Before I begin this sermon, I want to say something to the young people who may be reading this. It may seem at first to be against the younger generation. Just for the record, that is not my intention. I have nothing to gain by preaching a sermon against young people; as a matter of fact, my own children are young adults and my grandchildren will be teenagers in a few years. Come to think of it, one is already a teen. How time flies!

No, this sermon is not against young people. By the time we get to the end, you will see it is actually in defense of young people. This sermon is about ideas. It is about the struggle going on between truth and error. I am sure we realize that it doesn't matter whether a person is 18, 28, 58, or 72 years old. We all happen to be on the same boat, and if it goes down, we all go down. So I hope we can all stay together to the end of the sermon. I am not verbally inspired. That means I may not say it the way it should be said. There may be any number of better ways to say it. Please try to discern the concerns I am trying to express. Wait till the end, if you can, to come to your conclusions.

There is an expression showing up here and there these days. I even saw it as a feature in a church paper not long ago. The expression is "coloring outside the lines." I understand the words, but I have trouble with the concept and I am going to explain why.

When I was a little fellow I remember learning to color with crayons and with watercolors. You can remember those days, can't you? When children first start out leaning to color in a coloring book they usually scribble all over the place. There is no doubt about it--they definitely color outside the lines. But then as they get older and get a little practice and a little coordination, they begin to stay more and more inside the lines. It is strange that in the past the point was to try to color inside the lines; and now as we near the end of time, the buzzword is encouraging us to color outside the lines.

There is another saying going around that in some ways is a companion to coloring outside the lines, and it goes something like this: "It is easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission." I am sad to say that coloring outside the lines and not asking permission, but asking for forgiveness, has become the operating strategy of many.

This is very significant, because we are being told that the time has come for us to turn the church over to the young people. But the same folk who are encouraging us to turn the church over to the young people are turning to the young people and encouraging them to color outside the lines and to ask forgiveness rather than permission.

I don't believe I am a reactionary, neither am I a person who believes in maintaining the status quo. Nor do I personally discriminate along racial, gender, or generational lines. I have determined that Scripture, not cultural convenience, will be my guide. For some reason that I cannot understand, there seems to be a movement that is trying to divide up the church along the lines of special interest groups based, it seems to me, on what appears to be political correctness. If we use the Bible as our authority, I can find no justification for this in either the Old or the New Testament. But then this would be consistent with not asking for permission or with coloring outside the lines.

Inasmuch as it is definitely against the will of God to discriminate along racial lines, where do we find a justification for discriminating along generational lines? When we read in the writings of the Apostle Paul, nowhere do we find that the leadership of the church is to be determined by birth certificate.

There are those who point out that our church was founded by young people. It is true that many of the early pioneers of our church were young people. But they were not chosen because they were young, rather because of their commitment to Jesus and their faithfulness to His Word. The truth is, the founders of our church represented all the generations. Miller and Bates were hardly what you would call Spring chickens!

The men and women who were Christ's contemporary followers, and so the founders of the Christian church were not only Gen-Xers, but included men and women of experience. I don't know if any of them were senior citizens, but it is quite probable that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were men of considerable experience.

There has grown up in the past forty years a cult of the young. I don't say this with any bitterness. I was actually a Gen-Xer during the past forty years myself! I recognize that young people at any time in history tend to be full of spirit, yet I believe that the maturity of the younger generation at any particular time has tended to reflect the amount of responsibility they have had to bear.

In our country during the past thirty years the younger generation has increasingly had less and less responsibility. Though I just missed being a baby boomer, my generation married younger and established families at a younger age than the generation of young people today. I was 19 when I married, and Betty and I had our first child just before I became 21. I was 22 when I took the pastorate of my first church. I remember one of my first encounters with the head elder. He came to me and said, "Scripture is being fulfilled before our very eyes." I asked him how that was. He said, "The Bible says, 'A little child shall lead them'!" And so it was.

But the past is past. We cannot nor do we care to go backward. We may have forgotten, but what we call the "good old days" had their problems, too. Namely, there was the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean Conflict and so forth.

Radical changes in this country came during the 1960's. That was the time of the Viet Nam War, the Beatles, the hippies, free sex, and drugs. Things have not been the same since nor will they ever be again.

As a husband, father, and grandfather, yea, as a human being, I am not comfortable with what seems to be a divide and conquer methodology. Since the beginning of the human family, society has been a continuum, with the parents caring for the children, and before the end, the children caring for the parents. It was understood that there is nothing quite like experience and nothing at all like wisdom, and to get both took time. Therefore, there was really no problem in the flow from one generation to the next, inasmuch as human existence was seen as flowing from one stage of life to another.

I am baffled to see within the body of Christ what appears to be a fracturing of unity based on the birth certificate. I am troubled by the concept of coloring outside the lines. Perhaps we should give the benefit of the doubt to those who are proponents of this concept. Surely they don't mean outside the lines in things having to do with faith and morals or things that would ultimately impact what is clearly the revealed will of God.

I am completely in accord with the concept of enlarging participation within the body of Christ. What can be wrong with that? But there must be a distinction between participation and revolution. A young pastor, who had recently instigated a split in his church, boasted to me one day, "We are in charge now." This didn't sound like a revival or a reformation, but a revolution.

I must confess, I am more than a little sensitive to the concept of revolution. We lived through one. Our family arrived in Chile during the administration of Salvador Allende, who had come to power as the result of a "democratic" election. He had put together a coalition of leftist parties. He himself was a communist. The popular vote was equally split three ways. So he had to be elected in a run-off vote in the House of Deputies. He signed a document that he would respect the Constitution of the Republic of Chile and its democratic institutions. When we arrived in the country, the pastor who picked us up at the airport greeted us with the words, "Welcome to our socialist paradise." On the way into the city, I remember seeing a large billboard with the American flag on it covered with swastikas.

We quickly learned that the vocabulary of that time was a vocabulary of revolution, such as, "El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido" (The united people will never be defeated), "Venceremos!" (We will win!), juelga (labor strike), gremio (labor union), socialismo (socialism), companero (comrade), and finally guerra civil (civil war). Though the president had promised he would respect the democratic institutions of the country, it wasn't long before things were going the other way. The rest is history.

I sincerely believe that the church of God desperately needs a reform and a revival; but one thing it doesn't need, and that is a revolution. A revolution is overthrowing one system and replacing it with another. Revolution is a break with the past. History in the case of a political revolution begins with day one of the new government.

The church of God needs a revival and a reformation, but it doesn't need to begin all over again. It doesn't need a revolution; in fact, it can't begin all over again and still be the body of Christ. The church of God has one Foundation, and to that Foundation can no other Foundation be laid. 2 Timothy 2:19, "Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure."

It is true, the time has arrived to invite the youth of the church to come in and get involved. But this is not about being in charge. The youth can be the vision and energy of the church, but this will not happen if we encourage them to color outside the lines and not ask permission. I am afraid that whatever positive thing is meant by these expressions, they may very well begin a fire that could burn down the temple of God.

If there is one thing the church needs to be aware of, it is from whence it has come. You know the old saying, that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it. For this reason, we need to know as much about the past as we do about the future, because to a large degree, our future as a people will depend on from whence we have come. We will not know who we are and why we are unless we see where we have come from.

You may have heard the expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." There is another expression that is creeping in: "If it's not broke, then break it." This is not the spirit of revival and reform, but of revolution. I agree with what someone said, "Before you tear down a wall, find out why it was there." Those who are into building will also appreciate that some walls are non-load-bearing, while others are essential for the stability of the building.

In some places we are now seeing a systematic attack on the foundations of our faith, and unfortunately, sometimes our young people are being used as cannon fodder. As it is written in Psalm11:3, "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" A person would have to be naive to believe that the changes that have come into the church in recent years are only cosmetic and more of form than of substance.

I receive, as do the rest of my colleagues in the office, a weekly fax from the office of the president of the General Conference. It was shocking to learn that, for more than a year, the communication was an appeal in defense of a seven-day creation week, the integrity of the Scriptures, and the validity of the Spirit of Prophecy. This document was not being used to try to win the members of a local atheistic society; it was being sent to the ministers and workers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Do you realize the implications? That the day would ever come in which it would be necessary for the office of the president of the General Conference to defend creation, the Word of God, and the Spirit of Prophecy to the leaders, ministers, and educators of our church is disheartening indeed.

Friend, we must wake up and realize there are winds blowing all around us. If these winds are not restrained, they will huff and puff and attempt to blow our house down. This is why I am amazed that we as a church would encourage the young people to paint outside the lines.

Some might say, "But to paint outside the lines is just encouraging us to try new methods of evangelism; it is only encouraging us to grow spiritually, and inviting the young people to get involved in the church." If that is what it means, then why not just say so? When one is encouraged to paint outside the lines, where more and more people, old and young, no longer believe God created the earth in seven days, then the cry to color outside the lines is a cry for revolution.

A man once confessed to me that he didn't agree with the doctrines of our church. After debating the subject a while, I respectfully suggested that if he felt so strongly that the doctrines are wrong, he might feel more comfortable in another denomination. "No," he said, "I prefer to stay and try to change the ones we have."

Can we see that to encourage such a person to color outside the lines may mean one thing to you and me, but it may very well mean something entirely different to him. To him it may very well appear to be giving a green light to start a revolution.

If the office of the president of our denomination is trying to convince its paid workers that the earth was created in seven days and that we can put our faith in the Word of God and the Spirit of Prophecy, then it would seem to me that this is no time to call on the church to color outside the lines for whatever reason, however creative the intent. I am not sure that what we need in these last days is to be especially creative. Perhaps what we need more is to settle into the truth we already have. The fourth commandment doesn't give us much wiggle room, but reminds us to do what we already know.

You may disagree, but I am convinced that our church in its twenty-seven doctrinal beliefs is right on the mark as far as its doctrines are concerned. This is no time to encourage either the young or the old to tinker with the doctrines and then ask for forgiveness later. I believe there is a systematic program in certain quarters that is trying to render null and void our unique mission as Seventh-day Adventists, and re-tool us to be merely another generic Christian church. We like to say we are Seventh-day Adventist Christians, but there are more and more who are becoming uncomfortable with the concept that we are the remnant church that was raised up by God with a message for this hour. They believe that to think of the church as such is arrogant. They seem to prefer to be generic Christians.

This is no time for us to go backward. We used to be Baptists and Methodists. We were Catholics and unbelievers. This is no time to go back to the denominations from which we sprang. The Apostle Paul would tell us to forget those things that we used to be, and press on toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus our Lord; and that high calling is that we are to be a special people with a special message that will prepare whosoever will to be ready to meet our Lord in the air.

This is no time to throw out the old people and replace them with young people. God isn't concerned with the date on your birth certificate. This is no time to favor inexperience over experience, but this is the time to enlarge the army of the Lord on the basis of time-tested ways.

This is not the time to color outside the lines. God calls us at this critical time in the history of the gospel to build up the waste places that have been thrown down. Isaiah 58:12, "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in."

This text is not a call for the overthrow of the existing order or a revolution in the way that things are done. This text is a call to restore the faith that was given to our fathers. We must reject the temptation to throw out the old. We have not believed cunningly devised fables. The challenges we are facing are not the result of not having the truth, but of rejecting the truth. God is not calling for us to lay the foundations, but to build on them. We must understand that the plans for this building were laid from the foundation of the world, and Jesus Christ and His holiness, and not the world and its sinful ways, is the Chief Cornerstone

The call to the world in the third angel's message is, "Fear God and give glory to Him for the hour of His judgment is come." This is hardly a call to color outside the lines. The problem from the very beginning was that the archangel Lucifer decided there was a way outside the lines of the will of God, and so as a result we are where we are. This is not the time to color outside the lines.

The call is to repair that which has broken down. The promise is about restoration. Something that is being restored is being returned to its original condition. The problem we face is that we have allowed the devil to get into our lives, and when that happens the results will of, course, be felt in the church. The problems in the church are merely a reflection of the problems in our lives.

The false doctrines that are creeping all around us are the result of the fact that we have not been faithful to the faith God has entrusted to us in the beginning. Yet there is hope for the church, because there is hope for us. In Joel 2:25 it is written, "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer worm, my great army which I sent among you."

In these times, when the enemy of our souls is making a supreme effort to destroy us as individuals, our homes, and our church, we have hope. Isaiah 59:19 reads, "So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him."

There are forces out there which are intent on redoing the church as we have known it, and our youth are being exploited for their cause. For whatever reason they have chosen to do this, we plead with them to think again. But maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it is because they are like me. They have children and grandchildren. They see the inroads the devil is making among our youth, and they feel that they must make any sacrifice, including compromising the truth, to keep the bodies of our children in the church.

Yet our problem is not a matter of how many bodies shall we have in church on a particular Sabbath. The problem that afflicts this generation is that our hearts have wandered away from the Lord. The solution to our backslidden condition is not to create a church for the carnal heart. If we are not faithful to the true and living God, and we insist in doing things our way and not His way, we are as verily making false gods as did Israel in the day of provocation.

We can change the church, but we cannot change our own hearts except for the worse. God's call to us is not a call to color outside the lines, but a call to return to Him. We are not talking about returning to an address, but the returning of our hearts. The call to the church is a call to the heart. "And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13).

"Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God, to walk in His statutes, and to keep His commandments, as at this day" (I Kings 8:61).

When we read the Old Testament we are made aware of the tremendous backsliding that seemingly afflicted God's people from generation to generation for hundreds of years. The prophets never laid the problem at the door of boring worship services or the fact that the people didn't come to church anymore.

The words of the prophets were that the people had given up their commitment to the true God and were, in fact, coloring outside the lines of the will of God for their lives. The call of the prophets without exception was a call to repent. The call to repent is a call to get back into the lines.

The matter of not asking for permission but asking for forgiveness reminds me of the text that tells us our iniquities have separated us from God and He doesn't hear our prayers anymore. Let's read the text--it's an important one. Isaiah 59:2: "But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear." That means, when we knowingly go against the will of God and come back with a grin on our face to say we're sorry, things may not go as we might have thought.

Here we are at the end of time. We will very likely be those who pass through the Close of Probation and the Great Tribulation. We are the Church of Laodicea. Jesus has a message for us, and it is not a call to color outside the lines.

Listen to Revelation 3:14-21:

"And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth.

"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see.

"As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: If any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me."

The call of Jesus to this generation is to stop coloring outside the lines. He is calling on us to repent. That is hard to do when you can't see that what you are doing is wrong. This is why He tells us we need eye salve. By the way, it is interesting to notice that Jesus says we are naked. He must have looked down with His prophetic eye and seen the way that even professed Christians dress (or I should say undress) when they go to the beach. He might even be speaking of the way we dress all the time, including even when we go to church.

We doubtless have felt that things are not going as well as they should for our children, and even for ourselves, spiritually. We thought this was because we have lost the worship technique or we didn't have the right praise style. There is talk about how to "package" the truth. I don't know about you, but I feel in my heart of hearts that our problem is not about packaging or style or technique or the lack of spin doctoring that we ought to be putting on the gospel.

We are not making history; we are simply repeating it. The message of Jesus to the young people of the Church of Laodicea is the same as the message to the middle-aged and the older, and that is that we must repent. The message that the prophets gave to the nation of Israel was the call to repent. Jesus' ministry was a call to repent; John the Baptist's ministry was a call to repent. The sermon on the Day of Pentecost was a call to repent.

The call to the church in the last days is also a call to repent. The devil knew that the call to repent would be what it would take to make things right, and so he has spent a huge amount of time and effort making the call to repent not politically correct. He has substituted it with a call to affirm each other, to have plenty of self-esteem, and not to let anyone walk on you. When these concepts are practiced, they make repentance an impossibility.

Once when I was talking with a group of young people in their early 20's, someone remarked that it appeared to them I was against new and better ways and in favor of staying the way we have always been. Although I knew this was not the reality, I believe a person is responsible for the impression they give, so I tried to assure the young person that nothing could be further from the truth. That was not the way I feel at all. What I believe is that the call to the church of Laodocia is not a call to stay the way we have always been. If the call to color outside the lines means we must stop following the world, abandon our sinful ways, and come back to the Lord, then so be it.

If the mandate to ask forgiveness rather than to ask permission means we should each, without regard to what anyone else may do and without asking permission, get down on our knees and plead with the Lord to forgive our backsliding, then I would surely go along with that. But is this the case?

No, this sermon is not against young people, but very much for them. I deplore the fact that some are using the young people, with their enthusiasm and inexperience, to try to melt down the faith that was delivered to our fathers and which has been passed down to us, so that those living in this generation may, by the grace of Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, carry the truth victoriously across the finish line into the kingdom of heaven.

We have lived in our current house 17 years. I am the type of person who likes the old, but I also like the new. I like to not only keep our house in good repair, but now and then take steps that keep it up-to-date. When we first moved into the neighborhood, the colors in vogue in those days were the earth tones, both inside and out. In case you are wondering what that means, it means the house was painted in dark brown tones inside and out. These days earth tones are not in style; we are now into the lighter hues. I have painted my house both on the outside and on the inside in light colors. It makes a big difference. I have changed the carpets. I repainted all the woodwork. I have replaced some of the kitchen counters. Of course, along the way I had to replace the heating and cooling system, and replace the roof shingles, and so it goes.

No, I do not hang onto the status quo, because in this world of sin the status quo means deterioration and degeneration. But I am careful in my remodeling that I don't punch holes in the existing plumbing and water systems nor do I go around tearing down walls. Remember, it is not wise to tear down a wall until you find out why it is there.

We may have been born yesterday or we may have been around a while, but we were not here when the foundations of the church were laid, and we must be careful not to do anything or encourage anyone else to do anything that would alter the bearing walls of our faith.

I believe truth is progressive and I mean just that--progressive. That means that one truth doesn't muscle out other truth. I am not saying that in the past we have had all the truth, but truth we have had. Those who come on the scene lately must not substitute truth for truth, or worse still, error for truth.

Those who would insist on change for change's sake in the area of faith and morals are running a great risk. Instead of going forward, they may actually put this church into a stall and bring it near a collapse. The servant of the Lord does say that, before the end, the church appears about to fall, but doesn't. This must mean that forces will come along at the end time which will have the effect, not of picking the church up, but of stalling it out.

No, I am not comfortable with the call to color outside the lines. It too easily can be misunderstood. Neither am I am comfortable with the "not asking permission but asking forgiveness" philosophy. It ignores the value of experience and can easily lead to the breakdown of unity in the body of Christ.

Speaking as a father and grandfather, I don't think it is fair to exploit the enthusiasm and creativity of the young people of the church for ends that may very well not be the best for the entire family of God.

It is time we forgot which generation is in charge and all start asking ourselves if we are submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, who is the head of the body of Christ, which is the church. It is time all of us, without regard to the date on our birth certificate, to answer the call of Jesus to the end-time church--the call to repent.