We all try to cover up Christ. God says it's a glory, a crown of glory. It's a crown of glory that God has given you. Now, in our current culture, you are going to have a lot of folks that are not going to understand that crown of glory. They're not going to see it that way. But before God, it's a crown of glory for you if How many of you have heard the saying, too soon old and too late smart? Have you ever looked around and you thought, I wish, you know, if I knew everything I know right now, back then. I told you that story about the old guy that keeps running in front of me and getting in my mirror. And in my mind I remember this other guy. This goofy young guy. And instead I look in the mirror and I see this old guy and I look at Jacob and I say, there's the guy I'm looking for. We all talk about the aches and pains. If it's not dripping, slipping, sagging, or bagging, if it doesn't work, it hurts. And if it does work, it doesn't work as well as we remember it used to. When I go play basketball, which is not as much now with Pastor Jerry gone as it used to be, when I go play basketball, when I get back, Jackie says, you didn't hurt anybody, did you? I had a bad string where I hurt a few guys. And now I've gone to good string where I haven't hurt anybody. But I'm waiting for the day where she's going to say when I get home, nobody hurt you, did they? Because I see time passing on. And another thing that I see, which is not good, is in culture in general, I see a negativity. It's a sarcasm, but there's something more serious below it. Toward those that are older. Everybody knows they can't pull out a white hair if they get one because seven more will grow back. But they get out a bottle of Clairol something or other. Get rid of those things. I'm going to get that white right out of my hair. And then there's just for men, you know. Oh, you got this gray beard, and you look like the old guy, and oh, we'll get you fixed up. And just brush a little of this into your beard and mustache, and you know, and your hair. It's not going to happen to you, is it, Mr. Lindsey? You'll have to put a piece of gray flannel on your head. The Bible does not see things in that way. And we should not buy into what our culture is selling. And I'm going to tell you what it is a fight upstream. To work with your family and your children and take their impressionable minds and teach them the value that God places on the aged. There's a discussion in a story in Africa that when a person that is very old dies, it's like a library burning down. And part of that is because they haven't written down a lot of things, and they have storytellers. And the people with the oldest memory have the most stories. And it's amazing how stories come out and how you remember things from your childhood or your youth. And maybe some little obscure thing I say at the house, like last week, and my family's like, we never heard that one before. I'm like, guys, it happened to me. And I never thought it was important until now. My children are all especially interested. And it's kind of interesting how those things happen, isn't it? Differences in life bring things to surface. God values every person. But he puts a special value on those who are older. Let me go to the scripture. Let's go to Proverbs chapter 16 and look with me at verse 31. Now, this is a conditional statement, but it's very important and very true. In Proverbs 16 and 31, it says, The hoary head is a crown of glory. if it be found in the way of righteousness. Now you can grow old and never grow up. You can get older chronologically, but you can never get more mature. You can remain an infantile and you can stay a baby. And that is not what this is looking at. You can grow old, And you can get grumpier and grumpier as you get older. And isolate more and more people from yourself. There is something especially valuable about the experiences of a life lived. Steve and I were talking about another Christian brother, and Steve said he has a lot of knowledge, but he does not have a lot of experience. and he needs to have some experiences to temper his knowledge. You know, there is nothing more helpful if you're going to travel to a new town or a new city and somebody goes, If you take the road right through the middle of town, you're going to hit every light. There's a nice little bypass. You want to take the bypass. And then when you get on the other side of town, if you take exit 59A, right off there, there's a diner. and their lights out, they've got great food, it's tremendous, it's not terribly expensive, the service is great. If I was traveling through there, anywhere near, I'd just stop at that diner just to go there. And they go, wow, thanks for the tip, I'm gonna make sure that I take that road. Having gone through life, and having lived a lot of things, every single one of us, have some throwbacks. Some things where we would like to say, I would love to have a do-over. God forgives us for those things. But they have tremendous value if you're willing to allow them to be a blessing and a benefit to someone else. I believe the whole idea of a generation gap is something that the devil generated to keep one generation in front of the other. Everyone look in the Bible. One generation is telling the other generation the goodness and the glory and the majesty and the marvelous wonderful works of God. And it's the older generation that is telling the younger generation. And it's helpful to them, it's formative, it brings them along in the awe, in the majesty, in the glory of the great God that we have. And it's lost. Now say, you know, back to the library burning down. If you have a lifetime of experience, But you got a chain on the front of the doors. And the lights are out. And there's no librarian working the desk today. And you won't take and share with someone else the blessings and the benefits of your life. Our dad taught us to value and respect people that were older. Every time I went to a job, I found someone quite a bit older than me, and I learned from them. I judged, looked at their character with discretion, and I decided, and I teamed up with that person and allowed them to be a benefit and help to me. I'd go into Electrolock, where all my nephews are working now, I'd go in there in the morning and Jerry Fleason was vice president. I'd hear him or he'd hear me. We'd creep around the corner. And we'd both try to get the quick draw up first in the morning. Jerry Fleason, the nicest, kindest fellow I knew. And I heard him tell stories about being in Korea in the war. And some of the things he saw, and I watched him shut down, and some of the things that he would not talk about. I learned from his kindness and his example. I found out later, Jerry Fleason was a world-renowned chemist. We never talked about chemistry one single time. We talked about life and what's really important. I remember Jackie and I were just married and we had some extra money from overtime and we bought a barbecue and he was talking about how nice it is for a family to have a barbecue. Just some time that I spent, he's not on this earth any longer. But it impacted my life. Steve and I worked for a fellow Jack Gooding. And Jack had a story about anything you could think of. It was a hard-working, hard-driving man, but he was a kind man. And I learned something about work ethic from Jack. I learned about taking people and being firm, frank, and fair. No nonsense. We worked with a fellow landscaping, Lawrence Cook. Think about him once in a while, don't you? He'd tell us stories about the old days. Just the goodness of God. And what God allows. I want our children in our church to be around the older folks, and the older the better. And I want there to be friendships established, and I want there to be value produced and shown on either side. You ought to make it a point. If you wonder if I'm talking to you, it's probably you. You ought to make it a point to greet all our young people. Befriend them. I've seen some kindnesses and some encouragements from some of you. given to some of my children. I value it so much. Steve and I were traveling today and I was just telling him names of a few people and some of the things they've done for my children. I don't want it just for my children because I'm the preacher. I want us to take ownership of all of our kids. I don't want the devil to get one of them. And you have some help and you have some retaining power. You have some influence. And if you'll use it, there's parents that could use your prayers and your love and your concern. These are our kids. We ought to treat them like they are. You know what the problem with kids are? This ain't gonna go over real great. Kids are stupid. I was teaching in school, and I got all my kids together, and I had all the high school in front of me. We talked about a point, and they got the wrong side of it, and I explained it to them, and I taught them, and I spent a week with it. And then, I did a thing in class. I said, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, smart. And now I had the rapport and the relationship to do that. And that's the next thing I want to get to. If you don't build the relationship, you won't have the influence and the library will be closed. Listening is wanting to hear. The opposite of listening is wishing it was done already. Wishing it was over. Looking at your watch or your phone and saying, I wonder how many more minutes this is going to go. Let me read you a couple of scriptures that God put down for us. In Proverbs 20, 29, it says, the glory of young men is their strength. I grew up with Steve and Paul. And during the course of our teenage years, we had at least 12 other teenage guys live with us. My cousins, Herb and Brian, Adam, Buddy, Tim, Dwayne, just a whole bunch of guys that my mom and dad took in over time. Anyways, all of the guys was always trying to see who had the biggest arms, who was the strongest, who could hit hardest with a splitting maul, who could pick up the heaviest log, and you know, if there's a mirror around. One time I got, you know, my arm and I pushed it way hard up like this and I made my muscle look about five times, and my brother Paul walked through the glass and went, oh, James, I can't believe it. The glory of young men is their strength. The glory of children is their dads. Dads, show your children that you respect someone else. Show your children by deferring, by accepting advice, by loving and caring, by including. It's very, very easy to feel isolated. We feel isolated, then we feel neglected, then we feel unloved, then we feel bitter. And this is not something that has one H. Young people feel this way and older folks feel this way. Nobody cares what the, no one cares what the kids think, no one cares what the older folks think. Am I getting that right, mom? Is that what you asked me to say? In Proverbs 20, 29, the glory of young men is their strength. The beauty of old men is the gray head. I'm in a race between going away and going gray. Before Jackie and I got married, we had this discussion about whether she cared if I went bald. And she said, oh, honey, I don't care. I said, dear, if you don't care, I don't care. If I go bald, I'm not going to try to grow my hair long and cover it over and tape it down. I'm not going to try to buy a rug to put on my head and trick everybody. I'm not going to put a wig on. I'm not going to spray paint my head brown. I'm just going to go bald. You know, How many of these do we have here today? If you got glasses, hold them up. All right. Mabel, everyone's so jealous of you. You know, in England, they used to preach about people having glasses. I'd say if God let your eyes go bad, you ought to just accept the will of God. Why would you get glasses and try to circumvent God's will? I'm going to let you know what I think about that. I'm not sure. The next thing I'm going to say is that we all try to cover up grace, and God says it's a glory, a crown of glory. It's a crown of glory that God has given you. Now, in our current culture, You are going to have a lot of folks that are not going to understand that crown of glory, and they're not going to see it that way, but before God, it's a crown of glory for you if... if it's achieved and established in righteousness. Like I mentioned before, you can grow old and never grow up. We have the beauty of a crown of glory in Psalm 71. Let's all turn there. I'm going to start reading in verse 9. There's two points I want to make here. The first is that it's not our righteousness, it's God's righteousness, because our righteousness is self-righteousness, and He has no interest in that. It's His righteousness that He clothes us with. In Psalm 71, look in verse 9 with me, it says, Cast me not off in the time of old age. Forsake me not when my strength faileth, for mine enemies speak against me, and they that lay wait for my soul take counsel together, saying, God hath forsaken him, persecute and take him, for there is none to deliver him. O God, be not far from me. Oh my God, make haste for my help. Let them be confounded and consumed that are adversaries to my soul. Let them be covered with reproach and dishonor that seek my hurt. But I will continually, will hope continually and will yet praise thee more and more. My mouth shall show forth thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day, for I know not the numbers thereof. I can't even put it into numbers to say what an amount of glory and righteousness God has in His righteousness and His salvation. And if you go and you check the bank of righteousness in heaven, it's chock full, and you can see the beginning, but you cannot see the ending. And if you go over and you check the bank of salvation, it's full. You can see the beginning, but you can't see the end. And we can praise and thank God for His righteousness and His salvation, which He freely bestows on us. What a blessing that we can take. Let me see your quote there, Steve. Jesus Christ takes. Come here, James. Help me out. Can you help me? Okay, you gotta do 40 push-ups first, okay? We can take and we can have that robe of righteousness. Do you buy this coat? Huh? Sounds like there's something important in it. Yeah, you can have that. That's Miss Jackie's van. You'd look good driving that thing around. How many of you did something to earn your salvation? Oh God, help us. If we think we did, we're in trouble, right? But we sometimes think we can leverage and do something to earn righteousness. I go, look what I did. Look at me. And the minute that we do one iota or ounce or smidgen, is there anything lower than a smidgen, Jake? We're in trouble. Because our righteousness is earned. And when God looks at our righteousness, It reminds him of a guy that has leprosy, and he's got all this oozing and all this pus, and he takes rag after rag off, and he lays it in a pile to burn it so it will not infect other people, so he can kill the germs in it. So it's all of our own righteousness. Your very best day, your very best moment, your proudest achievement, the thing you said, look what I did. It's in that pile ready to be burned. And the only righteousness that he wants to see is what has come from the bank of heaven, the imputed, the given, the borrowed righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is by faith. Go give that back to him. If you feel like it, you can give it back to him. It says in verse 16, I go in the strength of the Lord, the Lord God. I will make mention of thy righteousness, even thine glory. If we look in Philippians 3, it says, But what things were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ. Yea, doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and you count them but dung, that I may win Christ and be found in him. not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." Oh, Pastor, I had my list all checked off and I did all these good things. So excited about it. I thought I was getting a little ahead. I thought I was getting a position and place. I thought I was establishing myself. The closer we come to Jesus Christ, and the light that he illuminates on us, the better we see ourselves. The better we see ourselves, The more we say, oh Lord, I am a sinful man, I am a sinful woman, I am a sinful boy, I am a sinful girl. And say, oh Lord, I need help. And you know what he's ready to do? He's ready to cover us with the blood of Christ and cleanse us. And he says, it's like scarlet, but it can be white as snow. I can take that stain out. and then I'll put my robe of righteousness on you. Back in Psalm 71, 17, oh God, thou hast taught me from my youth that hereto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old and gray-headed, oh God, forsake me not. There was a time in my life where there was nothing I tried to pick up that I wasn't able to. It led me to believe I could pick up anything. There was a time in my life where that theory got blown right out of the water, Mr. Lindsey. There was a time in my life where my benchmark was I can handle my own end of a piano. I had piano that I carried to the Lockhart's, and their two son-in-laws are both in their 20s, and they're on that side, and I'm on this side, and they set their side down to rest, and I said, I'm just gonna hold mine. It's easier to keep it up than set it down. I went home and did this in front of the mirror for a while, as you can imagine. That day is not today. I can pick up my end of a piano still, but I want to set it down when it's time to set it down. Somebody told me a story that I might get to move a piano out of the upstairs to downstairs, and I was like, how can I get Jacob Zane and Zach to do this? This is why God has given me these children. O God, forsake me not, until I have shown thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come. Thy righteousness, O God, is very high. Thou hast done great things, O God. Who is like unto thee? Thou, which hast shown me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again. and bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Thou shalt increase my greatness and comfort me on every side. There's a certain, there's a certain pride in every man. There's a certain pride in every woman, which is a little different, but it's the same. It's the same source. It's the same poison. We're told not to think higher of ourselves than we ought to think. We're told to consider ourselves. We're told if we come to the altar and we have a gift and our brother is odd against us, that we take heed to ourselves. We think, oh, that brother's got it out against me, I gotta take heed to him. The Bible says, take heed to yourself. Because we're always in danger of doing wrong. We're always in danger of departing from the righteousness of God. There is a truth about age, it humbles us. what goes on for then goes on to and then goes on three. This man he crawls on his knees and then he walks on two and then he gets a cane and now he's going on three. And first our back starts to humble and then bow down. Pretty soon more of us bows. The Bible says every knee shall bow. Be humbled by the majesty of God. Be humbled by the goodness of Jesus Christ. Be humbled by the cross of Calvary. Be humbled by that sacrifice, not humbled by your body. It's good. I'll tell you this. It's good to praise the Lord. Some of our saints in our church who are going through the most difficulty and the most pain have the sweetest spirits, are the most gracious, are the quickest to praise the Lord and to be concerned about someone else. You take a big baby grumpy man who normally feels great all the time and he gets a little pain somewhere. And he's moaning and groaning and focused on his pain above the whole, everything else in the whole world, could not care less, doesn't matter, we gotta deal with this. You take somebody that has 20 pains worse than him and they're focused on someone else. God, help us to pick that course of selflessness. We have the beauty of the gray head. We have the relationship and the fellowship with God. You ever need help and you wanted to do it yourself? Maybe you ran out of strength. Maybe you ran out of time. Maybe you ran out of money. Maybe you ran out of ideas. Maybe you ran out of skill. Something goes wrong with the computer, or my phone, or anything else that's electronic, and I'm like, Rachel, you're the person for this. I need help. Rachel's like, I'm going to change my name. I'm perfectly happy to say I need help there. There's other places and areas where I'm not as willing to say I need help. Sometimes God allows our needs to bring us together with other people. Your need and the subsequent humility to be able to ask for some help might collide your life with somebody else's, and during that time that you spend interacting and getting help, you might build a relationship. When we come to a point in our life where we realize we can't do everything we'd like to do, and we start having more time, time to recuperate, time to rest, It's also time we can spend with God. There's beauty in the whorehead. There's a fellowship and a friendship that we can have with God in our age. Number three, there is to be honor. If I'm sitting on the bus, and there's no seats left, and a lady comes on, or an older person, what should I do, Jake? I should get up and stand up and let them take the seat, right? You know, I did that somewhere recently, and I can't remember where it was. And before the older person could get in the seat, some younger person jumped in it. And me and the older person laughed a little bit, and we talked for a while, but something is wrong. That idea did not come up in early America, did not come up in England. In Leviticus 19.32 it says, Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old man, and fear thy God. I am the Lord. God's laying down a list of commandments here for the people to follow. He says, you stand up and let the old person sit down. You stand up and honor the aged one. You give them respect. I am the Lord. You got something to say about it? You don't think that's a good idea? I am the Lord. He establishes it with himself. There's nothing greater to establish it with. Our young people should see some of our other adults carrying things in. Now to recognize immediately that they should go take it and carry it for them. You ought to get to the door, they ought to greet them. I already told the older folks that they should greet all the younger folks. Younger folks, I'm going to tell you, you ought to because God says, I'm the Lord! You ought to stand up for them, you ought to respect them, you ought to go see them, you ought to say hi. You ought to listen to what they have to say and make them feel important. because they are important. Now, the benefactor of that situation... Come here, Emily. Are you young enough to be called a young person? If we could join you two up, guess who wins? They both win. She has a lot to give. And you do too. You might find out there's nothing you'd like better if you give it a chance. Be awkward. It'd be a little bit, you know, like any relationship when you get started. Beaten up. And this isn't exclusive. We can go back one row. Same deal. There's a lot to give here. And you have a lot to give also. And the blessing would be mutual. The closer that we can knit this Afghan Better off we are. Have you ever had a loose knit afghan? And you hold it up and you can see through it everywhere? And you're like thinking, how in the world is this thing going to hold heat in? It's going to go right through all the holes. Somebody made me a nice tight one. I put it on. I put it on for five minutes. I'm like, fold it in half. It's too hot. Fold it in half again. It's too hot. OK, now I'll use it for a pillow. God has given us each other and sometimes we miss the boat. You've been listening to a message from the pulpit of Town Center Baptist Church in Happy Valley, Oregon. We invite you to come visit us at 10505 Southeast 85th Avenue in Happy Valley. If we can be of help to you, please call us at 503-659-4494. We wish you God's very best.