Allen Jackson - A Chosen People - Part 1
We’re in a series of talks on «Why Israel Matters». And in this particular session, we’re gonna look at that from the perspective of a chosen people. Is that legitimate? I believe it is. I’ll give you the short answer. But I wanna start with a verse you don’t have in your notes because I can. But it is a verse from the reading portion for the weekend. I hope you’re reading the Gospels with us, and I hope you’ve invited somebody to join you in that. Luke’s Gospel chapter 12, Jesus is speaking to the religious leaders in Jerusalem.
So they are steeped in scripture and biblical tradition and knowledge, and Jesus says to them, «Hypocrites»! And that’s not a compliment no matter what point in history you live. He said, «You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret,» or some of the older translations say analyze. «How is it that you don’t know how to interpret or analyze this present time»? It’s a pretty straightforward idea. Jesus said, «You can look at the sky and you’ve got some anticipation of the weather. If it’s cloudy and dark, you think it could rain. If it’s sunny and clear, it could be hot. You know how to anticipate weather patterns». But he said, «You do not know how to understand or analyze the times in which you live».
It’s very clear that Jesus’s expectation is that his audience would not just be biblically literate, but they would understand the world in which they lived in light of the teaching of scripture. You see, they were biblical experts and they did not recognize Messiah in their presence. And he wasn’t subtle, he raised the dead and walked on water and made wine out of water. Pretty good party tricks. And they missed him in spite of fulfilling dozens and dozens of biblical prophecies that they’d spent their entire lives studying. They could not recognize or analyze the present time in which they lived. Jesus expects us to be able to do that in the 21st century.
But you know, it’s highly possible, in fact, I suspect the best analysis is it’s probable that we don’t pay attention. We have plans and things to do and agendas and objectives and you know, we had an election and we kind of sort of paid attention so we could participate, but we wanted to move on because we don’t wanna think about all that garbage anymore. We’re tired of the bickering and we won’t get back to what we wanna do. And our dreams and our agendas, and yes, we’re Christians and you know, we kind of read our Bibles and yeah, but you know, I’m not gonna be one of those people and… then I hear Jesus saying, «You spend a lot of time considering the weather 'cause the weather could interrupt your plans. It could rain on your picnic. You might wanna go to the beach and it’s not gonna be a good time».
But he said, «You don’t care enough about what’s happening in the world to analyze the times you live». Now I would submit to you, we don’t wanna be those people. The little paradigm I’ve been sharing with you for quite a season, actually several episodes of «shaking and go now». It first came with COVID, you know, those shakings to me are when God begins to shake things and things become clear that were not clear previously. That happened in an unprecedented way with COVID. And I began to encourage you to watch and listen, to think, and then be prepared to act, not just to be sheeple. We have to watch and listen and think. And then we had another. There have been multiple episodes. I didn’t know this was coming. I didn’t understand when God said he would shake the earth, that that’s how it would unfold, but I think the Hamas attack in Israel a little over a year ago, October, was another season of shaking, not just for the hatred of Hamas towards the Jewish people.
I understood that. Honestly, as horrific as it was when I saw the videos of it, that part wasn’t really a shock to me. What shocked me was the hatred of the Jewish people that was boiling in this nation. At some of the most celebrated academic institutions and very powerful people in academia and government and institutional life in America who wouldn’t condemn it. If that same kind of hatred had been expressed towards almost any other minority or subset of our culture, it would have been vilified in a moment and it wasn’t. Well, I believe last November was another episode of shaking, not because of the individuals elected, but there are things being pushed into the public square that I didn’t know that word is clear to me six months ago.
And every one of those episodes has been a little unsettling. It’s uncomfortable, it’s disorienting. You’re trying to sort out what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate and should I believe this and what’s the right action to take and because when they’re shaking, things are not as stable and it’s hard to find that stability. And you and I… I wanna pay attention to what Jesus said, I want to understand the times. So, I’ll take just a moment with this. I think it’s relevant to our faith and our scripture and our community, but so much is happening. A lot of change is happening. And there’s a lot of competing voices and some of them very loud and some of them very powerful and some of them very influential and very strident in their assertions.
It seems to be the most predictable constant at the moment is that those who oppose President Trump will be loud and unrelenting in their opposition. That has framed the landscape of public discourse in our nation since Mr. Trump stepped into the political arena. Loud opposition. And the menu of things they’ve been opposed to has been widely diverse. Russian collusion. I mean, it’s an unending list beyond politics or personal preference. The people with those voices have proven a willingness to tell just about any lie, fabricate the most remarkable accusations, and then brazenly repeat what they know to be totally false. It’s unsettling. And then when the truth does come into the public square, no one walks back. You go, «Oh, we’re really sorry about that». That’s how you maintain civility. We’ve avoided that. The persistence, volume, and broad cooperation of the legacy media makes it really difficult to interpret what’s happening. It’s a confusing time.
So, I think a few facts from history are helpful. Once upon a time I earned a degree in history which really just means you know the tools sometimes to go find some stuff, but one of the things these days that’s getting a lot of attention, a lot of discussion, a lot of voices has been DOGE, the Department Of Government Efficiency, and the willingness to look at government expenditures. It’s really a fascinating discussion and Elon Musk and his participation in that. You know, we’re told that’s very inappropriate to have someone who wasn’t elected be meddling in those things. Well, there’s only two people in the executive branch that are elected: the president and the vice president.
That’s a matter of record. And having unelected people serving in that executive branch is by no means a new thing. When President Obama came to office, he appointed more than 30 czars who weren’t approved by the Senate and given significant powers and authority for expenditure and oversight and it’s a part of the way government has unfolded. And as President Trump announces plans to restructure the federal government and remove some entrenched bureaucrats, and there are one or two. More than 90% of the federal workforce has not been working, they have not been working in the office full time? Ninety percent? I don’t know the little business, the place where I work, if that was true, we would fail quickly. And many have claimed that such firings are an unprecedented attack on civil service. They deliver those messages with all the sincerity of an evangelist.
However, history really gives us a very different picture. The blueprint for mass firings in the federal government wasn’t drafted by Trump. It was authored by President Bill Clinton. President Clinton took drastic action when he entered office. He fired many federal appointees and those reporting directly to them. It reached three levels deep into the management hierarchy of the government. It included upper level, mid level, and lower level managers. At the time, such dismissals were unprecedented. The stated reason for his actions was to reform government and to make it more efficient. It was 1993, the Reinventing government initiative. Clinton oversaw the termination, get this, of more than 370,000 federal employees.
The initiative was led by Tennessee’s own Vice President Al Gore. It was marketed as an effort to cut bureaucratic bloat. They were very proud of it. Not inappropriately, Clinton publicized that his administration reduced the government payroll from 2.1 million employees to just under 1.8. However, while he claimed to be trimming the size of government, in reality, he had a plan for expanding it rather dramatically. Less visible, less celebrated, less talked about, but rather than reducing the government’s reach, Clinton tripled its size. He shifted millions of jobs to government contractors. The maneuver allowed his administration to hide the expansion of government within the bureaucracy.
The federal workforce under his administration effectively grew from 2.1 million to a staggering 9.1 million. I don’t tell you that to go back and rake through history. I tell you that we have to pay attention. We’re spending money on foolish things, and I would remind you the government doesn’t have money, they just have our money. And as we watch these steps towards efficiency being made and reckless spending being identified and the recognition that our government is spending billions of dollars on an ideology and a worldview that opposes ours, well, people who don’t like us consistently shout at us to shut up and stay in the shadows because we have to separate the church and the state.
Well, if you were an outsider that reviewed the expenditure of dollars of the United States in recent years, you would be quite convinced that we had a religion. It wouldn’t be Christianity. Our government has been a very powerful vocal advocate for a worldview. It’s been defined by the LGBTQ2+ community, by DEI, by CRT. Those are worldview issues. Well, that’s the truth, and the people who adhere to them and teach them, it’s been institutionalized in the government, in academia, in the corporate world with all the zeal of a tent revivalist in the South in the summertime. I’m grateful that those expenditures are being reviewed. I was in Jerusalem last summer and I approached the consulate. And the biggest banner over the consulate wasn’t the US flag, it was a pride banner. Our government, that was the message we were taking to the nations of the world.
Another arena that lately has been under a bit of scrutiny has been the Department of Education. Pray for that poor man at the door. But there’s a bit of history that will help, I think. The Department of Education is a cabinet-level department founded by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. It didn’t start in 1776. The expressed goal was to close the gap in the education of our children so that the lower performing students and the higher performing students, that that gap could be eliminated. They’ve been very successful.
Now everybody’s performing at a lower standard. That’s a matter of record. The department formation in reality was a response to help from the teachers unions during Carter’s election. It remains today a stronghold of power for teachers’s unions, and the children have suffered. If you’re just paying marginal attention, I suspect you heard the president of one of the teachers unions arguing without shame in public very forcefully that the teachers unions should have more authority over the education of our children than their parents do. The awkward reality is that education must be reimagined. It isn’t working. Our schools are less safe, they’re less effective. Long list of things.
I’m not pointing at any singular thing, but the way we’ve been doing it has not been working and someone has to have the courage to say that. And I would submit to you, at least my opinion, that is especially true at the university level. It has failed, and I spent my life being an advocate for education. Another issue that’s been in the news in a very profound way in the last few days is Israel. You know, I was headed home one evening this week, forget which day, but I knew the president was supposed to have a press conference with the prime minister of Israel. That’s not particularly new, but we turned the television on and I was gonna listen while I did some other things because after all, they usually say the same thing. There’s kind of this mindless drivel that comes out.
And President Trump walked out to the microphone, acknowledged his guest, and said, «We’re going to be involved in Gaza». And I got up off the floor. And he said one of the most honest things about the Middle East that I’ve heard in quite a season, and I’ve been paying attention to that part of the world for a long time. He said, «What we’ve been doing in Gaza for the last 70 years has failed. And why would we continue to do that»? He said, «Today, it’s decimated. It’s uninhabitable as it is, and we would like to see Gaza become a place that is an asset to the people who are here». And he talked about relocating the people of Gaza for a season while it’s rebuilt, and the world begins to lose their imaginations, I mean, they just lose their minds without paying any attention.
And most of us, we’re busy enough. We don’t even know the war that’s been raging in Syria, a civil war that resulted in the last few months with the exit of the dictator Bashar al-Assad, that millions of the Syrian people have fled Syria. Many into Europe through Turkey, many into Jordan. Millions and millions of Syrians displaced from their traditional homeland, and there’s been hardly a comment from the media or the Muslim streets. No complaints. But the Palestinian people for 70 years have been the fulcrum. That there hasn’t been a compassion for those people. They have suffered horribly, horribly. President Obama gave $300 million to the Palestinians to manufacture concrete when he was in office. I’m sure, take the high road with the imagination they would build homes and businesses and all the things that would be used.
We don’t have purchase orders, but there is significant evidence to suggest a significant amount of concrete production went into tunnels in Gaza. Have they been helping the people? President Obama just before he left office, delivered $50 billion in cash, liquid assets, palletized cash on planes to Iran, the global sponsor of terrorism, the supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis. It’s been reported that it was $150 billion, but Facebook fact checkers are willing to concede there was $50 billion. So, I’m thinking that’s a really conservative number 'cause Zuckerberg, you know, let’s just leave him alone. I would submit to you it’s the most honest statement we have heard with regard to Israel in quite some time.
I don’t imagine the US should be an active landholder in the Middle East. I don’t think we should dictate the outcome for the nation of Israel or the Jewish people. But I think we should have the courage to say that the two-state solution has failed. That it hasn’t brought peace or cooperation or unity. It hasn’t helped the people, the Palestinian people. And a different solution, a better solution has to be imagined. The Middle East is upside down, and I know it’s popular to say it’s Israel’s fault, but you really have to be ignorant of the circumstances to say that Lebanon is in tatters. The most powerful force in Lebanon until just recent months was Hezbollah, a terrorist group funded by Iran. They had better weapons and better organizational structure than whatever government the Lebanese imagined was there. Syria is in total disarray.
Their long term dictator Assad has withdrawn, which meant Russia has lost their port on the Mediterranean. If you just follow it on around, Jordan is very fragile. If not for US and Israeli support, they wouldn’t survive the month. Iraq is a mess, and we had a great deal to do with that. Libya is chaotic. We had a great deal to do with that. The Middle East is in turmoil. To imagine that it’s the Israelis kind of the common global mantras. If the Jews weren’t there, there would be peace. Really? Like Syrian peace, Lebanese peace, Iraqi peace, Libya, what kind of peace would that be? It’s just been the mantra. It’s just kind of been numbly repeated. God is moving in the earth. Fraud is being exposed. Waste is being exposed. Very ungodly unbiblical values are being exposed.
It’s an embarrassment to me as a leader in the church that a politician stands up and says, «There’s only two genders,» and the pastors have been quiet. That’s not a political declaration to make, that’s a biblical worldview issue. Marriage is a biblical issue, not a political issue. Family is a biblical issue, not a political issue. But all of those things are being addressed in the public square, and I would bring you back to Jesus’s perspective. We’re pretty good at anticipating weather and we care about it. We get emotionally happy or unhappy based on weather patterns, but we could care less about the signs of our times. I believe it’s time for us to change.
So, I’ll take a few minutes and explore with you a bit more about why I believe Israel matters to the people of God, why they’re significant in the earth. It’s not broadly understood. It’s not unique to me. I’m not suggesting it’s some hidden secret, but typically American evangelicalism is not awake to the biblical role of the nation of Israel or the Jewish people. In fact, we’ve created some rather unhelpful views in that regard. So, let me just start with the notion that the Jewish people were chosen by God.
You see, I don’t like that, but he didn’t take a vote. It’s really about the sovereignty of God. In fact, this whole discussion has a great deal to do with the expression of the sovereignty of God. And the simplest way I know to understand this, God can do what he wants, when he wants, and he doesn’t need anyone’s permission. Now, I know that’s unsettling 'cause there’s something in all of us that goes, «No, I’m in control». And God has given us free will, and that brings to us a certain amount of autonomy as opposed to the birds or the insects. We don’t just migrate, we have choice, but it does not make us the creators of the universe. We are not really the masters of our fate. A chosen people.
And here’s the reality, God has favorites. I got a little plaque in my office. Says, «God loves everyone, but I’m his favorite». Not suggesting it’s biblical, but on a bad day, it helps me. What you should know is when God chooses favorites, it’s not based upon appearance. It’s not about IQ. It’s not about resource accumulation. You can’t buy your way into the club. It’s not based upon our biological sex. Those things that we use to differentiate and discriminate. There are two primary qualifiers, as I understand it from Scripture. God considers the hearts of people. That lesson is reiterated over and over through scripture that God does not look externally, but he looks at our hearts.
That takes a spiritual awareness. I think it is very telling that the contemporary church wants very little to do with spiritual matters. We’re heavily invested in our intellect. We make some concessions to our soulish emotional self, whether the style of worship suits us, but we have very little room for a discussion about spiritual matters, and it’s the spiritual consideration of your life that will commend you to God or isolate you from him. You should think about the spiritual circumstances of your person. And I’m a tremendous advocate for the necessity of conversion and the new birth, but you wanna think about your spiritual circumstances beyond the new birth. Jesus was in harmony with his Father, but spiritual things were of primary importance to him. And he’s our Lord.
And I wanna pray for God’s boldness. Let’s pray:
Lord, I thank you that you’ve called us to this season and that you’ve given us everything we need to stand on your behalf. Now give us the wisdom and the courage, the determination to be your advocates wherever you send us in Jesus’s name, amen.