Allen Jackson - Then The End Will Come - Part 2
The question for you and me ultimately comes down to whether we will be faithful to God or we'll choose to be unfaithful. Psalm 125, I love this verse, says, "Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore". You see, we have to make a decision if we will be faithful to the Lord. He's a trustworthy place, but you can't choose purposely and willfully to be disobedient, to practice ungodliness and imagine that you will have the protection of Almighty God. It isn't biblical. It's not a presentation we're offered. It's a fabrication. It's a false gospel. It's deceptive.
The reality is we have choices and our lives are reflections of the choices which we make. The concept of an Almighty God and the gift of a free will removes us from the realm of being perpetual victims. We may walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Evil, but we don't have to stay there. We may face difficulties and challenges and obstacles. Jesus said, "In this world, you'll have trouble". But he also said, "be of good cheer; I've overcome this world". He said to his friends don't be surprised at the painful trials that you go through. And yet I'm always surprised! Every time I walk through a painful place, I say, "God, I didn't expect this". And he's like, "I told you"! But the reality is we have a choice, and God is Almighty.
I suppose you've heard it said, it seems to be growing in popularity, that you are what you eat. And the people that say that to us are never eating ice cream, right? And they don't look like they're enjoying it either. It's like plant-based meat substitutes. Bless you. Well, I want to amend the statement a bit. I would submit to you that you are what you choose to believe, that your life is what you have chosen to believe. Our lives are stories of redemption, not perfection, but out of our brokenness, out of our frailty, out of a world that's filled with sin, God brings remarkable stories.
Luke, chapter 7, in verse 30 says, "The Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God's purposes for themselves because they had not been baptized by John". It's such a sobering verse to me. We've talked about it before, that although they're very religious, they have all kinds of religious activities and holidays and menus and dress codes, they reject God's purposes. So, it's very important to know that the ultimate expression of God's purpose for you and me is not to be highly religious, not all sorts of religious activity, and religious language, and obedience to rules.
There has to be more to it. They rejected God's purposes for themselves in the midst of all of their religious activity. And they rejected it, we're told, because they refused to listen to John. He wasn't one of them. He wasn't a parrot for the messages coming from their power structure. He wasn't educated within their system. Yet, God was using his life to call a generation to repentance. Now, this has my attention because historically, renewals, awakenings, whatever words you want for when God stirs the hearts of people in broader ways, those historically have not come forth from religious establishments. And I'm a professional religious person, so they have my attention. The best educated, the most sophisticated, the most powerful religious leaders that were contemporaries of John the Baptist, we're told it wasn't they rejected his message, they rejected the invitation of God.
So, here's my caution, we should be careful when we casually dismiss God's invitations. Be careful when you hear things coming out of your heart or out of your mouth when you say, "Well, that's just not the way I believe. That's not how my people do it". That may be a guideline that's helpful, but it could also be a boundary that could keep you from an invitation from the Lord. It's why the reading of your Bible in a systematic way is so important. It's why learning to pray for yourself, learning to recognize the voice of the Spirit of God. For far too long we've been comfortable saying, "Well, I'm born again. I've been baptized. I can name the 12 tribes. I can spell them with Hebrew letters".
I mean, I think all of those things are commendable, but in the book of James, it says, "You believe there's a God. Good! The demons believe that and they shudder". We wanna keep our hearts in a place where we can recognize and receive the invitations of God. So, in that context, is it possible we could have blind spots? You know, in your car, there are places in almost every model of car that are harder to see. Makes you a little more vulnerable to an accident of any kind. Well, spiritually, it's not only possible that scripture would suggest to us that we have some significant blind spots. Abraham had the courage to follow God and leave his home, but he didn't have the courage to say Sarah was his wife.
David had the courage to face Goliath, but he didn't have the faithfulness to say no to the temptation with Bathsheba. And on and on the narrative goes. So, it would be naive, foolish, arrogant of us to say we have no blind spots. How can we begin to see with greater clarity what God is doing? How can we recognize the God choices within our lives? Well, I would submit to you that Jesus is still restoring sight, and it isn't just physical sight. We may have reacted in previous seasons to someone with a complete lack of perception. But I believe we're living in a very unique time, that God is redeeming the days. And I believe you and I should both expect that God would give us insight and understanding and discernment beyond what we've had in the past.
If you will seek the Lord and listen to him and spend time with him, he will help you. We need it today. The deception is growing, the manipulation is increasing. The personal freedoms and liberties that we have taken for granted are being diminished on a daily basis. Matthew 15, there's a statement, Matthew's actually quoting a prophet, but he said, "These people honor me with their lips and their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are rules taught by men". Do you have the imagination that Jesus is telling you the truth? That it's possible to be in the act of worshiping God and it be vanity, futility? It's just so much religious activity. I don't wanna do that. I don't believe you wanna do that.
Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand, what goes into a mouth, doesn't make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth is what makes him unclean". The disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this"? People say to me, "You know, Jesus was all about love. He loved everybody. Let's hug it out". And I agree, much of Jesus's messaging was about love, but there were times and places where Jesus had some very disruptive things to say. In this passage he's talking to a group of experts in religious rules, and not academics. They lead the people in their behaviors. They're the ones that define the boundaries and their boundaries say that your diet is what makes you better than people that don't eat right. Gee.
That idea couldn't persist across two millennia, could it? And he looks at this group of people and he said, "Don't you understand that what's on your fork does not make you better? What goes into your mouth isn't nearly as important as what comes out of your mouth". Well, he just took their boundary set, the platform on which they have built their sense of confidence, and he put it in the shredder. If you can imagine the scene, you can see their shifting in their seats and their agitation and their discomfort. They don't like this message. And you go, if you can find the disciples in your imagination, you can see them shifting because they feel the anxiety in the room.
So, they get Jesus in private, "Psst. Did you know you offended them"? Can you imagine coaching Jesus up on situational awareness? One, the disciples were comfortable enough with Jesus to say, you know, "Dude, you really missed it with your message today". And they were also so anxious that Jesus be embraced by their audience that they thought it would be better if Jesus would tone it down a little bit. See, the challenges we face are not new. The messaging we have internally that says, "You know, if you'll just be quiet, just, you don't have to say something," is not new. But in the same way, it would have been destructive if Jesus hadn't told the truth, it's destructive when we don't.
You see, there's blind spots in the disciples's lives. And I think that's noteworthy because they're all in. I mean, they've walked away from everything. They, they pushed all their chips into the middle of the table. They are truly searching, they want to know, and yet they're still struggling to see with clarity. I tell you that because I think it's highly probable that you and I will struggle, that we're not always going to see. I'm uncomfortable with Christians that act like they have just 20-20 vision about all things. Knucklehead. You can't get to that place from the scripture. Peter denies the Lord. After three years with Jesus, he's walked on the water. He's been part of feeding a multitude with a little bit of food. He's seen all these miracles.
And Jesus says to him, you're gonna deny me. "No, no, no, that'll never happen". And he denies the Lord, even when he's warned! You would think, as a casual reader, that if you were warned by that, you just go stay silent. He had a blind spot. The same disciples, maybe even more stunning to me, Acts, chapter one, post-Resurrection. They have a 40-day seminar with Jesus on the kingdom of God. And the last question that's recorded that the disciples asked Jesus was, "Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel at this time"?
I'm surprised Jesus didn't burst into tears. After everything he's done, that question has been asked and answered long ago. He said, "The Romans are gonna destroy the city of Jerusalem and tear it apart stone at a time and dash the baby's heads against those stones because you didn't recognize the day of my coming to you". And they've witnessed the Resurrection, and they spent 40 days learning about the kingdom of God. And they say, "So, are you gonna get rid of the Romans now"? It's a blind spot because they so desperately want their sovereignty back. They want their autonomy. It takes the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 2 to begin to bring a whole new perspective to their lives. That's what the Spirit of God does for us.
It takes courage to ask God. I think one of the reasons we've stayed in the shadows is often we've forfeited that courage. Psalm 46 in verse 1, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging". God is our refuge and our strength and our ever-present help. When we go to the park, he's our ever-present help in what? In trouble. I wish there was some Hebrew word I could tell you that means, "that's not really trouble, but it means party".
But I don't know of any such linguistic help. He's our ever-present help in trouble. We're gonna need to cultivate a confidence in God and a relationship with God that brings courage to us in those places of trouble. You see, the antidote to fear is not courage. The antidote to fear is trust. The Psalmist said, "When I'm afraid, I will trust in you". And with what we're witnessing and what is growing around us, we're gonna have to have the courage to put our faith in God in ways that we've never been asked to do before. We're going to have to learn to trust him in new ways to cultivate a trust transfer.
And the image in my head, I don't know if it's relevant for you, but I often, when I'm trying to learn to trust the Lord in some new arena, I feel like that small child on the edge of the pool and the mom or dad's in the water saying, "Jump, I'll catch you". And the little kid clearly wants to get in the water. They're kind of trembling with, but they're also trembling with fear. And you watch them, they're conflicted. They lean forward and they lean back and they're kind of, you know, it's all... I feel like that with the Lord at this point in my journey. "Well, places where I've already jumped, yeah, I got that, he caught me". But when he brings me to a new place and he says, trust me, I'm going, "Well, I don't know".
One of my least favorite things in the church is a response I've heard, I've been doing classes or gatherings with newcomers for a long, long time, and they've had a lot of formats and a lot of lengths, and all of those things have changed, but there's usually some kind of a Q and A in the midst of it. And I can't tell you how many people I have heard say, hundreds and hundreds of people over the years will say, you know, well, "We've only been coming to church three weeks but we really like it so far". Didn't bother you, did it? And somebody else said, "You know, we brought our kids, they've been in Sunday school for the last month and they love it so far".
And somebody else will speak up and say, "You know, we got involved with the teenagers and our teenagers loved everything you've done so far". About the sixth person that says, "So far," I'll start to twitch. I've never really done it yet, but I always wanted to take the microphone back and go, "You know, I've seen you three weeks in a row, and you look like a reasonable Christian so far". But what I hear myself say about my journey with the Lord is, "God has been so good to me, so far". "He's always been faithful to me, so far".
And what I really have is anxiety about next, is he gonna be faithful next? Well, if it annoys me when they say it about our nursery, I don't think I want that to be my mantra with the Lord. So, I wanna wrap it up with an invitation. There's a verse that's been bumping around in me for a few days. And it was the Philippians 3 passage that you have. I put the Psalm 42, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for the Lord". The Timothy passage, but it started with that passage in Philippians 3 where Paul said, "I want to know Christ. I want to know Jesus". And it's really that phrase, it's just that this season in my life, at this point, at least in this little window of time, what seems so real to me is I wanna know Jesus, and I don't mean in some fuzzy, weird, you know.
In my life, the most spiritual people have not been weird, and the most weird people have not been spiritual, but I want to know Christ. And Paul goes on to say, "In the power of his resurrection". We'd all raise our hand for that. A power that could bring Jesus out of the grave alive at work in your body. Yeah, sign me up. I'm a little creaky. But then he says, "I also want to know him in the fellowship of sharing and his suffering". Well. "Becoming like him in his death," fully surrendered to the purposes of God. So, how do you really come to know Christ? How do you achieve that? What's that look like?
If you say, "I wanna know Christ," well, Paul seems to think that the ultimate expression of coming to know Christ is becoming fully yielded to the purposes of God. So, what I find myself saying in my heart, "Lord, I wanna know you, I wanna know you". And it keeps bringing me back to that phrase, "to become like him in his suffering". Even at that point of saying it's not in my time, it's yours. And then he tags it with a phrase that is intriguing to me. He says that "somehow I might attain to the resurrection of the dead".
There's no swagger in that. There's no boisterousness in that. This is the apostle Paul. I mean, he's been on the journey now for a while. He's got some stories in his portfolio, but somehow that I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. And then the next line is almost inexplicable, and to the point that in most of your translations, they put a break in there, they'll put some phrase in there to separate those thoughts, but they weren't separated in the original. He said, "But I don't consider myself to have achieved this or apprehended this yet. This one thing I do. I press on, I want to know Christ. I want to know Christ".
That's my invitation to you, not to be churched or religious or whatever, not to keep the rules better than your neighbors do. But what if we said to the Lord, "We want to know you. And Holy Spirit, if you'll help us, we want to yield to you more fully tomorrow than we did today"? "I trust the Lord because he's been really, really good, so far". I repent. Why don't you stand with me? I wanna pray for you. We have New Beginnings Sunday. I wonder how many "so far" people I'll meet.
Father, I thank you for your Word, for its truth and power and authority, for the privilege we have of gathering in a public place to lift our hearts and voices to you. And Father, we want to scale the height you put before us. And we want to be prepared for that point when the end comes. And Holy Spirit, we ask for your help for those places where we have trouble seeing, where our vision is obscured by our experience, our ignorance, or our lack of awareness. Whatever it may be, I ask that that you would begin to restore our sight, restore our awareness. Give us listening ears and understanding hearts. Father, I thank you that you love us. And we present ourselves tonight as men and women who want to know you. We have a hunger and a thirst in our hearts to know a living Lord. And I thank you for what You will bring to us, in Jesus's name, amen.