Allen Jackson - A Life That Triumphs Over Evil - Part 1
The title for this session is A Life That Triumphs Over Evil. But, to be completely candid, it's a bit different for me. I wrestled with this more than I typically do in preparing a talk. I'm sure most of you know, at least, that my mom went to heaven this week. And I would like to, on behalf of myself and my whole family, to say thank you for the many, many of you who have expressed your kindness and your condolences and offered support and encouragement. You made this week really a celebration of a life, and we thank you for that. It reminded me of what I didn't know when God began to invite me, many years ago, towards the church. And that's the tremendous power and strength there is in a community of believers.
And I wanna thank all of you in the most sincere way for the many ways, those of you that stood in line for far too long to express your kindness. So thank you for all of those things. I'm confident today that my mom's gain exceeds any loss or grief that we're wrestling with. And, because of that, I have enough hope to persevere. And I felt like I needed to honor her life a bit, and I wanna do that as a part of this message. But I also feel a tremendous responsibility to take our faith and address what's happening in our world. If my mom could say one thing to you today, I'm pretty confident I know what she would say. I've watched just a little bit, not much, the last two or three weeks, maybe 10 minutes of the, some of the Olympic trials, getting ready for the Olympics.
Seen a little bit of track and field, and you watch those relay races. It's amazing to me, the gifted athletes and the tremendous training and strength. But there's that critical point in those races where they put their hand behind them, and everything rests in the balance at that point. I tell a story, I've told it many times, about a French Olympic team; they were leading in the, in their event, and they dropped the baton. And all the training and all the years of effort and all the lifetimes, all it went away, in the fumbling of a baton. Well, if everybody will just imagine, you're putting your hand behind you, Miss Betty's putting a baton in it.
Now, that's the good news. Now, for the rest of the story, and it's just because I've known her longer than most of you, she's gonna ask you how you did with it. So you better run like she's chasing you. Oh, what a privilege to have godly people join us on our journey. You know, we have seasons together. I think we always imagine that we'll always have these opportunities, that we'll always be able to open the doors of the church and come when we want and gather when we want, and the things that we like and the things that we wanna do will always be available. I've had enough birthdays and watched enough now that I understand God gives us seasons. And it would be wrong to lead a presumptive life.
I think we should take advantage, understand the gifts we have, cherish them every day, celebrate them every day. It's important because we're living in a season of tremendous turmoil. I wanna point this, I'm gonna keep pointing this back to the church. And, by that, I mean capitol Church, not this congregation. Folks, when the Church fails, people suffer. I don't mean congregations or members. I mean, when the Church fails, broad groups of humanity suffer. Earned a degree in history, and I won't take the time to belabor it. But I can tell you, when, you know, the Roman Empire became a Christian Empire, many holes in it, many flaws in it, certainly far less than perfect. But it was transformational what the Gospel did to that structure of Roman law and organization.
When Rome fell and then Constantinople fell, and then that Christian worldview, that biblical worldview, with all its flaws, when it collapsed, you know what happened? The dark ages. Civilization in the West regressed into demonism and paganism and violence and brutality. And it took centuries to walk out of that again. When the Church failed in Europe, in the last century, when the Church lacked the courage or the will or the attention or, for whatever reason, the Church, it wasn't just the German Church. The Church across the west failed, and untold millions of people died. When the Church fails, people suffer. We've been coached into this thing that governments protect us, and organizations protect us, and NGOs protect us, and whatever.
Folks, Almighty God is the one who watches over us. And the Church of Jesus Christ in the earth, when it's healthy and strong and vibrant and alive, withstands evil; provides a pathway for overcoming; illuminates things that bring dignity to those that would otherwise not have it, that protects those who would have no protection. Now, there are chapters where the Church has failed. I'm not denying that; it's not difficult to find them. But, when the Church is the Church, it brings life and hope and transformation to people. My question to you is, what's gonna be said in the Church in our generation? It's important. There's many voices today that say we shouldn't talk about our current culture, that we're being political.
I disagree completely. I'm very, I have a passing interest in politics because I believe politics in our culture is a reflection of the heart of the nation. In the same way, if you're in the hospital, they're gonna take your vital signs on a regular basis; they'll check your blood pressure, and your pulse, and your oxygen levels. They wanna know your health, and, if they're paying very close attention, they'll do blood screens. Well, I believe elections are like taking the vital signs of the spiritual vitality of a nation.
In the one we have, we have a representative form of government. We have elections, and we vote against the sanctity of human life, and we vote against biblical views of marriage, and we vote against all sorts of biblical principles and values. It's not a political problem; it's a church problem. And then we compound that by saying, "Well, we maybe shouldn't talk about those things". Folks, it's who we are. The difference in applied science and theoretical science is engaging people.
Now, science theory is important because it ultimately gets played out in the practice of medicine. But, if we never take it out of the laboratory, it doesn't help the people. The same thing is true of theology. If we gather in our churches, and we have debates about the nuances of theology, but we don't take that into our culture, we are robbed of the transforming power of the Gospel. Now, I understand it brings confusion and even division. Jesus said that; he said, "I didn't come to bring unity or peace. I came to bring division". And the goal isn't to be divisive; the goal is to know the truth, a biblical perspective, and then encourage people to bring alignment in their lives with that.
So, when we talk about a life that triumphs over evil, it's about a biblical worldview. But, to do that, we have to understand what's happening in our culture. I came across a quote; it's not a new one; it's from a Lutheran pastor, a German pastor, Martin Niemoller; I suspect many of you have heard it. He wrote this, "First they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I didn't speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, but I didn't speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me".
The backstory makes a great deal of difference. That's not just a witty quote. As I said, Martin Niemoller was a Lutheran pastor in Germany. In the '20s and '30s, he was a very vocal sympathizer with Nazi ideas. He thought that nationalism was an appropriate response to the humiliation of what followed World War I. When Hitler came to power, Niemoller became a very outspoken critic because he saw the interference in the Church from the Nazis. You should know, he spent the last eight years of Nazi rule in prisons and concentration camps.
You see, there was a point in time where the Church's response could have changed the outcome of history. It could have changed the destiny of the West. But it was either inconvenient, or the price seemed too high, or everyone was distracted. It was true amongst the Christian community. It was true amongst the Jewish community. I don't know that they would have changed the outcome, but they could have certainly changed their destiny.
I've listened to interview after interview after interview with Jews from the European community who said, "We never imagined the hatred would come for us. We were the presidents of banks. We were in charge of universities. Our families had been a part of that culture for hundreds of years". And you still hear the shock in their voices where they say, "Until that late night, when they knocked on our door, and they took us away". When the Church fails, people suffer.
Well, you and I are witnesses to a conflict of biblical significance. It would fit right into the book of Judges, when the people lost their way and God handed them over to a series of judgments. We see them all around us. If we just remember quickly, and I don't wanna stand here long because, true, I do wanna get to the biblical response, but our experiences together from the last four years have been very insightful and very different than any previous experiences we've had. We faced a pandemic of unknown origins. China, the country where it originated, hid the facts from the world, denied it, did their best to cover it up, and never suffered any true consequences for the devastation they unleashed.
Our churches, on the heels of that, were told to close, and we complied, almost universally. We lost sight of a fundamental component of the people of God, and that's that, in the face of great suffering, our assignment as God's people is to serve the suffering. Our schools were closed for many months, then our children were masked. We know a bit about the outcomes now; it's begrudgingly kind of leaked into the public square. There's significant learning deficits that we're still struggling to overcome. Our hospitals and nursing homes were locked; the most vulnerable amongst us were left alone in a time when tremendous fear was being incubated all across our culture.
In the face of a pandemic, doctors were sent home. Then there's all these random instructions that were issued, as if they were rooted firmly in scientific fact: cover your face, even if it's with a bandana, maybe two; stay 6 feet apart, social distance; put up plexiglass because plexiglas is the great destroyer of viruses. And then we saw things that I never imagined we would see: censorship, the taking down of the freedom of speech, censorship from an unholy union of social media and powerful technical companies in our own government, expressions of authoritarianism that set aside things in our constitution that we once thought we protected us.
Very clear to us, clearly showed us, those protections were more an imagination than a reality. And, in the background of all those chaotic events and frightening information, we were undergoing an election process, it was just kind of running in the background and, in state after state, in circumstance after circumstance, the rule of law was suspended because of pandemic concerns. People were encouraged to vote early and to vote often. Common sense was replaced by fear and propaganda. And, ultimately, we witnessed, in January 6th, what we have been told repeatedly was an insurrection, a murderous attempt to overthrow our newly elected government. It was threatening enough to those in power in the Capitol building that they erected a fence encircling the Capitol building.
It's worth noting that they refused to build a fence along our border while they invite an invasion of millions of people. The details of that day are still not clear, but, upon evaluation, we know this, that the only murder that day was committed by a Capitol police officer in shooting an unarmed woman. The facts have been pretty carefully hidden. All the media has relentlessly recited the propaganda. But it didn't stop; it hasn't stopped. This last October 7, communities in Israel were attacked by Hamas and citizens from Gaza, not just terrorists, citizens from Gaza; 1200 people were brutalized and murdered; more than 200 hostages were taken. Many are still being held, among them American citizens.
Across the Muslim world, there were celebrations which took place. In our nation, we've witnessed a rather stubborn reluctance to condemn the event and persistent demonstrations supporting Hamas and their self-declared goal of genocide of the Jewish people. But it doesn't stop. In recent days, we've witnessed an assassination attempt upon a former president and a leading candidate in the current election. Even casual observance suggest the attack was allowed to unfold. There's been little or no transparency from those in charge. Many in the media are now suggesting it was a political stunt and not a real threat. The excuses that have been offered, to be candid, seem farcical... The roof was too slopey. But it's a symptom of a much larger issue.
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to do an interview with Robert Kennedy, Jr. Some of you will remember that both his father and his uncle were assassinated. So Mr. Kennedy, at some courage on his part and great vulnerability, entered this current election cycle as a candidate and has been consistently denied, until just the last few days, the protection of the secret service. He was told to provide his own security if he wanted to engage in the election. We have a president who has called his chief political rival a target and the media who repeated the label endlessly. Almost anything you wanna pick up or look at, our nation continues to deteriorate at a rate that implies an intentional dismantling. It seems to be far too specific and consistent to be random.
We defund our police and turn our military into a social experiment, asserting that preferred pronouns make us safer or that women and men are equal in physical strength and stamina and, therefore, should be deployed equally on the front lines of battle. And then we hide things. The Fourth of July weekend in Chicago, I just returned from Israel where I was told it was so unsafe, and I traveled with dozens and dozens of people, and we'd had a wonderful time. I returned home to a weekend in Chicago where there was 100 shootings, and some of the reports were as many as 20 fatalities. Our cities are unsafe. Violence and homelessness is causing mass relocations. Our justice system has been weaponized, not against those who are committing crimes, but against those we want to keep from power.
Our leaders choose to be energy dependent upon nations which are adversarial to our own national interest. Our economy is staggering, almost $35 trillion in debt; it's a number too big for me to understand. Inflation has changed how we live and how we imagine our futures. Yet we are told repeatedly by multiple voices that it's transient, or it's the result of corporate greed, or we're suffering inflation and our chicken costs more because the super wealthy are not doing their fair share. And, in the midst of all of this, for the most part, the Church says, "We don't want to talk about it". Well, I would submit to you, we have a spiritual problem. It's far more than anything you can evaluate in the political arena. We have a fundamental spiritual problem.
So here's my invitation to you. Let's decide to become a part of the spiritual response. Let's decide. And, towards that goal, I brought you a short course in confronting evil. When I say short course, it will be; we may elaborate in some future sessions, but, for this morning, it's an introduction. Then I'll start with Matthew chapter 4, in verse 1, I'm back on your notes; there's hope. "My God, two pages of scripture, and he's rambling off the path". Matthew 4, in, chronologically, is just following Jesus's baptism, and the descent of the Spirit, and the public affirmation of Jesus. Nothing remotely like that in his life up to this point.
The birth announcements were private. Maybe the angelic show in the fields outside of Bethlehem, with the shepherds, but there's been silence. And now Jesus is approaching 30 years of age, and he presents to John to be baptized in the Jordan, and the heavens open, and God speaks and says, "This is my Son. I'm pleased with him". And now we step into Matthew 4, "Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came to him and said, 'If you're the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.' And Jesus answered, 'It's written, Man doesn't live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
I would point out to you, as a beginning point, that first there's an affirmation of Jesus. God's not angry with him, frustrated with him; Jesus hasn't wandered from the path; he hasn't deviated. He's in the midst of what God has asked him to do. The Spirit descends upon him; he begins the public portion of his ministry, and the first response is the Spirit leads him into the desert where he's tempted by the devil. And the Spirit prompts him to an extended period of fasting. Our governor has prompted us to a month of fasting, gratefully, not a full month of fasting.
As a congregation, we're taking Wednesdays to fast and pray. If you haven't yet joined us, please do; it's an important time. And the devil arrives with a question for Jesus, and he says, "If you're the Son of God..."
Now, I think our beginning point from that passage in this initiation and beginning to imagine what it would look like for you or for me to confront evil, I think we have to recognize the reality of evil and temptation. It's fashionable to deny it, to act as if we're above it. We're a little too sophisticated for the devil. Or we're a little too secure in our conversion to think that there's any real meaningful temptation. Because, anything that would present itself, we could just say we're sorry for, and then we can be forgiven, and, therefore, it's kind of 'no harm, no foul.' And so we've been given the imagination that spiritually we're bulletproof, that the redemptive work of Jesus is such a remarkable thing that there would be no consequence; there would be no diminishment; there would be no forfeiture were we to choose ungodliness.
Therefore, we have diminished temptation to be something that other people struggle with, but, for the most part, we live above it. There's a Greek word I would like to suggest in response. Don't get ahead of me. I might have learned a new Greek word, it's improbable. I think 'baloney' still works. If Jesus faced temptation, the obedient Son of God, I think you and I would be incredibly arrogant or remarkably naive to suggest that we're not going to face temptation. It's a part of the journey. And, just as affirmation, when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, they said, "John taught his disciples to pray. Won't you teach us to pray"?
Jesus said, "Yes, this is how you should pray. You know the prayer, 'Our Father, who art in heaven hallowed be thy name.'" Do you remember that line Jesus slipped into that universal prayer that we've repeated so many times? "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one". You wouldn't need to be delivered from the evil one unless the evil one was in pursuit. You wouldn't ask to not be led into temptation if the reality of temptation wasn't real and we don't have places where the Spirit of God puts us in proximity. There are times, when you confront evil, it makes you more vulnerable to temptation. We've spent too much time avoiding.
So, if we use Jesus as our pattern, I would suggest, secondly, we have to prepare for the truth to be challenged. The truth in your heart, I'm not talking about the truth in the culture. There's always gonna be that battle in cultures between those who engage with and yield to the authority of God and those who don't.
Our Bibles are filled with that, from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation. Revelation is the culmination of that with an antichrist, this embodiment of that refusal to yield to God, and a high priest standing alongside of him with all the supernatural, but not under the authority... That battle is always going to rage in our culture. But I'm talking about, within our hearts, within our homes, within our lives, this struggle; the truth will be challenged. Satan came to Jesus and questioned God's truthfulness and his faithfulness.
"If you are the Son of God," he said. He does the same with us, and I would submit to you that one of our fundamental vulnerabilities is that we have a too great of a lack of conviction that God is really involved because we pushed God off to eternity. We believe in a God of salvation; heaven may be out there someplace, but, where we live this week, WE better fix it; we better have a solution; we better know what to do. So we don't really pray; we don't really invite God in, not in a meaningful way, not in a purposeful way, not in an, in a sacrificial way, because we think we better do something. And I'm talking about the Church.
I wanna pray with you before we go:
Father, I thank you that you're the author and the completer of our story, that, irrespective of our circumstances, you have written a future for us that is a display of your power and your strength and your great love for us. May that future fill our hearts. I thank you for it, in Jesus's name, amen.