Finding the Unshakeable City, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. There are moments when you are wronged that the way that God renews your commitment to the city is by letting you take upon yourself the cross of Christ so that you suffer and you give blessing instead of cursing and you are renewed in the fact that it's more about Him and not about you. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor and theologian J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Benovitch. We are in a teaching series called Christ is Better, and it's taking us through the book of Hebrews. Listen to any previous message from this teaching for free online at jdgreer.com.

Today we're looking at the issue of security. Okay, everyone wants to be comfortable and safe from the unknown, but that's not always God's plan, and that's okay. As we'll see, even when it's scary, God still knows best. To learn more about Pastor J.D., visit us online at jdgreer.com.

But right now let's join Pastor J.D. in Hebrews 12. He titled this message Finding the Unshakeable City. Searching for a city, searching for a kingdom, that's the image that the writer has used throughout Hebrews, especially in these final chapters. It's a metaphor that he is using for what we are all doing with our lives.

Well, aren't we searching for a place of permanence, peace, prosperity, fulfillment? So what he does is he does three things with that in the last chapter, three things, three things with that image. The first thing he does is he asks you to consider what your city is and whether or not it is shakeable. Then he shows you, secondly, the results of Jesus being your city. And then thirdly, he warns you about some small things that can totally destroy your city. So here we go.

Number one, what is your city and is it shakeable? What is your primary source, in other words, of permanence, security, and peace? The invitation of Hebrews is to make God your primary source of these things. So to that end he gives you two warnings. The first one is in verse 26.

Look at this. Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. Then he leads you to a second thing, verse 29, a second warning. You see where he says our God is a consuming fire? Y'all, that is a sobering reality for me because that means that everything that I have accomplished, the things that people look and say, wow, you have done this or that, the question becomes with God is what was the motive for doing that? Was that done for the honor and glory of God or was it done for the honor and glory of JD?

Because you might be impressed with something that God knows that it wasn't about thy kingdom come, it was about my kingdom come. Everything is shaken. Everything. Everything goes through the fire.

Are you ready for that day? Here's the second thing. When Jesus is your city, right, so who is your city? And then secondly when Jesus is your city, in the middle of this passage the writer goes off on what almost seems like a tangent.

Follow this. They've left Egypt in search of a city, a city that God will give them. Here they come to the promised land and here is the presence of God and the dilemma is how do we find the permanence and joy and fulfillment that only comes from knowing God and living in his land if we're too sinful to even be in his presence?

So they lived in a state of fear. What if we haven't been good enough? Well, as you approach whatever mountain or whatever city represents your ultimate satisfaction, whenever you approach that you encounter the same dilemma.

What if you're not good enough to obtain what you need? And what happens is your life begins to be dominated by fear. Jesus, the writer says, is the better city because he's the only sure city. See, the ways that you have tried to secure a city have left you insecure and unstable and fearful. But when Jesus is your city, acceptance is given not based on how well you did or how well you accomplished.

It's given to you because he purchased it for you. That's what happens when Jesus is your city. Here's the third thing. Here's what can destroy your city.

Here's what can destroy your city. You see, in these verses he warns you against several things that can erode your faith. Here they are.

I think there are five total. Division, that's verse 14. Seek peace with all men. A friend of mine told me a story a few weeks ago. He's a missionary in a country in Africa and he said that there was a lady in his community whose husband died and she was completely impoverished so his family allowed this lady to live in their house. He said that she was trying to scrape up money together to be able to purchase a place to live, a little plot of land. So she gets this little piece of property, she scrapes up some money. He said she built just about a 10 by 10, I mean just a shack.

It had no electricity, no running water, but it was hers. He said about three months later, he said, I came home one afternoon and she's sitting out kind of in her front yard which is only about the same size of her house, about 10 by 10. And he said she was just sitting there and she had the most depressed look on her face and I said, you know, what's wrong? And she said, she kind of pointed over to the plot of ground next to her. She said, my neighbor, she says his garden, he lets his garden grow about six inches every week onto my property.

She says it's just slowly encroaching. And this guy, he said, well, I mean, we can fix that right now. Let's just go over and talk to this guy. And she's like, no, don't do that. He said, look, he said, we'll just go over, this is the American way, we'll have a little confrontation, he'll get his turnips out of your yard. She said, no, I don't want you to do that. He said, look, I don't even think you need to go, I'll go take care of it for you. And she said, do not go and confront this man. And he said, why? He said, I just, why would I not do that? And she said, because that man is sick. She said, that man is sick and soon he will be in the hospital. And when he's in the hospital, I will go to visit him. And I cannot tell him about Jesus if I have argued with him about the land.

Now, I'm not giving you a recommendation for how you do business. But I'm telling you that there are moments when you are wronged that the way that God renews your commitment to the city is by letting you take upon yourself the cross of Christ so that you suffer and you give blessing instead of cursing and you are renewed in the fact that it's more about him and not about you. Here's your second thing, worldliness, that's also in verse 14.

So the first thing you had was division, second thing is worldliness erodes that. See where he says, pursue holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. Holiness means two different things in the Bible, two concepts, we've gone over this. Holiness, first of all, means purity. It's where we get our word holiness from, holiness. And the other thing that holiness meant to the Jewish people was separated or other. That was literally what the word holiness meant in Hebrew, kadosh. Remember that? Isn't that like a great Hebrew word?

Kadosh. It meant to be separated from. So when God, they said God was holy, it meant he was totally pure and it meant he was totally other. So the opposite of holiness of holiness is worldliness because worldliness implies impurity and it implies things down here, things that are not other, things that are not bad in themselves but just consume your mind so that you don't think about eternal, don't think about other, the other things. So he tells you to pursue holiness because without holiness you will never see God. And see God there means see it with the eyes of faith. You'll never be able to see the glory of God on earth. You'll never be able to, watch this, you'll never be able to perceive what he's doing and whatever he's working. You'll never be able to perceive him when your heart is filled with worldliness. When your mind is saturated with the world, it is dulled to the purity and the beauty of God.

Your ability to see God, your ability to have faith is inhibited. So he says literally pursue. In Greek, literally persecute. Same word for persecute. Persecute holiness. Hunt it down like Jason Bourne. Track it relentlessly. Growing in holiness is an uphill climb. It's like riding a bike. You quit peddling when you're going uphill. You're not staying still. You're going backwards. You gotta hunt it, he says.

Charles Spurgeon. You will never gain holiness by standing still. Nobody ever grew holy without agonizing to be holy.

Sin will grow without sowing, but holiness needs cultivation. Follow it. It will not run after you. You must pursue it with determination, with eagerness, with perseverance as a hunter pursues its prey.

You have to hunt it. It's not coming naturally. You have to discipline yourself to read the Bible. You don't hop out of bed and just think, oh, I'm just going to read the Bible today because I feel like it. Hey, newsflash, I don't feel like it a lot of times in the morning either. I hope that doesn't burst your bubble about me as a pastor, but I don't always get up in the morning singing Chris Tomlin songs on my heart and trying to find my Bible.

I'm thinking, where's the coffee maker? And thinking about all the things that I gotta do throughout that day. It takes discipline to read the Bible. It takes discipline to memorize Scripture. I've got to pursue holiness. People ask me sometimes, how do you read so many books? You would be surprised what you can accomplish in 30 or 45 minutes every night if you turned off that stupid television and just got into something that would enrich your soul. You're like, well, I'm not a reader.

Well, A, go to school and become one, okay? And B, if that really is true, then listen to podcasts or Scripture in your iPod when you drive around. For most of you, the greatest enemy to your faith is not some cataclysmic event that messes up your faith.

It is the slow rot of TV, Facebook, new cars, or toys. The enemy's primary way of tearing you apart is not through unbelief, it's through distraction. He just distracts you away from it. You will likely, here's the thing, most of you will likely continue to do Christian things. It's just too much in your culture to quit going to church altogether or quit believing in God. But you'll do it, you'll go through the motions without the soul of passion for God and the faith that pleases him.

Pursue holiness because without that nobody will actually see God. By the way, that verse also tells you, just in case this applies to you, that verse tells you that if you're one of those kind of people who feel like coming to church and doing some God stuff and then you go out from here and you've got a handful of things in your life that you know are wrong, you know are displeasing to God, you're like, I'm just gonna do those anyway. You need to put up the idea forever that God's okay, that that's how you live and you come to church and he thinks that that's okay and he's just gonna let you.

Yes, God forgives all sin but he forgives sins that have been repented of and for you to live in open defiance of him, for you to acknowledge him with your lips and then defy him with your life. He says that kind of rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft. You might as well leave this place and go worship Satan because that's how he sees it. He says these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are from me. They sing, you know the way that Christians tell lies, A.W.

Tozer said, is they sing them. They honor me with their lips but they go out and then the way they do business, the way they treat their spouse, the other relationships they have outside of their marriage are the things that crucify me. You actually think God is going to be mocked like that? Like he's okay that you sing him songs on Sunday and defy him with your life? You have to pursue holiness because without that nobody will see God. God forgives all sins. Christ died for all sins but it's sins that you repent of. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. We'll return to our teaching in just a moment but I wanted to quickly tell you about our featured resource this month created just for you. One thing that Hebrews has been telling us in this series is that we're supposed to keep fighting for our faith and never give up. We'd love to get you a copy of our newest Bible study that follows along with the teaching on the program. We'll learn that Jesus is greater than every other hero of our faith. He is our prophet, our priest, and our king.

Receive the Christ is Better Bible Study with your gift to the ministry right now by calling us at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to the unshakable city and Pastor J.D. 's final thoughts. Here's your third thing, bitterness. Bitterness destroys. Verse 15, see that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled. Root of bitterness is in quotes in your Bible, if you have the ESV, that's what I'm reading from.

Root of bitterness is in quotes because it is a quote from an Old Testament passage in Deuteronomy warning the children of Israel not to let idolatry grow among them because idolatry like a poisonous weed will infiltrate their whole garden. Now what struck me as I read this passage are the consequences of this. That there are a lot of people who are going to miss the grace of God, not because they've sinned in such a way that God can't forgive them, that's never the case. They're going to miss the grace of God because they're just distracted from it by idolatry. Idolatry is usually not fixated on bad things. Idolatry is when something becomes too important to you, becomes more important than God. I've told you that the word in Hebrew for idolatry or the word for glory is the word chabod.

And chabod literally means weight. To make something in idols to give it too much weight, to give it more weight in your life than God has. It's when a good thing becomes a God thing and so turns into a bad thing. It is when money becomes your obsession. It is when the approval of people becomes your obsession. It is when your children, your marriage, finding romance, finding a new marriage, finding a good marriage becomes your obsession. It is the love of the first place.

Here is how you tell that that root of idolatry is growing in you and corrupting and destroying you. What dominates your thoughts? What dominates your thoughts? What upsets you? What makes you jealous?

What's made you bitter? Because those things are all smoke from a fire that go back to your idolatry. It is when these things, this root that is growing and it is destroying you. Idolatry is subtle. It's not the kind of thing that you can stand up here and just point and say, you and you and you. It's the kind of thing that is subtle but it is very, very serious because it keeps people from grabbing hold of the grace of God.

It is literally choking literally choking the life out of you. It is spreading to your children. It is spreading to your friends and it is causing you to fail to grab hold of the grace of God because you just don't see the need for it.

Our enemy's primary weapon against you is not unbelief. It is distraction and he distracts through these roots of idolatry that grow among the garden of faith. Here's number four, sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures. See to it that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal.

Now this is an interesting image. You know the story of Esau? Okay, so in Genesis, Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau. Esau is a hunter. He's a man's man, right? He drives an F-150. Jacob, not so much a man's man. He watches the cooking channel, the Food Network. You know, he drives a little you know, he drives a little Mini Cooper.

Not the kind of Italian job but like a little dainty kind. And he, you know, so he's at home cooking and Esau is out hunting and Esau comes home one day and Esau is the firstborn so he's going to get the what they call the birthright. The birthright was all the promises. It was all the inheritance.

We're talking something of massive value. Esau comes home from hunting and he's powerful hungry and he's shot something while he's hunting but it's going to take a while to prepare it. And so Jacob is just finished this little lentil stew that he cooked. And Esau says, man I'm so hungry brother would you give me some food? And Jacob, who was kind of crafty and a deceiver, says yeah I'll give you some food. I'll tell you what, I'll trade you some of this food for your birthright.

Which is just crazy. I mean it's just like, you know, hey five bucks could I have your retirement? You know, and Esau's like, oh well here was his reasoning. His reasoning was, you know, my birthright's not going to do me any good if I'm dead and I'm so hungry I feel like I'm going to die. So sure you can have my birthright.

I'm going to have a cup. He traded his birthright for a cup of soup and it was lentil soup. How gross is that?

Right? And so he, you know, he but he was so enslaved to his physical desires that he traded. He sacrificed the eternal on the altar of his stomach. And the author says this is what a lot of people who were so enslaved to their bodily pleasures that they are kept from eternity by things like sexual immorality. That's why he brings that in there. You realize how much of our lives, especially those of you that are younger, how much of your life is dedicated to just giving yourself the physical sensations that you want? I mean, you know, Rolling Stone magazine had an article talking about the really good parties in Hollywood and Nashville are the parties that start about Friday at four o'clock and end about Monday at two in the afternoon.

And these are the parties that are filled with great food, sex, alcohol, ecstasy. And you think thousands of dollars and people's whole lives are spent just trying to create sensations in them. Are sensations really that valuable in light of eternity? Are creature comforts?

Is sexual immorality or just just tingly things in your body, is that really worth your soul? Pascal, philosopher, 300 years ago, 400 years ago, used an image on this and I give it to you all the time. He said the tragedy with most people, his image was, he said it's like they're barreling toward a cliff in a, you know, a horse strong carriage. They know the cliff is coming.

They know it's there. They know that their death is right in front of them and is a few minutes away. He said, but then they start to distract themselves with what they've got to eat in the carriage, the pretty scenery that is around the carriage. He said, how crazy for a person to actually live that way. He said, but that's what people do when they know that their death is coming. They know eternity is there and they're addicted to living in the right house, having the sexual encounters they want to have because they just are addicted to physical sensations.

They're like Esau who sold his eternity for a cup of soup. It is sensual pleasures that erode those things. God created sensual pleasures. He wants you, He created, wants you to happen to the fullest. But some of you are so distracted by them, it keeps you from ever grabbing hold of the grace of God and surrendering yourself to God.

Here's the last one, inattention. Inattention, verse 25, see to it that you don't refuse him who is speaking. The author then says, he says, imagine, basically, he says, imagine you were there that day on that mountain when the Israelites came up to the mountain. And here's a mountain that is filled with thunder and lightning. God is on the mountain.

And God starts speaking out of the mountain. Now, imagine you were there. Do you think it's likely that anybody was like, hey, would you cut it out? Would you turn that down? I'm trying to concentrate here.

I'm trying to do something. Would God, could you be quiet? No, nobody put God on the back burner. God was speaking out of a mountain, so they stopped what they were doing and they turned and they listened. And the writer says, if that's how they paid attention to God, how much more would you listen to a God who spoke out of Calvary? That was God. That was God who had not surrounded himself with a perimeter and covered himself with thunder and lightning to keep you away. That was a God who took the thunder and lightning of God's judgment into himself whose body was ripped apart for you.

That was God. You know the details of the crucifixion? Beaten with a cat of nine tails that would have shredded his skin. The pieces of bone and glass, they say that, historians say, would have, would have, were often, they would likely lodge themselves into a rib and often just rip a rib off of a man's frame during the beating. They tell us that it's very likely that Jesus was at least partially disemboweled after that beating.

Isaiah says he didn't even look like a man when they got done. Then he was strung up naked, had nails put in his hands and his feet, taking into himself the punishment for your sin. And you just put it on the back burner. You treat it like a secondary thought, like it's not that important, like something you'll get to it later. How possibly could you hope to escape if God was speaking in Christ and you just thought it wasn't that important?

You just thought it was something that you could just deal with later. That was God. And I would say that most of you listening to me right now at any of our campuses, you believe that that was God. If that is God, do you realize how important the message that he was giving to you was? And that message is that Christ died for sinners and there's no possible hope apart from him to go to heaven, that you have to receive what he has done. J.C. Ryle, one of our preaching heroes, listen to this. It is a lack of seriousness that keeps most people from heaven.

The carefree way that they go through life. God is serious in observing us. Christ is serious in his death for us. The Spirit is serious in striving with us. The truths of God are serious. Our spiritual enemies are serious in their endeavors to ruin us. Poor lost sinners are serious in hell. Why then would we not be serious too? I'm not up here each week telling jokes, entertaining people, giving them a religious pep talk. I am trying to save your life.

And I hope you don't think that's a too important sense of my own job. I'm just saying that it is the word of God given to people by which they find eternal security in him. It is God speaking.

We don't have music up here that's designed to entertain and keep you, you know, like oh I like that. It is there to point you to the unspeakable riches that have been given by God in Christ that if you ignore how can we possibly escape, Hebrews 2-3, if we neglect so great a salvation that God has given. Is God shaking you? Does he need to show you that the only foundation that will truly survive is Jesus Christ? Use your seasons of difficulty to re-establish your trust in him. That's a challenging message from Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. We're in a study of Hebrews called Christ is Better. And if you'd like to hear any of the previous messages, you can find them all online at jdgreer.com.

You know Hebrews shows us that the Old Testament was a shadow of everything in the New Testament. It all points ahead to Jesus. This month we are offering the Christ is Better Bible Study Guide as a way to drive home that he is worthy of our trust and devotion. You can get this exclusive new study when you donate today by calling 866-335-5220. That number again is 866-335-5220.

Or give your gift online at jdgreer.com. Before we close, let me remind you that if you aren't yet signed up for our email list, you'll want to do that today. It is the best way to stay up to date with Pastor J.D. 's latest blog posts. And we'll also make sure that you never miss a new resource or series. It's quick and easy to sign up at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us tomorrow when we'll be talking about getting plugged into the gospel.

It's a practical message. Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.