Allen Jackson - Great Darkness, The Light, and The Truth - Part 1
I suspect most of you know my mom went to heaven this week, which is a tremendous victory for her. And the thing that helps, I think, all of us process that loss is we understand that the gain that's come to her is far greater than the loss that we experience. So, with that bargain in mind, we'll go forward. But for full disclosure, I think it was impossible for me to put together the talks for this weekend and this week without having some influence from all of those events and the contribution that she'd made in my life, and my family's life, and so many of our lives, maybe not directly, but certainly indirectly, written into the narrative, so.
The title is, "Great Darkness, the Light, and the Truth". I suspect you know by now that we seem to have stepped into one of those seasons where confusion is growing and the deception seems to be escalating, and it's disorienting. And I suspect, I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that will intensify over these next few weeks, and even months, perhaps, and we will need the help of the Lord. And when you do that, you know, when the terrain is unfamiliar and when you're in a place where you don't know the pathway, the light to illuminate the path becomes far more critical. If you're walking through your house and nobody's rearranged the furniture, you can typically do it in pitch darkness. If you're walking through someone else's home and you do it in pitch darkness, you will have injuries and a non-church vocabulary, unless you guard your heart very carefully.
And we're walking through one of those seasons where the darkness seems to be intense and it makes our dependency upon the light even more important. So, that's the target. Isaiah chapter 9, we'll start there. Isaiah, as is his habit, with such beautiful, poetic language. "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; and on those living in the land of the shadow of death the light has dawned". Isaiah prophetically looking forward to the Messiah, and then Jesus quotes Isaiah in Matthew chapter 4. He says, "The people living in darkness have seen a great light; and on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. And from that time on Jesus began to preach, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.'"
Jesus gave us a bit of commentary. He did more than fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah. He gave us a little window on how you walk in the light. You do that by a willingness to repent and when you recognize God's timing is imminent. And there are many things that God gives us windows into. He gave us a great deal of prophetic information about the arrival of Messiah. He is giving us a great deal of information about the end of the age, but whatever it may be, whether it's a life season or a life stage or a kingdom event, when we've been given that insight, the appropriate response on our part, to maintain our position in the light, is to hold very carefully and closely to us an attitude of repentance. Because repentance indicates a willingness to change, to change our thought and our behavior.
Since self-righteousness is a unique problem, an epidemic amongst religious people, we imagine ourselves to be so right we need not change. Repentance becomes a very important tool in times when change is afoot. And when you see the darkness increasing, understand, for that to have happened, the light had to be diminished. And the thing that would cause our light to have been diminished is ungodliness, indifference, ambivalence. And so, in this season I believe God begins with his people, saying, "Repent". Jesus came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He didn't come to the Gentile nations. And I believe, as we approach the end of the age, the Spirit of God will move amongst the people of God, for those who will respond to him.
I wanna be one of them. One of the phrases that Jesus used very frequently, and I just gave you a very small sample, had to do with the truth because it's the truth that brings the light. When you hide the truth, diminish the truth, manipulate the truth, you intensify the darkness. When you choose the truth, when you celebrate the truth, when you determine to be a person of the truth, you can't shade the truth, you can't tell part of the truth, you can't withhold the truth that you know. When you do, you're a deceiver. It's important. And there's these phrases that Jesus used, when he was ready to make some serious statement, he would say, "I tell you the truth," and it's kind of code for, "What I'm about to tell you is so bizarre that I'm gonna have to say, 'This is really true,' because if I didn't tell you it was true, you'd think I was making it up".
And I gave you just a couple of samples. It's a fun Bible study. You can run the references for yourself. The first is Luke 21 and Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow is put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on". They were making their offerings at the temple. They're watching it in public. That's another discussion for another day, but they weren't giving in secret. Jesus said, "We give in secret and we help those that are less fortunate than ourselves so that their dignity can remain intact".
But on the majority of the occasions when he encouraged people to give, they gave publicly. I'm not suggesting a tote board. Yet. But on this day, they're watching the people make their gifts and the gifts are being given, and he calls the disciples over and he said, "I tell you the truth, that widow who contributed a couple of small copper coins has out given everybody". Well, that wasn't what happened, if you just tallied up the value of what had been given. But Jesus is giving them another lesson. He's turning a light on, the darkness is being dispelled. He said, "There's a value beyond the ledgers of this present age. There's a worth to things that you can't put into an adding machine. There's a value that exceeds the value that the secular culture attaches to things". He said, "I'm telling you the truth, that woman made a great sacrifice".
You see, a part of learning to walk in the light means our lives, our thoughts, and our behaviors will transition further and further away from those who walk only in the knowledge and the light in the information of a secular culture. Godliness is intended to change your life more than a location where you sit for a few minutes on the weekend. We've lived too far in the world, far too concerned that they would be offended by the truth of Almighty God, and we've lived too far away from the righteousness, the holiness, and the purity of an Almighty God. In John chapter 8, Jesus again, he said, "'I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!' And at this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds".
Again, Jesus makes a statement that is beyond, it seems, reason. It doesn't fit into their neat equations. He said, "Before Abraham was, I am"! Now, the language isn't lost on them. They know the scriptures better than we do. And clearly, Jesus in his earth suit had not been here longer than Abraham. Abraham's been dead for hundreds and hundreds of years. But he was asserting a place in the unfolding purposes of God and he was using language that pushed it right up in the face of his adversaries, his opponents, those who were refusing to acknowledge him as Lord. For those who say Jesus was all about a group hug, they don't know their Bibles.
In fact, it made the audience so angry, they wanted to kill him. The truth is not always applauded. The truth is not always celebrated. The truth is not always comfortable. The truth is not always an invitation to a vacation. Sometimes, the truth means realignment. It was Jesus's message. He said, "If you wanna walk in the light, repent". If you wanna stay in the dark, keep saying, "We know it all. We're the covenant people of God, we keep the right holidays, we eat the right foods. We're better than all the non-Jewish people. We're better than all the Gentiles".
He said, "If you wanna continue to stumble in the darkness, just keep on that way. Or you can repent and participate in my kingdom". It's the overriding message in my heart for the contemporary church. If we will repent, if we will choose the truth, if we will allow the Spirit of God to bring a new alignment to us, we can have an entirely different future. Our children and our grandchildren can know the blessings of God in a way that we wouldn't know how to imagine and that we are powerless to orchestrate. Or we can pretend we know it all.
There's some amazing expressions of God's grace and engagement in our world. In all the chaos and the confusion and the ugliness and the darkness, there's some remarkable things that the Lord is doing. We're in the midst of an election cycle. Have you noticed that? Good, I'm grateful for that. In all the anxiety that comes with that and all the ugly words and all the stuff and the accusations, in the midst of that God, I believe, intervened on our behalf. Not along political partisan lines, but he spared us the grief of an assassination. Our nation's history is stained with enough of that kind of hate, and wherever you fit on the political spectrum, I hope we can recognize the mercy of God in sparing us that.
Beyond that, on a more local level, a judge this week, a federal judge, upheld Tennessee's Adult Entertainment Act. You may not all know the names of the laws, but it was a law that was put through our state legislature and signed by our governor limiting the presentation of obscene material to children. What a thought. The darkness is the idea that we should present obscene material to children. The light is that legislators and governors would say that's not a good thing.
Now, previously, a lower court had ruled to block the enforcement of that law in much of our state, but a federal appeals court upheld the law. That's a, "Yea God". We're in the midst of a month of prayer and fasting called for by our governor. We've agreed as a community here to fast and pray on Wednesdays, at least as a beginning point. You are welcome to fast seven days a week throughout the month. It's okay. Don't let me limit your vision and your enthusiasm, but if fasting is newer to you, at least join us for some portion of Wednesdays. We're together on Wednesdays and I believe fasting and prayer throughout scripture is one of the most powerful ways we're asked to seek the Lord. It's a way of humbling ourselves.
God is moving in the most incredible ways. I mean, it just goes week after week. It comes with such frequency. There was a sniper allowed to attempt a shot at a presidential candidate. Now, they promised us full investigations, but the people promising that are the same ones who told us the Russians subverted the will of the American people in our elections, that COVID-19 didn't begin in a laboratory, that the president's son had a laptop was just propaganda from some other nation, that slopey roofs are really dangerous places. I mean, we watch it, but it's so disconcerting, and what we watch and what we are told are so divergent, they're so different, you have trouble believing what you watch. It makes it a disorienting time.
I had the opportunity to do an interview with Robert Kennedy Junior a few months ago, and in order to do the interview we had to rent a space to do it and his security people had to do a sweep of the building, and the room, and whoever was going to be there. Because for more than a year, while he's been campaigning in this election cycle, he was refused Secret Service security. Now, never mind that his father and his uncle had been assassinated in service of this nation. Now, that's been altered in the last few days, but for more than a year they refused security. It's so far beyond absurd and it happens with such frequency. We have a president who called his chief political rival a target and the media liked it so much they repeated it over and over and over.
What we watch and what they say to us are so divergent. It's unsettling. Are we watching and listening or are we just swept along in the tide? Elections are not our fundamental problem. They truly are not. I understand they have consequences. I'm not arguing that. Participate in the process. But I'm very much saying to you that the real challenge we face is the hardening of our own hearts. That, truthfully, we just don't want to be bothered with it. We want to do what we want, when we want, the way we want, and we want to pursue the things that are our agenda and we don't want to be bothered with an assignment to the larger picture. Our lives are distracted.
And once again, the powers of darkness have stirred up a great hatred for the people of God. I wanna encourage you, as I do frequently, to stand up for the truth. Pray for the Jewish people, the nation of Israel, for all the God's people, all the Jesus people. Pray for your family, pray for your nation, pray for your leaders. It's very important work. This is our hour. This is our time to walk by faith. Very soon, I suspect, we'll be called upon to walk by sight. That the spiritual forces of principalities and powers of evil will break into the open and you'll have to deal with them in a very personal way.
When Goliath is bellowing his challenge, it's too late to master the use of the sling. When the Sanhedrin commands you to be silent and they threaten your life if you refuse, it's not the time to begin an inquiry of who Jesus is. When the riots have begun, fueled by lies and deceit, claiming that those believing in Jesus have destroyed the economy, the opportunities to be advocates for Jesus will greatly diminish. Now we have the freedom, the liberty, the tools with which it make so much possible. Let's determine to walk uprightly in our homes, with our friends, in our communities, boldly advocating for the truth of our Lord turning up to light. We have been called by Jesus to be salt and light. We have kind of a modern perversion of that in the church. We think we've been called to be light salt.
If you salt your food and the taste isn't changed, we don't blame the food. We understand that the salt is diminished. May God give us the bold faith we need for this season. I want to pick up Jesus's invitation again. "Let us repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand". I wanna be a participant. I truly do. In Luke chapter 2, I'm back on your notes, there's hope. I'm going away again, it's okay, but I'm back for a minute. They brought the infant Jesus to the temple to observe the law on his behalf and, "Simeon," an old man who was waiting to see the Messiah, "took him in his arms and praised God, saying, 'Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people. Israel.'"
Simeon said, "You've done it in front of all people," but he, and there was only a couple of them, a handful of them, at the temple that day that understood. It wasn't a majority position. He said that Jesus would be a light of revelation for the non-Jews and for the covenant people of Israel. Now, I'd like to take the balance of the time and turn this, in some respects, a bit more personal. Most of you know the story. Almost, gee, almost 60 years ago, the doctors told my mom she had six months to live. We were churched, we just weren't Christians, and she prayed a prayer that she would know the truth before she died. She didn't imagine God would heal her. She didn't know God that healed. She simply asked to know the truth.
And some days after that, the Lord spoke to her. We were Methodist. That was not normal. Well, I'm not being disparaging. I'm telling you, the people we hung out with, God didn't talk to them. And he said, I gave you the verse, it was John 14:6. Said, "You asked to know the truth before you died". And she said, "I did". And he said, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me". She didn't know that was in John 14. She had to find the Bible and look till she could find it. But it put her on a pathway that changed my life and has impacted many other people beyond just my family. I'm grateful for that. That's what truth does. Jesus told the truth. Truth brings freedom. The light helps dispel the darkness.
Now, there's a lot of messaging coming at you that says, if you choose God's truth or you choose this notion of God's light, you're inappropriate, you're arrogant, you're presumptive, you're antiquated, all sorts of unflattering labels will be attached to you. You can be sexist or racist or homophobic or xenophobic, and the words just get longer. You have to start looking them up. Then, you just feel bad about yourself because you don't even know whether you should say thank you or be angry. I think it's worth noting that objective truth exists, and this needs to be established in your heart.
When I say objective truth, it means there is truth that is universal, that it transcends nations, languages, race, gender. There is objective truth. It's universal, it's knowable, it's not hidden from us, it's not beyond us. It has been made plain. The scripture says that it's been made clear to us in God's creation. So, you don't have to speak the original languages in which the Bible was written. You don't have to be a great sage who spent your life hidden away in a cave. That God has revealed to us in his creation, and that that objective truth transcends governments.
Some of those ideas are captured in our founding documents. I'm not saying they're transcendent, but when they make statements like, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain rights. That's not about the United States of America. That would be true for any person in any government. We just have had the blessing of having some, at least, hint of a biblical world view in the documents that have shaped the nation where we have lived. Now, alongside objective truth is subjective truth, and subjective truth is personal. That's about my experience or yours. That's about my perspective. That's about the elements and the influences that have shaped me and how I understand the world in which I live. Subjective truth is circumstantial. It's ever-changing.
Now, the discussion that takes place in the public arena these days seldom makes the distinction. In fact, if you would dare to suggest you believe in objective truth, you'll frequently be mocked, particularly in institutions of learning. What at one time said it was institutions of higher learning at elite levels, but that's no longer true. Now, they push that drivel down into the schools where our children are. There's something we should all understand, that the personal choice to reject objective truth does not change reality. It's a very important point.
If you say, "I don't believe in God," or, "I don't believe in the devil," it doesn't nullify either one. It's like saying, "I don't believe eating chocolate will cause me to gain weight". I'm a living example that that is not true. "Well, maybe if you chase it with ice cream," won't help. "Well, maybe if I gargle with Doctor Pepper," won't do it either. Tried all the above. Their existence is unchanged by your decision. When you encounter objective truth, the best possible choice is to submit to it, to submit to it. Now, what we all understand and we know intuitively is there's a personal struggle with that. I don't want to yield.
From the time I was this tall, I was very adept at "me do it". "No," is one of the first words we master. I'm not sure if we have to be taught that one. It seems to be intuitive within us. Our will is formed very early. When we're hungry, we cry, and we'll keep crying until you satisfy my hunger. When we need change, we'll cry louder until somebody gives me the attention to make me more comfortable. And without the help of the Spirit of God, we take that pattern into adulthood. Crying when we're uncomfortable, until circumstances change to make us happier. And then God in his mercy begins to reveal himself to us and we have a choice to make. Will we submit to the objective truth that there's a God and his invitation to us to repent and to walk in the light?
I wanna pray with you before we go:
Heavenly Father, I thank you for every person that I've had this time with today and I pray that in the name of Jesus you would give us the will to persevere, the determination to overcome, that we may be reminded that greater is the Spirit within us than any challenge we face in this world. In Jesus's name, amen.