Allen Jackson - Seasons of Change - Part 1
We’ve been working through kind of a continuation of a theme we’ve had for a while now, leading with our faith. You are remarkable leaders in a whole variety of ways; business, technology, in the hobbies of your choice, in families. In all those ways, you have so much confidence and ability and you impact our community in so many great ways, but frequently people with really strong skills and confidence in some of those arenas, when it comes to our faith, all that seems to evaporate. «Yeah, you know, I don’t pray,» or «I don’t know how to talk about my faith,» or «I’m not a Bible scholar,» the litany begins. And I wanna encourage you to begin to gently say to the Lord, «Teach me to lead with my faith».
We’re in the midst of a transition season in our nation. We’ve just completed an election cycle, we’re awaiting an inauguration, so there’s a whole new leadership team being put in place, and every day the news cycle is populated by all these new names and faces and people are voting up or down or complaining or celebrating or cheering or mourning. You hear all of that. Tremendous change, there’s a whole new cabinet, a whole new administration being assembled. I’ve been watching with some interest. It’s always interesting to me when there’s a change on who’s selected and what the process is, if there is a process. I made a list, because I make lists, of the criteria that seem to be necessary to be included in the cabinet, and I have no inside information from Mar-a-Lago. This is just a hillbilly’s observation on the building of a new cabinet.
I chose seven criteria because seven is a good biblical number, and if I had 48 reasons, you wouldn’t want to listen that long. But it seems to me that loyalty is a high priority. They want people to serve alongside them and lead, that will be loyal to the agenda. It requires availability. You have to be willing to almost totally reorganize your lives. I’m acquainted with a couple of people that have been tagged and I can assure you it’s bringing tremendous change to their lives and the people that were involved in their lives. It requires a realignment, the acceptability of a new assignment. You’ve gotta be willing to go step into arenas where you don’t have as much experience probably as where you’ve been standing. You may have some qualifications that will enable you to be nominated or imagined to be selected, but you probably haven’t led at the level you’re being invited to lead.
Fourthly, the people who accept the assignments have to be invested. I don’t mean financially, but you can’t lead at those levels of significance if it’s a hobby, if it’s a whim. You think, «That’d be kinda cool. I’ll do that for a few weeks». That’s not adequate, you’ve gotta be fully invested. The next one I would list, it seems to me you gotta be pretty durable. You gotta be like an old Timex watch. You gotta be able to take a licking and keep on ticking, because everybody’s not gonna cheer and all your decisions aren’t gonna work out well. And if you’re gonna lead at one of those higher level roles, you’re gonna have to be willing to cultivate the perseverance and the willingness to endure. Durability is just a necessity, it seems to me.
Sixth, experience seems to help. They wouldn’t put you in some position, hopefully, where you have zero experience. I mean, there’s enough voice to say they don’t have enough experience to lead at this level and that will be proven to be right or wrong. But you shouldn’t imagine that you’d be trusted to lead in someplace where you haven’t cared enough to develop any expertise. And finally, it seems to me that, if you’re gonna lead at that level, you better have some situational awareness. Naivete is not a helpful characteristic. A lack of awareness of the world in which you’re living and the people that you’re leading and the circumstances in the global community, if you’re not aware and connected and observant, you’re in a deficit that you won’t overcome.
Now my list could have gone on, but those seven seemed adequate for me. I’ve been thinking about them quite a bit in the context of the church because I would submit to you that God’s putting together his own leadership team, that the Lord is assembling a leadership team for his initiative. I promise you God’s not passive. He’s the most creative, engaged, focused, powerful force that’s present on Planet Earth today. He’s not assembling a cabinet, he’s not assembling a team. What do we call the initiative that God’s committed himself to? It’s the church. Say, «Aww, pastor, I thought you had something exciting». I think being a part of the church is exciting. I think the greatest force for the transformation of humanity available on Planet Earth today is the church of Jesus Christ.
My Lord is the head of the church. He is the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords. The earth and everything in it belongs to him. Ultimately, every earthly ruler will bend their knee to my Lord and King. One of the great challenges we have is we’re so familiar with the idea of church, with the principle of church, that we really attach very little significance to it any longer. It’s simply a sermon station or a place where our children get some character-building ideas or it’s an expression of benevolence. It’s kind of a civic club with a little bit more of a moral bent. And so we don’t imagine the church to be an initiative of great significance. The only thing that stands between humanity being totally dominated by evil is the church. That’s biblical.
So I wanna invite you to a little different imagination. I wanna invite you to imagine that the privilege of leading with your faith is the greatest invitation of your life. It’s been some years ago, but I remember reading Chuck Colson. If you’re not familiar with him, I highly recommend his books. He was an attorney, he’s a Marine, he was an attorney, he was White House Counsel for Richard Nixon and got caught up in the scandal that came with Watergate and became a believer in the aftermath of all of that. But he wrote and he said he saw many people of faith come to Washington DC into the White House, imagining that they were going to change the White House or Washington DC. And he said, almost without exception, they were changed and the White House remained the same. I think we misunderstand.
The greatest invitation of our life is not to serve in a political administration, not to be a corporate something. The greatest opportunity ever presented to a human being is to become a part of the church of Jesus Christ. I believe that and I would invite you towards that. Each generation is required to make a decision about service, lordship, priorities. Every generation, what your grandparents believed or your great grandparents believed is valuable. You certainly stand on their shoulders, but it will not bring you the qualifications necessary. You and I have to make decisions. Matthew 16:18 is a verse that changed my life. My spiritual formation didn’t take place in church.
I was born again in my parents’s kitchen, I was baptized in the Atlantic Ocean in Fort Lauderdale. Probably explains a lot about me. I had to come to understand the value of church. I did not see church as an incubator of spiritual formation. But in Matthew 16:18 Jesus said, «I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it». Jesus is on record in public as being engaged, invested in, establishing, and strengthening his church. In Ephesians chapter 1 in verse 22 it says «God’s placed all things under his feet,» speaking of Jesus, «and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way».
Jesus is the head of the church, not pastor, not the denominational execs, not the seminary professors, not the Supreme Court. Jesus is the head of the church. We’re his body. I have to guard my heart on this one. One of the reasons I didn’t wanna be a part of the church, I didn’t like it, I wasn’t comfortable there, I didn’t like the people that were there. I didn’t, Christians got on my nerves. I thought church was a place for leftovers. Leftover time, leftover clothes, leftover appliances, leftover money. I didn’t think of church, I had no imagination of excellence being connected with church.
In fact, from my vantage point, if you did something well at church, we were suspicious. And I was so wrong. The reason I didn’t like the people of the church is there was so little Jesus in me. I had to change. I was far more comfortable with ungodly people than I was godly people. Godly people made me nervous because I had so little Jesus in me. I had to change. The more that I’ve allowed the presence of God to grow in my life, the greater the value, the appreciation I have for the people of faith. We’re gathered from every nation, race, language, and tribe. We’re gifted very broadly with a diverse set of gifts and abilities. But we are the people of God and Jesus is the head of the initiative that we have given ourselves to. It is the primary assignment of our lives.
The impact of the church varies generation to generation. If you read your Bible with us, and we just completed the historical books and the record of the kings, it’s not dissimilar… if you charted the history of the church, there were godly kings and ungodly kings and the nation’s fortunes rose and fell depending on the godliness that was available to the people. There are seasons when the church has been effective and the church has been ineffective, where the church has been yielded more completely to the authority of Jesus and the authority of his Word, and there are times when we rebelled against it. The history of the church is not an even chart any more than the history of the monarchs of Israel is.
In Psalm 84 in verse 10, David said, «Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked». I mean, I know it’s in the Bible and we’re in church and we’re listening to a church service and so we’re gonna go «amen,» really? And maybe skip church because you got a really cool invitation to some wicked tent. Well, they were good seats, it was a unique opportunity, I go to church anytime. I believe what David said was the attitude that shaped his life and caused him to be one of the most remarkable characters in all of Scripture. He said, «Listen, I’ll do whatever I need to do to be included with the people of God». He said, «That’s more valuable to me than any other invitation in my life».
I believe you have to cultivate that. I don’t believe it’s intuitive, I don’t think it’s automatic. Well, I believe we learn to worship the Lord, to serve the Lord, to engage with the Lord in the same way we learn any other aspect of discipline in our lives. We do it haltingly, it’s a bit uncomfortable at first. It makes you sore, it feels awkward. It’s unfamiliar, a little bit intimidating, maybe even a little frightening. We’re tempted, if it’s something you don’t understand, you know, kind of the default response is, «Well, that’s stupid,» until something captures your attention and gains a bit of your heart. You know, if you don’t like to hunt, you can’t imagine why people would get up early in the morning to go sit in the woods.
If you love to hunt, you can’t imagine why everybody doesn’t. If you love to cook, you probably watch the Food Network. If you don’t like to cook, you pray you never have to. I have discovered that I have to have the intent to make room in my heart for God, that I have to wanna grow with him. I have to begin to develop, I have to spend time with people that wanna know the Lord better. If most of my discretionary time is spent with people who don’t value the Lord, my interest in the Lord diminishes, and I get paid to be a Christian. Doesn’t mean you love the Lord, you have to choose that for yourself. And the challenge is this inconsistency is a part of the people of God. And one of the things we’re told is that, as we approach the end of the age, it will grow more intense. I give you lots of examples, it’s not new to our generation.
In 1 Samuel, one of kind of the poster children for losing your way was the first king of Israel. His name was Saul. God recruited him. God sent the prophet to anoint him and he said, «I’ve chosen you». God sent Samuel to Saul to say, «I have chosen you to be king». Saul felt more ill-equipped than anybody who’s been tapped for the current cabinet, I promise you. He was kind of bumbling, but very quickly he got acclimated. In your notes it’s 1 Samuel 15. «Samuel comes back to Saul with a message and he said, 'Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night, ' and Saul said, 'Well, tell me, ' and Samuel said, 'You were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And he sent you on a mission. Why did you not obey the Lord? ' Samuel goes on to say, 'God’s gonna take the kingdom away from you.'»
You were chosen, you were anointed, you were given the role. It was a very significant change. For hundreds of years, the covenant people of God have lived in the promised land without a central authority. Twelve tribes loosely affiliated. When there was a need for a corporate response, God would raise up a leader. That is the book of Judges. Gideon or Deborah or Samson. No monarchy. The tribal leaders come to Samuel, the last of the judges, and say, «We want a king. We wanna be like all the other nations».
Samuel warns them about the pain and suffering it will bring. They ignore his warning and they say, «We want a king,» and God chooses Saul. And Saul loses his balance and stops being obedient. Church, we cannot afford disobedience and think we will flourish. And we tend to be a little… we have clarity on that when it’s someone else’s disobedience. You’d have quite a bit of clarity if it was my life. But it gets fuzzier the closer it gets to home, because around home you’ve got all the rest of the story and we tend to morph into a rather disobedient lot of people. Or we think it’s just about me in my house and we forfeit our assignment to be salt and light in the world. Saul wasn’t called simply to be a private disciple, he was called to be an influence in the nation, so his personal choices of disobedience influenced lots of people. Your choices of disobedience influence lots of people.
Matthew 21, it’s not just an Old Testament issue. Jesus is speaking. He said, «I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed». That’s a first century audience, he’s talking to the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Folks, we’re not the first generation to drift into rebellion and I assure you we will not escape the consequences if we don’t correct our own courses. Jesus had a great deal to say. Matthew 15, «He called the crowd to him. He said, 'Listen and understand. What goes into a man’s mouth doesn’t make him 'unclean, ' what comes out of his mouth, that’s what makes him 'unclean.'»
That’s a radical statement. He’s talking to a group of people who keep kosher rules and they believe because they eat the right foods they’re better than people who don’t. All religious people have rules. You know, the principle of religious rules: my rules make sense and your rules are stupid. We all think that because we’ve kind of baked in the exploitation for the rules that we hold. The example I’ve used before but it is as clear as any, I took, years ago, I went with a mission team to India. Long way to fly, and we got off the plane. Before we got off the plane, everybody kind of spruced up and cleaned up. You know, the women put on their lipstick and freshened their whatever and off the plane we went. And our host saw us and they didn’t seem pleased.
And a conversation ensued and they informed us that in the portion of the people that we were going to be with, godly women didn’t wear jewelry or makeup. And they asked if when we showed up for the meeting the next day, if we could be absent jewelry and makeup. Well, it wasn’t a big deal to me but to some of those traveling with us, it was a big deal. Much consternation, great angst. And after a great deal of persuasion, we gained some kind of detente that we could probably attend one worship service without the nature of our marital status being assaulted too severely, absent a ring, until we showed up at the meeting. And some of our hosts showed up in their traditional garb and you could see a portion of their stomach.
Well, we lost our collective minds. My wedding ring made me ungodly and there stands that hussy, because my rule makes sense and your rule is stupid. Religious rules are problematic and Jesus took a religious rule that was at the center of so much of their life it built their menu. And he said, «What goes into your mouth does not make you unclean, what comes out of your mouth does». Mic drop. And the disciples come to Jesus. In verse 12, «The disciples came to him and said, 'Do you know that the Pharisees were offended? '» You have to coach Jesus a little bit. Sometimes he’s not very clued in. «Every plant,» This is Jesus, «Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides».
It’s really common these days. You hear people say, «You know, Jesus was all about love. Group hug, come on, let’s hug it out». Well, I agree a portion of Jesus’s message was about love, but it was also about delivering the truth. When he looks at the spiritual leaders and the people that are around them and he said, «Leave them, they’re blind guides,» that is not a compliment. That’s not affirming, that’s not encouraging, that is very harsh. So I’ll give you the 21st century interpretation of that from my vantage point. Don’t choose tradition over truth. Don’t prefer the familiar over faithfulness. Don’t trade your future for momentary comfort.
Never lose sight of the fact that we are the church and we are under the authority of the King. What I think, what I want, what I feel are not the primary leads. I am submitted to the authority of the King. In 2 Timothy chapter 4 in verse 2, it says, «Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage-with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they’ll gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear».
The New Testament gives us very clearly a portrayal of the church as we approach the end of the age. And it’s not a pleasant picture, it’s a picture of deterioration. That we’ll be intolerant of the truth, that we will cast off the restraint of the authority of Scripture. That will we will lead lives filled with rebellion while we use language filled with religious words. In 2 Timothy 3, it’s not in your notes, but it is in the book. You can check me. The first five verses, Paul said, «In the last days there’ll be terrible times,» and then he lists 18 aspects of human character that will deteriorate, centered around three things. He said, «People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, and lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God».
But then he says something that’s really unsettling. He says they’ll have a form of godliness but deny the power of it, have nothing to do with him. He sounds a lot like Jesus at that point. I read those verses as a younger person, even as a person in ministry for many years, and they didn’t seem overly relevant to the world we live in. In those seasons, if you looked across the landscape of American Christianity, orthodoxy still held sway. The majority of churches still embraced the authority of Scripture, the uniqueness of Jesus, the redemptive work of Jesus, and it wasn’t being taught in our leading theological institutions, but that hadn’t made its way into the churches themselves, yet.
Folks, we’ve arrived at a place that’s very unsettling. Orthodoxy is no longer orthodox. It’s not common. Oh, our buildings still look ecclesiastical in their architecture and the signs say churches, but the language and the authority structure in those places is not yielded to the Word of God. It’s an unsettling place, it’s awkward.
I’m not talking about the kind of pettiness that comes with sectarian attitudes amongst believers, where we argue about the cover on the Bible that we read or the color of the grape juice with which we take communion or the frequency of which we take it. I’m not talking about that kind of pettiness, folks. If we can disagree on a point and still both go to heaven, I will extend to you a hand of fellowship. If there’s an idea that, wrongly embraced, would disqualify me for the kingdom, I cannot call you brother or sister. I have no intention of being united with ungodliness. I can care about you, I’ll treat you with respect and dignity, but I won’t deny the fact that there is a breach. We have to lead with our faith.
The Scripture says that some of us have entertained angels and we didn’t know it. I wanna pray with you before we go that we’ll have the discernment to recognize what God is doing in the earth. We don’t wanna be overwhelmed with the darkness and the bad news, we wanna be aware of the moving of God. Let’s pray.
Father, give us understanding hearts and the discernment to see and recognize what you’re doing in the earth that we might take our places. I thank you for your faithfulness and your great provision. In Jesus’s name, amen.