Thank you for joining Alan Jackson Ministries. It is not a simple thing to ignore the Lord. When you see the looting begin, we should understand God is sending an invitation. There were tremendous generational losses because of failures to respond.
breakthroughs involved the faithfulness of God around both His discipline and His purposes. We have to care about the purposes of God, or we're self-absorbed, and God loves us too much simply to give us that permission.
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Taking time to notice the good things and giving thanks for them is a consistent way to find hope and peace. That's why Pastor Allen recommends keeping a good news list, taking the time to write down the good things happening in the world and your life. Our new 52-week Good News notebook gives you a place to record your good news, prayers you saw God answer, and your current prayer requests. This simple practice will help you see how God is constantly at work all around you.
Request your good news notebook when you donate $20 or more today at allenjaxson.com or by calling 855-5772255. That's 855-572255. We're so glad you're here to listen. Today's program is Part 1 of Pastor Allen's message called Breakthrough, Looting Interrupted. Tune in tomorrow to Hear Part 2.
We're talking about breakthroughs, trying to understand the nature of breakthroughs so that we can participate in them more fully, gain the benefit of God's interventions in our lives. When I say breakthrough, what I mean is God's intervention. When there's an outcome presented to us that is beyond something we could have achieved on our own. But there's a great deal the Bible has to tell us about those interventions, about those breakthroughs, and completely, completely can that it isn't what we have been taught.
far too frequently, I've spent my adult life in the church. I've listened to lots and lots of messages, and I'm grateful for that, but there's a much we can learn from Scripture. In this particular session, we're gonna talk about looting interrupted. I believe that's a breakthrough. I believe it requires an intervention of God once looting begins for it to be interrupted. If we use this little paradigm of when God intervenes, I'll remind you of some of the more significant
breakthroughs you know from your Bible, Moses at the burning bush was a breakthrough. Particularly if you were slave in Egypt, God was recruiting help for you. He was recruiting a leader. If you were Moses, I don't know if it was a breakthrough or not. Pretty heavy lift. Big dog assignment, late in his life. He had a lot of momentum in a more comfortable way and God interrupted him, but I'm confident it was a breakthrough for him as well. Changed his eternity.
Paul in the road to Damascus was a breakthrough. Angry, violent man, hating people who followed Jesus, and Jesus stepped into his life. Mary, a teenage girl in a little insignificant village tucked away in the hills of Galilee. She had a visit from Gabriel and said, God has an assignment for you, and it completely reoriented Mary's entire life. She lost friends. A breakthrough.
You see, I think we've had a wrong imagination of breakthroughs. We've imagined that breakthroughs were when we have a problem or a need or a bad diagnosis or we're behind on our payments and we want to get out of this tough place and we want to break through. We want to be healthy and we want our bills to be paid. There's nothing wrong with that. I believe God responds to those prayers. But what our imagination has been is we get out of the difficult place so we can go back to doing what we've been before.
And I honestly don't think that has very much to do with the biblical presentation of these breakthroughs. None of the individuals I just mentioned do you return to normal? I think it was a breakthrough for Simon Peter one day when a itinerary rabbi passed him on the shores of Galilee and he said, follow me and I'll make you a fisher of men. But Peter never earned his living fishing for very long after that. This whole world got reoriented. So what I want, I'm asking you to consider with me is what would it look like if we had breakthroughs?
If God intervened in our lives, are we willing to be a part of that story? It gets personal really quickly. Are you willing to change your calendar and your schedule and your workflow and how you interact and your social schedule and your plans for the future? Or do you just want God to bless you so you can go on your own jolly old way? Breakthroughs.
deliverance, revelation, insight, understanding, redirection when God's purposes and plans are initiated. Not these kind of fanciful stories where we click our heels together and everything's just perfect, but we don't really have to change anything. I mean, occasionally God does that. I find that God does that in two circumstances in Scripture predominantly for very new, when you're very new.
When your faith is childlike, then your maturity is small. And I find that God does those kind of remarkable interventions. When the circumstances are so dire that it requires a dramatic intervention of God, you need a talking donkey or you're gonna lose your life. And God in His mercy gives you a talking donkey. May I suggest you don't wanna build a life plan where the choice is the donkey speaks or you die.
So that kind of idealistic breakthrough really isn't the target. We want the revelation, the insight, the understanding, the invitation to grow, to change, to become, to emerge, to lead in a new way, to respond to God. Are you with me? Breakthroughs. Breakthroughs. Well, in this session, I wanna talk specifically about this idea of looting being interrupted. And it's a biblical principle. I'm gonna try to show it to you. I'm gonna take a moment with it.
So I'm gonna need you to think with me for a minute. I know history probably isn't your favorite subject, but it's biblical history. So it's not like I'm not just gonna talk about Martha Washington. We're actually gonna look at scripture, but the looting or the plundering of the people of God throughout scripture is presented to us as a form of God's judgment. God's judgment is discipline.
So that when we see it happening in the pages of Scripture, we understand God is disciplining His people. It's a very frequent occurrence. It's not something from just one or two unique points in the history of the Hebrew people. Israel or Judah is often a vassal state subjugated to another nation. Typically, again, it's an expression of God's judgment.
It isn't primarily about political might or military ability. A secular assessment might explain it in those ways because they deny the supernatural engagement of God in the unfolding story of history. But I don't. I believe God is very much engaged in the unfolding narrative of history.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and at the end of the book He's coming back, the rule and reign over a new heaven and a new earth and the lion will lay down with the lamb. He's not separate from history. There are many accounts of God delivering His people in the face of overwhelming odds. Defeat is typically an expression of discipline. It's not about the size of the enemy.
or their technical prowess. It's about the condition of the hearts of the people of God. In the book of Judges, there's a whole book of these leaders. Before there was a monarchy in Israel, God would raise up leaders. Gideon, Samson, Deborah, Jephthah, the whole list of them in the book of Judges. From these people who would oppress them, the Midianites, the Philistines. During the monarchy, after there's a king,
nations oppressed them, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria. You're familiar with some of the names perhaps. In the New Testament, it's not just an Old Testament concept. In the New Testament, the cart cry of Jesus' disciples is, will you throw the Romans out? Because Israel is once again a vassal state this time of Rome. It's important.
In the book of Judges, chapter six, just to give you a couple of samples. Just whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the other and Eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land, ruined the crops, all the way to Gaza, and didn't spare a living thing for Israel. Neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys, they came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locust. It's impossible to count them in and their camels. They invaded the land to ravage it.
Israel is being looted. They're taking the livestock. They're taking the harvest. They're plundering the country and the leaving the people destitute. And God raises up Gideon in this case. It continues in their history when there's a monarchy in place in 1 Kings 14 in the fifth year of King Rehoboam. It's very early in the life of Judah as an independent nation.
The king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem, and he carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord, and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields, solemnly made so King Reoboam made bronze shields to replace them, and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace.
The temple was the national bank. It was the national treasury. So the ostentatious wealth of the temple was plundered, was looted by the Egyptian king. He took the gold that Solomon had accumulated and took it back to Egypt. And the king of Israel says, we'll just make brass shields. The people are being looted. In 2 Kings 23, Jehoaqah, this is near the end of the nation of Judah.
paid Pharaoh the silver and gold he demanded in order to do so. He taxed the land and exacted the silver and gold from the people of the land according to their assessments. They're being loaded. Thank you for listening to Alan Jackson Ministries. We'll be back to the message in just a moment. But first, Pastor Allen wants to tell you about a new resource from the ministry.
You know, the two most critical junctures of any enterprise are how we begin and how we conclude. So the beginning of a new year is a tremendous opportunity. We've prepared a tool we want to share with you. It's a good news journal. We want to help you set a habit this year to do something with a bit more intention than perhaps has been our pattern in the past.
We want to start our year with an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the blessings of God in our lives. So we've designed this journal so that you can use it as a part of your devotional. It's something you could include the children, the grandchildren. You can take it to work and create a good news journal for the people you work with.
Wherever that may be, let's start our year out purposefully, intentionally, saying thank you to the Lord for His goodness to us. I know there's challenges and we have places where we need God's help, but we're gonna begin with gratitude and walk into the blessings of God in this year. I think you'll enjoy the journal. God bless.
a warm home when it's cold outside, a surgeon who knows how to fix what's wrong, a stranger who stops to help. We have so much to be thankful for. When we turn our focus away from what's wrong with the world, and instead give attention to what's good, we find a path towards hope and peace.
That's why we created our 52-week Good News notebook. It gives you a place to record good news in your life and the world around you. You can also write down prayers God answered and your current prayer requests. Over time, your Good News notebook will become a personal record of God's faithfulness to you. Request yours when you donate $20 or more today at ellinjaxon.com or by calling 855-5772255. That's 855-5772255.
Now, let's get back to Pastor Allen as he wraps up part one of his message called Breakthrough, Looting Interrupted. Tune in tomorrow to hear part two. Perhaps the most notable example of this is the exile. When I use that word, I hope you know what I'm talking about.
In 721 B.C., the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria, and the 10 tribes of Israel were dispersed throughout the Assyrian Empire. The southern kingdom of Israel, called Judah with the capital in Jerusalem, survived for about another 150 years.
Finally, in 587, the Babylonians destroyed the city of Jerusalem, and they took much of the population back to Babylon. Biblical scholars or people who study it called that period the exile, because the people that were promised the land of Israel weren't living in the land. They were exiled. It was God's judgment upon them. It had nothing to do with the Babylonian army. It had everything to do with God's judgment.
What we are not quite as familiar with was the exile was not a singular event. It wasn't a single siege of Jerusalem when the Babylonians won and the Jews lost. It was a series of events, a series of events bringing Judah and the Jewish people further under Babylonian control. The end result of that over a long period of years was the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
If you don't know that, you miss the expressions of God's grace. Time after time after time, God would intervene to the people. Then he would say, there is an opportunity for you to be different. And time after time, they took a pass. The first stage of Babylonian encroachment
It was about 605 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, laid siege to Jerusalem. After Jehohokim, I'm going to show you some scriptures in just a moment. I promise this is biblical. Because the king of Israel, the king of Judah, had made an alliance with Egypt. And Egypt and Babylon were enemies. And the Babylonians were not going to allow Israel to expand Egypt's influence. So the Babylonian king marched to Jerusalem.
and defeated the city, and they took some of the sons of the Judean nobility as hostages. That's where you'd pick up Daniel and his friends. They're going to go back to Babylon. You know some of those stories about a lion's den? About a fiery furnace? Remember those?
That's the part of this exile narrative, but that's not the whole story. Some years later, it was about 597. The second stage of this Babylonian incursion took place. They conquered Jerusalem more completely, and exiled parts of the pom-pom but population, including this time a different king, King Jehollican. The third stage was 587, that I've mentioned already. VC Nebuchadnezzar, this time attacks Jerusalem and destroyed the city. Destroyed the walls of the city. He destroyed the temple in the city.
They took the gold in vessels that were there. Some of them had been plundered years and years ago by the Egyptians. But they took anything that was left in the temple that was valuable. Any wealth that had been accumulated or remained or maintained from Solomon's time. The Babylonian exile ended in 538 BC when the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, came to power. He had a different attitude.
and he allowed the people to go back, who fits into that narrative? What biblical characters do you know? Well, Esther was a queen to the Persian king. Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the Persian king, and he got permission to go back and to rebuild the wall around the city, remember?
All of that is a part of this exile narrative, the judgment of God upon His people. Warning them, your behavior is going to bring destruction. I can't defend you in your ungodliness, in your immorality, in your idolatry. If you persist in these behaviors, you will lose your freedom, your liberty. Your children will suffer.
It's the message of the prophets. It's said over and over and over again. This whole thing got triggered in my brain by our Bible reading. If you're reading with us, we're doing Ezekiel. And the reading for either today or tomorrow is Ezekiel 40. And Ezekiel, it's in your notes. Ezekiel gives you a little timeline. He says, in the 25th year of our exile, we're 25 years into this exile, he said.
Look at his next phrase. In the 25th year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the 10th of the day of the month, the 14th year after the fall of the city. In Ezekiel's understanding, the exile began 25 years ago, but it's only been 14 years since Jerusalem was destroyed. Again, it wasn't a singular event.
It was a series of events spread out over many years with God pleading with the people, don't keep going this way. The most visible things, and then as they begin to insert themselves more fully, they loot more completely. Until finally they say, we're gonna take your smart people and your talented people, and we're gonna destroy your ability to reproduce,
to maintain your equilibrium. That's the final stage of this looting in 2 Kings 25 on the seventh day of the fifth month in the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar. The commander of the Imperial Guard, an official of the King of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and he set fire to the temple of the Lord. They're going to burn the bank. We've taken everything these people have. We can burn the bank now.
the royal palaces in all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down, they've plundered everything they want. You see, Jesus said it in John chapter 10 and verse 10, if you'll ever come to the conclusion that spiritual forces are more real than any other force, the Bible in history will make much more sense. Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly, but the thief comes to steal, to kill, and destroy. When God withdraws his protection,
The end result is complete destruction. It may not arrive immediately. It may look like looting and plundering. It may look like a slow deterioration, like momentum is being lost.
But what has happened is God has stepped back or the people have walked out from under the protection of God and refused his invitations to repent or to change or to bring realignment or to engage in obedience again. And they continue in their stubbornness and all the wealth has been plundered. Everything's been looted. So the only thing it's good for now is to be destroyed. That's a demonic expression. It's the judgment of God. Every important building he burned down.
The whole Babylonian army under the command of the guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem. If I could take you to the city today, you could see the destruction. The commander of the guard carried into exile, the people who remained in the city, along with the rest of the populace and those who had gone over to the king of Babylon. But the commander left behind some of the poorest people.
to work the vineyards in the fields and the Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars, the moveable stands, the bronze sea that were at the temple of the Lord. It's where they prepared the things for sacrifice. They were made out of bronze, so they cut up all the bronze and carried it back to Babylon. Again, this is not a one-time event, the exile. There are many breakthroughs in this process.
There are multiple times and places where God intervenes, where he sends a prophetic message. He sends a person to say, don't go this way, to provide direction, to give the people alternatives. And repeatedly, not once or twice or a handful of times, dozens and dozens and dozens of times, when God intervenes and he gives the people a choice, a fork in the road, they rebel. You see breakthroughs require change in the part of those who benefit.
If we take the breakthroughs, if we take God as interventions and we continue on our own way, we give momentum to destruction. The inhabitants of the land did not anticipate God's judgment. They only understood God to be a God who would bless them, because He delivered them from Egypt and it's a part of their narrative, because He fed them manna in the wilderness, it's a part of their national story.
because he turned back Assyrian armies and he turned back Moabite armies and he defeated Goliath and they have this rich history of the interventions of God. And so they can scarcely imagine that their enemies can conquer them. Their consciences have been so calm, so calloused that the message of grace and mercy is so prevalent that they can't imagine a just God.
There's breakthroughs in Babylon with Daniel and his friends in Persia with Esther. But God doesn't bring them freedom from their slavery or from their difficulty. In fact, there are 70 years will pass before the people can return to Jerusalem. Think of all the children born into slavery. Think of all the children born that never worshiped in the temple, that never had a Passover meal in the Mount of Olives.
Think of the young men and women that's been there entire lives in foreign lands, speaking of foreign language, thinking about Jerusalem. Nehemiah was so grieved when he heard about the condition of Jerusalem that he left the service of the king and made a very dangerous journey back to Jerusalem. Folks, it is not a simple thing to ignore the Lord. When you see the looting begin, we should understand God is sending an invitation.
There were tremendous generational losses because of failures to respond. Breakthroughs involved the faithfulness of God around both His discipline and His purposes. We have to care about the purposes of God, or we're self-absorbed, and God loves us too much simply to give us that permission. And if you'll allow me, I would like to take that biblical perspective and see if we can understand the world we're living in.
Because what I want to submit to you is that right now our nation is being looted. And I don't understand that there'll be a political issue. I think Christians hide from the discussion because they, and they use the word politics, but I truthfully don't think it has anything to do with politics. I think solutions may give an expression in those political realms.
But I think we're being looted. I think our wealth, our strength, our opportunities, our futures, our children's futures are being diminished on a daily basis because of the hardness of our hearts. And I say that having spent my adult life serving in the church. So I'm not casting stones at anyone. I'm trying to understand diagnostically where we are so we can choose a better future. I don't think it has to result in the complete obliteration of our nation.
Any more than I think the discipline of God in the midst of the land of Israel had to result in the destruction of the temple. I think that was a reflection upon a generation. Our new 52-week Good News notebook gives you a place to record the good things God is doing in your life and the world around you. Write down prayers you saw God answer in your current prayer requests. When you keep these lists consistently, you'll create a personal record of God's faithfulness.
Request your good news notebook when you donate $20 or more today at alanjaxon.com or by calling 855-5772255. That's 855-5772255. That's all for today on Alan Jackson Ministries. Thanks for listening. Tune in next time for another encouraging message. This program is sponsored by Alan Jackson Ministries.
