Allen Jackson - Full Measure of Devotion - Part 1
We’re working through a series on «Tabernacle, Temple, Synagogues & Churches». Not just places of worship or styles of worship or ways to worship, but the way that God engages people of faith in community. We’re the 21st century edition of that. And I believe it’s significantly important to understand the role and the significance of church and being in community of faith. It’s not fashionable these days. And technology is changing imaginations around that, but I don’t believe biblically it has changed at all. I think it’s important. And in this session, we’re gonna talk a bit more in detail about the full measure of devotion, another topic that I don’t hear a great deal about in this season.
You know, churches and messaging are like fashion. They tend to go in cycles and there tends to be a lot of groupthink and there’s some things that are left out of the current conversation that I think are important. They may not be fashionable, but they’re very significant. But I wanna start with an idea that I think is a pretty accurate description of what we’re doing. The weekend, the last few days, have reminded me of it. You know, all the messaging around the storms and the frantic interruptions if you’re watching ball games, which is what I do, you know, and the anxiety of the people who are reporting and the fear that’s instilled. A lot of storms across our nation, thunder and lightning and high winds and great volumes of rain. It was evident all around as you came to church today, I suspect.
Well, I want to submit to you that there’s something happening that’s even more dramatic than what we’ve seen in the weather in the last 72 hours. I think we’re walking through the midst of a truth storm. I think there is truth being revealed, truth breaking into the public square, things that have been hidden in the darkness that are bursting into the light. It’s far more disruptive, far more powerful, has a far greater potential of changing our future than any thunder or lightning or volume of wind or rain that we’ve experienced recently. And I’m of the opinion that behind all of it is God. I like storms, just for full confession. I like thunderstorms. Like, the darker it gets and the more frantic the people on television get, the more I want to get closer to something outside. I wanna sit and watch.
My wife thinks I have no sense, but that’s not just around storms, that’s just, you know. She woke me up one night and said the wind was so bad it’d blown the… true story, blown the window out of our living room. So I got up and went and put the window back in. And went back to bed, which apparently was not the appropriate response. That was the only part I understood. So I like storms. I do. But we’re living through a truth storm and it’s unsettling. It brings adrenaline, it brings some anxiety because you recognize there’s tremendous potential for change, and you don’t know what that’s going to elicit. You don’t know which direction it’s going to go. You just recognize that there’s a lot happening, that the status quo is not in full play at the moment. Does that feel like what we’re watching?
Now, I believe this is God-initiated. The beginning point in my awareness took a dramatic change about 2020 when we first heard about that virus from Wuhan, China. We came to know it as COVID-19, but when we first heard about it, all we heard was it was a tremendous threat, and we really weren’t sure how to protect ourselves. We weren’t sure of treatment protocols. We just understood that we were being told that it was a terrible, terrible threat, and so we began to pray, sincerely, as a community of faith: «God, let the truth be known, so we will know how to help one another, how to protect ourselves, how to protect our families».
I didn’t understand we were praying about anything more than COVID-19. But from that day until this we’ve continued those prayers and the truth storm has intensified. COVID seems almost simple by comparison. I’m not minimizing that. I’m just saying that it hasn’t stopped. I didn’t know God was going to shake the earth to the degree he has. We see this. There’s such a lengthy list of the way the truth storm is shaking things that it extends beyond what we can do in any single session or I would even try. I had no idea that anti-Semitism was flourishing at our most celebrated college campuses. If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes in recent months, I would never imagined it was possible. There were so many things.
I had an interview this week with a physician, a doctor, he spent his life, helping deliver babies. He’s helped deliver thousands of babies, and he has given much of his energy to being an advocate for those children. He’s written a whole Bible study guide. He’s known as the ProLife Doc. He’s written a whole Bible study guide to help us understand the viability of those children before their parents see them. In fact, he’s done some animations recently. I got to watch one with him. It was an animation, not a video, it’s an animation, so you don’t have all the… my dad was a veterinarian, folks. I grew up with gross stuff, all right? I got two brothers. There were three boys. My dad was a vet. It was a small business. So while we’re having dinner, the phone rings and some farmer’s got a cow trying to have a calf.
Now my mother’s goal was to raise three sons who were not heathens. She really tried to teach us manners, how to behave. You can’t fight in the house. You know, which fork to use, all the stuff. And we’re at dinner and she’s trying to enforce the law on the three of us, and Farmer Brown calls and his cow’s trying to calf and the calf’s half delivered and my dad is taking the description and we’re sitting looking at one another. So a video of a baby being born or a calf being born or a foal being born, to me, that’s dinner table conversation. But I understand everybody didn’t have the benefit of such a well-rounded upbringing as I did.
So I see the value of an animation because it’s much more sedate. But the animation is of a mom who’s very pregnant, but the baby needs open heart surgery. And the animation shows how the mom has an anesthesiologist to help get her ready for surgery. And the mom has a surgeon to help prepare her and the baby has his own anesthesiologist to help get him ready for surgery. And his own surgeon to help get him ready for surgery. And the baby has a patient number. And it’s a billable event, recognized by the insurance company. And when you’re done with the animation, it’s just, there’s no imagination whatsoever that that little baby, that little fellow that his parents haven’t even seen yet, is a real person. He’s a patient. He’s a patient with his own anesthesiologist and his own surgeon and his own hospital bill. Little fellow’s in debt before he gets here.
It’s the American dream. But it completely eliminates this idea that has grown in the darkness, that it’s not a child. That it’s a choice or some other something or other that eliminates. It’s a truth storm. It’s unmistakable. You can’t hide from it. It’s right there. It was wonderful to see the video and to have the discussion and know that there are people that are saying we have to stand up for our children. Anywhere you look, this truth storm, the clouds are gathering and truth is swirling about in ways we haven’t seen. Darkness is being dispelled. The fog is lifting.
You know, I would expect the scientific community or the pulpits in our nation to be adamant and determined and persistent in telling us that God created us male and female. After all, it’s good theology and it’s very good science. But the pulpits and the scientific community have been strangely silent. So we’ve had politicians lately saying there’s two sexes. And there’s all the same anxiety that comes around one of those alerts that pops up on your phone about tornadoes. We’re all stunned and shocked and we run for the basement. But I would submit to you that shouldn’t really be that much of a dramatic announcement. The facts are pretty evident when it comes to male and female. They’re revealed throughout life, and if you’re following it, they’re revealed in the first chapter of Genesis.
So that if we’re people of the book and people with anything like awareness, we would know God created us male and female, and we’re not the same. It’s not about lesser or greater. I’m not suggesting that. I’m just suggesting we’re different. That’s biblical. God created man and he said, «Oh, that’s not good». Women, that should be your favorite verse in all the Bible. God said, «There’s something else needed; we’re not finished yet». I mean, it’s a fundamental notion and yet on this point, the churches and the scientific community have had a great deal of time finding the courage to express their voice because the darkness was powerful. It was choking out the truth to the point that we’d arrived at these absurd places. We have men in the Olympics boxing with women. And nobody wants to say anything.
Now that’s absurd, but the truth storm started. And now we’re saying it at the most powerful places in the nation and I pray that the churches and the scientific community find the courage to tell the truth. You see, it doesn’t really matter what surgery you have performed upon you, every cell in your body identifies you as male or female. Well, there’s another truth storm. The list could go on and on. I’ll give you one more because I really… you have an outline with scriptures and you’re looking at that thinking, «Dear God, what’s…»
So the Bible tells us things like to practice contentment. And it tells us that envy and greed and covetousness are evil and that if you practice them, you will not enter the kingdom of God, so they are off limits. They’re not life enhancements, they’re not pathways to something better, even if you baptize them in envy and covetousness for your children, they’re evil. They will keep you from the kingdom and the truth storm that’s blowing around has revealed levels of fraud and waste and greed in levels that are almost, they’re so stunning, it’s difficult to process. The numbers are so large and the magnitude of what’s been going on, the absurdity of it truly feels like a storm. You just want to go sit in the basement and turn the lights out. But I don’t believe we really have that option.
You know, it was decades ago where some government investigation found that the Department of Defense had spent $600 on a hammer that you could buy at a local hardware store for about $6 and that’s, for years and years, that’s been kind of the joke, the punch line on government fraud and waste. By today’s revelations of the truth storm, a $600 hammer seems like a bargain. We sent $60 million to Gaza for condoms. I’ve been to Gaza. Never mind. But what’s being revealed in this storm about the levels of fraudulent spending and waste and stealing and the complicity of the media and the silence of the leaders who have been in place a long time while this was taking place, you can’t steal that much money and the people in town with you not know it. It’s impossible.
This has been happening for so long that we elect people and we send them to leadership roles in our nation and they go as kind of ordinary citizens with ordinary incomes and they serve for a short season of time and they become fabulously wealthy. It’s happened so frequently we’ve considered that to be normal. Folks, it’s not normal. It’s not right. We shouldn’t be tolerant of it. And not only that, if the organization they’re presiding over is plummeting into almost irrecoverable debt, they shouldn’t be rewarded for it with our money. But we’ve watched it for so long, we’re anesthetized to it. We just kind of nod numbly and go, «That’s the way…» no, that’s not the way the system should work. And it’s gonna take courage. It’s intriguing to me.
As I said, I like storms. I’ll go get a lawn chair and sit as close to it as I can without just getting completely soaked. I may get a little wet. But I’m watching the response to this truth storm and the reduction of the trough of public waste seems to frighten many. The implication: the graft and dishonesty and lies are necessary components of governance, and we should accept them as such. Well, that’s just how it works. That’s human nature.
No, I have friends, people that I’ve done life with, they’ve said to me of late, «Well, you know, Pastor, given the access to money, everyone steals». No, I reject the premise. Somebody else’s practice of evil does not give you license to be evil. You will miss the kingdom of God. We have a Lord that set the agenda. We should not steal. We should not betray our families. We should not betray our personal responsibilities to integrity and honesty for the sake of personal gain or for opportunity. Character matters. Sacrificial leadership is a value worth maintaining. In fact, our faith demands that integrity. I don’t believe we can capitulate.
I started with the concluding sentence from the Declaration of Independence. I think it’s relevant. Says: «For the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence,» the signers of the Declaration were acknowledging their dependence on Almighty God, «we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor». Those words seem so quaint. The pledging of our lives and our honor to one another for a cause beyond ourselves, for which we are facing the possibility of great loss. Those ideas seem so quaint to us.
How is it we have lost touch with principles like honor and dignity and sacrifice? How is it that we’ve had decades of leadership, not just in Washington, folks, we’ve had it in churches, we’ve had it in the business world, we’ve had it in athletics. You know, I’m old enough I remember where at the earliest levels of childhood you were taught when you participated in athletics, you represented something other than yourself. You represented a school or a team or a community, and it was one of the great honors of your life. It was much less about your personal ability or talent; it was the privilege of being included to represent something greater than yourself. We took those ideas of sportsmanship and we taught them into civics, into our responsibilities as citizens. We brought them into the church with our responsibilities in the kingdom of God. Almost all of those ideas have been swept aside.
Now we train little mercenaries. We get them personal coaching and great opportunities and they’re fluid and they move from here to there. I’m not against athletics and the participation of our kids and the honing of their skills, but we better learn that we live for something other than ourselves, or adulthood is going to be very difficult. And we’ve done that, it’s not the children’s fault. We’ve done it to them because we parent competitively and we grandparent hyper-competitively. We don’t want anybody to have any difficulty. We got to eliminate all of that because we don’t want any difficulty. We had difficulty and we don’t want any more. We needed some discipline to get those earlier times in our life through, but we got out from under them, and we don’t want any discipline now, and we don’t need anyone related to us to have any discipline. We have to change.
And, church, it’s got to begin with us. We are the conscience of the culture. We are the people of faith. If judgment comes on our nation, it won’t come because of the pagans. It won’t come because the political party you don’t like got elected. Judgment will come because the people of faith walked into the darkness. So I’m very concerned with the local church. I’m very concerned with our attitudes. I’m very concerned with the silence, the indifference, or the outright ungodliness. I wanna start with the notion of devotion. I gave you the definition. You know, we think, we write devotionals. I’ll send you a devotional every morning. You just go to the website and give us your email address. It’s free. It’ll drop in your inbox, Monday through Friday, a little spiritual vitamin to start your day.
It’s intentionally built to be short, a little reflection on scripture, a scripture verse, and a prayer, the Bible reading for the day if you’re interested, but you can do the whole devotional in less than 10 minutes if you read slowly. We should know the difference between having a devotional and devotion. Because they are very, very different things. It doesn’t take great devotion to read a 10-minute devotional. Particularly if someone else writes it for you. Like, if I was gonna really be old school, hardcore, mean-spirited: «You’ve got a Bible. Get your own devotional».
We’ll send you one tomorrow, I promise, okay? But the definition of devotion is the fact or state of being ardently dedicated and loyal. Ardently dedicated and loyal. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a Christ follower who’s not devoted to Jesus. I don’t believe you can do that. Because he’s either Lord of all or he’s not Lord at all. There’s no gray. There’s no, like, hyper-disciples and super-disciples and grade A disciples and grade C disciples and then those who just get in. I brought you a passage. It’s Philippians 3. This is Paul, the apostle. He said: «If anyone thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more». Not a really humble statement. Paul said, «You think your resume is good; mine’s better».
That’s what he said. Doesn’t really matter how you turn it, and then he’s gonna tell you why he’s better. And he’s gonna start from the way he was born. He said, I was born to the right group of people and you weren’t, ha, ha, ha. «I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless». That’s his CV prior to meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus. He was a rising star. He had the brightest future. He was so zealous and effective at home in Jerusalem that they gave him assignments beyond the country. He was an international developer. And then he met Jesus.
In verse 7, he said, «But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead». Wow, not a fashionable passage.
Now, you can dissect it in theological terms and hide from the implications of it, but the simple reading, an honest glance at that passage, is it’s a statement on devotion. «I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord». There is nothing in the influence of my life, he’s saying, not my education, not my professional accomplishments, not my achievements, not my peer group, not my contact list. He said, «Everything is but rubbish,» and that’s kind of a cleaned up English word. More literally he said, «It’s dung».
You choose your euphemism. It’s trash compared to the privilege and the opportunity of knowing Jesus. Personal question, we’re in church, don’t answer. I want you to think about it for a few days. If the people who know you, work with you, the people who spend their discretionary time with you, were asked what the most valuable thing in your life was, the thing that you prized, the thing that you were most committed to, how many of them would answer without hesitation, «Oh, it’s Jesus»?
When the Spirit of God begins to move, one of the most important things we can do is to continue to say yes to him. No hesitation, no reluctance, we’re all in. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, yes, yes to you. We want to cooperate in obedience and faithfulness and steadfastness to serve your purposes, in Jesus’s name, amen.