Allen Jackson - Seeing the Invisible - Part 1
Our topic these days has been «Angels, Demons, and You». And the «and You» is the most important part of the title. We could have endless seminars on angels and demons, and there would really be a little pushback. There’d be a lot of enthusiasm, but when you introduce the «and You» part, all of a sudden it gets personal and we begin to try to find ways to to step away from that. In this session, I wanna talk a little bit about seeing the invisible. But I believe what we said in that little clip that evil has a voice and evil wears many faces.
And if you live your life unaware of evil or refusing to acknowledge evil, you have conceded the field. And the church has done that for too long. We wouldn’t need light if there was no darkness. And we’ve been so busy trying to say that darkness has been dispelled by government or the UN or our legal system or our health care system or whatever. That we’ve stepped away from the reality of spiritual things, and I think we’ve done that to our own disadvantage. You should have had outlines when you came in. I will get to them. I promise. I followed somebody in that was looking at that outline and said he’ll never finish. Challenge accepted. I hope you didn’t leave anything in the oven.
You know we are walking through a time of tremendous discontinuity. Change is coming at such a rapid pace and in such sweeping ways that there’s a marked break with the past, a necessary one. The way we’ve been doing things was plunging us towards destruction, destruction of our lives, destruction of our families, destruction of our culture, destruction of our nation. No question about it. No matter where you stand on the ideological spectrum, we’ve been spiraling. And so, the discontinuity brings with it a breath of hope, but it also means that all around us now there are behaviors and experiences that we’re not familiar with. And it’s disorienting, it’s hard to get your balance day over day. It’s uncomfortable to have credible people stand up and begin to say there’s been unimaginable waste and fraud at the highest levels of our government. Like you don’t want to believe it.
The numbers are so high they like, «Couldn’t know. Surely not». And it’s like irrefutable. It’s awkward to think that billions and billions of dollars have been spent recklessly. Or that our leaders across the political spectrum, our leaders have been profiting wildly while presiding over failure and plunging us into enormous debt. It’s such an unthinkable set of circumstances, it’s really difficult to process. It’s as remarkable as seeing the leader of Ukraine arguing to extend the war which has already cost more than a million lives. So, decimated his country. And it’s a war that he couldn’t conduct alone. You watch and it’s disorienting. You think, «Well, there should be another explanation».
We watch major American cities that are struggling to serve the needs of their citizens fighting with determined passion to protect illegal immigrants with a greater enthusiasm than they expressed in educating the children of the families who have been long term citizens of those communities. It’s awkward. So, you know, in the midst of that kind of discontinuity, the question is, «Well how do we respond»? Do we just ignore it? Do we just stay on our path and we act like we don’t see? I don’t believe that’s the best choice. I believe the answer, and I know it sounds too simplistic, but I don’t really believe it is, is an intentional commitment to the fundamentals of our lives.
In times of great stress, in times of great need, your attention to the fundamentals are the key to the best possible outcomes. And for those of us who are Christ followers, that leads us back to the things that we know so well that we’ve ignored. Things like prayer, meditation, it’s a fancy way of saying, thinking about the Word of God. You have to read the Bible in order to be able to think about it. It’s taken an enormous effort and lift and focus for us over a long period of time to initiate a bit of a return to reading our Bibles on a regular basis. We need fellowship with one another. Don’t spend your discretionary time with people who don’t encourage you in your faith.
If you’re in the habit of going and doing ungodly things in ungodly places when you have free time, understand you are forfeiting any possible momentum in the kingdom of God. Hospitality, welcome people into your home. I know it’s a hassle. I believe the intentional commitment to fundamentals is the necessary preparation to accepting the assignment that God has for us. It’s a simple sentence, but it’s really significant. See, those fundamentals are not irrelevant busy work. It’s essential if we’re gonna fulfill God’s purpose for us. I think we have a challenge at the moment. It doesn’t take much discernment to see the greater need, the need beyond us. Like something’s got to be done, something needs to happen and you have this sense of being ill at ease and an urgency.
And then you think, «But I don’t have much power and I don’t have much influence and nobody cares what I think». Well don’t be frustrated or frightened by the greater need. Focus on your fundamental preparation. The awareness is not bad, but let the awareness fuel your determination to do that which you can do because you see God will issue the assignment when we’re prepared. He loves us too much, he cares about us too much to issue an invitation for which we’re unprepared. He didn’t give Moses the assignment to lead the slaves out the day he killed the Egyptian taskmaster. Moses wasn’t ready. We’ve got to be prepared. We have to choose to put on the whole armor of God, to say no to ungodliness. That matters so much.
The church has given so much license. We have greenlighted promiscuity in just about every conceivable way in the name of grace. We’ve got to be willing to say no to ungodliness, to put off the old self and to put on the new self, to be renewed in our mind and to stand for our Lord. You know, our theme these weeks has been this notion of «Angels, Demons, and You,» and it’s a reintroduction. It shouldn’t be that we have to stop and talk about the reality of spiritual things, but we do because they’ve been so pushed to the periphery. Prior to the understanding of microscopic organisms, much of life was blamed on spiritual things. Just cursory readings of Greek or Roman mythology will make you aware of that. But after the Enlightenment, after the dawn of the age of reason, if we do it in historical terms, spiritual influences were largely dismissed.
After all, now we had scientific investigation and we had rational diagnostics. Well both extremes leave us with an incomplete understanding if you separate them from one another. They’re incomplete ways of understanding our world. If you think the world’s defined only by your five senses, you’re beyond naive. And if you think your five senses aren’t valid, you’re equally naive. The truth lies in an awareness of all of that. I’m grateful for science and for the scientific method, but I also believe in spiritual realities which very much influence our world. Spiritual forces have influenced your life today. Most of us have watched at least once, «The Wizard of Oz».
It’s a fierce and intimidating program until Toto, the little dog, pulls back the curtain. And then it’s just a funny little man from Kansas. Well the things of God are often fierce and intimidating until we’re given insight. That’s the point of this study. Is to stop ignoring what frightens us, to engage in a dialogue about the forces that are shaping our lives beyond our sensory perception. Every dark and evil character created to evoke fear in readers and moviegoers is only the devil’s shadow. The reality is much worse than Hollywood or any author can imagine. There’s no battle scene from the Lord of the Rings which compares to the ferocity of the angelic conflict that’s taking place in our world today. Even the dreaded Borg of «Star Trek» Infamy, or assimilated by the devil and his army of demons.
The masses slaughtered by Hitler and Stalin represent only a fraction of the lives that have been destroyed by Satan. And for us to be the church, we’re gonna have to acknowledge this great conflict and the devastating consequences it has on humanity. Throughout the Bible, men are urged to fight the enemy, to do battle and wage war. Those are not phrases that are welcome in our liberal theological schools any longer. They wouldn’t allow us to use those old hymns of the church. When I was in school, and that’s been a day or two. We’ve not been placed in a spiritual Disneyland and told to have fun. At birth, we entered a battlefield and at the time of our rebirth in Christ, we enlisted in God’s army as warriors of light. Those are the facts.
Abraham’s nephew Lot learned this lesson on the evening that two angels told him to gather his family and get out of town because God was about to destroy the city of Sodom. Moses realized this when he was involved in a spiritual battle, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the flames of a burning bush, and he informed Moses that he’d just been recruited to confront Pharaoh and secure the release of the Hebrew slaves. Moses was not anxious for the assignment. In fact, he did everything in his power to avoid it. Gideon lacked spiritual vision until the day the angel of the Lord interrupted his life and sent him to battle the Midianites, the people who were plundering Israel.
Folks, we’ve been being plundered. If you didn’t believe the looting of America and we talked about it a few weeks ago, surely you can believe it now. It’s a spiritual problem before it’s a political problem. The stories could go on and on, but each of these persons and others fought in the power of God against forces empowered by Satan and his demons. Today, the conflict is spiritual. And if you’re not aware of it, the war is over your soul. It’s your destiny. The enemy wants to capture our affection and direct our plans. His objective is clear in every instance. He wants to destroy us and our families.
And I’m gonna take the minutes that we have left, you give the Lord a hand, and see if we can understand biblically this notion of seeing the unseen. I know it’s a paradox, but I believe it’s possible. You can have vision and understanding and awareness beyond your physical self. I promise. Let’s start with some scripture. You’ve got a page full of it. Romans chapter 1, and verse 20, «Since the creation of the world,» which is really in the biblical language since the beginning of the story of Adam and his descendants. This is our history. Since we haven’t imagined history from our beginning point, God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen. Being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse, that from the beginning of our story, «God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen».
So, the Bible says, «From the beginning of the story until today, there’s something that we can’t see but that’s very apparent». If you look at the order of creation, the precision of the universe in which we live, and you think that happened as a result of statistical probability, you are a determined denier of God. The fundamental principles of physics says that energy is moving from a state of order to disorder, that the earth is unwinding. It is not becoming more ordered. It’s a logical fallacy. Hebrews 11:3 says, «By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible».
The Bible asks us to imagine that the spiritual world gave rise to our physical material world. That it is actually more substantive than the things that we engage with our physical senses. It’s not a request to get you to deny your physical senses. I don’t want you to do that. Being weird does not make you spiritual. I grew up on the spiritual end of the church where we had those conversations and those behaviors and a lot of people thought the more weird they were the more spiritual they were. I don’t agree. I’ve told you many times if you’re pulling onto the interstate, you don’t need to pray for direction, you need to look. You don’t need a word from the Lord, a word of wisdom, you don’t need divine revelation. You need to turn your head and check the oncoming traffic.
And if you’re not gonna do that, I’m getting out of the vehicle. You’re not spiritual, you’re foolish. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve encountered that had a message that God gave them for me. And my answer is pretty consistent. «Well when he wants me to know, I’m sure he’ll tell me». Because often he gives them a message of how I should do something for them. To understand the scene, the visible world, I would submit to you that we first have to understand what we don’t see. A lack of an awareness of spiritual things will consistently leave you at a deficit in explaining the world that we’re in. Sometimes the best answer is, «That’s evil». There’s not another way to understand that. Every understanding is gonna grow from that, that evil exists.
I watched the videotapes of Hamas terrorists pouring into Israel on October the 7 some months ago. There is no description for what I witnessed that day other than evil. There is none. I brought you an example. Act 16, it’s kind of a lengthy passage. We’ll hit the highlights. Paul and his crew are in a city, they’re traveling the Mediterranean world, city after city. There’s really no explanation for the Book of Acts other than spiritual forces. Everywhere Paul goes, he’s a preacher. Everywhere he goes, there’s a riot. More times than not, they try to kill him. Do you understand that’s an unnatural reaction. We’re watching it right now. Someone is saving our nation hundreds of billions of dollars and they can’t provide enough security. And we watched that like that’s normal.
«Oh well, that makes,» that does not make sense. There should be such an overwhelming sense of gratitude that our money that’s being siphoned off by the Lord knows whom, is being secured for us and there’s enough anger and hatred that the person that’s on point with that assignment lives in fear of his life. «Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. And the girl followed Paul and the rest of us shouting, 'These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.'» How does she know that? She has a spirit. She has an unclean spirit, an unholy spirit. There are spirits that have awareness that we don’t have.
That’s a very fundamental biblical principle in Mark chapter 1. It’s not in your notes, but it is in the Bible. When Jesus went into the synagogue in Capernaum, first chapter of the Gospel, there was a man there, a demonized man, and the demon began to say, «I know who you are». Well nobody else knew who he was. Everybody else thought it was Mary and Joe’s kid. «Isn’t that the man from Nazareth just down the valley»? But the demon said, «I know who you are». There’s an understanding in the spiritual world that we don’t get in our educational system. In the book of James, it said, «You believe there’s a God. Well good for you. The demons believe that,» James says, and they shudder. They not only believe in God, they understand the power and authority of God. We’ve been incredibly naive.
In fact, we’ve been stubborn in our unbelief. So, this young woman is just screaming at the top of her lungs, «These men are the servants of the Most High God»! Imagine if you went with me to the store and people follow me through the door and go screaming, «The servant of the most…» You wouldn’t go to the store with me. It’d be awkward, right? Like, «No, no, I think I’ll just shop online. I’m good». «She kept this up for many days». Not just once. «And finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and he said to the spirit,» not to the woman, «'In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her! ' And the spirit left her. When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and they said, 'These men are Jews, '» hating the Jews is not new, folks.
«'They’re throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept their practice.'» That’s not true. They haven’t done that at all. «The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. And after they’ve been severely flogged, they were thrown into the prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. So we put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks». Now you read that and if you don’t pause and reflect for a moment, you’ll think, «Well there’s a logical sequence of events».
Nothing about that’s logical. That young woman’s insight into who Paul and his team were is not logical. Her harassment of them was not logical. Demons harass. They diminish, they annoy, they agitate. That’s their role That is an expression of who they are. But in this particular instance, I would submit to you that Satan’s kingdom was exposed and defeated. There was a greater authority. That girl had been able to tell fortunes and the people who owned her, she’s a slave, have made a good deal of money off of this. It’s a lucrative investment for them. And now there’s a greater authority. She’s been set free and they’re angry, but beneath that is this exposure of Satan’s kingdom and the defeat and authority greater than he was there. And the city’s response is completely illogical in its magnitude.
Do you think they care that much about a slave girl? There were hundreds of them in the city. The underlying reality of that narrative is the satanic kingdom was enraged and it manifested itself. We have to live with enough spiritual awareness to understand what’s happening in our world. It’s not the sum total of elections. It’s illogical to mutilate our teenagers. It’s not logical to say men and women are the same biologically. The same people that tell us to follow the science try to tell us that. That’s not logic. It’s incredibly destructive. And we watched this boiling around us, oblivious to the spiritual consequences.
And then we introduce all these fancy sounding religious words that we think provide explanations like compassion. It’s an open border for year after year after year is not compassion. It destroys the nations from which the people are coming. It destroys the community where the people arrive. Compassion would be a plan for an orderly migration of legal immigrants for their wellbeing. It’s impossible to understand apart from spiritual things. But because we don’t believe in spiritual things, we say, «Well I just don’t talk about that». Ephesians chapter 6, «Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power».
We haven’t lived with the Christianity for a long, long time that had any imagination of the necessity of mighty power. We treat that like it’s fanciful, like once upon a time long long ago and far, far away. We don’t need mighty power, we have schools and doctors and hospitals and social security and… We don’t need mighty power. We have lived with an intentional oblivious attitude towards spiritual things. We’ve ignored the council of Scripture. We’ve talked about being born again. That perhaps in eternity when my body wears out, perhaps I might have some slight need for God.
We’re gonna pray before we go, but I spent my life in and around the church, and far too often we’re critical. We’re so aware of what churches aren’t, not just the one we attend, but the ones we don’t like. Folks, Jesus is the head of the church. If we can disagree and both still go to heaven, I will extend the hand of fellowship. Let’s pray for the church.
Lord, strengthen your church. Give us a compassion and a love for your church and the earth and forgive us for who we brought division. In Jesus’s name, amen.