Allen Jackson - Power, Politics, and the Church - Part 2
If we are to persist in freedom, it will be because the people of faith return to God with a clarity about the values that we believe have shaped our lives and will shape the future of the generations who follow. In Luke chapter 4 and verse 14, it says: «Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and the news about him spread throughout the whole countryside». It’s the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry. Prior to this time, he’s been anonymous. He’s lived in a sleepy little village of Nazareth, tucked away in the hills of Galilee, maybe a community of 1500 people, not on a major road, not on a major water source, no reason for anybody to visit. And at the age of 30, he goes for baptism and then, after that, into the wilderness for a time of temptation by Satan himself. Jesus believed in the devil, so should you. And he returns to Galilee.
Luke tells us, Luke’s a physician, and he writes with that eye of a diagnostician from time to time. He said Jesus came back differently. He came back in the power of the Spirit. And very quickly, his reputation spread throughout the region. I believe God is spreading the reputation of Jesus once again in the earth. I wanna be a part of that. I’m very content to be a part of that in the community where he’s planted us, but I believe if we will do that with faithfulness and intentionality, that there will be such an outcome that it will spread beyond us. There’s a parallel passage in the book of Zechariah. The Word of the Lord to Zerubbabel. I bet he was 15 before he could spell his name.
Zerubbabel was given the assignment of rebuilding the temple. It was the second temple. The first one was built by whom? Solomon. It’s not a trick question. It’s good, you go to the head of the class. Zerubbabel rebuilds the second temple, but there’s great opposition and there’s persecution, there’s problems. They’re still an occupied country, and «'This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: „Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,“ says the Lord Almighty.'»
I think that’s the essence of the message for the contemporary church. We’ve got to return in the power of the Spirit. Not by might, not by power. We may see expressions of godliness, we may see biblical values expressed through political personalities or even political parties. It would be wonderful to have choices between political parties who all embraced biblical worldview issues. I look forward to that day and that opportunity. But we have to understand that those opportunities will emerge because of the people of God who understand the power of God that is expressed in the earth. The greatest power available to human beings is not economic, military, or political. I’m not denying the reality of those things. They are very real and they can be very powerful.
But we have such a small imagination of God, we have such a limited understanding of God, such a limited relationship with God, that we’ve imagined somehow that the Creator of heaven and earth and all that is in them and the sustainer of all life and the one who holds our future is somehow less significant or less powerful than an economic idea. May God help us. So I’m inviting you and it’ll take more than a session or a day or a week. I’m inviting you towards a new imagination, towards a new position in your faith. To believe that obedience to God, that yielding to God, that serving God, can empower you not only for the transformation of your heart, but impact our world in a way that it can change the destiny of nations.
I wonder if the church has the courage to believe that or if we’ll continue to cower in the shadows and say, «We shouldn’t be political». I’m not interested in being political. I’m very interested in engaging our current culture with the truth of scripture. In Revelation chapter 12 and verse 7, there’s a war described. A war. Says: «There was war in heaven, and Michael,» one of the archangels, «and his angels fought against the dragon,» that would be Satan. «And the dragon and his angels fought back. But he wasn’t strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. And the great dragon was hurled down, the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray». What did Peter say? «He ranges throughout the earth like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour». «He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him».
A third of the angels rebelled with Satan. A third of the angels. Satan was an archangel, and he and a third of the angels forfeited their place in the eternal purposes of God. And because humanity is at the center of God’s intent, the centerpiece of his creation in this present age, Satan has found a way to vent his hatred and his rebellion against God by trying to destroy that which is at the center of God’s purposes. The question again: With which Lion are you aligned? Not in word; in behavior. In Luke 10, Jesus amplifies that passage. He said, «I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I’ve given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpion and to overcome all the power of the enemy». That’s our Lord. He said to us, he’s given us what we need to overcome all expressions of the power of the enemy. That’s a phenomenal statement.
Now that may be, you know, that power can be expressed through all of the things available to us. We were praying our way through COVID. We said the deliverance would most likely be expressed through healthcare communities and scientific communities, but it would be God who brought the breakthroughs. He didn’t bring them in the timing I would have preferred, but he’s brought a great deal of truth about that season into the public square. God is moving in the earth. We’ve seen the protection for our children. We’ve seen abortion restrained. It hasn’t been eliminated because it’s more a condition of the human heart than it is a legal arena. But we’re seeing God move in the most remarkable ways.
Are we willing to move with him? Let me take a moment. I just wanna walk you through the presentation of scripture. We’re so far separate from it. We’ve been invited to say the sinner’s prayer to be born again and to think about heaven, and I’m grateful for that. I don’t want to diminish that, but I want you to think about your journey through time and the power that’s available to you. Men need to engage the Word of God. We need the strength of men combined with the reality of scripture, so that we can stand in the place we need to in our families and in our culture. We’ve sent generation upon generation of young men to the battlefields around the world. How can we do that and not prepare them with the truth of Almighty God? What has happened to us? How did we turn our military into some social experiment? We said biological sex was confusing. What a lie. I have notes. I promise I have notes.
2 Thessalonians 1: «God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you». This is written to a church, the church in Thessaloniki. The apostle Paul is writing. He said, «God is just: He’ll pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. And he’ll punish those who don’t know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus». «Well, wait, I thought Jesus was all about love. I thought Jesus was like an eternal group hug».
Well, he certainly brought a message of love, it’s changed our world and changed our lives, but it’s not the total presentation of Jesus and his character. The line that fascinates me in that passage is that he’s returning to the earth in blazing fire with his powerful angels, that the angels serve under the authority of Jesus. Our Lord has an entire contingent, in one scene in the book of Revelation, 100 million in one scene. An entire contingent of angels, powerful angels. So please don’t fall into the secular cultural trap that’s absent any understanding of God or his Spirit or his workings in the earth to imagine that the greatest expressions of power are things that we can produce.
Again, I’m not denying their power. I’m telling you there’s a greater power. There’s a greater power. In Psalm 103 and verse 20, it says: «Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. Praise the Lord, all his heavenly host, you his servants who do his will». I like it. The angels are described as mighty ones. That phrase, «the heavenly hosts». I don’t do a lot of word studies with you. They can be tiresome and they can be manipulative, but in this case it’s really straightforward. The Hebrew word… the Old Testament is written predominantly in Hebrew. The Hebrew word there that’s translated «heavenly host» is the modern word in Israel for army. The plural is armies.
So if you translated it most literally without doing any injustice to the text, you would say that to the Lord and all of his heavenly armies. I want you to think about that just a minute, that there are armies of angels. Armies of angels. Language matters, folks. I know we live in a time when language is being coarsened and words and definitions are being manipulated, but language matters. Armies of angels. Think of all the other ways you could describe a big group of angels. You could call it a crowd of angels or a gathering of angels or a collection of angels or a whole host of angels, but the language that’s chosen by the Spirit of God is that there are armies of angels.
Well, why do we need armies of angels? Why do we need armies of these powerful beings that God has corrected, that are willing to exert the will of Jesus in the earth? Because there’s one who patrols the earth like a lion seeking whom he may devour. And he hates the purposes of God enough that he incited a war in heaven. And when he lost his place in heaven, he decided that he would expend what energy was left to him and what opportunity was left to him to destroy the pinnacle of God’s creation. And in ourselves, in our own strength, in our own ability, in our own wisdom, and our own abilities and capacities to organize and plan and execute, we are inadequate to face the threat of the lion who would devour us. We need the help of the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
Look at 1 Samuel 17: «David said to the Philistine,» if you don’t remember, this is Goliath. He said, «'You come to me with a sword and a spear and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of the armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted.'» He’s not talking about Saul and his army. They’ve been hiding in their tents for 40 days. Morning and evening, Goliath has bellowed his challenge and nobody would accept it. And David, a teenager, shows up. And while the army hides in their tents, they are frightened enough that they push a teenage boy onto the battlefield. Cowardice. We understand a bit of that. We’ve been hiding. We’ve been timid and quiet.
«Well, we don’t wanna be political, we don’t want to engage in a conversation, we don’t wanna hurt anybody’s feelings. We don’t wanna be judgy». David understood. This is David. This is what fascinates me. How did he understand? He’d had a revelation. We need a revelation of God. I mean, he’s questioned about this. They said, «Why would you face Goliath? He’ll break you like a twig. Why would you do this»? And he said, «Oh, it’s really not a problem because,» he said, «I’m a shepherd,» and he said, «I watch sheep, and when a lion or a bear came,» he said, «God delivered them into my hand».
Who asks God to deliver a bear into your hands? I’d get back in my vehicle and leave, right? One of the mighty men who will serve with David later on, he’s one of the mighty men who was, he was in charge of David’s personal guard. And when his qualifications are read, we just read it in the book of Samuel. It was said on a snowy day, he saw a lion in a pit and he went into the pit to get the lion. Not an expression of PETA, not to help the lion out of the pit. He saw a lion in a pit, and he climbed down in the pit to kill the lion. That’s messed up. I might have taken a picture, a selfie, me with the lion over my shoulder, in a pit. But I’m not going down. But out of that experience, David has a revelation of the Lord, and he can say to this imposing figure that represents the greatest military might of that moment in the life of Israel, and he said, «No, no, you will yield to the Lord of hosts and the God of the armies of Israel». It’s the angels that bring the victory. Church, we have to have a change of reference.
Revelation 19: «I saw heaven open and there before me,» this is John again. «And there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war». We’ll find out who’s riding this horse. It’s in the passage. «His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He’s dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. And the armies of heaven were following,» not a big group of angels; the armies of heaven. Armies have authority, structure, assignment, responsibility, accountability. «Riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which he’ll strike down the nations. 'He’ll rule them with an iron scepter.' He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. And on his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords».
Again, I wanna just plant a seed. I want you to begin to think about, I want you to reflect upon realms of authority, assigned posts, specified responsibility. The angels clearly have tremendous influence over humans and activity in the earth. It’s equally true in scripture that they encounter opposition, spiritual opposition. What I’m suggesting is that you and I have to become more engaged, more aware. We’ve got to learn the dynamics of the Spirit. Too often we have preferred a program or a formula or a recitation or we just would sign up for another study as if we were gonna study our way to victory. If that were the case, folks, I would organize food studies. We’re gonna study our way to health and every time we get together to study food we’re gonna have cookies and ice cream.
I don’t understand. We’ve been studying for months and months, and every time we get together, we study hard and we take notes and we look at all the scientific data and we’ve eaten gallons of ice cream and thousands of cookies. And we don’t seem to be healthier. I mean, it sounds absurd, but it’s what we’ve done. We’ve had study upon study and discussion upon discussion, and then we stand apart from the truth of scripture and go, «Well, I know what the Bible says, but let me tell you what I think». Or we act as if we stand in judgment on the Word of God. We’ve got to allow it to bring judgment to our lives. Look at Revelation 18: «Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea».
You know, I’m not a brilliant logician, but by the rules of language, if there’s a mighty angel, it means he’s distinguished. There are lesser angels, angels not so mighty. This one’s mighty enough to pick up a millstone. I’ve seen those ancient millstones, enormous pieces of rock. It takes animals to move them, beasts of burden. And this angel picks one up and tosses it into the sea as if it were nothing. In Revelation 7: «I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth».
I don’t believe that’s just metaphorical. I believe the angels had the ability to cause the earth to become still. Forces we don’t understand, power we’re not familiar with. It’s time for a change. David understood that power of God. Those heavenly armies caused Goliath to be an insignificant speed bump in what God was doing. What would happen if we had such imaginations? Matthew 24, Jesus is speaking: «At that time the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. And they’ll see the Son of Man coming on the clouds, with power».
We read it, but we don’t pay attention. This doesn’t say he’s coming back in compassion. His compassion was presented on the cross. That was an expression of compassion for all of humanity. He bore the weight of our ungodliness. If we will receive the gift, we can be prepared for his return. But when he comes back, he’s not coming back with an expression of compassion. He’s coming back with a demonstration of the power of God. We want to be prepared for that. We’ve been too sloppy. «With power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other». They’ll do in a moment of time which we can’t even understand.
There’s one last passage. It’s a parable that Jesus told. It’s a parable that Jesus, in his explanation, said was the portrayal of the end of the age. He’s using an agricultural analogy of a field that was planted with wheat, but when the wheat came and when it grew to maturity, there was a liberal scattering of weeds amongst the wheat. And the servants responsible for the yields were distressed. They were afraid they were in trouble and they said, «Shall we go pull the weeds»? And the owner said, «No, we’ll separate them at the harvest».
But then Jesus explained that the parable was about the end of the age. It’s in your notes. It’s Matthew 13:37: «The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. And the field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is,» whom? «The devil». There’s two lions, folks. The question again: with which one are you aligned? Don’t tell me the group to whom which you belong, the denominational flag that you fly, or whether you imagine yourself to be Protestant or Catholic or Southern, whatever. With which of those two personalities, of those two Lions, are you aligned? At the end of the age, there’s a distinction. You’ll represent one or the other.
Jesus’s words, not mine: «As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. And they’ll throw them into a fiery furnace». I know I gotta wrap it up. Can we begin to imagine, to open our hearts and our lives to the Spirit of God? Can we take a step today? Just a first step, a shift in momentum, to align ourselves with the Lion of the tribe of Judah? Could we determine in our hearts to stand firm in the faith, as Peter said, «to resist Satan,» to resist his roars of deception and temptation? We will never find victory by accommodating evil. You can’t negotiate with evil.
The only thing evil will yield to is an expression of power greater than itself. God is watching over us. He will lead us forward. He’s moving in the earth. I wanna move with him. We’re changing our building, we’re reshaping our campus. We want this community of faith to give expression to that desire to see the church gain strength and a voice. But I believe God will allow us to be a part of that in a much broader way beyond just our campus. God is moving. We’re not in Ukraine today, but we can pray for those who are. We can pray for those who gather at negotiating tables. We can pray that God will silence the critics who would disrupt or diminish, that would let the destruction continue so that they might profit or gain an advantage or whatever their wicked motive might be.
Can we do that? Will you stand with me? I gave you a prayer. We can read it together. Your prayers matter. People often say to me they want me to pray. «Pastor, will you pray for this or will you pray for that»? And I gladly do it, but I want you to pray. Your prayers matter. You say, «Well, you know, I don’t know everything». Neither do I. I’m not perfect, news bulletin. Neither am I. I probably cut you off in traffic last week. And I probably smiled when I did it, so it’s… pray for me. We don’t come before the Almighty God because we’re perfect. We come in the name of Jesus. But we’ve got to begin to use our voices. Let’s pray together:
Almighty God, forgive us for our unbelief and indifference. We humble ourselves and acknowledge you as the creator and sustainer of all things. Now, open our hearts and our eyes that we may have understanding and insight from you. Deliver us from deception. Holy Spirit teach us, we are listening and we will follow. Give us now a boldness to believe, to serve and to respond as never before. May the name of Jesus be lifted high and may His people be strengthened, in Jesus' name, amen.