Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

2 Kings 19:14-19

“An Honorable Legacy”

Rev. Meagan M. Boozer

Those who are reading through the Bible in a year have been in the books of I and II Kings these last weeks. Obviously, these books in the Bible are about the kings who ruled the United Kingdom of the Israelites- Saul, David, and Solomon, and about the kings who ruled the divided Kingdoms of Israel in the north and Judah in the south. When one reads these books, one is given a quick description of each of the kings. The reader is told whether each king was a good king or a bad king.

There were a total of 44 kings. Of the 44, 31 kings are listed as bad kings. In other words, they were bad political leaders and were not committed to leading according to God’s will. Only 7 were listed as good kings. That’s a pretty low number- that’s about 16% who were considered good kings who led well politically and spiritually. Let’s take a look at our Scripture for today where we can read a little bit about one of the good kings, Hezekiah, who ruled the southern kingdom of Judah from approximately 715 to 687 B.C. First, let’s start in 2 Kings 18:

In the third year of King Hoshea son of Elah of Israel, Hezekiah son of King Ahaz of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the sight of the LORD just as his ancestor David had done. He removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan. He trusted in the LORD the God of Israel; so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him, or among those who were before him. For he held fast to the LORD; he did not depart from following him but kept the commandments that the LORD commanded Moses. The LORD was with him; wherever he went, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. He attacked the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified cited.

Without a doubt, Hezekiah was a good king. Now, let’s go over to Chapter 19, and read the words of a prayer of Hezekiah, after his people had been taunted by messengers from the King of Assyria:

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; then Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD and spread it before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said: “O LORD the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, you are God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O LORD, and see; hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have hurled their gods into the fire, though they were no gods but the work of human hands-wood and stone-and so they were destroyed. So now, O LORD our God, save us, I pray you, from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, are God alone.”

On this Father’s Day, it seemed good to talk together about our privilege and responsibility of passing on the “good.” Hezekiah was known as a “good” king. He followed in the ways of the Lord, and the Lord blessed him and prospered him. When we read about him all these years later, we learn that he did well in the eyes of the Lord. His reputation was a good one.

I grabbed onto the word “legacy” as I thought about Hezekiah, and as I thought about Father’s Day. A legacy is something that is transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past. Let me repeat that: A legacy is something that is transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.

Hezekiah’s legacy was his faithfulness to God. That’s what made him a good king. His son, Manasseh, was only 12 years old when he began to reign. The Scriptures tell us in 2 Kings 21 that Manasseh did what was evil in the sigh of the Lord, following abominable practices. How can it be that such a good king gave rise to such a bad one? Well, let’s remember the definition of legacy: A legacy is

something that is transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past. Not only do we have the responsibility of transmitting (passing on) a legacy, we also have the responsibility of receiving it or not receiving it for our own instruction.

Now, I’m going to get very personal on this Father’s Day.

When people think about my dad, many people think about the music, the entertaining, the radio programs, including “The Old Country Mountain Church.” You remember how he would encourage people to send cards to people who were sick or in distress. You remember him as a good man, and because of much of what he presented, you would also remember him, most likely, as a good Christian man. I’m glad for that for you. But this is not the legacy that I received from my dad as his daughter. You see, in order for someone to want to receive something from someone else, the message has to match the action. The truth being presented has to be not just spoken, but it has to be shown. It HAS it be, if you care at all about the legacy you pass on. I could say to you, “Church, I really love you.” But if my actions completely show otherwise, you will not believe the truth I speak.

My dad, as good a man as he was, (and I know he had received Christ as his Savior), did not have a message and a lifestyle that matched. He walked away from his family, and gave very, very little of himself to us as children and as adults. His loudest legacy to me as his daughter was a message that said, “I can love everyone else, but I can’t love my own family.”

Please don’t take this as doing dishonor to my dad. I did love him, and I know in his way he loved me too. But even though he was a Christian, the truth of that commitment to Christ was not passed on to me through him- because his lifestyle did not match what he said. Josh McDowell, a very popular Christian speaker and author puts it this way: “You can be the greatest explainer of truth, the greatest preacher, the greatest illustrator- but if a child doesn’t believe you love them, they will not receive the truth you speak. Truth without relationship= rejection of that truth, just as rules without relationship= rebellion.”

My dad was a broken man. I wish he would’ve been able to find freedom and peace that would have enabled him to be all God created him to be. He would have died a much more satisfied person.

On the other hand, my father-in-law, John’s dad, spoke and lived the same message. He said, “I love you,” in thousands of ways- spoken, written, lived out, shouted out. He said he loved the Lord, and he showed how he loved the Lord by his faithfulness to live the right way, and to serve Christ in Christ’s body, the Church. His message matched his actions. We saw it when he was living on earth, and we keep seeing it now that he is living in heaven. The legacy that he passed on is clear: Love God, love family, love others, serve God, serve family, serve others. Out on the message board it says: Joy= Jesus first, Others second, Yourself last. This is the legacy my father-in-law left to us- a legacy of JOY as inspired by the Holy Spirit working in him. The article in the paper written about him called him in the headline a “Joyous Man.” He left a legacy of joy.

As Christian people, we are called to always be grateful for and learn from those who came before- and we are called to always be thinking about those who will come after us.

What legacy has been passed down to you? Is it a good one, one that makes you weep with gratitude before the Lord and makes you want to pass it on? Or, is it not a good one? If it isn’t a good one, you have a choice: You can either receive it and carry it around like an anchor around your neck (which I did for a number of years), or you can choose to NOT receive it as your legacy, because let’s remember: Anyone who is in Christ, is a NEW creation. The old is gone, and the new has come! (2 Cor. 5:17).

But the question remains: What legacy do you want to pass on?

Please listen to this interview with Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in California, and author of the books, “The Purpose Driven Life,” and “The Purpose Driven Church.” The interviewer was Paul Bradshaw:

People ask me, what is the purpose of life? And I respond, In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body- but not the end of me. I may live 60-100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillion of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act, the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one or you’re getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interesting in making you life holy than He is in making your life happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life: The goal is to grow in character, In Christ-likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys- you go through a dark time, then you got to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that anymore. Rather than life being like hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.

And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems, you’re going into self-centeredness, “which is my problem, my issues, my pain.”

But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers and hundreds of thousands on people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before.

I don’t think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, 2 Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan- to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God’s purposes for my life?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don’t get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better… God didn’t put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do-list. He’s more interested in what I am than what I do. That’s why we’re called human beings, not human doings.

In happy moments, Praise God. In difficult moments, Seek God. In quiet moments, Worship God. In painful moments, Trust God. Every moment, Thank God.

What kind of legacy is Rick Warren passing on? It is a legacy of faithfulness, of standing firm, of love and devotion to the Lord, to his family, and to the Church. He has done what is right in the sight of the Lord.

I want to close with a poem by Will Allen Dromgoole entitled, “The Bridge Builder.”

An old man, going a lone highway,

Came, at the evening, cold and gray,

To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

The sullen stream had no fears for him;

But he turned, when safe on the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,

“You are wasting strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day;

You never again must pass this way;

You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide,

Why build you the bridge at eventide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head:

“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,

“There followeth after me today

A youth, whose feet must pass this way.”

“This chasm, that has been naught to me,

To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”

--Will Allen Dromgoole. The Bridge Builder.

What kind of a bridge are you building for those around you by the truth you speak and live, and by the relationships in which you are investing? Research shows, neither one can be shortchanged: Speak and live the biblical truth, and invest in making deep and intimate relationships with the people God has given you to influence with that truth.

It’s never too late to begin to build an honorable legacy based on doing what is right in the sight of the Lord. It’s never too late. And, for the young among us, it’s never too early, either.

Amen.

Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

06-18-2006