Hidden Treasure, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Many of you have substituted surrender for religious activity, but I'm going to tell you that's not repentance. That's not joy. That's not what Jesus is talking about. God is not interested in people who get involved in Christianity to keep him off of their back. He is interested in those who see in him a treasure of greater value than anything else on earth and would gladly leave everything else to possess him. Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Okay, so have you ever had an encounter with God that felt like finding a hidden treasure, like discovering something that changed things so profoundly and brought you so much joy that you gladly left everything else to possess it?

Many of us, if we're honest, might choose a different image, something more like finding a never-ending to-do list or being tied to a ball and chain. Thankfully, pastor J.D. Greer is going to steer us in another direction today so that we more clearly understand who Jesus is and the treasure he is offering to us. Pastor J.D.

has titled today's message, Hidden Treasure. So grab your Bible and let's jump in. You see, this parable confronts a deeply ingrained myth in our culture. The myth is this, that God has upset at us because we want to be happy.

In fact, if you're taking notes, write it down this way. God has not upset at you because you want to be happy. Many people think that. I used to think that. You see, I thought sin and the world and independence from God, that was fun. And God wanted me to walk away from all that and get religious. So I always felt like at youth camp, I'm sure they weren't actually saying this, but in my unbelieving heart, this is what I heard. I always thought the message at youth camp was, the problem with you teenagers is that you want to be happy. And God wants you to come up here to the altar and he wants you to get down on your knees and surrender any desire you have to be happy ever so that you can go to heaven. And I'll be like, well, I guess it's better to be miserable in life than to spend eternity in hell. So I'll go forward and sign the commitment card.

But y'all that, I mean, think of it like this. Say that on my wedding day, my wife Veronica stood at the altar and the minister said to her, did you write some vows for your marriage? And she said, yes, I did. And she pulls out a card to read her vows. And she says to me and to this pastor, she says, I hereby renounce all my desires for romance, physical intimacy and happiness to become the wife of JD. I'd be like, whoa, you know, I want you to forsake those things for me.

I want you to find those things in me. It doesn't glorify God when we serve Him out of duty. In fact, here's how you should think about it. God is not upset at you because you want to be happy. He's upset for you because you choose to be happy in things besides Him.

He's not upset at you because you want to be happy. He's upset for you because you have turned away from Him, the living God who can truly satisfy you. And you have sought the things you should be finding in Him and worthless idols that cannot make you happy at all, which is why we say that God is a jealous God. God is not jealous because He's insecure. God is jealous for your love because He knows He is the only one who can make you happy.

So He is jealous for your sake. Y'all listen, it does not glorify God when you serve Him out of drudgery and duty any more than it would glorify my wife to be married to her out of drudgery and duty. I mean to continue on with the marriage analogy, would my wife have been glorified in your eyes if shortly before our marriage you had found me, you know, a few days leading up to our marriage and I was like, look, yeah, there's actually a bunch of girls that I'm way more attracted to than Veronica. And honestly, I think I'd be much happier with one of those girls if I could marry them, but I just feel like loving Veronica is the right thing to do. I feel like I owe it to her parents. Would you look at me and say, wow, that really glorifies her. What a great man of character she is marrying. No, no, that's not glorifying to her at all.

She's glorified. When I say, you know, once I met Veronica, I lost all my interest in other girls. And that's the way basically it was on our wedding day. You know, we stood there in front of that audience of people. And there were other pretty girls out there in that audience.

In fact, there were probably one or two girls at some point in my past, I'd actually had an interest in it, but I could tell you standing up there on that altar in front of everybody else, I wasn't thinking about the girls that I was leaving behind. I was consumed with joy at the one that God had given to me. And it was joy over her that made leaving all the other girls an act of just total worthlessness because I was consumed with joy, not sorrow over what I was walking away from. That's how Jesus wants us to feel about him. And you see there's that joy and that kind of joy alone that can sustain the Christian life. It's the reason that some of you can't make it as a Christian is that you're trying to follow Jesus through the strength of your resolve and the strength of your will.

And you've never been consumed with the joy of who Jesus is. That's why Nehemiah in the Old Testament said, the joy of the Lord is our strength. It is joy in Jesus that gives me strength to obey. Where does the motivation to obey come from? It doesn't come from resolve and self-will.

The motivation comes to obey when you are consumed with a greater joy in what you're obtaining than you are a sorrow over what you're leaving. I thought of this this week. When I was in college, my job as a senior in college was I became a coach of a 12 and 13 year old boys club soccer team.

Okay. And we were good. We went undefeated the entire season. And so we made it to the playoffs, which was a big deal. And, you know, teams from all over the state came in and my guys, they were just so amped up and we just, I mean, we were confident.

We, nobody could beat up. We had this little ritual they did where they would spit on the ground before the game started and they make mud and they wiped their faces on it. So they looked like a scene out of Braveheart and man, they just, they did it. They just strutted onto that field. We played under lights.

It was like, it was a big deal to these 12 and 13 year old boys. They, we strutted out on that field and we got killed. I mean, the final score doesn't reflect it. We only lost three to one, but it was just, you know, anything about soccer, it was one of those games where the other team had control of the ball the entire game. And they had this one player on their team who was just the best player we'd encountered. Number 17, number 17. And it was Michael Jordan with the soccer ball.

That's how I describe this player. I mean, anytime that, I mean, it's just, we got dominant and I was, frankly, I was, I was sick of it. And so 10 minutes left to go in the second half, we're losing two to one.

10 minutes left to go. And I, so I pulled out our best fullback, whose name was David. And I said, David, I am sick and tired of number 17. He said, he said, me too, coach. I hate that.

I hate that. I said, don't go there yet. But, but, but, but here's the deal. We cannot let number 17 get another shot on goal. You understand? Yes, sir. I said, I said, David, I'm going to give you one assignment for the remainder of this game. Your one assignment is to make sure number 17 does not get a shot on goal.

You understand me? Yes, sir. Coach David, I don't care if the guy next to you burst into flames. That's not your responsibility.

Your responsibility is number 17. Yes, sir. Coach.

Anytime they step foot in the penalty box and they're going to take a shot, you make sure they don't get that shot off. Yes, sir. Coach. He turns around. I think he made me give me a little salute. And he turns around to run back on the field. He got about 10 feet away from me. I was like, David, do it legally.

Do it legally. He goes, okay, of course. And he runs back on the field.

All right. So game resumes. And, and here comes number 17 does something down there in the right corner of the field. Our left fullback is left in the field position, crying for his mom, brings the ball back in there. It is number 17, our stopper, our goalie number 17 does a pump fake. Who does that inside? Does a pump fake and both the stopper and the goalie just sort of fly out of the picture.

It's number 17 and a wide open goal. And I'm like, doggone it. This is it. This is the end of the game right here.

When out of the left side of my peripheral vision comes this blur. Okay. It's David the fullback. All right. Like a tractor beam locked on number 17.

I'm like, what is he doing? All right. So, so number 17, it's in this beautiful, just, you know, kind of posture ready to just kick the ball right through the goal. David hits this player from behind.

Okay. Full like spread eagle attack. Looks like Batman coming in. Just like, and there's like a little mushroom cloud of dust that, that pops up there. And it was one of those moments where it was like, you know, it's like time stands still. It was like, but it's kind of, and nobody could believe what like just happened. And then it was like on cue, everybody, everybody in the field got angry for different reasons. But in the, in the one moment, everybody gets angry. Their team was angry because they thought that we tried to take out their star player. The referee's angry. Cause he's like, can you give a 12 year old a red card and throw them out of a game? Our team is angry because they knew that David just handed this other team a penalty kick in the penalty box that they were sure to score on. Our parents are angry because they think psycho coach sent this kid in to take out this player.

I'm angry. So I'm like, what is he doing? So the only person who's not angry is David. David stands up and many dust himself off and reaches down and make sure the other player's okay. And helps them to their feet, you know, and just kind of make sure things okay. Then David turns around, turns around 180 degrees, looks, you know, 40 yards across the field and goes like that.

Now at this point I'm thinking lawsuits, right? So I'm like, David, what is wrong with you? So I pulled David out of the game. He comes just running over. This is innocent, carefree and gets about 10 feet away from me. And I start yelling at him.

I'm doing this for the sake of the parents. I'm like, David, what is wrong with you, son? Where's your brain?

Point to your brain and just perfectly little innocent 12 year old. He pointed his brain and he's like, I was like, David, what are you thinking? And he gets this little indignant look on his face and said, coach, you told me to take her out illegally, illegally. The last thing he had thought that I said to him before he took the field was, hey man, make it nasty.

Like just end the game right here. Now here's what, there are two things that are amazing about this story. Number one, number one, David came up to me about four years ago and introduced himself at the apex campus. He's now married. He goes to our church, right?

So that's what's amazing thing. Number one, amazing thing number two is in his little 12 year old mind, in his 12 year old mind, he was thinking he knew he was a good enough player that he knew what was going to happen when he did that. He knew that he would probably, you know, get a yellow card or a red card. He knew his parents would probably ground him. He knew he might get jumped after the game. He knew all those things, but none of that stuff mattered to him at all. One thing mattered to David. You know what it was? The coach's smile, right? Cause he thought if he thought, if my coach is happy with me, then it doesn't matter who is against me because I've got more joy in my coach's pleasure than I do sorrow for all these bad things happening to me. Now that's not a great way. If you're a 12 year old to go through life, let me just say that right now.

All right. But I will tell you that following Jesus is something similar to that, where you begin to have more joy and the pleasure of Jesus at the possession of Jesus and the glory of Jesus than you do after anything that is behind. And it's where you get the strength to obey, even when it's hard. And until you're consumed with joy, you'll never be filled with the confidence and the resolve to obey the joy of the Lord is your strength to obey. The joy of the Lord becomes your contentment and the mundane. It becomes your contentment and the mundane. Some of you have, you feel like boring lives. Maybe you have a boring job or maybe you're a student and you feel like that's just monotonous. Maybe you're a mom and feels like, oh, it's changing diapers just gets so old. When you have the joy of the Lord, it gives you motivation and contentment, even the mundane.

Here's the example I'll use. If you at your job were told by your boss that you were given a special assignment and it was to lick envelopes, you had 5,000 envelopes you needed to lick and get into the mail. Now you would just be like, what a terrible job, right? I mean, how boring. You come home and you're like, I had the worst day.

It was so boring. Just lick envelopes all day. But what if you found out that you got a $10,000 bonus for every single envelope you licked?

You think your day would go poorly? Every time you do it, you just be happy and giddy as you're licking another envelope, right? Well, see, when you're consumed with the joy of Jesus and the glory of Jesus and what it means to please Him and to have heavenly reward, it makes even the mundane things have a motivation because the joy is not in them.

It's in the one that you're pleasing. The joy of the Lord becomes your strength and your hope in the midst of trials. It means that even when you go through the darkest times where there's genuine pain, even that has a different feel to it because you know the joy that you're headed into is going to swallow up the pain that you're in right now. And it gives you endurance even in the midst of real and genuine pain.

I'm not trying to take away from your pain or to say that it's nothing. I'm just saying that the joy of the Lord becomes a way to endure it. We'll rejoin this teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to tell you about a daily email devotional from Pastor JD that's delivered straight to your inbox. Couldn't we all use encouragement first thing in the morning to remind us of God's love for us? I know the busyness of life can quickly choke out any joy we feel in our walk with God, so why not cut those weeds away each morning with a word from the Lord? The devotionals even follow along with our current teaching here on the program, so you can stay plugged in regardless of your schedule.

Sign up for this free resource right now at jdgrier.com slash resources. Now let's return for the conclusion of today's message. Once again, here's Pastor JD.

The example I've used over the years is one of my favorites. I told you it's like if you found out today that there was an uncle you'd ever knew you had who left you a hundred million dollars and it's at the bank. You just got to go pick it. You got to go sign a form and it's going to transfer into your account a hundred million dollars. So you're driving over to the bank on Monday and you're going to sign the papers and right before you about a half mile from the bank and your car breaks down. I promise you not one of you is going to get out of the car and kick it and swear at the car and shake your fist at the heavens and say, why me God? You're not going to do that, right? You're going to leave the car there. You're not going to care and you're going to skip the rest of the way to the bank.

Why? Because the joy over what you're about to obtain makes the loss of the car seem absolutely insignificant and there's a sense at which the joy of Jesus, when it fills your heart and possesses your vision, it gives you the ability to even go through darkness and pain with a sense of hope because you know the joy is going to make up for and erase and take away one day what you're experiencing. Now the gospel woos us with greater joy. I know that so many of you are missing this and honestly it's why you're so miserable. You got no idea the potential joy that is there in the Christian life.

You just have no concept of it. In fact, it reminded me of one of my favorite memory verses this week, Psalm 4-7. You put more joy in my heart than they have when they're grain and wine abound. You got more joy in my heart than they have when they get a new car, when they get a new a raise at work, or when their stocks multiply, or when everything goes right. I got more joy in you than they've ever known.

You know what he's talking about? He's talking about a different kind of joy, a better joy than what you get from food or friends or riches. Have you ever had the experience of entering a new phase of life that gives you a joy in something that you just didn't even know that you could have before? You fall in love, you have a kid, you get established in your career and you think, wow, I never knew, I never even knew what I was missing.

But if you were to try to go back and explain this to your former self, your former self wouldn't get it. If I could use a time turner and go back to five-year-old JD and I could tell five-year-old JD that one day, one day you're going to meet somebody named Veronica and she is more wonderful than any of your Davy Crockett records. And one day you're going to have kids and they're going to be more wonderful and you're going to love them so much more than you love these trinkets that you have. And you said all this to five-year-old JD, you said, this is your future.

You should look forward to it. Five-year-old JD would say, I'm not going to have candy in that future. And present day, JD would say back to five-year-old JD, listen kid, you're going to experience things in the future that are going to make candy seem like absolutely nothing, but five-year-old JD wouldn't get it.

You see, that's us. God offers us real happiness, real happiness. And essentially we say, yeah, God, but is there going to be candy?

Is there going to be candy? And God says, you don't even know the question you're asking. Number three, number three, we see from this parable, the gospel requires leaving it all. Y'all notice that both of the men in these parables had to leave literally everything else to possess this treasure. That was the requirement.

No conditions, no refusals. I would say that many of us want to have the treasure in the field without having to let go of anything. And many of us have convinced ourselves that we can have Jesus and not sell everything, so to speak. So instead of surrendering to Jesus, we do the next best thing we think.

We kind of salve our consciousness with the next best thing. We just get religious, right? Because religion is a way of paying God off. It's a way of meeting whatever you think is the minimum requirement to keep God on your side and keep Him from being against you and cursing you and throwing you in hell. Many of you have substituted surrender for religious activity, but I'm going to tell you that's not repentance.

That's not joy. That's not what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 13, 44 through 46. God is not interested in people who get involved in Christianity to keep Him off of their back.

He is interested in those who see in Him a treasure of greater value than anything else on earth and would gladly leave everything else to possess Him. That's why the second question we ask anybody who's being baptized here at the Summit Church, we say, are you willing to go wherever He tells you to go and do whatever He tells you to do? Sometimes people have said to me, and I always appreciate their honesty, they'll say, you know, I'm not really sure what you're asking right now, but I mean, are you saying I literally have to give up all my money if I want to possess Jesus? I had a really honest talk with a guy this week in my office who accepted Christ.

And he said, man, he goes, I don't know what it means to walk away from it all right now. And I'm afraid that there might be things that Jesus might tell me to walk away from later that I want to have the strength to do when He tells me. So I described the process of conversion to Him like this. It's very simplistic, but I said it, conversion is like discovering one day that you're in a car that you stole from Jesus. And all of a sudden Jesus just appears in the passenger seat and says, hey man, you stole my car.

All right, conversion is acknowledging, yes, I stole your car and this belongs to you. And Jesus says, don't get out, keep driving. But from here on out, I'm going to tell you where to turn, I'm going to tell you what to do. And when I tell you to turn, I want you to turn, I'm going to tell you to slow down, I want you to slow down. At that point, you keep driving and you wait for His instruction.

I told this guy, I said, so you're in the driver's seat of your car, it's stolen from Jesus, for you to come to Christ means you acknowledge that and you wait for His instruction. And He's going to tell you somewhere up there, He's going to say, I want you to go left or I want you to go right. And you're going to say, I'm going to obey that when He tells me. And He's going to tell you to slow down or speed up. And you're also going to trust that when He tells you what He wants you to do, He's going to give you the strength to do it. Coming to Jesus doesn't mean that you know the route yet.

It doesn't mean that you have the strength or the wisdom to pursue the route. It just means you acknowledge the car belongs to Him and that you are in a posture of saying, wherever you tell me to go and whatever you tell me to do, I recognize it belongs to you and I'm going to follow you. Coming to Jesus means that you may not be sure where He's leading you or that you'll have the strength to obey, but you recognize He is the one treasure you'd never want to be without. For this guy that I was talking to, his first step was baptism as it is for many people. He knew that this was the area where this is the first thing Jesus was telling him.

And He said, I'll do that. He trusted Christ and He's in the queue to be baptized here coming up very shortly. Let me close all this with a great story, I think, that summarizes everything that we learn here in these parables. In Cairo, I've actually never seen this personally, I hope to one day, but in Cairo, in a very out-of-way location, there's a small, dusty grave that you would never know was there if you weren't looking for it. Yet that grave contains the body of one of America's potentially richest men who ever lived. His name is William Borden. William Borden lived around the time of the turn of the century, 19th, 20th century. He graduated from Yale in 1909 and he was the heir to the Borden Milk Company.

Now the Borden Milk Company is still a big company today, but back in the early 1900s, it was one of America's largest companies. It was millions and millions of dollars and it was going to be handed to him. Well, while William Borden was at Yale, he encountered Jesus Christ and Jesus totally changed his life. And he began to get less interested in all the things that he'd been groomed for and he just started to plunge into who Jesus was. And in his Bible that somebody had given him, he opened up the fly leaf and he wrote the word, no rivals, no rivals.

Well, right after he graduated college, he sensed that God was calling him to go be a missionary to Muslims in Egypt. And so he told his parents, it's like, hey, I'm not going to take the company. I'm going to turn down the inheritance.

You give it to somebody else. God's called me to be a missionary. And his parents, and I guess you could understand this, but they were upset. They're like, you're groomed for this.

We want you to have it. And they told him he was foolish and he didn't have any idea what he was walking away from, but he stood his ground and he said, I can't, I've got to obey Jesus. Even if it means turning my back on you and all these things that you want to offer me. And the way I heard the story is he opened up his fly leaf of his Bible and he wrote the word, no refusal, no refusal, right under the word, no rival, no rival, no refusal. I won't say no to Jesus on anything. He boarded a ship and went to Egypt as a missionary to Muslims in Egypt, where after being there four months, he contracted spinal meningitis and died just a few days before he died. And he knew he was going to die because they, they were, they couldn't find the medical help they needed.

A friend asked him, they said, hey, you walked away from all this and you came over here and you're dying four months later. And Borden took out his Bible and opened the file leaf and showed him where he'd written the third words, no regrets, no regrets. And today, his grave, again, I've never seen it, but his grave has a very, his name, a very short description of his life. And then it has the phrase, listen to this, apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life. Or you could rephrase that, apart from joy in Jesus, there's no possible way for you to say no regrets, but with joy in Jesus, there's no possible way for you not to say it. Because even if you, like William Borden, turn and walk away from everything, you'll say no regrets because I possess Jesus for eternity. And you'll say with Martin Luther, let goods and kindreds go, this mortal life also the body, they may kill God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever and I belong to it forever.

It is a treasure in a field. My question for you is, have you come to this place? Have you come to a place where you say no rivals? Have you come to a place where you say no refusals?

Because if so, I promise you, you will get to a place one day where you will say no regrets. Have you discovered Christ as your treasure? Is that how you describe him right now? This is Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Now, J.D., something we've noticed is that while most Christians believe the Bible is true, a lot of us don't really spend time studying it on our own. But our goal is to help our listeners become better students of the Bible. Yeah, Molly, you know, the best definition I've ever heard of preaching is helping people read the Word of God better.

Right. We want to equip you to study and dig into this incredible book for yourself and hear from God in his inexhaustibly rich word. This month, we've got a book of devotions, a Bible study help. We are praying that this devotional book will help you feel more confident and joyful and reading the Bible so that when you pick it up on your own, it's not a big confusing book, but it's an invitation to the greatest experience of joy and purpose that you'll ever encounter. We'd love to hear from you and get you this 10 day devotional book. We'll send you a copy today as our way of saying thanks for your financial gift of thirty five dollars or more to support this ministry. Join us in this mission today by calling 866-335-5220. The number again is 866-335-5220.

Or go online to give and request your copy at JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Vitevich. Thanks for joining us. Tomorrow we shift our focus to what we're calling 11th Hour Faith. Wondering what that means? Be sure to join us right here for Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.