Gateway Church Sermons
Alder Road Site | 7th July 2024 | Carlos Bertrand | To the Next Generation!
[ Pause ] >> Hello. >> Good. >> Beautiful. >> Okay. We've got some chairs here at the front. If someone wants to move forward, that would be fantastic. I love to have people at the front. So I can, yeah. Staring in the eyes is you. Good morning, everyone. So good to be able to be celebrating the generations. And actually to see, you know, kids moving from one group to the other. I think that's what we all about. And I'm going to actually be touching on that this morning. And talking about generations, I'm going to call two different generations to the front to help me reading the portion of the Bible that we're going to be reading. So from a younger generation, I'm going to ask my son, Liam, to come to the front. And from a slightly older generation, Tony, can you please come as well and help me, help me reading. And if you grab your Bibles, we're going to come along. Come along. We're going to be reading two different portions of the Bible. One in Psalms, so if you get ready, we'll read it. Psalm 78. And the other bit will be Deuteronomy chapter 6. So, do we have a microphone? Oh, perfect. Which one first? Tony goes first. Age before beauty. So, my people, hear my teaching, listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter hidden things, things from of old. What they heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children. We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds that God has done. His power and the wonders he has done. His decrees statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children. So, the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. They in turn would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds, but would keep his commands. They wouldn't be like their forefathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him. The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned back on the day for battle, they didn't keep God's covenant. Good. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. All right. Thank you very much, guys. Three generations right here. It was that beautiful. The one in the middle, even more beautiful. Let me tell you a story. In 1989, a beautiful boy in Honduras was graduating from year six, right? So the dad bought a present for him and he came home and I was, you know, year six in Honduras is a big deal. So I was expecting a present. So now you know who's the beautiful boy is. And he came with two boxes and I thought, oh my goodness, this is my present, right? And I thought one was slightly bigger than the other one. Usually the smaller present is the one that is more expensive and the coolest of all. So I thought I'm going to leave the little one for the rest for the later. I'm going to open the second one. So I opened the first one. My dad said to me, you know, happy graduation. I'm so proud of you son and all that kind of stuff that the parent says. And I opened the present and voila. A sunny tape, you know, how do you call this thing? Tape player. A sunny tape player. 1988, brand new, and I just couldn't believe my eyes. I was going to go out one of the few years sixes to have a sunny Walkman. Probably the newer generations, you don't even know what this is, right? These are machines that actually plays music, okay? But the second one, so this is my Walkman, just to let you know this is not the original. This is not the one I got. But the second one, right? The little one, I opened the second one. And I thought, on those days we were into Bon Jovi and Guns and Roses were kind of like coming up and all of that. And all my peers were listening to that stuff. So I saw, oh my goodness, that looks like a size of a tape. And the younger generation is probably, you don't know what a tape is, but I'm going to show you. So I opened the tape and it was a tape. And I thought, whoa! And when I opened it, it was the latest Whitney Houston tape. And I was there thinking, oh God! But I saw, you know, he didn't know about my musical taste, but he was doing what he could do best as a parent. And he gave me one, and I embraced it. And now probably I'm the biggest Whitney Houston Honduran fan ever. And can I tell you something? This is the original. 38 years, I kept it with me. Sometimes, you know, previous generations, they don't know exactly what's going on with the next generation. And we do things differently, but it's just, you know, he was trying, he did well, he did well. But we do things differently, from generation to generation. He never actually tried to teach me about his music or ask me what kind of music I was into, but he was just trying. You know, but from generation to generations, we listened to music differently. So guys, the new generation, this is a tape. This is a tape. It actually has the amazing, amazing, like, I don't know, like ten songs in it. And you put it and you used to be able to listen to ten songs at the time. And finding the song was awful. Now, the kids, our kids have all the music in the world and their phones. So we do things differently. Dating, totally, totally different. You know, communications, when I was dating Becky, every letter I sent to her took two weeks to come all the way to England. And now the kids just sent, you know, messages to their friends, even if they're sitting next to each other. They do things differently, right? Work, work, the other day I was chatting with some of the guys here about communication. They say, you know, Facebook, what's up? That's for old people. That's what they say, old people. So to communicate with my son, I need to use Snapchat now. So I'm like, cool, that. We do work. People, new generations are different. They want to be entrepreneurs. They want to be their own boss. So we all do that. And that's all okay. Okay? I'm not saying this is bad. I'm saying it's all okay. Some things need to change. And we shouldn't be worrying about not teaching our kids or new generations the way we did things. Okay? We shouldn't be worrying about those kind of things. But there is something, there is something that every single generation without exception needs to hear and needs to learn. And that is the gospel. They need to know about God, who God is, what he's capable of. They need to learn and hear about his love, about all the good things that he has done for us and for the previous generations. And we as older and previous generations are called to do that without exception. We're going to see in the Bible as well that there is no permission for any generation to actually stop doing that. So it doesn't matter how we do other things, but without exception, we should be sharing the gospel and letting the next generations know who God is. So I think as a Sunday, as a Sunday like this, I think it's just appropriate and beneficial for all of us to talk about all of these kind of things. The divine call that we owe. Parents, why the church community? We all have on telling and teaching our kids the things I just mentioned. God wants us to be a church that will leave a legacy of faith to the next generation. And from generation to generation, to be honest. I want to do everything I can and I would absolutely love if you have the same desire. I would love to do everything I can to help the next generation to know Jesus and faithfully serve the Lord. Have you heard about the expression FOMO, FOMO, fear of missing out? I was reading that ages 12 to 24 in this generation. 45% of our kids actually suffer of that fear of missing out. What's next in the social media and what's the next message? That's really, really hard on them. So we need to keep an eye on that thing. I'm mentioning all of that because I'm going to coin a new wish. I do suffer not of FOMO, but FOMO. And what FOMO is is fear of them missing out. Fear of the kids missing out. I don't want the next generation not to know Jesus, missing out on Jesus. Because if we don't react quickly and if we don't do our bit, and if we could be just one generation away from a faithless generation, and that would be disastrous. Matt already stole these lines from my preach. Gateway is celebrating 100 years next year here. You can still say, "Yeah!" Thanks for that, Matt. It's fantastic. Don't you think it's fantastic 100 years? Matt was saying we want another 25, another 50. But I think a goal really shouldn't be just to see if we reach another 50. I think a goal should be, "Let's be here until the day of the Lord Jesus Christ." Call it 50, 100, 200, or 2025 if he decided to come next year. But that should be our goal. So the younger and next generation can continue to carry a legacy of faith. So this morning, there are three things I would like to see with you. And from the verses we just read, Psalm 78 and Deuteronomy 6 and 4. And I'm going to be focusing, not focusing, but mentioning a lot of parents as primary, you know, they should be the first ones on sharing the faith with the kids. Can we all understand as well that this is a community, church community thing that we should all be doing, you know, with all the kids in the next generations as well. And even the younger generations, this is for you as well because one day you'll be an older generation and you need to understand all of these things. So first one, God's heart. The second one will be God's instruction and the third one, God's promise. Psalm got's heart. Psalm 78 is a wonderful son. The entire Psalms, the topic is about investing and making a commitment to the next generation in a recount of how God was faithful to his people even when they were disobedient. So Psalm 78 starts like this. "Give ear all my people to my teaching. Listen to me." I was reading another version of the Bible, the King's James. The King's James actually says, "Incline your ear as well." So incline your ear. This is what the Bible is asking us to do. I don't know, as a parent you have noticed that you sometimes say to your kids, "Did you hear what I said? What you want is actually to pay attention." So that's what the Psalm is saying to hear for us. There is something important I want to hear. God is saying to us in this room, "Can I have your attention? Give ear. Can you now listen to me?" Because I'm about to share something that is dear to my heart. Something that is important to me. And I want you to listen because I don't want you to forget what I'm about to share. In Psalm 78, if you remember what we read, we are told that God gave Israel a law. Okay, and we're talking about this law. And what is this law we're talking about? That's why we read Deuteronomy chapter 6. And verses 4 and 8. Moses is presenting the 10 commandments in the law again to the second generation of Israel. It's at that point. And in the 4, we see the great commandment. And verse 4, it says, "The greater commandment to love the Lord of God, sorry, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul." We all know that commandment. And we all have heard about it. And Jesus reaffirms that in the New Testament when he's been asked for this. What is the greatest or what's the most important of all the 10 commandments? Well, the first one in the greatest is love, your God, with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul. But after that, and this is what I want to highlight this morning, after Moses is reminding them about the law. He says, "I want you to diligently teach this to your children." That's what I want you to say. It's not saying, oh, God is not saying, pay a little bit of attention to your children or the younger generation, the young adults here. Do your thing, and let's hope that the children are going to manage to learn something by themselves. Live them through their own devices, and that's actually happening more and more our days. Don't you think with the iPhones and the iPhones? No, children in youth are a priority. God is saying, I want you, I want you to see my heart when it comes to the well-being and faith of the next generation. It is super important, it's the utmost significance to me that every child, every young people, you know, sorry, listen about my laws. And when I read the today's passage, I understand that goes hard to the children. Jesus always, always, throughout his ministry, welcome every single little one. Jesus never made the kids' tomorrow's project, but he said, "Hey, you know what? When they come, can you all pause? Let them come to me, and I'm going to welcome them." That's what Jesus said. So, what do we learn about this portion of the Bible? Well, we learn that God wants you and me to know that his heart is for the children, the youth, and the younger generations. Teaching and telling the younger generations about God and his grace is not an option. It's not. So, that's God's heart. Number two, God instructions. God is reminding us, again, I want you to teach this properly, diligently. That is a command. That is the instruction. Okay, we cannot escape from it. So, what do we teach? And there are two things I want you to see with me this morning. Two things that we can teach. First one is, we teach our kids to love God passionately, absolutely passionately with all the strength. Consider again with me the greatest commandment. Love your God with all your heart, with all your man, with all your soul. Actually, that's kind of like the summary of the first four of the ten commandments. And the ten commandments, remember, is not just a moralistic teaching that is given to you, but it was actually a covenant that God made or made in order to be a personal God to his people. So, the first four go something like this. Do not have all the gods before you. Do not have any other idols before you. Do not make money, your success, your beauty, your idols. If those things becomes your idol, they will never satisfy you. That's what God is saying in these four commands. They will never satisfy you. So, through these commandments, God is reminding us. He's saying, "Find me, find me, believe in me. When you know me, I will satisfy you. When you know me, your life will make sense. When you know me, when you love me, and you will know that you are truly love." You know why it's so important that we keep the Sabbath. It tells us in our day of rest and worship to keep it holy because God is saying, "Spend time with me. Just come and spend time with me, okay? Get to know me because I'm committed to you. Love your God. Love your God with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength in mind. And again, we are reminded in Deuteronomy. I want you to teach this to the kids. In what way? If you remember what we read in Deuteronomy 6, in what way can we do these things? Well, God is saying to the parents, all the generations, church, family, you know, "I want you to teach your children when you at home, when you get up, when you lay down, when you sit down, when you walk on the road." All of these activities, well, we're not talking about sending them into a classroom, but these are your daily routines, our daily routines, okay? And what God is saying is when you teach your children on a daily basis, because we do all of those things every day, right? We don't skip waking up because we're going to be in trouble. We do all of things on a daily basis. When you teach your children like, I want you to show you what matters the most to you. And that is what we need to be aware of. And you know what? Our children know what we love the most. Sometimes we think that they're not, you know, quite there. That we're more intelligent than them. And yeah, probably not. But our children know what we love the most. They know. And what God is saying is parents, all the generations, church, family, show, demonstrate this place to the next generation whether you really love God or not. Do you know as to why it's so crucial to keep the Sabbath, to come to church? Because we show our kids our true value system. What matters the most to you and your family is Jesus. It should be Jesus and just that. And the reason why we come here, okay, we don't ask you as a church to come here just in the sense of, you know, legalism or being religious. But what we want you, actually, is you come here as a family together because it's good for us to worship God together. And because you're not teaching just your kids about attendance, you're teaching your kid about what really matters the most to you. It's Jesus' really worth of your attention. It's Jesus' really worth of all your time. It's Jesus' really worth of all your life. God is telling us to do, you know, teach this through to the kids. God, to love God more than anything else, the job that you're going to get in the future is the most important thing. Your success is the most important thing. Your accomplishments are the most important things. Those things are more important than anything else. Your competition is whatever it is. And I don't want you to get me wrong because I'm actually mad touch on this a couple of weeks ago. Those things are actually blessings from God. If the kid goes to a good school, praise the Lord. If they are successful, praise the Lord, they are good. But the problem is when those things, whatever it is, become more important than what the thing that should be more important for all of us. Which is Jesus. So, it's us. It's our responsibility to show and teach and influence our children to love Jesus more than anything else. Otherwise, the guys in Facebook and YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat, they will be the ones influencing our kids. And I don't believe that we'll be in the right way or the way that God intended to. That's what God is telling us. So, it goes hard, goes instructions. Oh, and the second lesson we need to teach the kids is we need to teach our kids and younger generations our testimony. Share your testimony with them. Your story of grace to your children. The kids, I can imagine the kids of all of those second generations of Israel. It's saying, "Hey Dad, why are we celebrating all of these celebration things? Why are we following those things and those tables?" They were asking, they were asking, "Why are we doing all of these kind of things?" And God reminds the parents to say, "You know why? I want you because we were one slaves and God has rescued us. We were disobedient and God still faithful with us." That's why we're celebrating all of these things. So, share your testimony with them. We want to be a good example for our children. Who doesn't want to be? So, when you read Psalm 78, you know what else is interesting in that Psalm? It's a compilation of the many mistakes that the Israelites actually made. The failures that they made. They have forgotten God at some point. But in and through all of those failures and disappointments and mistakes, God is saying to them, "You know, I'm going to show you and I'm going to show them that I'm a God that is patient, that I'm a God that is faithful, I'm a God that is loving." Do you share about your struggles with your kids? It is important for them to see that in the middle of the struggle, there is a God that never leaves us. It is important. Children and young people, like the ones we've got here at the front, they want to experience a genuine and sincere faith. And sometimes genuine and sincere faith means something like this. You know, we can honestly say sometimes we struggle to believe. Sometimes we struggle with sin. And yet, and yet, let me present you to the next generations, to the kids. Let me present to you a Savior that is kind, that is understanding, that is compassionate, that is low to anger, that is forever forgiven. And He will always be there for me and for you. And when your children see in and through your story, in your story of grace, in your life, how amazing Savior He is, then it's when they will fall in love with the Savior of their own. Do you share your testimony with your kids? If you do, keep sharing. If you don't, I think you should start today. Keep praying and remind them how much God loves them. Number three, God's promise. And promise 22, we didn't read that one, but I'm going to read that verse quickly. He promised 22 success. Train a child in the way he should go when he saw he will not turn from it. So let me read. So you know, Paul once said so about Timothy, you all know Timothy, right? And he said, he says this in the verse of Timothy. I remind it of your sincere faith, which first leave in your grandmother, Louis, and your mother unise, and I am persuaded that now lives in you also. That's three generations of faith going from one to the other. And Timothy went to do great things because the faithfulness of the previous generations. So parents, I want you to believe in God's covenant. And God who identifies not only with you, but also with your children. He says, I am the God of Abraham, Asak, and Jacob, three generations. That was his identification. And in the same way, he's saying, the promise I'm going to give you is the promise for your children again, as well. And for their children, and their children, and their children. But we are called to actually talk to them about it. There are some parents in this room, I don't doubt it. They're struggling because your children are actually struggling with their own faith. And maybe they're not even near to church. And I acknowledge that. But I want you to encourage you as well. Because I believe from the bottom of my heart that every child will go through his or her own faith journey. But something I know for sure is that if you continue sharing the gospel with him, praying to God for them, God in his time will bring his child back to him. So stay encouraged. Don't be discouraged and continue doing what God has called you to do and me as well. We have, finishing with this, go home and read Psalm 78. It's a long Psalm, but you're going to enjoy it. But the Psalm finishes with this. God is saying, you know, after all you've done, after all the failures and all the bad things you've done, I'll remain faithful. And you know what? Actually, the Psalm says that he raised a shepherd for them. And that was David. And David guide them. He says, guide them with a skillful hand. Don't you think that's beautiful? God is faithful. And that we don't have David anymore, but we have Jesus. And Jesus, amen. And Jesus is a shepherd. And the younger generations need and should know this shepherd. They need Jesus. Trust me, God says, despite your failures, despite your mistakes, I'll be the one who remained as faithful shepherd to your children. If you're not a Christian this morning, Jesus is calling you into his family. Jesus wants to say to you, come, be part of my family. And me, you can find love, salvation, forgiveness, hope and security, and I'm not going to let you down. And let me finish with this. I've been talking mainly to parents and all the generations, but you and people, I want to finish with this and for everybody as well. But I want to share a song with you on my tape. Side one. That's another thing. If you don't understand tapes, younger generation, this thing has size, you actually need to change it to listen to another song. I forget Spotify. This is quality. 38 years and still sounds like the first day. Anyway, finish with this. Finish with this fairly quickly. Side eight. This is not an, or you know, Whitney Houston, but I think it was Whitney Houston that made this song the best song in the world. And I wouldn't accept anyone else singing it, just Whitney. So if you have good-tasted music, I'll show you going to agree with me on this one. So the song is actually called The Greatest Love of All. Go, only two people. Excellent. The greatest love of all. Oh, what a song. Let me read it to you, young people, okay? It says like this. I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense. A pride to make it easier. Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be. Everybody's searching for a hero. People need someone to look up to. I never found anyone who fulfilled my needs a lonely place to be. And so I learned to depend on me. I decided long ago, never to work in anyone's shadow. If I fail, if I succeed, at least I will leave as I believe. No matter what they take from me, they cannot take away my dignity. You on it. That is one of the most beautiful songs ever, don't you think? And when you hear Whitney, it's like, whoo. But you know what, even if it's beautiful, that would be that we just read and make some sense. This is where the song goes absolutely wrong. The next line says, because the greatest love of all is happening to me. I found the greatest love of all inside of me. That is just totally wrong. Totally wrong. And that is a lie. That is the lie that the world is trying to teach our kids and younger generations. You know what, you are your own king. You can find everything you need inside you, self-empowerment. I don't need any gods. I don't need anyone else because I can do anything by myself. That's what the world is saying to you. The greatest love of all is not inside you. Let me tell you something. You know what, the greatest love of all was born in a stable. The greatest love of all was wrapped in swaddling clothes. The greatest love of all was 12. When he was chatting at the temple with teachers, the greatest love of all was 30. When he left his father's carpentry workshop. The greatest love of all went to the river Jordan to be baptized by John DeBattis. The greatest love of all stood on that river and a voice came from heaven and says, "Oh, this is my beloved song." The greatest love of all healed the sick. The greatest love of all raised the dead. The greatest love of all gets side to the blind. The greatest love of all... [applause] Yeah, made the lane to walk. The greatest love of all weighed his hand at a storm and the storm stopped. The greatest love of all went to a hill called Calvary. The greatest love of all was sacrificed on a cross and dying there for you and for me. The greatest love of all defeated death and he was risen from death on a Sunday morning with all power in his hands. The greatest love of all with his sacrifice on that cross has made you and me has made us clean and has reconciled with the Father. The greatest love of all is Jesus. Alleluia. [applause] Shall we pray? Let's stand. Of course, we just want to say thank you because you have the greatest love of all. You are the one that has given us hope. You are the one that has given us salvation. You are the one that has given us love. You are the one that has given us new life, eternal life. Lord, we just want to say thank you for that. This morning we want to say as well, please Lord, as all the generations give us wisdom to be able to communicate our faith the great deeds that you have done to the younger generations. So they don't make the main mistakes that we have made or the previous generation had made, but they still they stay firm in you, Lord. Help us to find ways not to drop the ball, to actually continue giving the best example to the new generation. I pray for the new generation as well, whatever name they receive these days. I pray for them to be able to see you directly. The only things that remain stable and the only thing that they really need in their lives. Jesus, we pray for all generations, older and younger. So we continue expanding your kingdom for many, many years until you come. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]