Thank you for joining Alan Jackson Ministries. We don't want to forget the purposes of God. We're too easily captivated by the pressures of our own selves and our own sphere. If we can recognize that we're a part of the larger purposes of God, it will bring a meaning to your life and a purpose to your life that will enable you to overcome those personal challenges that feel we're so aware of.
We've been called to something larger than that. Not to ignore ourselves, but to understand we are servants of the king and the purposes of his king.
Our ministry is to spread God's truth across our nation and around our world. And Alan Jackson Ministries intends to do this in every possible way, including broadcasts like these. If you'd like to listen to the full sermon, you can find it right now on AlanJackson.com on our podcast and on our app.
All of this is available thanks to our supporters. Together, our goal is to help people become more fully devoted followers of Jesus who lead with their faith everywhere they go. Learn more at alanjaxon.com.
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 alanjaxon.com or by calling 855-5772255. That's 855-572255. We are so glad you're here to listen. Today's message from Pastor Allen is called Stormproof Foundation, Christianity and Anti-Semitism.
I'm going to continue a study we began in some earlier sessions, talking about storm-proof foundations. Jesus said that storms come to every life, that you can't avoid them. There are some streams in contemporary Christianity that would suggest that if you do certain things, you can avoid the storms of life. And I don't believe that's biblical. I'm not making a negative confession.
I'm simply acknowledging the reality of Scripture. Our heroes, our Lord, faced temptation from Satan himself. The people he recruited to take the message of his life and his redemptive work to the world faced very real challenges themselves, and they were trained by the Lord. So I think to imagine that because you're a Christ follower and a person of faith and doing your best to walk in obedience, I don't believe you should imagine that it just completely removes you.
from the arena. We are here and we are called to live out the redemptive work of Jesus. So we want to learn to stormproof the foundations of our lives. When the storms come, Jesus said, you can stand that they don't have to bring destruction. But if that your foundation is incomplete or inadequate, that destruction will come.
So we're gonna spend a few sessions trying to understand this. In this session, we're gonna talk specifically about Christianity and anti-Semitism, which is a fancy word for hating the Jewish people.
And I wanna go back to where we were in our previous session in Matthew chapter 10. When I did that, it was the reading for the day and I simply took the chapter reading and unpacked it with you, hoping to add a bit of momentum to your read through the gospels. I'm not gonna persist in this pattern through the whole series, but I wanted to pick this topic back up. I'm of the opinion that God is shaking the earth. And in the same way when there's an earthquake, there may be a shock, but in reality, there's typically multiple shocks.
tremors, some are more powerful than others, but it's very seldom just a single event. Well, I don't believe what we're witnessing is just a single event. The one that awakened me in a significant way and caused me to pay attention was the COVID virus. I watched things I never thought I would see. I never thought I would see in a broad way the quarantining of healthy people. I never thought I would see the closures of churches.
and that we would quietly say, okay, I mean, there's a long list of things, but COVID began an awakening for me, and it wasn't just a theological awakening, it was an awakening to what was happening in the world around us. I got clarity, I had trusted the CDC implicitly up till that point. Never occurred to me to do anything other than that. It occurred to me during that season.
And it took God to bring that awakening to our lives. I pray that we see some of those institutions returned to places of being trustworthy. That's my prayer. I think we should pray and intercede until we see that happen. They are essential to our well-being as a people. And we forfeit something of great significance if we forfeit the trustworthiness of essential institutions in our society. I would put the church in that list.
We need churches to be advocates for the truth, boldly and courageously, holding out the light in the midst of the darkness. Amen. I think there was another trimmer of shaking on October the 7th, the year ago, when Hamas attacked that music festival in southern Israel and the villages that were in that neighborhood.
and hundreds of Israelis were brutally murdered. I wasn't aware of it at the time. I didn't watch the news that day and think, oh, God is shaking the earth. It took a bit for it to capture my attention. What really brought it forward to me was on America's most elite university campuses, it exposed that they were propaganda centers and not educational institutions. There were loud, bold, brazen, persistent, repetitive demonstrations
against the Jewish people on behalf of Hamas and the administrations of those universities supported them. That was an awakening to me. I understood some of the currents in academia, but I didn't understand the degree to which anti-Semitism had flourished and gained authority in those places. In November of this last year, I think we had another shaking.
I mean, there were billions of dollars spent by politicians all over the spectrum, but the unanticipated part of that election was the people all over the middle part of our nation, people who live and fly over a country, the despicable people, the trash. My people, that's the part of the country where I live and where I've grown up.
And that group of people inexplicably, really without precedent, raised their hands and went and said, we believe we need to go a different direction. I want to be clear. I think the outcome of that vote is very unclear at this point. I think it's foolish to imagine that a political class of people are going to rectify the problems of our nation.
And I think it will very much be dependent on the hearts of the people of faith and our willingness to seek the Lord. Thus, initiatives like let's read our Gospels. Nevertheless, I'm grateful for those men and women who will disrupt their lives in order to go stand for something. I'm very appreciative that Mike Huckabee would agree to go to Israel. He had a very
He had a very busy life here. He had a family here and grandchildren here and a daughter enjoying some very unique seasons in her own life as the governor of Arkansas and to leave our nation and go to Israel is a sacrifice. I mean, you may, I understand it's an honor, but it's an honor that comes with a sacrifice.
And so I'm grateful for the men and women that are taking those roles and willing to do it. I just understand that alone, they are powerless to stand against evil. They need the faithful support, a heart change amongst the people of God. I wasn't particularly comforted when Mark Zuckerberg came out recently this week to announce that on meta, they're no longer going to practice censorship. I mean, and there was kind of a celebration.
To be completely candid, I thought he should be prosecuted for admitting he's been infringing on our First Amendment rights. Nevertheless, perhaps we have a season of freedom to preach the gospel. I believe we should do everything we can to do that while we have the freedom. So having said that, let's go back to Matthew 10. We looked at the beginning of this in a previous session. I'll start there, but we're going to go beyond it.
Jesus called His twelve disciples to Him and He gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. So these are the names of the twelve apostles. Simon and Andrew and James and John and Philip and Bartholomew and Thomas and Matthew, you know the crew.
It's that initial sentence that I think is noteworthy. They've been watching Jesus do ministry, raise the dead, heal the sick, speak to storms, open blind eyes. And by Matthew chapter 10, Jesus calls the disciples to him and he says, now I'm gonna give you authority. I want you to go do this. Now, spoiler alert, I'm gonna give you my opinion. I don't think that has ever been rescinded.
In Acts chapter one, Jesus called his disciples together just before his ascension. And he said, you'll be empowered to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the other most parts of the earth. And I'll be with you to the end of the age. I don't understand that direction to have ever been amended. Now I tell you that because there is a school of thought and it's more than a school of thought. It's entrenched in whole denominations. So it's not just,
a thin line of people who believe that when the last of the apostles died, that commissioning for supernatural activity in the miraculous died with them. Now, I don't believe that is an accurate interpretation of Scripture. I don't like to argue Scripture. I'm very difficult to engage in a biblical argument. If you believe that, I'm happy for you.
I'll tell you what I believe and I'll tell you why. And I don't think you're probably gonna change my mind, so I'll just bless you. Stubborn is probably the words you're searching for. Sessationism is the fancier term for that. It just makes no sense to me to give us a Bible that is filled with the supernatural activity of God and then say to us, God's not doing that anymore.
You know, I'm grateful for hospitals and modern medicine and modern science, but there are times when God's supernatural involvement in our lives is necessary for us to have health. And I don't think it's an either or discussion. I very much believe in both and, but I trust God to keep us whole.
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 alanjaxon.com or by calling 855-5772255. That's 855-5772255.
Now, let's get back to Pastor Allen with this message called Stormproof Foundations, Christianity and Anti-Semitism. Same chapter verse 22. Consider therefore the kindness and the sternness of God. Stearness to those who fell, but kindness to you. Provided, you continue in his kindness. It intrigues me that we are willing to say to the Jewish community,
You rejected an opportunity and therefore you have been separated from the opportunities in the kingdom of God. And typically where you'll find that perspective, you'll find an equal perspective that says as Christ followers, there's nothing you can do to forfeit your place in the kingdom. Understand those two statements side by side are incompatible. So listen to what Paul is saying, otherwise you also will be cut off.
And if they don't persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in. For God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut off of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature, we're grafted into a cultivated olive tree. How much more readily will these than natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree? Paul is using the image of an olive tree. And he's representing the Jewish people.
And he said that there were branches cut off because of their unbelief. And as a result of that, there were those of us who were not a part of the original plant were grafted in. So our nourishment, our sustenance, our viability comes from our relationship with that original tree. And he's cautioning us. He said, if the original branches were cut off, what makes you think you're above that same pruning?
And then he also says that those branches can be grafted back in. God has not rejected the Jewish people. He's provided for them the same thing he's provided for every person born on this planet. And that's an invitation to redemption through his son, Jesus of Nazareth.
It's not secured by joining a church, a denomination, by keeping a set of rules, by being kind or generous or loving. It's not that those things are wrong, but they will not qualify you for redemption before an Almighty God. It requires of us receiving by faith the gift of righteousness made through the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth, an observant Jewish man.
So it makes perfect sense to me that Satan would cause the people of faith to hate the Jewish people. There's a very clear logic in that for me. If you wanted to disrupt the momentum of the people of faith, if you wanted to disrupt the purposes of God, you would turn them against one another and create an irrationally logical, blinding hatred and separate them. It's not new.
It's been a challenge for the people of faith since the season when the New Testament was assembled, and it persists in the earth today. It's illogical. It's irrational. Hamas, a group of terrorists, attack a group of civilians in the most brutal of ways I saw the videos. It's unbelievable.
It's not necessary to describe him. It's unthinkable. And it wasn't just terrorist actors. Within the second hour after the attack began, I watched the video. The cars and trucks began coming from Gaza. I saw citizens pushing wheelbarrows and pulling wagons, not simply to loot the property, to do heinous, murderous things.
Now I understand not everybody that lived in Gaza was that way, but to demonstrate on behalf of that behavior and to assign a moral equivalency between a sovereign nation defending its citizens against that kind of brutal attack against innocent civilians and to have it supported by the previously most elite institutions in our nation.
is an expression of a hatred towards the purposes of God that is stunning. I tell you this, because the day is ahead of us, and I don't mean the week ahead of us, but the season ahead of us. I believe the distinction between the true church and the false church is going to continue to become more and more clear.
We see already major expressions of established Christendom rejecting the authority of Scripture and biblical values and marriage in any number of ways. And I believe that will escalate. Even while we see great revival in an outpouring of the Spirit of God, the distinction between the true church and the false church will grow. And you'll have to be able to see beyond labels.
and affiliations that for centuries, for decades at least, have been reliable. They're no longer reliable. You can't distinguish every congregation just by a label. You'll have to know the word of God and the character of God and the spirit of God well enough to make those distinctions. Rabbinic Judaism, which
There's many ways of understanding Judaism, but rabbinic Judaism, which focuses on keeping the rules, is one of the most profound expressions of the spirit of Antichrist in the world. But it's matched by some expressions of Christendom that are very prevalent in America. We're going to have to be wiser. We're going to have to be biblically informed. Our instructions are to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Not an absence of conflict.
Jesus said he gave us his peace. Jesus didn't leave a life free of conflict. He faced consistent, persistent conflict throughout his life, and he's ultimately crucified as a criminal, tortured to death in public. But he said, my peace I give to you, we never find Jesus panicked or anxious, even when he stands in the face of authorities that are threatening to execute him.
Whether he stands in the face of a storm or he's confronted with death or demons or disease, he always responded with the authority of the kingdom that he presided over. And he said, that peace I give to you. We may face storms or challenges or threats, but we can stand in the authority of our king and his kingdom because we are submitted to him. We follow him and we bear his name.
And with His help, we will show the respect that is due, the Jewish people, and the debt that we owe to them. And we will love them enough to tell them the truth in gracious ways. I brought you a proclamation. I don't want to read the whole thing with you here. I want to say a prayer. But I think it's a wonderful proclamation you can take with you. It's a Psalm from the time when the Jewish people were exiled, when they had forfeited their place in Jerusalem.
You know, you can be the covenant people of God and forfeit your freedom. I think that should be on the radar, on the breath of every American believer. If we don't choose to honor God, we will forfeit our freedoms. I get mail, I don't know everybody likes that, but I believe it to be true. But Psalm 137, this is by the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
They're on the poplars we hung our hearts, for there are captors ask us for songs, and our tormentors demanded songs of joy. They said, sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the songs of the Lord while we are in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. We don't want to forget the purposes of God.
We're too easily captivated by the pressures of our own selves and our own sphere. If we can recognize that we're a part of the larger purposes of God, it will bring a meaning to your life and a purpose to your life that will enable you to overcome those personal challenges that feel we were so aware of. We've been called to something larger than that.
Not to ignore ourselves, but to understand we are servants of a king and the purposes of his kingdom. Amen. You'll stand. I'd like to pray with you. There's too many coughs in the room to ask you to join hands. Fred, you start spraying one another with Lysol. Remember those days?
God, we've been delivered. Father, thank you for your word. I thank you that you have a people in the earth, that you've called us from every nation, race, language, and tribe. Lord, that through the blood of Jesus we have been delivered out of the hand of the enemy. That his power over us has been broken. Every claim against us has been canceled. We praise you for that tonight. And Lord, I pray for your people in the earth that you would awaken us to your truth.
Give us a hungering and thirsting for yourself beyond anything we've ever known. We pause tonight to pray for the people of Jerusalem for the inhabitants of the land. Grant them a revelation of yourself that will write a new future for them. But I pray for those men and women that have been held hostage for so long. I pray that you would strengthen them, that your angels would stand guard around them, or we pray that they would be released expeditiously.
But I pray you would restore what seems to have been taken. I pray that you'll comfort those who have suffered. We pray for the families in the Orleans that are overcoming. But I pray for those in California that are facing a horrific fire. Lord, we are a people who are dependent upon an almighty God, and we cry out to you tonight.
when we turn our hearts to you and we know that you are well able to deliver and heal and restore. And I thank you that we will see it with our own eyes. In Jesus name, amen.
Hallelujah. God bless you. 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.