Allen Jackson - A Battle In The Mind - Part 2
There’s some ideas in the battle in your mind you’ll have to avoid: they’re toxic. They will completely derail you and if you embrace them fully, they will destroy you. I don’t have time to unpack them in detail, but I’m gonna hand them to you really quickly. One is a degree of tolerance, and this one is confusing culturally because we’re told that tolerance is one of the greatest virtues you can have. Tolerating evil is not godly. You don’t have to be angry, you don’t need to be belligerent, you certainly don’t need to be violent, but being tolerant, making peace with evil, you will give away your future. It’s biblical.
Revelation 2. Jesus is talking to a church, and he said, «You tolerate that woman Jezebel, she calls herself a prophetess, she pretends to have great religious depth and insight and understanding, but she misleads you into sexual immorality». Not a lot changed in two millennia. Do not tolerate evil. It has to be overcome. We overcome it with good, by asserting that good is more valuable than evil. We have to step into the arena. We’ve been hiding from it, denying it. We’ve sacrificed sixty million children. We’ve seen more people sold into sexual slavery in recent years in our nation than at any point in our history on our watch. We’re just being tolerant. I mean, everybody’s entitled to an opinion.
You know, some opinions are evil. Well, who decides? Well, if you choose a biblical worldview, not you. We’ve submitted ourselves to that. There’s another toxic idea. Jesus talked about it in Luke 12. He’s talking about a businessman, a really good businessman. Year after year he outpaced the markets. He exceeded all the expectations year after year. It got to the point where he finally said, «I’ve got everything I need. I’m just gonna take it easy». And God said to that man, «You’re a fool. You’re a fool. You’re living in only one dimension. You’re comparing yourself to the other people of this dimension and you’re not thinking about a life beyond that and tonight your life will be demanded of you and you’re not taking anything with you».
It’s a battle in our mind. We live in this world, in this present age. The messaging from this present age cascades over us like Niagara Falls. Healthy babies make noise. It’s okay. It’s when they get quiet, you gotta get anxious. The messaging is so prevalent, so predominant, so frequent, so overwhelming, it can’t help but influence us. We compare ourselves to the people that are fully engaged in the dimension of this culture. We want to achieve what they achieve. We want to be recognized in the way they’re recognized.
We have those aspirations for our children. And then we consider the spiritual aspects of our lives, you know, kind of removed and distant and minimalistic, and how can we address that? We don’t really get those perspectives out until there’s a crisis or a tragedy or something that’s beyond our ability to resolve. God said that’s a foolish approach to life. Don’t be foolish. It’s toxic, it will destroy you. You don’t want the creator of all things to call you a fool. And then the third toxic idea is pride. And one way of understanding pride is just a complete lack of awareness. You just think you’re all that and you lose all perspective because some achievement or accomplishment or an idea or a thought or an ability or an appearance or something.
In Revelation 3, it’s to a church again. He’s writing to a church. This is hard to believe. He’s saying, «You’re lukewarm, you’re not hot or cold, I’m gonna spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I’m rich, and I’ve acquired wealth and that I don’t need a thing.' But you don’t know that you’re wretched, and pitiful, and blind, and poor, and naked». That’s pride. I don’t need a thing. I can make it happen. I can get it done. I’ll work hard. I’ve got contacts. Watch. People tell me I can’t do it and I let them watch. Roar. And Jesus said, «You don’t understand. You’re blind, and wretched, naked, and in need of all things,» pride.
Folks, we can’t afford it. We can’t afford it. It’ll overwhelm us. That battle in our mind has, to a concerning extent, sidelined the church. It’s rendered us inept. I know that’s awkward. I’ve spent my life in the church, so I’m not truly throwing stones. I’m trying to understand where we are and what’s happened. We’ve had more freedom and more liberty and more access to scripture and greater opportunities to gather in the name of Jesus, all those things than any group of people in the history of the church and yet my lifetime coincides with one of the most precipitous declines of Christian influence in the history of the church. Biblical worldview once defined our educational systems all the way through the highest levels of education.
They were places where biblical values were taught, where biblical worldview was put before the students and given to them as the boundaries for their lives, as the formation of their character. We’re so far away from that. It was that biblical worldview that helped us understand the evils of racism, understand the evils of so many aspects of our lives. And it enabled us to take corrective actions and to choose better paths. It was the authority of scripture. Dr. Alveda King was here last weekend. We heard her. The moral authority with which her grandfather challenged our nation to something better came from the Word of God not from Congress. He called Congress to account with the authority of scripture.
The church has lost the notion, the awareness, the remembrance that the Word of God thunders against sin. And we become meek and quiet and withdrawn, and we’re waiting for the politicians to do something. It’s not that we’ve lost the language, we have the language, but we come to our churches and we’ve lost the imagination of what the vitality of that looks like. I’ll see if I can show it to you. Familiar words, we’ve talked about this a lot lately. You know the passage in Ephesians 6 about putting on the armor of God? If you don’t, see the previous session.
We talked about it in some detail. And I’m not gonna go through all of what we did in the previous session, but I do want to give you just kind of a brief presentation of what I understand kind of the contemporary expression of the armor of God to look like. I think that’s impolite. I’m gonna skip the slippers. You can see the earlier session. I can tell you, biblically, that the shoes you choose will make all the difference. For real. How you choose the foundation of your life will make all the difference. I’m feeling better already. I have a better chair than you. Mine rocks. I’m not gonna put on helmets today, but I brought some hats. I’ve got a red one. I’ve got one to remind me to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Don’t forget that. I’ve got one that says, «We have to make education great again».
That’s true. But you know the challenge I think that we face is we get addicted a little bit. I got a switch over here, there we go. Don’t covet. I’m not good enough for you to be this comfortable while I’m preaching. But you know, if you ask me for a picture of the Christian that I’ve spent my life around beyond our congregation, just in general, I’ve been with, I spent my life in that arena. I think this is the posture from which we want to serve the Lord. There’s a lot of things that keep us in this chair. The addictions to comfort and convenience and ease. If it’s not easy, we’re not really sure we’re interested. We expect the people that would ask us to serve to make it easy. And when they don’t, we get a little offended.
A lot of things keep us in this chair. Elections keep us in this chair. I’ve heard it a lot since November 5, I’m tired of the elections. I’m tired of the commercials. I’m tired of the bickering. I’m tired of the back and forth. I’m tired of it filling the conversations when I’m with my friends. Okay, we’ve had the election, they got elected, let them go fix the problem. I wanna go back to my life. I wanna stop paying attention. That idea that it’s somebody else’s problem and they have to fix it keeps me in the chair.
Folks, nobody in Washington DC is gonna bring a lasting solution to our problems. That will begin in the character that is formed around our kitchen tables and the men and women we decide to be and the discipline we bring to our children and how we want our communities to look. There there’s something else that keeps us in our chairs. Because we like them. They’re more comfortable. I have Dr. Pepper. Did I mention Dr. Pepper? You know, I have such a great team of people that help me. You don’t have to be smart if you have good… Apparently there was a concern that if we put Dr. Pepper right here that somebody on camera would take us down because of copyright.
So, I have Dr. George. Right there. Established 1936. I’m impressed. I’m afraid to open it. That’s vintage. You know, I’m happy to stay in my chair. I’ve got cheese doodles. Bobby Kennedy hadn’t found them yet. You know, we’re all, we all feel pretty good because we’re sending somebody to Washington that’s made a lot of money to go work on efficiency in the government. We want the government to save some money, but we don’t want them to take anything away from us. Because the money we get and the blessings we get, those aren’t extravagant, those are necessary expenditures. I stay in this chair because of my theology. I’m born again. I know I am. I’ve been baptized in water. There are photographs. I’ve helped thousands of other people be baptized in water. There’s photographs of that.
So what do you want from me? I’ve rejected a theology of works. I’m living in grace. I mean, it may not be biblical, but it sure is comfortable. My salvation is unassailable. I don’t have time or interest in my life, to be honest, to have theological debates. I can tell you this. It’s very easy to form a theology that says, «I’ve done all the heavy lifting. There’s really nothing more significant required of me».
I believe in forgiveness. I believe in mercy. I believe in grace. And yeah, you know, I’m gonna make some mistakes, but everybody makes mistakes. I don’t wanna be one of those Christians that’s like hyper, over the top. I like my chair. And while we sat in our chairs and enjoyed our Dr. George, we’ve sacrificed millions of children. While we sat in our chairs, our schools have crumbled. The moral content, the ethical content. Forget the lower schools. Look at the most elite places in our nation, the places celebrated as being the best of the best. They don’t have the courage to condemn anti-Semitism when it’s raging in the squares on their campuses. It’s just more comfortable in my chair.
In fact, with technology, I can sit in my chair and watch other people work. It’s amazing. I can just Doordash food. I don’t even have to get out of my chair. Well, I got a camera on my doorbell. When DoorDash gets here, I can talk to him and tell him to leave it at the door. When I’m in the mood to get up, I will get my food. And if it snows on a Sunday morning, y’all can stream church. And what has happened to us while we sit in our chairs? We’ve mortgaged our children’s futures. We have. We’re afraid to send them to schools. We’re afraid for them to go to universities. If you have any awareness at all, we understand we’re handing them a financial mess that is so overwhelming that apart from the mercy of God, it’s not survivable.
Folks, we’re on an assignment. I’m pretty certain that the armor of God doesn’t begin with a bathrobe. And as much as I like my chair, I don’t think it’s a really a fair expression of what Jesus gave himself on the cross for. I believe in grace and mercy. I have received it. For without it, I wouldn’t be here. But I don’t intend to live presumptively upon it. I understand with great clarity, I will never earn my way into the kingdom of God. What’s been given to me has nothing to do with merit. I did not deserve the opportunities I have been given. I have very great clarity on that. I haven’t always responded to the best with the things that were put before me. And in those places, the mercy and grace of God and the authority of Jesus’s redemptive work has brought forgiveness to me. But I do believe that my best response to that is to get out of the chair.
But that’s only part of it, you know. I could probably shape getting out of the chair in terms of conversion and if you’ll just walk the aisle of the church and repeat this prayer with me or meet me at the altar when I’m done with the lesson today, I can help you into the kingdom of God and actually that’s true. I could do that. But I don’t believe that’s an adequate presentation of what we’re called to. That’s not what Paul was describing to Timothy in that passage we read at the beginning of this when he’s talking about enduring hardship like a good soldier. Or competing according to the rules, not just arbitrarily or what’s comfortable or convenient. Or as a hardworking farmer.
My first job was working for my dad. That’s probably not a plan I would suggest. He gave me a pair of gloves. I didn’t like gloves, hadn’t worn gloves. I was used to doing jobs that were convenience jobs. I mowed the grass when I was in the mood and I didn’t have something better to do. I might haul a little hay if I had a little free time and I didn’t have a ballgame to play or my friends weren’t going to do something, the lake or… But I understood that if he was giving me tools for the job, there was an expectation, and I didn’t want any expectations. I remember he said that, «They won’t stop the blisters, but it’ll make it better and you won’t miss time».
Warning Will Rogers. I just bought a sampling of some of the tools that I started really early in my life with. Everything on this little platform is different from that one. To put any of this stuff to work is gonna take effort. And there’ll be complaints and they’re all gonna be internal. And there won’t be a lot of people that want to join you. The numbers go down. If this is the invitation, you can have a party. If this is the invitation, you’re gonna need a friend. That’s the truth. Somewhere along the way, I’ve talked to you about it. I decided I wanted to be Jesus’s friend. I don’t wanna just be there for the party. I don’t just wanna be there to take down the prizes and receive the gifts. I wanna be involved. I want to be included. I want to be trusted.
What did Paul say to Timothy? «Entrust these things to reliable people». In the halls of heaven, I want it to be considered that I might be a reliable resource for what God would be doing. I want you to imagine that. I want God to imagine that he can trust you with understanding or insight because you’ll put the effort into it that’s necessary to get to the outcome. You’ll stop reciting the verses to try to secure something that requires nothing. It’s offensive to me to imagine that we would ask God to send his Son or Jesus to endure all he did, so that all I have to do is mutter some simple prayer and then lead my life on my own terms. We’re called to lay our lives down, to take up a cross.
That’s a whole lot worse than picking up a maul because the cross is a place for public humiliation, execution. You forfeit all of your self direction at that point. And Jesus said we had to take up our cross daily. Church, I believe we have the greatest opportunity of my lifetime in front of us. I believe that. I believe with what God has done, we have an opportunity to see our children and our grandchildren have a different future. But it’s gonna require a different response from the church. Not the pagans, from the church We’re gonna have to believe that what we’ve been entrusted with is worth our best effort. That it’s valuable enough that you can’t make us be quiet. That we think everybody would be better if they knew what we found. And wherever we go, we’re gonna talk about it. We’re gonna talk about the things God is doing. We’ll pray for other people, that they’ll stand still for a half a minute, we’re gonna slip a prayer in.
Let’s pray. If they’re struggling, we’ll invite them to read a Bible with us. We’ll show up together, we’ll volunteer together, we’ll serve together. We’re not gonna be treated fairly. People will complain and criticize and say we did too much of that or not enough of this. We had too many cheese doodles or not enough cheese doodles or the wrong color cheese doodles. That’s the nature of the journey. They killed our boss. «They stoned the prophets,» he said. Nevertheless, we go.
I wanna put the invitation before you. There are people be sworn in over these next few weeks. They’re taking temporary assignments. I’m grateful for their willingness to do it. I believe with God’s mercy, they could bring some changes that would help. I don’t know. I think more of that’s in God’s hands. But I know this for certain, whatever changes are brought, they’re unsustainable unless the church becomes different. Which means we’ll have to raise our hands and say, «We’ll walk in a new way, with new courage and new boldness». We’re taking Jesus to work with us. We’re taking him back to our schools, so they say, «You can’t». He’s going with me. I don’t intend to maintain business as usual. The status quo is not the objective. Kindness is not the 11th commandment. It is the fruit of the Spirit. Jesus said, «I didn’t come to bring unity». He said, «I came to bring division». The truth Is our assignment. Are you ready? I brought you a prayer. I want you to stand with me.
It’s really more of a proclamation. It’s a declaration to define our future, what we’re gonna ask God to do in us and through us and around us. Can we say it together?
I choose to honor God with my life, with all that I have, I will honor him with my strength, with my wealth, and with my attention. I will offer my days to him as an expression of loyalty. I will yield my thoughts to him in humility and respect. I submit my will to him that I may see his purposes. My ambition is to be included in his kingdom and to be faithful to his purposes for my life, amen.