Chaos and violence are exploding in a world that holds the law in contempt. How did this all start and where is it heading? Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah shares answers that might just surprise you as he continues the series The World of the End. Learn the simple thing you can do to make a difference as David introduces today's message.
In a world of lawlessness, be kind. You know, kindness is a quality that has fallen out of use for many people. We live, in many respects, in an unkind world. Whether it's on the highway or in the grocery store or in the business places at the water cooler, we know unkindness. All of us, we felt it firsthand.
And Jesus said that in the end times, there's going to be a time of lawlessness, a time when all restraints are removed. And if you think it's bad now, you won't believe what it's going to be like just before Jesus returns.
So today we're going to talk about kindness. how we as God's people can take the prophecies of Jesus and turn them around into our priorities to do the very opposite of what he says is going to happen. All from the series The World of the End, and we'll get to the teaching in just a moment. But first, let me just remind you that The World of the End is a book that is available to you. It's 241 pages.
It's a hardback book, a beautiful cover, and the words of all of the teachings over these last days are now available in that book, available to you to review, to rehearse, to share with others, hopefully to lead a Bible study or a discussion with your family. These resources were produced. For the people who listen and watch Turning Point, they're not available in any bookstore. You can only get them from this ministry. They're beautifully designed, and you'll be pleased to have them on your bookshelf.
Most of all, you'll be blessed to have them in your heart.
So this month, with the few days that are left in April, if you will send a gift of any size to help us with the costs of airtime and production, we will send you your copy of The World of the End. Send your gift and when you do, simply say, please send me the world of the end, and we'll do it. You can also get the study guide and the C D and D V D packages from Turning Point, which is davidjeremiah.org. Here's part one of In a World of Lawlessness, Be Kind. How many of you know things are happening right now that we've never experienced before in all of our lifetime?
Never happened before in our nation.
So it's really a clarion call to us to listen carefully to what our Savior has to say to us. Jesus gave this little message on the Tuesday before he was crucified. These were some of his last words before he went to his death on our behalf. And he wanted us to know These things. Zaki Anwari was 17.
He was good looking and athletic and a rising star on Afghanistan's national soccer team. He spent hours practicing every day trying to emulate his hero Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi. He couldn't get enough, said his older brother. It's all he ever talked about. It's all he did.
He was born after September the 11th.
So he didn't remember the brutal state of the Taliban or the early chaos of the war in Afghanistan. He grew up in Kabul and relative peace and prosperity thanks to the presence of American forces there. When President Joe Biden announced that he would withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August of 2021, Zaki felt apprehensive. He had heard reports of the Taliban heading toward Kabul and As the Afghan resistance collapsed, he feared for his family, he feared for his future, but most of all, he grieved the loss of becoming a soccer star.
The Taliban banned most sports. Instead of rounding up young men for sports, they forced them to participate in the religious rituals and live under strict control. It was on August 16th that Zaki went to the international airport with his older brother and a cousin who had worked for the American company. to attempt to secure passage out of Afghanistan. There had already been one suicide bombing in the city.
People were beginning to feel panicked. The Taliban forces were close, nearly surrounding the city. The U.S.-backed government was showing more and more signs of imminent collapse. The plan was for Zaki to watch the car while the older men negotiated, but Zaki couldn't wait. He jumped the fence and entered the airport.
And it's not clear what happened next, but at some point he made his way onto the tarmac as a U.S. Air Force C-17 prepared to take off. He ran toward the plane. He raced alongside the aircraft. He was knocked off balance and fell under the wheel.
Among his final known words were: Pray for me, I'm going to America. But he never made it. He was killed in the accident. And the question that comes to our mind when we hear a story like that, we're not surprised because we watched it, we saw it on TV. Why would anyone run alongside an airplane?
as it's taking off. Why would anybody do that? And the only reason they would do it is out of desperation. Rising terror in the heart, lawlessness, violence, chaos, brutality. Any of those words will do, and all of them describe our world today.
We see it most vividly in failed states such as Yemen and Somalia and Syria and yes, Afghanistan, where law and order have collapsed and extremists fill the void. fomenting hatred and exporting terror. It's difficult for you and me to understand the gruesome life that befalls people that don't live in a place like we do. Most of us in America and the West, we feel relatively safe. We elect leaders who say they're going to uphold the law.
We have law enforcement agencies and emergency response systems populated by millions of good and decent people. But something is changing. Our police officers have been so vilified by the media that they're finding it hard to do their jobs. Politicians curb law enforcement budgets, and prosecutors. release people who are arrested the next day.
With open borders, it's difficult to control human smugglers and sex traffickers and dangerous drugs. Our Western nations have become so divided that we never know what's going to happen next. what will provoke rioting in our streets and violence in our neighborhoods. What is happening to us? The answer is just what Jesus said would happen in his discourse with his disciples.
Listen to his words. In the 12th verse of Matthew 24, Because lawlessness will abound. The love of many. will grow cold. Lawlessness will abound.
All you have to do is watch the news every single day. There's something on the news about lawlessness. about the law no longer being obeyed. About people no longer paying a penalty for their crimes. scenes of terrible things happening.
Lawlessness. Oh, you say, Pastor Jeremiah, there's always been, yes, that's true. We've always had people that want to break the law, but we've always had people that stood behind the law and made sure if they did, they paid a penalty for it. Today, The law means almost nothing in some places. And that people are being more and more liberated to do whatever they want to do without penalty.
Jesus said: in the days before I return, Lawlessness will abound. and the love of many will grow cold. Let's talk for just a moment about this world of lawlessness. The sequence of events that will take place before the rapture of the church. If you remember the birth pangs principle, where things start and then they get more intense and they get more close together, that's kind of what happens.
Lawlessness starts and then it becomes more lawlessness and more lawlessness closer together and more intense lawlessness. Deceivers are going to come, Jesus said. Wars and rumors of wars will rage, and famines, and plagues, and earthquakes will increase in size and in scope. And the world authorities will track down Christians, and persecutions will spread to all corners of the globe, and will face betrayal and hatred, and false prophets will rise up and deceive multitudes. That's what Jesus has already said.
With this cascading torrent of crisis, it's not surprising to learn. that there'll be more violence. And it will increase, and love will proportionately decrease. The Bible is clear. Jesus' words are unambiguous.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way, the most experienced psychologist knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing, and that is what sin is. Bonhoeffer went on to say: Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but worldly wisdom does not know that godlessness. is what's behind it all. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can only be healed by the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
Only the Christian knows this.
So you ask yourself, what's going on in our world? What's going on in our world is sin is just exploding everywhere. And we have no answer to that apart from the forgiveness of Almighty God. We have no way to curb that with our plans and our policies. We curb it over here and it breaks out over here.
Because the issue isn't what people are doing, the issue is Why they're doing it. Because we're broken. And we're sinful. And without the forgiveness of God to make us whole again. We do these things that we can explain.
Jesus knew that. Look again at Matthew 24:12. He said, Lawlessness will abound, and the love of many will grow cold. The word because implies a cause and effect relationship. A people that reject justice that comes from God will forfeit love that comes from God.
If you don't want God's justice, you don't get His love either, because love and lawlessness don't coexist. This becomes a vicious downward cycle. Lawlessness begets lovelessness, and lovelessness produces more lawlessness. And the Bible says wickedness will increase. When Jesus said that, he was describing more than the absence of laws or law enforcement.
His words call to mind periods of human history. That were defined by chaos and disorder, like the Dark Ages, for example, or the bloody legacy of the first half of the 20th century. or as I said earlier, failed states and terrorist havens. But the lawlessness that Jesus pointed to at the world of the end will be exponentially worse than anything we have ever witnessed before. Biblical scholar Dale Bruner describes this future period as a season of unique lawlessness, in which the very concept of morality will be turned upside down.
Right and wrong will be inverted. With entire cultures celebrating what is evil and condemning what is good. In Brunner's words, sinful human beings always practice lawlessness. But there will be a unique lawlessness at the end. Good will be called evil.
And evil will be called good on a massive and unprecedented scale exponentially. People will glory in their shame. The prophet Isaiah put it very clearly. Woe to those who call evil good. And good evil.
Who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight. If you watch carefully what is happening today, and it's not just in Somalia. in Afghanistan, what's happening today in our own country. There's an awful lot of this inversion going on.
And you ask yourself as you watch it, how can they know that and say that? How can they Expect us to believe that. That's what happens when truth gets lost. Truth means nothing to these people. They wouldn't know truth if it jumped up and hit them in the face.
Because truth is not useful to them. They only want what's useful to them, and if truth is not useful, it's put aside.
So we have to look at this world today in our own lives and try to find a point of. Where we can put the stake down in the ground and say, this is the truth, and we won't move from that. And Jesus said, as you get closer to the time when I come back, this is what it's going to be like. People will say good is evil and evil is good and they will glory in their shame. We see this twisted logic in our headlines.
The United States Department of Justice equated parents. as domestic terrorists. For pushing back against school boards and other groups teaching children to judge people on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. In Kenoshi, Wisconsin, violent protesters were celebrated as heroes after setting buildings on fire and looting businesses. Local firefighters responded to 37 separate fires during one single night of protesting.
Society is moving ever closer to the world of the end, and we feel the currents of the tribulation blowing backward into our own cultures. As never before, we need to be able to articulate biblical positions on moral issues without confusing or reversing right and wrong. And as never before, we need to understand that the growing insanity in our world isn't primarily a political or a military problem. It's a spiritual problem. The further our world strays from Christ, the closer it drifts toward cruelty and chaos and wickedness.
And Jesus said it will increase. You put God out of the schools, you put prayer out of the schools, and then you wonder why the schools are being shot up. Wherever you take God away, wherever you take Jesus away, wherever you push Him to the perimeter, you leave a vacuum, and that vacuum is always filled, not with good, but with evil. And that's what's happening in our world. And Jesus said, that's what's going to happen.
He's not telling that to us because he wants it to happen, because he knows it's going to happen. And then the Bible says, when this wickedness increases, love will grow cold. That's an interesting thing. The growing wickedness will cause the love of many to grow cold. The NIV version of this particular verse says it this way.
The love of most will grow cold. Not just many people, but most people. The further we drift from God's justice, the less we'll be affected by God's love. Anger begets anger. While working on this material on the 4th of July, I remember checking the headlines.
A gunman started shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park outside of Chicago. Seven people were killed, two dozen wounded, as he fired away from the rooftop perch with a high-powered rifle. Initial reports indicated he had been planning the attack for weeks. The mayor of Highland Park actually knew the alleged gunman from many years earlier when he participated in the Boy Scouts. She said it was all too familiar, and then she made this comment: It breaks my heart, she said.
I see this picture, and through the tattoos, I see this little boy. who was in my scout troop. And I don't know what got him to this point. What indeed Pundits debate the reasons for these kinds of things. Guns, mental illness, broken homes, drugs, all these things may play a part.
But the root cause that got all of this to this point. is here in Matthew 24, 12. The increase of violence, godly love as a human force is being frozen out of our culture. which in turn begets more violence. Because of growing wickedness, the love of most people will grow cold.
And that phrase is a translation of the Greek word psycho. P S Y C H O The word from which we get our word, psyche and psychology. I want you to notice here in Matthew 24:12, the word is literally used in the sense of blowing air across something. Think of your coffee when it's too hot to drink. What do you do?
You blow on it, allowing the air to stir the top of the liquid, cooling it just a bit. That's the word Matthew used. As the winds of lawlessness blow across our world, It chills our love. and the world becomes a colder place. That's what's happening.
If you need more evidence, think of the loneliness and lostness of multitudes of people around us. A recent study concluded that 36% of all Americans experience serious loneliness. You wonder why I'm so fired up about small groups? That's why. You wonder why I want to say to our men, get to men's Bible study?
That's why, because we live in a lonely world. And don't think it doesn't touch Christians just because you're a Christian. This includes a whopping 61% of young adults. 61% of our young adults are lonely. Look at the rise of diseases of despair.
Over recent decades, including addiction, anxiety, depression, suicide and more, all of these are skyrocketing in America and across the world. In fact, the medical journal BMJ conducted a review of health insurance claims between 2009 and 2018. And they found a 68% increase in diseases of despair on a broad level during that time. And that was before COVID, and COVID has spiked them.
So this is what Jesus is telling us. the world will be like we know he was telling the truth because we live in that world. And I may have pushed the limits a little bit today to get your attention. But every one of you know I'm telling the truth. This is the way it is.
And I try to make this As clear as I can, so that what I'm about to tell you will mean the most that it can. What do we do about that? What do we do about people who are lawless and loveless?
Well, the first thing I want to say, don't be that way. Don't be lawless and don't be loveless. That's a pretty good start. It's difficult to watch the world disconnect from God, isn't it? Humanity's slide toward lawlessness and lovelessness is painful.
We feel a jolt when forces corrupt the institutions and customs we've cherished for so long. The darkness seems to be deepening over our culture like the edge of night. But we are not powerless. We are children of God. without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom we shine as lights in the world holding fast the word of life.
You need to nail that verse. Listen to it again. We're in the midst of this lawless, loveless generation, but listen to what Paul wrote to the Philippians. He said, You, we, are children of God. We're without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.
And in this generation, we shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life. One of the biggest ways we can make a difference is by bringing back a revolutionary concept called kindness. which in many ways is the anecdote to lawlessness. We have limited ability to control the lawlessness and lovelessness in our society. But we can control how we respond to it.
Some people pray, Lord. Change the circumstances so I can feel better. And the Lord says, No, I'm going to use the circumstances to make you be better. And I think that's what's happening to us now. I know that as I see these things happening in the world, and I see them as you do.
I don't feel so much anger about it, but I feel, Lord, how can I be the person I ought to be in the midst of this? Everybody is looking for hope and we have the hope of Christ. We need to turn our candles up higher and shine brighter. We live in a dark world, but we are here on purpose. God could have put us down in any generation He wanted to, but He plopped us down in this one, in this particular generation that seems to be coming unglued.
and we're the light of the world. Jesus is the light of the world, but before he went back to heaven, he pointed to us and he said, You are the light of the world.
So, before we can ever be purveyors of kindness, we have to embrace it ourselves.
So, let me ask you this question. Do you? Feel and embrace the kindness of God toward you. Let me just tell you a story to help you with that. Rich Mullins wrote his best-known worship song, Awesome God.
in 1988. and he sadly died in a highway accident in 1997. A few years later, James Bryan Smith wrote a book about Rich's life in which he shared how Rich grieved that his dad never spoke the words, I love you. Rich also battled feelings of worthlessness as a teenager. God, he once prayed, why am I such a freak?
I wanted to be a jock or something, but I'm a musician. I feel like a sissy all the time. Why couldn't I just be a regular guy? Despite his struggles, Rich attended church. He read his Bible.
He began writing worship songs. But all the time he was doing this, he was feeling like God didn't love him and doesn't care about him. Along the way, he began to truly embrace the love of God. It struck him when he looked at the creation around him. He became awed that God in his love gave songs to the birds and majesty to the mountains and laughter to the children, all of that for our benefit.
And he became centered on Jesus. Rich discovered that the love God has for us is not an emotion, but it is in fact the essence of who God is. The death of Christ is the indisputable sign that shouts to you, God loves you. God loves you. Amen.
Amen. We'll have part two of this tomorrow on the Friday edition. I hope you'll be with us then. Hey, a shout out to my friends in Canada.
So many of you who listen in Canada. I don't know how many listen, but we sure do get great response from Canadian people wherever we go. And what we know about all the Canadian people that we talk to, the ones who listen to us at least, they love the Bible. They love the Word of God. And I just want to let you know that we want you to support Turning Point in Canada.
So that means when you give a gift to Turning Point from Canada, it goes to Canada Turning Point. It doesn't come to the United States. It stays in Canada. It helps pay airtime on the Canadian stations and the information that we send back and forth in our ministry to the Canadian believers.
So be sure to think about that when you give. This is a gift to your own people, to your own country, and it involves Turning Point as the product. Thank you so much for listening today. Don't forget to join us tomorrow where we talk about what it means to be kind. For more information on Dr.
Jeremiah's series The World of the End. Please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected, our monthly magazine Turning Points and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org/slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's informative and inspiring book, The World of the End, with a special Be the Answer bookmark.
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This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series The World of the End on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
