From Generation to Generation

Psalm 145:4

The City of Pasadena was a mere nine years old when a small band of women formed the Lake Avenue Union Sunday School. The date of the first Sunday School meeting was October 27, 1895. The meetings were held in a car barn, just north of where we are now, at Lake Avenue and Orange Grove. The first Sunday School was made up of children and teenagers. The likelihood is that some – maybe even most – were the children of those who worked in the homes, barns and stables of rather well-to-do Midwesterners who had moved here, people like the Wrigley and Gamble families.

The story passed down to us is that one of those teenagers, a girl named Haidee Bryan (who likely was African American) suggested, “We shouldn’t just be a Sunday School. We should be a church!” And so the vision of what is now the Lake Avenue Church was launched. We rightly call Haidee “the teenage founder of LAC.” The first church service was held 11/25/1896.

One of the first mayors of Pasadena, William Waterhouse, was one of the earliest members of the church. He and his family donated this property at Lake Avenue and Maple Street to the church. He loved the city, he loved his new church, and he loved God’s global mission with two of his family members being among our first missionaries. In donating the property, he wanted to be sure of three things, i.e., that the church will always:

1. Faithfully proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to this neighborhood,
2. Care for the needs of the people God’s will bring to this city, and
3. Carry the message of Jesus to the world.

This three-fold mandate of Mayor Waterhouse came to mind when I first thought of the Scripture verse chosen for this 120th Anniversary, “One generation commends (praises) Your works to another. They tell of Your mighty acts.” “Una generación alabará tus obras a otra generación, y anunciará tus hechos poderosos (Psalm 145:4).”

I want us to meditate just a few moments on that verse written by King David so long ago.

First, it tells us that it is the calling of every generation of God’s children to see to it that the next generation hears about the mighty acts of God. God doesn’t drop a new Bible from heaven on every generation. Reading the whole of Psalm 145, it becomes clear that God has always intended that the older generation in a church will teach the next generations to know what God has done. That’s how the good news of God found in the Bible has gotten to us all today. It has been passed down from generation to generation. On this day of celebrating the passing down of God’s truth here at LAC for over 120 years, we gather today to make a pledge to be those who will continue to do this. We will trust God, follow Jesus Christ, and proclaim God’s mighty acts to coming generations until God’s work on earth is done. That’s the first thing I want to call us to today – to continue to be those who proclaim the God we have met through faith in Jesus and His mighty acts to our children and to our world.

There is a second thing I want you to notice about our verse. Even though I think its main point is that the older generations will commend and praise the works of God to the younger, sometimes the praising will be from the younger to the older. Do you see how it’s put? David simply said that one generation will commend God’s work to another. It’s clear that the young commended God to older generations in the very beginnings of LAC’s history. It was a young teenage girl who had the vision and courage to call for this church.

Indeed, our church’s history is filled with countless stories of children and young people who have come to faith and then begun to commend the greatness of God to their parents and grandparents. And, perhaps even more often, in times in which the older generations have become a bit stale or complacent in their walks with God, the Lord has raised up student revivals and movements of younger generations of people who call their elders to a deeper and more passionate faith. May that continue to happen. In fact, I’m sensing that God is doing quite a powerful work among the younger generations in our church in these days. To those of you here today younger than I am, I say as Paul said to a young man named Timothy, “Never be afraid (2 Tim 1:7). Don’t let anyone look down on you because of your youth (1 Tim 4:12).” Commend the great work that God is doing in your heart to all generations.

And that brings me to the third reason that Psalm 145:4 is important to us on our anniversary. Not only does this verse command us to pass on the truth we know about God from one generation to another, it speaks of a certain kind way we are to pass it on. We are to pass on the truth of God with conviction and passion. The word translated “commend” in v.4 also means to do so with heartfelt and joy-filled exultation about all that God is and has done. We are to tell about God in such a way that people see that we know Him personally and love Him. We are to tell of God in such a way that we commend Him to others so that they believe in Him too.

If we only pass on the the details of the things God has done to the next generation, then when we speak of God in our homes, or teach our children in Sunday School or preach from the pulpit about God, our words will be dry, unemotional, and boring. The next generation will deeply sense that we don’t really believe personally what we are passing on. What we do will come across as dead religious ritual rather than a living and loving relationship with God. We might say the right things about the greatness of God but our lifeless words will communicate something very different. We might say that God is great, but we will teach as if God is not great.

To those of us in the older generations: If we truly believe that God has done mighty things in our lives, then our words, hearts and lives must show it. If we will have future generations who love God as Haidee Bryan and William Waterhouse must have loved God, i.e., lives that are radically committed to following the Jesus who came and died for us, then we must be those people who passionately love God ourselves.

There’s a story told of a small town church whose local town newspaper always had a small section in it about what happened in their neighborhood churches. About one of them, it said, “At the Oak Hill Community Church on Sunday, 9/22/1957, nothing really happened.” I’m afraid that’s too often the case in churches.

I am praying that we will see here at LAC ongoing generations of people who are passionately and radically committed to Jesus. For that to happen, you and I must be those kinds of passionate and radical Jesus-followers ourselves. This anniversary Sunday is a day that I call you to make a new whole-lived commitment to Jesus. By "radically committed”, I mean I call you to be so deeply committed to Jesus that no price is too high to pay to follow Him wherever he leads. It’s clear to me that when you and I are fully committed to the Lordship of Jesus in our lives, then our lives and words do what Psalm 145:4 says: We will praise forth the greatness of God in such ways that future generations will want to passionately and radically follow him too. They will become a generation in which they join us in praising forth the acts and ways of God to the next generation after them.

Where do passionate and radically devoted followers of Jesus come from? Without question, it takes the work of God in our hearts. God can certainly work in a person’s heart even if that person comes from a dysfunctional family or a complacent church. But the usual way God does his work is found here in Psalm 145. God develops hearts of future generations of followers through God-exalting families and churches in which "one generation praises God’s works to another."

That kind of passing on of the faith in Jesus and love for Jesus has happened throughout most of our 120 years here at LAC. Global ministries have been birthed here. A major seminary began here. Well over 300 of our own people have been commissioned to careers of carrying the Gospel of Jesus Christ all over the world. They were people who learned of the greatness of God here at LAC. And, the people who stayed at home identified those in the church that God had called to be pastors, evangelists and missionaries, commissioned them for ministry, and then gave sacrificially to further the gospel in our neighborhood and world. Because of that, ministries of evangelism, compassion and justice have been launched here and carried out here.

Let me declare to you: Our Christian faith is more than simply teaching the minds of coming generations about the mighty acts of God. It’s about a life-transforming relationship with our mighty God through faith in Jesus. What we pray will happen in the generations who will grow up here is not just that their heads will be full of right facts about the works of God; we want both heads full of right facts and hearts that burn with the fire of love for the God that those facts make known. We pray that all of us who worship here will have hearts ready to sell everything to follow Jesus anywhere, even into the hardest places of our community and world.

Before I finish today, I want to return to the fact that our church was founded by an unlikely person, Haidee Bryan, the young woman who found Christ here and found welcome among his people. And, I want to return to the fact that the mayor who gave us this property also sent his own family members out to the mission field in our church’s earliest days. I do not want us to forget that we have quite a heritage in this church family.

Some of the most beautiful parts of that heritage is engraved in our church’s stained glass windows. Let me walk you through three of them. I think you will be as amazed as I’ve become as I’ve pondered the windows that show us visually what has been in the hearts of those who have gone before us.

The 1st stained glass window at LAC was installed in our earliest days, in 1905. It’s called “Jesus and the Children”. You can now find it located on the 2nd floor of Ortlund Hall. It draws upon the episodes in Matthew 18-19 in which those in authority in Israel did not value children and thought a genuine Rabbi would never spend time with them. But, in Mt 19:14, Jesus declared, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” In other words, “I am ready to welcome all who come to me including those disregarded and disrespected in society.” In the window, you see one of the men who was criticizing that Jesus welcomed the children standing distant and scowling in the background. Jesus would have welcomed him too – but the man would have to join the others welcomed by Jesus, like these little children. In fact, Jesus said he would have to become like them even to enter the kingdom.

Just as striking as the children in the window is the woman our forefathers pictured in the window – clothed with scarlet and adorned with what would have been gaudy accessories. These would have been symbols of women like the prostitutes who came to Jesus in Luke 7 and John 8 and who found welcome and a new life through Him. It’s a rather shocking statement our founders were communicating. They were saying that all who come to Jesus will find welcome in this church family. May this always be true of us.

The 2nd window I want you to see is the “Rose Window”, the one behind the pulpit and platform in the chapel. It’s the one that Communidad looks at when they worship each Sunday. At the center is the symbol that God’s Word will always be at the heart of this church -- that whenever we gather, God’s Word will be proclaimed. As you move from left to right in the widow, you will see, to the left is the symbol for justice and to the right is the symbol of compassion for the poor. It’s communicating that, when we have God’s Word directing us, we will always be committed to God’s work of furthering his kingdom of justice. That includes caring for the poor in our community (see Galatians 2:10).

Notice also that, at the top is the symbol of reconciliation and peace that is brought about by the work of God’s Spirit while at the bottom is the symbol of communion, the shed blood of Jesus. The heart of the Gospel is that Jesus died to reconcile us to God so we will also be committed to God’s reconciling work in this world through our words and actions. These were the things of central importance to those who worshipped at LAC in its beginnings. Again, I say that these things must continue to be true of our church now and in the future.

The last window I want us to consider is our newest window, the “Oaks of Righteousness” window on our Children’s Center. That window points us to Isaiah 61, the great prophetic text saying that when the Messiah comes, he will proclaim good news to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, bring release for those in prisons, and comfort all who mourn. In Luke 4, Jesus said that this passage was fulfilled in him, i.e., that to do these things is the mission for which Jesus had been sent by the Father (Luke 4:14-20). Jesus later declared that, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you (John 17:18; 20:21).” In other words, we who follow Jesus are also to bring good news to the poor, release for those who are in bondage and comfort to those who mourn.

All this is captured in our newest window. In Isaiah 61:3, all who follow this Messiah, Jesus, will ourselves become “oaks of righteousness planted by the Lord for the display of his splendor.” As an oak tree multiplies itself by the planting of acorns in the surrounding environment, so we are to do the same by making God known from generation to generation, developing oaks of God’s righteousness and justice out of all who come to faith in Jesus here, particularly through our children.

God has done mighty works in this church family for the past 120 years. But, the time is now for us to recommit ourselves fully to furthering God’s kingdom in this world. He has located us in this place and at this time to make his splendor known to our world. Our own community is increasingly becoming a community with all the people groups of the world. It is a broken world. It is a world in which many do not know of the beauty of Jesus and the greatness of God the Father.

Let us do what Psalm 145 tells us to do: Let our generation commend God’s work to this world. Let us tell of God’s mighty acts. Let us speak of the glorious splendor of God’s majesty and proclaim His great deeds until people from every tribe and nation – many of them right here in the San Gabriel Valley – join us through faith in Jesus in celebrating God’s abundant goodness and singing joyfully of his kingdom of justice.

To God’s glory alone!

Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor