Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Jesus' life was not defined by what he avoided. Jesus' life was defined by what he entered into. Had Jesus merely avoided sin, none of us would be saved. We're saved because Jesus not only avoided sin, he entered into suffering. And if you're a follower of his, your life is not going to be defined by just avoiding sin.
It's also going to be defined by entering into suffering just like he did. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Today on the program, Pastor J.D. asks us a couple of very blunt questions.
Are you a sheep or a goat? Are you lukewarm? I mean, we all struggle with seasons where we aren't as on point as where we'd like to be, where we are striving to maintain a commitment to Christ, but we simply falter.
I've been there, but does that make me lukewarm? Luckily, Pastor J.D. doesn't just ask these types of questions, but he shows us how to find biblical answers that can help propel us toward a life on fire for the Lord.
As always, if you miss any of these programs or if you're in search of our featured monthly resource, you can find it all online at jdgreer.com or by calling us at 866-335-5220. But right now, let's rejoin Pastor J.D. in this message he titled, Either a Sheep or a Goat. The sign of genuine saving faith is a passionate commitment to the people of God and a passionate commitment to the mission of God. You see, there are two ways for us to tell what you believe.
One is what your mouth says, the other is what your life says, and one of those is way more reliable than the other one. And if what your life says is different than what your mouth says about what you believe, God accepts the testimony of your life every single time. So the question is not, what does your mouth say you believe about Jesus? The question is, what does your calendar and your bank account and your daily habits, what does that say about your belief in the lordship of Jesus and the generosity of Christ?
Which leads me to number two. This question presents this question, is it possible to be a lukewarm Christian? Now, if you're not familiar with church lingo, lukewarm Christian, that's a concept that comes from Revelation chapter three, where Jesus is talking about a church where he says, listen, you're neither hot nor cold, you're lukewarm and I just want to spit you out of my mouth. It's like, I mean, hot coffee is awesome, cold brew in the afternoon is awesome, room temperature coffee, you just want to spit it out of your mouth. And Jesus is saying something similar.
He's like, I wish you were hot, I wish you were cold, but this kind of lukewarm, half in, half out, sort of committed, not committed, it just makes me nauseous. Lukewarm Christians are Christians who sit in churches, believe the message, but are not really sold out to Jesus and not meaningfully engaged in his mission. It is these kinds of Christians that Jesus is describing in these three parables. The maidens consider themselves friends of the bridegroom, but they don't live in a way anticipated by anticipating his return.
All they're thinking about is how to be comfortable for the evening, not how to be faithful in their assignment to the bridegroom. The wicked servant considers himself in the employ of the master, but he has never offered his talents without reserve for use in the kingdom. Lukewarm Christians are Christians who sit in churches and come on a regular basis, but are just not sold out to the mission.
There's no middle ground. There's either sheep or goats. You're either committed to the mission, using your resources for the kingdom, all in for Jesus, or you're not. Either a sheep or a goat.
And see that puts lukewarm Christians in a very precarious position. I've told you before that one of the things in these parables that has always gripped me is how when the master in the second parable comes back and rewards the first two servants for their investment in the kingdom, the third servant who remember buried his talent, just buried his money and just gave it back to the master. The master refers to him as wicked. And the question I ask is, well, what wicked thing had he done?
Right? There was no immorality in there. He didn't take the money and blow it on prostitutes or gambling or embezzle it or anything like that. He gave it back.
He gave back a hundred percent of everything that had been given to him. And Jesus calls him wicked. What wicked thing had he done?
And here's my conclusion. I've told you, there's more than one way to be wicked in the kingdom of God. You can be wicked through an egregious violation of the 10 commandments.
Yep. You can go out and be immoral and that would classify you as wicked, but you can also be wicked by simply failing to leverage and invest what God has given you for his kingdom for the purposes for which he gave it to you. The first, the first breaking the 10 commandments, we would call that becoming wicked by the sins of commission. The second one, not leveraging your life and using it for the kingdom would be becoming wicked by the sin of omission.
We preach a lot here about the first, about not breaking the commandments, but what about the latter? Let me ask you, have you ever offered your life, your talents, your time, your talents, and your treasure without reservation as a blank check to God? For those of you who are in high school, middle school, college, have you ever said to God, I'm glad you're trying to be a good Christian. I'm glad you're here learning the Bible. I'm glad you're trying to be a good person at school, but have you ever said, God, every second of my life from this point on all my talents, all my treasures, all my time is a blank check to you. You show me where you want to use it and how, because my life belongs to you. One of the things we've learned as Forbes Magazine says that the average senior adult now lives 20 plus years after their retirement. Our question is, have you offered those 20 years to God and said, God, how do you, how do you want me to use these next two decades?
It's probably not going to be just a coast out into eternity. There's probably something God wants you to do for his kingdom. I don't know what the answer is, but have you offered it to him as a blank check?
All right. If we looked at your giving, all of you, if we looked at your giving, would we say that your giving represents somebody who is all in with the mission of God? Are you a lukewarm Christian? Francis Chan's book, Crazy Love has a chapter where he describes the profile of a lukewarm Christian, which you could, you know, I think you could see straight from these parables. You could say that everything he got comes straight from these parables. All the people that he describes are regular in their church attendance and all of them are pretty accurate in what they believe about the Bible and the gospel.
Here's how he describes them. Lukewarm people, first of all, don't really want to be saved from their sin. They just want to be saved from the penalty of their sin.
You know the difference? In other words, Jesus is useful for keeping them out of hell, but they're not really interested in loving Jesus and eradicating sin from their heart, sins that nobody can see. Jesus is useful to them as a way of avoiding hell, but he's not beautiful to them as somebody that they worship. Lukewarm people are moved by stories about people who do radical things for Christ, right?
You love to hear them in church, love to hear these stories of missionaries, and you love to applaud people who are sacrificing for the kingdom, yet they do not do radical things themselves. In fact, lukewarm people kind of call radical what Jesus calls normal. What Jesus expects of all of his followers, lukewarm people say, wow, that's crazy radical.
You're just all sold out. Lukewarm people equate their partially sanitized lives with holiness, but they could not be more wrong because Jesus did not call us to sanitation. He called us to discipleship. To be a follower of Jesus doesn't mean that you live a sanitized life. In fact, it means you get your hands dirty by bringing healing and salvation to people just like he did.
So it's like a friend of mine says, in the church today, we tend to disinfect people rather than disciple them. We define holiness by what Christians avoid rather than being like Jesus. I mean, holiness, isn't that what holiness is, is being like Jesus? Jesus' life was not defined by what he avoided. Jesus' life was defined by what he entered into. Had Jesus merely avoided sin, none of us would be saved. We're saved because Jesus not only avoided sin, he entered into suffering. And if you're a follower of his, your life is not going to be defined by just avoiding sin.
It's also going to be defined by entering into suffering just like he did. How about this one? Lukewarm people rarely share their faith with their neighbors or coworkers or their friends. They want to. Oh, they think it's a good idea. They love it when other people do.
But when it actually comes down to the moment where they would share their faith, it's just too awkward. And see, the bottom line is they care more about their comfortability. They care more about avoiding awkwardness with their neighbors than they do the eternal soul of their neighbor. And so they just prefer to sit back and hope somebody else does it because they're lukewarm. Lukewarm people think about life on earth like these maidens did much more often than eternity in heaven. Lukewarm people love their luxuries and rarely give to the poor in a truly sacrificial way. They love the concept of giving. They love it when other people do, but when it comes down to actually giving in a way that would maybe threaten some of these luxuries that they have worked so hard to obtain, they're not going there. Lukewarm people don't live by faith.
Their lives are structures that they never have to. I mean, you can see that from this parable of the talents, right? There's always risk that it's involved in the kingdom. There's always kind of a blank check that says, I don't know what you're going to do with this, but here it is. If you are not in a place where you feel desperate for the spirit of God, there is no way that you're on the front lines of the mission. When you're on the front lines, you feel desperately your need for God's help.
Let me give you one more here. Lukewarm people give God the leftovers. And by the way, sometimes they're really big leftovers because you're really wealthy. Sometimes they're really impressive and they get you on list of top donors to organizations and churches.
But at the end of the day, they're the leftovers and they're not your first and your best. The prophet Malachi talked, for example, about a bunch of priests who gave to God, but they kept for themselves the best spotless animals and passed on to God, the less desirable animals. And they assumed, they assumed that God was pleased because, you know, at least they'd sacrificed something.
Their name was on the donor list. Yet God described them and their practice, Malachi 1.8, as evil, not just inadequate, but evil. If your giving does not represent your first and your best, it is evil to God. So what I'm trying to tell you, and I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, I'm just trying to tell you when the offering plate goes by, keep your lunch money.
Don't throw your lunch money in there to make yourself feel better. God deserves your first and your best. And if you're not going to give your first and your best, then God doesn't want it at all. And stop calling it like too many bills or forgetfulness, or I got a busy schedule. Call it what it is.
It's evil. That's what Jesus is talking about here with the lukewarm Christian. Now, listen, I don't want to give you the wrong idea.
And I know that I already have with some of you. We all struggle, all of us, including, especially your pastor, struggles with seasons where we're lukewarm. And it's difficult to strive to maintain commitments, seasons where we falter. All of us are like that.
But the fundamental question, listen, here's the fundamental question is this. When you became a Christian, did it include for you a surrender to get engaged in the mission of God? I'm not asking do you falter and do you go through seasons where sometimes you're this and sometimes you fall back a little bit. I'm saying when you became a Christian, did it include for you a blank check surrender to get engaged in the mission of God, or was your Christianity more of a belief thing, a go to church thing, have Jesus saved me from hell thing, a basic morality and avoid the big sins thing, or have you personally gotten engaged in the mission of God and offered your time, your talent, and your treasures as a blank check to God at whatever age you are.
If not, you are not a follower of Jesus. Don't sit there and hide behind the, well, I just don't know really what I'm called to. People use that with me all the time as a way of just excusing, not getting involved and avoiding action.
Here's what I usually ask them back. I'm like, okay, did you hear God calling you to watch TV yesterday? No, but you did it, right? Did you hear God last year call you and your family to go on a vacation? Did you come into your family and say, you know what?
I've been praying about this. And I feel like God's called us to go on a vacation. And my point in that is not to say that vacations or exercise or even watching TV is wrong, just that we're so quick to rationalize our entertainment and other priorities that we are slow to commit to serving God. So stop using that as an excuse, right? In fact, you're like, well, I can't forget what I'm called to.
Try about 10 different things and let God call you out of one of them. Don't write this off by saying, well, I can't afford it, right? I'm just not that wealthy. Do you realize that if you make average household income $4,000 a month, 48,000 a year, if you make that in your household, you automatically make a hundred times more, a hundred times more than the average person on this planet.
I mean, honestly, y'all what's more messed up? What's more messed up that we have so much compared to everybody else or that we still don't think we're rich? That we can make a hundred times more than everybody else and say, yep, I'm poor. I'm broke.
I ain't got nothing. We are neither of those things. We are rich. All of us are filthy rich. How can we have so much, but be doing so relatively little to relieve suffering and still call ourselves followers of Jesus?
So what are you doing with your resources? A strong challenge from Pastor JD here on Summit Life. We'll finish up this teaching in just a moment, but first let me share how you can get quick access to more free gospel-centered resources. Did you know we have a biweekly newsletter packed with useful content just for you? Twice a week, we'll send you the latest from Pastor JD, links to recent radio, TV, and podcast episodes, news on free downloads, updates on new releases, and even stories from fellow listeners.
It's the easiest way to stay connected and never miss out. And when you sign up today at jdgrier.com, we'll actually send you our latest free download. It's the Resting Well Checklist to help you cultivate rhythms of peace. It works right alongside our featured resource this month. Whether you're feeling spiritually scattered or simply need a fresh focus, this free resource is here to help point you in the right direction.
It's all free because of the generosity of our giving family. So don't wait. Head to jdgrier.com now and sign up for the newsletter.
You won't want to miss this. Now let's get back to our teaching today. Once again, here's Pastor JD. The sign of genuine saving faith is a passionate commitment to the people of God and the mission of God. There are two ways for us to tell what you believe. One is what your mouth says. Yeah, that's what your life says.
And one of those is way more reliable than the other one. And if what your mouth says you believe is different than what your life says you believe, God accepts the testimony of your life every single time. The question is, what does your life and your checkbook and your calendar and your daily schedule, what does that say about your belief in the lordship of Christ and your belief in the mercy of the gospel? So let's ask our third question.
Who might be the least of these my brothers who we should be serving today? Well, let's start with the obvious. One of the most obvious application or persecuted believers around the world. Now I'd say we live mostly isolated from this in the United States, not entirely.
We face it in our own different ways. But in 2017, 3,066 Christians were killed specifically because of their faith. And just as many were abducted or raped for that same reason. 793 churches last year were attacked and burned. They say that 2017 was by the numbers the worst year for persecution in Christian history.
Let me give you a second category here of people he might've been talking about today. Poor believers around the world. Many believers in places around the world live on basic subsistence. There are about 500 million Christians, many of whom are children that live on less than $2 a day, which is why we at this church partner with a group called Compassion. Compassion is the best ministry that we found.
I'm sure there are others, but it's one of the best that we found that connects you to impoverished children. It's not just charity, like an NGO where you come in and drop off a bag of rice and zoom off somewhere else. It is committed to raising up leaders so that they can raise up the level of their community in a holistic way.
It will only work through local leaders. They work through local churches. And if there's not a church in the area, they'll work to see one planted.
And then they'll use that church to start a program for children that will help meet their medical needs, education needs, and give them spiritual training to come and follow Jesus. My family, we have four children that we sponsor, one for each of my kids. We sponsor them monthly.
My kids write them letters. We're involved in their lives. We've taken two mission trips and we're planning, Lord willing, a third coming up. And that is a way that we're involved. And it's a way that you can be involved. And by the way, for some of you, your action step in this could be just to go on a mission trip with us. We don't have you go on mission trips so that you can be vacationaries and, you know, see exotic places around the world. We want you to see firsthand what God is doing in some of these places.
And so let me give you another category here. Neglected believers in our own community is a way we could, we could fulfill this. We could start with, with the ones that James, the half brother of Jesus said, widows and orphans, or how about this older senior citizens who are in rest homes, who are believers and never have somebody come by and just tell them, Hey man, we love you. We want to take care of you. And we don't want you to be lonely. Foster kids in our community.
By the way, I heard the greatest story. You know, we, our church, we've gotten very committed to the foster system here and we have multiple families that are engaged in it. We had a family that wanted to become a foster family.
You know, to do that, you got to get a lot of training, certification, a lot of testing. And so they were being interviewed by, it was a medical doctor and they were sitting out with the doctor and the doctor said, okay, so why do you want to become foster parents? And the dad said, well, we believe God rescued us when we were orphans.
So it just seems appropriate that we would take our time and our talents and our treasures and use that to rescue others. Doctor looks at him, puts down the pen and says, do you go to the summit church? And the wife said, well, why do you ask that? He said, because I can't tell you how many times I've heard that very thing. And there are always people that are go to the summit church who'd say that. He said, I'll tell you something else we can track here in Durham County, the foster care services, we can track the date your church decided to get involved because you've made the biggest difference of anything that has happened in the foster care system over the last thing of when you got involved.
This is what we're talking about. We're talking about you loving people in Jesus name. Give you another category. I would mention that one of the ways that we specifically in the majority community can heed Jesus's instructions in Matthew 25 of loving the least of these, my brothers and sisters is being committed to justice for anybody in our community who is not treated equally under the law or who doesn't have access to the same opportunities and privileges that we do. I mean, part of what it means to love brothers and sisters of Jesus everywhere is that we are committed not just to justice for us and our kids, but we're committed to justice for anybody everywhere, even if it doesn't affect us. Two more categories real quick here, refugees and immigrants. Listen, I understand that our government has some really difficult questions when it comes to the best refugee settlement programs and the right immigration policy. I get that.
And I get that there's a lot of complexity in that. And personally, I'm praying for our leaders in that, and I'm glad it's their decision, not mine. But see, I've got a different set of questions when it comes to being a pastor and a follower of Jesus. And what that means is that when somebody shows up in my community, regardless of the legality of how they got there, I know what my responsibility is. And it is to love them like Jesus has loved me. I can pray for my leaders. And we can even have engaging discussions about what the right best policies are that balance security and fairness and general. We can talk about all that. But I know that as a follower of Jesus, when somebody is in front of me, especially Jesus says, if they are claiming to be believers, which many of them are, I know my responsibility is to love them as I would want to be loved or want one of my children to be loved.
Let me add in one final category here. And that is future brethren of Jesus. I can't help but read Matthew 25 through kind of a future lens of Jesus talking about people that had not yet come to believe on him.
And he was saying, when you reached out to them, when you reached out to this person who had become one of my children, I took that as being done to me. If we believe the gospel, how can we not be actively and sacrificially engaged as a church in carrying the gospel to the nations? Not too long ago, a study I was reading showed that, listen to this, the average American congregation spent no more than 7% of its annual budget on anything apart from ministry within its four walls. 93% got spent on ministry within the four walls, only 7% went outside. Of that 7%, less than half ever left the United States.
Of that half that left the United States, only one third, now we're talking with 1%, ever went to meeting people's physical needs. In other words, listen, roughly one penny of every dollar of American Christian giving to the local church, only one penny of every dollar directly implements Jesus's vision in this parable across national boundaries. Now I'll tell you, Summit Church, last year, last year, 19% of what we took in was dedicated to getting the gospel to the ends of the earth. And we want that to be a lot more, but it's why we are so focused on mission's giving. It doesn't benefit us, it's not a direct, it's that we know that we've got to fulfill what Jesus says here in Matthew 25. It's one of the reasons, by the way, I am getting involved more in the Southern Baptist Convention, because that's who we give a lot of our money through and we want to see a leaner, more efficient structure in getting the people to the nations, right? I mean, if we've got people that are dangling on the end of the rope in some of these countries, then doesn't it mean we got to do what we need to do on our side to make sure that we've got the best structure to support them and send them?
I mean, I always think of William Carey, who was the British missionary who went to India, the father of the modern missions movement. As he was leaving, he told this congregation in Great Britain, he said, I'll go dangle on the other end of that rope in India, but you got to promise to hold securely on the other side. For those of us that God has called to stay here, which I'm in that category now, I've got a commitment to the people that are carrying out Matthew 25. I got to hold the rope, which means I give and I pray and I take trips to go support and just lift up their hands and say, how can I serve you? How can I bless you? Are you going to be a sheep or a goat? Our call today is to trust Christ, surrender to service and his kingdom and actually get involved.
Are you doing that? I don't know about you, but that truth resonated with me today. You were listening to Summit Life with pastor, author and teacher, JD Greer. Pastor JD, as a listener funded organization, what kind of impact does a financial gift to Summit Life really make?
Yeah, Molly, I don't think this is an overstatement. Every time you give, you're helping change lives. I mean, think about somebody hearing a gospel centered message on their commute to work or a family sitting down together to watch a TV broadcast that encourages their faith. Maybe somebody is unable to get to church for medical reasons or whatever reason, they're traveling and they're able to hear the gospel preached in their home or in a hotel room.
Maybe it's somebody searching online who just stumbles across one of our podcasts. I type in the right keywords and realize that we've answered that question, the question that they're asking here. We hear stories that move us to tears sometimes of people that at just the right moment, God's word intersects their lives. Well, see, it's your generosity that makes that happen. Yeah, I'm the one with the mic and I'm the one that's doing a lot of the teaching, but without your generosity, we can't be in places where we can speak that word of God to people. And so your generosity literally enables us to do what we do.
And we are so thankful for it. If you're interested in learning more about that, becoming a gospel partner or just supporting the ministry and partnering with us through your prayer and through your generosity, you can go to jdgrae.com and find out more. While you're online, check out our newest resource called parables and peace.
It's a digital study guide designed to help you focus your heart and mind on God in a world that pulls you in every direction. We'll send you a copy as a thank you for making a donation to the ministry today. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.
Or if it's easier, you can give online at jdgrae.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Thursday, Pastor J.D. Greer encourages us to look at our own hearts as he continues our series called Listen. We'll see you Thursday for Summit Life. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
