Allen Jackson - Weapons at Our Disposal - Part 1
It’s good to be with you again, we’re continuing our study on «Angels, Demons and You,» trying to understand those spiritual forces that have such a profound impact on our lives. Folks, they’re more significant than the coronavirus. And so often we just act as if we’re a bit too sophisticated to believe in those things. Well, Jesus believed in them, so maybe we should too. In this session, we’re gonna look at the weapons that have been given to us, the weapons that are at our disposal. We’re not left just to out-think evil or out-organize evil or out-work evil, there are spiritual weapons that have been entrusted to us that are empowered with the resources of heaven. That is an amazing thing and an important part of our journey through time. Grab your Bible, get a notepad, most of all open your heart, I believe God has a plan and a purpose for our time together today.
We’ve been working through a little study on «Angels, Demons and You». The «and you» part’s the most important. You know, those of us in the Christian Church realm are famous for doing studies. And we do them in a kinda theoretical sense, a distant sense, we remove ourselves from the discussion as if it may or may not have impact for us. I want to talk in this session about how spiritual forces influence history, because I believe they do. I earned a degree in history and so I have an appreciation for history, I think it’s enormously valuable, but at this point in my life I have reached the conclusion that spiritual forces are probably the greatest single determining factor in the outcome of history. More than technological innovations or economic booms, I think spiritual forces are important.
I would submit to you, the Bible tells us that, I just think we read past it. The book of Revelation is the story of the conclusion of this age, the judgment of God upon this present world order; the systems of this world, not this planet, because Jesus is gonna rule and reign on this planet; but it’s a story of spiritual forces impacting what’s happening on planet Earth. And it’s not a new story, that starts in the opening chapters of Genesis, and it fills the pages of your Bible from Genesis to the book of Revelation, but somehow we read past that. I would submit to you that Jesus’s birth was a supernatural event. Can we agree on that? That without supernatural interaction, Jesus’s birth would not have occurred?
Well, I think it’s safe to say that that historical event has changed the unfolding story of humanity. So the spiritual world introduced that change. The gospel, when it came to the city of Ephesus, made such a dramatic change in the economy that riots broke out. The preaching of the gospel, the good news of the gospel, the spiritual change in the hearts of people disrupted the economic patterns of the city of Ephesus to the point that riots broke out. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see such significant spiritual change, transformation in the hearts of men and women, that we changed our patterns of living enough that the economic repercussions caught the attention of the ungodly? That’s not a boycott as a matter of punishment, it’s a change of living.
Spiritual forces influence history. And it seems to me that those of us in the church, veteran, tenured church people, Christ followers, often dismiss or underestimate the magnitude of spiritual influences. We talk about being born again as if we understand that’ll maybe help you not go to hell. And that’s a good thing and we don’t want anybody to do that so we kinda focus on that little nugget, but beyond that we don’t often think about spiritual things. And again, it’s at the heart of the story. In Matthew 26, as Jesus is about to begin his passion, he’s in Gethsemane and they come to get him and Peter is writing to defend him in a rather clumsy way, nevertheless ready, and Jesus stops him.
It’s Matthew 26:53, he said, «Do you think I can call on my Father and he’ll at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels»? Peter, you and your sword are a little goofy; bad aim, not overly effective. If I wanted real help, 12 legions of angels. That’s a lot of angels, legion could be as many as 6,000. 70,000-plus angels in Jesus’s personal security detail, that’s a pretty significant spiritual force. In Revelation 5, in verse 11, we have a little snapshot into heaven, we can see into heaven through John’s vision. And he said, «I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, 10,000 times 10,000. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders».
Now we’ve already reached some, at least modest, if brief, agreement that the supernatural was engaged in Jesus’s birth and his mission, angels are essential characters in the story of Revelation, that Jesus can call upon 70,000 or more if he needed them. Satan knew that when he tempted him, he said, «If you throw yourself off of this place the angels are gonna watch over you». John shows us a window into heaven and there’s as many as 100 million angels in one scene. Jesus said, «The children have angels assigned to them that have the Father’s attention». It’s safe to say that in the kingdom of God there are spiritual beings in significant number, and they’re ministering spirits, the Bible says, sent forth to help us. They’re messengers, they fill the pages of Scripture, and yet we tend to kind of imagine as if it’s peripheral, secondary, that you can be a Christ follower and not really be engaged or have to imagine spiritual forces. We believe in organization.
Well, so do I, I like a good plan and I like an organization that is run well, but I don’t want to… it’s not an either/or equation, and I certainly don’t want to exchange the power of God and the spiritual help that he’s made available to us for the imagination that we can out-organize evil. But I’d like to take the macro view with you. If you do the Bible reading with us, we were reading today in 1 Kings, and it was a story about the prophet Elijah. And as I read it, it was difficult for me to just to put it down again, I’ve gone through it several times just today again. Elijah had the privilege of being a prophet, someone with God’s perspective around the nation of Israel, in the season when Israel had their most wicked king in history.
The king’s name was Ahab, his wife is Jezebel, she’s Phoenician, she’s not even an Israelite. And Ahab and Jezebel, in the Scripture, are the epitome, they’re the gold standard for wicked. I would submit to you, that’s not the way you want to make the book. And Elijah the prophet has the privilege of speaking into that world. So 1 Kings 18, verse 12, says, «'If I go and tell Ahab and he doesn’t find you, he’ll kill me. Yet I your servant have worshiped the Lord since my youth. Haven’t you heard, my lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the Lord? I hid 100 of the Lord’s prophets in two caves, 50 in each, and supplied them with food and water. And now you tell me to go to my master and say, „Elijah is here“. He’ll kill me! ' And Elijah said, 'As the Lord Almighty lives, whom I serve, I will surely present myself to Ahab today.'»
There’s a conflict in Israel, and if you’ll look at it on one level it’s a conflict between a prophet and the king and the queen, and the power structure that they represent. And that’s one way of understanding it, but it’s incomplete, it’s inadequate. In fact, if that’s all you know of the story, you’re missing the most powerful parts of the story, because that scene, when Elijah meets with Ahab, leads to a confrontation on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal, one of the Canaanite fertility gods. And the outcome of that is a change in the direction of the nation of Israel. The people have followed Ahab’s lead into worshiping this pagan god, and they have done it in unprecedented numbers, and there has been physical persecution amongst those who chose to worship God, the prophets, those who speak from God’s perspective.
Biblical prophets are not principally future-tellers, Biblical prophecy is about delivering God’s perspective on current events. Did you know God cares about current events? If you study your Bible absent current events, what exactly are you doing? That would be much like going to the doctor, who says, «Well, you know, I really haven’t read a medical journal in 20 or 25 years». I’m going someplace else. And the point of the truth of Scripture is to help us understand the world we’re in today, and Elijah is speaking to the challenge of his day. «You are an adulterous generation,» he said, «You’re gonna have to choose today whom you’re gonna serve, either the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or Baal. You choose, but today, when we leave this mountain, you will have made a choice».
Most of you know the story, you learned it, I hope, years ago in Sunday School, we’re certainly teaching it to the children now. The prophets of Baal build an altar, the agreement is the God who is real will send fire from heaven; they don’t have much success. Elijah could’ve played in the southeastern conference based on the way he talked trash, 'cause he taunted them all day long, he wasn’t kind, he just mocked them, and when his turn comes, he makes it as difficult as possible. Some of you know, I hope you read the story today, and when he’s done he murders those prophets, executes them. I’m not in inciting violence or suggesting that you should, I’m suggesting we have misunderstood what it means to stand for the truth.
It’s not always kind or comfortable or convenient or easy. Elijah is sent into the desert, he’s running for his life, his life is under threat. The queen says, «I’ll have his life by tomorrow,» and Elijah’s response, it’s a stunning response but I’m thinking if you could call fire out of heaven you’d say, «Well, just bring it on, sister». I mean, he’s been talking trash all day long, right? I mean, like, just, «What you got? Call me 'Smokey.'» but he runs for his life, he runs for his life. He runs until he’s exhausted and God sends an angel to him, wakes him up, feeds him, and said, «Elijah, you need strength, the journey’s too much for you,» feeds him two meals. God sends a messenger to help him, and before he comes out of that desert God says to him, «I want you to anoint your successor, I want you to anoint the king’s successor, and I want you to anoint the foreign king that’s gonna displace this one».
Now again, God’s engagement in history: I’m asking you to imagine that spiritual forces impact the world we live in, not just in terms of personal conversion but in the course of nations. Say, «I don’t believe that». I got that, I’m asking you to think about the Bible and your choices around it. Spiritual forces impacting the course of nations, but they don’t do it without the engagement of people.
See, most of us think we can do it from our prayer closet, and I’m an advocate for the prayer closet, but I’ve told you before, your prayer closet is not sufficient to cause a garden to grow. You need a way to till the soil, you’re gonna need some seed, you’re gonna need some water, you’re gonna have a hoe, you’re gonna pull some weeds. You can’t pray your way to summer vegetables in Tennessee, you’ve got to do, there’s a little sweat equity involved. Now, we’ve been so spiritually-minded, we’ve been so inauthentic in our faith that our impact in our culture has been minimized because we thought we could have the conversation and be polite and that it would happen around us or apart from us. It’s not the biblical pattern.
I’m not finished yet, I hope we can form an opinion. Judges chapter 6, the book of Judges is a period in Israelite history when there is no central government, there’s no capital city, there’s no central. There’s 12 loosely associated tribes bound together by their worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They have their own territory, they worship at a common location, mostly the Tabernacle, it’s a tent structure, it’s a bit worn by this point in their history; and this period of history lasts for 400 years. When there’s a threat that threatens something more than a tribal level, God will raise up a leader, it’s what judge means, it’s a leader. It’s not somebody in long black robes, it’s a leader for the tribe, somebody that can marshal the cooperation of all or some portion of the tribes because there’s an external threat and they need to work together. It’s a theocracy, God is actually the King of the people.
Well, Gideon is one of these judges, I know many of you know the story. It says, «The angel of the Lord came down and sat under the oak tree and watched Oprah». Well, kinda. «That belong to Joash, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites». To thresh the wheat, you throw it up in the air so the wind will blow the chaff away and leave the wheat, you need to do that in an exposed area but Gideon’s afraid so he’s doing it behind the walls of a winepress; for good reason, there’s an enemy. «When the angel of the Lord appeared to him, he said, 'The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.' 'But sir, ' Gideon replied, 'If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? '»
Good question. You ever feel like that? I do. Well, if the Lord is so good to me, why am I in this fine mess, Ollie? I’ve been to church three weeks in a row. Don’t attend church thinking you’re stacking up markers. Gideon asked a question we’ve all asked, «'Where are all the wonders that our fathers told us about? „Didn’t the Lord bring us up out of Egypt“? But now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.' And the Lord turned to him,» this is the Lord’s message to Gideon, «Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand».
I’m sending you. That’s not the message I want, I want God to say, «I’ve come down to get them, watch what I’m gonna do to them». 'Cause there are some stories in the Bible like that, when the angel of the Lord kills 180 Assyrians, 180,000 Assyrians in one evening. Those are the kinds of deliverances I usually pray for. God, let me sit in the recliner and you smite my enemies. Right? If I get to choose, I don’t want any of these messages saying, «I’m sending you». It’s like Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. God said, «I’ve heard the cries of my people,» and you can see Moses kinda leaning forward, «Yeah,» «I’ve seen their suffering,» and Moe’s going, «Absolutely». And then God says, «I’ve come down to deliver them,» he’s going, «Yes,» and then God says to Moses, «I’m sending you,» «Whoa».
I think that’s a little bit how we feel, we want God to do something. God, there’s darkness and ungodliness and immorality, and people have drifted. God, won’t you do something? And he says to Gideon, ah, «Go in the strength you have,» dude is hiding, «And save Israel out of Midian’s hand». And Gideon, he just speaks right up, God bless his heart. He said, «How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest and I’m the least in my family». I was born on the wrong side of the tracks and the street I’m on is the worst street on this side of the tracks. And the Lord said, «I’ll be with you». «I’ll be with you, and you’ll strike down all the Midianites together».
So Gideon says, «Okay». But the assignment doesn’t begin with the Midianites, it doesn’t begin with the invading army, it doesn’t begin with the foreigners, it begins with the hearts of God’s people, and it begins in Gideon’s household. I believe that’s our pathway, it’s not about being angry at somebody else, it’s not about being angry at the political party that you’re not, it’s not about being angry at somebody that you didn’t vote for, it’s about recognizing the condition of my heart and those closest to me. «The Lord said to him, 'Peace! Don’t be afraid. You’re not going to die.'» Gideon realizes he sees an angel and he gets a little anxious. «So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and he called it The Lord is Peace».
Do you know the Hebrew word for peace? Shalom, it means a whole lot more than just, «Hey». It’s a greeting in modern Israel, they the answer their phone, a lot of times they’ll say, «Shalom,» they see you on the street, they’ll say, «Shalom,» when they’re leaving, they’ll say, «Shalom». It’s more about a state of being with God’s presence. «The Lord is Peace. To this day it stands,» somewhere. «In the same night the Lord said to him, 'Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.'»
Again, they’re both places where they worship the Canaanite fertility gods. «'Then build a proper kind of an altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.' So Gideon took 10 of his servants as the Lord told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the men of the town, he did it at night rather than in the daytime». Did you hear that? Gideon has an assignment. God said, «I’m gonna use you to deliver these people from the Midianites, I want you to go in your strength. But before you worry about the Midianites, Gideon, you need to clean up your own household».
And he gets a revelation of God, it’s the first, it’s one of the covenant names of God, Jehovah Shalom, our God is peace. He gets a revelation of God that’s gonna take him through this season, and you know the story of Gideon and his fleeces, I mean, he’s not an easy sell, he wants confirmation and reconfirmation and one more time confirmation. And still when it’s time to go, he’s afraid, so he does it at night, less confrontation, but he’s not done. «In the morning when the men of the town got up, and there was Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar! 'Who did this? ' Gideon did. And the men of the town demanded, 'Bring your son. He must die.'»
That’s why Gideon did it at night. This wasn’t easy, this wasn’t comfortable, this wasn’t convenient, there was not an applause line. Tremendous risk, he’s never going to get to the Midianites if God isn’t on his side, he’s not gonna get past his family. Again, God is going to change, for more than a generation, the direction of a nation, but it begins with individuals that are willing to embrace the truth of God in the midst of the resentment or the hostility or the pushback that comes with it. In the church world, I’ve spent my life there so I’m not throwing stones at others, this is my life as much as it is anybody else’s, we get angry about somebody in our chair or somebody in my parking place or whether or not drums are appropriate or not, whether the pastor’s shirt is tucked in or not.
I mean, it’s the stuff of church debate. Right? And then we wonder why the influence of Christianity has precipitously declined in our generation, because we resorted to conversations and invested our thought and our energy in things that are, I don’t even think we can call them secondary. And we’ve looked away while immorality and ungodliness and wickedness is proliferated and been pumped into our children from dozens and dozens of venues, but we found it inconvenient to engage in that because it might impact us in an economic way or our social circles or somebody would say we were aligning ourselves in a political… It’s not politics, it’s a biblical worldview.
Gideon is engaged in a spiritual battle, it’s initiated by an angelic visit, he wasn’t recruited by the leaders of the 12 tribes because he was a brilliant military strategist, he was recruited by an angel of the Lord because I assume that God thought Gideon would be obedient. God provides the directions. The point of contention in Gideon’s household was about the focus of worship, what we’re going to worship. And the discussion was intent enough that Gideon was afraid to say it in the daylight, he made his statement after dark and the response at dawn was, «We’ll kill him». We’re gonna have to stand for our faith in a new kind of away. Again, not angry, not belligerent, it begins in our hearts and in our homes. It’s not about somebody else, we’ve got to stop that. Get off the social media, stop being angry at other people, they don’t have any power unless we’ve given it to them.
Do you ever feel inadequate for the challenges of our day? I do. Well, Gideon’s one of my heroes because when God recruited him, Gideon gave all the reasons why he wasn’t qualified. If you feel inadequate, I think that is an essential component for a valuable role in God’s economy. Because the reality is we are inadequate, I don’t have the strength, the power, the resources, the wisdom, the connections. What I do have is a relationship with the Creator of all things, and that’s enough. It says in Romans, if God’s for us, it doesn’t matter who’s against us. So I wanna pray for you today, God’s got a new, bold response for your life:
Father, I thank you that, in Christ Jesus, we are more than adequate, that your Spirit dwells within us. Thank you for it, in Jesus’s name, amen.