Allen Jackson - The Power of the Gospel
The study we've been doing, walking towards Easter, has been called "The Intervention". And the Easter story is the culmination of God's intervention on behalf of humanity. It's something that was pointed to throughout the entirety of the Hebrew Bible that was launched in a tangible way with Jesus's arrival in Bethlehem. But it came to a culmination on a hill outside the city walls of Jerusalem at the beginning of the first century, when Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of God, offered himself as a sacrifice on a Roman cross. He was buried in a borrowed tomb, and 3 days later, God brought him back to life. He had done something on behalf of humanity that we were powerless to do for ourselves, to change the course of humanity for time and all eternity.
In 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 21 there's a summary statement of what happened. In your notes, you have the last verse of chapter 5 and the first verse of chapter 6. The chapter headings and the verse numbers were added much later, after the text was written. And sometimes I think they interrupt the thought. I think that's true in this case. It says: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain". Look at that first verse, verse 21. It says: "God made him". Who's "him"? Jesus. God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us.
Let me begin by identifying that this is God's initiative. God did this. This is his intervention. God asked his Son to come to the earth in the form of a human being, to humble himself, to lay aside the privilege of heaven, and become one of us. And then God put upon him the sin of us. God made him who knew no sin to be made sin with my sin, that I might be made righteous with his righteousness. That was God's idea. God initiated, God driven, God created, God orchestrated, God watched over. We didn't do it. The Jesus story is a gift to humanity from the Creator of all things. It wasn't invented by a preacher or a theological system or a denomination. It was initiated by the Creator of everything, as an intervention on behalf of humanity who had rebelled against him.
And as far as we know from the biblical record, it is unique in all of Creation. When the angels rebelled, God did not initiate a rescue mission on their behalf. They're condemned to ultimate judgment, banished from the presence of God. But for humanity, he provided an intervention. Now, look at verse 1 of the next chapter. It says: "As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain". It seems like an odd pairing with that promise or the declaration of what God has done for us, not to receive God's grace in vain. Remember the definition of the grace of God? It's the undeserved, unearned, unmerited favor or blessing of God. Something God extends to us that is not merit based. We don't qualify for it. We don't deserve it. It's just an expression of the love of God. His grace extended to us.
Now, the sentence feels like a paradox. If it isn't earned and isn't deserved, how could you render it ineffective? Vain is kind of an old English word to render God's grace in vain or receive it in vain would be to make it futile, to nullify it, to empty it of anything. How could you make the free gift of God useless? Well, the only way I know is by failing to receive it, by turning it aside. "God made him who knew no sin to be sin for me, that I might be made righteous with his righteousness. I urge you not to receive that in vain". Don't make what God did futile. Now you read that, you think, "Well, no one would do that". But the record of human history suggests otherwise. In fact, Jesus's evaluation, Jesus's prophetic perspective, says Jesus said that "broad is the way and wide is the door that leads to destruction and many enter in, but narrow is the way and small is the door that leads to life and only a few enter in".
In fact, what Jesus suggested to us is that accepting the free gift of God's grace is a minority position in humanity. Wow. Folks, I wanna encourage you not just to be churched or religious or theological or spiritually minded. I wanna encourage you to grapple with the person of Jesus of Nazareth and choose him as Lord of your life. He is the Messiah. He is the Son of God. God put your sin and my sin upon him that we might have his righteousness. And that is the ultimate expression of God's grace and kindness to every human being. And it has nothing to do with any particular congregation or denomination or theological construct. It began in the heart of God and was expressed through the faithfulness of his Son Jesus. Don't miss it, and don't ever be confused by it and don't ever accept a substitute. Now, Jesus oversaw that himself.
In Mark 16, this is Resurrection Day. In fact, Jesus is about to hand to his disciples a mission. Anybody here ever watched "Mission Impossible"? I watched "Mission Impossible" before it was a movie series, in black and white, with dinosaurs outside the window. And I still remember the introductory line: "The mission, should you decide to accept it," and Jesus gave us a mission, but it's dependent upon us being willing to accept it. He won't force it upon us. It's Mark 16: "Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; and he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. And he said to them, 'Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.'"
That mission assignment he gave them was the first printed piece I ever saw attached to World Outreach Church. My dad had a banner made. It had a picture of the globe on it and believe, beneath it was Mark 16:15: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation". Twenty-nine people, and we were worried about the world. Thank God we were. Wasn't about us then, it's not about us now. The verse that precedes that is significant. Jesus rebukes his closest friends. First time they've been with him since the Resurrection. It says he rebuked them. That's a biblical word, not Allen's, "for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he'd risen".
He rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe. When we choose not to believe, it's an expression of stubbornness. It's not a neutral position. We're confronted with an invitation from God, an idea from God, a truth about God, and we push it away. "I will not accept that into my decision-making equation. I will not dignify that with credibility in my own personal world. I am going to refuse it. Don't confuse me with the facts. Don't try to give me your circumstances. I don't want to hear your story. I refuse to believe". And before you think, well, that's the territory of the pagan or the wicked or the immoral, Jesus is talking to Peter and James and John, his closest friends.
So this tension of belief and unbelief and stubbornness that comes out from our old carnal nature is the substance of disciples. And I would submit to you we wanna be a part of a 21st century group that lays down our stubborn refusal to believe and says to God, "We're in". Amen? That's the part of crew I wanna be with. And then Jesus reassigns 'em. He said, "Now you're going into all the world". For 3 years, they followed him all over the land of Israel. They were in the boat when he walked on the water, and in the cemetery when he calls Lazarus out. In the wedding, when he made Merlot. They've been following him. That's the order of march they know and I'm quite confident they thought they were gonna spend the rest of their lives following Jesus, hearing him in public crowds and asking questions in private sessions. And Jesus says, "Now I'm leaving and I'm sending you into all the world". He is repurposing them, reassigning them.
You need Mark 16. He said, "I'll build my church". Jesus has a new focus now. "I'm gonna establish, not a building, not an architecture, not a denomination. I'm gonna establish an initiative for all humanity. It's comprised of men and women from every nation, race, language, and tribe that acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, choose him individually as Lord and serve him as King". That is the church. And Jesus said, "I will establish my church in the earth and hell itself won't stop it". Hell itself won't stop it. You need a bit more information to understand the emotion in that. The large cities in this season in history were defended not by aircraft but by walls. And if you wanted to defeat a well-fortified city, the method of choice, the warfare of choice, was a siege.
Jerusalem was destroyed by a Roman siege in the year 70 AD. They brought more than three legions to Jerusalem to encircle the city so that nobody could go in, nobody could come out. You would starve a city into submission. And when you were ready to breach the walls of the city, the most vulnerable point wasn't the stone walls, it was the gates because the gates were typically made of wood. They may be overlaid with metal, but they were made of wood so you could pound them with a battering ram or you could set fire to them. When you wanted to defeat someone you had besieged, you broke through the gate. It's the image Jesus used: I will establish my church and the gates of hell will not withstand it. It's not a defensive church. It's not a church hiding behind a fortress. It is a church that is besieging the initiatives of hell. Amen? We're not here on a defensive assignment. We are here as ambassadors for the conquering King who's coming back to the earth. And he is with us.
I would rather celebrate the expressions of the power of God and the gospel of God in the earth than to recite the expressions of wickedness and evil. God has called us to this unique season. Now, Jesus told us a lot about it. What's the world gonna be like before he comes back. In Matthew 24, it's Jesus's most lengthy prophetic discourse. It's repeated in multiple Gospels. We'll use a bit of Matthew this morning. Of all the Hebrew prophets, and there are many, what a wonderful gift to humanity, what a debt humanity owes to the Jewish people. And one of the reasons is the insight of the Hebrew prophets. The back half of your Old Testament is filled with them.
Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, then the minor prophets. You're not sure whether they're people or something to spray for. All kinds of unusual names, prophets, but of all the Hebrew prophets, Jesus is the greatest. And in Matthew 24 he's describing the world and the conditions in the world prior to his return. Now, this isn't something new. There was a lot of prophetic material describing the world before Jesus's first arrival and it was largely overlooked and so many people were unprepared. We have even more information about the condition in the world prior to Jesus's return to the earth. He's coming again. And in Matthew 24 Jesus himself is teaching. He said, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom". The Greek word is ethnos, from which we get "ethnic".
So it's not just nation states doing battle, but conflict amongst ethnic groups. "There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. These are the beginning of birth pains. And then you'll be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you'll be hated by all nations because of me". There's gonna be an increasing intolerance of a Christian worldview. There will be an increasing expression of the spirit of Antichrist because that's what that describes. And then Jesus gives the ultimate sign before his return, the penultimate sign. He says, "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. Then the end will come".
Did you know that we have a role to play in facilitating the return of the Lord to the Earth? That the church of Jesus Christ has an assignment to expedite or to facilitate the return of Jesus to the Earth? How exciting is that? We're not just observers, we've been invited into the drama. Now, this season is described as the beginning of birth pains, which makes it, very clearly communicates this isn't gonna be a lot of fun. My dad was a vet. I grew up watching things being born: kittens and puppies and lambs and goats and calves and foals and occasionally a goldfish. We didn't help the goldfish. They were on their own. But I did observe this, that once delivery begins, once those birth pains begin, they're gonna increase in both frequency and intensity until there's a delivery, right?
And there's always great excitement around that. I'm telling you, if one of the mares was about ready to deliver, the boys in the Jackson household didn't get much sleep. We were on foal watch. "I wanna go look. Let me go look". Shut up and go to bed. "No, I wanna go look". We were excited. I've taken lots of phone calls through the years from excited men on the way to the hospital. "We're in labor". We are? And I never heard one of those men say, "I hope it stops". Everybody was excited about what was coming. And we read this, understand the birth pains are the indicator that the King is coming, and there's a culmination. The crying and mourning and tears are gonna be swept away, that death is going to be overcome, hallelujah.
Now that was Jesus's presentation. In the book of Revelation, Jesus gives a bit more of the story to one of his closest friends. Who wrote the book of Revelation? John. John was present when Jesus made the presentation of Matthew 24. So when he's given the revelation that we have in that book, it wasn't entirely new material to him. John was being given, excuse me, a bit more of the story. And in chapter 6, he describes much of what Jesus was describing in Matthew 24. I won't read it all to you, but let's look at it for just a moment. He says, "I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. And I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, 'Come!' And I looked, and there before me was a white horse! And its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest".
Many of you've heard, in even secular literature, of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Well, they come from Revelation chapter 6, and I wanna identify the horsemen for you, but for a moment, can we just take the white horse and set it aside? I'll come back. In verse 3: "When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, 'Come!' And another horse came out, a fiery red one. And its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. And to him was given a large sword".
The second horse we see is the red horse and it's the horse of conflict riding into the earth, particularly if we add Matthew's Gospel or the presentation back in, particularly ethnic conflict. Hatred and war are going to proliferate on planet Earth before the King comes back. Expressions of violence are going to multiply. Folks, you don't have to have a lot of discernment to see that happening in our world today. You don't need tremendous spiritual insight.
Look in verse 5, there's another horse. "When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, 'Come!' And I looked, and there before me was a black horse! And its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand and I heard what sounded like a voice among the living creatures, saying, 'A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and don't damage the oil and the wine!'" The black horse is a portrayal of lack and shortage, of insufficiency.
What did Jesus say in Matthew 24? "There'll be famines, there'll be shortage". It's clearly a characteristic prior to Jesus's return: a fundamental lack, not enough to feed a family. That in spite of a day's effort, the grain that's available isn't sufficient for the needs of the family. Now, we still live in a relatively protected place in the world. But I'm telling you, we're unique in the world. We are so blessed, we don't even understand how greatly blessed we are. We're so blessed that our biggest problems come because there's too much. We have too much food on our fork, so there's too much of us. We have too much stuff, so we have to rent places to put our stuff. We have too much leisure time, so we're frustrated because we can't do the things with our leisure that we want to do. Most of the challenges that face us come because of the magnitude of our blessings and we are unique in the world. There's one more horse to ride out.
Verse 8: "I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! And its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword and famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth". The pale horse is death and it says very plainly, it's death for a fourth of the world's population. Death will claim the bodies of men, and Hades will claim the soul. It's a season of tremendous turmoil in the earth. But can I go back to that first horse again, that white horse? "A white horse and its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest".
I believe the rider of that white horse is the gospel of Jesus Christ riding through the Earth. I believe before Jesus returns, we will see the greatest harvest of souls that the world has ever known. That's not just motivational talk. There's some logical reasons for it. The world's population has grown exponentially. More people on the planet than have ever been here, so we have a greater opportunity to reach more people in this season than any season in the history of humanity. We have the technology to do so. But the image matters here. In the Roman Empire, it was the emperor that rode the white horse and he would often wear a laurel wreath.
There's multiple Greek words for crown. The one that's used here is for a laurel wreath. It's the symbol of a victor. It was taken from the emblem, today, in the Olympic Games, you get a gold medal. It's that same imagery. The person wearing the wreath is identified as the victor. And in this case, the gospel of Jesus Christ riding in the earth triumphant, ahead of the other horsemen. Now, but what follows that, that when the fifth seal is broken, it reveals the souls of those who forfeited their lives when the pale horse rode through the Earth, crying out for God to bring vengeance on their behalf. And then the next scene in that chapter is of the Lamb, ready to step back into time. But the Lamb is described as wrathful. It's a paradox.
Have you ever envisioned an angry lamb? You may have envisioned an angry pit bull. But when you see a lamb, it brings a sense of peace and serenity and calm and innocence. And when we meet Jesus in the Gospels, he's introduced to us as the Lamb of God, but he's coming back to the earth as a conquering King to express the wrath of God against those who have rejected his grace and mercy. It's not a value-neutral position to stubbornly refuse to believe. Please don't do it. It's worth noting that the authority for each of these horses originates with God. Permission is granted from heaven.
And having read this and prayed about it and thought about it, it seems to me the only solution is that the white horse has to stay ahead of the other three horses. We have to arrive with the offer of mercy and the grace of God throughout the Earth before the judgments come. It's the assignment of the church. What did Jesus say? "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to everybody. I will establish my church, and hell itself won't be able to withstand it". It's not a frightening season. We're getting ready for a new world order and for a new King to reign in righteousness and truth and justice and sickness and mourning and pain and death are gonna pass away. I'm in!
Being a Christ follower is not intended to limit your life, to diminish you, to diminish your pleasure or your happiness or your contentment. It will add to all of those things. Don't ever be reluctant to encourage somebody to embrace Jesus. I want to close with a prayer. You have it in your outline. If you'll stand with me. It's not a prayer I wrote. It's actually the doxology for the book of Romans. And I couldn't think of a more appropriate proclamation for ourselves and our church this morning. When you're looking for prayers to pray, some of the most powerful prayers you can proclaim over your life is to pray what the scripture says about you. You won't manipulate God with his Word, but you can choose to bring yourself into alignment with God's Word. And that releases the power of God on your behalf. Let's read this together:
Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 'Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?' 'Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?' For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.