To hear this Morning Devotion, please click A legacy lost
.
.
I can just see the family members hurriedly sifting through every bag, chest and drawer in their house as they search for proof of who they are.
There is a look of desperation that grips their faces, a look that is rooted in the fear that their mission will fail.
The men in these families know what is at stake. And so do their wives.
Failure means exclusion from the priesthood, even though they know that they are descended from the priestly line.
It is a terribly sad micro-story recorded in Ezra 2:59-63, an account that shows the failure of an unknown number of families in terms of documenting their priestly geneology.
In Ezra 2, thousands of Jews are preparing to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city after decades of desolation. The new king in Babylon, Cyrus of Persia, is even helping with the project’s cost. The core objective of the Jews is to rebuild the temple and resume the worship practices of the Jews.
Priests would be the overseers of this long-desired resumption of Jehovah worship. Not only would the priests derive the great satisfaction of serving God and their people, but they would also derive their financial support from offerings at the temple.
The descendants of the priests Hobaiah, Hakkoz and Barzillai had to have been thrilled when they first heard the king’s plan. But then when they realized that they would have to provide their ancestors’ documentation of temple service, things got tough.
All they had to do was to find an ancient counterpart to an ordination certificate or a diploma from a priestly seminary or some temple document with Grandpa’s signature in a place required for the priest on duty.
They found nothing, despite the likely repeated sifting of their homes and repeated trips to the homes of close relatives.
This failure had to have been emotionally devestating, made even worse by the realization that a few moments of careful filing decades earlier would have prevented this calamity.
I’m sure that you can imagine how the descendants of Hobaiah, Hakkoz and Barzillai felt when they had to accept the fact that their places as temple servants were forvever lost due to filing errors.
So how does this sad story relate to us?
What are you doing to secure your legacy? To pave the way for your biological or spiritual descendants to follow in your footsteps of serving God?
Serving as a priest in the Jerusalem temple is not an option for you and for me. However, if you’re a Christian, you are part of God’s new “royal priesthood” (I Peter 2:9) called to declare the praises of God. And you are pass on that role to those who follow in your footsteps, whether it be your biological children, your relatives’ or friends’ children, a younger adult convert or any other believer of the generation after yours.
It is so good when I encounter a Christian teen whose solid faith can be traced to the careful imparting of God’s love and truth from faithful parents who received the same from their parents who received the same from their parents.
It’s like being one of the soon-to-be-priests in Babylon who are packed and ready to go to Jerusalem, with Grandpa’s priestly ordination certificate tucked into his inner robe right next to his heart.
Dear friend, be careful in the living of your faith so that God is served and pleased. But NEVER forget to be equally committed to imparting that faith to your child, to somebody else’s child or to a young adult who can carry your torch of faith after you’re gone.
Your legacy will be served and your spiritual descendant will experience a sense of joy, not confused loss, when he or she senses God’s call to return to Him.
As always, I love you
Martin
