Christmas is over for another year.  Gifts have been opened, the day has been observed with loved ones, and now the future awaits.  Some believe the world will go through some wrenching event on January 1, 2000, but most know it will be just another year.  Some have gotten ready for the future with a survival kit, and others trust God will provide.  It's an exciting time to be alive.

          Have you ever wondered if you'll get an inheritance?  As a young boy I used to think about it.  I had several single uncles and aunts who favored us as their own and often wondered if we might get some inheritance from them.  My parents owned a farm and said they wanted to leave it to us five children after they died.  After they sold the farm, they updated their wills so we would receive some kind of an inheritance.

          My uncles and aunts are long gone now and passed on few possessions, but they left precious memories and fine examples of Christian faith.  My parents lived in a nursing home their final four years and Dad died about a week after his money was gone.  As he told my brother, "I guess they got it all."  But Reuben Soderberg, one of our neighbors, had another method.  He was a big farmer who had three half-sections of rich farmland.  After his wife died, he signed his farms over to his three sons, so that later when he was in poor health, the county and state ended up paying his nursing home and hospital bills for over a year -- about $60,000.  I mentioned this to my Dad once and he said, "Let him do it.  That's just being a thief."

          I knew what my Dad was saying.  If you shelter your assets to let welfare pay the bills, it's the same as theft.  That comment was part of his real inheritance to me.  He and Mom taught us a lot of things that way, about our life and about our Lord.  The money is gone, but the real inheritance, their Christian examples of faith and love, will never be taken away.

          What is the real inheritance of life?  Is it farms or is it fundamentals?  Is it assets or attitudes?  Is the inheritance we leave about finances or about faith?  The Bible says you and I are heirs who will one day receive something.  Usually an inheritance comes after someone dies, and the living ones receive it.  But our common human inheritance is different.  It comes after we die.  It will be an inheritance to eternal life, and that eternal life will be either with God or without God, either in His presence, or in total and complete separation from Him.  This inheritance is eternal and it will be the most important one of all.  Whether it's for our good or evil depends on whether we believe in Jesus.

          In our text, St. Paul speaks of the time when we will possess God's inheritance.  An heir must wait for the right time.  You can't push the inheritance.  Our sinful nature often makes people greedy to get it, and so the papers are full of people doing dastardly deeds to hurry their inheritance.  It can land them in jail.  If that doesn't happen, they still have their guilt and eternal destiny to face.

          With Christians, our inheritance comes immediately.  It's ours the moment we believe.  For the Christian, the inheritance of eternal life begins at the moment of faith - and what a blessing it is!  We don't have to wait for someone to die - that's already happened.  Jesus, the Son of God, died on a cross that we might receive eternal life.  Jesus is the means through which we receive the most precious inheritance of all.

          A wealthy widower had one beloved son who died tragically in his teenage years.  Though the father was very wealthy and had many valuable possessions, the death of his son was too much for him and about six months later the father died also.  An auction was held of his many valuable paintings and art treasures with the instruction that the large oil portrait of his young son was to be sold first.  It wasn't a very good painting, but it was the only picture of the young boy who meant so much to his father.  The auctioneer sought bids but found no takers.  They were all waiting for the better, more valuable paintings.  Finally an old servant who had helped raise the boy bid $10.  The gavel dropped, the painting was sold, and the auction was stopped completely.  You see, the man's will had stipulated that whoever thought enough of his beloved son to buy his portrait would inherit the entire estate as well.

          How very much like our Heavenly Father who is willing to give the treasures of heaven to anyone who loves His only Son!  You and I need only trust in His Son and we'll receive eternal riches.  If you love His only beloved Son, you get all the rest.  And what an inheritance!

          One of the joys of Christmas is receiving gifts.  We love to give them and we love to get them.  The real reason for Christmas - that Jesus was born to die for a sinful world - seems almost incidental to the occasion.  Indeed, if it weren't for the market value of Christmas and its impact on our economy, our foolish courts would probably find a way to ban Christmas altogether.

          But that will never happen.  God is the author of government and state.  He establishes authority and power.  His message of love will never be quashed.  The real message of Christmas is God giving the world His only Son, and we get ready for the future by loving and trusting that Son.

          The message of Christmas is for the whole year -- winter, spring, summer and fall.  St. Paul's words here give us that message:  "When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as God's children."  God chose the right time to give us the right gift.  The right gift is Jesus and the right time is now.

          Do you have a will?  They are not difficult to have written, but many have not taken time to do it.  Perhaps this is a good time for you to have your will written.  They don't have to be complicated, and most Christian lawyers will be glad to get you started.  If you don't have one, now is the time to do it.  Even a hand-written and notorized piece of paper is better than nothing.

          In my internship year I helped at the funeral of Joe Meyer, a 47 year-old man who drowned in 1969 during the flood of the Mouse River near Minot, ND.  Joe had been married before and so had his wife.  Their children were numerous -- 2 of his, 3 of hers and 2 of theirs.  He had thousands of acres of ranchland near Minot, but he died with no will.  I heard later that his wife had to sell off nearly 1/3 of the land just to pay taxes and lawyers.  The older children fought over the estate for years.  A good will could have saved most of that.

          It's time to get ready for the future.  Whether or not you and I have a will or are named in a will, we're still heirs.  We will receive an inheritance, and it will be the most important one of all, for it will determine our future destiny.

          Some inheritances are disastrous, even when they aren't supposed to be.  Walter Neuhart and his wife had 10 children and milked about 120 cows twice a day for years.  It was enormously hard work.  They and their children were working all the time.  The kids missed school because of work.  They were in the barn at all hours of the day.  They never came to church.  At the time I was their pastor only 3 of their 8 oldest children over age 18 had graduated from high school.  Every one of them had been forced to work day and night.  Yet when I asked him why he was working himself and his kids so hard, Walter said, "I'm doing all this for the kids.  I want to leave them something when I die."  He left them a legacy all right but it wasn't financial.  Their children had little education and almost no relationship with God.  The greatest problem came later when his wife got cancer.  To "help with the housework", he acquired a live-in maid, nice cute young thing.  His wife once told me in her pain, "I wish someone would get me a gun."  I don't think she planned to use it on herself, but on him.  Those children received quite an inheritance from their father, and none of it was very good.

          "I wonder how much he left behind," someone mumbled at a funeral.  The funeral director, overhearing the comment, said, "He left it all behind."  We can't take it with us.  The most important inheritance we'll leave is the kind of person we are, the example we leave to those who follow, and our public witness to Jesus Christ.  One of the ways you can leave an excellent gift is through a Christian expression of your faith in your will.  It's your last word to your survivors, and it's a legacy to all who hear it.

          When someone very close to me died some years ago, her will was a page and a half long, about 300 words, but it began with an expression of her faith in Christ.  J. Pierpont Morgan, the wealthiest man of his day, had a will of over 10,000 words -- about 60 pages.  In it he gave away today's equivalent of $10 billion dollars.  But right up front he gave his personal testimony to Jesus.  Many notable people in history have given a personal testimonial in their wills.  Patrick Henry, Michelangelo had fine testimonies to Jesus Christ in their wills even though they died poor as church mice.

          Each of us will receive an inheritance, and each will leave an inheritance.  What will you receive and what will you leave?  Sometimes a church can establish an Endowment Fund that people can give to in their wills.  Our Church Council has discussed establishing such a fund here at Epiphany and we'll vote on it next month.  It's another way to get ready for the future.

          My Mom and Dad left us five kids only a small amount of goods, but it was symbolic, for their real inheritance to us was their love, their integrity, and their Christian faith.  That's the inheritance I want to leave to my family.

          May our Lord Jesus Christ give each of us a strong and trusting faith that will get us ready for an eternal life with God.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  Amen.

Copyright © 1999 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.