Allen Jackson - Enemies We Face - Part 2
And the Bible says we have to learn to reckon ourselves dead to sin. Temptation starts as an idea inside of me. Selfishness, envy, jealousy, lust, those are all thoughts. So some of the challenge in our lives, the doorways that evil tries to exploit, sometimes it's physical. Sometimes it's emotional. Sometimes it's in my thought life. Doesn't mean you're a bad person or a failure as a Christ-follower because we face challenges in those arenas. But God has given us help. All right? The simplest, one of the ways that helps me understand it: when God created you and me, he designed us. That one of the things that enabled me to serve the Lord was when I saw the beauty of science.
Science made me wanna worship the Lord. The human body, to me, was one of the most remarkable things. God designed you with an immune system. A multi-layered set of defenses against things in this world that would diminish your health and well-being. And it happens involuntarily. You don't have to sit around and think about it. You didn't get up this morning and think, "Make white cells. Make white cells". And I doubt on the way to church you said, "Boy, I hope my epidermis holds up".
I mean, there's multiple layers to your immune system, and it protects you day in and day out, 24/7, keeping you strong and healthy. You're even designed so incredibly that if you break somethin', it'll heal. When you break your finger, you immobilize it for a little while, see to it that you get proper nutrition, and that rascal will get better. We act like that's normal. Do you know how freakish that is? I dropped my cell phone the other day. Got that little spider web thing goin' on the screen. So I'm an optimist. I rinsed it off with cold water like I would if I'd cut my hand. Laid it in the sun, 'cause sunshine makes you feel better. I thought maybe it'd just heal itself. I didn't have any luck at all.
Do you know how remarkable it is God made you and me to heal? We act like that's normal. He did that for us. I always smile at Christians when we have debates. "I don't know whether it's appropriate to pray for the sick". Let me give you a clue: the Designer made you to heal. So when I pray for somebody, when I pray for me, like I did this morning, I said, "God, I know you've given me all the things I need to fight this infection. Let my body respond supernaturally. Let the sniffles go and the congestion go and the cough go, in Jesus's name. Amen".
This has not come to stay. It has come to pass. Well, just as he's provided for your physical well-being, he's provided for your spiritual well-being. So you don't have to read those passages in Ephesians 6 or 2 Corinthians 10 and respond with fear or anxiety because the Holy Spirit is the power behind your spiritual immune system. The Holy Spirit is the power behind your spiritual immune system. And to the degree that we learned to cooperate with him, he's the one who orchestrates our protection against all the intrusions intended to disrupt what you were created for. He is your friend. You don't have to be afraid of him. You don't have to limit his involvement. He'll never make you roll on the floor, bark like a dog, give away all your stuff.
We have irrational fears around the person of the Holy Spirit. We've gotta become better at distinguishing between the Holy Spirit and unholy spirits. And I'll give you a big rock idea on that. The Holy Spirit will convict you. He'll make you ill at ease with an attitude, with a behavior, with a practice, and he will show you a way out of that place. He'll invite you. He'll prompt you. He will never dominate you. He never will.
I have had appointments, I suppose, through the years with hundreds, thousands of Christians, and I've never had someone show up and say to me, "Pastor, I need your help. I can't stop being holy. I've been trying to dial back the purity a little bit. It's becoming intimidating to all the people I work with, and there's just somethin' takin' over me. I can't stop being better and better". Never had that appointment. On the other hand, I've taken meetings with dozens and dozens of individuals and families who will say, "I know this behavior is destroying me. It's gonna cost me my health, my family, my resources, and I feel powerless to stop".
An unholy spirit intends to dominate you. And when you invite it in and you think you can manage it, you can control it, understand you have unleashed something whose intent is your total destruction. So you don't have to be afraid of the Holy Spirit. He will not dominate you. He just won't. Isn't that good to know? Now, I wanna take a minute and see if we can highlight, I'm gonna do it, I'm okay, the audacity of evil. Let's define evil in the simplest way: it's that spiritual force, but it's expressed through people that stands in opposition to the purposes of God. If it stands in opposition to the purposes of God and the wisdom of God, I wanna define it as evil because its objective is destruction.
You can't negotiate with it. You can't reason with it. You can't outargue it. You won't outthink it. The only thing that evil will yield to is a power greater than itself. What is stunning to me is the audacity of evil to continue to assert and demand. I earned a degree in history. And if you look across the span of human history, you cannot find a place where evil has produced good. It hasn't brought betterment of humanity. There's no record of that. There's no history of positive outcomes. There's no story of improvement. Yet evil insists until this day in the public square to insist on controlling, manipulating, and dominating.
Again, standing it apart from with no intention of cooperating with God's perspective or his truth. It demands its way. It demands control and domination. Again, it's a way to recognize something that is ungodly. Please don't be naive. The season has changed. We have to be more informed consumers in many, many ways. Well, there's a story in the Gospel of Luke, it's not a story, it's an event in Jesus's life. And I wanna look at it with you very briefly. Jesus, the the verse is immediately preceding Jesus has been baptized. And at Jesus's baptism, you'll remember that the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit came down upon Jesus in the form of a dove. And then a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son. I'm pleased with him".
I'm thinkin' if that's me, that's a red-letter day, right? We're gonna do baptism tonight. Thirty plus people. Imagine if 30 times a dove descends on the baptismal candidate and a voice comes through the ceiling, "That's my child". How many of you think that'd be a good baptism? I bet you'd be at the next one. I'd be gettin' in the pool. Well, Jesus comes away from that triumphant day, Luke 4, verse 1, full of the Holy Spirit. "He returned from the Jordan," where he was baptized, "and he was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil".
Now, wait a minute. He's led by the Spirit to a place where he's tempted by the devil. Do you have a room in your portfolio of godliness for the Holy Spirit to lead you to awkward places? 'Cause when I get in an awkward place, the thing that goes off on the inside of me, "Well, you must have missed it. You must have veered off the path. You might have gotten selfish or somethin'". But the Holy Spirit leads Jesus to this place where he's gonna be tempted for 40 days. He fasts, and Luke says at the end of 40 days, he was hungry. No kiddin'. And then when he's vulnerable. If you'd have tempted him the day after baptism, he's still pretty fired up from baptism.
Forty days later, he's hungry, and the devil comes. He doesn't play fair. He's evil. He exploits us when we're emotionally underdeveloped as children. We're not prepared to push back on him. It's why honoring God in our homes is so critical. We have a spiritual line of defense for those young people, and if your children are grown, we still hold a spiritual line of defense for the children amongst us. That's our assignment. It's why we stand for godliness in a culture, because it protects the people who don't yet have the maturity to defend themselves. Righteousness and godliness and holiness in a Christian worldview is a protection to the most vulnerable amongst us.
Satan comes to tempt Jesus. "And the devil said, 'If you're the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.' And Jesus said, 'It is written: Man doesn't live on bread alone.' The devil led him up to a high mountain, a high place, and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said, 'I'll give you all their authority and splendor, for it's been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you'll worship me, it'll all be yours.' And Jesus said, 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.' And then the devil led him to Jerusalem, had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 'If you're the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. For it's written: "He'll command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; and they'll lift you up in their hands, so that you'll not strike your foot against a stone". And Jesus answered, 'Don't put the Lord your God to the test.'"
I read that passage, and it's almost beyond belief to me. The audacity of Satan. He is tempting Jesus. Are you kiddin' me? So I said to you a moment ago that evil is unrepentant, unyielding, unapologetic, unashamed. It will exploit whatever opportunity it's given. No matter how unfair, it'll take whatever unfair advantage. It's the nature of evil. It's why we call it evil. It won't play by the rules. It won't do the right thing. And Satan comes to Jesus, look at the first temptation in verse 3: "If you're the Son of God". "If you're the Son", Satan is questioning, trying to get Jesus to question his identity.
Now, the reason that's evil is Satan knows very well who Jesus is. He's no mystery to him. He's known him from since before the foundation of the world. We know it from scripture. In Mark chapter 1, Jesus goes into the synagogue in Capernaum. The 1 chapter of Mark's Gospel. And there was a demonized man there, and the spirit in him said, "We know who you are, Jesus of Nazareth. What are you here for"? And Jesus addressed the spirit. We can even go back before that 30 years. At Jesus's birth in Bethlehem, there was an order issued that all of the male children born in the window of Jesus's birth awareness be slaughtered. Do you remember that? Herod the Great issued the order, but it was an expression of evil.
When the most vulnerable amongst us are slaughtered and exploited, no matter who signs the letter, I assure you it's an expression of evil. Satan knew who Jesus was, and he said, "If you're the Son of God". Now, why is that relevant to you and me? Well, if Satan will try to get Jesus to question his identity, I assure you he'll try to get you and me to question our identity in Christ. "Who do you think you are"? And he'll remind you of some less-than-stellar part of your life. Right? "Who do you think you are? Goin' to teach the Bible to those people this weekend, and you're coughin' and spittin' and spewin'". "Well, I think I'm somebody that loves Jesus, and on this particular weekend, is coughing and spitting and spewing. So let's open the Word of God together".
Now, that's a pretty innocuous accusation, but in my life, there have been some that are more meaningful, and I'm sure there have been in yours as well. Satan will challenge your identity in Christ. We have to know who we are, but he doesn't stop there. In verse 5, it says, "The devil led him up to a high place, showed him all the kingdoms of the world". And he said, "I'll give you all their authority and splendor. It's been given to me. You just worship me".
See, Satan was an archangel, and he rebelled against God, led 1/3 of the angels with him in the rebellion. It isn't explicitly stated in scripture, but it seems to me that the genesis of that rebellion is he wanted the place that Jesus had. My opinion. And now Jesus is on the earth incarnate, and Satan is offering him a bargain. "You worship me. I've wanted that place you've had since the beginning". He's inviting Jesus to idolatry to divert worship away from where it belongs. He's seeking Jesus's position, and his bait in this, evil is insidious. The bait in this is he shows him all the kingdoms of the world.
Jesus was present at creation. He saw our world in its unfallen splendor. And Satan shows him our fallen world and broken humanity. Satan shows him the trash heap and says, "I will give you all of this. You just worship me". That's the essence of temptation, folks. Temptation is a fraud. I'm not saying it isn't real. I'm saying what it promises, it can't deliver. And if you're battling that, understand the deceptive nature of temptation. And then finally, it says that Satan took Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple, the highest point on the temple. And he said, "Throw yourself off, 'cause the scripture says, 'The angels are watching over you.'"
Did you know the devil knows the Bible? Can you believe he would quote the Bible to Jesus? You talk about audacity. Quotin' the Bible to Jesus, trying to get him to misbehave. Did you know you can use scripture for selfish ambition? That's why it's important to read your Bible: to get to know the character of God and who he is. It will protect you from deception in so many, many ways. And in every one of those instances, Jesus responded with the appropriate response from scripture.
In the book of Revelation chapter 5, there are some phrases of worship that I want to commend to you. The book of Revelation is the story of the conclusion of this age. The return of the King and the establishment of his kingdom. And the revelation is given to us in multiple arenas. Some of it is taking place in heaven, and some is taking place on the earth. So when you read the book of Revelation, every time that the scene changes, you wanna pay attention if you're in heaven or in the earth, because they're very different arenas.
Well, in Revelation chapter 5, it says, "I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice". Where is this taking place? It's in heaven, right? This is the smart group. "'Who is worthy to break the seals and to open the scroll?' But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside". And John, he's so intent on understanding what he's seeing that when there's no one to open the scroll, to open the book, to read what's there, he said, "I wept and wept because no one was found worthy to open the scroll. Then one of the elders said to me, 'Don't weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He's able to open the scroll and its seven seals.'"
So John turns to see the lion of the tribe of Judah, and he said, "I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne. And he came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was on the throne. And when he'd taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints". Can we pause just a moment? You have no idea how significant your prayers are. Did you hear what we just read? That before God, the collective prayers of God's people exist. They rise before God like incense.
I want to encourage you to never again say, "I don't pray". You may say, "I don't know how to pray well. I'm learning to pray. I don't feel like an expert in prayer". There are many, you can qualify it, but let's determine to become a people who are learning to pray. Amen? All right, now watch when they begin to break into worship. "They sang a new song: 'You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you've made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.'"
That is the revelation description of an intervention. It's the revelation equivalent of John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that he sent his Son". It says, "Because you were slain, with your blood you purchased men from God from every tribe, language, people, and nation". He rescued us from the dominion of darkness. They're giving glory to the Lord for it in heaven today. You see, when we worship the Lord, it's not because God's ego is so fractured and so fragile he needs us to affirm him. We worship the Lord because in the midst of the struggle and the challenges, physically, emotionally, spiritually, we need to be reminded that greater is he who is for us than all of those things are right against us.
I leak, I get tired in all sorts of ways, and I have to be reminded, so I use my words to give authority to what God has said about me. It's biblical. Look at what we're reading. Verse 11, "Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand". In the South, that's just a whole lot. "And they encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. And in a loud voice they sang: 'Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!' Then I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, and under the earth and on the sea, and all that's in them, singing". Every living thing, now. You know, one day, the whole earth will give glory to the Lord. "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever"! Amen.
Now, I brought you a prayer, but I don't want you to stand up just yet. It's on the back of your notes. I didn't write it. I just took it from that passage we just read. I gave you the reference. I didn't want there to be any confusion. I'm not taking credit for this. I did monkey with a couple of pronouns to make it personal. I put them in parentheses so you'd know where I made the alteration. But I wanna suggest that we say what they've been saying in heaven. We wanna say about the Lord who he is and what he's done for us. Why do I do that? Because I'm in a wrestling match with persons without bodies, and I intend to use the authority of my words to declare what God has said about me.
The fastest way I know to attract the involvement of the Holy Spirit is to give honor to Jesus. And if we'll give honor to who he is and what he has done for us, the Spirit of God moves into that place. So whatever challenge you're facing, it may be physical or emotional or whatever it may be... God's help is available as we give honor to him. It's the practice in heaven. You just read that with me. Can we do that? You can do it right where you're seated. We're gonna stand up and do it again in a minute, all right? You learn by repetition. I learn by repetition. Can you read this with me?
You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased (us) for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You've made (us) to be a kingdom and priest to serve our God, and we will reign on the earth. 'Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!' Amen.
Hallelujah. Now stand with me if you will. How many people here have some sort of challenge today? Look at you. Me too. And I want us to take that now and offer it before the Lord. Let's let it rise up before the Lord in opposition to those things that are encroaching on you. I don't intend to yield to them. I don't intend to capitulate. I don't have the power to overcome evil, but the one to whom I belong has defeated it. Whether it's temptation or sickness or sin or my past, whatever it is, through the blood of Jesus we have been redeemed out of the hand of the devil. He's an intruder. He's a tempter. He's a deceiver. But he has no authority over us. We have been rescued from the dominion of his authority. Hallelujah.
The church's assignment in the earth is to give the praise and the glory to the one who has intervened on our behalf. Hallelujah. I'm about to get warmed up. Now, let's read that together, and you say it this time. You say it with the authority over your life. All right?
You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased (us) for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made (us) to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and we will reign on the earth. 'Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!' Amen.