TD Jakes - The Turning Point
Now you must realize, my brothers and sisters, just to put the text in context, that they have come to the feast of the Passover, and the feast of the Passover is an annual memorial moment for every respectable Orthodox Jew to commemorate the great escape that God gave them from the oppression of Egypt. This is their point of reference the rest of their existence. "Am I not the God who brought you out of Egypt"? You read it all through, the, I am the God with my own hand that brought you out from under Pharaoh. This is to help you remember where you came from so you never forget, it is the feast of the Passover, the celebration of the fact that an innocent animal gave up his life so that you might live.
And as you understood that, and you took the cup, and you broke the bread, and you recognized the lamb that was slain that paid the price for your escape. And it has become a feast, and the problem with a commemorative moment becoming a festival is that it becomes commercialized. It's much like Christmas; we're supposed to be celebrating the birth of Jesus, and Jesus is the last person on our list. We put more attention on getting a turkey than we do on getting Jesus. And somehow in the process of the festivities the real meaning is often lost in the ceremonies and the rituals and the routines and the festivities and the snowflakes and the roasting over an open flame, and all of the things that we do around it sometimes subtracts from it until the meaning gets lost.
So was it with the feast of the Passover, it had become a tradition, and every year they got together all their families and all their friends and it was time for them to convocate and socialize and interact and meet other people in Jerusalem and have a wonderful time. And so they came every year, until the 12th year, and the 12th year was a turning point. The family comes every year to worship. This is not Jesus's first feast. The first thing the Bible tells us is that this is not just a national tradition, this is not just a tradition for believers, this is a tradition for our family. "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," and for every year they came up, as a ritual, to Jerusalem, to honor the Passover. At first blush, there seems to be no real message here.
Most parents have had that moment of displacement, where you look around, and you can't find your kid for a moment and you panic, and you get scared, and you're disrupted. At first, it just seems like that sort of thing, but normally, in a moment or two you you lay your hands on them or, "Oh, I didn't see you go there, don't go in that store without me," and you get it straightened out. But the problem I have here, the problem I have here is that the family has become so engrossed in peripheral things that they have forgotten the main thing. And the problem I have here is that in this case not only have they forgotten their child, Jesus is the Passover.
Oh, you didn't hear what I said, I said Jesus is the Passover. So while they are celebrating the shadow, they are bringing the reality to the shadow. The reality is always greater than the shadow. I have a shadow up here, but my shadow is not as valuable as I am; I cast the shadow, the shadow don't cast me. They are bringing the real Passover to celebrate the shadow of which the lamb was only a representative and a substitute. Jesus is the real deal. Give me a minute and let me praise him, I wanna praise him for being the real deal, he's not a shadow, he is not a caricature, he's not a joke, he's not an image, he's not a reflection, he is my feast of the Passover. He is my feast of unleavened bread, he is my feast of Pentecost, he is my Kinsman Redeemer, he is my Daystar, he is my Bulwark, he is my Mighty God, he is my Everlasting Father. I wish I had a church that knew something about praising the, "He is," of God. "He that cometh to God must first believe that he is". Somebody say, "He is".
It makes me think, from a theological perspective, that what they were bringing was greater than where they were going. Think about that with me, they were bringing the lamb of God to the feast of a substitute, so what they had with them was more important than where they were going. I want you to think about that because there's something I want you to get out of that. What you have with you is more important than where you're going. I understand you've got goals, I understand you've got plans for 2021, I understand you've got strategies, I understand you've got purpose, I understand you got vision, but what you have with you is better and more important than where you are going. And if you lose what you got going after what you want, I said, if you lose what you got going after what you want, your feast is going to turn into a disaster.
What good is it to have a feast if it costs what I got going after what I want. That's what's wrong with us, too many unscrupulous people are willing to sacrifice what you have to get what you want. The Bible says it this way, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul"? What does it mean for you to advance economically if you lose your soul? What does it mean for you to end up running the business if you lose your soul? What does it mean to have a bigger house if you lose your soul? What does it mean to collect more degrees if you lose your soul? I want you to value what you have, not just what you're going to, but we have an age of people that have no appreciation for what they have. They're so excited about where they're going that they have lost sight of what they have and, like this family, they fall into the fallacy. The fallacy, a failure of reasoning which makes an argument invalid. They had a failure of reasoning that this is more important than that.
Somebody is wrestling with a decision and the Lord sent me here to tell you that this is more important than that, what you got right now is better than anything you're trying to go after in your life. And in the long run, it may not look good right now, it may not seem valuable right now, it may seem unimportant right now 'cause it hadn't got to growing up yet, he's just 12. It may not seem consequential, it may not seem relevant, it may not seem majestic, it may not seem central to what you're trying to create in your life, but give it some time, he's just 12. What has God placed inside of you that's just 12? That you don't think is particularly important because you have evaluated it premature and created a fallacy? So we have the festival, we have the family, and then we have the fallacy of making a bad decision. We have the festival, we have the family, and we have the fallacy of making a bad decision. The festival, the family and the fallacy of making a bad decision because what God has given you needs time to grow up.
I feel like shouting it. What God has given you needs time to grow up, it needs time to grow up, he's just 12, it's just 12. What God has given you is significant, "Despise not the day of small beginnings," he's just 12, he's just 12, he's just 12. You were bringing your redeemer to celebrate redemption, but you didn't recognize that the redemption is not in where you're going, the redemption is in what you already got. "Despise not the day of small beginnings," it's just 12, but it's goin' grow, it's goin' grow. What God has given you is going to grow, it's going to grow not just to bless you, but to bless you and your children and your children's children and your children's children's children. I heard somebody in the spirit say, "It's too late for me, I'm too old". Baby girl, it ain't about you, what God has for you is gonna affect generation after generation after generation after generation, so endure whatever you've got to endure.
When they found Jesus, it had been four days. Can you imagine what goes through a parent's mind in four days? And they found Jesus, and Jesus is in the temple, like, "Yo, what y'all trippin' about? I'm good". And they said, "What have you done to us"? They blamed him for their negligence. I want to talk to people who are angry at God when it was your negligence. You say tithing doesn't work but you don't admit the fact that you're overbought, you lived above your means, you bought what you want, you begged what you need, and then when you get in trouble you say, "God didn't work for you," and you don't assume responsibility for your own actions. I want to talk to somebody who is blaming God for a marriage you lost, but you didn't do what it took to keep the marriage going, you didn't put your attention on it, you didn't focus on it, and now you act like the Word don't work, when in truth Jesus didn't lose them, they lost him, he's 12, they are the parents.
The Word doesn't work when your responsibilities are derelict, God's not going to bless over your abandonment and your self-consumed egotistical habits, your destructive habits that are creating your own hell. The devil didn't do it, Satan didn't do it, the demons didn't do it, the witch didn't do it, your fallacy, your loss of focus did it. I know that hurts, I know that's strong, but you did it to yourself, you lost sight of what was the main thing and you gotta own that. If you don't own that, you won't get better, you'll never get better blaming anybody, especially God, for things that you let get outta control. See law, I'm going to let that sink in. They blamed Jesus for being lost at the feast when the truth is they lost him, and they didn't even notice he was gone. And most of the time, by the time you wake up and realize what you lost, it's gone. This is a wake up call for somebody and I don't know who it is, it's a warning sent from God himself to say, "Check what you got, value what you have right now".
Don't be so goal-oriented that you fail to invest in what God has committed into your keeping right now, and don't you dare blame God when it all falls apart if you haven't kept the hand on what he gave you. He's only 12. Woo, it's quiet now, they was shouting a minute ago but it got quiet now. But none of that I'm talking about, none of that, none of that, none of that is my point because my subject is "The Turning Point". So we talked about the festival, and we talked about the family and we talked about the fallacy, and we talked about the four days, but we have not talked about the fathers. Now see, this 12th year is the last year that we have record of Jesus until he pops up at 30. What we are reading is the last accounting of the boy Jesus before he shows up the man at the banks of the Jordan River to be baptized of John. 18 years he will go into obscurity, 18 years he will hide in historical mystery, 18 years unaccounted for.
This story is the turning point, and the turn is in the text, The turn is in the text, can I preach it like I feel it? The turn is in the text, every turn you will ever make, every turn you will ever make is in the text, every twist on the road to destiny is always in the text, every decision you're trying to make right now, the answer is in the text, every change, paradigm shift in your life is in the text. The times we're in right now, the whole vaccine that we're talking about, the whole curse of the virus, the whole plague we're in is, the secret, the mystery is always in the text, but we've raised a generation that does not examine the text. We're trying to find the truth without the text, and there is no truth outside of the text. The truth that prevails is always in the text, and it is so obscure, Serita, that we almost don't see it. The father and the mother come rushing into the temple and they started fussing at the boy, and he turns to his mother and his father and says, "I must be about my Father's business".
How do you tell your father that, "I must be about my Father's business"? Don't you know? Boy, do you know who you're talking to? Yes, I do know who I'm talking to, I know that you are not my Father. I don't need Maury Povich, I don't need a DNA test, I know who I am, and the reason you can't stop me from my destiny is because I'm about to shift. Good God. Somebody is about to shift, I feel a change coming in your life, somebody watching right now is in the middle of a shift; what you used to be satisfied with, you're not satisfied with anymore because now you've discovered who you really are, and you have come to a turning point. Everything in your life is about to shift, everything in your life is about to change, a new order is about to break forth in your life and the Holy Ghost said get ready for the shift.
A turning point is coming, a shift is coming, a change is coming, a reformation is coming, a restructuring is coming. And Jesus is standing in between two daddies, he's got his earthly father over here and his heavenly Father over here, and he tells his earthly father, "I got to go, I must be about my Father's business," and there is a shift. Once you know who you are, there's always a shift. You can't hold me like you used to hold me, you can't do me like you used to do me, you can't control me like you used to control me, because while you was gone, I figured out who I was. I want some liberated people to give God a crazy praise right now. You thought you belonged to me, you thought you belonged to them, they had you under their grip, but they left you alone long enough that you found out you could make it without them, and now you know who you are and you will never be bound like you used to be bound.
If I'm talking to you I dare you to give God praise, a praise, a praise, a sanctified praise, a Holy Ghost praise. I dare you to open your mouth and give God some glory, give him a praise right now, I said give him a praise right now, I said give him a praise right now, I said give him a praise right now. Somebody text, "I know who I am," somebody comment, "I know who I am, I come to myself". I recognize that you are the temporal, he is the eternal; you are the shadow, he is the reality; you are the former, he is the latter. I turn, I feel a turn about to hit the kingdom, I feel a turn, I decree and declare there shall be a turn. I need 30 seconds of crazy praise. I need 20 seconds of people praising God like you getting ready to turn, like you got turnin' on your mind, like you got turnin' in your spirit. I need 15 seconds of somebody that's gonna turn and give God of... I feel a turn, a turn in my finances, a turn in my ministry, a turn in my life, a turn in my spirit, a turn in my preaching, a turn in my feelings, a turn, I feel a turn. I'm turnin', I'm turnin'. Call my old friends and tell them I'm turnin', call my haters and tell them I'm turnin', tell every liar I feel a turn. Somebody turn around, God's getting ready to turn.