Allen Jackson - Kingdom Authority - Part 2
It's an honor to be with you today. We're exploring our authority in the kingdom of God, and we're gonna look very carefully at the authority that is ours in the blood of Jesus. This one idea, the truth in this lesson, can change the trajectory of your life. It can bring hope and peace, deliverance, freedom, forgiveness. Through the blood of Jesus, we have been delivered out of the hand of the enemy. He has no power over us, no place in us. It's not because we sit in the right church, or we read our Bible more than our neighbor, or we have earned our way into the kingdom of God, it's what Jesus has done for us, and it's through the power of his shed blood that we have been delivered out of the hand of the enemy. Now, that's good news, and it's a pathway for freedom. Grab your Bible and a notepad, most of all, be prepared to receive what God has for you.
I wanna go back to the Passover Lamb. Do you remember the Passover story? The Hebrew people are still slaves in Egypt, Moses has come in and said we're leaving, and the plagues have started, and Pharaoh, he hardened his heart, and then God hardened his heart. It's a dangerous thing to harden your heart. You say why would God do that? I could give you some opinions, but it's important enough for me to know that if you harden your heart, the time will come God will help you get what you want. It's a really dangerous thing to entertain ungodliness, or rebellion, or sin, or stubbornness. Because if you choose that path, the time will come God will say, well, you know, you can have what you want.
We want to accuse God so often that he's unjust or unfair. It's a really awkward debate to try to carry forward for the creation to look at the Creator. I mean, the language is in the Scripture, "Can the clay say to the potter"? Well, you can, but it's probably not gonna work out well, and you're goin' back on the wheel. And some of you have withdrawn from the Lord because you haven't liked his job performance. You've had disappointment, or broken places in your life, or evil has intruded on your life, or you made bad choices, or whatever, and you're angry at God, and you've withdrawn from the equation. I would encourage you in humility to say to the Lord, you don't need to know, you can say to the Lord, "Lord, I'm sorry. I want to walk with you. I wanna follow you". You can be angry at God, he can withstand your anger, it's just not a helpful place.
Well, their last night in Egypt, God gives Moses some instructions. It's their final exit strategy. He tells every household to take a lamb, and there's an inspection period, and they're to prepare the lamb in a very specified way, and to take the blood of the lamb, and when the lamb is slaughtered, and to capture it in a basin, and to take some hyssop, a common weed in the Middle East, it's as common as fescue in Middle Tennessee, it's everywhere. And put the blood on the doorpost of the house, because tonight, death is coming through the land. You know the story. It's where we get the word "passover". Death is coming through the land, and where the blood is on the doorpost, death will pass over.
It's in your notes, it's Exodus 12. "Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, 'Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it into the blood in the basin, and put some of the blood on the top, on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning.'" It's not a sentence we talk about a lot. It's not just enough to prepare the lamb in the way you're instructed, to prepare the meal in the way you're instructed, to put the blood on the door, and he said nobody goes out of your house. Let me ask you a question. Do you think everybody put blood on the doorpost of their house and everybody stayed inside? Well, we don't have a direct insight from Scripture on that point.
My imagination at least, no, I don't think so, because if we follow the rest of the story, how many times do you find total cooperation amongst the Hebrew slaves? They have a hard time getting a unanimous opinion, don't they? And I don't mean just, like, once. You know, a group gets together and rebelled, says we don't like Moses as our leader, and the earth swallows 'em up, thousands of them. And the next day, there's a complaint line. You know, I'm reading that story and I'm thinkin', well, you know, the complaint line will go away for a couple of weeks. No, no, no, next day, new crew. So, based on the rest of the story, I'm thinking there probably wasn't 100% compliance at the Passover, but you didn't get the benefit.
You could belong to the right family, you could believe in God, you could believe Moses was who Moses said he was, but if you decided it was inconvenient, or the lamb is too expensive, or it just seemed like too many rules to follow, or you weren't interested, or you had something else you wanted to do, or your kids had a plate, something, you had to be obedient, and not just randomly obedient, not obedient in the way you wanted to be. You understand we've imagined there's a God, but he'll negotiate with us. Not 10%, but 6%. Do I tithe off the gross or the net, what? And when you've done that, he said stay in the house, don't leave. Can you imagine the wails, can you imagine the grief as death began to settle over that nation? Imagine what it sounded like. Don't you leave the house. And then God said I want you to celebrate this every year.
I want you to remember. It's the greatest presentation of a deliverance in all the Bible until we get to the redemptive work of Jesus. So, the Jewish people celebrate it until today. Well, it's a New Testament idea as well. It shouldn't be shocking, most of the New Testament is written by the Jewish community. First Peter chapter 1, he says, "Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout," and then he names some of the regions in the empire, "Who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father". See, the God, we worship knows the ending at the beginning. He's smarter than us. If you will just meditate on the fact that there is a God, that means he's different than us, but you can know him. He will help you. "According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ, and sprinkling by his blood. Grace and peace be yours in abundance".
Now to us, the imagery of that verse could be easily lost, but if you've celebrated Passover every year of your life since childhood, and you've heard the story of the blood on the doorpost and the lentil, and you're familiar with the notion of the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat and the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, then the language that Peter is using would have been familiar, as familiar to his audience as if we talked about a Christmas tree and the lights on it. You immediately have an image of what that looks like. It's not theological, it's a part of your life experience. But the order of the presentation is significant. "The sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ, and sprinkling by his blood". The sprinkling of the blood is only effective if you've been obedient. If you put the blood on the doorpost of your house but you didn't stay inside, you didn't get the benefit.
See, we put obedience way down the list. No, I'm not too worried about that, I've said that prayer, I got in the pool. Peter, this is the introduction to his letter. He said those of you who are scattered throughout the world. Look at 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7. "Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast, as you really are for Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed". And place after place through our New Testament, we're reminded that Jesus was our Passover Lamb, that his blood was shed that it might be the point of deliverance for us. Revelation 12 verse 11, "They overcame him," and for the sake of time, they overcame Satan. They is the believers on earth overcame him, Satan, "By the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they didn't love their lives so much as to shrink from death".
Again, it's the same imagery in the book of Revelation that we see in the book of Exodus. In John's gospel, when he sees Jesus, in all the gospels when John the Baptist sees Jesus, you remember what he says? "Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world". To his audience, it brought an image that was just as clear as if I said Easter Bunny to you. Don't be offended, I'm not suggesting they're equal, I'm telling you there is language that's connected to experiences with you that brings immediately an image to mind. And that would have been true with this language around the Passover Lamb.
So what's it mean to you and me? What's that application look like? That's the thousand-dollar question. We can agree on the facts, and we can even catalogue the verses of Scripture, and you can find the references throughout all the epistles of the New Testament. Not a bad exercise, but how do you give it application? Let's look at the larger context in Revelation 12. So, it's John, he said, "I heard a loud voice in heaven say, 'Now have come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ.'"
Again, we're talking about authority and its connection to power. When you understand the authority you've been given, that is demonstrated in an expression of power. A police officer that has authority, if he's standing at an intersection and he raises his hand, he has the power to stop traffic. He doesn't have the physical strength, he's not threatening to shoot the engine out, that hand raised represents the authority that he's been entrusted with. If you're oblivious of the authority, which is a bit of what we're watching in our nation right now, then there is no power to be expressed, so we see the power on the other side of the ledger being expressed, yes? Defunding the police is a bad idea.
"For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down". Been hurled down to the earth. Another day, my opinion, this is still ahead of us. But they overcame him. They, the believers on earth, overcame Satan, "By the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they didn't love their lives so much as to shrink from death". How can you be an overcomer and still face death? Those seem to be contradictory. "Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them, but woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you and he's filled with fury because he knows that his time is short".
That's another discussion for perhaps another session, but I think what we are handed is the key on how we give application to the authority of the blood of Jesus in our lives. We don't have to physically apply it to our doors. If you visit Israel today, in the hotels and in many of the homes, there'll be a little Scripture box attached to the door, because he talks about writing the Scriptures on the doorframe of your home, and they take it to the very literal extent. And if you're in a Jewish hotel, there'll be a little box with the Scripture right there. How do you and I apply the blood of Jesus to our lives? How do we give expression to that authority so that we benefit from that power being released? It's a very important question. Well, I believe the keys in that 11th verse. "They overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony".
Throughout Scripture, your words carry with them spiritual authority. Now, I understand that can be misused, but it doesn't diminish the truth of it. And I think it's by your words that we give application to what God has said. We overcome Satan when we choose to testify personally to what the Word of God says the blood of Jesus does for us. You say I don't believe that. Okay, your choice, but it's biblically sound. Our testimony is what makes it personal. It takes the general truth of Scripture, the general principle of Scripture, and it applies it personally into your life in the same way the Hebrew slaves and the families had to take a lamb, they had to slaughter the lamb, capture the blood, put it on their doorframe, and stay home.
You see, if we don't take the truth and give it application in our lives, we forfeit the benefit of the authority. And I brought you some samplings, I'm not gonna walk you through them all, I'm going to get to the punchline, but our redemption to be purchased out of the kingdom of darkness, that took place not because we joined the right church and we read the right translation, but by the blood of Jesus. Ephesians 1:7, "In him we have redemption through his blood". Our sins are forgiven because Jesus shed his blood, not because we said we were sorry. If Jesus hadn't gone to the cross, you can say you're sorry all you want, your sin stands. It took the shed blood of Jesus to pay the price for my sin.
Our redemption only comes one way, through the blood of Jesus. To be redeemed means we've been bought back, bought back from a place we weren't intended to be, but we found ourselves nonetheless. We were in the kingdom of Satan and we've been bought back out of the kingdom of Satan and the price of our redemption, Peter tells us, was not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. God's investment strategy, I'll send my Son, I'll ask him to offer himself as a sacrifice that I might gain a people out of the earth from every nation, race, language, and tribe. If you want to know what God thinks about you, he asked his Son to be tortured to death so that we could be in his kingdom. Now, how are you gonna treat that, presumptively, arrogantly? Well, how often do I have to read my Bible?
Psalm 107 verse 2 says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say this, those he redeemed from the hand of the Lord". You see, it's when you are willing to say it that you make it personal in your life. The Bible says we've been cleansed by the blood of Jesus, washed, made whole, made new. In Isaiah when God said, "Though your sins are like scarlet, come let's reason together, they can be as white as snow". In 1 John 1:7, "If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin". The verbs in that verse are in the continuing present tense. If we have fellowship, and continue to have fellowship with one another, if we walk in the light and continue to walk in the light, then the blood of Jesus continually cleanses us from all sin.
So it's not a one time thing. It isn't punctiliar, it didn't happen in the past, and it doesn't have to be revisited, there's provision. If we will walk in the light, and walk in fellowship with one another, we can be continually cleansed, but it means we will have to give application to that. We've been justified, it's a fancy religious word, it just means to be just as if I've never sinned. Wouldn't that be good? If you're going to see the Creator of all things, if you're going to have an appointment, how many of you would rather show up clean? Ooh, I'm thinkin' that would be something I'm interested in. How could I orchestrate that?
Romans 5:9, "We have now been justified by his blood, so we will be saved from God's wrath through him". Don't want God's wrath, I want to be justified. How do I get there? Through his blood. How do I do that? I have to give it application. My testimony matters. Even your conversion it says we have to believe in our heart and what? Confess with our mouth. If it's powerful enough to get you into the kingdom, why do we not believe what that Roman Centurion said? Just say the word.
"Well, Pastor," sanctification, it's not a big religious word. To be sanctified is to be set apart. When they built the tabernacle, or when they built the temple, and they had all of the things to serve in the temple, the tools, and the things that were gonna...everything had to be sanctified. It had to be anointed with oil. It had to be dedicated. They didn't just go get a spatula out of the kitchen and say, "Use this for the sacrifice. Anybody have a knife? We need a knife".
No, there was a separate set of articles, they were all dedicated, totally and completely, for the service in the tabernacle, or for service in the temple, right? Well, that's the same imagery that's been used for us. We've been sanctified, we've been set apart for God's purposes. We're in the world, but we're not of it. It says we're aliens and strangers here. We're temporary residents, but this is not our final destination. This present world system does not define our success or failure. We belong to a different kingdom. There's a different authority in play over our lives. We may be buffeted in our journey through time, it's not going to be easy. We're told that in the plainest of language, but we have been sanctified, set apart for the purposes of God. Do you know what an honor that is? And we hide it, we're embarrassed of it. We have places where you don't want to tell people you go to church. Lord, help us. We get more excited about being in groups of pagans than we do in being in groups of believers. Lord, help us. We've been sanctified.
Hebrews 13:12: "Jesus, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate". Again, it's through our words. I brought you a profession, I've gotta stop. Stand with me, please. We're gonna say this together, but I would encourage you not to leave it at church. If it's old news to you, I bet there's some places in your life where the authority of God being unleashed would be a good thing. God's power on your behalf would be a good thing. Well, why isn't it? I don't know, I really don't. I don't know why Peter stayed in prison for several days before the angels came to get him.
I don't know what Abraham had to wait before they got Isaac, I don't. I don't understand why John the Baptist succumbed to Herod's carnality and sensuality. I can give you some opinions, but if I'm in any of those seats, I don't like it. I don't know why Stephen became a martyr in the streets of Jerusalem. I don't know why Paul had to take the abusive treatment he took in city, after city, after city. It doesn't diminish the truth about God. God said, "Paul, I need you to go to Rome". If God told me that, I'm thinkin,' "Wow, business-class tickets. Kathy, pack, pasta". They arrested him, there were multiple assassination plots, multiple trials for his life, accrues, chained to a soldier, a shipwreck, an angelic visit, things are turning up. Gathering firewood, I'm bitten by a poisonous snake, not so much. You ready to make a confession?
I testify to what the Word of God says the blood of Jesus does for me. Through the blood of Jesus, I am redeemed out of the hand of the devil. Through the blood of Jesus, all my sins are forgiven. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, continually cleanses me from all sin. Through the blood of Jesus, I am sanctified, made holy, set apart to God. Through the blood of Jesus, I am justified, made righteous, just as if I'd never sinned. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, redeemed, cleansed by the blood of Jesus, therefore Satan has no place in me, no power over me, through the blood of Jesus, amen.