Allen Jackson - Essentials for the Church (02/07/2026)
The sermon opens with a prayer for Charlie Kirk's family, Turning Point USA, and the nation amid his recent tragic death, emphasizing the need for civil discourse, healing, and restoration of free speech on campuses. Shifting to the conference theme of culture and Christianity, the preacher stresses the church's role in shaping culture through Judeo-Christian values, Jesus as head of the church, the need for new eyes to see God's moves, courage in truth-telling despite opposition, and a final proclamation from Isaiah 59 and Acts 4 calling for repentance, truth, and God's power to impact the generation.
Prayer for Charlie Kirk's Family and the Nation
Our offertory prayer this weekend, they're having memorial services for Charlie Kirk, for family and friends, and then they'll have some rally that looks more like a political rally, but it's really based to acknowledge Charlie and his life. So I think we should pray for our nation. We have to have the ability to have civil discourse. If we lose that, it's a very bleak future. And that doesn't mean everybody has to agree with us, but that ability to have a conversation, in the public square without threat is extraordinarily important.
And initially, it's got to be restored to our college campuses because we've lost a great deal of that. A whole host of reasons for that I don't want to unpack, but I think we can pray for the family. I asked you last weekend to pray for Charlie's family, for Turning Point USA, and for our nation. And I think those prayers are still appropriate today as we move forward.
So why don't you stand with me? If you're at home, you can stand. Somebody told me, they told me tonight, they said they don't eat pizza. Well, they chop wood. I'm a little reluctant to put down your axe because somebody will edit that out and use it against me. But it's... Apparently, there's a whole variety of things happening while we're having our prayers, but that's a good thing. So thank God for His church. Amen. Hallelujah.
Father, we thank You tonight for the great freedom and privilege we have of being together. I thank You for Your mercy and Your grace in our lives. Lord, even when life brings great tragedy and heartache, You remain Lord of all, and I thank You for that tonight. And we stand to pray for Charlie's family. And as they process their loss, Lord, I pray You will bind up their broken hearts and instill in them a hope for what is ahead that's greater than the loss they have suffered.
And I pray for the people who worked with Him, Father, that they will... that You'll give them a wisdom beyond themselves, beyond their experience, to know what next steps should be, or direct them supernaturally to Your very best plan. And I pray for our nation. We're a land in need of healing. I believe You called this nation into existence, and You have watched over us and poured out the blessings of heaven upon us over and over again.
And I pray that we would turn away from our arrogance and acknowledge You. I thank You for it and bring healing to our nation. May we once again respect one another. I thank You for it. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Hallelujah.
Before you're seated, I want you to do something. Find somebody that didn't come with you to campus in your car, and tell them God is moving in the earth. Will you do that? I'm pretty sure you said more than God is moving in the earth, but it's okay. Whichever space you're in on our campus, you should have received an outline when you came in. It has the scriptures we will look at and should help. If you're joining us off campus, you can download those same outlines from the websites or the apps.
Conference Overflow: Culture and Christianity
I really... I postponed most of my preparation, because I had a feeling that my heart would be full by the end of the conference. And so I sat down this afternoon, and I really... this session and the next are kind of the overflow. At least what I heard. We've been talking about culture and Christianity, and the premise is very straightforward. The reason we do a conference like this is we believe the church should shape culture. That we shouldn't be shaped by the culture.
And I think we have a very important role to play, and I don't mean politically. The values that shape our communities. The values that shape family. How we understand that to be in our schools, and what has held us together and given us strength. You know, we're not bound by a... in this nation by a singular ethnicity, or... we are a melting pot. We've come from the nations of the world.
And there's not one way that Americans look, or one accent with which Americans speak. You know, the concerns around... what's been happening with our borders in the last few years wasn't any concern about immigration. We're a nation of immigrants. But it has to be done in a legal and an orderly fashion, or we... we spend completely out of control.
But what has been the unifier in our nation from the beginning of our nation, back from... before we were even recognized as a nation, was the Judeo-Christian worldview. And that's not something acknowledged by pulpits. It's been acknowledged by people who came to observe this nation in its various stages of emergence. And I believe that's still true. And if we take that away, then we will be left to authoritarianism.
So the church has a role to play. And tragically, in recent decades, we have been a bit confused about that. I intend to come back and take some time and unpack some of the dialogue around Christian nationalism. That, you know, language is important and words matter. And I think we all understand language has been changed, manipulated makes it sound nefarious. I think much of it is nefarious. But language is being changed.
We have trouble in the public square defining things like what is a man and what's a woman. That's pretty fundamental stuff. And when you recognize that language is being used to introduce tremendous changes by confusing things that we're not confusing, then there are some terms when we hear them. We need to have clarity so that we're talking about the same set of things.
I don't want to do that in this session. I'll come back to it. I'd rather be fresher than I am tonight. You might get the unvarnished version if I picked it up tonight. But we had multiple... We had segments to the conference. We talked about Israel and is support appropriate. And if so, what does that look like? We talked about the culture and church. We talked about the culture and the church and media. And then this morning we talked about the church and health.
You know, we've had the finest healthcare system in the world. But that will not continue. It will not pull forward if we take our Judeo-Christian values out of that. The sanctity of human life is a fundamental component in how that healthcare has emerged and how it's worked. And so all of those buckets of discussion are very much centered in who the church is and the way our faith is expressed in our culture.
We don't just do Bible studies from antiquity. I mean, I like to do that. I've spent a great deal of time and energy and effort and resources, honestly, studying and learning and traveling to other places in the world. But at the end of the day, the purpose of all of that academic activity is to help us live it out in the present.
Who Is the Church? Jesus as Head
And so in this segment, I would like to focus with you on the church segment of the conference. One of the most encouraging to me, we had several pastors from the East Coast to the West Coast. I learned some great things. We had a pastor here who pastors a church just outside of D.C. with a lot of government employees and deep state folks and elected people. And he gave us a definition that I thought was... He said because of his location, his church has people involved in politics. And he said poly means many and ticks are blood-sucking insects. That was not my definition. I can get in enough trouble with my own definitions.
But I think it's important to start with the notion that we need to know who the church is. You know, we're not Bible study societies. We're not civic organizations who basically do acts of benevolence in communities. We may do those things. We may help those that are less fortunate than us. That's certainly a part of the assignment. But our goal isn't to eradicate poverty. Jesus said that we would have the poor with us. That wasn't Jesus' assignment. He was kind to those less fortunate than himself. He was a healer, but he didn't heal everyone.
And understanding the role of the church and who the head of the church is, there's so much confusion on this. We're hiding from the issues that are shaping our culture. So I'll start in Philippians chapter 2 and verse 9. It says, God exalted him. It's speaking of Jesus, to the highest place. To the highest place. There's no place. Jesus is exalted to the preeminent place in all of creation.
And then Paul uses some rather poetic language. He said he gave him the name that's above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow. In heaven, on earth, under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus is the Messiah and our Lord. To the glory of God the Father.
Who's the head of the church? It's Jesus. It's not about world outreach or the Presbyterians or the Episcopalians or the Methodist or the Southern Baptist or the Church of Christ. Or all the different... Whether we're Protestant or Roman Catholic. We get way heated up about all... Folks, Jesus is the head of the church. And we are an expression of his Lordship in the earth.
We live in different nations. We come from every nation, race, language, and tribe. But we answer to a higher authority than any of the civil authorities where we find ourselves. But we are called with the assignment of being salt and light in the midst of all of those varying civil authorities.
My prayer for the nations of the world that are tonight under the authoritarian brutality. Where the church isn't welcomed. Is that the church would flourish. It would bring freedom and Liberty to those peoples. And we have been... We've been told over and over and over and over and over again. And our young people have been educated by people pretending to be intellectuals. That it was inappropriate for our faith to be in the public square.
And if our faith is absent from the public square. The authoritarianism amongst us will continue to grow. Again, it's not to establish a theocracy. But it's to bring our faith to bear. Jesus is the head of the... He has the name above all names. More significant than the UN.
You know, we did some work in Rwanda just after the genocide in the 90s. And our friends in Rwanda, their reference to the United Nations was it was the united nothing. It said when the slaughter was taking place, they would step back. And I think we've just had some misguided.
Look at Ephesians chapter one. It says that power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. Far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, every title that can be given. He's talking about the kingdom of darkness. He's been given a place ascendant to every expression of evil.
Evil hasn't been banished from our existence, but the one we worship as an authority over all things. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
God gave him a name that's above every name, that every knee would bow, every tongue confess, and he appointed him to be the head over the church. Our allegiance is first and foremost to Jesus of Nazareth. It's so important. We seek him, we follow him imperfectly in our fractured ways, but we follow him.
Learning to See God's Move in New Ways
One of my big takeaways is I listen because most of the weekend or the week I've spent listening... I know that's hard to believe, but I did. It was so clear to me that we're going to have to learn to see in some new ways. You know, I earned a degree in history and I've studied a good bit about the church and the history of the church beyond that and how awakenings come and renewals come.
And the challenge is that we tend to imagine that what God will do next will look like what we've seen God do in the past. That's a very normal expectation. It's familiar to us. It's comfortable to us. It's like home cooking. Or staying in a familiar space. It's not wrong. It's just typically not accurate.
You know, when God, when Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the door and started a tremendous change in people of faith, it was really outside of the system. It wasn't inside out. When the Wesley brothers and that whole Methodist revival began, they preached predominantly or frequently on horseback, sometimes standing on a saddle, riding hundreds and hundreds of miles. It didn't take place from within the structure.
And it isn't that there aren't expressions of that, but God is moving. In the most remarkable ways, and I watched and listened this weekend, it was remarkable to me. But we're going to have to learn to see, I really think, trained to see in new ways.
Recognizing God's Work: Training Our Spiritual Eyes
Everybody here has areas of expertise. You see things that other people don't see. I have a friend that's a world champion barbecue person. You know? Some of you have thermometers. You know, and it's connected to your phone. And you can set a temperature, and the grill will do this, and your phone will chirp. Not my friend. He puts all the stuff on the grill, and he opens the grill, and he walks up and he pokes it with his finger. That burned my finger. And he goes, that's done. That's not done. And I say, how do you know? And he said, I just know.
Well, he's cooked thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds of stuff, or smoked it, or whatever he's doing to it. I just like to eat it. But he's a trained observer of what's happening. You know, I grew up, my dad was a vet when I was at home, and his expertise was an equine vet. He treated horses, and his real expertise was lameness in horses.
My brothers and I would get to go with him sometimes on calls, or they'd bring a horse to the clinic. And if they're expensive horses, and they're lame, it's a big deal, and they need to know what the problem is. It sounds kind of simple, but not really. You know, you've got a foot, and an ankle, and a knee, and a hip, but horses have got four of them. And they're not very verbal. And shoulders, and so, you know, they say, my horse is lame, or he's not picking both feet up the same height. And we're like, yeah, that's unfortunate.
So he'd always say the same thing. Well, walk the horse down that barn hall, or walk him down that path. And if that didn't, get on him and ride. I want to see you ride him. And he'd stand there and watch, and he'd get in the back, and he'd go get in the front. And if one of us was with him, usually he'd look over and say, so what do you think it is? And I never had the guts to say, but I think, well, they're not paying me. That's really up to you. I was wise enough not to say that.
But, you know, it took a lot of training to know whether it was an ankle, or a knee, or what the problem was, or how to finally get to that conclusion. And, you know, you have training. We have people in the building, they're video editors. They can look at a piece of video, and they'll look at a transition video like we just saw, and they'll go, you know, we should have gotten out of that two frame sooner. And I'm going like, what? I don't know.
Well, in the church, the people of God, we have to know how to recognize what God is doing. We have to have eyes to see, and we act like, well, that's obvious. No. We've been trained in some things. We know about an altar call and a confession of faith. Maybe we know about worship that we think is meaningful.
One of the first things I had to learn when I started in ministry is, how do you know if a community of people is healthy? Because our language doesn't help. How was church? Oh, it was wonderful. What do you mean? Well, the Spirit moved. How did you know? Well, you could feel it. No, you may have just been hungry. I mean, it could have been about your emotions. That's not, you know... I had to come to understand ways to recognize what was happening, so that we could have conversation about it.
And how do we see? How do we recognize? We need God's help. We had a conversation... What's today? Is this Saturday? We had a conversation Friday morning about Israel. And we had two people that traveled from Israel to talk to us. And we had a man who works in the media. He's the editor-in-chief of Breitbart. I had a conversation with him earlier in the week, and he said, I'd like to come be a part of that conversation. And he wanted to talk about it based on what he understands. I mean, he's world-class at the news and the media and the conversations.
In my imagination, that would have been a conversation fueled by pastors. But they're much more reluctant to have that conversation. We're having to learn to see in new ways. We had a conversation on the media last night, and I learned a great deal about spiritual things happening in our nation from sports reporters, editors of media outlets. They had some amazing insight and discernment about what's happening in our nation from a spiritual vantage point. And the courage to say it.
Well, I didn't expect that. It's not their business. I prefer that to be coming out of our theological seminaries. I mean, those are the places that we pay to train people to be spiritual leaders, right? That's how it happens. And I'm like, wow. And I'm listening to all this going... There's something... I got pages and pages of notes. I'm going to try to share some of it with you in a minute. But what I was conscious of is I've got to see in some new ways. And I would invite you to that.
Say, well, I've never seen that. No kidding. Because what we've been doing isn't working. We've presided over one of the most precipitous declines of Christian influence in the history of the church. For all of our talk about safety and security, our lives aren't safer or more secure. Our children aren't safer or more secure.
I'm old enough to be of a generation... They used to let me walk to school unattended. Like blocked. And it wasn't because they hoped I didn't come home. I mean... And it was normal. There was lots of kids walking to school. I mean, it was pretty typical behavior. That's unthinkable today. So for all of our language, it's really deceptive. Our grades are down. Our scores are down. They're not as safe. We took the Ten Commandments out and put in metal detectors. But we're anesthetized to it. We're like, yeah, that's just how we do things. No. That's not always been the case. We have to learn to see.
Biblical Examples of Seeing God's Work
In 2 Kings 6, it's not in your notes, but Elisha is in the midst of a little bit of a... He's a prophet in Israel. But there's some tremendous pushback. And he's actually giving messages to the king of Israel about an adversary. So for those of you that think the church shouldn't be engaged in culture, you'll have to lose the Book of Kings. Your Bible is going to get really small. You'll lose the Gospels and the Book of Acts. You'll lose all the epistles. Well, never mind. I'm not sure what you'll have. Well, you have a table of contents.
But the enemy of Israel sends an army to get Elisha because he is telling the king of Israel what their plans and schemes are. And so the army surrounds the little community where the prophet lives. And when the servant gets up in the morning and goes up on the roof, he sees the surrounding army and he's terrified. And Elisha prays a little prayer. Lord, open his eyes to see. And it's one of my primary takeaways from these last couple of days. It's a prayer I'm praying for myself and for you. Lord, open my eyes. I want to see what you're doing. I don't intend for my viewpoint to be shaped by secular voices. God, I want to see it from your vantage point. Help me to see what you're doing in the earth.
Jesus is the head of the church. I promise you, they're not in heaven wringing their hands going, what should we do? Do you know? I'll grieve Charlie's loss. I'm deeply sorry. But Jesus is still the head of the church. Charlie got a promotion. We got a Baton. I didn't want one. I thought I was already busy. And I'm sure you thought you were as well. But the assignment is still before us. Lord, help us to see.
You know, the help in scripture arrives from very unlikely sources. Balaam. Do you know about Balaam? He was a prophet of sorts. Kind of a shady character. A little sketchy. But he knew the Lord well enough to ask for instruction. And Balaam was in a disobedient season. You know, you can know the Lord and still be disobedient. Did you know that? You shouldn't pretend that because you know the Lord that you're always obedient.
And Balaam makes some really bad choices. He's driven by greed and some things that aren't good. And God is angry enough with him. He dispatches an angel to take his life. But as an expression of mercy. Because there's no other way to understand it. He loosens the tongue of the donkey, Balaam's riding. And the donkey says to him, What are you doing? Well, I would call that an unlikely source of a divine message. But it's about the mercy of God. Who would have imagined it to happen that way?
But it doesn't stop that way. Jesus, when he needed to teach the disciples a lesson, the apostles a lesson about God's ability and provision, he took the lunch away from a kid. I mean, there's a little boy with a happy meal. And Jesus said, Take it away from him. You know, we always talk about the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. I think the miracle was the kid didn't have a complete meltdown and disrupt the whole meeting.
And he took that little boy's lunch and he said to the disciples, Now, we're going to feed this group of people with it. They could have had manna on the ground. That's already a part of their narrative. It's in their history. They could have had quail blow in. That's a part of their story. The ravens. I mean, there's all sorts of biblical. But no, Jesus did something they'd never seen before.
I mean, it's a consistent pattern through the narrative of Scripture that when God moves, we're going, Wow, I don't know what that is. Could that be God? When God recruited Moses and said, I need you to go back to Egypt. It's time. Now we're going to get those people out of there. Moses said, Wait a minute. What if I go back there? And they say, Just who sent you?
And I think we're in one of those seasons we recognize we need God to move. We can't just keep playing church and whistling and acting like there's nothing happening in the world. Something's happening. I mean, how is it we can't find voices to speak for Israel? They were attacked by Hamas, a globally agreed-upon terror group, recognized even by the United Nations, in the most heinous behaviors, killing women and children. They put children in the oven and made the families watch. Over 700 days later, they still have hostages that they're torturing. And there's a lot of voices saying the Israelis are misbehaving.
Christians, Christian leaders, saying, Well, the Israeli government is inconsistent. Oh, well, thank God, ours isn't. I was relieved to get that sorted out. I mean, a disproportionate anger. There's horrible things happening in the earth. Sudan, Ukraine, I mean, it's a... But there's a hatred directed towards the Jewish people, and we're reluctant to talk about it. We need new eyes to see.
The Necessity of Courage in the Church
God moves in unusual ways. They argued about Jesus, the religious scholars, the experts, the power brokers in the synagogues, in the temple. And they said, There's no prophet that comes from Galilee. Listen to his accent. He's a hillbilly, and God didn't recruit hillbillies. We know the scriptures. Check for yourselves.
Now, we know he walks on the water, and he makes wine out of water, and he raises the dead, and he opens blind eyes. But his pedigree's wrong. And you're reading the narrative, and you think, How could they not see? And I look at our world, and I go, It's hard to see. That's not the way I expect it. It's not the way I expect it.
One of the pastors that was here and spoke to us was Rob McCoy, pastors of Calvary Chapel in California. It's a mission field. He was Charlie's pastor. And he made a statement that I wrote down. He said, In the absence of courage, truth is an orphan. That it's not enough to have access to the truth. We have to embrace it with courage.
Truth is not always celebrated. Truth is not always welcome. In fact, a casual glance at history would tell us that there have always been powerful forces that try to suppress the truth, or manipulate the truth. Jesus said you'd know the truth, and truth would bring freedom to you. So one of the assignments of the church is to be advocates for the truth.
And when I heard Rob say that, I understood that we can't be advocates for the truth absent courage. Because you won't tell the truth. You'll capitulate to whatever the cultural narrative is. You'll just accept conventional wisdom. You'll just go with the flow. And we've done a lot of that. We've done a lot of encouraging around that.
And if you talk about the truth from a biblical worldview, there's a lot of voices that say, Wait a minute. Stop it. You're being inappropriate. Can't we just do a Bible study about the truth in the first century? We can, but it won't be overly relevant to the 21st.
Understanding why the Sadducees' understanding of their world was incomplete, and they missed an opportunity, can inform our decisions. But the purpose of studying the Sadducees is to help us make better decisions in the 21st century.
In 1 Corinthians 16, 13, you do have that verse. It says, Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be men of courage, be strong. Paul's writing to a church, Christians, believers. And he said, To be strong in your faith, you're going to have to be people of courage.
Church, we're going to have to have a new kind of courage. We are. We used to think attendance was enough. Right now, I know, I've raised the bar. Yeah, I have to come to church and be courageous. Yeah. It's like biblical. It's the opposite of courage. It's not so much fear. You can do courageous things while you wrestle with fear.
I think the absence of courage is to be discouraged. That little prefix, dis, means without. Something disappears, it no longer appears. To be discouraged is to be absent courage. If you ask me to describe contemporary American expressions of our faith, I think, for the most part, we're a discouraged lot. We're absent the courage we need to have a bold voice, a forward-leaning voice, an imagination of what God will do.
See, one of the things that I think is so important is we begin to imagine what it will look like when God moves. I've been in 20 cities over the last couple of years across the nation from both coasts, north and south, and there's a lot of... It's not an even story. They look at our part of the world and they think, you know, we're the buckle of the Bible belt. And I go visit downtown Nashville, and I think if that's the case, we've lost our belt and our pants may fall down.
But I came to the realization that there's not a church in Tennessee or a church in Murfreesboro and a church in Portland and a church in Seattle. There's a church. There's a church in Tehran, a church in Tel Aviv, and a church wherever. And the church, when a part of a church is suffering, we're all suffering. The New Testament uses the language of the body, and it said, you know, if one part of the body is suffering, we all suffer.
So I'm spending time now praying and thinking, what will it look like for New England to have an awakening? A spiritual... what would it look like for the Pacific Northwest to have an awakening? What would that look like? I'm praying. I want to see it. I want to be prepared. I'm listening for voices. We had people from California come to Tennessee this week to talk about what God is doing in California. Amen. We better pick it up. God is moving, folks.
Facing Opposition: External and Internal Pressures
We say, no, the way God moves is they sing just as I am. And on the third verse, we've selected a volunteer to come forward. It's to help everybody imagine what that looks like. And then the people that are here that need to respond to the Lord will come forward. That's how I met the Lord 84 years ago. And that's the way my grandparents met that. And that's the way... I'm not saying it was wrong or incomplete. I'm saying we're trying to take something and say, this is the only way God will move.
I got baptized in the Atlantic Ocean in Fort Lauderdale in front of the Sheraton. But I don't think the beach in Fort Lauderdale is holy. I don't think if you really love God and you want your life to amount to something in the kingdom, you've got to go to Fort Lauderdale and find a Sheraton. Hallelujah. But we have that tendency. And God is moving. And we're going to have to cooperate with the Spirit of God to say, help me see, help me recognize. It's going to take some courage on our part. We're actually going to have to know the Lord.
We'll have to know the Word of God well enough that we're not just reciting something that somebody handed to us or say we joined a group and I belong the right group. Therefore, I don't really have to know what I believe. It doesn't matter. I just joined the group and I'm good. We've all done that. We've joined organizations. With no real intent. We just thought there was some opportunity in the organization. So we joined it. We said, yeah, I'll be a part of that, you know, and they're going to require me to have three days of service work, a year to be a part of this organization. So I'll flip hamburgers or I'll collect tickets or I'll do whatever they need or I'll sell something. But I'm a part of the organization and they do good and this is kind of a good connective for me.
And we've treated church kind of like it's just an advanced social thing. You know, it's kind of a good thing to do. No, it's about the transformation of our lives. Apart from God, we have no hope. Amen. It's intended to be transformational from the inside out. What are we going to leave our children and grandchildren? It needs to be something other than a massive debt.
I'm having a hard time. Some of the opposition, the requirement for courage is because there's opposition from beyond us. That doesn't take much imagination these days. And it's not new. I don't believe it has a great deal to do with the end of the age. I think it has very much to do with the age of the church or the age of being the people of God. But I don't think it's so much prophetic.
In Acts chapter 4, which is very near the beginning of the church, they called Peter and John in, the same group of people that orchestrated Jesus' death. They called them in and commanded them not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. And Peter and John replied, well, you judge for yourselves. This is not a particularly respectful response. Judge for yourselves whether it's right in God's sight to obey you rather than God.
Do you understand what they just said? There's a God and you're wrong. And we understand you have some power. You can do harm to us. You can limit our opportunities. You can cause our reputations to be solid. You can inflict pain on us. But God is not with you. That's what they're saying, the leaders in the church. Well, shouldn't they have just gone and had a Bible study about Moses?
Verse 20, for we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. In good plain Middle Tennessee English, we won't stop. We're not going to stop. You can decide for yourselves what you're going to do, they said, but we won't stop. They had some real pressure. It's not theoretical. They're not just going to get taken off social media. This is Acts chapter 4. By Acts chapter 7, there's martyrs. In Acts chapter 8, Saul was there giving approval to his death. Stephen's murdered in the streets of Jerusalem.
This is the first verse following that. And it says, on that day, a great persecution broke out against the church. And all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. All who were scattered, there are thousands of people in Jerusalem at this point that believe in Jesus. And by Acts chapter 5, I'm sorry, by Acts chapter 8, they're being scattered. They're being driven out. It's not safe for them to be there anymore.
Well, that doesn't feel like revival to me. I mean, could it be that the Spirit of God moves and there's external pressure? Saying, no, we don't like that. I don't know. That's not the way I think about revival. I think about a revival where it's like a 5k race. Have you ever run a 5k? Walked a 5k? Watched a 5k? You know what I'm talking about? Five kilometers? I saw two hands. That's good. Y'all should move more.
It's kind of fun, really, because, you know, there's a few show-offs at the front of the thing that, like, run against the clock. But the rest of us, we're just there to wave. And when you do that, when you run, there's people all along the path and they're cheering for you. They don't even know you. You're doing good. No, I feel like I'm about to throw up. No, you're doing good. And every little bit, there's somebody with refreshments, a slice of an orange or a piece of banana or some Gatorade. I mean, it's only a 5k. You're not going to dehydrate in a 5k, folks. But it's more like a social thing. There's usually something attached to it.
But in my mind, that's what revival is. It'll be like, oh, we're so grateful. God is moving. Lives are changing. Things are happening. Yay, God. This is so good. Right? You brought Jesus to our office. We're all going to be honest. Oh, you came to my school and told everybody about G. Thank you. Give me a hug. That's what I want it to be. Right?
But then I read my Bible. And they said, no, if you don't shut up, we'll kill you. And that feels a lot. That feels so relevant, it's uncomfortable. We'll call you names. Now we've got to check. Do we have the courage to still say, well, Jesus has changed my life. And I think he might change yours. Well, who are you to be so judgy to say, I need changed? Well, I really wasn't judging you. I was telling you I was a mess. And you have a lot of the same behaviors I used to have. And God has helped me.
You know what? If you have the courage to say that from time to time, you'll meet somebody that will be angry about it. Well, I don't know who you think you are. I go to the first church of better than you. And we do things more right than that place where you go. And they'll tell you their stories. Don't be angry.
Many years ago, someone who God used as a mentor in my life said to me, Alan, don't pick green fruit. And it really changed my paradigm. I want to help people that want help. If people say to me, you know, I'm not interested. I'm like, okay. I meet people frankly. You know, I don't believe like you. Okay. Well, don't you want to debate? Not really. Well, I don't believe in God. I'm sorry. I don't think we need church. Okay. I think you're a charlatan. Hmm. It's all right. I don't think they have to be silenced. They're entitled to their opinion. I don't agree with them. I don't intend to be silenced by their opinion. I don't intend to diminish my efforts.
Life has a way of creating enough pressure that all of us need help. And when that happens, I hope we have enough humility and enough grace within us to help those who said they thought we were charlatans.
Philippians 1, Paul writes something. I think it's on point for us today. Paul wrote Philippians from a Roman prison. That's a hard place to write encouraging letters from. And he writes to the church in Philippi that he'd been instrumental in bringing formation to it. He said, I want you to know, brothers, that what's happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it's become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I'm in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.
That's really not logical. If it wasn't there, I wouldn't have expected that. He said, you know, I'm in prison, but my imprisonment has caused others to be more courageous. You go, wow. I've heard that for the last few days. People saying that Charlie's assassination will... is causing thousands of people to raise their hand and say, well, I'm going to be more verbal with my faith. Wow.
You know, I've had to yield to the sovereignty of God. Have you ever... how many of you could say God doesn't do things like you think he should? About a third of you. What did the rest of you think? I'm here to tell you, God's plan very seldom looks like mine and his calendar never looks like mine. But I have made peace with the fact that God is sovereign.
And I trust that out of what seems to me to be a horrible tragedy, he's going to bring some expression of his life. And I believe we'll get to see it. Some of the opposition that you and I will face will be from within. Not external. Not pagans beyond the walls. Not people that deny the authority of Scripture. People that sing the choruses we sing and use the vocabulary that we prefer. But they'll oppose the purposes of God. Not new. Not new.
Internal Threats: Wolves from Within
Jeremiah. Jeremiah is a prophet in Jerusalem. In the midst of the covenant people of God. In a very dark season in Israelite history. And Jeremiah says this. It's Jeremiah 5.31. One of the pastors this weekend used it. He said that... I think it was John Ammonchukwu. I'm glad Ammonchukwu wasn't my last name. I'd have been 16 or 17 before I could have spelled it. So, I mean... John is a good man.
But in Jeremiah 5. 31, John... The prophets prophesy lies. And the priests rule by their own authority. And my people love it this way. The prophets and the priests were the spiritual leaders for the people. The priest ministers on behalf of the people to God. The prophets bring God's message to the people. And he said the prophets are false. They lie. And the priest ruled by their own selfish initiatives, and the people like it. That's an internal struggle. God's people attacked from within.
We have too many churches espousing ungodliness, embracing cultural definitions for things that the Bible has defined for us, and we don't have that Liberty. We can't imagine that we're God's people and we ignore God's boundaries. We forfeit our place in the kingdom when we do that. It's not a designer faith, but we can take commandments 1, 3, and 7. We're under the authority of a sovereign God.
We call Jesus of Nazareth Lord, Christ, Messiah, and King. Those are all expressions of yielding, of submission to an authority beyond ourselves. That's the essence of being a Christ follower. And what we see very prevalent amongst us are voices within the church, within the ecclesiastical community, within seminaries, and highly educated, very sophisticated people with adept arguments. Saying, no, you shouldn't yield to the authority of Scripture.
Look at Acts chapter 20. It's Paul. He's talking to the church in Ephesus. He's highly invested there. A lot of things. He's been involved in riots there. He's been involved in some real public ministries of deliverance. Some tremendous breakthrough. The whole city has been shaken. The church has flourished. And he's taking his leave of the community there.
And he said, I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you. And they'll not spare the flock. Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard. Well, I don't expect to read that. I expect Paul to say to them, you're the best. You're awesome. You've got so much momentum. God's done so much in Ephesus. You've got to... Come on now.
But he says... He weeps. And he said, I know when I leave. That from among you, people will treat you with savagery. See, we're going to have to be trained to see in new ways. We're so naive. Amazingly so. I thought Rob McCoy had such clarity on this. Most of this section of my notes came from what I wrote down with him.
He said a couple of things that I thought were worth sharing. This whole cultural engagement thing. He said, Unless Jesus Christ is running for office, you're always voting for the lesser of two evils. Because you know what we say, I didn't participate because I didn't like anybody running. And that's true. More than half of us that say publicly we're Christians don't participate in national elections. And it's because we don't like the options. You know, it's the lesser of two evils.
And I thought Rob, I mean, he's in California. He's got like a front row seat. But he said, Until Jesus is on the ballot, we're always voting between the lesser of two evils. The next statement I had in my notes, that it was in quotes from him, is unsettling to me still today. He said, Our kids are the most indebted, drug-addicted, and depressed generation in American history. And we've abandoned them. because we don't do politics.
Again, I'm not advocating for parties or candidates. I'm telling you, we have to shape the culture. We can't surrender parental authority to school boards. or to teachers' unions. And we can't surrender the training of our young people to pseudo-intellectuals in college campuses. The world has changed. But God is moving in the midst of it all. It's so exciting. It's so exciting to me.
Final Call: Living in God's Sanctuary – Psalm 15
There's one more passage. Psalm 15. It's in your notes. I'm going to wrap this up. I brought you a proclamation. It's a psalm. It says, Lord, who can dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? Those are two very relevant questions. I know it's in something of poetic language, but the real issue is who can dwell in your presence? And I know the standard answer. Well, the one who's born again. But that's not complete. That's the initiation into the kingdom. And I believe in that. I don't want to diminish that.
Who can dwell in your sanctuary? Who can live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbor no wrong and casts no slur on his fellow man, who despises a vile man, but honors those who fear the Lord.
I'm saying, you could spend your life with that. There's real clarity in that. Who keeps his oath even when it hurts. That really hasn't been what we've been coached towards. We've been coached towards a much softer, gentler, embracing, selfish.
One of the most profound things I witnessed this week was Rob McCoy showing up here. He lives in California. He had memorial services today and tomorrow. Is this Saturday? Today and tomorrow. Multiple ones today and then one tomorrow. that will be broadcast all over the world. And he had important assignments to do. He made the commitment to come be a part of our conference months and months ago.
And when Charlie was killed, I sent him a note and said, Rob, I know you got... I can't imagine the scope of what you have to do, but I understand helping families through times of grief. Don't worry about our conference. And he sent me a note back and he said, well, let me see. The family hasn't made all their arrangements yet. Let me see what I can do. And I got a note a couple of days later and he said, I'm going to be there.
And I thought, wow. I'll tell him myself. You know, I'm invited to speak at other places and the invitations come months and months in advance. And, you know, when they come and you look at your calendar, like, you know, somebody will come and say, can you come to Buck Snort next November? When I open my calendar, next November doesn't look too bad. I'm kind of rested and I think, well, Buck Snort's not that far and they got a trout farm, so let's go. And then next November rolls around and life has happened. And my calendar is crazy crowded. I'm like, who put Buck Snort on my calendar? And somebody will say, well, Pastor, that looks like your initials right beside it. I don't remember Buck Snort.
When Rob said, I'll be there, I thought, he's demonstrating something. He's going to forfeit sleep and it'll add stress to his life. He serves the church. I understand that. He gets all the opportunities to make presentations he needs. His presenter is fully exercised. And he traveled across the country to be with us. on a week when I know. his heart is broken.
See, I want to learn to see. in a new way. I know it's going to take some training on my part. But God is moving and I don't want to miss it. There'll be some pressure externally. There'll be voices that won't agree. Revival, awakening, God moving is not going to look like you think. There'll be some donkeys that talk. There'll be some kids that offer their food. I mean, you'd expect somebody in the group to be better prepared than a kid. And there'll be some young people or some people that you think, wow, they're not prepared and they'll have exactly what's needed.
There'll be some expressions of God's power that'll be completely overwhelming. And then there'll be some people with more experience that'll come alongside and say, Lord, open their eyes so they can see. I don't pretend to know what it's going to look like. I can tell you that God is up to something. And we want to be a part of that, folks.
I can tell you this, the Incubator won't be hatred. And it won't be anger. And it won't be resentment. And it won't be bitterness. Doesn't mean we're accepting of ungodliness, that we embrace wickedness and we say it's okay. But you've got to guard our hearts. We've got to guard our hearts. We have to have the humility to say, God, let the change start in me.
We're not the best at that, those of us that go to church. We tend to look through the windows and think the problems are out there. I think that too until I try to leave the parking lot with you. And then I understand the problems are amongst us.
But I brought you a proclamation and I gave you the verses that it was taken from. It's really a... It's just a restating of Isaiah 59, those verses I gave you and then Acts chapter 4. But I think it's an appropriate prayer for the church. God is moving. I believe he's going to use his people to impact our culture and to give our children and our grandchildren a better future. I do.
So if you will, stand with me. We're going to read this together. It's a little longer than a prayer. Sometimes we would pray, but you know, a proclamation is simply when we say what the scripture says about us. Your words have spiritual authority. You know, I understand that can be abused, but it doesn't lessen the fundamental truth of it. You know, food is good for you, but you can kill yourself with a fork. And the reality of your words having spiritual authority is a biblical principle.
Have people taken it and misapplied it? They certainly have, but don't step away from the truth because of some knucklehead. We want to say what God's word says about us. Say, well, I don't believe in that. I know it's part of the change that's underway. We haven't had to trust God because we thought we could join a group and be completely whole. where you will need the power of God to flourish. They're not coming. They're amongst us. They're hunting us.
Let's read it together. Almighty God, our offenses are many in your sight and our sins testify against us. We acknowledge our iniquities, rebellion, and treachery against the Lord, turning our backs on God. Justice has been driven back and righteousness stands at a distance. Truth has stumbled in the streets. Honesty has been far from us. Truth is nowhere to be found. And whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. We humbly ask, Lord, that you would look. Restore righteousness and establish our hearts in your truth once again. May a respect for God grow in the hearts of your people. May those who oppose you, fomenting deceit and lies, be silenced. May their schemes unravel and be exposed. May the glory of the Lord be evident. let us speak your truth with all confidence. Stretch forth your hand that's your power. Amen. Let the purposes of God break forth in this generation. Amen.