What Will You Pass on to Others?

well today it's my privilege to introduce my pastor dr chuck swindoll or simply chuck his is a familiar name to many christians around the world in fact i'd be willing to bet uh prophesy uh that uh many of you are here because of him and his ministry he served dallas seminary well as the fourth president and is known by millions around the world for his practical application of the bible to everyday living he now serves dallas seminary as chancellor emeritus he is also the senior pastor teacher of stonebriar community church in frisco texas he and his wife cynthia reside here in the metroplex and they love to spend much of their time with their four grown children and ten grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren so join with me in welcoming chuck to our pulpit today in chapel good morning it's always such a pleasure to be with you today uh today especially and i thank you for your presence i know that the omicron is sweeping across our area it's a bit of a risk to come into a group like this so thank you for risking and for coming together uh i i want to begin by asking you a question everything i have to say today will will relate to the answer to this question but first think about it will you what are you leaving for the next generation what will you pass on to those who will outlive you the questions may seem a little irrelevant because you're young you are students and you have most of your life spread out before you and probably among the last things you think about would be those who will outlive you but there will be many and as you minister in the years to come you will meet them you'll serve them and you'll leave them with the lasting impressions that even your death will not erase i want to talk about those impressions stephen king is a horror novel writer as all of you know he's rich he's famous and he's also very human neither his notoriety nor his wealth could protect him from a very serious car accident that happened a number of years ago it was a hit and run the other car fled i don't recall if his car was totaled or almost but he wound up thrown from the vehicle in a ditch bleeding he was in a remote area in the countryside he was seriously injured had he not been found and airlifted to a local hospital he could easily have died that traumatic event left him differently than he was before it happened it was his wake-up call as he put it this time it wasn't some horrifying story that he created in his mind it was an actual event that for all he knew would him for the rest of his days he wrote about it and i have come across the piece that he wrote and i want to read it to you these are stephen king's words after he had recovered in the hospital and was able to go home he wrote this a couple of years ago i i found myself i've i really found out what it meant that you can't take it with you i found out while i was lying in a ditch at the side of the country road covered with mud and blood and with the tibia of my right leg poking out of the side of my jeans like the branch of a tree taken down in a thunderstorm i had a mastercard uh in my wallet but when you're lying in a ditch with broken glass in your hair and blood all over you no one accepts mastercard we all know that life is ephemeral but on this particular day and in the months that that followed i got a painful but extremely valuable look at life's simple backstage truths we come in naked and broke we may be dressed when we go out but we're just as broke warren buffett going out broke bill gates going out broke tom hanks going out broke steve king broke not a crying dime at his death all the money you earn all the stocks you buy all the mutual funds you trade all of that is mostly smoke and mirrors it's still going to be a quarter past getting late whether you tell time on a timex or a rolex no matter how large your bank account no matter how many credit cards you have sooner or later things will begin to go wrong with the only three things you have that you can really call your own your body your spirit in your mind so i want you to consider making your life one long gift to others and why not all you have is on loan anyway all that lasts is what you pass on everything i have to say has to do with those last eight words of stephen king all you have is what you pass on and i realize it's easy to forget that when you're involved in your studies in ministry preparing for a lifetime of reaching touching serving the lives of others it's easy while here to be focused only on what you're getting that makes sense you've come for an education you seek to learn things you've not known before so that you might use them in a career that stretches out before you but i want you to remember today that all that lasts is what you pass on it will not be your financial portfolio it will not be your possessions it will not even be those precious family photos what you will pass on most importantly will be a life well-lived ideally lived for others the legacy of a series of life-changing relationships that you cultivate in the years ahead i would even add in the years you were at this school in case you wonder what that might look like you need not wonder any longer thanks to the apostle paul's careful work in romans we find a veritable checklist of the qualities that are worth passing on from one life to another in the latter half of romans chapter 12 all the attention that we give to romans usually falls on the first part of the chapter i'd like to emphasize the latter part we haven't the time to cover all the verses that follow verse eight we usually a folk give attention to verses one to eight i'm looking at nine through sixteen actually and i wanna read the verses for you carefully and slowly i want you to listen for characteristics in a life worth living paul writes in verse 9 from the new living translation don't just pretend to love others really love them hate what is wrong hold tightly to what is good love each other with genuine affection take delight in honoring each other he goes on never be lazy but work hard and serve the lord enthusiastically literally the greek says with a zealous spirit i love that rejoice in our confident hope be patient in trouble and keep on praying when god's people are in need be ready to help always be eager to practice hospitality the list just goes on and on doesn't it bless those who persecute you don't curse them pray that god will bless them be happy with those who are happy and and weep with those who weep live in harmony with each other don't be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people and don't think you know at all candidly i don't know of a better list to shape one's life with than that list uh i once preached on that section i called it christianity 101. it's the living out of the life of christ emphasizing these various character traits that are worth passing on and yet are so easily forgotten in the midst of our busy preoccupied world not surprisingly love takes center stage right away as it should or it is the pervasive trait that colors all others so paul though he doesn't go into such detail as in first corinthians 13 paul highlights love and not only lands there but stays there for a little longer than with the any of the other characteristics let me say a couple of things about love the best definition i've come across is that love is seeking the highest good of the other person it's not making the other person comfortable it's not telling him or her what he or she wants to hear it isn't treating another like he or she treated you it isn't looking the other way when another does wrong love sometimes must be tough even stern and always relentless other times admittedly it is soft and it is affirming reassuring and and full of forgiveness and compassion why is it so important as i said earlier it colors all of these other traits john stott puts it this way each staccato imperative adds a fresh ingredient to the apostles recipe for love here in romans 12. when it is lived out it wears these various garments the first is as you will see in this passage it is unhypocritical literally the verse reads agape anupakritas love unhypocritical so the first side of the coin is sincerity a love that's sincere it isn't play acting it it isn't phony baloney it isn't act one way and think another it isn't something with hidden motives as we act out love is not theater john murray writes if love is the sum of virtues in the hypocrisy the epitome of vice what a contradiction to bring these two together let's face it our culture is is uh saturated with hypocrisy it goes all the way to the state to the nation's capital we see it on display on our televisions at night polish the end in the image while hiding the reality we use words that impress but the fact is we do not often mean them so love is to be sincere second it is to be discerning that's the other side of the same coin of love love is not blind sentiment it has backbone it doesn't check its brains at the door when it walks into the room of good and evil love clings to truth it bonds like glue remember it's what you pass on that will last make sure that it includes a life of love people who most impacted my life while in the most impressive years of my earlier days were those who truly loved me they loved me enough to tell me the truth they loved me enough to look past those things that should not have been they loved me and often in spite of myself there are several other components and they are all set forth in this passage he moves quickly to devoted affection you'll see that here in verses 9 through 16 verse 10 refers to devoted affection paul draws upon terms that are usually refer reserved for the family familial affection phil adelphia the same kind of devotion that you find when family members are in harmony with one another let that be true in the family of god he's saying deep familial affection warmth and depth and second he mentions in verse 10 to honor one another one of my favorite concepts it works its way out in listening when they speak caring about how they feel paying attention to their opinions and showing gratitude for their lives and saying so so important that we be demonstrative in these qualities third is one of my favorites enthusiasm passion is not a shallow superficial excitement like you'd see at a ball game this is long-lasting optimism true zeal about the work of the ministry i urge you in that i have a friend who said he learned at the school he attended that he did his best preaching when he preached on tiptoe you live your life on tiptoe when you live it with zeal and enthusiasm some time ago i came across a work titled the art of possibility by benjamin zander benjamin zander at that time was the conductor of the boston philharmonic also a teacher a professor at the new england conservatory of music he wrote this in a part of his book listen to what he says about enthusiasm i love this example i had listened to one of my students who was a pianist i watched perform uh box sweet in d minor and uh i realized that uh the student was able to play the piece and could handle it theoretically i also also saw a young pianist playing chopin's prelude in my master's class and although we had worked right up to the edge of realizing the overarching concept of the piece his performance remained well earthbound shall we say he understood it intellectually he he could have explained it to someone theoretically but he was unable to convey the emotional energy that that the true language of the music held within it and so as i noticed it i saw that his his body was firmly centered in the upright position on this piano stool and uh so i blurted out can you imagine in the middle of this man's piece the trouble is you are a two buttock player i yelled in the class i encouraged him to allow his whole body to flow sideways from one cheek to the other on the bench and he would catch the wave of the music and and the shape of his own body would convey the enthusiasm of the music several in the audience gasped when i made my comment but later they felt the emotional dart hit home as a new distinction was born the one buttock player he made the mention he said we had in the class that day the ceo of a company from ohio who was there with us and he wrote me later and said i was so moved by what you said i went home and i formed my whole company around the idea of a one but a company which is a whole new concept i'm suggesting a one buttock ministry that you might think about you've got to be careful who you suggest that to however he goes on to talk about a cellist he said i i i met jacqueline dupre in the 1950s when i was 20 and she was only 15. get this she was uh just a school girl who blossomed into the the greatest cellist of her generation what enthusiasm her uh performance of the two cellos by shubert as she played a duet with another stayed with me for the rest of my life when she was just six years old the story goes someone saw her running down the corridor with her little cello held above her head the custodian looked at her and thought he saw a face of relief as she was grinning from ear to ear and so he referred to that saying how wonderful it must have been when you played she said no i haven't played yet but i look forward to i'm just about to play my my piece there was an excitement before she even went in to play her piece uh i would love to light a fire of excitement under many a young preacher i've endured while listening to as they go along with their very accurate exposition of a passage but lacking in enthusiasm don't leave that out don't forget that it's amazing what happens in the pulpit and how it affects the pew uh howie hendricks used to say a mist in the pulpit puts a fog in the pew a sleepy preacher puts people out right away and therefore i urge you to think seriously about a life of passion when you share that literally people do not forget then he mentions patience and the importance of enduring hard times and being steadfast in prayer something that is so easily easily forgotten in our lives came across an interesting story regarding prayer a group of young college students went to hear charles hadden spurgeon preach they had never been to the tabernacle in london and therefore they had never seen him in person they were waiting out in the cold while the doors were still locked waiting for them to open while they were there an older gentleman walked up and asked uh if if they would like to come and see the heating plant of the church they thought well they weren't interested too much in the heating plant but it might be a place to get warm they didn't want to offend the old man so they said sure so they walked behind him as they went down a stairway and came to a door that he opened slowly and they looked inside and there were 700 people on their knees and he whispered here is the heating plant of the church and they realized that above them was a sanctuary that would soon be filled with god's blessing but the heating plant was down below when it was all over the older gentleman introduced himself to them it was spurgeon himself who wanted them to know the value of prayer as it relates to the ministry of the word and i would emphasize the same to all of you if you have a body of people who hold you up in prayer you're a rich individual billy graham used to talk about the one who would get the greater reward himself or the the lady who prayed for him throughout his ministry back home and he was quick to say the greater reward will go to her encourage great commitment to prayer in your ministry it will outlive you and it will not be forgotten by others fifth he mentions generosity in verse 13. we tend immediately to think of being generous with money but there are other kinds of generosity generosity of our time generosity of interest and attention when you talk to others be sure you look at them rather than around them generosity of encouragement these are all what we call random acts of kindness that means so much to others and then he mentions hospitality you know what the the greek term for hospitality me it really is it really comes from the words love of strangers reaching out to those you've not known before make a habit of that in your life and in your ministry it's we're not simply to be hospitable this word here is pursue hospitality take time for those whom you've not known before and reach out to them and then of course would be empathy that would be both sympathy for those who are sad and the ability to rejoice with those who rejoice we're better at the former than we are at the latter when we see someone broken in grief our hearts quickly are moved over that but when another is promoted how rarely we rejoice over their promotion how good it is that you cultivate the habit of writing a note of congratulations to those who've achieved something of a particular benefit or celebrative note in their life that's so valuable that you rejoice with those who rejoice there's an old swedish proverb that used to hang in a little frame in our kitchen at home that my mother would often read shared sorrow was a double shared joy is a double joy shared sorrow is half a sorrow the blessing in it is in the sharing of it as a minister of the gospel be one who shares in this in the lives of others as they rejoice rejoice with them as they grieve take time to grieve with them how valuable that is in ministry it's all back to love isn't it love sings when those around us are singing love mourns when those around us are weeping love laughs when those around us are cheery and filled with joy love stays awake when those around us cannot sleep all of this sets the stage for the seventh and final expression of true love that's worth passing on this is one of the fairest flowers that ever grew humility he mentions it in verse 16. he speaks here against our being snobbish proud of our status proud of our training of our degrees of our birth of our giftedness proud of our accomplishments the remedy is is to remember how everything got started in your life remember where you were when you just began life years ago my daughter and i were traveling from southern california younger daughter and i we were going to houston and it was a long trip we loved it being together we had stopped in a place of for the for the night uh when we got nearer houston and uh she was looking at the map that's where we would be traveling tomorrow as we got to houston and she said oh daddy she said look here uh we're gonna we're gonna be on a road that's not that far from el campo which is the great white way of my birth and uh of course you've never heard of it and most people on the planet have never heard of it but she had heard me talk about the little town of el campo where i was born she said i'd love to go there and i said sure we'd we'd pull off and take that side road and visit there i'd not been there since forever so we drove in the town and a little nostalgic seeing some of the sights as you go through when you go to the place where you were born and spent your earliest years she said you know the the house i've heard you talk about it where where where you were born my dad used to say that all three of the kids were were birthed in the same bed where they were conceived my mother never liked it that he told that to everybody he met but uh he was proud of it she said you can you think we can find that place i said well it's a little garage apartment maybe we can find granddaddy's place and then i'll take a right and another right and i think that'll be so i did that and there it was tiny in fact it's leaning a little bit toward the north as a result of the the ocean breeze or the or the bay breeze that blows across el campo not far from palacios and she said turn the turn the motor off turn the engine off so i did we sat and looked at it she put her hand over on mine i'll never forget this and she said gosh daddy like is that it i go yeah isn't that impressive this look at that then all of a sudden she began to cry she said i think it's wonderful i i think it's great she said that i can see where it all got started i remembered a statement one of the prophets made that we should remember the hole from which we were dug i sat in the car and i looked at this little place i remember we had a cow out back my mom and dad took turns milking it so we would have food and a little four-room garage apartment older brother older sister and i all born and for the first few years of our lives reared there who would ever know who would ever care it was good for me to see it and to put myself back in that place and remember i suggest you do that sometime in your own life clarence thomas did that i remember reading his memoirs several years ago you remember clarence thomas justice on the supreme court of the united states of america he tells the whole story in his book my grandfather's son which he became because his grandfather raised him i want you to hear his roots i'm descended from the west african slaves who lived on the barrier islands in georgia my people were called gichi's mother was born out of wedlock her mother died in childbirth and she saw little of her father who was a slave and she was just a child i was delivered by lula kemp my midwife who came from the nearby community of sand fly he by the way was born in pinpoint he says in the book neither is on the map it's too small pinpoint and sand fly our lives were a daily struggle for the barest of essentials food clothing and shelter the place in which i was born was a shanty kerosene lamps lit the house water came from a nearby faucet that stuck out of the ground and we carried it through the woods in old lard buckets they were small enough for us to to fill up and tote home where we poured the contents into the wash tub or larger kitchen buckets out of which we we drank with a dipper in the wintertime we plugged up the cracks and the holes and the walls with old newspapers that was the late 1940s in pinpoint georgia fast forward to the fall of 1991 following his being sworn in he writes i walked into the awe-inspiring great hall of the court and through the imposing doorway glancing at the huge brass doors then walked slowly down the gleaming white marble steps lit by the brightness of a beautiful sunny morning i thought back to another sunny day when my brother and i had walked for miles through the woods to a house where we would live with our grandparents all of our belongings were stuffed into a pair of grocery bags every time i look at the the nine justices i always spot justice thomason remember the hole from which he was dug no wonder he still has a heart for the ordinary person never lose that heart men and women i don't care what title you're given i don't care what degrees you earn i don't care what amount of money you may make your humility is worth passing on and it starts with remembering how life began for you whether it's el campo or sandfly or pinpoint or wherever the man understands both extremes doesn't he what a list devoted affection honor and respect enthusiasm and passion patience generosity empathy and sympathy humility and love i think i'm probably looking into the faces of some whose love has been burned i regret that for you because it probably has caused you to restrain yourself lest you be burned again i want to caution you about that people don't show love either because they're proud or because they're afraid of the risk i hope as the minister of the gospel you will leave both aside and let your love flow don't forget to write the words i love you to others outside your family use the pronoun and when you're with them don't be afraid to say it your love will last long after your face is forgotten your love will linger forever in another's life but it's a risk c.s lewis writes in four loves to love it all is to be vulnerable love anything and your heart will certainly be wrong and possibly be broken if you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give your heart to no one not even an animal rapid carefully all around with with hobbies and and little luxuries avoid all entanglements lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness and in that casket dark motionless airless it will change it will not be broken it will become unbreakable impenetrable irredeemable the only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is hell what are you passing on to others those who will outlive you give it thought because as stephen king has written all that lasts is what you pass on all that lasts is what you pass on i understand i i i know your life is busy i know there are deadlines i know there are demands i know there are exams i understand i i know it like the back of my hand but in all of your getting all of your learning pay attention to some qualities that will be seen in you over and above the sermons you preach the counsel you give the books you write give attention to these qualities that's what they'll remember when you're gone bow with me please thank you father for this brief journey through this splendid passage of scripture thank you for leading paul to write it and putting it in our language so we can grasp it thank you for the reminders today and the value of them may we not soon forget them may they be demonstrated first at home with those who know us best at school where we are in training with others learning and growing together and ultimately in places where we will minister in the years to come these are our way of saying just be glorified in us and through us in our lives be magnified i pray in the name of our model our savior our lord jesus christ everyone said

Channel: Dallas Theological Seminary

Views: 7,174

Keywords: Dallas Theological Seminary, DTS, Jesus, Bible, Grace, Community

Id: bJD2fmfp1nM

Length: 50min 53sec (3053 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022