Allen Jackson - God Is For Us - Part 1
It's good to be with you again, our topic in this session is "God Is For Us". You know, I've been around church a long time, most of my life, and so often I meet Christians that think God is mad at them. I got news for you, God is far more for you than he's agitated with you. I've read my Bible a few times, the folks God's really mad at, he gets to them. Don't live with that anxiety that God is mad at you, he has your best interest at heart. When he's unhappy, really unhappy, you'll know it. Let's determine to find ways to live in pleasing God, and not spend our time frightened or trying to hide from him. We're not gonna hide anything from him. We might as well live with the awareness that God is our audience and if he's pleased with us life goes better. Grab your Bible and get a notepad, open your heart, God's got an exciting invitation for you today.
You know, it's a time when there are so many expressions of pride in our nation, and that's not always fashionable. And this year especially it seems to me that it's an Olympic season so we have Olympic trials taking place in the US, and there's a whole host of athletes and all those who support them that are planning to compete on behalf of our nation. The summer holidays celebrate our nation, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July. Even the sports seasons, it seems to me, it's in the summertime, we have the US Open, both in golf and tennis, they compete for a National Championship. So it's a time when there's lots of ways and lots of voices to celebrate the good things in our nation. It's a bit unsettling to see the frequency with which there is a reluctance to say things like, "God Bless America".
And I just wanna be on the record, not me, I believe God has blessed our nation. There are many ways to tell our history and to tell our story, but we are a remarkable nation, it's an exceptional story, a nation blessed by God. It is a most unique experiment in human history, where people from many nations could find opportunity. It wasn't because we spoke the same language or we came from the same place or even because we shared the same faith, but because we had a Judeo-Christian worldview it provided a set of opportunities for people. And it has resulted in one of the most unique experiments in human history, and our record's not perfect, we all understand that. We have failures, but we have had many more victories and it's important to state that.
I know there are many who prefer to express disdain or disappointment in our nation, but it seems to me to hold such a disdainful attitude towards America requires either a lack of awareness or some agenda that's not being readily identified, or maybe just a willful ignorance of global realities in history. You know, right now in our nation, Marxism is fashionable. I'm not certain I would ever say that, but it is currently the truth. I don't know how much history you know but the incredible toll of Marxism in the 20th century, not ancient history, in the 20th century, is worth noting. And when I say that, it's principally around three people but certainly not limited to them, it was Stalin and Lenin and Mao.
There were others, Castro, I mean, the list could go on. But in 2017, a professor wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal and he said that, "Marxism was responsible for at least 65 million people losing their lives between 1917 in 2017". That's a staggering number, and he said that, you know, that Marxism had killed huge numbers of people intentionally, and even more of the victims had died from starvation as a result of cruel projects in social engineering. Now that's about the most conservative number you'll find, the most commonly cited figure is more than 100 million deaths because of Marxism in the 20th century. Some reports have as many as 160 million deaths attributed to Marxism, many from starvation.
That's not talked about a great deal, we're told that Bernie Sanders took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union, it's awkward. China's celebrated as a tolerant place, and I believe many of the people probably are but the governments that have had authority over them have been anything but that. Mao's responsible for as many as 45 million deaths in a four-year window, 1958 to 1962. It was Mao Zedong, his great leap forward, 45 million Chinese lost their lives. It's fashionable these days for our NBA players to criticize our history while the NBA is busy marketing in China. And they don't see any inconsistency in those positions.
See, Marxism embraces the centralization of power, the domination of citizens by an authoritarian government. I think it's relevant to us and relevant to us in this place because we're in the midst of a revolution. It's not openly declared, but Jesus is less and less welcome in the public square, in our schools of almost every variety, or at least we want to be open-minded and present all the worldviews. And in the midst of that, the Christians have seemed to have difficulty finding our voice or maintaining our focus. Lawlessness is escalating on a weekly basis in our nation, it's biblical, I understand it's in the Scripture, but it doesn't mean we just have to concede the field.
There's lots of expressions of it, I chose one, San Francisco, one of the leaders when we started this notion of sanctuary cities, where federal law would be ignored. They wanted federal funding but they just didn't wanna be hampered with enforcing federal laws. Well the current trends in that city is that shoplifting isn't being prosecuted, so stores are closing. You may have seen some of the videos reported on the news, even the main stream media has picked that up, it's unsettling.
Folks, if we don't enforce federal laws and we don't enforce personal property rights where does that trend stop? When will it had gone too far? When we find a voice and say, "That's not a good idea"? When will we awake from our stupor and say, "Enough"? When they come into our homes and take whatever is wanted? There's a new word, it's not a new word, there's an idea that has captured the hearts of many in recent months, it's called equity, not equality, equity. In its simplest form, equity is equal outcomes for all, its Marxist principle. The reason I take a moment with you, because I don't believe it'll have a different outcome in our nation than its had in the other places where Marxism has been implemented.
Equal outcomes for all, it's a false construct, it's not an idea supported by reality. Equal outcomes is stealing, because we don't get equal outcomes. All kinds of reasons for that, some good, not so great, but we don't get equal outcomes so if we try to distribute everything equally, we have to take something that's not yours if you're wanting more. It's not a good idea, it's flourished sociological realms, I'm old enough to have been in school when sociologists were still teaching Social Darwinism. Equity wouldn't have worked in that discussion, it's not a naturally occurring outcome, it requires manipulation to implement equity, and you need power and authoritarian expressions of power to implement it.
Should we all do the same amount of work? Should we all be paid if we don't work? Should we all have the same amount of education? Should be wear uniforms? Just exactly how much equity? There are some simple observations of the world around us that will help us overcome this deception, it doesn't take a great deal of thought. You just look at the world around us, we're not the same. Not better or worse, we're just not all the same. Some are tall and some are short, some are thin and some are thick; it's alright, we're still nice, we're just a little thick; some are pretty. Then there's voices that'll say, "Well society defines what's pretty, everyone is beautiful".
Well, if everyone's beautiful, everyone's ugly. Sameness diminishes us all. Some of us have higher IQs, some of us are good at math, some not so much, some of us are good with color and design, and some of us not so much, some of us like to read, some of us would rather not. Differences, and those differences contribute to our journeys and who we are and how we experience life and the world around it. Sometimes we look at others and wish you were more like that, that's an internal issue. You see somebody that has physical characteristics different from yours and you think, "Well I wish I were taller or thicker," or something.
You can look at the world around us, it's not equitable... We live in Tennessee, we have lots of humidity, lots of green, growing vegetation. You go farther west, that diminishes, deserts are just as much a part of God's creation. Some places there's mountains, in some there's valleys, some have beach-front views and some of us live in a hollow in Tennessee. It's not the same. Creation isn't the same, the trees aren't the same, some blossomed with beautiful flowers and some have thorns, they're all God's creation. Pay attention, what's being forced upon you, what you're being told to act like is a gift is not a gift, it's an intrusion of authority over your lives.
Equality is the word that we have celebrated and tried to embrace, an equal opportunity for all of us, it's been the objective. In our brokenness we still strive to treat one another with dignity and find common ground and build a bridge, it's brought good things to us. It hasn't made us perfect but it's brought good things to us. In maybe his most celebrated speech, Dr. King, his "'I Have A Dream' Speech," he said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". It's about equality.
In Romans 8:31, it says, "Wat can we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us"? I simply want to put an idea on the table and we're gonna walk around it and look at it from a variety of perspectives, but it's the same idea for the entire lesson, that God is with you. If you're interested in him joining you for the journey the Lord is with you. It really begins as an observation, both in my own journey, but in Scripture. In 1 Chronicles 9, in verse 20, I was doing some of my Bible reading this week and I came across this verse, and it's just as if the lights went off in my head. It's says, "In earlier times Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, was in charge of the gatekeepers".
In walled cities, there were gates. It was the most vulnerable point of the city and someone was assigned to be sure that the gates were closed when they were supposed to be closed and open when they were supposed to be, it's very much a part of the defense of that group of people. And Phinehas was in charge of the gatekeepers, and then there was this little phrase, "The Lord was with him". "The Lord was with him". Yeah, well, it never occurred to me the Lord needed to be with the gatekeepers, but I don't know if it was about his job description or his character or his heritage, I'm not sure why. It simply says, "The Lord was with him".
And when I read that, I was spent that whole day walking around going, "Lord, be with me". I'd rather it be said of me, "The Lord was with him," than earning any degrees or accomplishing any tasks or being given an award. If God is with us. When we read in Romans, "If God is with us," who cares who's on the other side of the discussion. So I began to walk through my Bible with this notion in mind, "The Lord is with us, the Lord is with you". In Genesis 26, it said of Abraham, a foreign king, not a godly person, a foreign king, says, "We saw clearly that the Lord was with you; so we said, 'There ought to be a sworn agreement between us and you. Let's make a treaty with you.'"
We want a contract with you 'cause God is with you and we don't want to be against him; we don't really like you so much but God is with you. Wouldn't you like the Lord to be with you in such a clearly demonstrated way that people who don't like you, going, "Whoo, I'm gonna stand next to them". The Lord is with you, the Lord is with you. In Genesis 39, it said of Joseph, now if you look up "Dysfunctional Family" in the dictionary, Joseph's family will be there. I mean, he came from a family that was torqued, his father showed favoritism to Joseph, not subtly, not quietly, in such a blatant, over-the-top way that his brothers hated him. I mean, he just annoyed them, they hated him, they hated him to the point that when they got the opportunity they sold him as a slave.
Can we agree that's pretty torqued? So Joseph's living in Egypt, not because he was on a tour, because his brothers sold him and told his father he'd been killed by wild animals. Genesis 39, in 2, it says, "The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered, he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did". The Lord was with him, the Lord was with him, it keeps being repeated after Joseph. In Genesis 39, same chapter, a little further in his story it says, "Joseph's master took him and put him in prison," because the Lord was with him, "[In] the place where the king's prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in prison, the Lord was with him; and he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden".
This one takes a little reflection on our part, it says the Lord was with Joseph. He found his way to prison, he was a slave in Egypt, he was sold as a slave to a wealthy Egyptian, and his wife made sexual advances towards Joseph which he declined because of integrity. He said, "I've been given authority over everything in this house, I couldn't betray my master with that". He could have easily been embittered and angry and filled with hate, he's a slave, but he chose integrity, and because he rebuffed the advances, she accused him falsely and he's thrown in prison. And it says in prison the Lord was with him.
So I think a minute, the Lord was with him, he's wrongfully imprisoned, but then in prison he's forgotten by those he helped. He interprets dreams in prison and says, "When you're free, remember me," and they probably forget him. Do we have room in our imaginations to think about the Lord being with us and our circumstances being that, what do we say, difficult? Very broken family, false accusations, improper imprisonment, abandonment by those you help? And you continue to choose the Lord? Do we have room in our imagination to think the Lord is with us even when our circumstances are less than ideal? To call Joseph circumstances, "Less than ideal," is an understatement.
See, I think, for the most part, what we've been coached towards, and I've been a part of the church most of my life so I'm not throwing stones at anybody else, but what we'd been coach towards is that the Lord is with you when everything's working. Your kids are perfect and your business is working and your life's perfect, the Lord is with us. Do we have room to say, "Lord, I thank you that you're with me. When I'm falsely accused, when I'm in prison, when the brokenness of my family spills over into my life in such a powerful way that it's diminishing to me, the Lord is with me". The Lord is with me. "If God is for us, who can be against us"? Well Joseph had some names to fill in there, but God is still for him.
You see, we cannot afford bitterness and hatred, you just can't afford it. When Jesus taught us to pray, remember that? "Our Father who art in heaven," remember that prayer? "Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us". The implication is, just as we need to pray routinely for the bread we need today, we have to offload any unforgiveness on a daily basis. You cannot carry it, it will destroy you. Forgiveness doesn't mean they're getting away with it or you're getting back in line for further mistreatment, but you cannot justify unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, hatred, in the eyes of God.
Joshua chapter 6, remember Joshua, Moses's successor? It says, "The Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout the whole land". Be careful Joshua, everybody knew Moses but they were always rebelling against him too. I mean, it's just like they had a Rebellion-of-the-Week club. Right? Moses comes to the end of the run and God says, "Moses, lay your hands on Joshua so the people will know that I'm going to treat him like I've treated you," and I'm thinking, "Whew".
See, I think we mistakenly think an assignment from God means easy and everybody's gonna applaud and everybody's gonna want to make the trip with us. It's not what the story says but the Lord was with Joshua, the Lord was with him. He had to wait 40 years to enter the promised land, 40 years, because of the unbelief of others. He came back with a good report, he said, "We could do this now," but the majority of the people said, "No, I don't think we can," and so 40 years Joshua wandered in the wilderness. Are you prepared to imagine that the Lord is with you if your life purposes are hindered because of others?
Judges chapter 2, when the children of Israel occupied the promised land they didn't have kings, there was no central government, there wasn't a monarchy, there's a theocracy, God watched over the people. When there was a threat from beyond the tribes, God would raise up a judge, a leader, not somebody in black robes, but a leader, to mobilize the people to respond to the aggressor from outside. So the book of Judges is a remarkable collection of leaders that God raised up. And he empowered them in different ways, he gave Samson great strength, but he gave others different gifts. But it says at the beginning of the book of Judges, "When the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and he delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them".
The condition of God's people moves God to action, we need God to raise up men and women in our generation with an anointing from him, men and women with whom the Lord is present, to deliver us, we are a people in need of deliverance. I read a statistic this week, it said, I didn't believe it, it was so low, but it was, "Fewer than 10% of the current US population has a Christian biblical worldview". That means we see the world from a biblical perspective, less than 10% of us. Folks, we need help. You can't sit in church and say you're a Christian if you don't live through a biblical worldview. You can wear all the t-shirts you want. We're struggling, we need to understand the Lord is with us.
You know, we're living in a season where there is almost an unprecedented sense of fear and anxiety. Maybe it started with Covid but it has continued through a whole host of disruptive things that continue right into our lives today; the violence in American cities, the lack of trust we have in so many places that we used to think were stable and trustworthy. The outcome of all of that is fear and anxiety are far more prevalent in the lives of those of us who are Christ followers. We've got to come back to the foundation that God is for us, and if God is for us, what does it matter who's against us?
We've got to change our attention from the trouble in the world to the steadfastness of the one who watches over us. I want you to hear and believe today that God is for you, he has your best interest at heart, he has gone before us, he's preparing a way. I want to pray with you:
Father, we come today to lay down our anxiety and our fear and our concern. I thank you that you're for us, that through the blood of Jesus we have been delivered out of the hand of the enemy, that we're your children and that you watch over our future and you will keep us strong, firm and steadfast. In Jesus's name, Amen.