August 23-24, 1997 Sermon

August 23-24, 1997

David Olshine

II Chronicles 34:1-8
1: Josi'ah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem.
2: He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father; and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left.
3: For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet a boy, he began to seek the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Ashe'rim, and the graven and the molten images.
4: And they broke down the altars of the Ba'als in his presence; and he hewed down the incense altars which stood above them; and he broke in pieces the Ashe'rim and the graven and the molten images, and he made dust of them and strewed it over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.
5: He also burned the bones of the priests on their altars, and purged Judah and Jerusalem.
6: And in the cities of Manas'seh, E'phraim, and Simeon, and as far as Naph'tali, in their ruins round about,
7: he broke down the altars, and beat the Ashe'rim and the images into powder, and hewed down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
8: Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azali'ah, and Ma-asei'ah the governor of the city, and Jo'ah the son of Jo'ahaz, the recorder, to repair the house of the Lord his God.

David Olshine
I want you to stand as I read the word of God to you from II Chronicles 34, beginning in verse 1.
Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for 31 years. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and he walked in the ways of his ancestor David. In the eighth year of his reign while he was still young he began to seek the God of his father. In the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places and altars. Under his direction he knocked down the Baals. He cut to pieces the incense altars that were with him. Then he burned the bones of the priests on the altars and he purged Judah and Jerusalem. In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign he began to purify the land and the temple.
You may be seated.

A Story Problem
I want to have you help me figure out a problem. I want you to add this up. As I tell you the story, you can do it on paper or you can do it in your head, but hold your answers until the end. Then I’ll try and call on you to get a little bit of participation. I want you to imagine with me that I went out and bought a horse. I paid six dollars to the owner. I brought that horse home and my wife and my child started thinking that I was terrific, but problems started to arise. The horse was too big for the house. All the galloping started to get a little bit ridiculous and the furniture started to get messed up.
My wife finally said, "Honey, you’ve got to take that horse back." I was pretty depressed about it and so I took the horse back and sold it for eight dollars. I started missing that old horse and I started singing cowboy songs at night and staring at the moon and my wife just could not stand seeing me so upset. She said, "Listen, you can go back and get Calico." So I did. I went back and I bought the horse and I paid ten dollars. The horse started making messes in the house, and the kids were horsing around and I could see the handwriting on the stall. So I sold Calico back for twelve dollars.

The Answer Is...
Now you math majors, you brilliant calculus people, did I make money? Did I lose money? Did I break even? If you have an answer put your hand up. Sir you said I made four dollars. Anybody else? Yes - I made two dollars? OK. Anyone else? Is there another answer here in this incredibly bright crowd? Yes - I lost all my furniture. OK! Figures that a woman would see that. Any other answers? Yes - I broke even. So we’ve got one answer that I lost four, I made four, I made two, and I broke even. How many of you think I broke even sounds good? Put your hands up. How many think I lost two dollars? Put your hands up. How many think I made four dollars? How many of you don’t know? How many of you don’t care? I made four dollars. That is the answer.
My wife and I got this from our daughter Rachel’s second grade math book. Second grade. Wouldn’t it be nice if life had only those kind of problems? But life doesn’t have those kind of problems. Life has much more incredible problems than figuring out a second grade math book.

Life’s Problems Are Complex
The worst problem that hit my family was when I was twelve years old. I was watching the original "Mission Impossible." My parents came in and turned the TV off and they told me they were getting a divorce.
Watch this clip!

Scene from the movie "Mrs Doubtfire" where Sally Fields is telling Robin Williams she wants a divorce while the kids are watching on from the stairway.

Divorce is an incredible divider in our culture today. In many places one out of two marriages end up in divorce. To say that it doesn’t hurt the kids is just not true. It does. It is like getting a saw and cutting kids wide open. Skepticism abounds in our culture about family life.

Skepticism in Life Today
Listen to a number of comments from a number of different people. For example, Rita Rudner, who is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune writes, "My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can’t decide whether to ruin our carpets or our lives." Listen to a teenager, fifteen years old. "We don’t have a family. We just have four people who are trying to survive." Even our parents are confused in our culture. Listen to this mom. "My kid is all screwed up from heavy metal music and exposure to sexual videos at an early age. Don’t blame me. I’m never home."
How about two sophisticated five year olds. One of the five year olds was saying to his friend, "Guess what, I found my brother’s condom on the patio." The five year old friend said "What’s a patio?" That is the kind of culture we live in. Or this teenage inner-city kid said, "In a way it’s a good thing that adults don’t know what we teenagers are like. If they all knew what we were like, they’d puke."

I. Generational Legacies
Legacies. Divorce. Alcoholism. Fear. Depression. Suicide. It’s so easy to fault generational legacies. I read a true story. The grandfather was a punk, and the dad was a scoundrel. It comes from II Chronicles 33 and 34. First there is grandfather named Manasseh. He was involved in spiritism, mysticism, and the occult. He was so wicked that he literally burned one of his children alive in fire. His son was named Amon. He was appointed as king and he got involved with a bad group of guys too. After two years of political power he was assassinated. Blown away. The third person in the lineage - his name is Josiah - everyone branded him to be a loser. This kid was bound to fail. Like father, like son, he would blow it.

Defying the Odds
Everyone knew it. But he defied the odds. He reversed the trends. He broke generational patterns. Maybe some are saying that about you. That you are branded to be a loser. That you’re going nowhere in your life. It’s kind of hard to defeat the odds when you’re down on the mat and the count is about at ten. The family scrapbook did not look too encouraging for Josiah. Here he is, an eight year old kid. Can you imagine? How many of you have children? Can you imagine your eight year old being appointed the president of the United States? Would that be wild? Eight-year-old Josiah.
Youth were not made for pleasure but they were made for heroism. In other words, God has created young people to do something distinctively different with their lives. As we grow, we can deviate from the norm. We can deviate from patterns that our family has handed down to use. We can break those patterns. The Bible goes on to say that because of Josiah, because of his faithfulness, he turned a nation that God had no mercy on, and God said I’m going to have mercy on them. Because of one man. Maybe there is a Josiah here today. For in such a time as this, God is going to use you to turn your campus around, your city around, your neighborhood around, for the glory of God.

II. Principles for Breaking Patterns
I’d like to suggest to you two principles on how you can break patterns. These are not simplistic. They are effective.

Choose A Mentor
The first principle is: Find a mentor. A mentor is someone that gives you something that you don’t have for yourself. I shared three or four weeks ago when I was here about my high school days when I was a druggie and had long hair and baggy eyes. What I didn’t share with you was how I came to make my faith decision in Christ. I had gotten high for three and a half or four years. I seemed to do it a lot with a black friend of mine, Duane Noble.
I made a decision after getting arrested for marijuana not once but twice, and being in a car wreck, I made a decision for one weekend to not get high. I won’t get high for one weekend. For about four years, I had gotten high all the time. I can still visualize, going downstairs, into his little basement. I used to get high with him a lot. I said, "Duane, I went Friday night, I went last night, I did fine, I didn’t get high, I didn’t drink, I didn’t do anything, but now I’m starting to get antsy, can we smoke some marijuana together?" He said to me, "I don’t do that anymore." I said, "Really, why not?" He said "I’ve met someone who has changed my life." I said, "What’s her name?" He said, "No, it’s not a girl. It’s God." I said, "You’re not one of those Jesus freaks, are you?"

Jesus And Freaks
I didn’t even know what a Jesus freak was. I had just seen it on a Time magazine. He said "Listen, Jesus doesn’t make people into freaks. He does take freaks and make them into people." He began to tell me who the person of Jesus was. He mentored me. I’ll never forget, I was eighteen years old, I had never been inside a church. Here I walked inside to an all African-American church. I am the only honky there. I am the only Jewish honky there.

Romans 9:3
3: For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race.

As I observed them, I became what Romans 9 says, I became spiritually jealous. Over the next six months he mentored me. He taught me how to read the Bible. He taught me how to pray. I would dare say that I don’t believe that any of can break patterns without some mentor, someone outside of our family system that can help us see who we really are.

We Need Others
How many of you know that we don’t always see everything about ourselves that we could see, so we need someone else to help us? Does that make sense? We need other people to help us see who we really are.That is what the movie "Sandlot" is about. This kid can’t play softball at all. He has a guy who takes the time to help him. In the process, a relationship emerges.

Let's watch this clip!

Scene from the movie "Sandlot" where an older boy helps a younger boy in softball, giving him tips and loaning him his own ball cap.

We all need different kinds of mentors. We need spiritual mentors. We need, if we’re married, we need people who can mentor us in our marriages. If you’re a guy you need a male mentor who can tell you stuff about yourself that you can’t always see. It takes guts, it takes courage, to find those kind of people.

Discover Your Mission
You not only need a mentor - someone who can help you outside your family system - you need to discover your mission. It was in 1902 in the Rose Bowl. It was University of California vs. Georgia Tech. It was a great game. It was a close score. All of a sudden there was a fumble. A University of California player by the name of Roy Regals picked up the ball and dashed and ran the ball 65 yards the wrong way. Right before he was about ready to score for the other team one of his teammates spun him around. Four plays later they punted, the punt was blocked, University of California was down 2-0 going into halftime. As the coach came in he gave a typical pep talk. He told them to not worry about it, to get over it.God. How on earth is Josiah going to break the trend?
There in the corner was Roy Regals, who was later named "Wrong Way Regals." In fact, on his tombstone, it says Roy "Wrong Way" Regals. How would you like to live with that your whole life? He sat there in the corner crying like a baby - sobbing. All of a sudden the coach, his name was Nift Price, said, "Men, everyone who started the first half will start the second half." All of a sudden they got together and all ran out. There was Roy, in the corner, like a baby - sobbing. Wrong Way Regals. The coach said "Regals, did you not hear me? Everyone that started the first half will begin the second half." Regals said, "I can’t. I’ve ruined my reputation. I’ve ruined University of California’s reputation. I have ruined your reputation, Coach." Coach Price looked at him and said, "Listen to me. The first half is over. But the second half is yet to be played. Now go out there and play it." He went out and he played like an animal. They say he played the game of his life.

Jesus Came to Set You Free
Men and women, maybe you feel like the first half and the second half is over for you. That you are so stuck and you are so locked in to patterns that there is no way out. Jesus Christ came to set you free. He came to help you break patterns. You will never, never be able to do it alone. You need a mentor - you need a mission. What is your mission? It is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. Does that happen overnight? No.

A Growing Relationship
Seventeen years ago I met a beautiful brunette. Her name was Rhonda Weisman. I fell in love with this girl. I met her at the library at Asbury Seminary. I was so struck by her beauty that when I finished saying good-bye to her I ran right into a wall. Literally. I literally ran into a wall and broke my glasses in half. It’s not funny. I’ll never forget driving down the street with her, we’d been dating for five months, and I said, "I really think that God wants us to get married." She said, "That’s nice. God hasn’t told me." What do you say? So I prayed for her. I prayed that she would see the light, and I guess she did.
Yesterday we celebrated out 16th wedding anniversary. I told her as I kissed her today at the airport, I said, "I love you," and I meant it. You know what? Sixteen and a half years ago I told her, " I love you." Did I mean it? I did, but what I meant when I said it sixteen and a half years ago wasn’t exactly what I meant when I said it today at 11:40 in the Columbia, South Carolina, airport. Because my love has grown, our marriage has been refined.

God’s Mission Takes Time to Define
When you try to discover God’s mission for you, it doesn’t happen overnight, so don’t get too frustrated. Your mentor will help you define your mission. If it wasn’t for Duane and a lot of other men who have invested their life into me, I would not be the person who I am today.
God has not left you in a sea of heredity doomed to fail. No, He has put you in a lifeboat and you have choices. Today you can make a decision whether you will stay afloat and survive and thrive or whether you will go under. The choice is up to you.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you that Josiah gives us courage and hopefulness, that he had to literally leapfrog back ten generations to see someone there called King David to see a model worthy of emulating. Lord, I pray for every human being in this room, that you’ll provide the mentoring so they can learn their mission, so they can learn how to love you with all their heart, their soul, their mind, and learn to love their neighbor as themselves. We commit these things to you, in Jesus’ name. And all God’s people said, Amen.