The Good Old Days

 

[The following is a manuscript of my message delivered on Sunday morning, the 15th of August, 2021, at Pilgrim Reformed Church.  Our YouTube streaming channel is:  http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDIz4WuP8igQstkEOq1AMTg.  Look for the video of our recorded services on our Vimeo channel:  http://vimeo.com/pilgrimreformedchurch.]

Ahhh… the good ol’ days.  Those times long ago when everything was better.  That’s what we long for, right?  Right now we don’t have to go back too far, do we?  Most of us pretty much long for the days of 2018, with no COVID-19 or masks or isolation.  But if we take off our rose-colored glasses that we often view the past through, we’ll see that not everything in the good old days was really all that good.

Please listen and follow along as the Apostle Paul speaks of his good old days, in chapter 3 of his letter to the Philippians, verses 1 through 11, and I’ll be reading this from the Contemporary English  Version of our Holy Bible…

1 Finally, my dear friends, be glad that you belong to the Lord. It doesn’t bother me to write the same things to you that I have written before. In fact, it is for your own good.

2 Watch out for those people who behave like dogs! They are evil and want to do more than just circumcise you. 3 But we are the ones who are truly circumcised, because we worship by the power of God’s Spirit and take pride in Christ Jesus. We don’t brag about what we have done, 4 although I could. Others may brag about themselves, but I have more reason to brag than anyone else. 5 I was circumcised when I was eight days old, and I am from the nation of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin. I am a true Hebrew. As a Pharisee, I strictly obeyed the Law of Moses. 6 And I was so eager that I even made trouble for the church. I did everything the Law demands in order to please God.

7 But Christ has shown me that what I once thought was valuable is worthless. 8 Nothing is as wonderful as knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have given up everything else and count it all as garbage. All I want is Christ 9 and to know that I belong to Him. I could not make myself acceptable to God by obeying the Law of Moses. God accepted me simply because of my faith in Christ. 10 All I want is to know Christ and the power that raised Him to life. I want to suffer and die as He did, 11 so that somehow I also may be raised to life.

--Philippians 3:1-11 (CEV)

Let us pray…  Father God, thank You for choosing us and giving us to Jesus.  We know by His own promise that what You have given to Him will never be lost.  Thank You, Father, for Your great mercy and love.  Please help us be closer followers, better servants for You and our Lord.  Help us to do as You will and not just what we want to do.  Please keep us strong in our faith and of one purpose in our service to Christ Jesus.  Please keep us healthy and safe through these trying times.  And Father, please guard us from Satan and those who do his bidding, whether knowingly or not.

Speak to us now, Father, that we might hear Your voice through Your Spirit and better understand the message You have for us this morning.  Remind us of our life without You so we won’t be tempted to return to it.  Show us what we can do to make this life better for all those we encounter.  This we pray in the blessed name of Christ Jesus our Lord.   Amen.

A farmer walked into his bank and announced that he had bad news and good news. "First, give me the bad news.", the banker sighed.  "Well," said the farmer, "I can't make my mortgage payments.  And that crop loan I've taken out for the past 10 years -- I can't pay that off, either.  Not only that, I won't be able to pay you the couple of hundred thousand I still have outstanding on my tractors and other farm equipment.  So I'm going to have to give up the farm and turn it all over to you for whatever you can salvage out of it.”  Silence prevailed for a minute and then the banker asked, "What's the good news?"  "The good news is that I'm going to keep on banking with you," said the farmer.

I’m sure the banker was absolutely thrilled that the farmer intended to continue doing business with him.  Anytime someone comes up and says, “I have good news and I have bad news”, we can be fairly sure we’re in trouble, that the bad will be greater than the good.  In the case of the farmer, he might as well have started out by saying, “I have bad news and I have worse news”.

But generally we’re an optimistic people.  We want the good news to be far better, far greater than anything bad we hear.  Just as we want our memories to be of good times, blocking out as much of the bad as possible.  Which is why, I think, we look back fondly on the good old days.

Like I said, though, if we’re honest and realistically view the past, we’ll see that not everything was all that good.  Not everything from those times is worth returning to, nor something we’d want to come back.  Those good old days we remember are often romanticized versions of reality, painted up in our minds to be all pretty and sweet.

In many ways, what we have right now is far better than in any of our days before.  And that is especially true of our life now, with Christ, in comparison to our life before we accepted Him as our Lord.

I think Paul provides a pretty good example of this for us, using his own life as an object lesson.  As a Pharisee, Paul enjoyed a good life.  He obeyed the Law of Moses and gladly did his duties for the Temple, trying to stamp out this new Way.  He did everything he could in order to please God, and in so doing to please himself.

He could have easily looked back on those times as the good old days, especially in light of what happened to him after his eyes were opened.  He suffered multiple beatings, shipwrecks, threats on his life, imprisonments, and all because he was now working for Jesus.

But did he look back fondly on those days as a Pharisee?  No, just the opposite!  Because Jesus showed him that what he once thought was valuable was actually worthless.  Everything he had before, everything he knew from those days, was garbage.  There is nothing, nothing as wonderful as knowing and accepting Christ Jesus as our Lord!  As far as Paul was concerned, these were the good old days: serving, and suffering for, Jesus.

I’d like to turn to wise King Solomon’s Book of Ecclesiastes for a moment to see what he has to say about “the good old days”.  I’ll start with chapter 7, verses 10 and 14…

10 Don’t long for “the good old days.”

This is not wise.

14 Enjoy prosperity while you can,

but when hard times strike, realize that both come from God.

Remember that nothing is certain in this life.

--Ecclesiastes 7:10, 14 (NLT)

Nothing in this life is certain.  Everything is subject to change at a moment’s notice.  We’ve sure seen that, haven’t we?  So enjoy the good times while they’re here and don’t long for the good old days.

Like I said earlier, not everything in the good old days was really "good".  Let’s hear what Salomon adds in chapter 11, verses 9 and 10…

9 Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. 10 So remove sorrow from your heart and keep pain away from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.

--Ecclesiastes 11:9-10 (NASB)

We who have long ago crested that mountain known as the prime of life know just how fleeting youth is.  Those pleasant days of childhood and young adulthood linger in our memories, and still live only there.  But just remember, as Solomon cautions, we will be judged for any and all foolishness and indiscretions from those days.

And lastly, going back to chapter 3, in verse 6 Solomon reminds us…

6 [There is] A time to gain,

And a time to lose;

A time to keep,

And a time to throw away;

--Ecclesiastes 3:6 (NKJV)

Paul said I count everything as garbage that I ever had and enjoyed in the past, before knowing Jesus as Lord.  Everything that was valuable is now worthless.  I count it all as loss.  I threw it all away.  What I thought were the good old days really weren’t very good.  Or at least I wasn’t very good in them.

Now, all I want, all I need, is Christ.  I want to know Him, to know that I belong to Him.  Nothing I ever did before made me acceptable to God, made me right in God’s eyes.  God accepted me simply because of my faith in Jesus.  All I want now is to know Christ and the power that raised Him to life.  I want to suffer and die as He did, so that I, too, will be raised to life eternal.

This is what Paul told us as he wrote to the church in Philippi.  And family, these should be our words as well.  Those good old days we long for?  They were only truly good when we were serving our Lord Jesus and doing the will of God.

So let’s not dwell on or long too much for those good old days.  These times we live in right now can be made better – better for us and better for others – if we just work at it and do the will of God.  So let’s do all we can to make these the good old days.  In the blessed name of Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

Let us pray…  Father God, thank You for accepting us and seeing us as righteous because of our faith in Your Son Jesus.  By Your grace, we worship by the power of Your Holy Spirit and we take pride in Christ Jesus as our Lord.  Thank You for allowing Your Spirit to dwell within us.  Please, Father, help us be more worthy of Your love.  Sometimes, Father, when we look through our catalog of memories, we see only the good, forgetting the bad things we may have done or experienced.  Sometimes we long for what we think are the good old days, without doing anything to make the current days better.  Please, Father, help us make these the good old days.  Give us the insight to make things better.  Encourage us and strengthen us to continue the mission Jesus gave us.  Please keep us strong in our spirit, in our faith, and in our service to You and Jesus.

Please hear us now, Father, as we pause for just a moment to speak to You from our hearts through Your Spirit within us, promising to be more faithful and true, putting all our trust in You and Jesus, and seeking Your help as we do so…

Lord Jesus, until we came to know You as our Lord, all we did was in vain.  Everything we had, anything we ever accomplished, was all garbage.  All that matters is belonging to You.  Thank You, Jesus, for showing us what is truly valuable.  Lord Jesus, we ask You to help us make these days we are going through better for others.  Help us as we walk through these times to remember that we can make these the good old days for those we encounter.  Strengthen our will to do what our Father God wills us to do.  Help us to be more loving, more understanding, kinder to all we encounter each day.  And please help us as we try to show Your love in a world still filled with hatred and distrust of one another.  All this we pray in Your blessed name, Christ Jesus our Lord and our Savior.  Amen.