Allen Jackson - Let's Follow Jesus - Part 2
One of the great surprises to me since 2020, and I was unprepared for this. You know, in the midst of all that confusion and chaos and the unknowing and the fear and sheltered in place and things closed down, we begin to pray that the truth would be told. And we've seen as we've said so much of it, it's a reason for celebration. Please don't let that list unsettle you. It should cause you to rejoice things that were hidden in the darkness that powerful people would have preferred stayed in the darkness have come into the light. It's a gift from God. What I wasn't prepared for, I thought when the truth was told the majority of the people would rally to the truth.
I wasn't prepared for people to say, "Oh, I don't know if I believe that". Or just not be willing to look at it because it was awkward or uncomfortable or because the positions they had taken they don't want to deal with it, folks when you find yourselves on the wrong side of the truth let me make a suggestion. You have a choice there, you got several choices honestly, you can ignore it, you can deny it. You can be angered by it, you can do a lot, you can attack the person that's delivering the truth, or you can repent. See, we all make mistakes, every one of us. No perfect people, there's only been one, we killed him.
And when you realize you were in error, you may have been in error from a lack of information, you may have believed somebody that wasn't trust, there's a whole menu of reasons why. But when you recognize you're in that place, if you will repent, you can be free and clean and empowered to go forward. If we don't do that, then we live with the weight of the deception and the dishonesty and the lie, it's crushing, it's limiting. It's much better to say, "God, I'm sorry". We would gain so much momentum in the body of Christ if we could simply say, "Lord, there were ways where I was influenced by things that weren't true, but I'm sorry for it. I've defended things I shouldn't have. I participated in things I shouldn't have".
And I'm not talking about COVID. We have defended moral positions and life choices and things that we know are not biblical, not scriptural. We participated, and now when it's becoming more blatant and it's growing, we look away or act like we don't remember or it's just inconvenient or it's uncomfortable or we don't know what to say, you begin by saying, "God, I'm sorry". Repentance is a change of mind. "I was wrong," and then it's a change of direction, "I'll behave differently". That's what the cross was about. That's why Jesus was willing to do that. It's why God asked him to come. It's why we do the Christmas thing. Easter's coming, it's because on the cross Jesus won a victory for us. The author of Hebrews goes into great detail. The book of Hebrews is written to Jewish believers.
So the author of Hebrews presumes an understanding of the behaviors in the temple of offering sacrifices, the furniture in the temple, Jewish history. All of that is baked into the book of Hebrews, and if you're not familiar with it, if you haven't ever read the Old Testament, it can be a bit confusing. But in Hebrews chapter 10, we'll do this part quickly. It says, "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming," it's the law of Moses. All those rules that God gave to the Hebrew slaves to help build them into a people, he said, "It was a shadow," it was a foreshadowing. It was a premise of the good things that are coming, "Not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to God, to worship".
The repetition of those animal sacrifices didn't actually make the people holier. It was an atonement and a covering. It stood between the people's sins and God. Because of their obedience to keep the law, it served to hold judgment at bay, but it didn't remove the fundamental problem. If it removed the problem the author of Hebrew says, "Then it wouldn't have needed to be repeated". "If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once and for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins".
So they had the annual festivals and the annual holidays to be reminded they needed the mercy of God. Goes on in verse 5, "Therefore, when Christ came into the world," and he quotes now from the book of Psalms, Jesus believed there were passage in Psalms that applied to his life assignment. Some of you question the value of reading the Old Testament, Jesus thought it informed his journey, and he's the implementer of a new covenant. "'Sacrifice and offering you didn't desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offering and sin offerings you weren't pleased.' Then I said, 'Here I am, it's written about me in the scroll,'" before we had books, we had scrolls. "I have come to do your will, O God".
There is our life assignment folks. You wanna know what the goal of your life is? It isn't to accumulate, to leave for the next generation, to become, achieve, be honored, it's to do the will of God. "First he said, 'Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you didn't desire, nor were you pleased with them' (although the law required them). Then he said," or secondly, "he said, 'Here I am, I've come to do your will.'" There it is again. "He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all". It's an important sentence. It's kinda couched in a lot of religious language and words, but righteousness and holiness, the ability to stand in the presence of the creator of heaven and earth without guilt, shame, or fear.
Why do we care? Because every one of us have an appointment in his presence. And if you happen to arrive there unprepared, the outcome is not good. There's no do-over. There'll be no blaming of others. When you step out of time into eternity, you want to be prepared to stand in the presence of God, holy and righteous. Period. Bank balances won't matter much. Degrees earned will not be impressive, I do not think we'll want to take a test and be compared to God. Our physical skills and attributes, I don't think we'll be impressive, he made us. Are we prepared to stand in his presence? So the question is what we can do. This is so important, not what can we do. Folks, there is a very clear pathway, a runway of things that we can do.
"So pastor, I don't think, I don't believe I have to earn my..." yeah, I'm not talking about earning your way into heaven. I'm talking about behaving in such a way that you are prepared to meet the King. "Well, I'm born again. I've made a profession of faith. I was even baptized". Good. Absolutely essential, that's how the new birth begins. But growing up in the Lord requires more than that. "So I'm not interested in that". Well then we need to have a serious conversation about the depth of the change that came with your new birth. Because if you became a totally new creation, your orientation, your heart's desire, your passion should be pointed at something other than this present world order, which is plunging towards judgment.
We'll stay in Hebrews. Chapter 10, in verse 19 says, "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place," the Tabernacle, and then the temple was divided into sections. The most holy part of it is this holy place, there wasn't even a light of any sort in there, the presence of God illuminated. And it says, "We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place because we joined the right church. Because we volunteered for the ice rink. I was a skate guard and I can come boldly into the Most Holy Place". No, it says, "We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and a living way open for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God".
It says, "We can come boldly into the throne of grace because Jesus is our high priest". The one who introduces us at the throne is the one who shed his blood that we might stand there in righteousness without fear or guilt or shame. We are indebted to Jesus. It's why we call him Lord. It's why we will lay our lives down to serve him, to see his name exalted. It's why we will not be silent when he's denigrated or mocked or removed. We are his people. "There is no other way under heaven," the scripture says, "whereby men can be at peace with the creator of heaven and earth". And when we're silent about what we know about Jesus, we are not expressing compassion or kindness, we are being self-serving. We're protecting ourselves or our future, whatever we value, and we're unwilling to acknowledge him.
So what we can do, we can understand first of all what the blood of Jesus has done for us. And then in response to that, we can do our part, this isn't my opinion, this is very biblical. We're not gonna have time to walk through this whole list. I brought you a collection, just from the book of Hebrews, of statements that begin with, "Let us, let's do something. Because of what Jesus has done for us, let's do something". You'd be amazed at how many of these we ignore completely or we argue against. I can take you to some of the most influential voices in contemporary Christendom. They're willing to say in the public square things in this list are not necessary, essential, or important. It's troubling.
Hebrews 10:22, "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water". The imagery of that is pretty alien to us. We sprinkle our yards, we sprinkle our vegetables with some things. But if you went to the temple to worship, there would have been people standing in the entrances to the temple who would have been rather sprinkling water on anybody who came in, water that had been mixed with the ashes of the red heifer just as a means of acknowledging a desire for purity, for everybody who would even approach the temple area.
Again, the author of Hebrews understands a set of involvement in rules and regulations that are far removed from us. But the invitation at the beginning of that is "Let us draw near to God. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart". Understanding that we have been sprinkled this time, not with the water and the ashes of a red heifer, "but with the precious blood of Jesus," Peter says. Our conscience is cleansed, that's why I said to you a moment ago, "Don't live with the guilt and the shame. Don't act like you don't notice. Don't ignore it, don't excuse it, don't deny it. Don't try to talk it away. Don't try to find somebody with a PhD to justify your choice".
Say, "God, I understand I stood apart from you. I wanna draw near to you. I don't want to stand at a distance. I don't want to carry the weight of my guilt and my shame of my poor choices or my poor behavior or my ungodliness or my immorality. I don't want to just live through it and live past it. I don't want to accept what it means to have been rejected or hated or mistreated or have suffered because of evil. I wanna come boldly and through the blood of Jesus be set free from every impact of sin in this world of my own and the sin of others". We've acted as if we weren't impact...we are impacted. We can draw near to God.
Verse 23, same chapter, I mean it's just, they come right after one another. "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess," we have a hope for our world, folks, grounded in our faith. It's an election year. May I say it? I'm going to say it 1,000 more times: an election won't fix us. Do they have consequences? Sure they do, but don't overrate them. It would be far more profound for us as a people and a culture and a society if we would repent and turn our faces to the Lord. We have a hope.
Hebrews 10:24, "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds". I lived around horses for a good long while folks, spurs, they will change your relationship with the animal on which you are seated. I promise I changed the language a little, and I don't think I changed the meaning, let's lead with our faith. If you're spurring on a horse, you're giving direction. You're boldly saying, "We will go this way". It's not always received with enthusiasm. It's understood to be, it could be disruptive, maybe even painful. Leading with our faith, we haven't done it. We've led with our technical skill, we've led with our education, we've led with our work ethic, we've led with our determination, we've led with many things, but we've left our faith somewhere way in the back of the discussion. What if we began to be known?
Listen, I'm gonna enter this discussion as a Jesus person. And I'm going to enter into this business deal understanding this set of values is coming before me. I'm gonna be a part of this classroom setting. Understanding that I'm gonna lead with my faith. We've talked about this ad nauseam, but we got to begin to live like it. It's a biblical notion. Verse 25. "Let's not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing since 2020", oh, I'm sorry. That's not a new thing. It's not a new thing. There's really nothing new under the sun. Our adversary, the one who has been working against humanity since the opening chapters of Genesis doesn't really need a new bag of tricks, the ones he has work really, really well.
Did you know that's the truth? We imagine ourselves to be so superior technologically and so advanced. Folks, the things that caused the failure of cultures, that bring societies down, that eliminate populations are the same temptations that have faced us over and over in every generation. Please hear the direction, "Let us not give up meeting together". Can we just say it plainly? Let's go to church. "Well I don't have to go to church to be a Christian". Duh. Agreed. Absolutely. Yay, good for you, Obi-Wan. I agree. But biblically, we are directed to community. We need one another. We need all of this benefits, the challenges, the awkwardness, the discipline, the accountability, it's hard to spur one another on if you're the only one. We don't spur ourselves very well.
Chapter 12, "Since we have been surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let's throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles," let's just not tolerate any self-imposed things that diminish us. Let's just not accept them. Let's just not give excuses to him anymore. Let's not willingly forfeit our opportunities. Let's just not do that, let's get determined about this. Let's say, "Nah, I don't wanna do that anymore". If I can humble myself and repent, If I could say, "Lord, I'm sorry". If I could raise my hand and say, "Look, I'm for Jesus".
If I could add momentum to what I'm doing, you'll do that in business, you'll do it in athletics, you'll do it in giving your children an advantage, you'll get hitting coaches for three year olds. "I wanna get that muscle memory started early". It's okay with me. We'll do extraordinary things, and then when it comes to our faith, we got all sorts of sloppy. Let's just not tolerate any longer. Self-imposed hindrances, let's just not do it. I want to skip to the last one because I think it's so important.
Hebrews 13. "Let us," let's. "Let's go to Jesus outside the camp". Again, it's an image that's kind of lost on us. The journey from Egypt into the promised land that they were nomads and there was a whole set of activities that you could not do in the camp. Some of them were for general public health reasons. Some of them were means of punishment. Some of them was about sickness and disease, but there was a whole host of things. So to be outside the camp was to understand you were either engaged in something that was less than should be celebrated, or there was a reason you'd been separated from the general population. And it says that Jesus suffered outside of the camp, outside the gate of the city, he was crucified. Because the Jews wouldn't tolerate that inside the city. And we're called, it says, "Let's go to Jesus outside the camp bearing the disgrace he bore".
Are you willing to face disgrace for Jesus? Or have you adopted the contemporary mantra, "Well, I don't want anybody to feel awkward because of my faith. So I'm more like a chameleon. I can whistle Dixie or the battle hymn of the Republic depending on the audience that I'm with". We've elevated this to our art form, we have books and libraries and seminars. Folks, there are times when you say, "I'm for Jesus," it gets quiet. You'll be dropped from some invitation lists. Or you'll start qualifying, "Well, I'm not one of those kind of Christians. I mean, yeah, I guess you could say I'm a Christian, but I'm not one of those, you know, I'm one of those Bible people, not an extremist. I believe after God finished Malachi he got some gummies and he chilled".
Do not send me a letter. Look at Acts 5, I'll close with this. "The apostles left the Sanhedrin," if you don't remember, the Sanhedrin was the Jewish authority that lit the fuse on Jesus crucifixion. They wanted him condemned, they took him to Pilate and said, "This man deserves death, the death that you can implement. You torture people to death, we don't do that, we want you to torture him to death". And now the apostles are before that same group and they're threatening them in the same way. It says, "They rejoiced because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. And day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ".
That seems to me to be almost the antithesis of the contemporary church. They rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus. They weren't going to win best citizen's awards. There were children that would no longer want to interact with their children. There were segments of polite society that would not welcome them anymore. They were going to lose friends. They might lose their lives. They certainly could lose portions of their fortunes if they had any. And their response wasn't one of grief or remorse or frustration or anger or bitterness, they rejoiced, because they had been worthy to stand with Jesus.
I want to plant the seed. Let us begin to be determined to be Jesus people. Wherever we go, with whomever we gather, we don't have to be angry. Doesn't require us to be belligerent. Certainly doesn't demand of us to be violent, but we wanna be advocates for Jesus. Folks, the truth is being made plain with a clarity that is more startling than I ever imagined possible. Even the people who perpetrated deception, inexplicably to me right now, standing in the public square going, "Yeah, I made that up". Only God, only God.
Let's decide what we're gonna do. I don't know the number that will be required, but I know at some point God will look upon us with mercy and he will interact and he will bring freedom and liberty. It's the best gift we can give to our children and grandchildren. I brought you a prayer, it's actually a proclamation. Why don't you stand with me. It's a proclamation about God's protection in our lives. We can read it together. If you're at home, you can read it with us. We can hear you through the screen. No, we can't, but the Lord can.
I rejoice in the protection of Almighty God over my life. I am the Lord's servant, I rest in the completeness of His strength and care. No weapon formed against me will prevail. I will refute every tongue which rises against me, this is my heritage as a servant of the Lord. A thousand may fall at my side but destruction will not overwhelm me. I have made the Most High my dwelling place. God is my refuge and my security. No harm will befall me, no disaster will overtake me. God has commanded his angels to watch over my life. My life and my future are secure through the strength of my Lord and my redeemer. Amen.