Allen Jackson - Generational Choices - Part 1
We’re working through a series on how to stormproof the foundations of our lives. Jesus told a parable about that. Jesus told us, forewarned us that storms come to everyone, nobody is exempt. But that in the midst of that, we can prepare ourselves so that our lives have a foundation that we survive in the storms. If we don’t do that, the storms will bring total destruction. It’s too late to get ready when the storm is approaching. We have to build the foundations when we don’t know we’re gonna need them.
In this session, I want to talk about generational choices, and I’m gonna start with that idea. I believe every generation has to make a choice regarding their faith. I don’t believe that’s just my opinion, I think it’s a biblical principle. And I’m gonna briefly try to highlight it for you, but we could do it in a far more comprehensive way. We’ll start in the book of Judges. You know where the book of Judges fits in the chronological story unfolding of the Bible? After the Exodus, the Hebrew slaves are released from Egypt with a little help from God. And they’re pushed, God sends them into the wilderness where there’s no provision, so he becomes their provision.
And there he teaches them how to be a nation. He implements the laws of society and the priestly rules and the rules for worship, and all that forms a group of slaves who’ve been slaves for hundreds of years into a group of people united by their faith in God following God. And ultimately he brings them into the land that he promised them, a land that flows with milk and honey. And then they have to conquer the territory. It’s not like the adversaries that are in that land just surrender. In order for them to occupy God’s intent for them, they have to be willing to do the conflict that is essential for that. There’s a spiritual parallel in the New Testament for you. We don’t have piece of geography promised to us, but we live in the land of God’s promises.
And for us to live out the promises of God, we will have to engage in the spiritual conflict to displace the enemy. Jesus defeated him on the cross, completely, irreversibly for all eternity. But he’s still present in the earth, and we are ambassadors for the kingdom of God, and we have to engage in that conflict. Ephesians 6:10 says, «We wrestle not against flesh and blood,» and all Christians repunctuate that. They prefer to say, «We just wrestle not». We don’t believe in that, we don’t believe in the devil, we don’t believe in demons.
You may not believe in them, but they believe in you. Every generation has to make a choice for themselves, and the book of Judges is a story that… they’re recounting to us of after the Hebrew people occupied the Promised Land, that generation upon generation, they would drift away from God. There was no king. God would raise up a judge, a leader, not somebody in black robes, but a leader from one of the tribes to lead the people against the oppression. And I’ll give you just a sample in Judges chapter 2, Joshua has died.
«Who was the one who led them in the conquest of their inheritance. This is after that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist».
It feels very contemporary to me. There are generational choices that are made, and if we don’t purposefully, intentionally teach and train the generations who follow us, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of our history will be diminished. I can give you an example from very recently with us when Dr. Alveda King was here. After service on Sunday, we taped a podcast and invited the teenagers. And when we extended the invitation to the teenagers, we discovered that the majority of them did not know who Dr. Martin Luther King was. They knew nothing of his «I have a dream» speech on the mall in Washington.
So, before we could truly give them the invitation, we had to create some highlight videos introducing them to Dr. King. And once I understood it was very clear to me, you see, you couldn’t teach DEI in the schools, which we do, and tell the story of Dr. King. Because his dream was that we wouldn’t be judged by our appearance but by the content of our character. And DEI has taken the opposite approach to that. And so, in order to push the divisive hatred of DEI, they had to diminish what Dr. King and many others gave their lives for.
So, when I read the passage from Judges, it felt very personal to me, a generation grew up who neither knew the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. And we have to teach every generation because every generation makes a choice for themselves. And because of their lack of knowledge, because of their lack of awareness, they worship the idols. And to really understand that the gods of the Canaanite people, they were agricultural people, so their gods were about the productivity of the land, and much of their worship had to do with sexuality and immorality. Prostitution in various forms, offering your children as a sacrifice so that you would have better crops, make more money.
Imagine that, offering your children for economic gain. Gee, we wouldn’t do that in the 21st century. And because the young, the generation who followed did not know the story, they drifted into the pleasure of worshiping the fertility gods of the nations around them. After all, they had homes, they didn’t have to go to battle, they hadn’t faced the brick pits of Egypt, they hadn’t lived in the desert and collected manna from the ground, and followed a pillar of fire or a pillar of cloud. They had an easier life. They had vineyards and crops and homes and cities. And they forfeited it to the judgment of God. It says, «The Lord handed them over who plundered them».
I spent a few weeks not long ago talking to you about the plundering of our nation. It’s happening before our very eyes and has been for quite some time. That pattern is repeated through the book of Judges. The judges that you know, if you have read your Bible, Gideon, Barack, Deborah, Samson, God would raise up leaders when those invading forces would be really exercising the judgment of God on the Hebrew people. Look in chapter 13, it says, «Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years».
God would raise up a leader, not always a godly leader. He didn’t always raise up, the last of the judges. Do you remember who the last of the judges was? Who was the judge to whom the tribal elders came and said, «We don’t want you to be judge over us anymore»? It was Samuel. Samuel was the last of the judges. A man who heard the voice of God. And Samuel complained to the Lord and God said to Samuel, «It’s not you they’re rejecting, it’s me. So, tell them what a king will do». They said we want to be like all the other peoples. And he told them and they said, «We want a king».
So, God told Samuel to anoint. Who was the first king? It’s not a trick question, Saul. Not the one who became the apostle, the one who became the king, Old Testament, King Saul. He stood head and shoulders above all the people. He wasn’t more godly than Samuel. He wasn’t more righteous than Samuel. He didn’t know the Lord better than Samuel. If God had been choosing the person who was closest to him that we have a presentation of, he would have orchestrated the circumstances for Samuel to be king. And Saul was overwhelmed with pride, and God said, «I’ve rejected him».
Now Saul wasn’t removed from the throne, but he was removed from God’s org chart. And God sent Samuel to anoint David to be king when he was just a shepherd boy. And David becomes the mightiest of the Israelite kings, but David is far from a choir boy. David’s not allowed to build the temple, but God says, «Because of the blood on his hands». He’s an adulterer? He’s a murderer? He’s a conniver? A violent guy. But God used them to bring leadership and deliverance to his people.
Every generation has to make a choice for themselves. It’s a very important point. We’ve lost sight of this. We’ve had such a focus, such an intense focus on personal salvation. We’ve had little, if any, awareness of generational responsibility. We just shrugged our shoulder, it doesn’t matter. It does matter, whether your children will know freedom or not has a great deal to do with what we instruct them about the Lord. We say, «Well, it doesn’t matter. We just want them to not go to hell». Well, you’d rather them not live lives of oppression and submission to ungodly things. And that necessitates us teaching them how to know the Lord. That’s almost totally absent from the public conversation.
And if we go back to the book of Judges, how many of you know the story of Samson? Most of us learned that in Sunday school. It’s kind of fun, strong guy. You know, Samson was not like heavily muscled up. He didn’t look like an NFL linebacker. Because if he looked like that, there would have been no question why he was strong. But the big question of Samson’s day is what’s the source of his strength? Well, if he had, you know, 36 inch biceps, we would have known what the source of his strength was. Samson looked a lot like you and me. And God used Samson to bring freedom to the people from the Philistines. But if you know the story very well, Samson was far from a stellar character. I mean, his moral compass was broken. Is that fair? And yet God used him to bring freedom to the people.
The people needed to choose God. I can give you King Josiah. Do you remember King Josiah? Became king when he was just a boy, and he ordered a remodeling of the Temple. The Temple had fallen into such disrepair, the doors didn’t work. And he ordered the Temple to be remodeled, and when they’re remodeling it, they found a copy of the books of Moses, they lost the Bible. I mean, you got to be in bad shape to lose the Bible and not know it. Gee, that sounds a lot like us. And when they read him from the Scripture, he tore his robes. It’s an expression of grief, of mourning. And he said, «The judgment of God will come to us».
And Josiah initiated a lengthy series of reforms. I wanted to put them in your notes, but they’re so long, it would have taken too long. He tore down the idols, he cut down the Asherah poles, all the things that were part of that Canaanite fertility cult, which was mostly about sexual immorality and pleasure, including the prostitutes quarters that were a part of the Temple. Now for that to have happened, there had to be a constituency that thought it was a good idea. There had to be some sort of priestly characters that were presiding over the places, using that immorality to gain authority. It was profitable. And the king tore it down, kind of like an executive order. No, no, it’s a serious point.
And when the king died, the next king was more wicked than those who’d come before him. Do you know why? Because the people had not had a change of heart. This is important for us. Because someone who has the courage to stand in public and say, «There’s right and wrong, and I choose right,» has very limited effectiveness if the people don’t repent. We can’t just live through sin, we have to say, «I was complicit. On my watch, we sacrificed 60 million babies. On my watch, we took Jesus out of the schools. On my watch, our universities became anti-Semitic propaganda pools». We have to own it. We have a leader these days. I don’t know, we’re just a couple of days in. I don’t know what the future will bring, but when I hear the President of the United States say, «There are only two genders».
And for the most part, the churches have been totally silent. I think, Lord, be merciful to us. You’ve raised up a voice not because his character is perhaps perfect, but he has the courage to speak the truth. I remember praying together as a community that the truth would be restored, that truth had fallen in the streets. I heard the president have the courage to say, «We will not use our federal dollars to teach DEI». I was stunned. It’s a godless, divisive, socialistic, it isn’t biblical, but our churches have been teaching it. Our Christian universities and Christian schools have embraced it. And it’s not enough for us to have a leader because leaders come and go. In our world and in the biblical, that’s the story, but the people have to choose. We have to teach our children. We have an assignment.
Matthew 5, this is Jesus again, «Blessed are you». How many of you want to do something that Jesus said would bring a blessing to you? About 10%. What do the rest of you want? If Jesus says that I’m gonna bless the people that do this, watch me go get in line. He said, «Blessed are you,» this is a part of the Sermon on the Mount, «when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me». We haven’t lived like that was a blessing. We’ve lived like that was something to be avoided. We’ve lived like we shouldn’t do that. We’ve lived like unity was more important than telling the truth. We’ve lived as if kindness was a greater value than telling the truth.
Because we understood that if we spoke the truth and we gave a biblical perspective on right and wrong, good and evil, marriage, human sexuality, that there would be people who didn’t like it. They would insult us, they would call us names. There might even be persecution, we could forfeit something. They would falsely say, imagine that, falsely say all kinds of evil against us because of our Jesus perspective. So, then we’re watching somebody who’s had every imaginable thing said about them. Jesus said, «There’s a blessing in that». If there’s a blessing if you do the right thing, you understand the opposite of that? There’s a curse if you don’t. «Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you».
You’re not unique. We’re not the first generation to face pressures. We’re just the current edition. This has been going on since the book of Judges and before. Remember, this is Jesus. Verse 13, now the rest of this, we know a little better, but the context of the rest of this is in that, you’ll be persecuted and hated. And they’ll say things about you that are not true. «You are the salt of the earth. And if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It’s no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men». You should be conscious of the fact that Jesus warned us about losing our saltiness. He talked to the church in Revelation about losing their passion, their first love.
They’ve lost their momentum. He said, «You’re lukewarm, I’m gonna spit you out». «You’re the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people give light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men». We haven’t been good at that. We’ve had a lot of bowls. We’ve had a lot of shades over our lights. You know, we don’t want to offend anybody. We don’t want to be obnoxious. We don’t wanna force our faith on anybody. We don’t wanna be judgy. We got a whole vocabulary to excuse the fact that we lost our saltiness. The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing, and we’ve done so much nothing that evil almost triumphed.
And now we have this rather awkward reminder, somebody telling the truth in the public square. I’m not sure how we’re gonna respond. We’re very early in this. It’s more probable that we will be offended than it is that we will repent. Dr. Fauci gets a pardon. Why? If we were following the science, there’s no need for that. And people know. Are we gonna tell the truth? We’ve subjected our children to mutilation. It was profitable. And we’ve known it was happening. We’re reluctant to speak to our schools about the inappropriate literature in them. I suspect because we’re way too exposed to inappropriate things on our own. Light and salt. What will we do now that the truth is told a bit? We can discredit the messenger.
Well, you mean like Samson? Or the apostle Paul? Or Mosses? It’s disruptive, it’s messy, it’s awkward. Yeah, remember when God recruited Moses? Is Exodus chapter 3, that whole burning bush thing, remember that? Kind of a dramatic little narrative. And he sends him back to get the slaves out of Egypt, then Moses rolls and you know, he’s reluctant, he didn’t want to go. He finally goes, he rolls into Pharaoh’s palace and he says, «Let these people go. God sent me, I got tricks». «You do»? «Let me show you». Remember what Moses said… I mean what Pharaoh said? Living Bible, «Fat chance». Remember what the people said? «It was better before you were here. It was better before you were here. We don’t like you».
God sent him. I’m thinking if God sent me with a message and tricks, that the people would be like having a parade for me. It was messy stuff. In fact, the whole journey that Moses was with them, there was always a segment of the people, there was always a segment of the people who said, «We don’t like you and we don’t like what you’re doing».
Well, they picked manna up off the ground that God provided and drank water that God provided for them in the desert. Their hearts were so far from the things of God that they would repeatedly say, day after day, «We don’t like you and we don’t like what you’re doing». Folks, we gotta make some decisions. This isn’t political. These are about biblical principles. Gender’s not confusing. We shouldn’t need to be told that by a politician. We should be echoing that message in our neighborhoods, in our family gatherings, in our kitchen tables, in our children’s schools.
I wanna pray with you before we go, but I just wanna remind you, we don’t have to outthink evil or outwork evil. We don’t have to be louder than evil. We need to understand the authority that is ours in Jesus’s name and the power of his shed blood, it changes everything. I wanna pray with you:
Father, I thank you that through the name of Jesus, we have been delivered out of the hand of the devil, that he has no power over us, no authority over us in Jesus’s name, and I pray that that truth would take root in our hearts and enable us to live with great boldness, in Jesus’s name, amen.
