Allen Jackson - On Assignment - Part 1
We’ve been working through a series on dynamic faith. The premise is that faith is not a static thing, it’s not a theoretical thing, that it’s intended to be about transformation. It’s given expression and action. It remains theoretical until it’s lived out. And in this particular session we want to talk about watchmen on assignment. I believe that’s an accurate description of the role we’ve all been given. And I’ll start in Matthew 24. It’s Jesus’s most lengthy prophetic discourse. We’re just gonna look at a half dozen verses. He said at that time, he’s talking about the conclusion of the age and that that’s a broad, you know, in Acts chapter 2, on the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up and used Joel chapter 2 that said, in the last days, and he used that perspective for that 1st century audience.
So I would caution you against being too narrow sometimes in your imagination of time, but in Matthew 24, Jesus is talking about the culmination of this age, and he said, «At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another». And that’s really the trifecta. He said, there’ll be an apostasy of falling away, people that have stood in the truth, that have been advocates for the truth, that have known the truth; they will fall away. But then he says, there’ll be two more characteristics. They’ll betray one another and they’ll hate one another. In its context, the suggestion seems to be there will be enough pressure, there’ll be enough opposition to the person of Jesus, that people will step away. And in stepping away, they’ll betray those who don’t. And they’ll hate those who remain. Then he says, «Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many».
Biblically, prophets are not primarily future tellers. The role of the prophet in Scripture is to deliver God’s perspective to the people of faith. The priests represent the people to God. The priests take the offerings to God, the sacrifices to God. You and I have a great High Priest, Jesus, that takes our prayers and presents them to the Father, but the prophet is to speak God’s truth to the people. Sometimes that has implications for what’s ahead, but it is primarily about the delivery of truth, so a false prophet is someone that you would expect to tell the truth who doesn’t. So I would encourage you to broaden your definition a little bit, not just from religious context, but any person in any role where the assignment is to be a truth teller and they don’t. They’re false prophets.
I think, we could say we live in a season where there is a proliferation of false prophets. And look at the consequence. Many false prophets will arise and mislead many. That’s that truth-telling component. They’re misleading people. And then Jesus said, «Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold». Not many, most. It’s a very significant distinction. «But the one who endures to the end will be saved, and this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come».
The penultimate sign is the proclamation of the gospel in the whole world. You know, I’ve heard that verse my entire life. I’ve heard many approaches to it. I can tell you where we are today and the unfolding of technology, the barriers of distance and language have been removed. Which is unimaginable. It wasn’t very long ago, if we were going to an unreached people group and we needed to translate the Scripture into their language, it was at least a ten-year project. And with the technology available to us today, those barriers have almost been totally removed, so the possibility of preaching the gospel in the whole world, it seems to be just at the doorstep for us. What I would call your attention to is verse 13. It says, «The one who endures to the end will be saved».
I don’t believe that you can maintain your salvation unless you’re willing to endure. Not in my opinion, it’s actually what Jesus said. But I don’t very often hear discussions that suggest to Christ followers that endurance will be required of us. You know how you learn to endure? By enduring. Don’t you wish there was a pill or a cream? Or some kind of aromatherapy? You know, I put the endurance scent on and I go to sleep, and I wake up and I’m just an endurer. Well, I think Jesus’s message is about this deterioration of so many conditions and the intensification of pressure upon the people of faith as we approach the end of the age. And the requirement that he tells to his closest friends is he said, it will require you to endure. I tell you that because I don’t want you to be surprised. If you say, «Well, it’s more difficult in some respects to be a Christ follower than it was at once,» okay. Let’s do it anyway.
«It’s more challenging. There’s more voices in opposition». Okay, let’s do it anyway. Let’s decide we will press through. I want to give you some ways to amplify your faith, to make the impact of it more personal, more dynamic, if you will. They’re not new concepts and I’m not going to belabor them with you, but I would submit to you that fasting and prayer changes the context of your faith. Fasting is not complicated, it’s just abstaining from food for spiritual purposes. It’s a lousy way to diet. But the pursuit of God and foregoing a meal and taking the time and energy we normally spend in the preparation and enjoyment of that meal in seeking God, reading your Bible, praying.
Well, it’s a biblical principle throughout both the Old and the New Testament. I gave you in Daniel chapter 9, and the context is probably helpful. It says, Daniel at the beginning of that 9th chapter says, he understood by studying Scripture that it was time for the Jewish people to go home in Daniel’s lifetime; he’s a slave in Babylon. It’s the exile. The Jewish people have been, by God, removed from the Promised Land. And the bulk of them have found their way to Babylon, where they’ve been enslaved. And the time for that is over, Daniel discovered in reading Jeremiah. And when he discovered that, it says that he began to do something. If it had been us, we would have posted it on social media or bought stock in U-Haul or going on the banquet circuit with our new revelation. But Daniel did something differently.
It’s in your notes in verse 3, he said, «I turned to the Lord and pleaded with him in prayer and in petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and in ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed: 'O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands.'» When Daniel understood something from Scripture, he had a revelation, an insight, a breakthrough, his response was one of humility. He began to fast and pray.
See, when God gives you understanding and insight, it’s not necessarily time for a party and a loud declaration, it’s time to seek God as to how that thing will unfold. The rest of the story, if you will. Daniel is a man of tremendous accomplishment, great insight, tremendous spiritual gifts, but he lived his entire life as a slave. With significant physical suffering and almost constant opposition. And yet there are multiple times when an angel is sent to Daniel, an archangel, and the angel informs him that he’s highly valued in heaven, highly esteemed by God. And in reality, God gives to Daniel revelations of what will come in years still ahead of us.
Daniel was a trusted enough friend of God that God would entrust him with insight into what would come at the end of the age. Dynamic faith. See, I’m inviting you to an imagination of your relationship with the Lord that is more than about getting your needs met and getting your way with a little assistance from heaven. It is leading a life of faith that enables the purposes of God to flow through your life in such a way that you make a generational difference, and if God chooses to make a difference for generations to come. We don’t do that, folks. What we can do is seek the Lord. And if you’ve never included fasting in your spiritual disciplines list, I would commend it to you. It’s a game changer. If you’ve never fasted, don’t start with a 40-day fast. It’s like if you’ve never jogged, you don’t want to start with an Ironman. You might just start by walking a mile.
And if you’ve never fasted, maybe you start with the meal. And you begin to see how you react and how your body acclimates. It’s not easy. You know, I found that I always impute to others an ease, when they’re doing things that require discipline. If I see somebody that runs all the time, I think, oh they must like running. No. I think they’ve embraced the discipline. And so I don’t think fasting is ever easy. I think it’s something that is you can learn, but I would commend it to you. I would add to that this notion of not just prayer but a prayer watch. Missing sleep to pray and seek the Lord. I don’t mean because you couldn’t sleep 'cause you ate too much pizza or you’re anxious, but I mean, purposefully taking time that would normally be a rest time and you use it to seek the Lord.
From time to time around here, we will schedule a night of prayer, but I wanna encourage you not to wait for a church-wide effort. A church-wide effort should simply be a consolidation of a practice that is incorporated into the life of the church. You know, biblically, there’s this idea of four watches of the night. You’ll read it a lot of times through the New Testament. The 6 to 9 p.m. is the first watch, and 9 p.m. to midnight is the second watch. Midnight to 3 a.m. is the third watch and obviously 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. is the fourth watch. In John chapter 10, Jesus uses this idea. He says, «The watchman opens the gate for him». He’s speaking of himself. «And the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out».
I would point out to you that in Jesus, the imagery he’s using, the watchman is the gatekeeper. The watchman opens the gate. So when we’re willing to forego a bit of rest to seek the Lord, that we open the doors of possibility for the purposes of God, not just for ourselves but beyond ourselves. See, we want to be men and women who understand that the assignment of our life is more than our personal satisfaction, that there’s a kingdom component to who we are, that it’s more than just me and mine and what I want and what I would desire, that we actually spend time and energy and effort in the pursuit of God so that his purposes might break forth in our generation. Gatekeepers, I love that imagination.
Are you willing to imagine the community in which we live, that we’re gatekeepers if things have come through the gate that you didn’t want, that we could do a better job as gatekeepers, that it’s time to pray in some new ways to fast and to watch and to pray and to seek the Lord so that the purposes of God might take root in our community, in our generation? Or do you think you just hire people like me for that? Ezekiel chapter 33 is actually a lengthy discourse, a message that God has given to his covenant people about the role of watchmen. And I gave you just a verse, but there’s actually a very extended conversation if you want to go and read it at your leisure, but this is a part of what the Lord said.
«If the watchman sees the sword coming and he doesn’t blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood». Wow. The assignment comes with accountability. It’s not a passive assignment, «Oh, you can be the watchman when you want to». You know, when you’re in the mood, when it’s convenient, when it fits into your schedule. We have an assignment to be on the alert for ungodliness. To be salt and light is not when it’s convenient for us. We don’t extinguish the light because there’s an economic opportunity that we don’t want to forfeit, so we’ll just turn our light down for a little while, but we’ll turn it back up and we get to church.
We’re called to be salt and light, to be difference makers, to be men and women standing on the walls on behalf of the kingdom of Almighty God. In Mark 14, there’s an interesting application of this. It’s Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. It’s the evening he’s going to be betrayed. You know the drama. It fits into the season of the year very well. Jesus is praying, «Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; not what I will, but what You will». You know the famous line. «And He came and he found them sleeping». Peter, James, and John. «And he said to Peter, 'Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.'»
Now Jesus is praying initially, as we understood it, for himself. «Father, you know, I don’t wanna do this. If there’s any other way, I want to go that way, but at the end of the discussion, I would rather have your will than my will». And when he’s completed that, he comes back to see his friends, and his friends are sleeping, and he says something to Simon Peter that is noteworthy. He said, «Couldn’t you keep watch with me for an hour? The expectation is you would understand the significance of this moment». But clearly Jesus isn’t asking him to pray for him, for Jesus. He said, Simon, «Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak».
A part of this notion of fasting and praying is bringing discipline to our old fleshly nature, old carnal nature that really demands that it be preeminent. That its desires, its initiative, its thoughts be given first place in the ordering of our lives; and a part of discipleship, a part of learning to follow the Lord and seek the Lord, of being trustworthy with the assignments of the Lord is saying to our old physical carnal selves: «You don’t have the ascendancy». And fasting and praying, and watching and praying are ways to to yield that part of us. Jesus knew what awaited him, both the suffering and the reward, but it intrigues me that he’s concerned that Peter would invest the effort in prayer that would enable Peter to survive the ordeal which he faced.
See, when Jesus intercedes for us, I don’t believe that he always intercedes that we would just be delivered out of the furnace or delivered from the trauma. I think sometimes he prays for us that we will endure because we read that in Matthew 24. He said, the one who endures to the end will be what? Saved. In the language of Corinthians, run in such a way as to get the prize. Well, I’d just rather not run. Couldn’t I just have a prize? Is there a participation trophy line? There’s not. This notion of being a watchman, of an assignment, of monitoring, of paying attention, of recognizing that we’ve been called to be the conscience of our cultures, it’s not my idea. Dr. King said it. Under far more stress and pressure, it cost him his life. But he announced that there was a responsibility of the church to be the conscience of the culture.
You see, it was the authority of Scripture that thundered against the sin. Wasn’t just Dr. King. Long before we had electronic surveillance, Google monitoring our location, or smartphones tracking our movements, and now even doorbells that have cameras in them, we had an old school way of protecting ourselves. People were designated as watchmen. And the assignment was pretty simple. We were to stay vigilant, to be alert, and to watch for the approach of danger. If a threat was present, sound the alarm, warn the people, awaken those sleeping, call everyone to a state of readiness. It wasn’t the government’s response or their responsibility. We understood, for self-preservation in community we needed watchmen. And it was a rotational responsibility.
One of the assignments given to the church is to be watchmen. We’re assigned to watch over our hearts, our families, our schools, our cities, and our nation. I don’t believe we can live in a community, where the schools are filled with ungodliness and perversion and be silent. I think we’re forfeiting our assignment as watchmen. And if we ignore our assignment, God has some very stern words. The assignment shouldn’t be considered optional, nor should it, I believe, be considered a value-neutral assignment. We don’t want our opinions to be… what nonsense. Something shrouded in the nebulous ether of everyone should be allowed to do whatever pleases them.
That’s a purposeful abandonment of the principles of our faith. In reality, the idea of watchman is really not so old school. For all of our new high tech digital tools, to be effective, they have to be monitored, they have to be watched, analyzed, and decisions made about the information that is gathered. Perhaps even more distressing than the reach of our new digital monitors and their overlords, is the idea that someone is analyzing your activity, paying attention to your interests and your habits. They are making very deliberate efforts to impact how you think, to determine what information is available to you, and to shape your behavior. I promise. And somehow the church has lost the notion that we should use our voices and our influence to try to influence the behaviors of others.
I hear Christians say, «Well, I don’t wanna be judgy. No, I just want to be truthful». Your digital masters, they wanna be judgy. They want to influence what you think, how you feel, how you shop, what you see. They’re not apologetic about this. In fact, they charge you for the privilege of you being monitored. First, we purchased the devices from these new watchmen, smartphones, personal digital assistants for our home, our Google Nest video doorbell. Then we pay a monthly fee to ensure someone is listening. Oh sure, there are some conveniences to this new arrangement. You can adjust your thermostat before you arrive home. Because if we’re honest, very few things are more stressful than arriving home to a house that’s five degrees cooler than your preferred temperature.
The enticement is more security and greater convenience. Well, if you’ll allow me to ask a couple of questions, what are you willing to sacrifice for greater convenience? Privacy, the right to your information, freedom, liberty. They’re in the balance. The second question is related. Do you really believe that our new watchmen are committed to your personal development or your family’s well-being? For the security of our communities. You know, in the current iteration of all of this, our government standing up for the citizens of our country has caused great outrage from some. Google monitoring us doesn’t seem to. But the government looking out for the interest of citizens seems to cause some extreme angst.
I mean, the debate «legal versus illegal citizens» seems to be presented as if it is some kind of a divisive issue. Folks, it should not be divisive. Illegal is wrong. Illegal withdrawals from the bank are wrong. Illegal withdrawals of food from the grocery store are wrong. Demanding the rights of citizens when you are, in fact, not a citizen is wrong. The one of the week is reciprocal tariffs. Standing up for US citizens, saying to foreign governments, «You will not take unfair advantage of us» seems to be some radical new idea that we’re not sure how to wrap our minds around. It at least got Elon Musk and the DOGE team off the headlines for a day or two. For the past few weeks, they’ve been the villains exposing graft, theft, and incompetence. It is the literal looting of America by the hundreds of billions of dollars.
And for the effort they have made in identifying those places where our dollars have been very generously wasted or grafted, they’ve been met with burning vehicles, dealerships being assaulted. And most shockingly, it’s been winked at by the media and by many people in very powerful positions. Watchmen. We can’t just watch these things happen, we have to use our voices and engage in the conversations. The line we have used around here for quite a season now is to watch, listen, think, and act. Not just observe and be quiet. We have to engage. It’s not a political issue, it’s a spiritual issue. Stealing is not a political issue, it’s a spiritual problem. Taking things that don’t belong to you, that you don’t deserve, that you don’t have a right to, that’s not a choice about compassion. That’s a moral choice.
You know, I really dislike the idea of a religious lecture. I believe the point of ministry or opening the Word of God is to be transformed by it. So before we go, I want to give you two invitations. One’s a prayer I’m going to pray with you, but the other is our offer this month. The book is «The Lord is my Shepherd» by my friend Rob Morgan. It’s an important word in this season to understand God’s direction, his abiding presence, his protection. We all need that. It’ll be a blessing in your life. It’s something I think you’ll want to share with some friends. But I want to pray with you before we go, that we’ll know we’re not alone.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for the resources you give us, for the voices that you provide in our lives, that in a world of turmoil and confusion and, honestly, great fear, that your calm, assuring voice guides us, and I thank you for it today. Thank you for your faithfulness. In Jesus’s name, amen.