Allen Jackson - God Is Watching Over Us - Part 5
That the real essence of prophecy isn't about foretelling, it is about God's perspective on the season in which you're living. And then the beautiful part of scripture is that it is addressive literature, what causes the Word of God to be a living thing. You've had the experience, I'm certain. If you read your Bible, you read a passage that you've read 20 times previously, and then the 21st reading, it says something unique to you. The Bible is addressive literature, and the prophetic perspective is gaining God's perspective on our life circumstances and the season in which we're living. It's a revelatory process.
Now, there are some things God has said he does not intend for us to know, and no amount of study and no amount of prayer will pry open the things God has said he won't tell us. He said, "No man knows the day or the hour when Jesus is returning to the earth". So if you meet someone that says they know, just smile and turn around and sprint in the other direction. God said nobody knows, but he did say we can know the season in which we live. In fact, Jesus chastised the religious leaders of his generation because they didn't recognize the season in which they were living. And because they didn't recognize it, they forfeited the opportunities that it presented.
We wanna be seasonally aware. We're kind of in a transition time between seasons in Tennessee these days. We understand what that means. It's a change of clothing, it's a change of planning, different seasons elicit different responses and different behaviors. If you ignore the season, you forfeit much of the productivity of your life. It's true in physical terms and it's true in spiritual terms as well. For far too long in the Christian community, we have imagined if we were sincere that was sufficient, or if we intended to do the right thing, that should be enough. I didn't intend to do harm, I intended to do good. Therefore, good should come forth.
Well, I appreciate your good intent, but that thinking is a little uninformed. You could intend to plant a world-class garden, but if you plant it in December, the best of intentions will not bring a great harvest. And sometimes we only confuse it further by saying, well, you know, I'm sincere. I'm as sincere as I know how to be. And again, I applaud your sincerity, but sincerity doesn't change the reality if you're working against the season you're in. And we have been a bit naive, perhaps even immature, in thinking that if we were sincere and we intended good, then it was kind of up to God to make up the difference. But God says to us, you can know the season you're living in, and be prepared, and respond accordingly.
So Peter gave us the counsel. He said we would do well to pay attention to the profits. It would go better for us. And I believe that. There are two things I have suggested to you each week of this study that are happening in this season that are an expression of the power of God, and unique in many respects to the season in which we live. Now, they're not the only two things, but we're limited in the scope that we can do in a short study. One we have said is that God is gathering the Jewish people, and I've been adding a layer to these each week as a part of the study, and I wanna continue that.
Why is that so spectacular? If you're most of us, the modern nation of Israel has existed as long as we have. But it is something unique in the unfolding story of human history. It's an aberration, actually. The year was 70 CE when the Roman legion surrounded the city of Jerusalem. They destroyed it. The Jewish population was scattered from the city, many of them slaughtered, many sold in the slave markets of Rome. And for two millennia, 2000 years, the Jewish people did not have a homeland. They were scattered throughout the nations of the world. Yet they maintained their unique identity.
And in 1948 in one day, through a decision of the United Nations and the sovereign intervention of Almighty God, the modern nation of Israel was born. A rather small population of Jews that lived there at the time. They had no central government, they had no standing army, they had no infrastructure. They were a fledgling, brand new, one day old nation. And the five nations surrounding them in unity declared war on Israel. It was impossible for them to survive, and yet they did. And the miracle of Israel persists until today. It's a tiny little place. Most of you by now know our map of the Middle East. You have become geographical experts. I'm proud of you. But Israel is a tiny little nation tucked away here at the end of the Mediterranean.
It's not much larger than Middle Tennessee, yet it garners a disproportionate amount of international interest and debate. It attracts a disproportionate amount of international hatred. The only way to explain Israel, I think, other than the sacrifice of the people who live there, is the the sovereign intervention of Almighty God. I visited Israel the first time in 1970. It was very much a developing nation at that time. The roads were two-lane, many of them were not paved, you had to pay attention to the food you ate or the water you drank to be sure that it wouldn't do you harm before it did you good.
If you visit Israel today, it is one of the most modern nations in the world. They are technology leaders. Their high tech start-ups lead the world. They rival our own Silicon Valley in many ways. They are a marvel, and they have done that not in an environment of support, and encouragement, and adulation; they do that in the midst of a neighborhood where they are the center, the focus, of hatred. They have had a series of wars, constant intrusions from their adversaries, and yet in spite of that, they have flourished. The only explanation is Almighty God.
There's a couple of lessons in that, that I don't think you and I should miss. One, you can flourish in the midst of adversarial places. I think so often you and I imagine our life can only fulfill its purposes and find its highest expression if everybody around us applauds, and cheers, and all the circumstances in our lives are perfect, and life just seldom is like that. So don't let difficulties and challenges rob you of the notion that God is watching over your life. He is. Tiny Israel flourishes.
Now, the misinformation or the lack of awareness of Israel is staggering to me. The single greatest talking point with regard to this tiny nation of Israel, and particularly the Middle Eastern nations that surround her, but the global population as well, is that there can be no peace in the Middle East until something happens, something of great significance happens. No peace until Israel gives up some territory. Because when you look at the map, it's very clear that there's a disproportionate balance of territory in the Middle East, and Israel occupies the lion's share, and so rightfully until they give up some land, there can be no peace. And the world looks at that and nods, as if that makes sense and it's perfectly normal. It's nuts. It's irrational. It's inexplicable apart from spiritual things.
A couple of things I think you should know about that equation because it's a part of the world we're living in and it's a part of God's pronouncement, it'll help you understand the season we're in. This "land for peace" notion. Israel has given up land for peace. 1967 was the first time since the Romans were there in 70 that the Jewish people in Israel as a sovereign nation had control of the Temple Mount. The place where Solomon first built his temple. It's the place where a thousand years, roughly a thousand years before Jesus, Solomon built the first temple. The temple stood there with a brief interruption for more than a thousand years till the Romans destroyed it in 70. It's the holiest place on the planet to the Jewish people.
In 1967, for the first time since the Romans drove them out, they took possession of the Temple Mount. The general that was in charge of the Israeli armies in that season, Moshe Dayan, came to the leaders of Israel and said, "Let's give the Temple Mount to the Muslim world". He said, "It's the greatest extension of peace we can give them. Then they will know that we want to live in peace with them forever, and we can end the conflict". They gave the holiest piece of territory available to them to their enemies and it didn't bring peace. And yet the world persists more than 40 years later in arguing that the exchange of land will bring peace.
I grew up in Middle Tennessee, in the barns of Middle Tennessee, with the horse business of Middle Tennessee. I don't know if you've ever talked to a horse trader, but they are a unique breed of folk. I heard, somebody told me once that the one place a horse trader does not wanna look is in your eye. But I learned something. You can't trade with somebody for something that they don't have, and you can't negotiate for peace with someone who doesn't have peace. Now with just a rudimentary knowledge of the Middle East, you can sort this out. Lebanon is disarray, Syria is engaged in a civil war, hundreds of thousands of their own population are dying at their own hands. They're using weapons of mass destruction on one another.
Iraq is largely under the control of ISIS, one of the most brutal expressions of evil on our planet. Iran is clamoring for nuclear weapons so publicly, as they say, so they can annihilate Israel. Egypt has been through multiple revolutions, the same is true in Libya. You can go around the map. It is not a region of peace. So there is not a partner there with whom you can establish peace. It's insanity to say, if Israel will give up territory there can be peace.
Iran is the global sponsor of terrorism on the planet and agreed to by the international community. They are the sponsors, the supporters, financially and militarily, and hardware of organizations like Hezbollah terrorist organization, Hamas. And Iran these days is intent on securing nuclear weapons, which they have said they will use to annihilate Israel and the United States. And, in an irrational move, the United States has led the international coalition in securing that agreement with Iran, over the objections of the Saudis, and the Egyptians, and other Middle Eastern nations. God said it would happen. Your Bible will help you. It's the season we're in. We need to understand that it will make a difference.
Now, there's some other things we can glean from this. Look at Ezekiel 34 in verse 11. It says, "This is what the Sovereign Lord says: 'I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements of the land.'" It's an interesting passage.
If you circle all the times God says, "I will". God said, "I'm gonna do this". He didn't say the nations would, or the Israelis would, or the Jews would. He said, "I'm gonna do this. You watch it and see". I would submit to you that you're watching that passage be fulfilled before your very eyes, over the consternation and the frustration of many. Over the objections of many nations, and powers, and influences. God has gathered the Jewish people from the nations of the world and has reestablished them in the land of Israel, and they're flourishing there, and not without sacrifice. And there are some other passages we won't have time to look at today, at least not this morning, that seem to suggest there are still some very challenging seasons ahead for Israel. Nevertheless, God is in play. But there's some other things he's gonna do in the land of Israel before Jesus returns.
Look in Luke chapter 13. Jesus is the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, and that's not a small statement because there are some remarkable Hebrew prophets. But among them all, Jesus stands unique. He says, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing"! That intrigues me. God wanted to do something for the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem, but they didn't wanna cooperate. Do you hold the imagination that God would do things for you or someone else that you know, but we refuse to cooperate, so we don't get the benefit of what God will do?
I think we have held a harmful idea about our faith. We've invested enormous energy in this idea that the goal of the Christian faith is to recite a prayer, a profession of faith, maybe be baptized in a pool. I think those are both appropriate things, but then we kind of shut down and we really lose the imagination that from that point forward, the real agenda is to cooperate with God. That God has a better idea. And the real challenge of the Christian life, And that being a Christ-follower, is to recognize God's invitations and say yes to them. Jesus is lamenting over the inhabitants of Jerusalem. He said, "You were not willing to cooperate with God and now your house is left to you desolate". And then he says, "I tell you," this is one of those statements that if he didn't put that in front of it, you probably wouldn't believe it.
"I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" Jesus said, "Before I return to the earth, that the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem will say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" Does the line sound familiar to you? It should. It was the line that was used on Jesus's triumphal entry. We call it Palm Sunday in our church calendar, when Jesus made his entry, that final time into the city, and he descended them out of Olives, and the people lined the street, and put their coats and their cloaks on the street, and waved palm branches and said, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord". They were welcoming Messiah. And Jesus said, "I won't be back to the earth until the inhabitants of Jerusalem are ready to say that".
Well, that's a challenge because there's been an enormous gulf between the Jewish people and the Christian church. And I have to say a significant part of that gulf has been created and held in place by the attitudes in the Christian church. Without question, overwhelmingly, the greatest persecutor of the Jewish people, the greatest expressions of antisemitism, racism, and hatred, have come from the Christian church. May not be a part of history you're aware of, but it's an unmistakable part of the story of history. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Roman pogroms, to many other places, it just is. And the Jewish people are very much aware of that today. Very much aware of that.
So when you talk to them about Christianity, there's a pain and a hurt because they know the stories of their family members that suffered in the Holocaust, and from their vantage point, at the hand of Christians. And so for them to process the Jesus story, there's a lot of hurt, and anger, and resentment, and bitterness, and hatred, that has to be processed. And yet God has said it will happen. When we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we don't just pray for the absence of military conflict, we pray for the peace of the people, the inhabitants of the land, with Almighty God. You know, one of the things that is most intriguing is when you watch a Jewish person that's never read the New Testament because of their reluctance to do so.
Often times I've heard them say to me, I didn't know it was a Jewish book. It's a story about a Jewish Rabbi that invited disciples to follow him. He kept the Jewish law. He celebrated the Jewish holidays. In fact, Jesus said, "I didn't come to destroy the law, I came to fulfill it". All of the people who believed in him initially were Jewish. He said, "I didn't come to talk to the non Jewish world. I came for the lost sheep of the House of Israel". He focused his message almost entirely on the Jewish villages of the land of Israel, ignoring the centers of Roman population or Greek life. It's a Jewish story about a Jewish man fulfilling the Jewish law. The funny part about that is Christians don't know that either. We call it the New Testament if it's a book just about us. But it makes no sense apart from the Old Testament. They're not two separate initiatives.
You know, there's kind of two extremes in Christendom when we talk about the Jewish people. On one hand, there's an expression of hatred really, racism, that says God replaced the Jewish people with the church. And when you read your Bible, when you see "Israel," just pencil in "church". It's not only bad theology, it's just flat wrong. It's an expression of arrogance and pride to say that God would reject the Jewish people because they missed an invitation that he put in front of them. How many of you have missed a God invitation? Don't raise your hands. Maybe you live with somebody that's missed a God invitation.
Aren't you glad God doesn't reject us because we missed an invitation? On the other... we call that a replacement notion, that God replaced the Jewish people. It's just wrong. But on the other extreme, on the other end of the spectrum, there's another ditch that we can get in that's equally disruptive. And that's the idea that the Jewish people don't have to deal with Jesus. That somehow there's some other covenant that God would have with them. That they don't have to come through that Jesus door. But Jesus himself said when he was speaking to a Jewish audience, "No one comes to the Father except through me". There is no plan B. And that's not just true for the Jewish people, it's true for every person in our planet.
Jesus is the doorway into the Kingdom of God. And it takes great love and compassion to share the Jesus story with people who have suffered at the hands of people that wore the label "Christian". You know, we're gonna have to be a bit more sophisticated in our understanding of our faith. Just because we stand underneath the sign of Christian does not mean we live as Christ-followers. You understand the difference? You can affiliate with people who say we are Christian, but it does not mean you lead the life of a Christ-follower. And there's been much pain, and suffering, and hatred injected into our world in the name of our faith. It had nothing to do with Jesus or people who were following him.
So you and I need a category that understands an authentic church and an inauthentic church, and they'll both be called church, and you'll have to have the awareness of scripture and the character of God. It's not about a denomination or a translation of the Bible or a style of worship. It has to do with your relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. Well, that shouldn't be perplexing to us nor frightening or intimidating. For many years, I had a membership card at a gym and I never went. The fact that I had a membership card did not make me an athlete.
In fact, I was a far more probable visitor to Baskin Robbins than I was the gym, okay? But I had a card, and I was a member in good standing, and they would have owned me, and you could have put it on my resume, but it did not mean I was a dedicated athlete. And in the same way, you can stand beneath the umbrella of Christian, and with having no intent of doing the will of God, and you and I need to carry enough awareness and enough maturity to recognize that distinction, or you are incredibly vulnerable to deception. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We will get to watch that continue to grow and emerge.
There's a second thing God is doing simultaneously and it requires an equal expression of his power. That's the preparation of the church. God is preparing a people from every nation, race, language and tribe under the lordship, the headship, of Jesus of Nazareth as Christ and King. A unique initiative in its scope and its proportion as we approach the end of the age. In Matthew 16 in verse 18, Jesus said, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it". It's a prophetic statement. It's a statement of intent. Jesus said, "I will build my church". I would submit to you that, from a God perspective, the rest of the phrase is unnecessary. Jesus said, "I'll build my church". You can put a period there. Done.
When God said in Genesis 1, "Let there be light," he stopped. He had expressed his intent, he had released his creative power, the lights were coming on. And when Jesus said, "I will build my church," done. The power of God had been released. The next phrase is for our benefit, "I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it". Why is that there? Because there are times and seasons when it will appear as if the gates of Hades are prevailing against the church. So Jesus said to us, "I will build my church, and hell itself won't stop it".
If we didn't have that, there are things in our world that would be terribly frightening. When ISIS is destroying churches that have been in existence for more than a thousand years, and desecrating anything identified with Christianity, and they're showing it on television without any repugnance or repudiation, it would be a little intimidating. But Jesus said, "I'll build my church, and hell itself won't stop it".
So if it looks like hell is gaining an ascendant position, you know I'll step in. I wanna be a part of that. Jesus told us a little bit more in Matthew 24. He said, "This gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come". It's a lengthy prophetic passage. This is his concluding remark, the penultimate sign of his return to the earth is that this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world.
No, God doesn't abandon his people. No matter what besets our lives, even if it's God initiated, even if it's God's judgment, he does not abandon us in those places. He gives us a way back to restoration. That's the point of the cross. That Jesus exhausted the curse of our sin. That we might receive the fullness of his obedience. Let's pray together:
Father, I thank you that you love us. That no matter our circumstances, and no matter the challenges, no matter the choices we've made, that if we will come in humility and repent, that you will bring restoration and renewal to our lives. We trust you for this day and in this year. In Jesus's name, amen.