Passing the Baton

Thank you, Mr. Kester. Good afternoon, brethren. I'm glad you got a timer up here. I had a sermon at once in Salem that went 27 minutes, so I'm supposed to go 12. It's not good time management on my part, so it's always nice to know generally where you are. I won't comment too much on the weather. We've heard a little bit about it, but it felt a lot like April today, driving across that pass. We actually had the opportunity to go up to the Spokane congregation last Sabbath for their annual ski weekend, and there wasn't much snow up there either. In fact, Silver Mountain, which is where they have it up in Kellogg, Idaho, it was very, very little snow. The runs were okay, but they had just a bit of rain the night before, and there was this hard-packed ice, so those that were out snowboarding and skiing were gingerly walking back into the lodge after a few wrecks here and there. It had one person that got injured a little more seriously than others as they went tumbling down the hillside over and over and over and over again, so it was not the best snow in the world, and it's definitely not just here. They're seeing it all across the northwest, and kind of makes you wonder what this summer is going to look like without some more precipitation in the next little bit. Well, brother, in this past school year, I had the opportunity to join the coaching staff of my school's track team. We're middle school. Very little pressure. But I've always enjoyed the sport of track and field. It's always been something that's been very interesting to me, because it's a good mix of individual as well as team competition. So on one hand, you're competing against yourself, you're competing against your previous times, your personal records, PRs, as we put it, but then on the other hand, ultimately, the team score wins the day. The team that can work together the best and win the most events takes away the win. Now, I coach the field side of things, particularly the throwing events of shot put and discus, and while I love that side of it, you know, the excitement of the sport for me comes in the track events. For me, the excitement comes in the track events. It's not that I... it's not exciting to me to see these big guys and folks throwing these big heavy things around and grunting out there in the grass. But there is a certain exhilaration that comes from witnessing a well-run race. Watching that runner make a perfectly executed start, watching them make that solid turn into the track and having a strong finish.

I love watching all of those long hours of training over and over and over again come to fruition. And for me personally, the pinnacle of the events that I enjoy watching is the 4x100 meter relay. It is fast, it's technical, it's over in less than a minute. Even at the middle school level, it's over in less than a minute. Four short little legs around the track, and each leg of that event requires a very specific type of runner. And once you identify those types of runner, once you get them practicing together as a team and kind of firing on all cylinders, it is truly a beautiful thing. And in the 4x1, not only is the speed with which you run your race important, equally important, in fact, I think you could argue more important is the effectiveness of your handoff.

In fact, when you reach the Olympic level, especially when you reach the Olympic level, you're looking at guys across the board whose sprint times in the 100 are off by hundreds of a second. Unless you're saying, bolt, and you're beating everybody by a couple of seconds in some cases. But at that level, the race is one in the handoff. So in a perfect world, here's what this looks like. Your incoming runner and your outgoing runner at a handoff, they come in, they manage to match their speeds inside of this 20 meter long, what is called exchange zone. And the goal here is for this guy that's going to accept the baton not to take off too fast or too slow, but to match the speed of the incoming runner.

And you've only got 20 meters to make that happen. You have to make that exchange without any errors, without any loss in momentum, slowing down, speeding up. And then that outgoing runner's got to take that baton and explode out of that exchange zone to either hand it off to the next person or go ahead and finish. Three perfect exchanges and, bada-bing, you've got yourself a gold medal. Sounds pretty easy. I mean, at first glance, it does sound pretty easy, right? Well, no, it's not. Even amongst the most elite athletes, baton handoffs are a source of immense frustration. Immense frustration. There's a certain amount of trepidation, actually, that goes into runners. They respect that baton a lot.

They really do. They have a lot of respect for that baton because they know there's all these little factors that can kind of come together in the wrong place and the wrong time to just spell absolute disaster.

And one of those disasters actually occurred for both the men's and women's 4x100 teams in the Beijing Olympics. Both U.S. men's and women's 4x100 teams were disqualified for dropped batons. Both of them. And it was kind of a thing, and it was this long chain of events. There had been some disqualifications at the national championships, at the world championships, and it's just kind of these things that just show that there were some issues there. And these are some of the best runners in the world, and they're dropping batons like a middle school track team.

Let's face it, handoffs are tough. They're not just tough on the track, but handoffs in general are difficult. Transitions, in general, are difficult. In business, for example, you know, not paying careful attention to a handoff or a transition of power from one generation to the next within that corporation can put even the most successful business into the ground.

There's actually a really interesting study that was done by the University of North Carolina, UNC, where they examined a number of family-run businesses. Now, you would think in a family-run business, there's a certain closeness between generations. We're talking father, son, grandson, things like that. And so UNC set out to find out, well, how well do family businesses transition from one generation to the next, to the next, to the next?

Well, here's what their data showed, and frankly, the results of this study are somewhat sobering for anyone who owns a family business and is planning to pass it off to the next generation. The study showed only 30% of family-owned businesses survived the transfer to the next generation. In the first generation alone, the first baton transfer, so to speak, 70% of family businesses failed. 30%.

Now, of those that survived, only 12% were able to survive to the next successive transfer, and only 4% were able to survive out to the fourth generation. You know, if we equate that to a 4x100 meter relay, 4% of businesses even finished the race. The rest of them were disqualified either at the first, second, or third handoff. But for the majority, for the majority of those businesses, 70% of them dropped the baton during the first transfer in a single generation's time.

Let's go turn over to the Book of Joshua to start today. The Book of Joshua, we're going to turn over to Joshua 24. And what we're going to see in this particular passage is we're going to see that Joshua, knowing full well at this point in time in his life, that he really didn't have much longer. We see Joshua gather the leadership of Israel to him.

We see kind of an interesting passage here as he begins to impart upon the leadership of Israel at that time some final words of wisdom. Let's go to Joshua 24. We're going to pick it up in verse 1. Joshua 24 and verse 1. So Joshua 24 and verse 1 says very specifically, Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers, and they presented themselves before God. So Joshua calls giant assembly, bring anybody who is any sort of a leadership position whatsoever. Come before me, come before God, we're going to talk here. Joshua said to all the people, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the river in old times, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, led him throughout all the land of Canaan. If you ever look at Abraham's journeys, it sure is kind of a round and around and around he goes. I wonder sometimes if he knew exactly where they were headed. But he multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac. To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave the mountains of Sare to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Also I sent Moses and Aaron and I plagued Egypt according to what I did among them. Afterward I brought you out. Verse 6, Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. So they cried out to the Lord, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, brought the sea upon them, and covered them. And your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. Then you dwelt in the wilderness a long time. You know Joshua here is reminding them of God's unfailing promises. Reminding them that he did everything that he said that he would do, again and again and again. He promised them the land of Canaan. Here you are. He protected them. He kept them. He ensured their safety. You know, he goes on to describe miracle upon miracle and promise upon promise that God had satisfied and had fulfilled. Now if you take a look in verses 8 through 13, we're just going to summarize this. We're not going to go through and read it verbatim. But basically he brought them into the promised land. He delivered them from the Amorites, delivered them from the Parazites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, again all those other Ites.

He defeated Balak. He delivered them from Balaam. He tells them specifically, I gave you a land you didn't labor for. All of trees and vineyards that you didn't plant.

In short, what Joshua is telling them here is he's telling them God was faithful. He did everything that he said that he was going to do. And I don't know about you guys, but the way that I hear this in my head is, if you've ever seen the great orators of history, as they get really emphatic and a lot louder as they build to their thing. That's what I hear in my head with this. Him working to this crescendo as he brings in his ultimate point. Those words just getting louder and more emphatic. Verse 14 of Joshua 24. Now therefore, here comes his conclusion, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord. Verse 15. This is that famous saying of Joshua. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourself this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua admonishes them here to make the call. He asks in point blank, after I'm gone, whom will you serve? After I'm gone, whom will you serve? Will you make the right decision? Notice a response in verse 16. So the people answered and said, far be it from us, that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For the Lord our God is he who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt. From the house of bondage who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the people through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out from before us all the people, including the Amorites who dwelt in the land. We also will serve the Lord for he is our God. Now they recognized all the miracles that God had wrought, but Joshua still wanted to make sure that they understood what they were entering into. Verse 19. But Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God, he is a jealous God, he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after he has done you good. The people said to Joshua, no, in some translations it says, nay, nay! But we will serve the Lord! Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves, that you have chosen the Lord for yourselves to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses. So how long did it last?

Well, about two pages. If you flip over a page to Judges 2, please. It lasted two pages. Now, granted, there's probably a lot of time there in those two pages, but in my Bible it is literally the next page over. If you've got a giant print Bible, maybe it's a few more pages, but in my Bible it's two pages away. Judges 2. We're going to pick up the passage in Judges 2 and verse 7. Judges 2, verse 7 says, So the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord which he had done for Israel. So those that Joshua talked to in Joshua 24, the ones who saw the miracles that God had wrought firsthand, those that saw Jericho's walls fall, saw the deliverance of the Lord with their very own eyes, experienced it firsthand. They were faithful. But if we skip forward down to the bottom here, verse 10, verse 8 and 9 just tells us about Joshua's death. Verse 10, When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, when the generation of those elders had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord, nor the work which he had done for Israel. Verse 11 tells us the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and serve the bales. One generation removed from Joshua, one baton transfer, so to speak, from Joshua to the elders, and that one went well. But something happened in the next transfer. You know, we saw this same sort of theme, this same sort of situation with a single generation when we looked at the Church of Ephesus. You know, again, in a single generation's time, something went wrong. And brethren, how does that happen? How do you go from a group of people that were faithful and believed, who saw it with their own eyes, to a generation the scripture tells us didn't even know God? Or, in the case of this passage, the works that he performed.

Somewhere along that passage, somewhere along that transfer, the baton was dropped. Now, there's a couple of possibilities. Either the generation of men that Joshua spoke to in verse 24 struggled to get the baton to those individuals. Sometimes the person coming into the exchange zone bottles it. Or, they did make the handoff. They passed on that knowledge. They passed on those things. And the next generation simply dropped it. You know, the end result is the same. We have a generational succession that was not successful, and a generation of Israelites that fell away from God and into idolatry, setting the stage for continued disobedience as we read through the Old Testament. The importance of nailing the handoff, the importance of giving a successful handoff, and passing that baton from generation to generation to generation is absolutely essential. And so, with the time we have remaining today, we're going to examine the three components of a successful handoff, and really analyze the implication that it has for us in the Church of God today. The three components, for those of you that take notes, the three components are, number one, the approach. Number one, the approach. So, in the approach, as you might have guessed, that's the incoming runner coming towards that exchange zone, coming into the box, so to speak. That approach is the first step of a decent handoff. The second step of an effective handoff is the exchange itself, the giving of that baton from the one person's hands to the next person's hands. The exchange. That's the actual transfer of the baton. And then the final component of a successful exchange is the next leg. What the people that take that baton are then going to do with it.

And that outgoing runner jetting out of that box and taking it either to the finish or to pass it on to the next generation or the next person in that path. So, there's three real components to this. There's the approach, there's the exchange, and there's the next leg. And, in case you hadn't already guessed, the title of the sermon today is passing the baton. Passing the baton.

Let's start with the very beginning of this handoff process. Let's take a look at kind of what happens at the very beginning, and we call that the approach. And in the approach, what we've got is we've got an incoming runner that is just full out just everything they've got to get that baton there as quickly as they possibly can. But as they come into that exchange zone, there's a number of things that start to happen. The outgoing runner is doing their final preparations. They're getting ready. They're trying to get to the point where we can grab that baton and they can take off themselves.

They're waiting for the incoming runner to hit a very specific spot. There is a mark of tape that is out there on the track, and they've practiced through this several different times. There's a little mark of tape on that track that they take a look at, and the person that's outgoing, the runner that's taking off, sees the runner hit that and knows that's the spot I have to go.

And if I go, and I go at my speed, and he comes in at his speed, we're going to match up, we're going to meet up, we're going to make that transfer. So they're thinking about a lot of different things, and once that runner hits that that tape spot, the outgoing runner takes off and just starts accelerating.

You know, at that point, though, they have to patiently wait for that baton to get there, for that incoming runner to close the gap. And this is something to think about. At the Olympic level, they're not waiting for very long. They're not waiting for very long. You look at the times that these guys run it, it's going to take that runner anywhere from eight to nine seconds, from the start of the gun to the point where now it's time to either, you know, start the handoff or the handoff is completed. And realistically, inside of that 20 meter zone, it's only about two seconds. So it's bang, eight or nine seconds, and then one, one thousand, two, one thousand gone.

I mean, it's fast, and doesn't give them a lot of time to really think it over and wonder, oh, did I leave the gas on? What's going on? They don't have a lot of time for thought processes. It's a lot of just wait patiently for that baton to get there. I recently had an opportunity to give a couple of teen studies at the Northwest Weekend, and I had a chance to gather some really interesting data.

And I, you know, I like that opportunity because it does give me a chance to connect with the younger people in the church and to get an idea of what sort of things are facing them and what sort of things that they need. And one of the things that I found was kind of interesting. And it's not going to be as effective in this particular room, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Would you guys please, anybody and everybody out there, would you raise your hand, please, if you're under the age of 20? Under the age of 20. Okay? So there's a few folks back there, too, back in the back in the kind of the gallery there.

And if we take a look around, go ahead and leave your hands up for just a second, go ahead and kind of take a look around. The individuals who have their hands raised in the air right now, okay, which, I mean, still, even in a smaller congregation, is a fairly sizable number of folks. You can imagine what it's like at a teen weekend or something like that. It's quite a bit bigger. But if you look around and you see the hands that are up, those are the individuals who were born in or after 1995.

Born in or after 1995. Now, keep your hands up for those of you... I know arm muscles, do it anyway. Keep your hands up. Now, would you increase and would you raise your hand if you're under the age of 28? Under the age of 28. I don't know if that adds anybody. I know a few wishful thinkers. Now they're going, oh, again, again, okay. And then one more time. If we go five or six years further out from that and take it on up to 30 to 34, would you include your hands as well, please?

Anyone in the 30 to 34? Oh, 35. There you go. That way you can raise your hand, too. Shannon's so close. Okay, go ahead and put your hands down real quick. Let me show you what the numbers are. Those that are under the age of 28 were born in or around 1986, the year of Mr.

Armstrong's death. Okay, so if you consider the possibility that five or six years out from there, like for example myself, you know, I was five when Mr. Armstrong died. You know, I was five. And so when we talk about Mr. Armstrong, I don't have a personal connection, so to speak, because I didn't have a lot of time where I was alive when he was doing his ministry and the church was growing and building and all of that.

Now, 95, yes, I have experience with that. I can remember the church split. I had that visceral reaction of, wait, this isn't right. I can connect with that. But the people who had their hand up today who were born in and around 95, they don't have that same visceral personal connection.

Intuitively, academically, they know, yes, that's what happened, but they don't get that same feeling in their gut when we mention 95. Now, likewise, I don't get the same feeling in our gut, or in our gut. We all have a collective gut now, apparently. Sorry. I don't get this same feeling in my gut either when people reference Mr. Armstrong. Now, I've read the autobiography. I've watched videos of his on YouTube. That's the extent of my knowledge, what I've been taught, what I've seen. It's all academic. In other words, I didn't have a personal direct connection or context to him directly. And so what we need to recognize and what we need to understand, I'll tell you at the Young Adults Teen Meeting, I asked that same question. Out of 40 plus teens and young adults that were in that room, there were only two that were even alive in 1995, and those two would have been infants. I mean, they weren't much removed from that age range. And so one of the things that we need to look at, and one of the things we need to be very cognizant of, is that there are two very distinct generations within the United Church of God. And the Church of God as a whole, we need to recognize that. And what we're talking about is those that have direct connection to Mr. Armstrong and his ministry, and those that have been at this way of life for a number of years. And then you've also got a group of people that are just coming up in the faith without those same contexts.

One group called Out of the World, another group brought up in the Church. Two somewhat different outlooks and life experiences. Same faith, same gospel, same goals. But two somewhat different outlooks and ways of life. Not ways of life, that's not what I'm trying to get at, but two different ways of maybe looking at things. But then what we have is we have a generation gap. I mean, plain and simple, that's what we have. We have a generation gap. And because of that generation gap, it's extremely important for us to recognize, one, that it's there, and two, find a way to close that gap, to close that gap or bridge that gap, if you want to use that analogy instead. But we've got to find a way to pass on the knowledge that those of you that have been at this for as long as you have, have attained in the years of your experience. God is a god of generations. When we hear God referenced in Scripture, he's referenced as the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's generational, it's family. And the idea is that we pass this knowledge and this faith on from generation to generation to generation and on down the line. It's a generational connection of it's been handed down, handed down, handed down. So this faith, by way of design, is generational. Let's go over to Psalm 145. Psalm 145. We'll see King David's thoughts on this concept of passing the baton. Psalm 145, as he considers the importance of passing things on to the next generation. Psalm 145. We're going to pick it up in verse 4, and we'll see King David's idea and thoughts on this process.

Psalm 145 and verse 4. Psalm 145 and verse 4, we'll read through, well, we'll just stay in verse 4.

Psalm 145 verse 4 says, one generation shall praise your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts. David is very specific here. We should be declaring. To a degree, we should be shouting from the rooftops the mighty acts of God from one generation to the next. So if you think about it, you know, when God has worked a miracle in our life or when God has provided us with some exceeding blessing or has brought us through a trial, we should make those things known, open and known so that the younger generation can see it and they can hear it, and they can see that God is working in that person's life, that God is operating and in working, that God's way works.

We also need to recognize that we have a limited amount of time to pass on this knowledge. Let's go to Psalm 71. Psalm 71, we'll see again in David's ideas on this process. Psalm 71, Psalm 71, and we'll pick it up in verse 18. But he considers this concept of passing on this knowledge, passing on this faith, declaring God's works to that next generation, but he contrasts it with his own mortality. I love the way he puts it in this particular passage. Psalm 71, and we'll pick it up again in verse 18. Psalm 71, verse 18 reads, Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, do not forsake me until I declare your strength to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come. In other words, God, don't let me die until I've had the chance to declare your strength to the next generation. Don't forsake me until I've declared your might to everyone who is to come. David recognized he had a limited amount of time to declare those works, to prepare that next generation. And again, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but when we look out on our generational landscape as a church as a whole, we need to recognize we're sitting on a situation where there is a significant amount of knowledge and wisdom that is going to slowly fade over the next 20 to 30 years. I mean, it's really unfortunate, but we need to recognize that. And I can't stress how important it is that that knowledge and that wisdom of living this way of life is passed on to the next generation. I can remember after my dad passed away in 2008.

You guys didn't know my dad personally. Maybe I don't know that any of you have necessarily met him, but he wasn't in the church and he was a little rough around the edges. But he had a gift with anything mechanical. He's one of those guys that you can seriously pick up the phone and say, my car's going to get this thing. It's definitely that it's not this. You need to just take that out and then tweak this little thing here and it'll run perfectly. 100% of the time he was right. I've never heard. I never ever remember him misdiagnosing anything. He could immediately diagnose and fix anything that was mechanical in the least bit. And he spent a lot of my childhood out in the garage and out in his garage he was tinkering on this project or that project or fixing somebody else's car. You know, the whole neighborhood brought their cars to him, practically. And he was fixing somebody else's car. He built a tractor out of some old dune buggy that he made down in Arizona. He built this big tractor, built a giant boat. He was always tinkering on something. But because he was a little bit rough around the edges and we didn't always have the strongest relationship, I avoided spending any time out in the garage because it didn't end well usually. Usually ended up with us arguing or whatever else. But as a result, I didn't get those skills. I didn't get the ability to diagnose. I didn't get the ability to tinker with or do, you know, and take care of these things as they broke. And once I moved out on my own, you know, they have the little thing on your application where it talks about the need for reliable transportation. You know, you must have reliable... I didn't always have reliable transportation. And as my cars broke down, naturally I would call, make the noise as approximated as I could over the phone, and have him diagnose the problem. Now I didn't have to spend a bunch of money on a mechanic or on a... on some guy to diagnose the issue. Then I could go on YouTube or whatever and look up, how do I replace this? YouTube's amazing that way. It tells you how to do anything and everything.

But I could figure out how to replace it. Well, shortly after he passed away in 2008, I was dealing with an issue on my car. And I picked up the phone, called the house, got the machine, and I started to even leave a message!

Until I kind of stopped myself in my tracks and went, wait, dad's... dad's dead.

And what ended up happening was I was on autopilot. That was the procedure, man. Something goes wrong with the car. Pick up the phone, call dad, get the fix, done. That was... that was my procedure.

But that option wasn't there anymore. That resource, that vast resource of wisdom and knowledge on how to fix these things, was gone. And we don't want to end up in a situation in the Church of God as a whole where we look back 20-30 years down the road and realize we let all that wisdom and that knowledge quietly fade away. Bridge the gap. Impart that knowledge. And speaking as someone in that next generation, I implore you, please don't wait until it's too late. Please do not wait until it's too late. The exchange itself. The exchange itself. So now the incoming runner has arrived. It is now time to begin the process of passing the baton.

When that incoming runner hits that predetermined mark and the handoff process begins, that outgoing runner begins to accelerate. And they're doing everything within their power to match the speed of the incoming runner, but at the same time, push them a little bit more because they're running out of gas. Right? So it's the idea of coming and it's kind of a fine balance and it's kind of a fine fine two thing, but you can't have the guy on the outgoing take off and leave this guy in the dust. And at the same time, you can't have this guy kind of slowly walk out of the box because they're going to collide. It's like taking two cars on the freeway. If one's going, you know, 55-60 miles an hour and the one in front of them is going 30, you got a rear end accident, right? Likewise, you know, you can't have the other the other vehicle take off. So it's this it's this kind of it's a little bit of a dance within this little 20 meter box that they call the exchange zone. And if that baton is not exchanged within that zone, within that finite period of time, if they run out of space, they're disqualified. If they drop the baton within that, they're disqualified. And what makes this difficult, not that it's not already difficult to match the speed and make everything work, but what makes it even more complicated is at the Olympic level, the handoff is both blind and silent. So it's blind and it's silent. Let me tell you what that means. At our level in middle school, again, not a lot of pressure in middle school track. I want to throw that out there. Not a lot of pressure. But in the middle school level, the incoming runner, which who clearly is not running hard enough if he can still yell this, but he runs in and he yells hand and the guy in front puts his hand back and they try to match each other the best they can. It's not always pretty.

To be fair, at the middle school level, it's rarely pretty. But they're able to kind of get it. And the guy in the back who's running it in yells hand. And at that point, guy throws the hand back, slapped the baton in the hand, and off the next guy goes. And hopefully that all kind of happens within that zone is kind of our hope at the middle school level. But if you can imagine, the World Championships, National Championships, Olympics, you're in a stadium full of people who are screaming and yelling and cheering. You can't hear a thing. And so these guys train to do it both silently, as well as blind. So the handoff is silent. No one yells hand, no one. It's just they go, they go, they go. They know it a certain step. Hand goes back and the baton is there. That's what it means to have a silent handoff. But it's also blind, which is kind of a kind of an extra bit of difficulty. What that means is once they take off, they take a certain predetermined number of steps that they've worked out in practice, and then they throw either their left hand or their right hand back, depending on which leg they're on, and they have to trust that that baton is there.

They see the guy hit the mark, they turn, they go, they do not look back. At the point where they know they have to go back, hand goes back, and hopefully that incoming runner has done his job, and that baton is there. Again, one one thousand, two one thousand, gone. All of that happens in about two seconds. So when we take a look at the handoff, especially at that level, it has to almost be instinctual. That it has been practiced so many times that it just comes as second nature.

And as you might imagine, to get to that level and to get to that point takes an incredible amount of coordination and practice. You're not going to take two runners who have never worked together in their entire life and slap them down on the track and expect them to do anything. It's not going to be pretty. A successful transfer takes an immense amount of practice in the exchange zone working together. We have a term for that in our world today. We call it mentorship. We call it mentorship. And mentorship involves a very close relationship where you have two individuals with kind of an increasing transfer of responsibility. We call this in teaching. We call it GR. We call it gradual release of responsibility. In other words, at the very beginning, I hold all the responsibility. I'm showing you how it's done, and you're there watching. But as time goes on and we get a little further, eventually I start to give some of that responsibility off. And you assume more and more of the responsibility once the transfer then goes. We call it the gradual release of responsibility. But in a mentorship, that happens. That's kind of the design of a mentorship. As the amount of responsibilities increase, that mentor is there for support when the person buckles under the burden of their responsibility or struggles with what to do there. They have support. And one of the most used examples of a mentor-like relationship in Scripture is Elijah and Elisha in 1 Kings 19. You can jot it down. We're not going to turn there. I'm going to summarize it briefly, but I want to look at a different example of mentorship. That is kind of your quintessential example. But we see God instruct Elijah to anoint Elisha as his successor. Elijah goes to Elisha, comes on him as he's plowing this field, walks up to Elisha, places his mantle upon him. Elisha interprets that to mean what it means. He asks if he can go, you know, and say goodbye to his parents. And from there, they go forward in this mentor relationship. And Elijah and Elisha work together as he kind of learns the ropes. Eventually, Elijah is taken. Elisha walks on his own from that moment forward. But he had been prepared. He had been readied. You know, we sometimes consider the possibility—I mean, you imagine that same story—if Elijah, with his last dying breaths, drops the mantle on Elisha and expires at his feet. You have Elijah looking at Elijah at the mantle, back at Elijah at the mantle, like, whoa, what do I do with this? Where do I go from here? Mentorship was a crucial component of his preparation. And the time that he spent with Elijah was very important to his development as a servant of God. Now, we looked at an example earlier of Joshua, and as he was kind of passing on the wisdom to the elders of Israel prior to his death. And he was an incredible leader of God's people. You know, sometimes it seems like Joshua gets a little bit overlooked in that capacity, but he was an incredible leader. In fact, that statement we read in Judges 2 is an absolute solid piece of evidence as to his veracity as a leader. The entire time that Joshua was alive, the people of Israel were faithful.

Him faithful. In fact, the people that Joshua trained and led the people of Israel faithful during their lifetimes. That's a mark of a great, great leader. Someone who inspires the people around them to develop and to grow. But how did he get there? How did he get there? How did he develop that leadership? So in order for him to do that, let's turn over to Exodus 7, and we'll see some beginnings of a very strong mentorship-type relationship with Moses, which was crucial to develop Joshua into the leader that Israel was going to need after Moses's death. Let's go to Exodus 17. I see one example here of Joshua being included in the process, being relied upon, even, in the process. Exodus 17.

Exodus 17, and we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 9. Exodus 17 and verse 9, we see a section here where Moses and Joshua are working together with God's intervention to defeat the Amalekites. Okay, so we're working together with God's intervention here to defeat the Amalekites. Verse 9 says, and Moses said to Joshua, choose as some men and go out. So Moses is delegating this.

He's saying, hey, you're gonna pick some guys, you're gonna go out, and you're gonna fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I'll go out and stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. We see in verse 9. Verse 10, so Joshua did as Moses said. There was no negotiation. There was no, ah, you sure? I mean, I don't know, they're kind of big. I mean, no. Yes. Yes, sir. He fought with Amalek. Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Verse 11, and so it was when Moses held up his hand that Israel prevailed, and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. You wonder sometimes whether Joshua looked back a couple of times like, hey, come on, get your hands up here. Come on! So we see, actually, Moses's hands became heavy. You can imagine holding that up for that amount of time. His hands became heavy. So they took a stone, they put it under him, he sat on it, Aaron and Hur supported his hands one on one side and one on the other on the other side, and his hands were steadied until the going down of the sun. Verse 13, so Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of a sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, and this is kind of an interesting little connection here, Lord said to Moses, write this for a memorial in the book, and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You know, this shared experience would have strengthened their relationship immensely. You sometimes hear of individuals who have had to go to war, and that bond between brothers who have had to fight together, it's a very powerful, powerful bond.

You imagine this would have very seriously strengthened their relationship. And in verse 14, God specifically instructs Moses to recount this and record this as a memorial, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, to include him in this process and have him be a part of the work that Moses was doing. Kind of see Moses undergo the process. A little further on in Exodus, we see another incredible example. Let's go to Exodus 24. Just a few pages over. Exodus 24.

Exodus 24. And what we see is we see Moses going up to meet with God at his invitation to receive the law. Exodus 24. And we'll pick it up in verse 12. Exodus 24 verse 12.

Exodus 24 verse 12 says, Then the Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and be there, and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and the commandments which I have written, that you may teach them. So Moses arose, noticed with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up to the mountain of God. Verse 14, he said to the elders, Wait here for us until we come back.

Indeed, Aaron and Her are here with you. If any man has a difficulty, let him go to them. Then Moses went up unto the mountain and a cloud covered the mountain. Notice in verse 13, Moses rose up and Joshua, his minister, his servant, and they went up. Verse 14 says, We will come again to you. Joshua was included. He was invited to this very personal meeting. He went up to the mountain with Moses. It's not clear, but I don't believe he went all the way up to the mountain with Moses. I think he kept himself off a certain distance. But he was also invited up further than Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu. He was included. He saw the relationship between God and Moses. He was close to Moses. He was kind of a confidant, a friend. You know, he was in this special relationship. And that relationship developed Joshua into an incredible leader. You know, you look at who was allowed to go into Canaan to spy things out. Joshua was included in that. He was trusted. Moses knew that he would give a solid report when he came back, that he wouldn't lie. So he was sent in to go and spy things out. I mean, there's a lot of examples of Joshua and Moses's relationship here. But having God working with the both of them and having Moses as a mentor made Joshua into an incredible leader. You see examples all throughout Scripture. You've got Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Timothy, you know, Ruth and Naomi, Christ and His disciples. You know, the list of the individuals who work together in a mentorship-like relationship goes on. So how can we in the Church cross the generation gap? How can we work on the exchange?

We have to be willing to commit to developing the next generation.

Praying for opportunities to exist in this extremely important work and increase our focus on service to one another. And really, one of the things that I think really could help is focusing on fellowshiping across the gap. And sometimes it feels like—and I'm guilty of this as well—but sometimes it feels like we tend to stick with our own generational groups pretty significantly. And we get together and we talk over here and we have the young people in this group and the kind of mid-somethings in this group and then mark on a horizon of people, the next one up, and then the older generation. We kind of, we need to focus on that cross-generational fellowship, sharing examples from our lives and lessons that we've learned and how we've lived this faith for the time that we have. The next leg. The final process of this is the baton has been transferred, the exchange has been made, the baton is firmly in hand—you don't want to have it bobbling around, you know, kind of there by a fingertip. That's not any good. Firmly in hand, the next leg is all on the outgoing runner. It is all on the outgoing runner. The transfer is done, the other runner is now slowing down, taking gasping for breath, rolling on the track sometimes to get some air, but they're off. And they now either pass it to someone else in line for another leg or they get to sprint it to the finish. And this is where the young people in the church today find themselves.

This is where they find themselves. They're in the process of kind of spiritually preparing themselves, kind of growing into this life. You know, those of us in the—I'm going to count myself in the younger generation. I'm just going to do it, and then it counts. So, younger generation, not 35 yet, right? But those of us not younger generation are working on trying to be prepared. We can't wish for a baton any faster. It's not going to do us any good. It's going to get there when it gets there. And when it gets there, though, this is the important part. We have to ensure that we're ready to take it if and when it gets there. You know, we are all called to be leaders. That includes all of us, you know, cross-generations. We're called to be kings, and we're called to be priests. Brethren, you're being prepared in this life for a role as a leader in the kingdom.

In addition, we also play a role of leader in our family, and we play a very crucial role in passing on this faith. But you know you never know where other opportunities for leadership are going to come from, both within the church and outside of church. I don't know how many of you seem like you're always getting asked at work to do extra things. You know, sometimes that's God giving you opportunities for leadership that are outside of church. You know, it might be a request within church to give an opening prayer. It might be a request to help out with sound. It might be part of chair set up and take down, you know, and some of the congregations that have to do that. You might be asked to lead a Bible study, become a counselor at summer camp for pre-teen or for teen camp. You might be asked to pray for and encourage a friend to help cut what firewood for someone who's in need. You might even be called into the ministry at some point. You know, you don't know where opportunities are going to come from. There's a laundry list of places and ways that people can serve both in the congregation and out of the congregation. You know, I think back to myself as a teen, and I think, honestly, if you would have told me 15 years ago, even 20 years ago, that I would be standing up giving sermons at some point, I'd have laughed in your face. I would have absolutely said, no, no way. But you know, opportunity has a way of finding you, and it has a way of giving you opportunities. Let's put it that way. And the question is, if and when that baton does arrive in certain capacities, whatever that capacity may be, will we be ready to step in and lead? Will we be ready to go through and do that? And one of the things that I think about is, you know, what are we doing today that is preparing us for leadership opportunities five years down the road, 10 years down the road, 15, 20 years down the road, or even tomorrow? What are we doing today that is preparing us for that? And you know, this topic has been on my mind a lot lately. And not only, you know, will you be ready to step in and lead, will you say yes when that question is asked? I think sometimes these leadership opportunities pass us up because we go, ah, no, you don't want me to do that. I'm not your guy, you know, will we say yes? But you know, this topic really truly has been on my mind a lot lately. And I think about it, if you think about our faith as something that has been handed down, you know, from God generation to generation to generation throughout the ages, from Adam to Seth down that line to Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Judah on down that line throughout the generations to Christ to his disciples preserved and handed down to us to kind of keep this way of life alive. If we look at our own lives as nothing more than a leg in a much greater race, that is sobering. That is really sobering to think of ourselves as as this leg in a race, to think that the baton that has been handed down was in the hands of Abraham, was in the hands of Christ, of Paul, on down through the ages, and now it's being given to us.

I don't want to be the generation that drops a baton. It has been handed down, handed down, handed down, and you know as you look at world events, as you look at kind of how things seem to be escalating, accelerating is the right term there, it sure seems like those events prophesied in Matthew 24 are nearer and nearer and nearer than ever. And you know we don't really set dates, but you know as we sometimes say, you can guarantee with certainty it's closer today than it was yesterday, right? But are we in the final leg? Are we the leg before the final leg? You know, we don't know, but we have to run the race all out. It doesn't matter if we're the Finnish, it doesn't matter if we're handing the baton to the next generation. We got to run the race all out. Give it everything we've got. And so as a result, our spiritual preparation is so unbelievably important. We have to make sure that when that baton does arrive, that we're ready. Some hypotheticals. Can we explain the fundamentals of our faith? If we were stopped on the sidewalk by someone who asked us, why do you do what you do? That's a lot of do's. Why do you do what you do? Would we be able to answer that? Are we able to give an answer for the hope that lies within us?

Do we actively live what we profess to believe? Are we a light to the world around us? Do we show love? Do we flee sin? Do we work to overcome it? If that baton showed up today, would we be ready to run the race? Is our relationship with God solid? Matthew 25 records the parable of the virgins. If you turn over there real quick, we're not going to read through the whole thing. I'm not going to go through all of it. It is a frequently cited parable. Ironically, one we were discussing right before services today, it's kind of funny, it's kind of funny. Oh, I'm going to read through this. Oh, that's interesting. We'll talk about that later.

But Matthew 25, this is again a very commonly cited, very frequent parable. So again, I'm not going to go through all of it, but I do want to draw our attention to a couple of things. We'll summarize it just kind of briefly, just to make sure that we get the main thing. But, you know, as you're turning over that way, parable of the virgins deals with ten virgins. Five wise, five foolish. The wise virgins were prepared, they were ready, they had oil in their lamps, whereas the foolish virgins had no oil. And we refer to that oil sometimes as the preparation, as the Holy Spirit, as, you know, the level of their relationship with God, so to speak. They were ready. They were ready to go. Everybody in this parable, everybody slumbered and slept, including the wise ones. Wise and foolish, everybody slept. Okay, it wasn't that the wise ones stood up awake and waited and waited and waited and waited. No, they were sleeping, just like the foolish virgins were. The difference was when the bridegroom came and when the cry went out that, he's here, he's arrived! Quick, let's go, everybody, the wedding supper! They simply swung out of their beds, trimmed the wick, lit the lamp.

Out the door they went. In the meantime, the foolish virgins are going, oh, I don't have any oil, I don't have a wick, give me some of yours. Nope. Go buy some. But they're not open! It's the middle of the night, what am I going to do? Running around like chickens with their heads cut off, which is kind of an analogy that maybe wasn't great, but okay.

They were scrambling at the last minute, final preparations, last minute, to try to get everything together. And, as you well know, in the passage, they arrived once the door was closed. Now, you can kind of imagine they're just absolute panic as they're banging on the door, banging on the door, knocking furiously. Let's pick up the account in verse 11.

It says, afterward, the other virgins came also, saying, Lord, Lord, Lord, open up to us!

But he answered, and he said, assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you. I do not know you.

Then verse 13 goes on to say, watch therefore, for you know not the day nor the hour.

I don't know you. We don't have a relationship. Who are you? Banging on the door.

You haven't spent any time developing the relationship with me. You haven't prepared. I know you not. Matthew 7 records the same concept in a slightly different way. And, as we're reading through and as we're turning over here, think about who this message is being said to.

You know, we were talking before services a little bit about how it used to kind of be taught that, oh, this is the conversation with folks that are outside of the world, the Protestant religions, and in this, this is to us! This message is to us. Believers. This message is us.

Matthew 7, please. Got to monologuing, and I didn't get there. Caught me monologuing.

Matthew 7. And it records it in a slightly different way. Slightly different way. Kind of the opposite side of the coin just a little bit. We're going to pick it up in verse 21. Matthew 7 and verse 21. It says specifically, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Mr. Kester mentioned that today, that concept of dying daily, putting our will behind and letting God's will be the will that runs our, that runs our lives. Many will say to me in that day, but Lord, Lord, haven't we prophesied in your name? Haven't we cast out demons? Haven't we done many wonders in your name?

In other words, look at me! Check, check, check, check, check, check, check. Look at all these things I've done. I've done everything you asked me to do. Why, why are you not? Why, what's going on?

Verse 23. I'll declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

The idea of, but, but, but, but, but didn't we do all of these things? Didn't we prophesy in your name? Didn't we cast out demons? Didn't we do mighty works?

And his response is, I never knew you. That relationship with God is so imperative. And I'm not saying the other things aren't important, you know, that, that yes, we need to make sure we keep the Sabbath. Yes, we need to make sure that we tithe. Yes, we need to make sure we do all those things, but for the right reasons, not because we're checking it off of a list, but because we love God and we want to ensure that we do what God has instructed us to do. We have to communicate regularly with God. We have to listen to Him. We have to let Him guide our life. Allow Him to prepare us. You know, scripturally, I think this would be one of the most incredible things that could ever be said of someone. Scripturally, Moses and Abraham were referred to as a friend of God. Enoch and Noah were said to have walked with God. David was a man after God's own heart. These are terms of endearment. These are terms of endearment. These are men that had close relationships with God.

You know, do we study the Word of God regularly to learn what God has to say to us? Do we communicate with God in prayer regularly? Do we actively work to then strengthen that relationship? Because once that baton is passed, the race is ours. And we have to run in such a way that we will obtain the prize. You know, as we wrap up things today and as we draw things to a close, one of the most difficult components of the 4x100 relay is the handoff. Even the most elite athletes in the world struggle with that aspect of the race. And with similar sprint speeds, passing the baton successfully is what separates gold from silver. That's what wins the gold instead of the silver. And so we want to look at, can we hand off that baton effectively without losing any steam? Can it be passed without slowing down? It's actually been said, and this is kind of a weird thing to think about, but it's actually been said that a good 4x100 teams overall time should be faster than their individual sprint times combined. They should be able to run the 4x1 faster than if you take their individual sprints and add it together because of the amount of time in the transfer, because you're given a set of fresh legs with about two seconds at the end of that run. And so, as a team, they are more effective when they work together than they are individually. We need to recognize, very much so, that if we're not careful, we can really botch the handoff. You know, there's a sound that all runners hate to hear, and these batons in the Olympics are metal. And so, when they drop, the runners say you can hear it on the track. It's a ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And it is the war. They just, it is absolute dread of that sound being made on that track. But we can drop the baton if we don't approach it in the right way. We need to ensure, as we approach the handoff of leadership within the church, of leadership in our families, of leadership at work, wherever we may be called to lead.

We need to ensure that we're working to make that approach smooth, that it's a smooth approach to the transfer. We need to make sure we're working hard to make sure that baton is where it needs to be, when it needs to be. And we need to make sure that as we enter that exchange zone, that 20-meter box where it has just got to happen, we need to make sure we work together with that next generation in a mentor-like relationship to prepare them for leadership in their families, in their church, and again at work or other capacities that they may have. We need to ensure we're passing on the wisdom and the collective experience of our years in the faith. And as young people, we need to make sure we focus on preparation so that when that baton of leadership does arrive, we are spiritually prepared to take it and run. Brethren, be ready. That baton is coming.