Secondhand Sins - Levi Lusko

[Applause] that awkward moment when you don't know whether you should hug or not man what a great year passion city it is such a privilege to be with you you can be seated i know those at home with cinnamon rolls in hand are already seating are already sitting but uh it is a pleasure and a privilege to be with you to those of you here in the rooms to those of you on the facebook live on the youtube stream on the passion city dc website thank you for having me jenny and i are such big fans of your pastors of pastor ben and donna and their faith and their strength and leadership and all along the way to planting this church and leading it so well we've just been cheering them on we love the passion city house overall uh pastor louie and shelly are some of jenny and i our favorite people on uh the earth and their courageous leadership and their spirit of creativity and uh passion for the glory of god has has marked our lives and our faith journey in such uh significant ways and we're so grateful that life's journey and god's providence has brought us together to become friends with uh with ben and donna as well and watching uh the uniqueness that they have found their sound in life and are playing it so loud and playing it so well and fighting for the city uh i just think it's incredible and we're encouraged every time we're together and listening to ben teach is always a joy especially these last messages through the book of colossians that has been going on and i i'm a little old-fashioned i believe once the bible says it we should live it and the bible says we're to give honor where honor is due so would you help me please honor pastor ben and donna and thank god for them the gift on their life um what a joy it is to be their friend you guys are planted in in good soil here and have great leaders uh to watch over you and fight for you and teach you and uh so we're thrilled to be in the nation's capital and i i just really believe that god uh wants to do something special through these uh these hard days these difficult days um hard times are for sure what we're living in and the hits keep coming you know it feels like the russian nesting doll that is the last you know 20 whatever you know however many days it's been it just feels like the moment you you get to the end of it it's like i thought i was running a marathon but turns out it was a triathlon and i don't know how to ride a bike but i just finished the swim and just when i get out of the water like you got to do what you got you know and then it's like oh no it's actually a decathlon do you know how to shot put no i do not know how to shot put what are you talking about here and uh when you when you reach a finish line only to discover it's a false finish line and it's actually just the extension of the next level that is fatiguing and we need endurance to run this race but it it it's really going to be that way all the way to heaven and i think that god wants to help us to learn the art of stamina the art of refueling the art of recharging and resting well and healing well and realizing that no matter what happens no matter what difficulties we face our only finish line is when that trumpet sounds our only actual finish line is when jesus returns our only finish line is when we're standing before him so the end of covet 19 or the difficulty of this or whatever we would say if this can work out then i'm going to be okay if we can get to this it's fine and i think we as humans love to create false finish lines so what we really need to do is just kind of shrug our shoulders and say whatever god has for me today i'm going to do that with all my heart with the spirit of worship with everything i can i'm going to approach it with all that's in front of me and that's all i really can do and so this pandemic this issue this tension this struggle this tragedy this it's going to continue to some degree or another jesus said we're going to have trouble in this world but church be of good cheer he said i have overcome the world so let's thank god together that we don't need any thing to happen in order for us to worship him we don't it's not our trust in him is not conditional he's not trying out to be your god it's been established we don't have to wake up every day and say what have you done for me lately if he never does anything other than dying on the cross and rising from the dead and giving us his spirit come on it's enough he's done enough he's he's proven himself faithful and so what a wonderful time to be alive and i really do want to encourage you and cast vision into every single home and every single heart that you guys are uniquely positioned in this country in this day for such a time as this that is true of every jesus follower that is true of all of christ's bride but there are significant unique places significant unique strongholds if it is not true then why did jesus set his face like flint to go to jerusalem and why did paul his entire ministry life say i really want to get to rome there are unique places there are unique times god loves people everywhere but if there's not important geographic areas and locales then why does the enemy set up unique strongholds in certain places and so i'm impressed in my heart for for you to see that god has planted you in the dc area inside the diamond inside this region inside the the government halls of power and the places that you work alongs inside and work alongside and zoom alongside there's there's a unique measure of influence and authority on this city and so there is also a spiritual dimension to what god has positioned you to influence and impact and i want you to believe that you are destined for impact you are the head and not the tail you are leaders and not just followers you are from above and not just beneath god has uniquely been dreaming and scheming about how he wants to use your life and he has called you to walk out the calling that he has placed upon you and so it is like maximus you know we are about to die salute you i've come here just to say i'm inspired by your faith that you would accept this mission and challenge and i only see that gaining greater influence in the coming days as the world continues to become more complex as our culture continues to become more secular and as the church called to be the salt and light for jesus christ in a day when we are losing some of the quote unquote benefits of being a cultural christian country where we get to actually just decide what are we in it for are we really is jesus enough are we content to pick up our cross and follow after him and i think that it is going to be great rewards that we see eternally as we just choose to follow him in jesus name that's not my message it's just me getting started i i do have a message but i felt that so strongly in my spirit as as we drove around yesterday as kip my friend and i were playing tennis in the shadow basically of the washington monument it was just unbelievable just to to be here and uh and to feel um christ's love for the world expressed through him wanting this church to to exist here and i love it if you have a bible genesis 26 is where we're gonna be genesis 26 as you're turning there when i was a child i hated shopping at goodwill but my mom would always drag us to stores like goodwill for for shopping and she had of course the whole laundry list of reasons why it was a good idea to shop at goodwill uh anybody else a show of hands at home and in the building your parents took you secondhand uh shopping of course she told us like they're they're new they're new to you right i was like i don't i see through that all right that's some creative language mom but i'm not buying and then she of course said that that uh it's it's uh it's uh you know economical there's five i was one of five kids and so you know back to school shopping was expensive and and so it was it was going to be uh money savings to go second-hand shopping and then the third reason that she would always you know point out it's just being a good steward it's better for the environment there's not there's not as much waste when something that's no longer being worn gets to be given a second life but i was afraid i think i was afraid of shopping the good i was afraid to be seen shopping at goodwill i was afraid to not have brand new in-season clothing i was afraid about what the clothes that i wore to school said or didn't say about my worth i was afraid about what the clothes that i wore said about my value i was dealing with so much insecurity and fear where do i stack up how do i measure up what what what do i matter in this world i walked into school often times middle school high school i walked in and and even to this day sometimes wondering am i important am i am i enough do i have enough value do you see me do you recognize me in am i am i validated by by having these clothes and i think i was afraid honestly just on a very pragmatic level uh that i was going to end up inadvertently buying something that someone at school had discarded only to have them call me out for wearing something to their family which presumably came from the endless vault of you know ducktales money that they pulled from their giant tower they could swim in and uh and purchase for themselves right that was a solid 80s reference right there right little gummy bears action also right and and anyhow i just sort of i was afraid i was afraid and so i didn't like shopping at goodwill as a child that's fine and well to to buy second-hand clothes but what about secondhand sins that's what i want to talk to you about today i want to talk to you today about how to let go of the recycled flaws of your family so that you can break free from generational patterns of sin that you don't even realize are holding you back how do we let go of the recycle floss of our family and break free from generational family sins that we don't even realize it inadvertently that even without even realize we're doing it are holding us back we are not the first to deal with these things we are not the last let me show this to you in genesis chapter 26 as we just read a small episode from the life of abraham's son isaac who as you read it you're going to see something that is an example of what we all deal with today it says in genesis chapter 26 verse 1 there was a famine in the land besides the first famine that was in the days of abraham and isaac went to abimelech king of the philistines in this is one of my favorite words to say garrar you just i don't know why i like it then the lord appeared to him and said do not go down to egypt live in the land of which i shall tell you dwell in this land and i will be with you and bless you for to you and to your here we go descendants i give all these lands and i will perform the oath which i swore to abraham your father and i will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven i will give to your descendants all these lands and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge my commandments my statues statutes and my laws so isaac dwell in gerar and the men of the place asked about his wife and he said she's my sister for he was afraid to say she is my wife because he thought lest the men of the place kill me for rebecca because she is beautiful to behold now it came to pass when he had been there a long time that abimelech king of the philistines looked through a window and saw and there was isaac and it says showing endearment to his wife in the new king james version which is a very muted tame anemic version of the hebrew expression that many translators insist should be fondled or caressed okay so he was showing endearment to rebecca his wife then a abimelech called isaac and said bro that's not your sister all right if it is you got problems all right quite obviously she's your wife so how could you say she is my sister isaac said to him because i said lest i die on account of her and abimelech said what is this you have done to us one of the people might soon have lane with your wife and you would have brought guilt on us so abimelech charged all his people saying he who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death it's a bad day when people far from god know better than the people of god how we ought to follow god now as we get our heads around this idea of second second-hand sins i want to approach it from four different angles and the first i hope you'll write down is the word reception how do we receive secondhand sins how do we end up one day uh in spiritual groundhog's day where we're we're listening to you know share i got you bae waking up smashing the alarm clock going down to bed and breakfast to get some coffee on our way to see punxsutawney phil how do we all of a sudden because that is exactly what we are seeing here my counselor who i go to regularly and it's been a little bit more regularly this these past 12 months uh he loves to ask me this question that oftentimes infuriates me and he'll say to me as i'm describing something to him this staff member did this and this happened jenny said this and this hap my 15 year old daughter said this and and this happened he'll say levi how old does this feel how old does this feel does this feel new does this feel raw does this feel old like how old does it feel where does this go back to how long has this been a pattern where do you see this stemming from how old does this feel and for isaac what we're reading in genesis 26 is we're reading this i think if a counselor sat down with him uh as he is in the the process of abandoning the promised land heading to egypt which is always a picture of the world that christians and christ followers are called to walk away from we come out of egypt through the waters of baptism into the the the transition where we head towards the promised land which is maturity which is fullness in christ and any movement back to egypt is always a reversion is always is always us going back to things that christ has called us to walk away from the leaks and the onions of egypt it's us returning back again to slavery it's us egypt can be religion egypt can be outright sin but it's always us going where christ has called us to walk away from so as isaac here in this moment heads back if if a counselor were to sit down with him and say bro how old does this feel he couldn't even historically sum it up in his own lifetime because what he is here doing is something that goes back to his father before him if you look at genesis 12 you can actually see the origin of what he's doing here where in verse 10 it says now there was a famine in the land isaac's not even born yeah fyi and abram went down to egypt to dwell there for the famine was severe in the land therefore it will happen when the egyptians say see you they will say this is verse 12. this is his wife sarah they will kill me they will let you live so verse 13 he says to his wife please say that you are my sister that it may be well with me for your sake and that i may live because of you same sin new situation old pattern new expression and by the way if you look at genesis 20 almost the exact same thing happens again in the life of abraham so what isaac is doing is inadvertently replaying recycling he's popping some tags like macklemore in the family thrift don't you love how nowadays thrifting has become so cool because of poshmark and because of grailed and because of instagram shops right like like now it's it's basically and then ebay which is the world's biggest second-hand store that has ever been right and so so what he's doing he's like he's pulling a macklemore and he's he's shopping in the family thrift store why why because of a crisis because of a famine now a famine in the land and that famine caused there to be heat and heat causes there to be friction and when we get into stress-filled situations when we find ourselves in a pandemic when all of a sudden there's pressure what happens we find out what's really in there for much of the things that are latent in us are heat activated so stress doesn't change you people like to say well the the pandemic was so much pressure it broke up my marriage no no uh a crisis will make a weak marriage weaker and a strong marriage stronger crisis doesn't alter who you are it reveals who you are these things come out bump a cup and you find out what's on the inside of us so a lot of us have discovered in these difficult days there's more dysfunction in us than we knew and for isaac when stress activates him these things that were already in him they now come to the surface and so his instant reaction is like his father before him to go to egypt his his in the moment of of difficulty his instant reaction is to practice deceit and to tell a lie about his wife my sermon in a sentence is this it is easier to copy the sins of your family than it is to come up with your own it's easier to cut to copy the sins of your family than to come up with sins of your own peter scazero puts it this way and this is a troubling quote jesus is in your heart but grandpa is in your bones all of us carry things inadvertently that in crisis in stress when there's a stimulation it's easy for these things things to spring out now i realize i can already hear you you're like levi that sounds very old testament i don't know if you are aware of this thing there's this brand new thing called the new covenant and that cancels out all those old things and so since been canceled so that's no longer an issue for me and i would say to you then why is it that so often times even in christian families father after father and son after son and mother after mother end up in the same toxic patterns even as jesus followers here's why because god is a generational god and we have been made in his image and those forces are at play for better or for worse in fact it's not just what he does it's who he is he's a generational god he always identifies himself as the god of abraham and the god of isaac and the god of jacob it's generational it's it's systemic that's how he approaches everything he does and us made in his image those forces are at play inside of us exodus 20 god tells us the ten commandments and as a part of it he tells us who he is and in the explanation of who he is he gives a statement that is also given to moses when moses says who who are you show me your glory and god passes by revealing himself disclosing who he is to moses and to us and what does he say this is verse 5 exodus you shall not bow down to them or worship them for i the lord your god am a jealous god punishing the children for the sin of the fathers check it out to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments what is he saying he's saying i am a generational god how i operate cannot be understood by merely looking at your life you also have to examine the bigger picture of three to four generations of what happened before you your uncles what happened before you your aunts what happened before you your grandparents we're living in this age of autonomy and individuals and we just want to think about our lives and we're off on our own we get in our uber and we live we live in our our condo or our apartment and we we don't think about we we moved away from the midwest we moved away from our family we think i started a new thing and yet here we are what are we doing we're we're in a new situation but we've brought along the old family baggage all the trauma and the hurts from things that happened before we were even conceived god is a generational god he says the third and the fourth generation david was told after his adulterous affair with bathsheba and the murder that he thought would cover it up he was told as part of the consequence the sword shall not depart from your house now david was forgiven of the sins when he asked for god to cleanse him with hyssop in psalm 51 david was forgiven but a part and aspect of the consequence would be that that was entered into the sowing and reaping cycle that would be systemic in his family and and we see it look on david's family you see murder you see a sexual impulse control problem you see a giving into the flesh you see a hatred you see covering up you see the same things that that he did the the one season of sinning or seeding led to generations of weeding it's easier to copy your family's sins of choice than it is to come up with your own it is both nature dna and nurture environment and i would add a third component it's also spiritual these strongholds that can be built up in a family over time these patterns of thinking these habits this this response to stress when conflict happens this is what i do i always run away or i always i always i always bottle it up and don't talk about my feelings and then one day explode i always have three gin and tonics when i have a bad day this is how i cope this is how i respond this is what i what my go-to is this is what i where i get my release from this is how i i handle temptation with pornography this is this is what i this is what i do it it comes down like dominoes there's a ripple effect there's consequences what we do never stays contained there's always collateral damage there's always impact there's always consequences you say levi not not me not me because i don't want to be anything like my mom and so what did you do you became the spitting image of the person who helped create your mom you see this is not only by direct imitation it's also overreaction so where we saw our dad this way and we hated that and we said i will never be my like my dad my dad was so lazy he was never a good provider he didn't pay child support he wasn't present so now we valued work to such an extreme degree we became our productivity we became our efficiency we became our accomplishments because i didn't want to become my dad and in so doing we ended up a workaholic we ended up completely given over to the opposite of our dad and so we became maybe without realizing it our grandfather who with his obsessive workaholic intensity caused hit your your father to say i'm never going to be like that so i'm going to be lazy and so what are we doing we're creating now what's going to be a ripple effect three generations from us where we're going to create another version of us and so even in the things we said i'm not going to do we ended up swinging back to the other side the point is as i think john wesley put it the devil doesn't care which side of the horse you fall off of he just doesn't want you to stay in the saddle and ride and so the pendulum goes back and the pendulum goes forth it's legalism and it's antinomianism it's it's i can do whatever i want because it's all paid for by the cross and this i have to earn my way and it says you're learning it's the gnostic thing it's christ and this and and then it's back over there's nothing new under the sun and the enemy laughs because we think he's playing checkers but he's actually a master at chess and with this and that and over here if i can get you to say yes to this he actually is messing with you so that he can create two generations from you something else over there that's how they're received second point let's talk about how their scent or the transmission now of secondhand sins transmission this is the part of the message where i need to pivot because i've been talking to you as children and now i need to talk to you as parents and in a church composed of many people who are still single who are still in that mode of grinding to build and eventually the family will come what i need for you to do is to take off the i'm a child hat and put on the i'm a parent hat now you're not yet but you will be you're not yet but you need to begin to think that way and i need to ask you the question what are you going to be handing on to your children and to your children's children what is it exactly this is the the more challenging part of the message because the first part some of you were like this is the greatest sermon i've ever heard i knew it my parents are screwed up my grandparents are screwed up you know this is what i've been telling everybody this is this look look levi this is not a revelation quite honestly thank you because i've i you know what now it now explains i feel justified for all of my flaws and all of my failures and all of my shortcomings and quite frankly this this is this is this is good i can't wait to send this podcast to lots of people who help create the problems but now i pivot and say all right what are you doing now that is going to be a problem for your kids one day what i'm really trying to say is what 30 years from today will your children be in therapy for because of you and because of what you're doing that is eventually setting an emotion you're not married yet but you're doing things today that are creating circumstances and conditions and strongholds and patterns in your heart that are going to make your future marriage more difficult make your vows that you're going to make to your wife one day untenable because you realize that putting a ring on your finger does not change who you are all of the habits all of the patterns all of the the sin you're you're sowing that's going to make sanctification a more uphill battle for you all of these things are going to make it difficult for your children to walk into the future free and unhindered and unhampered and undampened by what you're doing because here's the unfortunate news not only do the things we do today impact future generations but they are always amplified and exaggerated the second and the third time around okay let me show this to you it's crazy third and the fourth generation on those who hate me abraham tells a white lie he's never been there before he's a brand new christian he's a first generation christian and he's following jesus imperfectly without even knowing the name of jesus and he tells this little white lie i shouldn't tell my wife my sister but you know is what it is shouldn't go down to egypt but no one had ever done that before so it's really you could say a little little white lie there's no such thing of course it's deceit he felt the conscience the prick of the holy spirit just like you and i do but he chose to do wrong when he felt that temptation isaac has heard the family stories long enough to know that god told abraham don't go down to egypt and god even to him directly says don't do this you know james says that god always gives us a way of escape when we're tempted none of us ever can say the devil made me do it there's always a way and haven't you felt that you shouldn't be here he's not the right guy for you this is not a this is not the situation you want to be in this is right this that you feel you feel and if you if you're quiet for a second and give in you'll realize that he's leading you towards life but he's quiet it's the whisper of the holy spirit it's that little thing that just all of a sudden right it's just those little things that god do and if you if you turn the volume of the noise up it's just real quickly it's so easy to give in and to feel like you had no option so isaac isaac has that don't go to eat i'm gonna bless you god speaking life you knew him but then what is he doing he's deceiving again he's telling the lie so so for him it's actually more outright than it was in abraham okay so white lie bold-faced lie what about isaac's son guess what he will have a son whose name is liar literally jacob deceiver who will spend his entire life deceiving so much that he doesn't even remember the truth himself pulling his brother's heel stealing blessings for bowls of soup and then what what's the worst of all is the way it comes back to to revisit isaac when jacob covers his his arms and legs in animal skins and says to his father i am esau my brother bless me as the firstborn and then what happens to jacob the liar himself who spends his entire life lying he gets deceived himself when at his wedding his crafty uh soon-to-be wife's father swaps out the bride in the last minute he marries one woman wakes up after the honeymoon with a different woman we don't know a lot about jacob's wedding but i can tell you there was an open bar because how drunk do you got to be anyhow so deception you see how it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger what happens to jacob jacob has 12 sons and jacob's 10 sons deceive their father into thinking the eleventh brother has been murdered by wild animals what did he put on his arm animal skins wild animals killed him and he and he has brought the cloak of joseph the coat of many colors favoritism by the way which was something that abraham also struggled with ishmael favoritism with isaac and then and then the banishing of the sons this happens again and so the suns now are to a different level exaggerating and amplifying sin just gets bigger it will never be content small it will never be content little oh it'll just be over here in the corner yeah i download the tinder sometimes when i'm lonely yes yes it's just this little thing over here it's not that big of a deal i mostly love god but friday night sometimes it's it'll just stay over here just one more time and then you can stop i'm still in control but sin will always unfurl itself to its full height when it introduces itself to you says i'm just little i won't take up much room i won't mess up your life sin never looks like heroin overdose sin never looks like a dui with three fatalities sin never looks like a prison sentence it's always i'm your friend and i'm little you're in control you tell me when to go and i will go i'll never unpack my things and make myself at home and it's only ever going to resume its full height god told cain sin is crouching at the door pretending it's small but its desire is to rule over you it will always cost you more than you wanted to pay it will always take you places that you didn't want to go and it will always keep you longer than you wanted to stay and that's why jesus's admonition which feels so vulgar and shocking and grotesque actually makes sense cut off the offending hand pluck out that eye if you don't kill your sin your sin will certainly kill you jesus said the little leaven should be taken seriously before it infects the whole loaf so that's what's happening it's not just in our lives it's not just in our lifetime it's long after we're gone how are these things that we are permitting going to be amplified and exaggerated and causing there to be difficulty with our great grandchildren's attempt to follow jesus i stood at the tomb of george washington yesterday and i just thought here we sit in the aftermath of a life imperfectly but well lived and what can be unleashed for good and what will we be handing down by way of our journal entries our walks with jesus our temptations that we face proverbs 22 says point your kids in the right direction when they're old they won't be lost the converse is also true if we don't point our children in the right direction they will be lost one day third point is where it gets hopeful this is the part where you start going like okay this all will continue until there is a disruption these forces will continue unchecked until something disrupts them and this is the part of the message where i tell you you have a choice this is the part of the sermon where i tell you none of this is automatic so you don't get to see yourself as a victim in the story this is the part of the message where i tell you even though we all have learned through counseling to connect the dots on family of origin and this over here and great uncle and timmy and all he fell in the well and get lassy and all that's all we're all well and well but where we learn the fact that everything we've been handed even though it it's easier easy for us to copy the sins of our families we always have a choice and therefore we never get to write ourselves off as victims in the story and i did this because of that where we always get to see even though it would be your predisposition makes it easier for you to do these things you have a choice ezekiel 18 god was irritated that because of this generational pattern that he put into play when he created the world that they then began to see themselves as helpless to follow him because of the sins of their parents and so he said confronting an adage that had become common in the day what do you mean when you use the proverb concerning the land of israel saying the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge for as i live says the lord you shall no longer use this proverb behold all souls are mine the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine the soul who sins shall die what was he doing he was saying yes you get handed all these things but i don't want you to write yourself off as victims who are helpless just pointing back to great grandpa as why you did these things because every soul has the choice every soul can choose yes it's easier for you to drift this way because of the dominoes that came up to you but you can still choose to draw a line in the sand and say to yourself and say to your posterity as for me and my house we will serve the lord it stops today it stops right now there's a line in the sand written in blood and i choose to walk out a different story if you confront your disruption your dysfunction you can disrupt your dysfunction and it begins by naming the sins that have a hold on you so that you can no longer let them claim you so you have to identify them and what is god trying to do he's always trying to overturn generational sin and that was even hinted at in his disclosure of his name what did we read in exodus 20 those who hate me that will be visited to the third and the fourth generation but those who love me what did he say i will show that love to a thousand generations do you see what he's doing he's putting a limiter on what sin is allowed to do he says he says i'm always working i'm always scheming so that by the third or the fourth generation i will find a way to disrupt something i am actively looking to find someone to draw that bloodline in the sand and stand on the authority of the cross and live from the power of the resurrection and walk in the anointing of the holy spirit and i'm looking for it and by the third of the fourth generation i'm gonna find that because i will find a way to show love to a thousand generations as those rise up to keep my covenant it's like a governor like the bumper cars at the you want to go 30 miles but you'd calf out at 22 and you're like there's more in this engine but i just it can't get there because the governor was put on it god has chosen to put that governor and that governor is his eyes scanning to and fro on the earth always finding a remnant always finding a joseph abraham isaac jacob fourth generation god's eyes are scanning and he finally found out someone who's going to rise up and not see themselves as a victim finally find someone who will be handed the family script the same old same old you hit crisis you push play on sin as abraham isaac and jacob did it but finally in joseph he found someone who when he read the script goes i don't actually like this line it says i become angry it says i become hostile it says i get vindictive and i eye for an eye but you know what i'm tearing this up and i'm going to choose to live a forgiveness story i'm going to choose to live out of a powerful sense of identity that's going to come from my father in heaven who loves me who wants to bless the whole world through me i'm going to choose to reach to the generations and cling to the old rugged cross and i'm going to see a different story lived out and so he looked at his brothers and he didn't pretend the sins weren't there he didn't pretend what they had done was right he said you meant this for evil but my god meant it for good my god has a plan and so he like the risen christ showed his wounds he said this hurt what you did this was wrong what you did it was wrong when the baker forgot about me it was wrong when potiphar's wife lied about me it was horrible when you lied to everybody but these things are not going to have a power over me anymore i'm naming them so they can be tamed in the name of jesus and now i'm going to live a forgiveness story i'm going to live a bigger life i'm going to choose to follow god and so out of him flows something completely new and god wants to do the same thing through you mercy triumphs over judgment and so when there's a disruption there can then be the chain reaction unleashed generationally and we have no governor when it comes to what can flow through us up to a thousand generations he's willing to allow those who love him and keep his covenant to be a positive force of good unleashed on the world this is proverbs chapter 13 a good man a good woman leaves an inheritance to his children's children but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous it's been said that one man's trash is another man's treasure this message i've been trying to say to you that we can often end up valuing things that belong in the trash but we can also if we hear the voice of the holy spirit overwhelming our nature and our nurture and our spiritual strongholds we can choose to treasure things that have been thrown in the trash a woman in nashville north carolina was checking out at a goodwill and she came across this sweater she brought it to the front desk along with a whole big stack of clothes and when checking out they placed all the clothes on a scale and the cost to purchase this and the other items were 58 cents a pound 58 cents a pound she's like all right i think her bill was like 11 that day turns out this particular sweater was once owned and worn by vince lombardi football coaching royalty and she was able to sell it for somewhere near 48 000 same thing happened in south carolina when a woman purchased this painting because she liked the frame and intended to cut the oil painting out and keep the frame turned out it was done by a flemish master and worth over 190 thousand dollars and my personal favorite and because we're in washington dc had to include it in the list this is michael sparks who purchased a copy of the declaration of independence at the music city thrift shop in nashville tennessee 2.48 cents he thought this is gonna be great i'll put it up it's a wonderful imitation like nicolas cage bought right and i'm gonna this is amazing and then he noticed that it wasn't just lemon juice and a flame that aids this thing he said this thing seems really old and so he took it to an authenticator and turns out here's where i'm going this is not the actual declaration of independence all right that is safely locked away in a vault somewhere this is however one of 200 authorized copies issued by john quincy adams in the year 1820 to be sent throughout the entire country so that everybody could get a glimpse out of the declaration if they wanted to and michael sparks sold it for nearly half a million dollars not bad roi on his 2.48 purchase for a rubber banded poster in a in a bin there in nashville but it gets much weirder because when the news was sharing this incredible epic story of his wonderful thrifting moment someone named stan caffey who was a pipe fitter in nashville nor in nashville tennessee couldn't believe what he was watching on television because for nearly a decade that copy of the declaration had hung in his garage until he got engaged at which point his future wife said we need to downsize as we form our new life and he was a notorious pack grass so as they went through every possession there was a moment of should we keep it or should we get rid of it and he had this hanging up in his garage where he worked on on bicycles and his future wife said go the declaration of independence imitation yeah we're getting what is this no get get us out of here there's no no national treasure moments for us and so she said go so he donated it to the music city thrift stop all i know is that for the rest of his life he will never throw anything away and no matter what his wife says let me tell you something that is that is not happening anymore but the point is we can often times if we look at the things that have been discarded find things of great value just as we must examine what we're valuing and ask if they really are that good and i sort of want you to see yourself in believing for a godly chain reaction sort of by the power and authority of being a child of god allowing yourself the privilege of sort of having a spiritual crispr that combs through the dna and says to your future what do i want to hand on and i'm not limited to merely my parents and they might not have even been there i'm not i'm not limited to my grandparents i'm that they may not have done that that great for me as i look through the pages of scripture you and i have the authority to go through hebrews 11 and shout for a little bit of samson's strength and a little bit of david's passion and a little bit of abraham's faith and a little bit of esther's boldness and we get to choose to pull all of these things in i don't care what you're 23 and me says because of the cross of jesus christ there is a brand new family tree and you have the authority to grab some discarded things that our culture says aren't that important we get to dig out some old wells and we get to choose to tap into the faith of abraham and the promise of god that jesus has opened us up to a brand new way to be human you're like i don't know if that's really right yes it is galatians tells us explicitly 4 28 we brethren now as isaac are children of promise what does that mean that means that yes the ties of family of origin are powerful but there's something even more powerful and that is what adoption as children of promise brings us as being grafted into this vine we because of the cross get to look at every hard thing every dark thing and no longer be held captive by it but instead find redemption in the midst of it genesis acts 5 30 puts it this way the god of our fathers raised up jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree what was discarded was jesus the most valuable thing that ever existed much more valuable than half a million dollars but god through that that discarding of jesus to anybody who walks along and chooses to value him we get to be raised up and be tapped into the most powerful family tree the one that flows from the cross so what do we want to give to our kids let me give you three things that isaac did get from abraham in a good way and then we're done abraham did some bad stuff right we're not glossing over that but everywhere he went he pitched a tent everywhere he went he built an altar and everywhere he went he called on the name of the lord these are three things to build into your killer morning routine pitch a tent remember you're here temporarily the tent says just passing through a tent says this isn't my eternal destination a tent says the things of this world that everyone is clamoring for those things are empty and have no power to fulfill you to validate you or to give you your worth so i'm going to pitch a tent and remember this i'm here on mission but it's not my it's this is this is a hotel room this life is a hotel don't upgrade the tv don't feel the need to buy a new couch you're checking out on monday what like just enjoy it it's a great thing to enjoy the hotel room but it's not your home okay picture ten secondly build an altar an altar is a symbol of consecration and sacrifice it's an idea and what ultimately is on that altar it's jesus live from the cross walk in the power of the cross and then thirdly everywhere he went he called on the name of the lord don't live in your own strength you have been given something so much better than willpower and it's god's power and when you're weary call on his name and his power like an eagle will flow through you to do what you can't do on your own let's use that crisper let's walk in a new story and let's believe our children's children's children will be a testimony to our faith an example that we send forward into the future in the time capsule to be opened tbd in jesus name

Channel: Passion City Church DC

Views: 4,199

Rating: 4.9569893 out of 5

Keywords: Passion, Passion City Church, Passion Sermons, Ben, Stuart, Washington D.C., Passion D.C., christian, sixsteps, (six), passion conference, passion, passion city church worship, passion church, passion music, worship, jesus, Levi Lusko, Secondhand Sins, Genesis, Family, Generation

Id: _FAy7BGuB_U

Length: 49min 56sec (2996 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 22 2021