Allen Jackson - Stormproof Foundations - Part 1
It’s not a new thing to invite you to read through the Bible with us. We’ve been doing that for many years now and there are stories all over the building about the changes and the benefits and the transformations that have come with that. This year’s a little different for me. I certainly want to give you that invitation. All the normal tools are there on the apps and the websites, and it will read it to you and I think there’s an enormous benefit in that. But I had, something changed inside of me.
I was with a gathering of 20,000 or so people the weekend before Christmas and they were talking about changes in our country and a lot of enthusiasm around that. And I came away from that and I was grateful for what they were celebrating, but it seemed incomplete to me and I just, quietly in my heart I was saying to the Lord, «What do we do 'cause we have to have a spiritual change»? And I didn’t have a angelic visit and there wasn’t a donkey that spoke to me on four legs. Oh, I did not call you a name. But I really did feel like I had an understanding that there was something that was very accessible to us and I made a commitment to see how broadly we could share it.
And so I have made some phone calls and certainly with any place that my voice is heard or accepted I want to extend the invitation a little differently. If reading the Bible from the table of contents to the maps seems like a bridge too far for you, then start. In about 60 days we can read through the Gospels in their entirety, which means really if you’ll get started this week by the end of February or so you’ll be done. They’ve even put together some tools to help you get through it. It’s about a 60-day deal. If you’re willing to add another 30 days onto that, by Easter we can have read through the whole New Testament. And at that point if you’d say, you know, «There’s absolutely no benefit in it. It’s been an enormous burden to me. I don’t want to do it anymore,» I’m good. But if you’re willing at that point, we’ll pick up the books of Moses. It’s the first five books of the Old Testament. And let’s just see if we can find our way through.
Now, I’ve invited you to read the Bible forever. If you haven’t started yet, I’m kind of over that. I love you. You’ve heard the invitation. If you’ve taken a pass, it’s good. Those of you that have read the Bible, here’s what’s different. I want to ask you to invite somebody to join you in that. Recruit somebody. It could be somebody in your small group. It could be some people sit around you at church. It could be somebody that you work with. It could be somebody that your kids are playing ball with. You choose, but don’t do this just by yourself, all right? It’s a 60-day, if you take the easiest entry threshold, it’s a 60-day thing, about 10, 15 minutes a day. We’re going to read the Gospels. The Gospels are not divisive. They’re an introduction to Jesus. But please make the effort.
Here’s the idea behind it all. We need God’s help as a people, and there’s something I can tell you that I know God would bless and that’s if you will make the investment of time to read his Word. So just what if. You pick the number, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 people, however many would take start their year by reading through the Gospels together. I believe it would bring the blessing of God, and then we can make a decision about next if we want to live with God’s blessing or not. You say, «Well, you can’t earn God’s blessing». Duh, I got that. I also know that if you don’t behave in obedience you forfeit his blessing.
So I’m just curious. I know it’s church, but… they won’t turn the cameras around on you, I promise. I’m just curious. How many of you would be willing to help recruit somebody to read with you or at least ask? Look at y’all. Now, here… just kind of a spoiler alert, everybody you ask will not be excited and say yes. So don’t take it personally. I won’t ask for show of hands of how many people have never done this with me, and I’ve been asking for a long time. Not sure I could take it. I could, but I believe, I’m sharing it every place that I have an opportunity to invite somebody, I’m doing that for several days. So you’ll be tired of it before I hush, I’m pretty sure. But begin to ask the Lord. He’ll put more than one person in your path.
You may have a dozen people reading with you. It may not be anything more than a text you send out once a week or, you know, «What do you think about Matthew this week»? But let’s give the Lord a doorway where he could bring a new blessing to us. Wouldn’t that be good? That’s available to us. We can do this. I want to begin a new study. I don’t know how many sessions we’ll do. I’ve sketched out a few under the general theme of «Stormproof Foundations». Jesus talked to us about the ability to organize our lives in such a way that when the storms of life come we would be able to withstand them.
Now, he was honest enough and had enough integrity to tell us that you can orchestrate your life in such a way that when the storms come you’ll be totally devastated. The one given Jesus gave us in the parable was that storms are coming. Nobody escapes them. I’m not a pessimist. I very much believe the glass is half-full, but the reality is that life is more difficult than we would like it to be. But there are choices you can make that will enable you to withstand the storms. You can build stormproof foundations.
Now, I love that idea because we are living through a time where I anticipate some pretty significant chaos and I want to know how to stand. You don’t have to be particularly prophetic or culturally aware to know we are living in a tumultuous season, and I was awakened on New Year’s Day, Kathy already had the television on and the announcement of the attack in New Orleans, and the first formal response I heard was from an FBI agent saying that this was not a terrorist attack and my blood pressure went up about 50 points. I mean, I’m certainly not an expert on national security, but I hadn’t by that time enough of the grasp of the fundamental facts.
Someone drove a pickup truck at high speed into a very crowded street and attached to the truck was an ISIS flag. You’re not attaching blame to any group of people, but that meets most of the markers for a terrorist event. If someone had driven a truck like that into a crowd of people wearing a white hood with KKK painted on the back, we would understand with clarity appropriately so it was a racist event. We’re living in a season where the truth is still not celebrated, and you watch a report like that and you think, «Do they really just think we’re that stupid? It’s offensive».
Now, in all fairness it was withdrawn. They brought in somebody else to help bring updates, and the message is continuing to evolve. Something, it’s not new. It was Christmas. Was it four years ago? We had a bomb blast in downtown Nashville and I heard the mayor of Nashville say, «Oh, there’s just a few windows broken». And we saw a whole block devastated. They’re just now completing the restoration and renovation of all of that. And within 24 hours of that event, it was all wrapped up with a bow around it. «Nothing to see here. Look away». I don’t know the details. They’re not important to me at this point other than to say that the places that we look to for trust and confidence have disintegrated.
Now, I believe they can be rebuild, whether it’s the FBI or the justice department or the Center for Disease Control or churches. I believe we can rebuild trust, big tech in censorship. Trust is about the character of the people, not the institutions. That’s true. But trust has to be earned. The principles that my parents taught me when I was a kid I think they’re still in play. When you make a mistake, acknowledge the mistake. You can’t just live past it and act like it didn’t happen. Then we can move forward. I believe in front of us we’re going to have to endure, walk through, overcome a season of confusion and chaos and disruption because the people that have initiated it don’t want to see the momentum of destruction disrupted.
In the plainest possible language, the diminishment of a Judeo-Christian worldview and the dismantling of America has been very intentional if you’re just casually watching. They don’t want our worldview in the public square, in the public schools. They don’t want it in the corridors of the hospitals. They threaten people that bring it. «Don’t you dare pray with someone». And we’ve been silent through all of that. You’d be more than naive to think an election alone was going to cause evil to relent. We’re going to have to learn new responses, how to live the authority of our faith out; how we’re going to give expression to that not in anger, not in belligerence, with a new trust in God. And I honestly see, I believe that’s emerging.
You know, people say to me, «I don’t know what to do. I’m only one person. I really, I just…» There’s almost a sense of despair. «I just don’t know what to do». Well, I have an answer. I don’t have a simple answer or a complete answer or a holistic answer, but I do have a beginning point. What if we decide to honor God with a new intentionality and say, «God, this isn’t about someone else and what they’re not, or what they haven’t done, or what they have done. I’m going to honor you more intentionally in my life than I’ve ever done it before». I’m just naive enough to believe that Almighty God will engage with that.
So we’re going to talk about some of these things about how to storm-proof our foundations. And since I was already inviting you to the Bible reading, we might as well start with, «I intend to read my Bible daily». We’re walking through the Gospel of Matthew right now. If you’ve joined us, you’re not very far behind if you haven’t. And if you haven’t, I give you a pass. Just jump in. But I thought for this session and perhaps another, we would just take a chapter from Matthew’s Gospel. People say to me, «Pastor, I don’t read my Bible. It’s confusing. I don’t know the names. You know, I don’t know how to pronounce them. I don’t know where the places are. I’m afraid I’ll get it wrong».
I think that’s a misguided approach. I approach reading my Bible with the expectation that God’s attitude towards that is an attitude very similar to a parent watching their toddler learn to walk or begin to learn to talk. They don’t watch that toddler start to learn how to pull up on furniture and stand there and wobble and think, «That’s the clumsiest child ever». They’re taking videos going, «Look, they’re running». No, they’re wobbling. Then they begin to make sounds and the parents and grandparents think they’re using complex sentences. The rest of us just think they’re making guttural noises.
Well, I come to my Bible with that same imagination that when I’ll take the time to open it that God is so pleased, so delighted that I’m interested, that I want to know, that I would like to learn, that there’s a meeting place that’s been opened there. In the days when it doesn’t feel particularly fruitful to me, I’ll take it by faith that God will bring a fruitfulness to it at another time in another way; that it wasn’t a lost moment, it wasn’t a wasted bit of time. So I would like to relieve you of the burden of every day being a spiritual experience. Those people wear me out. Do you have a friend like that? Every time you see them, they have a fresh revelation. I’m like, «Oh, could I just read Matthew 4»? And it may be reality. It may be the world they live in.
They’re so in tuned and so dialed in, but some days I read my Bible and it’s the Bible. At this point I have done it once or twice or ten times or more and that brings some advantage. I recognize that. I’ll never forget I was with a friend. I was doing chores. I’d volunteered to take a couple of days to help some friends with chores really in repayment for some things they had done at the church, and that day my job was cleaning the kitchen, washing the dishes and just whatever they needed done. I was supposed to keep the kitchen clean. They were serving a lot of food.
The guy that was in charge is a really good cook, and I said, «You’re an amazing chef». And he looked at me and he shook his head and he said, «No, Allen. I’m no chef». He said, «I know how to cook food that tastes good to me». And he said, «That’s really all I know how to do». He said, «A chef knows how to build layers of flavor and imagine possibilities with about anything they can see». And he said, «I’m no chef». When it comes to the Bible, I feel a bit like that. Folks, I’m no expert, but it blesses me and I want to share that with you. And so just as an expression of an invitation into the Gospel of Matthew, I want to take a chapter and read it with you and I’m going to offer kind of a running dialogue. It’s not the only set of answers, it’s not the only way to understand it, but your Bible will change your life if you’ll read it. It will transform you from the inside out. You say, «I don’t believe that». Don’t just… try me, see what God will do.
Matthew 4:1, it says, «Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil». And I know this will be disheartening, but I need to stop right there for just a moment. That’s not what I would expect in the Bible. If any of you remember the verses immediately preceding this, Jesus is baptized by John, the Holy Spirit descends upon him, God says, «That’s my boy, and I’m really happy with him». And the next sentence is Jesus was led by the Spirit of God, it’s a capital S, into the desert to be tempted by the devil.
Now, that’s a theological challenge. That’s a personal discipleship challenge. The Spirit of God leading Jesus with whom God is pleased. He hasn’t been carousing. He didn’t misbehave on New Year’s Eve. God is pleased with him, and he leads him into the wilderness where he’s going to face temptation. Now, Jesus taught us a prayer. Anybody remember that? What do we call that prayer that Jesus taught us? The «Our Father», the Lord’s Prayer. Yeah, there’s a line in that. Do you remember Jesus taught us to pray this way? I put it in your notes. It’s Matthew’s Gospel, if anybody’s interested. «Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one». So when Jesus gave us that prayer, it wasn’t some theoretical prayer, it wasn’t some random arbitrary. Well, it’d probably be a good thing. Jesus has been in position to be tempted by Satan and it was difficult, and he said, «Listen, when you pray, pray this way: 'Lead me not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.'»
Now, before we’ve gotten through the first verse of this chapter, there’s a couple of things that should be on your radar if you’re reading this. If you don’t have me helping, if I’m not along for the journey, very clearly Jesus and the devil both exist. See, we’re so sophisticated, so educated, so enlightened, so arrogant, so spiritually inert that we want to have a conversation like there is no expression of evil in the world and very clearly in Scripture both Jesus and the devil exist. We need to accept that reality and plan accordingly. If you have a plan for how to cooperate with Jesus, you better have an equally-effective plan on how to resist the devil. You better be prepared, I mean, unless you’re already just serving him.
The biblical assignment is to follow Jesus and resist the devil, and you better be intentional on both sides of that equation because he’s effective. James chapter 4 and verse 7. I put it in your notes. I know it’s not in Matthew, but it is to the point. James said, «Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you». I love the book of James. He’s so plainspoken. Submit yourself to God and resist the devil. Now, I believe in this case sequence matters. The first step in resisting the devil is submitting yourself to God. The devil will not flee if you’re not submitted to God. If you’re on the throne, if you’re in charge, if you’re in control, if you haven’t yielded your will or your emotions, if you fill yourself with ungodly stuff and then you resist the devil, you’re wasting your breath.
We have the instructions. Submit yourselves to God, resist the devil, and he’ll flee from you. It’s not a power struggle, it’s about authority. «You’ve got no right to be here. Through the blood of Jesus, you go». But that authority is founded upon having submitted ourselves to God. That’s why we are Christ followers. Submit yourself to God. We have this mistaken notion that submitting to God is burdensome, loathsome, intrusive, diminishing. It’s a lie. When we submit to the Lord, we get all the benefits of the kingdom. That’s the best possible way you can make a journey through time. There’s no better way to live. There’s no better life to pursue. If you’re pursuing your will, your way, your timeline, your resources, what I want, when I want it, how I want it, there’s a crash at the end of that.
Verse 2, «After fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus was hungry. And the tempter came to him and said, 'If you’re the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.' And Jesus answered, 'It’s written: „Man doesn’t live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God".' And the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 'If you’re the Son of God, ' he said, 'throw yourself down. For it’s written: „He’ll command his angels concerning you, and they’ll lift you up in their hands, so that you’ll not strike your foot against the stone".' Jesus answered, 'It’s also written: „Do not put the Lord your God to the test."' And, again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 'All this I’ll give you if you’ll bow down and worship me.' Jesus said to him, 'Away from me, Satan. For it’s written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.' And the devil left him, and the angels came and attended him».
We can pause there for a moment. Again, big picture, high-level view. It’s important to note, just pull down the big rocks. Both the devil and God’s angels are very involved in Jesus’s life. You can’t read that without getting that. I mean, that’s the story. So don’t stand away from the Bible and go, you know, «I’m just not sure I believe in that». Well, then, do you believe in… what do you believe in? If you don’t believe what’s written there, who are you exactly? The arbiter of what? We need to put you on the bench in New York. That was tacky, I know. I confess. I repent. But as you’re reading through it, just let those big ideas. Wow. Both the devil and the angels were very integral to the unfolding story of Jesus’s life, his ministry, what happened to him, the challenges he faces.
The things the devil had to say that Matthew recorded for us, «If you’re the Son of God». That’s his pattern. From the Garden of Eden right through the whole narrative in Eden, the devil said, «Did God really say? Did God really say you shouldn’t eat of this tree»? And the same devil’s got Jesus an opportunity now and he says, you know, «If you’re the Son of God». He knows very well who he is. He’s seen him in all of his glory and his splendor. It’s an attack. And then he quotes Scripture to him. The devil quotes Scripture to Jesus. He said, «He’ll command his angels concerning you». He’s trying to use Scripture to get Jesus to take license. You know, that’s evil. It’s why you need to read your Bible to know the character of God, the larger narrative. It’ll protect you from people that will take Scripture and use it for very self-destructive things.
Matthew tells us that Satan showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor and he said, «All this I’ll give to you. I’ll give it to you». It’s a supernatural event. We’re not really given the details, but in a moment before the internet Jesus got a global overview. «I’ll give you all of this without the necessity of a cross, without the pain of rejection, without the physical suffering. I’ll give you all this authority if you just bow down and worship me». Great cry of evil used to cause us to worship it to… worship is not about music and choruses and church services and church buildings, worship is about priority. Whatever gets first place is what we worship. It’s what we’ll bend our knee to, what we’ll give our heart to and give our money to.
I want to pray with you before we go. I want you to imagine with me righteousness raining down upon us. We’ve seen evil rain upon us and ungodliness rain upon us. Like an avalanche, imagine Almighty God raining righteousness upon us.
Father, in Jesus’s name let righteousness rain upon our lives, our homes, our congregations, our communities, our nation. We thank you for it. In Jesus’s name, amen.