Allen Jackson - Spiritual Authority and Our Well-being - Part 1
Everywhere you go, you find men and women with a heart for the kingdom of God. And we have different stories and different backgrounds and different on ramps, but what joins us together is that passion for the kingdom of God and the recognition that Jesus has changed our lives and we wanna share that with another person. It’s not about joining a denomination or getting your systematic theology just absolutely dialed in. I’m not opposed to those things, but it’s the passion we carry for the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And when you meet somebody that has that, you want to spend time with them. Because it not only sharpens your own character, it reminds you that there are people with great enthusiasm.
I’m tired of seeing people more excited for evil than the people that call themselves Christ followers are for Jesus. But that’s not my topic. I want to continue what we worked on in the previous couple of sessions, under this kind of broad heading of ideas, understanding, and revelations, and it’s really a little personal paradigm. I told you I have this habit if I get an idea, and the people that work with me kind of flinch. My poor bride, 'cause, you know, we’ll be in a movie and I’ll say, «I’ve got an idea. Do you have something I could write on»? Because I learned if I don’t write them down I’ll lose them. Or I mean, I’d be on a roller coaster and say, «I got an idea». And then she just rolls her eyes at this point, «Yeah, here’s a piece of paper, so». But if you go beyond the idea, understanding is when you put experience around an idea, you actually do something with it.
And sometimes the ideas turn into something that’s helpful and sometimes not so much, but you gain some understanding when you put some effort around an idea. Don’t just be an idea person, be a person who does something. You know, I read once that Thomas Jefferson, not Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison. He developed the light bulb or was credited with it, and he’d failed over 900 times and a reporter asked him after he’d finally succeeded, did he get discouraged? And he said, «I didn’t get discouraged». He said, «There’s just 900 steps in developing a light bulb». And as Christ followers, sometimes we get some really weird ideas in our heads, you know, «I tried it and it didn’t work».
What do you mean? If you’d had that attitude about walking, you’d still be crawling. And so an idea that’s wedded to experience and some perseverance can lead to some really transformational things. And then there’s another category altogether and it’s those revelations. It’s those places when God gives you insider understanding, not the result of sitting down at the desk and working your way through the facts and doing the research. There’s times that God gives you insight and if you’re in the habit of reading your Bible, and I pray you are, you know what I’m talking about because there’s times you’ll read a passage that you’ve read 100 times before and there’ll be a verse in there as if it’s illuminated that day when you read it. And it won’t be a historical thing.
It’ll have some implication for who you are and where you are and what you’re doing. And in the world we’re in today there is more messaging than any time in human history. There’s more messaging washing over us because of those little handheld computers that we keep our noses buried in and the connectivity that they bring and the ability to have a phone that will follow you wherever you go and listen to everything you say and repeat it. The messaging that cascades over us, in my imagination it’s like you’re standing under Niagara Falls. And that messaging is just cascading over us and the overwhelming majority of it is not based on a biblical worldview. And whether you’re conscious of it or not, that torrent of messaging is pushing you away from that biblical worldview, the essential person of Jesus and what it means to yield to him. And you say, «Well, I’m not affected by the med… I don’t watch the news. I don’t read newspapers. I don’t pay any attention».
In my imagination if you’ll allow me to stay with the waterfall, it’s like you’re standing under Niagara Falls going, «I’m not getting wet». It’s impossible because even if you manage to not get wet or you’re not listening to the news or reading the news or whatever, the people that you interact with are and they’re repeating to you the messaging and the worldview shifts that they’re having and so we see things being redefined. Marriage is being redefined. Marriage is God’s idea, folks. It’s not up to us to define it. I mean, as I’ve said many times, that’s not a political discussion, that’s a biblical discussion. The family is not just under assault, it’s been deconstructed. Our birth rates are at historic lows, single parent families are at historic highs.
The reason we’ve arrived at place where hospitals are doing mutilating our teenagers and calling it health care, and segments of the health care industry are supporting it, the reason we could be that confused, biology, biological sex is not a confusing topic. I’m not a sophisticated person. My father was a veterinarian. I figured that out in the barnyard. But the reason we got to this place is the church hasn’t had the courage to talk about gender roles biblically and so that biblical worldview has been pushed so far to the periphery of our culture that we’ve lost our bearings on the most fundamental things of our lives. God chooses our biological sect. We don’t. When we rebel against that, we’re rebelling against the sovereignty of God.
It’s not about lesser or greater. We’re messed up on this. It’s not that men are better and women are lesser. Wrong conversation. Marriage is not a competition. We’re made in one flesh, it’s a covenant to become something together. It’s been so perverted because that messaging has cascaded over us and it has deeply infiltrated the church and there’s tragically not enough courage to talk about it. So I picked up a bucket full of these ideas and understandings and revelations that are foundational to us. We started in on them in the previous sessions, and I wanna continue. They’re not all for the… I’m not really trying to exhaust the topics. I’m just kind of re-establishing them in your thoughts and your imaginations.
So we’re gonna look at a couple of things in this session that aren’t necessarily directly related. I think they support one another. But they’re ideas and understandings and if you’ll allow the Spirit of God, I believe he’ll even bring revelation to you on the topics that are essential for us to being salt and light in this generation. We need a more courageous church than we’re accustomed to watching over these last few years. Not an angry church, not a belligerent church, certainly not a violent church, but we’re gonna have to have a different kind of determination. When they say to me, you know, «Jesus isn’t welcome here,» I’m going, «Well, not in your opinion. But I’m here and if I’m here he’s welcome here. So he and I are coming in». Nah, I don’t wanna go there. I don’t wanna spend my time there.
So I want to start with this idea that our God is a God that’s interested in your wellness, your well-being. Yes, he wants you to go to heaven. I mean, absolutely. Jesus died on the cross, he exhausted the curse of sin so that we could be reconciled to God. That has consequences for all eternity. But it doesn’t make sense to me to trust God for your eternity if you’re not trusting him with today. If you don’t imagine God is trustworthy enough today to serve him today and tomorrow, why would you trust him for eternity?
So you want to learn to trust him today and tomorrow with your best interest at heart each day, so that that trust transfer is increased every day incrementally. You want to trust him more tomorrow than you did today and the next day to an even greater degree, it’s incremental. But as you learn, trust is something that is built, it’s established. You don’t just give it away, that’s reckless. And you want to establish more trust in God every day. And we’ve been too divided, too subdivided, in the body of Christ over things, you know, I don’t believe that. I don’t think that’s a helpful answer. The question is, «Well, what’s biblical? What’s the scripture say»? You know, we’ll say, «Well, the church I go to, we don’t believe that».
Well, no single church has got it all right. We’re a bunch of cracked pots. Barry mentioned that a while ago. Well, he said we were pots. I told you we were cracked. It’s the rest of the passage. Paul said God didn’t recruit from the nobility or the crazy smart people. He chose the weak and the foolish and the cracked pots to make something extraordinary with us. So I wanna take a minute and talk about this idea, why it is that we believe God wants us well. Christians, we get some goofy ideas on this. Most of you know my own spiritual journey started when God miraculously got involved in my family’s health and he restored my mom’s health and, you know, the doctor said she had 6 months to live and they missed it a little bit. She lived over more than 50 years after that, so. I’m grateful for that, but the bigger picture is really helpful to me and when this broke through in my heart, it really was a revelation to me. God designed all of creation to heal.
You know, where Kathy and I, our house, there’s some really old trees, and they’re there probably because the soil was so rocky it couldn’t be plowed. So decades ago when most of this was still farmland around here they couldn’t plow where these trees were, there was so much rock. But there’s these enormous trees and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at them and walking around them. They fascinate me. I mean, they’re, but all of them have great wounds on them. I don’t know what happened. But you can tell that they’ve been severely wounded but the bark’s grown over it or it’s, I mean, God created everything in the earth to heal. If we cut our finger, we don’t, «Oh, I’m gonna lose that one».
Well, you know, if you get your mom to kiss it, that’ll make it better, but if that won’t work, you know, you put a Flintstone’s band-aid on it, now you’re golden. And I mean, two band-aids is better, but I mean you just, you have that expectation and we look at that and we go, «Oh». No, that’s a really big deal. You drop your iPhone and the screen breaks, you don’t go put it in the dark for 3 days and expect it to heal. And it’s the thumbprint of God on his creation. Even if we do things incredibly destructive to a body of water or a river or these, you know, we’ve seen some ecological disasters. And if we will just stop the destruction, God designed a system that will revitalize and restore and renew.
So when you and I talk about inviting God into our lives, into our homes, or to our physical bodies, to ask him to bring healing, we’re doing something that is completely consistent with the character of God as it’s been made known to us. It doesn’t make you the lunatic fringe or the bizarre edge and then we start saying, «Well, you know, I prayed for somebody and they didn’t get well». You’ve tried cooking meals that turned out awful. But you didn’t quit eating. We get some really goofy notions. Folks, we don’t manipulate God. He’s not at your beck and call.
In his grace and mercy, he responds to us, he answers prayers, he’ll reveal himself to us, but the Bible says that we have to seek him. Says that he’s the rewarder of those that diligently seek him. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said if you hunger and thirst, you’ll be filled. Well, two of the most powerful drives in your person are hunger and thirst. And we’re pretty casual with God, particularly when we have real needs. You think, «Well, I prayed twice and nothing happened,» or «I prayed for somebody. I didn’t get the outcome I wanted». The sovereignty of God over our lives.
But I wanna just introduce you to some scriptures, and we’re gonna pray in just a minute, but I may not even unpack all these scriptures that I gave you, but Psalm 103. I read this the other day and it just, I felt like it was shouting at me. Said, «Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits». Sometimes I do. You know, you have a bad day or a series of grumpy people or problems that aren’t easy to solve and you have to guard your heart, you gotta be careful what you think about, what you give your mind to. There’ll be some little voices show up and say, you know, God will never answer your prayers, or he’ll never give you the easy way. Oh, and you start down that, it gains momentum. Don’t entertain that. Guard your thoughts.
In Proverbs it says: «Above all else, guard your heart». More than you guard your inheritance, your retirement, your car, your home, your kids, guard your heart. Because if you keep your heart in the right place, your kids and your home and your inheritance will all work out. If you get your heart in the wrong place, you’ll lose all the above. Above all else, guard your heart. «Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits; who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies you with desires and good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s».
There’s three things there, presented in couplets. Hebrew poetry is typically arranged in a couplet, and to get the full meaning of what is being presented, you need both sides of the equation. And then those three couplets are helpful. It says he forgives all your sins and he heals all your diseases. We have a truncated gospel presentation. We think when we present the gospel, as important as it is to help people find their way into the kingdom, we need to understand God wants to help you today as well. We’re not just heavenly minded. He forgives all my sins and he heals all my diseases. Doesn’t mean we don’t face health challenges. But the God we worship is a God who restores and renews. Says: «He redeems your life from the pit. And he crowns with love and compassion».
He doesn’t just lift you out of the pit so you can go back on your own pathway. He lifts you out of the pit to put your feet on a new path that will lead you to a crown. You see, some of us want out of the pit, but we don’t want to do anything different. We wanna go back to what we were doing. This time we think we can avoid the pit. But the power of God is to get us out of the pit and then help us to put our feet on a different kind of a path so we get a crown. It’s a marvelous, and you understand how much in the dark we would be without the Word of God? You wouldn’t know the character of God. You wouldn’t know he would forgive your sins and heal your diseases.
I meet people who say, «I don’t read my Bible». What do you mean? How do you not read your Bible? Just get a t-shirt that said, «I’m ignorant». And then on the back, it needs to say: «And proud of it». Then it says: «He’ll satisfy your desires with good things». That’s not just selfish. You know, he’s not just trying to feed your carnal nature, he’ll satisfy your life with good things. The things God calls good will bring satisfaction to you. See, people reject God, resist God. People that sit in churches and do all the… they resist God because they don’t think they’ll be satisfied with godliness. They think they’ll be more satisfied with ungodliness. And the evidence of the Spirit of God at work in you or in me is that we’re actually satisfied. We find contentment with godliness.
The Bible says godliness with contentment is great gain. There’s too many of us in the church that wear the label of Jesus and we’re chasing all the wrong things, because we’re not really satisfied with godliness. It’s an amazing, Isaiah 53, it’s the great Messianic chapter in Isaiah. Isaiah, of all the prophets in the Hebrew, you know, the prophets are different. Different in the sense that the role of the prophet was to tell the truth to the people. They weren’t primarily future tellers, they were to deliver God’s perspective to the people, which is making the truth known to the people of their generation. And they’re all engaged in the cultures in which they lived. All the messages of the prophets is speaking into the culture.
If you labeled them with today’s discussions in the contemporary American church, we would say they were all political. All of them, but Isaiah is a court prophet. Amos was a farmer. Isaiah is a court prophet. Isaiah’s at home in the palace. And his language is majestic. He speaks to the destiny of nations. And he’s given a revelation of the Messiah when he comes. The character of the Messiah, the role of the Messiah, the behavior of the Messiah. Oh, it angers the segment of the Jewish community that doesn’t want to accept Jesus. They say it’s a corruption of the text, that the Christians wrote Isaiah 53 long after the prophet died and slipped it in. That’s common in academia. It’s kind of a fun aside, I guess. The oldest copy we had of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, is handwritten and it came from about 1000 AD.
Well, so Christianity by the 4th century, Christianity is the religion of the Roman Empire, so that left more than 5 centuries for the Christians to corrupt the text. So all the scholars said the Christians had inserted Isaiah 53. Well, in 1948, a little shepherd boy, Bedouin shepherd down on the shores of the Dead Sea, found a scroll. And I’ll give you the short version. You’ve heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well, the one book they found in its entirety was the book of Isaiah. And it was 1000 years older than the oldest copy of the Hebrew Bible we had. So it goes back to a point in history when the Christians were not the thing. And guess what? It was letter for letter with the copy that was 1000 years older, including Isaiah 53. Just every once in a while God smiles at us and goes, watch this.
But in Isaiah 53, listen to what the prophet said: «Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted». You see, the reason that in the book of Corinthians, it tells us that a Messiah who was crucified is a stumbling block for the Jews. Because they were looking for a Messiah who was a political leader. You understand that? They were looking for a Messianic figure who would be a political leader, a military leader, King David, somebody that could defeat Goliath, that could defeat the Romans. And to tell them that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and he died on a Roman cross, that’s a stumbling block. Because it meant that when the Messiah came, he’s not going to be a political deliverer in that moment. He could have been. If the people had embraced him, I believe it would have brought freedom to the nation, but that’s a different message.
So Isaiah is describing the Messiah. «He took up our infirmities and he carried our sorrows, but we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are,» what? «Healed». I’ve told you many times and it’s not original with me. I learned it as a young man and a boy, that on the cross there was a divinely ordered exchange that took place whereby the sinless, obedient, perfect Son of God took upon himself all of the punishment that was due by divine justice, my sin and my ungodliness, that in turn I might receive all of the blessings that were due his perfect obedience. It’s the divine exchange of the cross.
It’s what enables you and I through faith in Jesus to have standing in the kingdom of God, to be righteous and justified. It’s amazing. Well, if you look at the language of Isaiah, remember, now this is hundreds of years before Jesus’s birth. He said, «He was pierced for our transgressions». Please note the pronouns. He was pierced because of my transgression. He was crushed because of my iniquity. And the punishment that brought me peace was upon him. And by his wounds I am healed. So the same sacrifice that makes provision for the forgiveness of my sin, my justification in the sight of God, makes provision for wholeness in my person, body, soul, and spirit.
The Bible says God’s close to the brokenhearted. There’s a lot of wounds other than just physical wounds. Says he’ll never leave us or forsake us. We don’t have to suffer loneliness. That he was rejected so that we could be accepted. We don’t have to lead lives that are bent over by rejection. Well, we all face rejection, broken marriages, family systems that spool into destructive places. Business, all sorts of places and ways that rejection comes to us. You don’t have to be conscious of it for it to impact you. But if we understand that Jesus was rejected so that we could be accepted, and if the Creator of heaven and earth, if the name that’s above every name before which every knee will bow, if he has said you’re accepted, you’ll be okay. But it comes back to wanting to be satisfied by the things of God.
You see, if the longing of our heart is to know that we’re in relationship with God, then I will allow other relationships to be diminished that that relationship can grow. Some of us want the approval of people who are ungodly. And we’re willing to diminish our godliness thinking we can gain something by the approval of the ungodly. Don’t make that bargain. Don’t make that bargain. Don’t call it evangelism. You can show people kindness, you can encourage them. You can show them love. But don’t diminish, don’t deny your faith thinking there’s something to be gained if you will compromise with ungodliness.