Allen Jackson - God At Work Through Family - Part 1
It’s Mother’s Day weekend. The title for this session is «God at Work Through our Families,» and just a bit of a disclaimer on the front end, this is my first Mother’s Day since my mom stepped out of time, so it feels like a special day to me. And I’m sure somewhere through the course of this, I’ll share some of my mom’s stories. I, just for the disclaimer piece, I understand she was not perfect. I knew her better than you did. I knew her B.C. And no, I won’t tell you, but I will tell you that Jesus changed my parents’s lives, and through that my brother’s and mine, and I’m most grateful for that. And whatever your perspective, you know, I find it a bit intriguing that holidays are often difficult times for people to come to church.
If it’s the 4th of July, or Memorial Day, and you lost someone serving in the military, sometimes those are difficult days. If it’s Mother’s Day, and there’s some aspect of your circumstance that, you know, none of us have perfect stories and perfect families, we don’t. Norman Rockwell painted fantasies. All of our families put the «fun» in dysfunctional. Come on, I didn’t call your name. I mean, I’m not above it, but it’s early in the message, so give me a little time to build into that but. But you know, I meet people that say, you know, «I just, I don’t do church on Mother’s Day». And then they have a reason. There was pain in their family, or they lost a mother early, or there’s some circumstance, and I really think it’s our adversaries’s attempt to rob us.
There is something, there’s a voice in your life that God used to nurture and encourage, or you had a mother that prayed for you, or a grandmother who prayed for you, or you have children, or maybe they’re prodigals, and it’s too painful to think about that, but you’re gonna put them in the Lord’s hands. There’s just not a perfect scenario. I think we gather to thank God for his imagination of family. God put that whole notion of a husband and a wife together and children. It’s a God ordained institution. Now the brokenness of our world, and the intrusion of sin has made it less than ideal, but there is still something incredibly sustaining in that notion that God has given to us. And as we walk through this little outline together, I wanna encourage you to find a place where you can celebrate what God has done.
We can acknowledge the imperfections and the brokennesses, we have broken places, we have enough of them internally, every one of us, and to many, unfortunately we have contributed. But God is faithful, and so the title I chose is «God at Work Through Family,» as messy as that is, and it can be kind of messy, because we all think, «Well, our families should be better than that, or they could do better than that». and maybe, but the reality is, we still live in a fallen world. So I wanna start with the simplest to me. We’re gonna build this kind of from the foundation up, an awareness of God’s intent. Most people I know that would go to church will say, «If I knew what God wanted me to do, I would do it».
You know, I mean, if you were not willing to take that first step, you probably wouldn’t even come to church. But then we follow it, «But I’m really not sure what he wants me to do». And I have arrived at a conclusion, I don’t think God’s playing hide and seek. You know, I always smile to titles that those of us that are professional Christians choose the hidden keys to… I’m like, «Who hid the keys? Just bring me the person that hid the keys. I’m gonna deal with them». I don’t find that consistent with the character of God, so I’m gonna start with a really simple declaration. It’s one of the most important assignments of your life, it has the ability to bring the blessings of almighty God to you, or his judgment into your life. So this was really not like in the optional category, there’s a consequence whichever way you choose.
Matthew 15, Jesus is speaking, so it carries some authority. He said, «God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.'» Wow, again, you need preachers to mess this one up. Jesus is quoting from the ten commandments, but he adds the punishment. I mean, we know in that list of ten that Moses brought down the mountain, we were told to honor our fathers and mothers, but Jesus adds in the opposite side of the refusal to do that. So I have an announcement today, honor your mom, it’s Mother’s Day. If she’s already stepped out of time, honor her anyway. If she won’t acknowledge it when you honor her, honor her anyway. If she was mean, forgive her. Honor your father and mother. You see this notion of cooperating with God, I think we’ve complicated it.
We talk about Greek, and Hebrew, and 1st century culture, and 10th century BC culture, and I’m okay with all those discussions, but at the end of the day, it’s living out the simple truth that you and I know. We’re gonna honor our fathers and mothers today with God’s help. In John 19, Jesus gives us a little window into a behavior, not because it’s a simple time in his life or it’s convenient, it wasn’t like a good time for him, because in John 19, we find Jesus, having been tortured almost to death. He’s been stripped naked and nailed to a Roman cross, he’s being mocked in public by his enemies. It’s the most humiliating of circumstances that I believe are imaginable.
His body’s been wracked by pain, I mean, there’s just nothing good about this scenario and in the midst of it, listen, it’s John, you’ve got it in your notes, «Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. And when Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, 'Dear woman, here is your son.' and to the disciple, 'Here is your mother.' And from that time on his disciple took her into his home».
John is standing near Mary, close enough to the cross that they could hear Jesus. And when he, when he sees them, through the pain through all the stuff, he takes time to give an expression of care for Mary. We don’t know what happened to Joseph, by this point in the record, he seems to have stepped out. There’s no report of sickness or illness, he’s just no longer present, so John is entrusting Mary, I mean Jesus is entrusting Mary to the disciple that he was the closest to, to John. The church tradition says that John cared for Mary, it’s an expression of honoring your mother. Not because the circumstances are perfect, or you felt like it, or there weren’t other things, Jesus could have been angry about many things or focused on many things, and he chose to honor his mother.
I just, a couple of reminders, God chose your mother for you. For some of you that brings joy, for some it brings something else, but the reality is if you dishonor your mother, you dishonor God, he made the choice. We’re having a great deal… you see, when you reject God in a culture, when you reject objective truth that there is right and wrong, good and evil, when everything becomes subjective, and it’s about, «My truth,» and «Your truth,» «everywhere truth, truth,» then we lose the boundaries, and the bumpers for our lives, and chaos begins to percolate, and it’ll continue to grow until the church has the courage to come back and say, «There actually is objective truth».
The sovereignty of God is at the heart of this. God makes us male and female. God gives children to parents, God knows the children before we do. I know we share a little DNA with them, but God says, «He knows them when they’re being knit together in their mother’s womb». There’s abundant places in scripture where God knows the life assignment of a child before conception. It’s true with Samson, it’s true with John the Baptist, it’s true with Jesus. Gabriel says to Mary, «You’ll conceive, and you’ll give birth to a son, and his name is Jesus. He’s gonna save his people from their sins».
I mean, the whole scenario was there, and that’s repeated in multiple places. So the what we’re talking about in family and children is about the sovereignty of God. It isn’t confusing stuff. And when we dishonor our parents, we dishonor God because he made those choices. Some of us come from very difficult families, broken families, families where evil has existed. I’m not suggesting that you call it good nor that you re-engage for further abuse. I’m simply saying that being filled with anger and resentment and hatred will limit the God opportunities of your life. And the fact that evil touched your life and made a season very difficult is not sufficient reason to give it the power to impact your future. The point of the cross is we can be free from the consequences of sins, our own and those of others.
You see, when we reject and rebel against our moms, we reject and rebel against God. So plain language, I grew up in a barn in middle Tennessee, what’s it mean to honor your mother? We can make a lengthy list, I gave you three simple things, there’s just some tangible expressions of concern. Not just a theory, some act of kindness. I’m not opposed to cards, and hallmark, and but I do think it’s really inappropriate to imagine those expressions of concern to be limited to a day, or a Sunday, in May. Lead a life where you give tangible expressions of concern for a person who’s concern for you made a difference in your life. It’s a good habit to cultivate. Secondly, practice forgiveness. No perfect parents, they made mistakes.
Many parents have the humility to acknowledge that, some aren’t able to, but your willingness to forgive isn’t linked to their willingness to ask. Forgiveness is a decision we make, it’s not an emotion. I’ve discovered that your emotions will follow your decisions. It begins with a decision. You see, when we suffer in life, when there’s something that happens that’s unfair or unjust, there’s a wound that takes place. And then with that wound, there comes a debt, and the notion is that until that debt has been addressed, until it’s been repaid with an apology, or restitution, or restoration, or some make good, I’m gonna hold that marker. I’ve got a chip, but I’m gonna hold it against you. And what forgiveness says is, «I’m gonna tear up my marker, no obligation, I’m gonna set you free». Now the skeptic says, «Well, that’s not fair. Somebody’s getting free with no consequence».
That’s not true at all because God is just, and you and I don’t want to be the Avengers, we want to trust God with his justice. The part that’s not obvious is that when you hold that unforgiveness, when you hold resentment and bitterness, you’re not holding somebody else captive, you’ve put yourself in a cage. It becomes a boundary in your life, a limit in your life, it walls you off, and when you forgive, you’re set free. You ever been mad at somebody and they didn’t notice? Didn’t that make you mad? In fact, you get so mad about that you forget why you got mad to begin with. Well, I mean, it’s simple if it’s a small thing, but I meet people who spent years of their life angry, embittered, filled with resentment and hatred. Forgive, it’s a decision. «Lord, Father, I wanna cancel that marker». There’s, the motivation for that is pretty strong.
Jesus said that we won’t be forgiven unless we forgive, so forgiveness really is not optional. Again, I’m not saying you have to validate inappropriate behavior, nor get back in line for further mistreatment. I am saying you have to cancel the marker. The benefit in that, the bonus in that, is you and I are set free and we’re forgiven, and it puts an entirely new future before us. Sometimes we have to forgive people that have already stepped out of time. Sometimes we have to forgive organizations or institutions or systems of people. You just can’t afford the burden of resentment, and hatred, and unforgiveness. And then the third way you can honor your mom is just with respect. Practice expressions of honor. They put you first when your strength was small. And one of the ways that we can show respect to them is to lend our strength to them when it’s inappropriate.
One of the challenges we have with this increasing adolescence in our culture we’ve pushed it into later places in lives with the expectations that the strength of parents should continue to support, and provide, and protect the lives of children. And it’s a misunderstanding of family, and it’s a very destructive pattern. Use your strength to help those who helped you when your strength was small, even when it’s inconvenient. It’ll change your life, it’ll bring the blessing of God. Jesus said, «If we would honor our fathers and mothers, it would go well with us». I want Almighty God looking at my life and say, «How can we make it well for him»? I don’t want them looking at me going, «How can I limit that character»? It’s not a complicated path, it’s available to all of us, and it’s not about becoming, or achieving, or having. It can be a word, it can be an expression, it can be many things.
We’ve lost it, we’re adrift on this point, folks. We are adrift, you see, the pathway to a better place for us isn’t about a different economy, or a different set of politicians, or a different global circumstance, it’s about the people of faith realigning themselves with the simple principles of God. And I’m gonna suggest to you next that in our families, God is at work for us. The fancy word for that is restoration. The awkward part of restoration is it typically emerges from some pretty desperate places. I don’t like to be desperate, I don’t enjoy it, I don’t ever want to volunteer for it, but in Luke chapter 7, we’re gonna watch Jesus step into a circumstance that’s beyond desperate. He’s traveling with the disciples there in Galilee, the northern part of Israel, near the Jezreel Valley.
There’s the end of the day, they’re approaching a village, they need to get there before the gates are closed for protection for the evening, and as they approached the town gate, there was a dead person was being carried out. The Jewish community didn’t do burials within the city, there were religious rules around that, but it was really for health and safety reasons. So there’s a funeral procession, the dead person’s carried out, and Luke tells us he’s the only son of his mother, that she’s a widow. She’s about to be plunged into a very desperate place, no husband, she’s a widow, her only son, she’s gonna be at the lowest rung of the social economic spectrum. We don’t know her name, we don’t know any of the details, except there’s a large crowd from the town that was with her, and when Jesus saw her, his heart went out to her. Nobody asked Jesus to intervene, nobody recruited him, they haven’t brought him here.
It’s the end of the day, they’re looking for a bit of food, and a place to rest before they continue their travels. And «Jesus’s heart goes out to her and he says, 'Don’t cry.' Then he went up and he touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. And he said, 'Young man, I say to you, get up.' The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother». The Bible is this tremendous gift of understatement. You know you read that little scenario and, and you don’t read about the party. How many of you think that little village is gonna be different that evening? Right, young man was carried out through the gate as a part of a funeral procession, and he’s gonna walk back in.
Do you think he just went home, and played some video games? Me either, I think the whole village is transformed, but it’s a really desperate place. And the good news is, the message is, that when our families are in desperate places, God is still real. We can’t go to church and discuss miracles in the first century without expanding and understanding that miracles take place in the 21st century. It’s very important. We need a living faith, a vibrant faith, because our families need that. See, the goal is not to pretend the people we go to church with that our family’s got it all together. We’re only together for a few minutes a week, it’s really not hard to keep up that illusion, unless you watch the way we drive in the parking lot. But that isn’t the objective.
I read that story, and then I couldn’t help but think of my own family system. God gave my mother back to my family, he gave my father his wife back. The doctor said she had 6 months to live, they only missed that by 50 years or so. They didn’t account for, it wasn’t a medical failure, my mother had a disease. There were lab reports, and pictures, and lumps, and it wasn’t questionable, it wasn’t like a blown diagnosis. The part that couldn’t be explained in those quantitative measures is after a simple prayer, then they couldn’t find those masses anymore. There was not a great explanation. Sometimes our expectations of the healthcare industries are inappropriate, folks. They have to, they have to make a legal account of every interaction with the patient, and they don’t have a block that says «miracle».
So they have to fit what they can observe and measure into the explanations that are accepted by people who don’t have a living faith. Don’t try to make health care professionals have more faith than you do, amen. But just as that that mother received her son back, our family was changed. My brothers and me got our mom back. So I’ll take just a moment with this because our families have great needs, and we’re in church on Mother’s Day, but a little truth won’t hurt us. God has prodigal power, he can bring the prodigals back. You know, the awkward part of this is, you can do the very best you know within a family system, and then somebody just takes a detour. We know it’s true because most of us have our initials on one of those detours. And somebody cared enough about us to pray, or to wait, or to stand on our behalf, or to tell the truth when it was uncomfortable.
The message is in Luke 15, it’s the prodigal son. Most of you know that story, but when the son returns after having spent his inheritance in a very shameful way, and coming to the complete bottom, the young Jewish man finds himself feeding the pigs and eating the slop, that’s about the lowest it can go for a young Jewish man. He decides to go home, and he says, «Well, maybe I can be a servant in my dad’s household. I forfeited my sonship». And when he gets home, this is the commentary it’s Luke 15:24, «'This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate».
Our God knows how to restore prodigals, and some of you have got one or two. Some of you are one, be a good time to humble ourselves, and acknowledge God, and invite him into our circumstances. There’s a second component of this. God had worked for us, but it’s through us. God doesn’t work like outside of us. I can tell you about the miracle that God gave my mom, but the reality is, she and my dad had to walk that out. I mean my brother’s not to a lesser extent, we just got farmed out to family members while they’re pursuing doctors and further diagnosis, but they had to actually go through the work up in the clinics, and they weren’t even Christians. It blows all your theology out of the water.
God intervenes in the lives of people who don’t even know how to ask. We have no status, no standing, it’s called mercy and grace, we believe in that. I trust the mercy and grace of God more than I do any formulas that we derive thinking we know how to manipulate God with our formulas, what nonsense. But God is in the prodigal business, he’s working through us. Look at Mark chapter 10. Jesus again, «At the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.' For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh, so they’re no longer two but one». Parenting is the ultimate train and release program. There should be great hope in that for everybody involved. Proverbs 22:6 says, «Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he’s old, he’ll not depart from it».
I’ve been involved in a number of training programs throughout my life. There are some observations I could make: it’s impossible to train without effort, discipline, and some very real expectations. The other thing I’ve observed from my own experience is that trainers are not always in a friendly posture. In fact, they require an effort that you wouldn’t make in their absence. So the nature of those relationships is not always about a group hug and «thank you». Sometimes it’s about, «You gotta be kidding me».
Trainers have an imagination and expectation beyond often the one you have of yourself, and parents, that’s true in your assignment. And children, that’s true on our side of the equation. You know, we tend to think of children as being little people. Right across the hall somewhere around here we got lots of them today. They’re all over the building. In fact, they’re the learners. What I tell all the adults that work with the children is they get to engage with the people who are willing to change while I go entertain the people who have no intention of changing. Statistically, it’s accurate, but the reality is «children» is not a word that refers simply to small people, all of us meet the definition. We’re someone’s child, and I have discovered no matter how many birthdays you have in the eyes of your parents, you’re still their child. That training notion follows us through, but it’s to release them for the purposes of God.