LIVE: Jesus Loves Teenagers (August 15, 2021)

good morning good afternoon and good evening church family welcome back to shepherd's grove presbyterian church streaming to you live out of irvine california my name is preston parker and i have the amazing opportunity to be your service host for today family we have so many great things happening in today's service we've got amazing coral anthems a gifted musical guest and a tribute to our amazing friend jelco so please stay tuned for all of it also pastor bobby will be preaching a sermon titled jesus loves teenagers and you know as i heard that title it it got me thinking it got me wondering um that our teenagers are just going through so so much in these times and so if you have a teenager in your life if you know a teenager if you are a teenager i just encourage you to let them know that god loves them that god is still with them in the midst of everything they're going through to encourage them that they're not alone in whatever situation it is that they are dealing with and also remind them that they are the future of uh just showing the world god's love and so encourage them that they are not alone that they are loved and that they can pass on that love to future generations as well it's going to be an amazing sermon it's going to be amazing service as well so while you have a second i want you to go ahead and share the stream that you're watching on right now yeah wake up your best friends wake up your cousins wake up your sister and your brother and tell them to join you for service this morning all right now i am so excited because uh our friend tehila alfonso is gonna be here to sing for us now she has an incredible gift and i can't wait for you to see her in action and to see the gift that god has blessed her with so stay tuned for that now remember to follow us on social medias okay follow us on uh facebook on instagram on youtube on all of the social media platforms so that you never miss your daily content from our power and shepherd's grove all right family now i want to say a quick prayer for us before we start service father god in the name of jesus lord bless everyone who is here today bless every single peace of our ministry lord to have an amazing service and to bring glory to your name we give you the glory the honor and the praise and we thank you for allowing us to come together and start our week with you in jesus name we pray a man family enjoy service and i will be back at the end to close us out [Music] good morning church family we're so excited that you're here here are a few announcements for you this week are you new here sidecar sunday is for you what is cycar sunday thanks for asking it's for new folks to gather together to find out more about shepherds grove church both the history and how you can get involved and get connected and so join us september 12th between services at 10 15. you can stop by in the courtyard and see me for more details we'll look forward to seeing you september 12th for sidecar sunday for me knowing jesus is all about grace love and acceptance and that only happened because somebody invited me to church here at shepherd's grove we want to share that love and acceptance with other people so be thinking about who you could invite to church next sunday oh you should definitely do rooted it's worth it it's worth the connection it's worth like meeting more people it's worth getting involved it's just totally worth everything for me it was really fun getting to know everybody and getting to know just you know like their walks with god and what they came from everybody just loved you everybody just accepted you for what you had to say how you felt it just it just turned into a family it just like to this day like i call everybody i'm still close to everybody and like i'm just every day just happy to be a part of that rooted begins on september 15th and you can sign up today on the website as always be sure to check out the website especially the blog and follow us on social media for more details i hope you have a fantastic week and always remember god loves you and so do we [Music] [Music] sorry [Music] is [Music] [Applause] this is the day the lord is made let us rejoice and be glad in it good morning and welcome first timers in church family it feels great to be with you you know it is not an accident that you are here today god has a word for you you are loved uh let's begin with a word of prayer father we thank you so much for gathering us in your house we thank you god that you love us just as we are that even when we hated you and we were sinners lord you loved us and laid your life down for us we pray in jesus name that today we would become more like christ and help us lord to be better friends family members help us to be better christians help us to walk as you walked help us to understand your word and most of all fill us with your spirit this morning we pray we pray it all in the very strong name of jesus amen amen well today we're going to begin our worship service a little different than we normally do we were uh on vacation uh this last week when we heard that our organ of shell co had passed away um jalko has been a great friend of ours and such a wonderful person i met jelco in 2014 when he started playing for us i think he was a he was a fill-in uh and i believe it was don that that picked him and said i want him to be our organist and he was just so faithful so willing to always play he had such a great spirit so many great musicians oftentimes have a little bit of that you know prima donna type thing especially the good ones jelco was never that way just always so friendly so nice to everybody a great christian spirit a very very cool accent uh he's from croatia and every morning in the green room always would like have his ipad and show jokes to everybody and greet everyone he was just such a good friend and it's so hard when you lose someone you know it was weird because we just found out two weeks before he died that he had uh stage four cancer but we thought he might even live as long as several years maybe even 10 years and then he just died two weeks later it was a real shock um you know it's weird when someone first dies you almost struggle to feel it because it feels like it's not real but as time goes on you start to feel it more like i've been definitely feeling it this this last week and i told haven she was crying she said it's the first person she's known you know you and joko were friends and he used to play for the kids choir and different things and the first person she knew that had died so it's really hard on our team and we're going to begin this morning just with a a little reflection i know irene and mark wanted to say something i don't know i was gonna say too i thought it was um i loved what his family told us in the email they said the morning that he passed away in the quiet hospital room jelco said do you hear that do you hear that beautiful music and i thought you know that's just like jesus to welcome him probably something written just for him so we know like so grateful for the cross that he can he can be with the lord right now but yes please pray for his family because it was so sudden that you know they're really grieving so please pray for peace over them and i know we're all grieving as a church family to lose such a dear brother in the lord so we love him and yeah so please pray for their family gelco morozovic was a friend to this ministry it was a friend to the congregation he's a friend of the leadership of this ministry he's a friend of the choir a friend of the orchestra he was my friend and i'll have to tell you our friend jaco could do anything he was a he was a film composer composer of tv music a fine arranger a wonderful organist and pianist he was the first accompanist for the children's choir the voices of hope got them on their start on their way he was always there to help us out when when we needed him and when we needed an organist like bobby said we went through about 25 or 30 substitute organists in search of someone who fit in and then when we came across zelko it was like family instantly family don and i said this is the guy we just love him and he loves the ministry so as the years rolled along and anthem after him and anthem jelco proved to be just a wonderful person a wonderful organist a wonderful accompanist willing to do anything and believe me this ministry has its demands in terms of music i mean mitigating the abyss of this space and also mitigating other things too i mean zilco is just an amazing person one thing i really want to say is that he came to us at a time when we needed somebody we needed somebody and he was there we relied on that and every day we relied on him during our most challenging moment which was last year the heart of the pandemic we were facing a bit of an existential existential crisis what are we going to do we have this wonderful choir of incredible singers we have our our orchestra how are we going to get this together and we had a powwow irene and i and diane we had a powwow what are we going to do and we we said jelco is going to help and i know what he can do he is going to create with along with our hymns and our anthems he's going to create a metronomic click we call it the click right that the choir will receive they recorded all of their music at home in their home studio they be they went from incredibly great professional classical singers to studio musicians because of gelco's click holding it all together and then they submitted their their videos and their audio and i'd get the click i'd create the virtual orchestra then on sunday mornings our orchestra would listen we would listen and we'd hear gelco's click still to this day that hop opening we just heard that was jelco's click that we all were following jelco is still here his musical impact here will be here forever i want us to all remember him remember that name joko morozovic because he was really a big part of our ministry thank you friends please be seated i just want to take a few minutes and tell you a little bit about my relationship with jelco he you heard was an amazing musician and composer as an artist as musicians we come together to collaborate to create to express and we hope to inspire our listeners every time and jalku did just that but i want to tell you a little bit about giaco my friend the person shelco was so kind-hearted if you ever had an opportunity to talk to him he would just exude kindness he was passionate about the work that we do every week and he was a funny man he would make us laugh hard-working in addition to all of his gifts he was passionate and loved his family so deeply and was so proud of his daughters i don't know why he was taken from us so suddenly and i can't begin to understand it however i am proud and blessed to have called him my friend today we are going to sing a movement from braum's requiem how lovely is thy dwelling place in jelco's memory and we hope that it brings you comfort and some peace so [Music] is is [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] oh foreign [Music] [Music] ah [Music] is [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] i [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh god [Applause] in my house [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] is [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] is [Music] thank you choir and orchestra it's beautiful in preparation for the message matthew 28 16 then the 11 disciples went to galilee to the mountain where jesus had told them to go when they saw him they worshipped him but some doubted then jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit and teaching them to obey everything i have commanded you and surely i am with you always to the very end of the age amen [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] is [Music] oh sure [Music] [Music] r [Music] me [Music] oh is [Music] [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] would you join me in prayer this morning father we come before you with hearts that worship you that give you everything we are lord we lay it all down at your feet we want to be more and more like jesus in everything we do in every action we take in every word we say and every thought we have lord mold us into the kind of people that put jesus on display in everything we do lord we pray for the morozovic family and we continue to lift them up during this time and in the coming days and the coming weeks and the coming months and in the coming years and while zilco may no longer be with us today his spirit and his life's work that you called him to continues to live on from this place so we celebrate the man that he was the disciple that he was and the gifts that you gave him lord we lift up the people of afghanistan currently right now living in fear and not knowing what tomorrow brings lord we pray for the women and children and and those who don't know what to do oh we pray for your peace to invade we pray for your love to invade we pray for aid we pray for just a miracle to abound but we also lift up the people of haiti and the hospital systems and the doctors who were who were trying to help those who were recovering from such devastation lord we pray for your spirit to invade father we lift up all of the stuff that we see every day we pray for those battling homelessness and mental illness we pray for those who are wondering what's next we pray for those who got news this week of losing a job but we pray for those who are on the front lines battling wildfires that we pray for the church to rise up we pray for your people to take action and lord at the same time we celebrate all the good that you're doing all the the mighty and powerful things lord we pray for our students as they gear up for going back to school we pray for families that are taking those last-minute vacations we pray for relationships to abound or we pray for those who are walking into new jobs and starting new things and fresh vision that you have called us to lord we're so thankful that you are a god that is alive and active in this world and lord we pray that this church this church be a place that puts that on display that yells it from the mountaintops that brings people into relationship with you and lord we pray for pastor bobby the message that you have placed on his heart may we have ears to hear and hearts that are open to what you are doing in our midst lord we love you in jesus name amen amen church well uh this morning as we've been doing uh we won't be passing an offering plate again today but if you brought an offering with you there are baskets that you can place that physical offering in or you can continue to give in all the ways that you have been given over these last few months through text through the website to writing a physical check you know every dollar that comes in we look at we pray and we thank god for the mighty work that this church and this ministry is doing and lord how can we use this money how can we direct this money to do amazing and mighty and powerful things you know because with god he takes two two mites from a widow and he turns it in to a worldwide movement and so we know that every cent that you give makes a difference so god bless you all as you give to this church tahila alfonso is an la-based singer-songwriter who is originally from omaha nebraska after attending an intensive training program called the acapella academy in 2004 her desire to pursue a career in music was solidified since then she has performed in venues all around the globe teamed up with world-renowned artists and lent her voice to numerous movies and television shows she also serves as a worship leader at her home church please welcome tehila [Applause] tequila alfonso welcome thank you so much for getting to see yeah hey we're just so grateful that you're in the house and grateful you're bringing your gift for those who don't know a lot about you tell us a little bit about your music and your love for the arts yeah uh so i'm like from omaha nebraska originally um and came out for to la to pursue music at usc just graduated last year actually and i study pop music there and now i work as a teacher and arranger and a session a singer in la very very very fun very great big change to go from omaha nebraska to los angeles what was that like for you i mean culture shock for sure it's a very not a small city but it is very much more conservative and then coming out to like super diverse cultures and backgrounds in l.a which was awesome but it was like whoa there's he's kind of like a bubble in like a little bit of a ghetto it's kind of like a weird thing we have this like beautiful amazing campus and then there's a lot of like crime and stuff around yeah definitely interesting um it was always kind of heartbreaking to go from campus and having like walking home and just seeing all the homelessness and all the um horrible things that were happening around there and hopefully that'll change a lot of so a lot of your art and stuff develop there but acapella's been a big part for you too and this uh there was like an institute or something that you were a part of yeah so acapella academy is a summer camp for high schoolers and late middle schoolers that actually just started in 2014 and i was lucky enough to go for 2014 all the way through 2016 when i was in high school and that was basically the reason that i started doing music i would say i think i did it as a hobby most before that but then i went to this camp and was surrounded by all these other high schoolers and these counselors who were so involved in music and i was like i want to do that that sounds like a great thing to do and i came back home and i was like mom i'm quitting everything else i'm doing music yeah and yeah my parents were very they're both nigeria so it was a definitely big change for them being like oh you want to pursue an art as your career interesting choice but okay that's great that's an even bigger culture shock than nigerian people too yeah definitely so you traveled the world then uh later didn't you go to different places i did yes i was lucky enough to um go to taiwan in this last uh when was it november and december for a performance of the lion king that they were having over there i got to play nala for a couple runs of the show and it was absolutely incredible especially being in the middle of this pandemic it was just amazing to be able to travel and to be able to um perform after i think eight months of not doing anything so it's awesome so you were actually able to go two of all places to go to taiwan yeah definitely because at that point you know like kobe wasn't really they were taking it super seriously and like really they kept their numbers down yeah absolutely i think at that point there was i think 250 days i think of no domestic cases and so they were one of the safest places in the world to be able to do anything at that point so it was a blessing all around your worship leader now your home church but we're so grateful that you're here today giving us uh you know some some music to reflect too and what are you singing today again uh never alone by tory kelly okay great well thank you so much to gila for visiting with us today we really appreciate your gift and appreciate you coming god bless you thanks thank you [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] a rolling stone nowhere feels like home [Music] tell me do you believe miracles standing here before your eyes [Music] [Music] is [Music] everybody wants to be [Music] [Music] but that's when love says your mind [Music] but i know somebody that called is [Music] [Music] my imperfections were [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] never alone [Music] awesome thank you tequila alfonso awesome well welcome we're so glad that you're joining us today at the church shepherd's grove and thank you musicians for today we appreciate you so much and uh we're so grateful that you're joining us if you're wondering what kind of a church shepherd's grove is hopefully if this is your first time you're like this church is a little like there's something off about it that's like a little weird and there's a lot of little things that make us a little weird including the senior pastor there's other things too but uh you know the most of the things that you see that make us a little weird are the ways in which we are trying to reach the unchurched in the bible you see this dynamic when the church is growing between the gentile church and the jewish christian church both are wonderful they're good but there's this tension that grows between the old guard that have their old ways circumcision dietary laws where do those fit in a place like ionia and rome and greece and macedonia and places like that and and how does the gospel and the holy spirit fit and you see this dynamic where people like paul and peter you know often are butting heads or other apostles about what do we emphasize in these new gentile churches i wanted to simply say believe that the gospel really grows when it's reaching not the old guard but it's reaching a lost people and it's my hope that shepherd's grove will always be a church to the gentiles is a way of saying that that we're always reaching the unchurched that even though we're full of people from the old guard who've grown up in church we have lots of people who have traditions and things that they hold dear at the end of the day we're thinking about how do we reach people that have never heard the gospel and that's why we're an international ministry that's why we're on television that's why we're on internet that's why we do things like get nice lights we're trying to do things in order to appeal to people who have never been in church before my hope is that you're that type of type of a person so we're not a country club we're anti-country club we're the opposite of whatever that is even though we have such fine looking people don't get me wrong you know everybody is well dressed we uh we are a place where we hope that the more connected you are to this community the more hospitable you are you're not here saying what can i get how do i get my religious goods and services you're coming here saying how can i help how can i volunteer how can i welcome new people how can i pray with people so our hope is that you'll always shift from being you know a guest to eventually becoming a host or a hostess or someone that's welcoming people if you want to know more about this church i want to encourage you to get plugged plugged in with a small group one of the best ways to do that is to get involved in rooted if you want to know more about rooted after the church service i really would recommend you check it out if you just want to meet friends in the church and grow it's a great place to do it all right no matter who you are would you stand with us hold your hands out like this as a way of receiving we're going to say this creed together as we do every week i'm not what i do i'm not what i have i'm not what people say about me i am the beloved of god it's who i am no one can take it from me i don't have to worry i don't have to hurry i can trust my friend jesus and share his love with the world thanks you could be seated in classical greece there was a lot of talk about wisdom philosophy the importance of growing in your knowledge and there was a lot of talk about what it meant for something to be truly beautiful one of the things i find so interesting in our youth-obsessed culture is that greece sort of had an opposite view of youth than we do one of the most ugly things in classical grease was when a young person tried to act or look older and when an older person tried to you know act or look younger that's not a judgment i'm just saying that in their view there was a sight a certain type of beauty that only the young could have but that young beauty would be replaced with another type of beauty that only the old had that could be a life of memories experience but most of all wisdom in the classical view in the ancient view there's no way a young person could have the type of wisdom that a wise older person could have and so when a young person tried to act as though they were an old sage it was considered repulsive because they were they were faking it they were lying and when an older person tried to hold on to or get the the beauty of a young person it was considered repulsive because they viewed the vanity of young beauty as more beautiful than the the wonder of true beauty that comes from wisdom and experience now if you're older you like that don't you i just turned 40. so i just realized a lot of this might be coming from my subconscious as i'm over the hill now i want to begin by talking about a principle that really guides my life it's a philosophical principle and it's actually embedded within the church itself and i continue to make it embedded and it's called the lindy effect i've talked about it before if you're a friend of mine you've heard of me mention it once or twice because it guides so much of the special content i create if you're a content creator an artist a writer a thinker you really want to pay attention to what i'm about to say i think it will help you a lot uh in the 1960s an author albert goldman who was a polymath wrote an article the new republic called the lindy law i believe is what it was called he had made an observation at the lindy delicatessen in new york city there was a gathering of mostly stand-up comics but there were other actors broadway actors singers and things like this and people would sit around wondering for their career wondering for their career you know how long a job would last how long would they be there how much it would pay how much longer you know until they needed their next gig one of the rules that they used at the lindy's delicatessen it was just a heuristic a rule of thumb was that if a show had been around about five months you could guess that it would be around for about another five months until it was canceled whereas a show that had been around for five years would probably be around for another five years so many of the actors and performers at the lindy cafe typically wanted the gigs that had already been around for a while because the longer something had been around the more likely it was to stay around albert goldman said that they made an observation that people have noticed for a long time and that is that the older something is that not not a person of course non-perishable things things like ideas art architecture things like that that the older a thing is the more likely it is to hang around because it has gone through the gauntlet of trial and error and things like this and people trying to take it apart one of my favorite academics if you haven't read him i really recommend you do it benoit mandelbrod mathematician he's also polymath he's known most for the mandelbrot set ironically it's named after him but he didn't put it together this is the mandelbrot set by the way if you're bored one time it's a set of equations that he had mapped out and when computers came around they were able to have a computer generate this equation and if you zoom in on any part of this image it will go on forever and it creates all of these really trippy 1960s acid type images but they're real they're real images and they're really cool so check it out sometime if you're bored but mandelbrot who is especially a mathematician actually worked out the pareto principle into this idea of the lindy effect working out through life that's a lot of preamble to simply say that that he was able to basically prove and show that in in general the longer a thing is around that is a non-perishable the more likely it is to be around ideas technology art in other words a shovel is more likely to be around thousands of years from now than an audio speaker is right a candle is more likely to be around thousands of years from now than say a camera is the newer a technology is the less likely it will be around a long time from now i remember talking to pastors years ago about what the next social media platform would be so we can invest in that and everybody thought it was going to be what was it called i keep wanting to say submarine periscope a live video it's gone now it was huge for like four months and then it just went away you got you might remember or might have had a thing called a myspace it was replaced by facebook which is now sort of being replaced by instagram which seems to be a lot of people thought that instagram would be replaced by oh i can't even remember what's the one where you send the video and it deletes i'm look what snapchat i think snapchat's still around probably won't be around much longer the facebook's still around so you you see like based on that facebook will probably be around a little longer than instagram will be which will probably be around a little longer than what's the new one tinky tick tock yes i'm looking at the choir constantly and my 26 year old executive assistant we're like we're working together here the point is that probably all if you're watching this a hundred years from now you probably have no idea what we're talking about you probably know what a camera is and a shovel is you for sure know to shovel in a candle r you probably have no idea what facebook or tick tock is probably irrelevant 100 years from now either be replaced by something or it'll be some new thing um another way to look at it is uh in art i actually googled it this morning the number one according to google i don't know the number one pop musician alive today is ariana grande based on the lindy effect it is more likely that 40 years from now the beatles will be still be listened to but ariandel ariana ariana grande there i got won't or won't be as much maybe she will but more than likely the beatles will last longer than ariana grande and brahms will last longer than the beetles does that make sense can we just thank the choir too for that brahms piece that was wonderful it was inappropriate at the time but thank you for that and so if you want to write music that will be popular a thousand years from now what kind of music should you write a question like this was asked by the mathematician nasim taleb who i talked about he's the one i heard about this uh lindy effect from he was speaking at google and google just like worshiped this guy you know and he got up to give a speech and he asked a question if i wanted to write a book today that would be read a thousand years from now what kind of book should i write what should the topic be what should it what should what should the the thesis be and they had all sorts of attempts to answer this question of course they were all wrong because google's a new company not an old company they're thinking about how to make something new that will last a thousand years and that was they were missing the point you see if you want to write something that will be read a thousand years from now write about something that was being written a thousand years ago that's what the lindy effect says if you want to write a song that will be listened to 500 years from now or 200 years from now write a song that was being that's similar to something that was being written 200 years ago maybe a movie score is something that will probably outlast a lot of pop music just it's a theory and it's so funny when you see futuristic movies when i was a kid i loved back to the future too that came out in 1989 i was eight years old and the vision was for what it would look like in 2015 six years ago incidentally if you're watching this 100 years from now the year is 2021 back to the future two's vision was flying cars that ran on nuclear reactors there were holograms everywhere there were hoverboards which i am the most disappointed that there's not a hoverboard it's like a skateboard that doesn't have wheels and there was clothes that fit you and all the clothes were plastic and people went around hanging upside down keep in mind that was six years ago that was supposed to happen but if you took the real marty mcfly and brought him 2021 he would look around and say gosh everything looks pretty similar except for a telephone he'd probably ask are phones still phones and we'd say no brother you do everything on a phone except call people anyway so you can see that in life the old things stick around and the new things get replaced by other new things which then get replaced by other new things i can still think about all of the new topics that were being discussed at when i was in seminary 15 years ago that were revolutionary new ideas most of them didn't even stick which meant all that work i did was a complete waste of time if only we had spent that time studying languages and i'm serious about that you know a language is old learning hebrew really teaches you something learning greek teaches you something more than the language itself so our world is because of its affluence is becomes more and more obsessed with what is vain and less obsessed with what sticks and really matters and so in many ways especially a place like southern california it's not a judgment you can see though that we're youth obsessed and it's foolish because what is young grows old and uh you get this idea that that that being older is worse somehow how could it be you're becoming wiser you're becoming yeah you're closer to death but first for us as believers you know dying is more like waking up than falling asleep you're becoming the best version of yourself every day if you're living in the kingdom of god and you have something to offer young people that they don't even know sometimes i remember and i've seen this happen philosophically in so many cases but i remember i've had a great friend have a great friend that that was an amazing amazing man of god he was the ceo of this car company completely turned this company around then he went to work for a ministry in los angeles that was barely hanging on and by the time he finished his time there he had completely turned this ministry around and when john charles had left as our president i was looking for somebody to help me run the ministry this was like eight years ago and so i met with him he had just retired from the ministry he was at that he completely turned around and i kind of feel like he did it because there was nothing left to do it's such an amazing ministry is like all the challenge was gone so i sat down with him normally he would wear a suit but this time he was wearing a polo and like even though he was 66 he was like muscular like big old like guns with veins he just looked like a tough like he-man young youngish but old and i was like this is the second time i had met with him i was begging him please please come work for me just just come work for me help me turn this ministry around i need help he goes bobby i'm 66 don't you want to work with someone your own age and i was like i won't say his name like man the fact that you're 66 is the reason i want you everybody my age is an idiot that's faking it i'm an idiot that's faking it [Applause] you know i'm 33 at the time i i don't know what to do i was like i need someone like you and he goes well i've always felt that way too actually you know that i've got a lot to offer still i'm like you do please come work for me he's like i i you know you could see him struggling and i said he would think about it but i begged him i said at least just give me three years so that i can mentor under you and i can watch you do what you do so i know the kind of leader i need to replace you or i can take on those characteristics myself i begged him at the end of the day he did end up mentoring me and and did a lot of work with our ministry but didn't come in as the chief and i'm glad because i did need someone a little closer to my age russ jacobson filled that seat and did a great job and is doing a great job and he's 10 years older than i am so that's a little something you know but just that idea i'm 66 don't you want somebody your age nobody in the classical world would have said something like that it would have been quite the opposite it would have been obviously as a 33 year old you want someone who's 66. i can't do it right now because i'm i've got grandkids but let me find another 66 year old or even better a 70 year old that can help you out you know there are lots of reasons why you'd want to find someone younger and experienced but my point is i'm looking at the philosophy of many industrialized countries especially in the west that have forgotten this principle that keeps a people and the principle is the older generation blesses the younger and the younger honors the older and that the ideas that have made it this far at least the good parts about those ideas will continue on there are lots of old ideas that are bad that have been worked out but we don't throw the baby out with the bath water to assume that all ideas are bad because in the mix there was some ideas that were bad is foolish and i think we will see a time i'm an old man the fruits of some of those those changes i hope we won't but i believe we will it's in the great commission that hannah read today that you actually see this dynamic taking place it's through the whole bible but jesus in the great commission if i were to ask most preachers actually what does a great commission say most preachers would say go out into all the world and preach the gospel but it doesn't say that mark says preach the gospel but what we call a great commission in the book of matthew jesus says go into all the world and make disciples there is i think a philosophical difference between those who say i'm preaching the gospel and those who say i'm making disciples there shouldn't be but there is a disciple in jesus day was effectively a seminarian it's someone who had gone into a training there's a review for if you've gone here for a long time but i'm going to repeat this every few months it's so important a disciple is someone who's in training to become a rabbi so when jesus picked the disciples he was working within a cultural model that these young men that were in their late teens they would have considered like late high school early college believed themselves to be in training to become rabbis themselves to do what the rabbi did include including performing miracles and doing and preaching the way he preached and so when the great commission comes at 33 jesus is giving up his office to someone younger he's yielding his position of power to the people that he's trained he's giving them a model and he's saying now effectively when he says go make disciples well there's only one type of person that can make a disciple it's a rabbi he's effectively saying you're there now after three years of practice your rabbis go and make disciples go make disciples of men of women of children and most of all of gentiles go to where we've really never quite gone as a people go to the whole world and go to everyone because i'm sending the holy spirit that will help people become this rabbi type person within that model itself of preaching the gospel should be this idea of being a mentor rabbi disciple rabbi disciple honor and bless honor and bless and that is a a very healthy church a very healthy country is one that adapts the idea of blessing the next generation and the young generation honoring the older generation you can see how that idea has a cascading enduring effect to a people jesus clearly loves the next generation you can see it emanating from him where as he speaks to the older generation and loves them the disciples he call are all universally young people and his desire is to bless them to equip them and to send them out to do his job when jesus teaches in leadership he talks about the idea of something like servant leadership where the leaders in his day it's all about them it's all about their glory he wants his disciples to serve others to lift up others and to replace themselves with others in jesus day the antithesis of jesus leadership model would have been like a king herod who was always building monuments to himself who lived in the old age but killed many of his friends and family members died alone and eventually lost everything he was a shell of a man but jesus who as a young man ascends into heaven gives his yoke to even younger men and younger women to fulfill the calling of drawing people into god's kingdom today we have the same very narcissistic type ceos and leaders i can give you lots and lots of examples and none of these are judgments it's just an observation for you if you're if you're a key leader hannah and i now when hannah and i were dating i was a pc guy and she was a mac gal and i used to actually tease her about her her mac stuff until my pc kept breaking down and i was like can i borrow your mac and over time and we've been married 20 years now or not 20 18 years and uh is it 18 okay cool she doesn't know sometimes too we both forget over time i was like oh my gosh mac is so much better than pc and just fell in love with mac until steve jobs died you remember steve jobs good old stevo and now now steve is gone every year apple gets worse and worse it's got a new macbook and every time i plug it in the plug is so heavy it like falls out of the thing i'm like and i was like and hannah i always when we see something like that we always say something like that steve jobs is dead like we say like mac is dead you know or like steve jobs is no longer with us because he was known to be like obsessive about like i remember one story they had they made like thousands of iphones but it didn't make a like a popping feel when you put the headphone jack into the hole and so he hated that so much he recalled like hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory to have it remade so that it would make like a sound when you put the headphones in and that's in a way the thing that i think you're probably if you're not a mac person you don't get it and that's okay but if you are you know it's like those are the things it's those little things that made it great but steve jobs was notoriously definitely had some problematic leadership things probably was a narcissist i didn't know him i only met him a couple times just kidding but you know i i don't i just know what i hear i know what i read you hear accounts but for the most part you hear that his whole that apple was really wrapped up in his ego and that having a legacy having a a person that was like him fill that role was like never in his mind maybe it was but and apple's i guess doing fine as a company but you will see that even though they're doing well from a cash standpoint eventually they're going to lose that thing that makes them apple because steve jobs didn't raise up a leader like steve jobs or a set of leaders like steve jobs it was about steve another saying that really troubles me in the church so this should not be in the church ever it shouldn't be in a church and something i worry about when i see my you know it's kind of a weird thing about being on tv and being in ministry when i see my face and and stuff on everything you kind of it's weird because you kind of have to do it but it also i don't love it you know what i mean and because i'm afraid of that type of thing of my ego and even my walk with god getting wrapped up in a church or a ministry there's an old saying it says that started about 10 years ago and i think it was started when my grandparents generation started stepping down and now the boomer generation seems to be even worse than my grandpa's generation the saying goes founding pastors don't retire founding pastors die i've heard this and said this so many times nobody says this aloud right i've never heard anybody in the pulpit say it i've never heard anybody publicly write it down but i have heard multiple church members and leaders in churches say this because the joke is founding pastors retire but they don't retire they retire but they remain the chairman of the board or they retire but they continue to triangulate and they continue to undermine the people that they wanted to replace them any time that person makes a mistake they undermine them and i'm amazed and so i think about this who's a founding pastor a founding pastor is a church planner with some young church planner who went and he or she started this amazing thing but never let go this is so different than what you see from jesus who takes three years to build a thing he hands it off to young people and he ascends into heaven that might be a way of thinking about it okay i'll just finish with this uh the ten commandments have been around for a long time so they'll probably be around for a long time according to the lindy effect three thousand years they've been around maybe longer the fifth commandment who knows the fifth commandment the ten commandments i've told you this joke before but i i remember being with a bunch of hollywood producers when i was working for tlc and i was at this table of of a lot of actors producers cameramen and we were talking about religion because i was a pastor at the time too and uh this one guy who was kind of the leader of the group we were all having a discussion and he said i don't really have a religion i don't have faith i just follow the ten commandments and i went oh you do he said yeah and i went i looked at everybody at the table said you all follow the ten commandments they were like that's all we do we just follow the ten commandments i was like that's amazing and i said what are the ten commandments it was amazing it was great i literally looked at him i go do you honor your father or mother but anyway that's that's the fifth commandment i didn't say it i mean he was my friend you know i wasn't like judging him i hope not i might have been i might have been the fifth commandment is honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land that the lord your god is giving you so this is the only one of the ten commandments i believe that has a promise tied to it if you're struggling to honor your father and mother remember that this commandment comes with a promise that you'll live longer if you do it why would it be worded that way honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land that the lord your god is giving you first of all not only is it a promise that you'll live long where you are but it also you might notice doesn't tell you to love your father and mother did you catch that the bible's a book i mean there's a lot of love in the in the bible god himself is love you're supposed to love the immigrant and the alien you're supposed to love your enemies you're supposed to love your neighbor but it doesn't say to love your father and mother it says to honor your father and mother there's a difference and although many of us love our fathers and mothers a lot of us don't a lot of us have a lot of animosity bitterness broken-heartedness some of us even struggle with abuse in general this is a principle of not just children honoring their parents it's a principle of the younger generation honoring the older generation and here's what we miss it's not that the older generation needs to feel honored it's that the younger generation needs someone to honor they need something to look forward to they need wisdom that's older than they are they need like the ceo i needed they need a mentor they need someone who believes in them they need someone who blesses them someone who teaches them and someone who proves to them that the principles by which they live are worth enduring i think a lot of the problems in our society is that the older generation has many wisdoms philosophies and good things but the way that they try and communicate those ideas are combative and offensive they rarely are communicated especially in the age of myspace i don't know anyway especially in social media you know they come across as very preachy but the older generation is supposed to bless the younger so what does it mean to bless well bless is that i think carries that old axiom people don't care about how much they know until they know how much you care that idea that i'm for you i'm with you i'm love you i'm on your side i might be coming across as direct or strict but it's you need to know first that the only reason i'm doing this is because i believe in you and i see the best in you and i just want to give you what has worked for me and i want to tell you what has failed for me and i don't want you to make the same mistakes i make that kind of a message is very different than the one that very often is the older generation we're giving the younger generation in turn in our youth obsessed culture is like who cares about old people the church has done this so many churches are like we don't care about all people we just only want to reach young people and we just hope old people will give us money to reach young people and we want our church full of young people we want you know old people to give still it's like what are you doing what are you doing that is not the bible that is not what a church is supposed to look like ideally a church is just kind of everybody and you have this dynamic of the old blessing the young and the young honoring the old and that that happens no matter how old or young you are i have seen haven be the elder in a community with chloe where haven is the older and she's blessing her five-year-old cousin chloe who's blessing you know honoring haven and it works well she's helping her learn how to go into elementary school and to do it well and no matter how old you are you can still honor your elders maybe you're saying bobby i'm 90. there's nobody left the bible doesn't say honor them until they die you see even when you're older it is useful to honor those who have passed and to remember the good that they gave to us so if you're older bless the younger and especially if you're younger honor the older you are missing out on so much if you are only obsessed with what is young and new you're missing out you're missing out on the thing that is going to sustain your faith your life your family your joy you're going to make the right decisions when you honor your elders you're going to make wrong decisions when you honor youth instead of blessing it i believe this and and we just need and if you are older young people need you but they need to feel that you love them first before you give them any advice you need to be more like mr miyagi or yoda or gandalf these are the best characters in movies by the way are the the mentors you know even tony stark the best version the most fun version of tony stark is when he's mentoring spider-man if you have no idea what i'm talking about i'm really sorry it's very interesting you should check out the avengers but but we need we need mentors who care have big hearts along with their big brains you know they they care first before they're trying to impute their info and if we if we can reclaim some of this in the u.s i kind of feel like maybe there's a bit of a trend going that way i feel like our music our art our churches our society our schools everything will get better it's not that we have to agree on anything on everything we're never going to agree on everything but that there's this dynamic of blessing blessing the young and honoring the old amen father we thank you so much for your word we ask in jesus name that you'd help us to be a community of people that blesses the next generation believes in the next generation and for those of us who feel younger or coming up that we would never dishonor who came before us that we would always understand that we stand on the shoulders of giants that we would learn from what's been around for a long time lord we love you so much we thank you it's in jesus name we pray amen would you stand with us [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] thank you so much for joining us today it really means the world that you would join us either on tv or on your phone or here in the house we're so glad that you're with us and we hope you come back next week and now the lord bless you and keep you the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you the lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen thank you so so much family for joining us for today's service i hope that you enjoyed every single bit of today's service from our amazing choir anthems to our tribute to our dearly beloved gelco as well as our musical guest in our sermon we hope that you enjoyed today's service we hope that you shared it with someone and we hope that you continue to join us next week and the week after and the week after that for more inspiring services for more amazing music and for more amazing words family i want you i want to remind you to encourage your youth to encourage um your teenagers in your life if you are a teenager i hope that you know how much god loves you how much he values you and how much he trusts you in whatever season it is that you're in right now know that god is only hoping the best for you and that he is walking with you through your times of sorrow through your times of tragedy through your times of darkness depression anxiety whatever it is know that god is with you family i hope so so much that you gain something from today that you can use um not just to implement in your life today but for the rest of the week the rest of the month and the rest of the year that's what we're trying our best to do here at shepherd's grove presbyterian church we want to give you nuggets that you can carry with you always to encourage you and uplift you and build your relationship closer and closer to god family i saw some prayer requests out there a lot of us are still praying for healing i saw a prayer for roger monica we see that prayer we're so so sorry about the situation that he's in but we are praying for him we are praying for all of you out there who are dealing with battles trials and tribulations and so i want to say one more quick prayer for you before i let you go father god in the name of jesus lord first of all we just say thank you we thank you because we know that you are with us right where we are wherever we are in our journey god lord we just say a prayer and we claim the healing lord that you have for us in whatever situation we're in lord whether it be mental healing physical healing lord spiritual healing lord we just ask that you bring us closer to you father and that you will touch our spirits touch our bodies and our minds lord grant us the healing that we need god lord and help us be closer to you in the end god lord we help you we ask you just to bless us in our daily walks with you and in our daily lives lord and whatever we do bless us to always keep you in mind to always keep you as the center of everything that we do father and so with all of that lord we just say thank you we give you the glory the honor and the praise in advance because we know that you will always take care of your children and that's why we love you that's why we honor you that's why we worship you every single sunday and all throughout the week as well in jesus name we pray amen family i love you so so so much i hope that you've enjoyed today's service and again be sure to join us next week at 9 00 a.m sharp until then i'm preston parker god loves you and so do we you

Channel: Hour of Power with Bobby Schuller

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Id: VSYjRqfLj6Q

Length: 82min 45sec (4965 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021