Allen Jackson - Blessings or Curses
It's good to be with you again. We have stepped back outside for some of our worship services, so I get to welcome you into our outdoor sanctuary. It's a beautiful time of year in Tennessee, and we wanted to take advantage of this season. Our topic for today is, "America, Blessings or Curses"? We are walking through a transition time. God is shaking the earth. This isn't just about a virus, or politics, or ideological conflict, God is shaking the earth. I don't think the outcome is clear yet for our nation, because I believe the outcome will be determined by the hearts of God's people, the choices we make, the changes we make. Our problem is not the wickedness of the ungodly, it's the indifference of the faithful. And as we are awakened to the purposes of God, I believe God will respond to us. I'm honored to have this time with you. Grab your Bible and get a notepad, most of all let's be listening for God's instructions to each one of us.
You have a citizenship in two realms. You have a citizenship in the current world order. I'm a U.S. citizen. I've got a little blue passport. It says I'm a citizen to this nation, and with that comes certain rights and privileges. I suspect many of you are citizens of this nation as well. We're a nation of immigrants, we've come from the nations of the world. We're not bound together because we look the same or we have a common heritage that reaches back thousands of years, or because we have the same facial structure, we're bound together by a series of laws. We've been a nation under law.
That principle, that premise, is under great threat right now. If we don't close our southern border and return to immigration in a illegal, orderly way, we will lose our freedoms. That's not a political problem, that's a character problem. We have to care enough to require those people that we elect to provide leadership for us to maintain the rule of law in our nation, or we will lose our freedoms. But you're a citizen of this present world order, but you're also, at the same time, a citizen of a spiritual world. Both dimensions exist simultaneously, and for me, it's more helpful to think of them as two dimensions.
You have a citizenship of this present world order, but you have a citizenship in that eternal spiritual world. You can be a citizen of the kingdom of darkness, or you can be a citizen of the kingdom of God, but you have dual citizenship. One will reach beyond time, so there is a level at which I will pray for this nation, I will defend this nation, I will work on behalf of the betterment of the citizens of this nation, but my primary loyalty is to the spiritual kingdom to which I belong. And that doesn't come by joining a church, or a denomination, or having a perfectly-crafted, systematic theology, or keeping a set of religious rules. Entrance into the eternal kingdom of God is linked to a person, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth. You have to choose him as Lord of your life.
You see, it's not adequate simply to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the long-promised Messiah of the Hebrew prophets. You can believe that, you can be an academic, you can be a professor. To become a Christ follower means you take that historic fact and you give it personal implications in your life and you yield to Jesus as Lord of your life. Your value set, your value structure, how you understand home, and family, and marriage, what you do with your time, your resources, your energy, your vision of the future are determined by Jesus of Nazareth. He is your Lord. And if he's not Lord of your life, it really doesn't matter where you sit on the weekend or how many Bibles you own.
So, one of the things I want to be certain you have clarity on this evening, or at least in this session, is which of those eternal spiritual kingdoms you belong to. To participate in the kingdom of God, you have to make an intentional choice. Jesus said no one will see the kingdom of God unless he's born of the Spirit. It requires a unique spiritual birth just as much as a physical birth is required to participate in your journey under the sun. Maybe we oughta just say that prayer together really quickly. You just repeat it after me.
Almighty God, I'm a sinner and I need a Savior. I believe Jesus is your Son, that he died on a cross for my sin, and that you raised him to life again that I might be justified. Forgive me of my sins, and I forgive everyone who's sinned against me. Jesus, be Lord of my life. All that I am, all that I have, all that I'll ever be, I yield to you, in Jesus's name, amen, hallelujah.
Welcome to the kingdom of God. America, blessings or curses? I hope you do the daily Bible reading with us, it's one of the most helpful tools that we make available to you. It's just a systematic reading of the Bible. You can get it on our website, or the church app, it'll even read it to you, I believe. You can listen to it while you're driving to work, or doing chores around the house, or mowing the lawn. We're walking through the book of Job right now. You know where that is? It's right in the middle of the Old Testament. There's Job, Palms, and Proverbs, right, they're together.
Well, Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible, and if you've read through the Bible a couple of times, the story of Job is a little heavy. In fact, we've been reading Job this week, and more than several people have said to me through the week, "I didn't really want to read it. I went back and read something else". 'Cause this story opens with Job and God is celebrating Job's faithfulness, but the devil presents himself and says the only reason Job loves you is you're so good to him. If you let me do what I want to Job, he'll curse you. And God says, okay. Yeah, it's tough.
And things in Job's life go really wrong. He loses everything, including his health. And his friends roll in, some friends, and they began to explain to Job why all these things are happening to him. Not correctly, but giving their opinion. Be careful with your opinions. Well, I thought I would take a little bit of time this evening with the book of Job. The end of Job, it's where we're just about to read. Job is this story of great suffering, of bad counsel, and of a revelation of God. The good news is, Job comes out at the end of the story in a much better place than he was at the beginning. Everybody goes through, folks. Everybody goes through. Nobody makes this journey under the sun without trouble.
If you think you know somebody that doesn't have trouble, you don't know him well enough. I've been interacting with people for a while now, and I'm telling you, everybody carries some things. Life's tougher than we wish it were. But in Job chapter 39, we're gonna look at Job chapter 39, 40, and 41, not in as much detail as you might think, it'll be okay. But Job 39, God has shown up, God's gonna respond to Job and his friends. And in the beginning of chapter 39, God says you don't even understand my glory. You all think you're so smart. Let me tell you a bit about my perspective. And he begins to ask Job some questions. It's really a presentation of the glory of God, but God did it in such an authentic way.
I'm a bit concerned about the way we present God. We present God in formal religious services, we line up in rows, and we sit like we're frozen, and we don't laugh. I don't think God's like that. There's an authenticity to God. He knows the secrets of your heart. He knows the things you've done in darkness and you pray never see the light of day, and he still loves you. So in chapter 39, God gives us this presentation of his glory, and he does it with the animals. In verse 1 he says, "Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you watch when the doe, when the deer bears her fawn"?
If you're so smart, he says, in verse 5, "Who let the wild donkey go free? Who untied his ropes"? In verse 9, "Will the wild ox consent to serve you? Will he stay by your manger at night"? In verse 13, "The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully, but they can't compare with the pinions and feathers of the stork". In verse 19, "Do you give the horse his strength or clothe his neck with a flowing mane"? And verse 26, "Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom? Does he spread his wings towards the south," 27, "Does the eagle soar at your command and build his nest high"?
When God wanted to get Job's attention, he used the mountain goats, the deer, the wild donkeys, the ostrich, the stork, the horses, the hawk, and the eagle. He said if you're so smart, let's talk about your world, big fella. The glory of God is on display all around us. We're living in a Romans 1 kind of a season, the deterioration of human character. But in Romans chapter 1 it tells us that the character of God is revealed in his creation. And God's reminding Job of that, so Job defends himself.
Job's response is in chapter 40, the first verses. "The Lord said to Job, 'Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him.'" Whew, how about one-on-one Jeopardy with God? "Job answered the Lord, 'I am unworthy. How can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer. Twice but I will say no more.'" You know, in the good old Southern living Bible, you know what Job just said? I give up. I recognize the folly of my way. But God continues with this revelation he's going to give to job. Job's walking through a very difficult season, and he's going to come out with something far more precious than camels, and donkeys, and a new family. He comes out of this season with a revelation of God that will shape his future.
And one of the points that God makes in the next verses of Job chapter 40 is how God deals with the wickedness in the world. It seemed appropriate to me for this season. God makes some statements about the role he takes in the world, and he's asking Job if Job is prepared to take over with dealing with the wicked. Job is saying I haven't been treated fairly. I'm not comfortable with the responses I've been getting from you. So God says to Job are you able to deal with the wicked?
Let's read it, Job 40 verse 6. "The Lord spoke to Job out of the storm, 'Brace yourself like a man. I will question you, and you shall answer me. Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Do you have an arm like God's and can your voice thunder like his? Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor, and clothe yourself in honor and majesty. Unleash the fury of your wrath. Look at every proud man and bring him low. Look at every proud man and humble him. Crush the wicked where they stand. Bury them all in the dust together. Shroud their faces in the grave. Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you.'"
It's a challenge that God is handing to Job. He said do you know how to bring the wicked into subjection? Are you capable of doing that? And Job answered wisely, and I think we would be wise to answer in the same way. We have to leave that job to God. We see injustice. We see things that are not right. But we have to recognize we don't have the power. We are dependent upon Almighty God. The one person we do have authority over is ourselves. And the most helpful characteristic we can cultivate in this regard is the fear of the Lord, the respect for God, a yielding to God.
A recognition that there is a God and it's not me. That it isn't my life, that God gave me breath today. And if I'm here tomorrow, it'll be because he's given me breath for tomorrow. I serve at his pleasure. I may make plans, but God orders my steps. COVID sent us to school on that a bit, has it not? We were so filled with pride, and arrogance, and our resources, and our future, and our dreams, that we scarcely had room for the Lord. And we thought either the protection of our legal systems, or the protection of our civil authority, or the protection of something would secure our future, and God is giving us a front row seat that apart from his strength and power, we will not live in freedom.
It seems to me if I were asked to give a description of what we're walking through, what we are watching, that wickedness and destruction have been unleashed amongst us in a way that I have not seen previously. I've studied history and I know there's some other incredibly dark chapters and seasons in history. I'm not suggesting this is the first time that there has been struggle, or pain, or deception, or wickedness, or darkness. But I am suggesting that something has changed in recent months, that wickedness and destruction have been unleashed. It seems to me that there's been a barrier removed by God, and the spiritual forces of wickedness are far more active amongst us.
The evidence in our own nation is abundant, beyond the time I have in this session. Tremendous division, we've never been this divided as a people, and we've fought wars we were so divided. And it seems to me that the division emerges with this powerful sense of self-righteousness, and it comes to us for many different reasons. There's no single source. We're divided on how we look, what our ethnicity is, the accent with which we speak, the part of the country in which we live, how we're dealing with our own healthcare choices, whether we're vaccinated or not, whether we wear a mask or not. We're divided over what kind of car we wanna drive, if it's gonna be fueled by petroleum or electricity.
Whether we're a Republican or Democrat. Whether we're heterosexual or something else. The list is too long. It's brought tremendous separation to us as a people. It's brought separation to my life with people with whom I have done a great deal of life I hold in high esteem. There is a spirit of division loose amongst us, and we better pay attention to the kingdom we belong to and let that be the unifying factor in our lives. Beyond the division, there is lawlessness exploding around us, on our border as I mentioned. Censorship, censoring the free exchange of ideas in a way I have not seen in my lifetime, and doing it without apology, without reluctance, without any embarrassment.
If they disagree with your idea, they simply say you're speaking something that's disinformation and they shut you down and expect you to be quiet. It's censorship and it's not okay. Violence is exploding. And at the same time the violence is exploding, there's a whole set of voices saying we should defund the authorities that keep us safe, what nonsense. We've gotta stand up for the expressions of authority in our culture.
Now, we need to hold them accountable to do their jobs and perform their tasks in a fair way, in a just way, but I'm grateful for those people that put themselves on the front line. Personal ethics, don't hold other people accountable to standards that you don't behave by, that's just crazy. We have a form of government that is a reflection of our hearts. That's the notion of this great experiment that we call the United States of America. That the leaders we have are a reflection of our heart, in our local communities, in our local expressions of authority, all the way through the most powerful offices in our nation. It's very clear from a casual glance we need a heart change.
Lawlessness is exploding. Greed and covetousness, spirits of greed and covetousness. I've never heard so much discussion about what we're entitled to. We're entitled not to pay debts that we incurred willfully, says who? We're entitled to this or that. Folks, we're not entitled, we're being manipulated, and it's happening because of the greed and the covetousness in our own hearts. We've lost the notion of work, and fair profit, and contentment. They're very important biblical principles and they have to flourish within the church. Family is under a full blown spiritual assault. Marriage, how it's understood, how it's defined, male and female, the roles they're assigned by Scripture.
Parenting, what's inclined, what's involved with that. We don't begin with our opinion or our family experience, we begin with a biblical worldview, or we stand apart from God's wisdom and counsel, and we won't get the benefits. Now, I could go on and on with the list, you're familiar with it, it's not hidden from you. The Department of Justice telling the FBI that they have to monitor our school board meetings. Are you kidding me? They're our children in our communities. Our opinions about what they learn and how they learn matters. But here's the question. What can we do? What can we do? We have to pray for our nation. That's not a platitude.
You see, laws restrain evil, but they do not produce good. Laws don't produce good, they just restrain evil. You know that in your own life and mine. We may obey the speed limits because we don't want to pay the penalty, but they don't make us better drivers. If I think nobody's watching, I'm in a hurry. We have to pray for our nation. The laws restrain evil, but they don't produce good. Praying for the government to do the church's job is not a good solution. The government's job is not to make people righteous, that's the church's assignment. The government cannot do what the church has failed to do in our responsibility. That's our assignment. Just a casual glance, you get the sense there's a lot more bad people than good these days.
At least standing in the public square, if there's a silent majority, they need to find a voice. And expressions of evil and wickedness in the public square are getting worse and worse. We need something that will change bad people into good people, and it needs to be more than a vocabulary shift. Well, God's provision for that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have to have a sense of urgency that the Jesus story will be told frequently, widely, consistently, unrelentingly.
That's the only thing that will bring a change to human hearts. Not more laws, not different politicians, not different majorities, we have to have a change of heart. It's the assignment of the church. We are to win people to the Lord, not make war on them. We have to pray for the ungodly with compassion. We have to tell them our Jesus story. You don't have to adopt their behaviors to tell them your Jesus story. You don't have to engage in their wickedness and their immorality, but you have to have compassion on them, not anger, and resentment, and bitterness.
The harshest words Jesus spoke were not directed at the woman caught in the act of adultery. He asked her where those who condemned her were, and she said Lord, they've all gone. And he said that neither do I condemn you, but now go and leave your life of sin. He spoke the truth to her. He didn't say to her I understand you're having a hard season and you needed some companionship, or the circumstances of your family were difficult. He said you've got to go and change your behavior.
We have to have compassion for people. We need a heart change, and it has to start with us. The people you work with, the people that live near you, the people you're kids are involved with on the soccer teams and the ball fields. Do we share with them our God story, or do we spend time being angry, and resentful, and bitter? The harshest words Jesus spoke weren't towards those public sinners, they were towards the religious people who used religious rules to keep people's hearts far from God. Jesus blistered them with his words. I think too much of our prayer power is misdirected, it's misdirected. I think we'll see change in public expressions of leadership when we see changes in the heart conditions in a broad way across our nation.
I wanna pray with you before we go. The solution to the problems that face our nation is not new political leaders, it's a change of heart, and it starts with our heart and the people that we know. Let's pray:
Father, I thank you that you've changed us, and that you continue to lead us forward. We present ourselves to you today. Have your way in us. Let your purposes come forth within us. Be merciful to us, in Jesus's name, amen.