Allen Jackson - Finish the Course - Part 2
Please understand God’s attitude has not changed. He will not force the glory of his kingdom upon you. He won’t force transformation upon you. He won’t force obedience upon you. He will put before you his invitations. He’ll put the prompting of his Spirit within you. He’ll even provide angelic support to help you. But you and I have to choose. We have to choose a dynamic faith. We have to choose to finish well. We have to choose not to conform to the prevailing standards of this present age. We have to decide we won’t freeze time. This is a very human response. It’s a very typical response among people of faith. I can give you biblical examples from our heroes. Mark chapter 9, «Jesus took Peter, James and John with him». They’re on the inner circle. «We’re gonna leave the other nine, you three come with me,» wow.
«And he led them up on a high mountain, where they were all alone and he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, 'Rabbi, it’s good for us to be here.'» It’s really good that we’re here for this. «'Let’s put up three shelters: one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.' (He didn’t know what to say, they were so frightened.)» Mark slipped that in. It’s in parenthesis, so it’s kind of his addition after the fact. And Peter had to tell him. Mark wasn’t there. I mean, Peter, James, or John had to tell the story. They were the only ones that were there. It’s terrifying, frightening. But it was a moment. Peter said, «Well, we could build a shelter».
I’ve always wondered how they knew it was Moses and Elijah. They’d been dead a long time. And their pictures had been deleted from the cloud so they hadn’t seen them. You suppose they had big laminated name tags? «Mo». I don’t know. Did they do introductions? «Hi, Moses». «Oh, very nice to meet you, sir. Heard much about you». I don’t know. But this idea, you know, we need a screenshot of this. We won’t remember where we left the car. Luke chapter 4, it’s a very different setting, but it’s a similar idea. «When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. Beyond that, demons came out of many people, shouting, 'You’re the Son of God! ' But he rebuked them and wouldn’t allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah. And at daybreak Jesus went out to a solitary place and the people came looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving».
Oh, we don’t want you to go. Please don’t go. Now, they didn’t say this everywhere he went. When he ministered to the man who was demonized that lived amongst the tombs and he was delivered and the legion of spirits left, they begged him to leave there. But in this particular community they had a little more situational awareness. They understood what Jesus’s presence represented, no sickness, no demonic torment, peace and hope, and they said, «Oh please, please don’t leave. We’ve found the formula. We have somebody in our midst that will solve all, don’t leave, please. Please, right here, stay right here». Watch what Jesus said to them. «He said, 'No, I must preach the good news of the kingdom to the other towns also, because that’s why I was sent.' And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea».
He’d shown them a pathway. He’d shown them how to run the race. He’d shown them the authority of his kingdom. He’d shown them a power beyond just studying Torah and sitting in synagogue, and he said, «You can maintain the momentum. Now you run your race, but I’m not gonna stay». We can’t freeze this moment in time. And I think far too often we get caught with that, so some observations to kind of walk towards a conclusion. I’m not there yet, don’t get excited. But the first I’ve already touched, you can’t freeze time. You can’t do that. There’s no ideal moment. I don’t like the way we describe it. As I listen to the way we interact, you know, I’ll hear grandparents say to a grandchild, you know, «High school are the best years of your life».
Well, I hope high school are really good years, but I don’t want them to think they’re the best years. That’s awful. «Well, I’m 18 and I guess it’s all over». And there’s a powerful tendency to do that. I think we have to recognize that in the moment God has given us there’s an opportunity for the kingdom. Make decisions each moment of your life that give possibility to your future. Make decisions every day that make your future pregnant with the possibilities of the kingdom of God. I know that’ll make you a little atypical. Go be atypical for Jesus. I mean, you know, we’ve all seen those picnic pictures, but if you’ve ever had a picnic, you know the real story. Come on, they’re not as good as the picture.
You had to lug all the stuff, you had to fix the food, and then pack it up, and then put it in a vehicle and then carry it someplace else and then reload it to a new location and then try to convince the people that they should eat what you fixed for them and they don’t like it and didn’t you bring this, and you always forget something. Kathy and I were first married. We were working, our jobs had different schedules. I have weekend assignments that are a little difficult and her schedule was more focused on weekdays so we were kind of working in opposite schedules. And one Friday evening I decided when she got off work we’d have a picnic. You’re already laughing. That’s impolite.
So in my bumbling kind of a way and you don’t need much imagination, you know, I picked a spot by a creek. Peaceful, I did all the food prep, all the things that I thought she would like. I had candles, a little fire. I was good. Yeah, I’m telling you, ah, we were… it was good. Everything was working. Sun was setting, the temperature was right, the insects weren’t bad. We were golden. And a little field mouse ran right across the place where we were. Picnic’s over. It doesn’t matter what the food is, whatever moment, no more, it didn’t matter how many candles you had, there is a mouse on the property. Now, picture 30 seconds before that. You’ve all been to that picnic. Picture looks good, but by the time you get it back home and cleaned up and the dishes put away, you’re like, «Next week, we’re just gonna DoorDash Chick-fil-A».
Well, here’s the reality of this. We serve a living God, and life creates growth and movement, and to follow God is to grow, and to experience him is about new and fresh and dynamic things. Hebrews 3, this is the New Testament commentary on what I just read you a moment ago from the book of Numbers. God said, «That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they haven’t known my ways.'» They didn’t know my ways. I delivered them from the brick pits of Egypt, I showed them the plagues, I parted the Red Sea, I fed them manna, I gave them water from the rock, there weren’t any sick people amongst them, their sandals didn’t wear out, and they didn’t learn anything about my character. «They didn’t know my ways, so I declared on an oath in my anger, 'They will never enter my rest.'»
Folks, I don’t wanna be that. Well, I may descend into that for a moment. I may get grumpy or whatever, but I want to come out of that place and say, «No, no, let’s go». There’s a second observation. Movement causes anxiety. It just does. You have to disrupt your equilibrium, you’ve got to get off balance. You need a little friction. You’re not sure what’s ahead. How are we gonna stop if we get to moving? Movement just causes anxiety. Some of us are just against change, no matter which one it is, we’re just against it. Because we remember one that wasn’t good. Well, the third observation I would give you, and this is critical, growth isn’t optional in the kingdom of God. Growth really is not optional.
You see, it’s not what we do for God that transforms us, but it is in the challenge of doing that we experience God and our relationship with him is transformed. At the end of the day, God doesn’t need me to do anything. He don’t need my strength or my intellect or my resources or my time or my attention… God doesn’t need that from me. He made me out of dust. He could make 100,000 more. I need God. And in saying yes to him and joining him through all the muddy stuff that life brings and the uncertainty and the mistakes and the failures and the learning experiences and the mice and the stuff, we keep moving forward. I would submit to you as a community of faith, these are kind of Kodak days for us. God’s doing remarkable things. I can’t really think of a season in our journey where we’ve been more blessed.
But I’m gonna tell you the truth. If I get to vote, we’re about ready to dash that Kodak moment. We’re not trying to freeze it, we wanna walk out of the snapshot. We wanna move from the safe waters of the harbor into some uncharted places because God’s still moving in the Earth. We need the name of Jesus to be lifted up and the kingdom of God to be extended, so it isn’t just status quo. We’ve already started. We’re rearranging our campus. We had entrances closed and new roads open. «Oh no, I don’t like that road. It goes around. I used to go straight, now I go around. Why do I have to go around? Can I go straight? Whose idea was it? I don’t know if I like that or not». I get it, it’s not the first new road. «You had to completely disrupt a pasture filled with cattle»?
Put up a new gate. Our world is undergoing tremendous change. I have more information on my phone than in most of the libraries that I used to love to go visit. It’s unbelievable what is happening. Distance and language no longer prevent us from sharing the gospel anywhere in the world. We can do it from our campus across any language, to people all over the globe. It’s unimaginable. We used to talk about that in terms of decades. And now we can turn that on in matters of moments. We want to be certain to follow God as he leads us through this season, so that age-old question comes back up, when’s enough enough? Or when do we say, «We like it pretty good here»?
And that’s a very real challenge. That’s a very local question, like it was a local question for those former slaves of Egypt. Life was better than they’d had it in hundreds of years. They had food to eat, they weren’t being forced to do harsh labor. They weren’t being mistreated. Their women weren’t being abused, their children weren’t being enslaved. It was better than it had ever been, and if they took on the invitation that God put before them, it was uncertain. But what was certain is there would be sacrifices demanded and they said, «We don’t wanna make the sacrifices,» and God was so angry with them, he said, «You can die right where you are».
So it doesn’t take much imagination for me to get the contemporary examples of that. My parents had a Bible study in their home for a dozen years. It was a very good Bible study. Dozens and dozens of people came. There were all sorts of answers to prayer. There were God stories and life change. Ninety-nine percent of the experiences I’ve had, that would be the end of that narrative. But somewhere in the midst of that group of people, someone said, «Well, couldn’t we meet on Sundays and become a church»? And that little home Bible study became a church. Boy, that changed the whole discussion. And I was here when we needed a place to begin to build a building and we were in a rented room and they said, «We need to buy some land».
And at that time, conventional wisdom said church never would need more than 5 acres of land. You never need more than that. And so the search started around the community. The decision was to purchase 28 acres. To do that, it had to be in the country. You didn’t buy land in the country and put a church on it. They bought a cotton field and put a tent up. It was embarrassing. People talked, trust me. And I sat with a group of people and a decade into that journey after the building was built and there was actually carpet in it, they went a lot of years with no carpet. And they said, «We believe over the next decade, God would help us to reach our community, that we could see 2,000 people join us for an Easter service».
They had about 200 people on the weekends at the time. They said, «No, we’d have to change, we’d have to be willing to be involved in some different ways. We have to learn new people’s names. And if another 100 people came, it might change this place». It would. 1994, there’s a little gray house on campus, we call it the lighthouse. It was the first addition we made to that original 28 acres. There was a house in the middle of the campus that had a 2-acre tract around it, a little house. The purchase price was $47,000. Well, we talked about that long enough to have built one. But at the time it seemed like a really big step. «What would we… do we need 2 more acres? We got 28 acres. What can we do with that»?
It was a struggle. By the end of the '90s, we were outgrowing our classrooms. Our children’s classrooms really weren’t great. They didn’t have windows in them. They just weren’t a good environment for learning. It wasn’t the best space and we thought, you know, we were so happy to have a room and not be in a tent, we didn’t care if there was a window, but it’s a new season and God’s put more children than we ever thought we would see. Should we build classrooms for kids that are, like, pleasant places for them? That would take money. Construction’s a hassle. You have to get permissions. We began to build classrooms for kids. I could walk you back through that, but I wanna ask you a question. Suppose that group in 1980 had said, «No, we like our little small group. It’s not our… we kind of like the routine. We rotate snacks». Because at the end of every group they had cookies and iced tea because I got the leftovers.
My brothers and I were childcare. I remember those days. Or suppose the group in '96 had said, «No, we don’t want to build any more classrooms for kids. Those are good enough. It’s better than a tent. They’re not using portable bathrooms anymore,» never mind there was only one bathroom for all the little kids, «but you know, hey, lines are character building». Well, if anywhere along that journey, if the group of people that were gathered hadn’t said, «No, no, we’ll say yes to that,» we wouldn’t be in this place today. Somebody made a sacrifice along that journey. I for one am grateful for every generation of people that kept raising their hand and said, «Yeah, we’ll follow the Lord on that».
Now, church world I know about. I’m not an expert on government efficiency. They haven’t invited me to DOGE, thank God. But I can tell you this, when a church turns inward, it sows the seeds of death. When the church turns out, there’s new life, there’s new energy, there’s new hope for tomorrow. It’s true corporately, it’s true personally. It’s true for our families. It’s very important. The cornerstone of this whole thing is the benefit of what it means to be in Christ, and it isn’t just about a ticket for eternity, it’s about how we’re gonna run the race. I’m going to lead my life day by day, week by week, year by year, as if I’m in Christ for the glory of his kingdom. It’s biblical.
Look at your notes. 2 Peter chapter 1, «His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness, so that through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness, through these, he’s given us very great and precious promises, so that you can participate in divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires». Kind of fancy language, but this is Peter. It’s the plainest language of the New Testament. He doesn’t use fancy words like Paul. In fact, he said, «Paul writes some complicated stuff». But Peter, he makes two statements, but they’re both made in the perfect tense, which, I know, but it just means it’s already happened. Hard stop. It’s not ongoing. It isn’t going to be more fully accomplished. It has been fully achieved. They’re in the perfect tense. Did you catch them? «He has given us everything we need for life and godliness».
It’s there. The same God that gave us manna in the desert and kept us healthy and didn’t let our clothes wear out is the same God that will help us when we cross the Jordan and we face the giants of Jericho. «He has given us everything we need». We’ve got a story that suggests that. But we feel the anxiety of movement because we know the familiarity of the past. And then Peter said, «He’s given us his very great and precious promises». See, to the new covenant people of faith, God has not given us a Promised Land. We’re watching Israel. God gave the Jewish people that little strip of land at the end of the Mediterranean to Abraham and his descendants forever. And he could care less about the United Nations. Iran saying they’re gonna drive them out does not cause the halls of heaven to be anxious. It should cause the mullahs of Iran to be anxious.
But God did not give to you and me a piece of land. He didn’t promise us a piece of terra firma, but what he did give to us was the land of his promises. And I have many, many friends in Israel. I have walked with them now for decades, and I can tell you it takes everything they’re capable of to occupy their inheritance. They send their children and their grandchildren into the military and they stand watch on the front lines. It takes an enormous amount of their economic attention. They do it without very much support from the global community. American administrations change frequently and some are supportive and some are very much not. If my friends in Israel have to do that, it helps me understand what will be required of you and me to occupy the promises of God. They will not fill our lives and the lives of our children and our grandchildren easily or simply or without effort or without determination.
What did Paul say? «Run in such a way so you get the prize». I was recruited once many years ago to be on a cross country team. I wanted to be on the basketball team. I was on the basketball team. This was back when the only team was if you played for the school. This was really a long time ago, we had peach baskets on the wall. The basketball coach came to me and he said, «Allen, I want you to run cross country». He said, «We need a couple more people and I think you should do that,» and I said, «No, I’m good, thank you». He said, «No, no, Allen, I want you to run cross country,» and I said, «No really. I’ll run your sprints, but I’m not running cross country». He said, «Are you gonna play basketball»? «Yes sir». «Then you’re gonna run cross country». «Great idea, Coach».
Well, at that time it was a 3-mile race and it was over, it wasn’t a track, you ran over hill and dale and so the coach was at the beginning. Well, it didn’t take me too long to figure out, I could run a while and he couldn’t see me. So after that it was just whatever I felt like. And I didn’t always feel like maximum effort, and that stopwatch thing, that’s a problem. But I wasn’t running to get the prize.
Folks, I don’t wanna… we lead our lives with the Lord like that. «I’m born again. I’m on the team. I’ve just accepted this little assignment as an interim because there’s other things I really wanna do. And if eyes are on, I’ll kind of cooperate, but it’s not that critical». I don’t intend to run my race that way. I’m grateful to be in the midst of a community of people who don’t run their race that way.
God has given us everything we need. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. Doesn’t mean we’ll always get it right. It doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges or hurdles or obstacles. But God will help us. He delivered us from Egyptian slavery to bring us into a Promised Land. He delivered us from a life of bondage to sin so that the glory of his kingdom could be revealed through us. «Run in such a way as to get the prize». I want to close with a prayer. I brought it for you. Why don’t you stand with me? Have you found it? If you’re at home, you can say it with us. We can hear you right through that screen. Not really.
Heavenly Father, thank you for your great provision for my life. You’ve not left me alone or uncared for but you have made me a participant in your eternal purposes. You’ve called me out of darkness and provided for my justification. Help me to walk in the light and to choose paths of righteousness. Deliver me from evil and restore the joy of my salvation, in Jesus’s name, amen.