Turning Point

Guest (Male): Through seasons of tragedy and triumph, the gospel has been strong and steadfast. And will remain so, even as the end times draw near. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah wraps up his series, *Where Do We Go From Here?*, with some ways you can draw on and share the gospel during this time. With the conclusion of his message, "The Triumph of the Gospel, The Final Prophecy," here's David.

Dr. David Jeremiah: You know, this is one of the important moments in this broadcast when we come to the end of a series. I look back over my shoulder at the things we have taught and realize these are all written out in a book. They're available in a study guide and they're on a CD.

This book, *Where Do We Go From Here?*, is one of the most-read books that I've ever written. It's one of the highest-selling books that we've ever done because people do want to know an answer. They have this question: where do we go from here? And this book has a way of setting the stage for the things that are going to happen in the future.

You can get the book from Turning Point. It's not the resource of the month, but it's available through our website. You can get the study guide and the CDs. You can actually host your own Bible study in your small group, or in a Sunday school class, or maybe in a Sunday night service program that you have.

This is a great way to study God's word and we make these resources available because we want to replicate the word of God in every way possible. We want it to echo throughout the land when we teach it, and I hope you will help us do that.

We also want to remind you that we're down to one of the last times to tell you about our resource for the month of March, which is a beautiful brand new book that I've put together called *Understanding Biblical Prophecy: A 30-Day Bible Study*. It's a beautiful book and it will take you into the scripture and help you understand what the scripture is saying by telling you how prophetic truth is mined from God's word.

On Monday, we begin two days of discussing how to change your mind and save your life from Romans chapter 12. These two days of teaching will bridge the gap between the end of this series and the end of the month. Then, as we begin the month of April, we'll be teaching a special series of Easter messages.

So, I hope you'll be with us for these days as we continue to teach God's word on Turning Point Radio. So very happy to have you with us as we close out this series today with the second part of the message, "The Triumph of the Gospel, The Final Prophecy." Let's begin.

Never underestimate the power of your local church. Make sure your local church is a big part of your life. That's something God has promised to bless. I know we have many parachurch organizations and I applaud them all, but there's nothing that God has promised to bless like the local church.

If you listen to me on the radio, you know every Friday I tell people, go to church. Don't stay home and watch us on television. Go to church because the church is what God has promised. He says the gates of hell will not prevail against the local church. How many of you know the gates of hell are at work today? But the Church of Jesus Christ has the promise that it will stand strong.

So, why shouldn't you be a part of the church? Maybe this is a good place for me to insert my little promotional. If you're not going to church because you stopped going to church during COVID, and you've gotten comfortable going to church in your pajamas, it's time to go back to church. The church needs you and you need the church.

So, the message of the gospel is transforming and the work of the gospel is expanding. The followers of the gospel are maturing and the author of the gospel... Oh, the author of the gospel is preeminent. One more thing we must remember, and that the author of the gospel is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Listen to Colossians 1 describe that: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence."

Richard Chin is the national director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. He's a profound ministry with young people on multiple continents. But always wasn't that way. Back in the early part of July in 1983, Chin was a student whose Christian experience was barely existent.

One day, while attending a conference, he heard the speaker ask one question. Here was the question: "Is Jesus number one in your life?" He knew He was a good number two or three, but He was not number one. Sometime that week, he said, "I joyfully received Jesus as my Lord and I moved Him up from number three to number one."

And he began to study his Bible and he was drawn to the book of Colossians. He was so infected by this book, he memorized the book and he was amazed at the triumphant picture of Christ found in its pages. As we see Jesus more clearly, the gospel gets bigger and bigger in our hearts.

His death becomes more wonderful, His resurrection becomes more astonishing, sin becomes more disgusting, and the devil seems more evil. The restoring work of the Spirit gets mightier, the global extent of the gospel becomes more important, and the connection between everything in the Bible becomes clearer.

Our yearning for eternity becomes greater and the love of God becomes more delightful in our lives. When you put Jesus number one, everything else starts to get in its right place. Jesus is preeminent in everything, wrote Chin. He rules everything in this creation and He rules everything in the age to come.

The question that changed Richard Chin's life is profoundly important now. Is Jesus truly preeminent in your life? Is He number one? If He's a good two or three, there will be nothing victorious about your experience. Someone said a long time ago, "Only in the Christian life does surrender bring victory."

So surrender your life to Christ. Make sure He's number one. That's going to be more important as we move through these days that are in front of us. And then the theme of the gospel is energizing. Another triumphal note in Colossians sounds like a blast from the trumpet.

Here it is. Colossians 1:27: "Christ in you, the hope of glory." What a slogan, what a motto! Taken together, this is the triumph of the gospel and you can make it your own. Christ in me, the hope of glory. The moment we put Christ as our Savior, He comes through His Spirit to live and reign within us.

And one day we're going to see Him face to face. One day soon, we'll literally walk and talk with Him as the disciples did long ago. We will share His glory and have a part in His inheritance, reigning with Him over the new heavens and the new earth. The New Living Translation says it this way: "And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing His glory."

So, what does this mean and where do we go from here? What do we take away from this that we can unpack in our lives every day? If the gospel is the preeminent triumphant message, if it triumphs over everything else, if there's no problem that we face in our culture today that is not overwhelmed by the gospel of Jesus Christ—and we believe that's true and the Bible says it's true—what do we do now?

How do we respond to that as followers of Christ? Well, first of all, let me suggest that we preach the gospel with our lips. We must keep preaching Christ. We must keep holding the cross up. Colossians 1:28 and 29 says, "Him we preach, warning every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end, I labor," said Paul, "striving according to His working which works in me mightily."

I don't know if you know this, but Paul was a Renaissance man in many respects. There wasn't anything that Paul couldn't do. He was a great student. He was a writer, he was a theologian. He's the one that basically started all the churches that you read about in the New Testament. He wrote 12 or 13 of the letters in the New Testament scripture. He was very gifted in many areas.

But I know this: if you ask Paul, "Paul, what do you do for a living?" he would say, "I preach. I'm a preacher." And if you go through his writings, you can pick that up. In 1 Corinthians 1:23, he said, "We preach Christ crucified." In 1 Corinthians 9:16, "If I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of."

2 Corinthians 4:5, "We do not preach ourselves, but we preach Jesus Christ the Lord." Philippians 1:18, "What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, and in this I rejoice." Well, you say, Dr. Jeremiah, that's great for you because you're a preacher. Not everybody is called to be a preacher.

But everybody's called to be a vocational preacher. Did you know that? We are all called to preach or tell the good news of the gospel. Naomi Reed interviewed an Asian Christian named Rasham who told her, "I have Parkinson's disease. I can't walk anywhere. I'm mostly in my bed. I can't leave this room. I can't go to church, I can't visit people.

And it's such a change for me. I spent my whole adult life sharing the gospel. Back then, I walked through 72 districts of Nepal preaching the gospel. And we started a Bible correspondence course. In total, we had 700,000 students. I was put in jail three times for my faith and I was tortured.

But I can't walk anymore. I can't get out of bed. And the challenge for me today is in reading Colossians 1:28 and 29." And here's what that says: "Him we preach, warning every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end, I labor," said Paul, "striving according to His working which works in me mightily."

Rasham continued, "I want to be like Paul. I know that he used all of his energy to share the gospel. And I want to do that too. I don't have any energy in my body anymore. But I still have energy in my heart and in my mind. So even now, people can ring me on my phone and they ask me about Jesus and I tell them.

I am still taking calls from our Bible correspondence students. I'm still using all my energy even when I'm lying on my bed. All the energy that Christ has given me, I've given it back to Him to advance the cause of Christ." Isn't that the way it should be? So basically, a story like that takes all of our excuses away.

There's a way that everyone listening to this message, wherever you may be, we all can have a part in preaching the gospel. We can do what God has equipped us to do. He's given us all these various wonderful gifts. Whatever it is that God has equipped you to do that helps move the gospel forward, that's what it means to preach the gospel.

So preach the gospel with your lips. Here's a second one: picture the gospel with your life. In verses 6 and 7 of chapter 2 in Colossians, we read, "As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving."

Paul said, "Okay, you're all Christians. Now live like Christians. Walk like Christians. Don't just be Christians in name. Be Christians all the way through to the bone. Be Christians in all that you do." Oh, how we need that today! One of the great rips on Christianity is that so many people who claim to be Christians don't live any differently than the people in the world.

Now, we don't have to be a bunch of weirdos and cranks and all the kind of things that people think that we are. But there should be a qualitative difference in our lives if Jesus Christ is who we say He is. "Walk" is a term that is often used to describe the Christian life. The word is in the present tense and it means continually walking.

Someone once told me that the hardest thing about being a Christian is that it's so daily. Isn't that the truth? Every day you've got to get up and do it over again. But here's the good news. It's daily, but the eternal Spirit of God lives within your heart and He enables you to do what you couldn't do.

We preach the gospel with our lips, but we picture the gospel with our life. People need to see Jesus Christ in us. Charles Spurgeon called this "adorning the gospel," dressing up the gospel. Here's what he wrote: "What is appropriate to the gospel? Well, holiness suits the gospel. Adorn the gospel with a holy life. How pure, how clean, how sweet, how heavenly the gospel is.

Hang then the jewels of holiness around your neck and place them as rings on your hands. The gospel is also to be adorned with mercifulness. It is all mercy, it is all love, there is no love like it. God so loved the world. Well, then adorn the gospel with the suitable jewels of mercifulness and kindness to other people."

He went on to say the gospel is also the gospel of happiness. It is called "the glorious gospel of the blessed God." A more correct translation would be "the happy God." Well, then adorn the gospel by being happy. How many of you know some Christians just look so sad?

The Bible says if Christ is in our heart and we have the joy of the Holy Spirit, what's in our heart needs to get translated to our faces. It doesn't mean we walk around all giddy all the time. But when Christians are walking with the Lord, as Paul has instructed us here in Colossians, there's a quality difference in how we live.

We are to walk in the Lord as we have received Him. We're to preach the gospel with our lips and picture the gospel with our life, and practice the gospel with our love. He says in verse 14 of chapter 3 in Colossians, "But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection."

We have this triumphant gospel, but those who share it must be clothed in love and carry in their hearts a genuine burden for their neighbors as much as they do for their enemies. Colossians 4:5 says, "Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time." You know, one of the things it says about Jesus was that He was filled with grace and truth.

And it seems to me, as you look out at the Christian world today, we have a lot of people who are on either side of it and not as many people who have joined the two together. Jesus said we're to be filled with truth and love. And especially for those of us who are Christians, there are many other instructions for us.

But I want to end with a strange little verse at the end of the book. We're to love and we're never to stop loving. Here it is. Colossians 4:17. Paul said, "Say to Archippus, 'Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you may fulfill it.'" Now, that sounds like an extraneous verse and what's that in there for and who in the world is Archippus? I never heard of him.

Well, first of all, Archippus was the son of Philemon. I know that. Paul called him a fellow soldier. So he had to be a Christian worker of some sort. But that's all we know. We don't know very much about him. But Paul cared enough about this man that he sent this instruction to him in the letter that he wrote to the Colossians.

And here was the instruction: make sure that by the end of your life, you have come to the end of your list. Do everything that you were assigned to do. What a word that is today! We believe Archippus lived his life that way, but Paul encouraged him.

I don't want to get off on this. This is one of my pet peeves that so many of God's people have bought into the idea that at a certain time in life, usually about 65, you check out and vegetate for the rest of the time you're on this earth. I hope you're not among that. I've already proven to you that I'm not and I don't intend to be.

There's so much that needs to be done. And I'll be one to tell you there's a lot of things that I used to do that I can't do, but a lot of things that I can do better because I've learned how to do them over time. And oftentimes what I've noticed in the church is that just when people have the giftedness that will make them so effective, they decide it's time for them to go do something else.

People ask me why I keep doing what I'm doing and I say, "You know, when I was 54, I got cancer and it was pretty serious. It was stage four, large cell, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. By all of the measures of life, I shouldn't be here. But God brought me through that and He gave me a new vision for my life."

And people ask me, "Why do you do what you do?" and I say, "When God brought me through cancer, He didn't do it so I could go sit on a beach somewhere. He did it so I could serve Him with my life." And I've had so much joy doing that. You know, I don't know if this is true for everybody, but it seems like God has saved the best to last for me.

Every day I get up, there's something new and exciting that He's doing that I never dreamed would ever happen. I'm glad He let me stay around for all this because it's really fun. I just want you to see if you wouldn't put your name in this verse. Say to David Jeremiah, "Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you may fulfill it."

Put your name in there and ask God to help you to finish what you have started. Do you know that Jesus, one of the earliest things that we read about Him in the Bible is when He went to the temple with His parents and His parents left Him—one of the most human quintessential things that ever happened in His life—and Jesus as a young boy said, "I must be about my Father's business." In other words, "I have a job to do."

And at the end of His natural life on this earth, this is what Jesus said. "Father, I have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do." Now, watch what He said and what He didn't say. He didn't say, "I have finished all the work there is to do."

Some people try to do that and they burn out and they don't have anything left. He didn't say that. No, He said, "I finished the work that You have given Me to do." God gives each of us something to do. If we want to know what that is, we can ask Him and He will tell us and we will know what we're supposed to do.

And He's given you certain gifts for His glory and certain tasks for His kingdom. Make sure you complete them. You don't have to get out of this world alive, but you do have to complete the work that God assigns you. And if we do that, we will see a resurgence of service among the more senior people in our churches that will be a glory to the church and such a blessing to the younger folks who are coming up and trying to figure out what this is all about.

Why should we make them learn all the hard lessons that we've learned? Let's help them with that. Let's lead them. The Bible is full of instructions that we're to do that. The apostle Paul said this about his life: "But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for the finishing of the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus, the work of telling others the good news about the wonderful grace of God."

So friends, the gospel is what God has given us. It's this commodity that we have. It's the blessing of being a Christian. We have this wonderful thing called the gospel. I can think of no one who sought to fulfill this verse more than Billy Graham. He's still preaching in his iconic voice—touches my heart and inspires me to be a better preacher.

He held more than 400 crusades in his life in more than 185 countries. His final crusade was in New York City in 2005. And this is what he said: "I have one message, that Jesus Christ came, He died on a cross, He rose again, and He asks us to repent of our sins and receive Him by faith as Lord and Savior. And if we did, we have forgiveness of all our sin."

He said that in the first message that he ever preached and he said it in the last one that he ever preached. He delivered his final sermon in a television broadcast on his 95th birthday. This is what he said. "Our country is in a great need of a spiritual awakening. There have been times that I have wept as I have gone from city to city and I've seen how far our people have wandered from God.

Of all the things that I've seen and heard, there is only one message that can change people's lives and hearts. I want to tell people about the meaning of the cross—the cross of Christ. He loves you, He's willing to forgive you of all of your sins." What a testimony to somebody who's coming along after to see a man who started preaching the gospel.

He just got stronger and stronger and he preached the gospel no matter what country he was in, no matter what situation he was in. It was always the gospel. God help us to be that kind of a pastor and be that kind of a preacher in our churches. Of course, none of us are Billy Graham. He was unique, but we all have the same gospel.

It doesn't belong to Billy Graham. The gospel is God's gift to all of us. It is the good news of Jesus Christ for you as much as it is for anyone in all the world. And it triumphs all the headlines of history. The gospel is the only beam of light shining in this dark world, but its megawatts are unlimited.

The gospel can brighten any life, dispel every shadow. We are not beaten-down people, we're not on the ropes. We are not an endangered species as Christians. We are not a people worried about where we go from here. We know where we're going because of the gospel.

We know Him who has prepared the way because of the gospel. We are more than conquerors through our Lord Jesus Christ because of the triumph of the gospel. And I hope you've discovered it for yourself. Whatever you're facing, the gospel, because it's Jesus Christ, is your victory.

Wherever you're going, He is your guide. However you're feeling, He is your soul and solid hope. Whatever you're worried about by the falling fragments of our collapsing planet, you can look up to heaven and see Him who came down to earth for you. He's right now seated at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us and waiting for when we come through the door to say to us, "Welcome home, good and faithful servant." May that be our hope. Amen.

Well, this has been a really interesting time. I love the teaching of this particular book and we haven't taught it very much on the air, so this has been really fun for me and I hope it's been helpful for you to look at the future and realize how the things of the future shape the things of today. And we've learned a lot together. Thank you for being a part of us and supporting us with your prayer and financial assistance. We're so grateful for all that you do to help us.

So today, as we close this series out, just remember the resources for the series are available from davidjeremiah.org. The special book for the month of March, the resource that we've offered this month for a gift of any size, is a book called *Understanding Biblical Prophecy: A 30-Day Bible Study* to help you understand how God's word tells you about the future. This book is yours for the asking when you send your gift today. But we're running out of time. We don't have much time left for you to get this, so sit down today and make that letter happen and we're grateful. Have a good day. See you next time.

Guest (Male): Today's message from Dr. Jeremiah came to you from the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend. To learn where to find it, visit our website, davidjeremiah.org/radio. That's davidjeremiah.org/radio or call 800-947-1993.

Ask for your copy of David's powerful new book, *Understanding Biblical Prophecy: A 30-Day Bible Study*. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, available in a variety of handsome cover options.

If this ministry is drawing you closer to God, let us know by writing to Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday for a special message of hope from Dr. David Jeremiah right here on Turning Point.