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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Steven Conway

The Death of Legends - Part 1

My name is Stephen Conway And I am coming to you from Detroit, Michigan And I bring greetings from my family, my wife Tamara, and our 4 children, Israel, Abigail, Gabriel and Angel.

They would love to be here, and I'm sure you would love for them to be here and your life would be better for meeting them as mine has been for having them to be a part of it.

But the 2 churches are the Detroit Northwest Church and the Cherry Hill Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Thank you for the testimony and thank you for the music as well.

Our Father and our God, we are so thankful for the privilege of life, health, and strength.

We thank you for motivating us to be here today and we ask that your Holy Spirit will continue to be with us as we look to ever important topics.

We pray dear Father that our hearts and our minds will be guided to where you would have them to be.

And I pray that you would help each 1 to hear just what he or she needs to hear in spite of me.

I had a few people out last night and we began talking around this theme, the death of legends.

Did you know that Christians have legends?

And I'm not talking about you know, someone saying they found a piece of John the Baptist's femur bone or someone saying that they have a piece of the cross or someone has 1 of the spikes that was driven into the flesh of Jesus but we nonetheless have legends even though they are not of that particular type.

And so I want to talk about some of those, and by the grace of God, we can see the death of them in our time together.

A legend is a story that comes down from the past, popularly regarded as true, but not verifiable.

So there are many things that we believe and accept, even as Christians, to be true, even though those things are, in fact, not true at all.

From the time that we are children, we learn what impresses, don't we?

He knows how to make certain faces and sounds and perform little antics that draw positive attention, laughter, praise, and the most important of all things, candy.

As we grow, we fine-tune our ability to perform until we are known for our particular act.

We play the part so well and so long that most of us become lost in character.

This is deadly for us as Christians because what impresses and garners applause with men is not of primary importance with God.

What we are in the eyes of God takes precedence over what we do.

On Saturday, an example of this, a tragic example, on Saturday, February the 11th, 2012, a singer by the name of Whitney Houston died at age 48.

Now I remember I was talking about this at my home church to some young people and some of them turned and said, who is Whitney Houston?

But Whitney Houston died at the young age of 48, and that is young.

A party had been planned for that very night where she was to be featured as 1 of the brightest stars.

At her peak, Whitney Houston was the golden girl of the music industry from the middle 1980s to the late 1990s She was 1 of the world's best-selling artists She wowed audiences with effortless powerful and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church, but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies where she starred in hits like the Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale.

She had the perfect voice, and the article goes on to say, and the perfect image.

She had the perfect voice and the perfect image.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use.

Her album sales plummeted and the hits simply stopped coming.

Her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances.

She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana, and prescription drugs and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable now to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

In 1992, Whitney Houston married Bobby Brown, a musician with a completely different image, which shocked many.

But Houston said that their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.

I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images?

You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place.

You see somebody and you deal with their image.

While battling her addictions, Whitney Houston was in the midst of what many would have called a comeback until her untimely and tragic death.

Here was a life apparently so preoccupied with her own legend that I believe it killed her.

She invested more time into repairing her image than she invested into actually being repaired as a person.

A rock musician by the name of Jim Morrison says, most people love you for who you pretend to be.

To keep their love, you keep pretending, performing.

I want you to consider today, who are the men and women who fill our history books?

Are they not filled with stories of those whose lives gave us moments of brilliance despite their own personal demons?

Maybe Houston and Morrison understood that despite all the faulty illusions, we as human beings crave heroes.

This is why we continue investing in what people see and what people think rather than what God sees and what God thinks.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equally, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That's a part of the opening portion of the Declaration of Independence, written and signed by men who owned slaves.

It was a moment of brilliance, but was it who they really were?

Our history books applaud them and tell us that indeed this is how we should remember them.

I have a biblical example for you as well of someone who was sidetracked by their image a Character by the name of Saul how many of you are familiar with Saul?

We spoke briefly about him on last night In 1st Samuel chapter 10 Verses 6 through 9 the Bible tells us that Saul experienced a change of heart The Bible even goes so far as to say that the Spirit of God was poured out upon Saul and he prophesied with a group of prophets in 1st Samuel chapter 11 Saul experienced victory over the Ammonites.

However, in 1st Samuel chapter 10, verses 13, excuse me, chapter 13, verses 1 through 10, Saul is waiting for the prophet Samuel.

You remember he's been instructed that he should go and he should wait for 7 days and the prophet says that I'll come.

Well, the soldiers apparently didn't get the memo.

Some of them are taking off and hiding in rocks and in caves, and others are actually joining the ranks of the opposition.

Saul sees this, and he feels like the situation has gotten out of control.

And so in order to regain control, Saul says, bring me an animal so that I can offer a burnt offering.

With good intentions, I believe very well-meaning intentions, Saul wants to solidify and galvanize all of his troops.

And so he offers this burnt offering because that's what kings do.

Kings don't allow the situation to get out of control.

When Samuel appears and asks what he has done, Saul behaves as though he's done nothing wrong What do you mean you're the 1 who didn't show up when you were supposed to what was I supposed to do?

In 1st Samuel chapter 15 verses 7 through 12 God has given Saul he's given him a Test another test if you will he is to go and to destroy the Amalekites Saul goes to destroy the Amalekites except he spares the king of the Amalekites, Agag, and he also spares, along with the people, the best of the flocks.

Saul, again, was acting in harmony with his image.

You see, when kings go to war and they return from war they have to have trophies and Agag was going to be Saul's trophy and the best of the flock so they were going to offer some of them to God and the rest they would act also as Saul's trophies and so Samuel shows up again says what have you done What do you mean what have I done?

I did exactly as I was, well, what is that sound that I hear?

It's here that Saul is disregarded by God.

And I must confess that I felt kind of sorry for Saul.

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The Death of Legends - Part 1

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