Allen Jackson - Good and Evil on Display - Part 1
Our topic is a continuation of a study we’ve been doing, «Angels, Demons and You». They exist, angels and demons as a theoretical discussion isn’t particularly interesting to me. Angels, demons, and you, that intrigues me. I assure you that today spiritual forces have impacted your life already. Doesn’t require consciousness on your part for that to be true any more than you have to be conscious of a virus or a bacteria. We have ignored this for far too long to our own detriment, and I believe God is awakening us to a new season.
In this session, I wanna talk about good and evil on display. I think what’s most important to understand with that is when good and evil are on display, you have a choice to make. And to make no choice is to make a choice. And we happen to live in a time where good and evil are being very clearly presented. The middle’s in trouble. The gray area is really almost completely disappeared. We created this kind of new class of neutral, you know, it’s not good or bad, it’s kind of gray. I think that’s really kind of evaporated. Like a morning mist in Tennessee when the sun comes up, and good and evil are on display and we have a choice to be made. The reality of spiritual forces and their influence upon our lives is plainly presented in Scripture. It’s not a subtext, it is the story, the opening words of the Bible is, «In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth».
A spiritual force gave rise to the matter of this world and the universe that we know. We, those of us in the church have drifted far from the biblical presentation of our world, we have been deeply, so deeply influenced by the secular ideas. That the result in the church, and I spent my adult life in the church, my professional life in the church, we’ve adopted an easy believism which for the most part has removed scriptural authority, we judge Scripture instead of allowing Scripture to judge us. We’ve removed scriptural authority and personal service to our King. We’ve replaced it with personal salvation.
«I’m saved, therefore I don’t have to serve anybody but me». It’s a false gospel. Spiritual forces are influencing our life on a daily basis. And with that statement, I have a question, do you have a plan for cooperating with God and for resisting evil? If not, you’re just careening through life. Jesus, when he taught us to pray, included this in the prayer, «Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil». When our Lord began to teach us to pray, he opened, I believe every sentence in that prayer is really a file drawer of a whole type of prayer, and he introduced this idea that we have to address evil and the temptation it brings and the destruction that it represents. I believe we’ve reached the pivot point in our journey, God has raised up voices for truth, and from my perspective, he’s doing it from the most unlikely places.
Now we have to choose if we will align ourselves with the values of Scripture or if we will remain silent, and understand this, to remain silent is to side with evil, we have a choice to make. There’s a struggle underway, are you watching? In my opinion, we’re engaged in a conflict that’s analogous to a couple of other points in American history. One would have been the American Revolution and the other was the Civil War. I’m not suggesting we’re on the precipice of taking up arms, but I am suggesting to you that this season will prove to be as definitive in the future for ourselves and our families and their families after them as those two critical periods have proven to be.
There’s a great divide right now in our nation, and it’s initiated not by politics or economics or race or gender, that divide has been initiated by worldview, and it’s so polarizing that negotiations really aren’t reasonable. Jesus didn’t call us to be unified with darkness. He said light and darkness don’t have anything in common. He said, «I didn’t come to bring unity, I came to bring division». And if you think you can be united with evil as an expression of godliness, you’re deceived. You don’t have to be angry or belligerent, you certainly don’t need to be violent, but folks, we’ve been compromising for far too long. We’ve compromised ourselves almost out the door.
So I have some questions, are you engaged or are you complaining? Do you know with whom you are aligned? Is it clear to the people who know you know with whom you’re aligned? How do you understand what is happening? Do you imagine it to be a political struggle, a debate about economic resources? Is it primarily a racial conflict? Is it about national sovereignty? How do you understand? Maybe even more germane, do you even care? I find the prevailing attitude to be, they just like the tension to dissipate. And if they could ask for one more thing, could the price of eggs and gasoline go down, please? I just wanna stay focused on my personal agenda. I’m confident that I’m born again, that I’ve entered into the kingdom of God, that I’ve been saved, and the rest of that stuff, I just don’t want to engage.
Well, how you answer these questions is very important, not just for your journey through time, but for your eternity. Honoring God and cooperating with him provides the best possible outcome for human beings in our world. That’s not a statement that will get much support amongst the conventional wisdom of this generation. I want to say it again, that honoring God and cooperating with him provides the best possible outcome for a human being in this world. If you’re doing the daily Bible reading with us, and if you’re not, why not? What exactly, never mind, I’ve said that enough.
Join us, at the moment we’re in the Gospel of John, and the study today really comes from that daily reading. It wasn’t my plan, I’d written another lesson, but as I was doing the reading this week, it just seemed too important to walk past it. In John’s gospel there’s a tremendous tension. If you kind of step into the narrative, when I read the pages like that, I try to imagine I’m in the crowd. I’ll put myself in different positions. I’ll say, you know, if I was a Pharisee, how would I respond to that? If I was one of the chief priests, what would I think about this? If I was one of the disciples that Jesus recruited, what would my comment be?
So I kind of get up and move around different chairs. I’ll freeze the scene and move to another chair and then I’ll hit play again. By the time I’ve walked through John’s gospel, there was something alive about it that I think is relevant and very analogous to our season. And I’ll start with the very prevalence of demonic opposition. I don’t think there’s another way to understand what’s happening. It can’t fully be explained in terms of politics or power. Other explanations are just insufficient. The Jewish people are waiting for a Messiah. Jesus fulfills dozens of prophecies, not one or two, dozens and dozens of prophecies. He’s performing miracles of a magnitude that until this day we’ll talk about something being a biblical proportion if it’s beyond the imagination.
He’s walking on the water and turning water into wine and raising the dead and opening the eyes of people born blind, no parallels. And there are many people who believe and follow, and yet there is stubborn, unrelenting hatred. Why would you hate on somebody that’s opening the eyes of people who were born blind? It’s irrational, when you see something that’s irrational and illogical and so destructive, understand beneath that is something demonic, an evil spiritual force. It isn’t just political or economic. You find in the gospel, there’s no willingness to negotiate. There’s no search for common ground. «We have to shut this down,» they say over and over again.
Sounds a great deal like the world we live in, it’s irrational. Why would we offer up our children as sacrifices before they ever draw a breath and call it choice? Why would we mutilate our teenagers without parental approval? And call it enlightenment, it’s demonic. And we’re reluctant to use our voices, but we’re not unique. Wait till we look at John. In John chapter 7, Jesus speaks very plainly about another dimension, and when I talk about angels, demons, and you, we’ve got to cross over. We live so fully engaged in this world that’s defined by our five senses that we’ve almost totally denied the existence of a spiritual world in the church. Oh, we’ll talk about it in the first century, somehow unique to their worldview, but we’re more sophisticated now, more sophisticated than Jesus, are we? More sophisticated than God, the Creator of heaven and earth.
You’ll believe in a big bang where something came from nothing, but you won’t believe in God. It’s demonic, and those demonic forces are still present in our world. Jesus clearly talks about being sent from somewhere else by someone who’s there. He said, «I came into this world sent by my Father». He talks about this world as if it’s a destination on a cruise. «I’m from another realm,» he says. «I’m the King of a kingdom, but not of this world,» he says. The chief priest want Jesus arrested, it’s a demonic response. He is their Messiah. Ah, you can give me these shallow explanations, and it was about power and economics, but that’s really not adequate, the hatred they demonstrate. In the same scene, we’ll see it repeatedly, there are people who believe, and people who demand his arrest.
I want us to be sure we see that because we’re living in a very similar time, there’s a parallel. We live in a time where within the churches there are people go, that’s godly and there are other people go, that’s evil, you got to choose. You better understand which spirit is influencing you. There’s a lot of things being pushed as biblical that have nothing to do with the biblical worldview by people who have significant credentials. You better know your Bible. That’s why reading the Bible is so important. John chapter 7 and verse 28, we’re just gonna walk through the gospel together. «Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out». The language is important, he’s crying out, there’s a desperate tone to it. «Yes, you know me, and you know where I’m from, but I’m not here on my own. He who sent me is true, but you don’t know him. I know him because I am from him and he sent me».
Again, Jesus is having a dimensional conversation with them. It’s going past most of them. These are the covenant people of God he’s talking to. These aren’t, if we used it in a contemporary setting, he’s talking to church folks. People that that have taught Sunday school classes and they volunteered, they’re fully engaged. This particular group of people keep the kosher rules, they keep all the right holidays, Passover and Sukkot, and they support the temple in Jerusalem and they’re used to the daily sacrifices. They know all the stuff just like a fully engaged church person would today. But they can’t see what God is doing right in front of them. Is it possible, is it possible God could do something and we could miss it?
If your answer is no, you’re already deceived. If you’re not on a regular basis saying, «God, help me to see, give me an understanding heart». We’re lost, the evidence of our light being dim is all around us. Verse 29, Jesus said, «'I know him because I am from him, and he sent me, ' and at this, they tried to,» what? «Seize him». They want to arrest him? They’re so angered by what he just said, «But no one laid a hand on him, because his time had not yet come». That’s an interesting, see John’s writing this after the fact. This isn’t a video loop, you’re not watching it in real time. John writes it down after the fact that he puts in what he’s come to understand. It’s an insertion into the narrative. And he said, «They wanted to seize him, but they couldn’t because his time had not yet come».
There’s a time when they came to seize him and John was there in the garden, they came to get Jesus. And to the disciples’s amazement, this time they took him away. Remember what it says, when they came to arrest him and Jesus turned and spoke to him, the guards that came were knocked backwards to the ground. You kind of see the knowing looks amongst the disciples, yeah, this isn’t gonna work well for them. Until they took Jesus away in chains. It’s a bigger shock because they’ve seen him time after time when it wasn’t yet his time. And so the powers of this age didn’t have the authority over him. Look at the next verse. No one laid a hand on him because his time had not yet come.
«Still, many in the crowd put their faith in him. They said, 'When the Messiah comes, will he do more miraculous signs than this man? ' And the Pharisees heard the crowd whispering such things about him, and the chief priest in the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him». There’s some in the crowd going, «It certainly looks legitimate to me. It’s important, I think this is good stuff».
And there’s others saying, «It couldn’t be good stuff, we’re with the power brokers». There’s a lot of division, some want to arrest him, some wanna follow him. Even in Jesus’s day folks. Why do we think the spiritual conflict will lessen as we approach the end of the age? The Bible tells us just the opposite, that it will intensify. There’ll be greater division, you’ll have to know the truth. You’ll have to know the truth, you know, the introduction of AI is making the manipulation of communication much, much easier. It’s harder to know what’s authentic and what is not. The same is true with the truth.
John chapter 10. Jesus again, «Don’t believe me unless I do what my Father says. But if I do it, even though you don’t believe me, believe the miracles that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am the Father». He said, «Listen, if you don’t believe me, look at the evidence». He said, «Something’s happening that you can’t do. There’s something working on my behalf». In verse 39, «And again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp. Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in early days. And here he stayed and many people came to him and they said, 'Though John never performed a miraculous sign, all that John said about this man was true.' And in that place, many believed in Jesus».
Many wanted to arrest him, many powerful people, but there are many who believe in him. See, I think we’ve been waiting for a revival where everybody’s in, so it doesn’t require us to stand out. We’re praying for this awakening where everybody, all of our friends and our peers and everybody that goes to a church and everybody we’ve ever known, they’re all going, «Oh yeah, I love Jesus». Because it won’t require anything of us except to kind of swim along in the stream and go, «Oh, me too». That’s really not what the Bible shows us even when Jesus was here. Very polarizing, people happy, people being blessed, people are experiencing God, people are very angry, very condemning on multiple occasions, it says they sent people to try to entrap Jesus. That sounds contemporary.
«Can you find something about him we can accuse him for? Go search through his background, do a deep dive into his background. What can we accuse him of»? Very much like what we’re watching. I would submit to you that there are miraculous signs happening all around us, around us of biblical proportion. But it doesn’t remove us from the struggle, and it doesn’t mean we always get easy solutions. And the fact that one person experienced a miracle doesn’t mean we all get one. The man who was born blind and was healed in Jerusalem, I promise you there were other blind people in Jerusalem. When Jesus walked up to the pools of Bethesda and he healed a man that had been 38 years sick. He didn’t heal everybody at the pool, he walked away.
There’s miracles happening around today. If we will believe it, if we’ll open our hearts amongst us, our little congregation, our little community of believers. We showed you a clip from a podcast, we post one every Friday. I’ve come to really enjoy those conversations. We’re interviewing people for whom God is doing remarkable things. I sat down a few weeks ago with the two brothers, they’re twins. One of them had taken his brother to the doctor for a simple procedure, and before he got to the doctor’s office, he collapsed. His heart quit, and it took way too long to get him resuscitated, almost a half an hour. They said they managed to get his heart going in, but I was there by that time when the doctor came in and said he was gone too long.
We’re gonna keep him sedated for a while, we don’t know what the outcome will be, but I don’t wanna give you any reason for hope. When they woke him up four days later, this is in the words of his brother. Well, he’s as normal as he’s ever been. He did, they woke him up, they asked him a question, he answered the question like a smart aleck, and his brother said, «He’s fine, let us go home». They hand out bulletins in the church. You walk by Lazarus every week? And people go, well, I don’t believe in miracles. Well, I can introduce you to one. I can introduce you to several, we did a podcast a few weeks ago with Brad Arnold, he’s the lead singer of 3 Doors Down. Do you know them?
Some of you do, you just don’t want to admit it in church. It’s a rock band. He was one of the founding members. He’s been with him a long time, a lot of success, lot of success. He said «We achieved everything I could imagine really professionally,» he said, «But I was in a desperate place». He was on tour. He tells it in the podcast. He says, «Were on tour in Japan». And he said, «I really came to the end of myself». He said, «I wasn’t sure there was a reason to go on anymore». And he said, «I tried to find somebody back in the States that would talk to me». And he said, «Nobody was answering my call,» but he said, «Charlie Daniels answered».
Now, and this is what he said. He said, «Brad, do you love your wife»? And he said, «I do». And he said, «Then why are you killing your husband»? He was an addict with all sorts of problems. He said, «You need to get home. Get your life straight, get your faith in its place». And he did, he’s had a remarkable transformation in his life. You know what he’s doing now in his concerts? I watched, I watched the clip, Madison Square Garden, filled with people to hear 3 Doors Down. I mean that’s not usually like the audience that wants to hear from the gospel. And he stopped and in the most humble, gentle way told them about his faith. We say we can’t take Jesus to work with us and he’s taking him to concerts.
I interviewed Granger Smith in one of those podcasts, church, country musician, platinum albums, a lot of success and tragedy struck. Their young child drowned. And he said, «My wife, we did everything we were supposed to do». He said, «I read the books, I went to the seminars. We began to rebuild our lives, we had two other children». He said, «It looked like», he said, «We went to church. I went to church». He said, «I would have told you I was a Christian». He said, «I was back doing concerts and I forget which state he was in,» and he said after the concert, he’s something so dark, he struggled to find the words. He finally said it was just something evil. He said, «I was at the bottom of a black place». He said the only thing I could think of was I didn’t need to live anymore.
And I remembered my mom saying, «Jesus help me». He said, «I was on my knees in the floor of the bus». And he said, «Jesus help me». And he said, «My mind cleared». Miracles are happening all around us, folks, all of the time. I sat with Dr. Carol Swain just a few days ago. She was born into horrible poverty. I think it was one of 12 children, big family, lots of kids. She was married as a teenager, had lots of children very quickly. Dropped out of school. No momentum in her life, no hope, no future, no chance. She’s earned multiple graduate degrees.
She was a tenured faculty member at Princeton and Vanderbilt. She’s a leading voice in our nation for education from a godly worldview, a godly perspective. Only God can do that with a human life. Now we’ve got a choice to make. Are we gonna believe in angels and demons and that they affect us? Are we gonna sit and have a polite Bible study and keep kicking the can down the road and go, «I don’t know». What’s it gonna take for you to make a decision? You’re gonna keep voting with the Pharisees and the chief priests? You’re gonna keep voting with the power brokers because you don’t want to be ostracized?
You’re gonna continue to refuse to take Jesus into the public square or the marketplace where God sends you, because there might be a price attached? We’ve got some questions to answer. Like, I brought you a little prayer. I wonder if you just repeat it with me. I’ve been praying a little prayer since I started this study, «Lord, I wanna see, Lord I», it’s not in your notes, «I got the cheap copy, there’s no prayer». It’s a simple prayer, you know this one intuitively. You can just repeat it after me, «Almighty God, open my eyes to see what you’re doing. Give me the wisdom to say yes to you and no to ungodliness. In Jesus’s name, amen».