A number of years ago I heard about a survey of centenarians (people 100 years or older). The study asked these folks if they had any regrets about their lives. One of the top answers of the survey was: I wish I could leave something that lives beyond me. Another way of saying it is leave a legacy, something that you’ll be remembered for which will be passed on to succeeding generations. Although it’s one of the great desires of humanity, most people are forgotten a generation or two after their demise.
The reason most of us fail to leave a legacy is our focus. Leadership guru, John Maxwell, puts it this way: “Achievement comes to someone when he is able to do great things for himself. Success comes when he empowers followers to do great things with him. But a legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into a position to do great things without him.”
“What we leave as a legacy reveals our priorities. It shouts how we want to be remembered. It unveils whether we pointed to Jesus or us. It is the testimony of God’s work in our lives, the spiritual inheritance or baton that we leave to others. God’s plan for the church has always been that one generation would pass the baton of the testimony of Jesus to the next generation until His return. You and I are just one in a series of runners.”
“In the 440 yard relay, races [are] won or lost at the handing of the baton. To drop the baton [means] losing the race. All the hard work, all the … training, everything could be dashed with a single fumble. Rule number one of relay events [is] NEVER DROP THE BATON.
“The same is true of life. We have not successfully finished the race of life until we have passed on our baton to the next generation.”
John McElroy, “Leaving a Legacy”
This morning I want to share with you how to leave a legacy. As we look at the final act of Abraham’s life. He ran the race of faith, but before leaving the track, Abraham made sure to pass the baton to succeeding generations. He accomplished more than making a great name for himself. He succeeded in more than blessing the people of his lifetime. Abraham left a legacy by enabling succeeding generations to do great things for God without him.
This morning, let’s learn to pass the baton as he did. Remember that in God’s sight, you haven’t completed the race until you’ve passed the baton.
Passing the Baton
1. Coach them in the way of the Lord.
I’m only going to briefly mention this one because we’ve already touched on it with regard to Abraham. He left a legacy through his teaching. It appears that this is one of the primary reasons God chose him for the task of founding a nation. He knew that Abraham would instruct his descendants in the way of the Lord.
“For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” Genesis 18:19
Abraham set a pattern into motion that we see throughout the Bible. Parents are given the privilege and responsibility of teaching their children about God. Several hundred years after Abraham, Moses wrote this commandment to the Israelites:
Hear, 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 upon 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. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9
God’s people were instructed to teach verbally, symbolically, and through modeling. The traditions, the stories of God and His people, the festivals, the commandments were supposed to permeate their lives. Parents were called to coach their children and grandchildren in the way of the Lord. The call continues with Christians:
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4
It’s not the school’s responsibility or the church’s responsibility. Parents are to make sure that their children understand the faith. They are to live it out in front of them. For some reason many parents in our culture have come to believe that the professionals are supposed to teach and coach and our job is to be the cruise director for their children’s pleasure. Kids are handed over to government schools where the faith taught is secular humanism. When they get a little older they’re handed over to hip, young, twenty-something youth directors who’ve never raised kids and often focus on being a buddy and having fun. We hand them over to Sunday school curriculum written by some guy in Nashville who know neither us nor our children and their struggles. We farm them out and fail to instruct them ourselves and then have the audacity to wonder why they’re not following Christ when they leave home.
I am cheered somewhat to see that in our day parents are beginning to retake the responsibility that God has given us. It doesn’t guarantee that we’ll raise children of faith, but makes it far more likely. Passing the baton begins early as we coach them in the way of the Lord.
2. Make godly choices with enduring consequences.
The choices that we make also determine whether or not we leave a legacy. What we do right now will either give our children and grandchildren something to build on or leave them with no foundation whatsoever.
For the most part Abraham made godly choices with his life. We know that he sinned and made mistakes. The Bible records some of them. Nonetheless the majority of his choices were godly and the enduring consequences followed. You see it’s not what you do some of the time that matters. It’s the choices you make most of the time.
Abraham’s choices were so godly that even his pagan neighbors recognized the difference. In those days, resident aliens, such as Abraham were not allowed to own property. When Sarah died, however, Abraham’s pagan neighbors were willing to let him use their own tombs and even to purchase property. They said the reason was that Abraham was a mighty prince in their land. Literally, they recognized him as a prince of God. His life was so characterized by the presence, power, and blessings of God that they jumped at the opportunity to help him out. They could see with their own eyes that the hand of God was on this man and they wanted to be a part of it.
It all came down to Abraham’s choices. Because he consistently chose God’s way he was blessed and others took note of it. His past actions followed him into the present and endured for the future. His choices were of such note that somebody eventually wrote it all down. His descendants built upon his godly choices. They could live out the same faith and obedience and experience the same blessings.
We can never do this perfectly, but with God’s help we can make godly choices the majority of the time. I have only one ancestor who left a genuine legacy. He’s famous still today in Tyro, NC. His name was Big Henry Shoaf. Big Henry gained renowned for lifting a huge rock single-handedly that supposedly weighed nearly half a ton. I am certain that that legend has grown over the years. Unfortunately, the man’s legacy is tainted by his other bad choices in life. Big Henry Shoaf is also remembered for having multiple wives, actually he had one wife and one concubine. I learned at a cookout last week that he may not have been married to either woman and they were sisters. Big Henry left a legend, but not a legacy. People remember him, but his choices were certainly not what you’d want to build upon. Even the big rock. That’ll just get you a hernia or slipped disk.
What about you? Are you leaving a legacy of godly actions that your descendants will talk about? Will there be enduring consequences flowing from your life that will cause others to desire following in your footsteps?
3. Develop a character free from compromise.
Even into his old age, Abraham was uncompromising when it came to his faith. When Ephron the Hittite offered the free use of the cave at Machpelah it sounded like a good offer, but Abraham understood that there would be some strings attached. To use the cave he’d have to seal the deal with an alliance through inner-marriage with the Hittites. Understand that these were wicked people who worshipped pagan gods. They were descendants of Canaan, the cursed grandson of Noah. It was a sexually deviant culture that Abraham would have married himself or his son into. This is partly why he chose to buy the cave at an inflated price rather than simply accept it as a gift. He paid a steep price, 400 hundred shekels of silver (10 lbs), rather than compromise with a degenerate culture.
Think what would have happened if Abraham had compromised at this point. All the godly choices, all the acts of faith and obedience would have been called into question. He would have left no legacy because his descendants would have suspected his motives. Maybe Abraham was all about self-interest rather than God after all. Instead, he developed a character free from compromise, as evident here, and his descendants remembered.
One of the first funerals I ever officiated was for a man named Allen James. He was a quiet man and a faithful member of Johnsontown UMC. As I talked with relatives and friends about this man who I’d known less than a year, I found that he had a nickname. Lots of people called him John. It was short for Honest John. Mr. James had worked in the upholstery business. Apparently in those days your completed work was recorded on a ticket which you turned in for money. Mr. James received a ticket that turned out to be a duplicate. He could have been paid double and no one would have known. Rather than “stick it to the man,” he corrected the oversight and lost a significant amount of money. Because of his integrity, the people where he worked called him Honest John. He was a man who refused to compromise his beliefs. That legacy followed him to the funeral and beyond. His family and friends attributed good motives to his actions because he refused to compromise.
People admire uncompromising individuals. Even if they don’t agree with them, there’s something admirable about the one who will not cave in to pressure or enticement or greed. It enables you to leave a legacy and pass the baton because a character free of compromise verifies all of your godly actions.
4. Give them ways to remember God’s goodness.
In the final analysis, the purchase of the tomb in Canaan was a sign of more to come. It was Abraham’s final witness that his descendants would own that land just as God promised. Sarah was buried in that tomb at Machpelah. Later Abraham, his son Isaac and daughter-in-law Rebekah, his grandson Jacob and grandson’s wife Leah were buried there. In a single purchase Abraham tied his descendants to the land of promise. He left a legacy by giving them something to remember God’s goodness.
The tomb was a tangible reminder for generations to come of what God had promised. They could never forget what God had done from Abraham. They would always remember the land God said they’d inherit, even during the times of brutal slavery in Egypt. I image that the cave at Machpelah was a sight the Israelites longed to see as they prepared to invade and conquer the Promised Land 400 years after its purchase.
This theme is common in the Bible. God’s people consistently provided reminders of God’s goodness so their children would remember. Here’s one example:
And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, "In the future when your descendants ask their fathers, ’What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ’Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the LORD your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The LORD your God did to the Jordan just what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God." Joshua 4:20-24
Jesus gave us a way to remember Him. We celebrated it a couple of weeks ago.
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
When God intervenes we need to leave the coming generations reminders of His goodness to us. Our pilgrim forefathers established the tradition of a thanksgiving meal after God miraculously preserved them from starvation. Some folks set up monuments after significant battles where God’s hand delivered the underdog. Others remember through stories. Dot Parker told me about her father, a prayerful, godly man, who was in the field one day working alone. Somehow he started a fire that quickly burned out of control. He knew that he could not stop it and that the fire threatened to scorch his neighbor’s property. Dot’s father knelt to the ground and call out to the Lord for help. What happened next was nothing other than a miracle. A small cloud rolled in over the field and rain fell in that spot, extinguishing the fire. The surrounding countryside was completely dry. As Dot tells it, her father came home soaked to the bone and shut himself in his room to pray. That’s a story that will be told and retold. God’s goodness will be remembered and called upon as long as that legacy continues.
Are you leaving a legacy or will your children and their children and their children have to create their own from scratch? Are you giving them a foundation to build their own legacy upon or leaving them with the fading memory of an unremarkable life? In God’s sight, you haven’t completed the race until you’ve passed the baton. Focus on leaving a legacy. Look to the long-term rather than concentrating exclusively on personal, short term success. For God and for the good of the coming generations, pass the baton of faith with care. After all, you haven’t completed the race until you’ve passed the baton.
