Welcome to the Further Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and as always, I want to welcome our listeners on Apple, Spotify, and those of you enjoying this on our YouTube video podcast format. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. All of our content is posted there for free. On today's episode, I want to continue our series designed to help you win this Christmas. And the series, of course, appropriately titled Five Priorities for Winning This Christmas. We've covered Christ, family, generosity, and now the fourth priority: eternity. The priority of focusing on the life after this one will ensure a winning Christmas because that mentality keeps your mind locked in on what matters most. Christ, his purpose, his plan, his people, his message, his love, his work, his glory, and his presence in our lives should permeate all that we do and all that we think about. And that's not going to be easy. I understand that, you understand that, because we're human. Christmas is filled with countless good things on this earth: family, traditions, the warmth of a beautifully decorated home, the joy of giving gifts, the thoughts and feelings that flood your mind and your heart at the sound of that favorite Christmas song or Christmas carol. How about the memories of your children or grandchildren in the church or the school Christmas play? I mean, all of these things, they're blessings, they're memories, they're things we hold on to, and they revolve around family and good gifts, as we touched on with priority number two and number three. But they are from God, and yet so is the spirit-filled balance of eternal perspective. So, what do the gifts ultimately represent? Uh, we should ask: are we aware that the feelings we have about all of the things I just listed are not the be-all end-all, but rather a foretaste of glory and joy to come? Does that mean you can't enjoy them and just relish in those now? No, of course not. But as a Christian, you still and I still am called to have this perspective that every great thing or good thing we experience here is a foretaste of a greater glory to come. How do the relationships and those memories and the traditions and the joys foster a greater thanksgiving in your heart for the gospel and for the Lord and his kindness and his mercy, and then ultimately a longing to be with him forever? Who is the center of all our happiness? With eternity as a priority during the Christmas season. The answer to all of the questions that we reflect on when it comes to spiritual things and spiritual values are centered on Christ, and all the joys are a foretaste, and everything revolving around Christmas blessings or even the hardship, they strengthen the anchor of our soul to the one who has redeemed it. I love what Jonathan Edwards once wrote. He said, The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven fully to enjoy God is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends are but shadows. But God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God, he's the ocean. I've selected four terms to help us prioritize and think about eternity in this episode, and these will help you meditate on what Christmas is all about. I want to list each one and then we'll break them down and wrap up. The first is the term Emmanuel. Emmanuel. Matthew 123 echoes the fulfillment of Isaiah 7, verse 14, which says, Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us. What a world-changing declaration for us as God's people. And might I add, what a nightmare for the kingdom of darkness. The Christmas season is a declaration that God's redemptive plan is unfolding. And no matter how victorious evil or suffering, trials, and death appear to be, they've already lost. We merely await until the Lord makes all things new. Emmanuel is a descriptive title. It's a word picture of what John 1.14 also declares, that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. This incredible moment when Christ comes down to redeem us is not only an essential part of God's plan on our behalf, but again, a foretaste of a future moment when he will once again dwell with his people in the new heavens and on the new earth. Revelation 21.1 captures this beautifully when it comes to eternal perspective for you and I, in light of the phrase Emmanuel or the term, John records, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And don't miss this. And he who sits on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. And he said, Write, this is to John, for these words are faithful and true. Friends, the phrase Emmanuel throughout the Christmas season ought to not just be another kind of Christian ease Christmas term, but really meditate and think God with us, God with you. What an amazing picture of the gospel. The second phrase I would add to our list for eternal perspective is uh gifts or gift, or you might want to say gift giving. When the Bible describes salvation, it's referred to as a gift. So every time you hear the term gift, your mind should not only go to the hope of a Nordstrom's box under your tree or a toy if you're younger, or maybe you're older, you're a man, you want your man toys, you know, the things that we enjoy still as older men, all of those things. You hear gift and you think, Christ, the gift of salvation. The Bible on and on and on mentions gift in relation to salvation, that we are saved from sin, given life eternal, not by our own merits, not by good deeds, not by indulgences or penance, which pays off our sin and grants us the grace of God. Instead, the Bible teaches we were dead in sin, but God initiated our salvation and gave us the gift of Christ. Not when we were good enough, but Romans 5.8 says, while we were yet still sinners. When we were lost, he gave us the gift of Christ so we would be found. When we were rebels, he gave us the gift of Christ so we would be redeemed. Romans 6, verse 23 is quite possibly one of the best summations of bad news and good news in the Bible. And by one of the best, I mean one of the most concise. Paul says, for the wages of sin is death. That is what the penalty of sin is. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. So when we give gifts, or you hear the word gift or giving of gifts, it is a shadow of God's greatest gift. It's a reflection of what God has done for us through Christ. And when we bless each other with gifts, do we ever add an invoice to the box? Can you imagine if I did that to my wife this year or my kids? Hey, here's your gift. And please note the price tag and be sure to Venmo me for it, you know, or something like that. No, but this is what we do when we add works or our own merits to the gift of salvation or think we can earn salvation with anything but faith in Christ. No, God has not said, hey, here's my son. Now, if you do all these things and you can earn it, you can have it. So be sure to pay me back. No, that's what we should think of when it comes to gift giving is the freeness of it all, the beauty of it all, the grace of it all. And so as you enjoy gifts this year, relish in the blessings of God and remember how you define blessings. Needs to be through a biblical lens. Every relational gift, material gift, every monetary gift, every bonus, every other thing that is good ultimately is meant to reflect the goodness of God and the gift of salvation given to you, so that life here on earth isn't the end. Oh, no, no, no. Life to come is everything that we look forward to. No matter how good your Christmas is this year, the gift of paradise lies ahead. And no matter how hard your Christmas is this year, the gift of paradise lies ahead. The next phrase I want to put in front of you to meditate on eternity this Christmas is peace on earth. Peace on earth. I've often heard it said that everyone who lives is living between the first Christmas and a second one, meaning the first coming and the second coming. The first coming brought the offer of peace on earth and goodwill toward men. The second coming will be the culmination of peace on earth and goodwill toward men. But this will not be all men, it will only be those who put their faith in Christ, believing that he accomplished at his first coming, paved the way for salvation and peace at his second coming. Christmas is a time when eternity should press upon our souls. And so the question should be asked by you this year. Am I at peace with God? When you sing a line from the Christmas carol, you know, hark the herald angels sing, and you sing that line, God and sinners reconciled. Does that include you? Does that include me? We ought to meditate on that when we hear the phrase or think of the concept of peace on earth. Be that in your own need for salvation, maybe you're listening to this and you've not been saved, or you're just not sure where you stand with God right now, or being that you are saved and you have the opportunity to share the gospel with those this year who are not at peace with God. Listen, this is not cliche. To say that Christmas is one of the better evangelistic opportunities throughout the year is not, you know, church Christianese kind of cliches go through the motions like, oh, please, here we go with the Christmas evangelism. No, it's Christmas. It is a time when the season opens the door wide for gospel opportunities. And so maybe you're one of those people you roll your eyes at the old kind of church stuff, and maybe even more critically or judgmental-wise, you think about the the the Christmas attendees who don the doors of the church once or twice a year. Listen, instead of viewing them with disdain or a self-righteous eye roll while attendance was high during Christmas, of course, everybody showed up finally. No, but rather as a wonderful opportunity of God's grace to extend peace on earth to them, perhaps this will be the last Christmas they ever spend apart from Christ, and you were the faithful mouthpiece God used to proclaim peace on earth and goodwill to them. The fourth term that I want to put before you to meditate on eternal things and to have eternal perspective is the term freedom. And I'm gonna help you understand what I mean by that here shortly. Uh there was a recent article I saw from Randy Alcorn. It opened up with this whole point on stress and control, and you're gonna understand why I bring this up in just a minute. Uh he writes that stress studies show that a sense of control is essential to mental health. Those who survive captivity with the fewest mental scars are those who maintain as much control as possible, even when so much is out of their control. They may treat their cell as a home. They may rearrange the furniture, uh, save food, share it with others, write notes to themselves, make plans for their days, or order their lives in simple ways. He says prisoners who lose their sense of control lose their sense of purpose and their self-respect, and eventually their minds. Most of us are not prisoners, but all of us, for better or for worse, face the holidays year after year. I love this perspective. From mid-November to early January, our lives change, bringing many things that are delight, but which increase our pressure and fatigue. For many, the holidays seem out of control. The chaos inevitable. Listen, friends, when you prioritize eternity during the Christmas season, you are taking back control over the chaos. You are saying, I am blood bot, I am a citizen of another kingdom, I have an eternal perspective. I'm not just looking at this earth, I'm looking beyond it. I'm not looking at this life, I'm looking at the life to come. And all that I do and all that I think and all that I enjoy is really centered on eternity. When you think critically about what we've already dug into in this series, I think you're gonna find freedom, not bondage. When you begin to set your course, make your plans, uh, if you will, build your fences or lay the boundary lines for how it's gonna be for you and your house. You're not gonna find legalism, you're gonna find liberty, you're not gonna find chaos, you're gonna find clarity. God has put you and I in control of walking in obedience. Now, do we need the Spirit's help? Of course. We need to live spirit-filled lives, and we can only do that with his help. But God has made his way so clear. And if you and I will walk in obedience, I'm telling you, the word freedom will be an ever-present echo in your life. God is sovereign always, and in his sovereignty, he has made a way that you and I can know the truth and walk in it. And so this Christmas, what's controlling you? Christ? His word, his way, or maybe you, maybe me, we're in bondage to things we didn't even realize. Well, one of the best ways to relish in the freedom we have in Christ is to take control of the things that God calls you to. Put Christ as the center of everything. And in the worship of Him and in the making Christmas all about Him, you are going to find freedom from the chaos this world so often succumbs to. To encourage your eternal perspective, I want to leave you with a few minutes from this past Sunday when Randy Alcorn preached on the new heavens and the new earth at our church. He took us from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, start to finish on a biblical course to the promise of a new earth. And I'll tell you what, it caused a longing in my heart. I know so many of the people as well who heard the message or have listened to it, uh, are echoing the same thing that we long for Christ to fulfill his promise. Behold, I am making all things new. Listen to this, and then we'll close.
SPEAKER_00No more curse means no more cancer. I just take that one. It means no more dementia. Some of you watching your loved ones. Umspeakable, the suffering brought by sin and the curse. So the words, no longer will there be any curse. If we had no more promise than that, wow. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. And the word word that's translated uh serve is the same word for worship. Worship and serving are just you they're indistinguishable virtually. The same word works for both of them. They will see his face, and they will reign forever and ever. To see the face of God, they will see his face. Um, John Dunn, uh, the English poet uh who lived in the uh late 16th century, said this: I shall rise from the dead, I shall see the Son of God, the Son of Glory, and shine myself as that sun shines. I shall be united to the ancient of days, to God himself, who had no mourning, never began. No man ever saw God and lived, and yet I shall not live until I see God, and when I have seen him, I shall never die. Now that's that's poetry. What does no more curse mean in Revelation 22? Well, it's it's the reversal of Genesis 3. No more painful toil, no more thorns and thistles, no more return to the ground in death. It's a permanent renewal of the original creation. God didn't look at what he said and said he declared it very good and then he gave up on it. That's sometimes that's the story that Christians believe. And it's just, it's false. It's not the true story. It's a permanent renewal of the original creation, is God's plan. Eternal liberation from all the false dysfunction. You know, think about it. We have never lived in a world not under the curse, right? We don't know what normal is. We just think all the bad stuff around us is normal. It was just normal under the curse, but that's not the normative plan of God. It was not that way in the beginning. It will not be that way in the end. Um, I've written some novels. And what what you do as a novelist is you take your characters, and it the story might start fairly well, and it hopefully will end fairly well. But what happens in the middle? I mean, I if the characters in my books came to life, they would ask me to write them out of the story. I mean, because there, you know, what happens in the middle of the story is a lot of suffering and conflict. Well, guess what? In the beginning was Eden, and in the end that never ends, there will be the new earth. And in the middle is where all the problems live. You and I have always lived in the middle. And we will until we leave this world, until Jesus comes for us or we go to him. Uh but the greatest relationships and natural beauties we've seen are just shadows of their original magnificence and real shadow foretastes of the world to come. Every wonderful thing we've ever known is a reminder of Eden and a foretaste of the new earth. If you, if that's your worldview, if that's how you look at life, you will live differently.
SPEAKER_01Eternal perspective will change the way you live and it'll keep you living for what matters most. I pray that you would relish in that priority this Christmas. So there it is, number four on our list of five priorities for winning this Christmas, eternity. Next episode, we finish with the fifth and final priority for the series. And let me tell you, it's a priority that can change the world and certainly change your Christmas. Thanks for listening, thanks for watching, and for supporting. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel or go to forthegospel.org to get free resources or to become a gospel patron by partnering with our ministry financially. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. For now, keep on living for the gospel.