Hey, podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. And right now, your generous gift will have twice the impact thanks to the Light the Darkness matching challenge.
It's active now through December 31st. To give a special year-end gift, go to ptv.org slash donate or follow the link in our show notes. Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, we look at 24 hours in the life of the Savior. And I want you to notice in this 24 hour period, the four components of Jesus' life that made him so effective in making disciples of Christ.
These four components need to be a part of your life and my life. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. Every person has an important role to play.
Most likely you're juggling multiple responsibilities at once. But you know, knowing your job is not the same thing as knowing your purpose. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress looks at a 24 hour period in the life of our Savior in order to discover our own God-given mission. Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message. Dr. Jeffress, Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. As we begin today's program, I want to express my gratitude for those who have already sent their special year-end gift toward the Light the Darkness matching challenge. As you know, God has provided a magnificent opportunity to leverage a record-breaking amount of $1.5 million. Because of this astounding matching challenge, every gift you give between now and December 31st will be automatically given to you. We matched and doubled in size until we reached the goal.
But that's not all. In addition to multiplying your gift, I'm prepared to say thank you by providing our brand new Pathway to Victory daily devotional for 2025. This volume is thoughtfully written to illuminate your path in the new year. It's more than 530 pages in length.
It's leather-bound in a beautiful navy blue color. And the whole point of this resource is to give me a way to walk alongside you every weekday in the coming new year. From January to March, we'll search God's Word to find His specific will for the direction of your life.
In the spring and summer, you'll dig deeply into the book of Colossians, which is a beacon of light for those who want to understand the character of God. And then in the fall of 2025, we'll celebrate the grace and love of our Heavenly Father through the parable of the Prodigal Son. This daily devotional equips you for a productive year of spiritual growth in the new year. And it's yours when you give a generous gift to support the growing ministry of Pathway to Victory. I'm going to add some important details later. But right now, let's get started with today's message. In a few moments, you'll understand why I chose this simple title for today's message.
24. And I'll use that I think is so great, and then it doesn't turn out quite the way I thought it would. In fact, sometimes it backfires.
That happened a number of years ago. I was getting ready to preach on the importance of having a clear purpose in life. And so the week before the message, I had an experience.
I thought, now this is going to be a great illustration of why it's important to have a purpose. The week before, Amy and I were traveling to Florida for a pastors conference. And when we got to DFW airport, it seemed like every gate, there was a contingent of women all dressed the same. They were in purple outfits, wearing these funny looking red hats. And when we got on our plane, we noticed in the back of the plane, there was a whole group of these women. They were hooping and hollering and apparently had spent too much time at the airport bar.
You know, they were having a great time. And one of the ladies had gotten separated from her group and she was seated next to us and there was no identification on them. So I said, Tell me about your organization. She said, Well, we're not an organization. We're a disorganization.
I said, Well, tell me about the purpose of your disorganization. She said, Well, we're a group. We call ourselves the Red Hats.
And our only purpose is to have fun. If you're over 50 years of age, you can be a part of our organization. We have 20,000 chapters around the country, hundreds of thousands of members of this disorganization called the Red Hats. Well, I used that illustration the following Sunday in my service. I said, you know, and I meant it as a joke.
I said they should write a book titled The Unpurposed Driven Life. You know, well, little did I know, little did I know that there was a whole group of those Red Hat members in my own church. And I had stirred up a hornet's nest and I started getting letters from them.
But not only from them. Apparently, word spread nationally throughout their organization that this preacher in Wichita Falls had said something about the Red Hats. And I mean, all holy heck started to break loose. They started sending me letters. Not only that, any time they were passing through Wichita Falls for the next year, I would look out in the congregation and they would be seated together, groups of them. And their Red Hats.
And finally, I kind of made some comments and we started to have fun with it. And every time a group over the next year would come through, they would have their picture made with me. Sometimes I'd put on the Red Hat for the picture. And then they started sending me these little figurines of Red Hat women that I had decorated all over my office. So let me just say very clearly, I love the Red Hats.
Okay, if there are any Red Hat members out there, I love the Red Hats. Now, there's nothing wrong, by the way, with having fun. Ecclesiastes chapter 2, Solomon said, For what is better for a man to eat and to drink and to tell himself that his labor is good for who can eat and who can drink and have enjoyment without God?
There is nothing wrong at all with having a good time. However, I think we would all agree, even the Red Hats, that there is something more to life than just having fun. God has left us here in this world for a purpose much bigger than that. The reason you and I as Christians have been left in this world is to expand the kingdom of God, to expand the rule of God in this world, to make God's rule larger and Satan's rule lesser in this world. And how do we do that? We do that, first of all, by rescuing people from the kingdom of Satan and making them a part of the kingdom of God by introducing them to faith in Jesus Christ.
And we don't stop there. Once they are rescued from the kingdom of darkness and become a part of the kingdom of light, then we help them become obedient and reproducing disciples of Christ. And that was Jesus' purpose. Jesus said, My food, my purpose is to do the will of him who sent me. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save those who are lost. You know, the Apostle Paul understood his purpose in Colossians 1 28 and 29.
Listen to his words. He said, And we proclaim him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom that we might present every man complete in Christ. And for this purpose I also labor, striving according to his power, which mightily works within me.
You see what he said? My purpose is to present every man complete in Christ. Now, some of you right now may be entering your third stage of anesthesia right now, about to drift off thinking, gosh, this doesn't apply to me at all. If you're thinking that, it's because you really have not discovered your purpose in life yet. You still think your purpose in life is about your goals, your dreams, your pleasure, your happiness.
That's not what it's about. God left us here to achieve his purpose, not ours. But I know there are a few of you here today, perhaps many of you here today, who have come to that point in life. You realize God has a purpose for you that's bigger than yourself. You want to do what God left you here to do. You want to introduce people to faith in Christ. You want to help people grow in their faith.
The question is, how do you do that? Well, the way you do that is by modeling the one who did it best, and that is Jesus Christ. If you have your Bibles, I want you to turn to Luke chapter 4. You know, I still love to watch reruns of that television show, 24. How many of you ever watched 24?
You know, it's about the counter-terrorist Jack Bauer, and the reason it's called 24 is every season has 24 episodes in it, and every episode covers one hour in one day of Jack Bauer's life. And the whole season, the whole year, is simply a look at 24 hours in his life in real time. Well, interestingly, Luke does the same thing in the passage we're going to look at today. We look at 24 hours in the life of the Savior. And I want you to notice, in this 24-hour period, the four components of Jesus' life that made him so effective in making disciples of Christ.
If you want to have a balanced, supernatural existence and live out the purpose for what you were created, these four components need to be a part of your life and my life. Notice, first of all, Jesus' life was marked by authoritative teaching. Look at verse 31. After Jesus left Nazareth, remember his episode at the synagogue we looked at last time, it says in verse 31, and he came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and he was teaching them on the Sabbath. The Greek tense here doesn't indicate this is a one-time occurrence.
This is something that he did regularly. That is, a part of his ministry, the central part of his ministry, was teaching the Word of God. James 1 21 says, it is the Word of God implanted in our lives that saves us.
You know, if we're going to be serious about transforming people's lives, we need to realize that the power to transform people's lives does not come from our words. It comes from God's Word. And that's why when Jesus taught, he was speaking the Word of God. He taught in the synagogue the Word of God.
Look at verse 32. And they were amazed at his teaching, for his message was with authority. What is it that gave Jesus' message authority? It wasn't his natural charisma.
It wasn't his booming voice. That's not what gave his words authority. When I look at the scripture, I find three characteristics of Jesus' teaching that gave him true authority. Number one, his teaching was rooted in God's Word. In Mark's account of this passage, it says, he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. The scribes were the men who taught, usually in the synagogue. And when the scribes talked, William Barclay tells us, their teaching was as dry as dust.
It was dry because they just quoted one expert after another, one opinion after another, one tradition after another. It wasn't rooted in God's Word. But when Jesus stood up and spoke, he spoke with the authority of God himself.
A great illustration of that is in Matthew 19. Remember the Pharisees were trying to trick Jesus on the question of divorce? And they said, now Jesus, tell us, what do you think about divorce? You know, this rabbi says this and this rabbi says this.
What do you say? It's a very complex issue, this issue of divorce. Jesus said, no, it's not really that complex. He said, and then he quoted the Old Testament, have you not read? He who made them from the beginning made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder. Jesus said, this isn't a confusing issue.
Go back to what God said. God made one man, one woman in one relationship for a lifetime. And yes, there may be some exceptions, but God's plan is for that couple to stay together. It is really not that complex when you look at God's word. And by the way, that very same passage has a clear word to us today about this very controversial issue of transgender identity.
It's not that complex. Look at what God said. From the beginning, God made them male and female. He didn't make them male, female, and a question mark. God is the one who assigns our gender to us. There are two classifications. There is male and there's female.
Now listen to this. Gender identity confusion is an emotional disorder that ought to be treated compassionately. It ought to be treated professionally. But gender identity confusion should not be exploited by social activists who are trying to blur the God-given distinction between the sexes.
That is wrong. That is exploiting transgender people. And you know the most loving thing you and I can do for those who are suffering from gender confusion? The most loving thing we can do is to point to the scripture, to point to God's word, not the opinion of this counselor or this counselor. Look at what God says.
And to say to them, your gender was part of God's loving plan for your life. You see, God's word just cuts through the fog of confusion today. Jesus understood that. And so his message was rooted very clearly in God's word.
Not only that, secondly, it was filled with application. Jesus taught with application. You know, in far too many churches, far too many Sunday school classes, the teacher just researches all this stuff all week and he loads it up like a dump truck. And then on Sunday, he comes and just unloads all of this knowledge, all of this history, all of this grammar, whatever, word studies without any application at all.
And the people go away hollow, unfulfilled. No, look, God gave us his word, not to make us smarter sinners, but to make us obedient followers of Christ. And any teaching or preaching that lacks specific application really isn't from God. God gave us his word to change us. And that's why we must demand that our teachers and pastors tell us how to apply God's word to our lives. Teacher, if you're giving lots of information without any application, you're really missing the whole point of the scriptures. Look at what Jesus did, whether he was teaching the Sermon on the Mount or through parables or through his discourse on the end times, he always added the so what.
What are we supposed to do in light of that truth? Thirdly, Jesus' teaching was lived out in integrity. It was lived out in integrity. You know, the word integrity literally means undivided, whole. There's no dichotomy between what a person says and how he lives.
It's whole. That wasn't true about the Pharisees. Remember what Jesus said about the Pharisees? He said, you hypocrites, you tie on all these regulations to men's back.
Do this, do this, do this, and you're not unwilling to follow your own regulations. You're hypocrites. And that's why their teaching lacked authority. People knew they weren't living out what they professed to be true. If you're a teacher of God's word today, if you're a pastor who happens to be listening to this message, if you're not living out what you proclaim, you have no authority. You know, you can't tell people to tithe if you don't tithe.
You can't tell people to pray if you don't pray. You can't tell people to live a moral and pure life if you're not living a moral and pure life. If you're saying one thing and living out another thing, your words will fall flat. With Jesus, there was integrity. That's why when he talked, people sensed something was different. His teaching was rooted in the authority of God's word.
It had practical application, and it was lived out in integrity. Secondly, his ministry was marked by supernatural power. You know, there was a British pastor who said one time, when the apostle Paul preached, after he preached, the people rioted.
After I preach, my people go out and have tea. Well, when Jesus preached, when he taught, he stirred up not only the people, but he even stirred up the demonic world. Look at verses 33 to 37. And there was a man in the synagogue possessed by the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, ah, what do we have to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, be quiet and come out of him. And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him without doing any harm. And amazement came upon them all. And they began discussing with one another, saying, what is this message? For with authority and power, he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.
And the report about him was going out into every locality in the surrounding district. Now, this passage opens up a number of questions, I realize that. But let me just point out three truths about demons in this passage, and then relate it to our ministry. Number one, demons are real. You know, some people say, well, demons, that was just a primitive first century attempt to explain certain emotional disorders and mental illnesses today. That's all it is, demons are just primitive attempts to explain mental illness. Well, if that's true, then Jesus ought to be put in a straitjacket, because he was actually conversing with these demons.
If they're not real, then why was Jesus talking to them? Demons really are real beings. Paul alluded to the demonic world. In Ephesians 6, 11 and 12, he said, put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes, against the blueprint, against the plan Satan has for your destruction, the schemes of the devil. Now, the devil is not like God. He can't be more than one place at a time. He's not omnipresent.
So to carry out his work, he needs helpers. Verse 12, he says, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, plural, against the powers, plural, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces, plural, of wickedness in the heavenly places. This is a reference to demons. Demons were originally angels who followed Lucifer in his revolt against God and were cast into the world and into the underworld. They are Satan's assistants to carry out his plan.
They're real. Secondly, demons can control people. They had the ability to end well and control people. You know, I believe many of these horrendous, unspeakable acts that some people commit against other human beings.
We couldn't even discuss them here. They're so heinous. There's no explanation for that level of evil other than demonic activity.
Make no mistake about it. Demons are real and they can control and influence people. Of course, the question comes up, well, can a Christian be possessed by a demon? It depends what you mean by possessed. If you mean can a person be owned by a demon, sometimes that's what we mean by possession. If you possess something, you own it.
The answer is no. No, Christians cannot be owned by demons. They can't be owned by Satan. Ephesians 1, 13 says, when we became a Christian, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of God. So we are God's possession once we are saved. God doesn't share his possessions with Satan or anyone else. So in that sense, no, Christians cannot be owned by Satan or demons, but they can be influenced and even controlled by Satan and demons.
How does that happen? Listen to this. Any part of your life that is not controlled by the Holy Spirit of God is open to be controlled by Satan and his demons. Ephesians 5, 18 says, be filled, literally be controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. If you allow your moral life, your work, any relationship not to be controlled by the Holy Spirit of God, it is open to demonic influence and control.
None of us wants to be controlled by an evil being like Satan. Guarding against his attacks requires that we walk in complete harmony with the Savior. Well, this is perhaps the cornerstone message for the entire month because we're given this unique 24-hour picture of our Lord.
Nothing will inspire a deeper respect for Jesus, quite like spending a day with him, encountering his friends, engaging with his enemies, and sensing the desperation of those who sought Jesus for healing. That's precisely what the brand new Daily Devotional accomplishes. I wrote this edition to give you a practical way to walk hand in hand with Jesus every day in the new year. Request your copy of the Pathway to Victory Daily Devotional today. I'm going to send a copy to your home right away when we receive your generous shearing gift toward the Light the Darkness Matching Challenge.
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David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. When you give a generous year-end gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, we'll say thanks by sending you the brand-new 2025 Pathway to Victory daily devotional. To request this exclusive resource, call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. And when your gift is $100 or more, we'll also send you Reigniting Your Passion for Christ. That's this month's study in Luke.
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Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins, wishing you a great weekend and inviting you to join us again next time when Dr. Jeffress concludes his message called 24. That's Monday here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. And right now, your special year-end gift will be matched and therefore doubled in impact thanks to the Light the Darkness Matching Challenge. Take advantage of this opportunity to double your impact before the deadline on December 31st. To give toward the matching challenge, go to ptv.org slash donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.
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