The Deliverer's name was Jesus. He paid for your sin and covered it over through his death, just like God promised to Adam and Eve. The deliverer who would cover our sin debt and crush the head of the serpent has come. All you have to do is believe it and then make your offerings in response to God's favor, not as an attempt to earn it. Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast with pastor, author, and apologist JD Greer.
As always, I'm your host, Molly Bidovich. Did you know that we have a weekly newsletter packed with free content? Every Tuesday, we'll send you the latest from Pastor JD. Links to recent podcast episodes, news on free downloads, updates on new releases, and even stories from fellow listeners. head over to jdgreer.com right now and sign up.
Today, Pastor JD begins a brand new, never-before-aired teaching series through Hebrews 11. by helping us see what faith looks like in practice. Hebrews 11 is often referred to as the Great Hall of Faith. But while the stories are indeed powerful, The people in them aren't perfect and their faith isn't unattainable. Today we look at Abel and Enoch and we're reminded that faith isn't just what we believe, it's how we live.
So let's get started. Here's Pastor JD. Hebrews chapter 11. I love sports halls of fame, and I particularly love watching good Hall of Fame induction speeches. One of my all-time favorites was from this guy.
I'm not sure if you recognize him or not. Hopefully, you do. This is Walter Payton, who played running back for 13 seasons with the Chicago Bears in the 1980s when all of the greatest athletes lived. His nickname, his nickname was: anybody remember his nickname? Sweetness, exactly.
Sweetness, because the way he could move and glide was just, it was like molasses, it was sugar, it was sweet. The best part of his induction speech was his explanation of how he developed all of his crazy moves. He said in that induction speech, and I quote, He said, my mom went to work on Saturdays and she made my older brother and sister clean the house. But because I was the baby of the family, she didn't make me help them. And I got to watch cartoons instead all morning.
So these guys routinely beat me up. That's the reason why I had the moves that I did. Because when you have an angry sister, an angry brother chasing you with a broom and a wet dish rag, you develop moves nobody's ever seen before.
So I want to thank them for this reward. We are starting a brand new series today through one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, Hebrews chapter 11, sometimes referred to as the Great Hall of Faith.
Now, I say Great Hall of Faith. But please do not think of Hebrews 11. As some kind of catalog of spiritual superheroes, angelic avengers or whatnot, you're going to find out these are very ordinary men and women with struggles and faults and spiritual warts, much like your own.
Sometimes you're going to see them stumble, sometimes they doubt.
Sometimes they do truly embarrassing things. In fact, many of them you will struggle to call saints in any definition of that word. But every single one of them you're going to see held on to a threefold conviction. No matter how faint and weak that conviction was, that conviction was that God was real. That he would keep his promises, and that seeking him was ultimately worth the effort.
Here is the key verse of Hebrews 11. It's verse 6. It says, without faith, It's impossible to please God. For he who comes to God must believe that he exists. And that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
We're going to return to that verse again and again and again in this series. In that verse, you see the threefold conviction of biblical faith that I just gave to you.
Okay, number one, God is real. Number two, he will keep his promises. And number three, seeking him is ultimately worth the effort. Over the next weeks, we're going to turn this thing called faith around like a many-sided diamond. With each character in Hebrews 11 showing us a different side of that diamond.
You ready? The first six verses are what we're going to look at today. The first three verses are the writer's introduction to faith, so to speak. And then verses four and five are his first two illustrations of faith.
So let's just move through those verses one at a time, if we could. Verse 1: Now faith, the writer says, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction. of things that are not yet seen. Faith is having an awareness that a world that you cannot see with your physical eyes is still very, very real. Real.
You say, well, Pastor, let me stop you right there. I don't believe in anything that I can't see with my eyes. Sure you do. Right now, there are literally billions of bits of data floating through the air around you, even passing right through you. There are digitized pictures and conversations and secrets and all kinds of information all around you, in the air around you.
You just have to have something to pick it up, like. You remember one of these old school things? A radio antenna? You gotta be able to pull the radio antenna. Everybody under the age of 18 is like, I have no idea what that is right there.
That is a radio antenna. Or, more popularly now, you have something like this, a phone that picks up this kind of data. You say, well, okay, okay, I spoke maybe a little bit too soon. You got me. Maybe I can't see everything with my eyes, but we can still prove that things like radio waves and digital waves, that those things physically exist.
Sure, it was just an analogy that I was giving you. My point is that for years, those radio waves existed. We just did not have the sensors to be able to pick them up. Is it possible that spiritual realities exist? I would ask this for those of you that would put yourself in this category of agnostic.
Is it possible that spiritual realities exist and that faith is the sensor that picks them up? Because that's what the author is saying. Faith is the assurance of things that are hoped for, the conviction of things that are not seen. It's a different kind of sensor for a different kind of data. Verse 2, for by it, the author says, the people of old received their commendation.
People of old is going to refer to people in the Old Testament who took God at his word and bet their lives on it. The people whose stories he's about to tell us in Hebrews 11. Commendation. You see that word in that verse. Commendation means affirmation or validation.
the proof that they had made the right choice.
Sometimes they're going to experience that commendation in the form of miracles. They're going to walk through fire unharmed. They're going to sleep the night through next to hungry lions. They're going to knock down giants with slingshots and part oceans right down the middle. But other times, other times the author's going to explain they didn't get their earthly validation.
The lions ate them up or the fire burned them up. They went to their graves with little earthly validation that they had made the right choice. But all of them, the writer says, held onto the conviction. Again, God was real. that his promises are true.
and that seeking him was ultimately worth the effort. Verse 3, by faith we understand, he says. That the worlds that we see, the universe, was framed by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. One of the first places we have to exercise faith. This in regards to the existence of our universe.
We cannot prove scientifically that God exists. Maybe somebody has implied to you that we can, we cannot. Science and reason can create space for belief in God. Create space for communication with God, but they cannot create faith in God. Science, for example, teaches us that the physical world cannot be infinite.
You cannot keep pushing the physical causes for things backwards, farther and farther, in infinite regress. Or to say it more plainly, it's logically impossible. We know that nothing times nobody can equal everything.
Something can't come from nothing.
So something back there has to be eternal, and that eternal thing is the cause of everything else. That is as far as science and reason can take you. See, and that's where faith comes in. Because faith is the antenna. The antenna that picks up on spiritual realities behind the physical ones.
All science can do is get you to a point where you realize the need to look beyond it. Faith hears the voice from beyond the physical world, speaking through the physical world. Where do you hear that voice, the writer says? You hear it through the word. By the way, notice already that the author has already introduced the concept of the Word of God here.
Verse 3, by faith we understand the world was framed by the word of God. The word is the primary instrument of faith. Faith comes by hearing, Paul will say in the book of Romans, hearing by the word of God. That word is going to come to us in various forms. It speaks to the beauty and the magnificence of creation, Psalm 19 says.
It whispers to us in the quietness of our consciences, beckoning us in moments of joy, screaming at us in moments of pain. That's Romans 1. The word speaks infallibly in the words of this book that we open up every week, which is why. The majority of what we do here at the Summit Church when it comes to messages is we read the words of this book and then we try to explain them because we hear a divine voice in it, 2 Timothy 3.16. The words of that book are the words of God.
Most of all, the word is Jesus. Jesus, the very Word of God. Faith recognizes the divine voice in those various manifestations of the word. It senses a divine reality in them and hears God speaking.
Now that's his introduction verses one through three Now, verses 4 and 5, he's going to give you his first two examples of faith, the first two sides of our faith diamonds, okay? Here's the first one: verse 4: By faith, he says, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. through which he was commended as righteous. God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, He still speaks.
Abel was Adam and Eve's second son, famously murdered by his brother Cain. Here is the story. It takes place in Genesis 4. If you want to jot that down, and you can turn there now or read it later. God had commanded Adam and Eve, his parents, right from the beginning of creation, to offer back to him, back to God, the first and best of their provisions as a way of declaring their dependence on him.
Cain was a farmer, so he brought an offering of grain. Abel was a shepherd, so he brought a lamb from his flock to offer back to God. And the writer of Genesis says this, Genesis 4:4. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering. But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard.
Why was Abel's sacrifice accepted? And Cain's rejected. There's no indication that God preferred the substance of Abel's offering, as if God was revealing right here at the beginning that he was a meat eater, not a vegetarian. And that's why he prefers Abel's leg of lamb to Cain's vegetable medley. I would love for that to be the indication here, but that is not what's going on.
No, God wanted them to make an offering from whatever their livelihood was.
So it made sense for Cain to bring grain, and it made sense for Abel to bring a lamb.
So what was the difference in their offerings?
Well, according to the book of Hebrews, Abel's was offered by faith. and Cain's was not. How so, you ask? Where do we see faith in Abel's offering to dine in Cain's? Two things, if you're taking those.
Number one, Abel gave his offering in response to God's promise. Let's back out from the story of Cain and Abel just a wee bit, okay? Genesis 3. Abel's parents, Adam and Eve, had sinned. The first thing they did after sinning was make for themselves fig leaves to cover up their nakedness and hide.
in the bushes. This is actually pretty important. The first emotion that human beings felt after sinning was a sense of shame about their nakedness. Genesis 2, of course, tells us that they had been naked before they sinned. but says explicitly that they were not ashamed of their nakedness.
Do you ever wonder what made them suddenly, now that they've sinned, feel naked? One of the early church fathers, Saint Augustine, said that it was because, up until this point, Adam and Eve had been clothed. and the love and the acceptance and the glory of God. But now, having stripped themselves of that covering, they felt naked. They suddenly noticed it and they felt ashamed.
So what did they do with this newfound feeling of nakedness?
Well, what does a normal human being do when they feel naked? How many of you have some form of that recurring dream where you find yourself walking around somewhere? and only your tidy whities. Right, raise your hand. I have that dream.
It's I have a recurring form of that dream in your dream. What do you do when you discover that you look down and realize that you're just standing there with nothing on except for your skiffvies? What do you do? What if you had a problem sleepwalking and suddenly you woke up one night at 2:30 a.m. in aisle 6 of a 24-hour Walmart in just your skivvies?
Well, I can tell you what you wouldn't do if you were normal. Right, you wouldn't say, well, while I'm here, I'll pick up a few odds and ends for the house, you know, make this a multi-purpose trip. No, you would. You would hide, you'd find something, hopefully bigger than this able, and you would hide behind it. You'd head for the clothing section where you could slip some clothes on.
Adam and Eve did something similar. They hid. and then they make clothes for themselves.
Well, later that evening, Genesis 3 says, God came down for his typical evening walk with them, and when he called out to them, For the first time, there was no response from them.
So he went looking for them, and when he found them, he said, What are you doing? You can't hide from me. It's pointless to try to cover yourselves. You can never do it. You're going to have to let me do it.
And then he took a lamb and he killed it in front of their eyes. And he took that lamb's skin and he made for them clothing. And then God made a promise to them. This is one of the most important verses in the Bible, Genesis 3:15. The first explicit gospel promise in the Bible.
God said one day, one day. Through one of your offspring, I'm going to send a deliverer. He's going to do more than just cover your sin. He's going to take it away. by suffering and dying for you.
Basically, what he was saying to them was this, you don't have to try. to cover up your nakedness. You can never do it anyway. Trust me. And I will provide that covering for you.
I will cover your sin and shame. Abel Listen. believe that promise. and he gave his offering in response to it. It was not an attempt to cover his nakedness.
It was an act of thanksgiving for the fact that God had covered his nakedness. Through his offering, he was basically saying, This offering is not an attempt to cover my sin. It's not an attempt to earn your favor. You've already promised that to me, God, in your deliverer. This sacrifice is a way of saying that I believe that promise.
And I belong to you. Cain, by contrast. Hope that through his offering he could cover his nakedness. He wanted through his offering to earn God's favor. He was like, God, look at me.
Look at me, look at all that I've accomplished. God, I'm good enough to earn your favor. This grain offering should buy your goodwill. Do you see the difference? The main point is not that Abel offered a lamb and Cain offered grain.
The point is the heart behind their offerings. One was given as an act of faith in gratitude for having received God's favor. The other was an attempt to earn it. Listen, many of you have gotten religiously active of recent. You've come to a point.
Something happened in your life where you realized you need God in your life. Or maybe you want them in your family or whatever.
So you've started to clean up your life and now you've come to church. Maybe here at the Alamance County campus this morning, you've been invited to church. You thought this is a new building, and you're just going to come. And you're like, I'm going to get my life back together. Hear me.
I am glad that you are here. But you're still cane. You're hoping through some activity, some offering. To make yourself acceptable to God. Maybe you're bringing in an offering of church activity or the offering of a Morally cleaned up life.
Look at how well I'm obeying the rules now. God, you've resolved to cuss less and go to church more. You're going to put some of your money in the offering in a few minutes, and you're always wondering. Is this enough? You see, the thing about Cain is he's always wondering if he's done enough to earn God's favor.
Is this enough, God? Are you okay with me now? And see, that makes you resentful. of people like Abel who seem to have the assurance of God's favor. That's some of you this morning.
You've gotten religious, but You still have the heart of Cain. That's the bad news. The good news is that you can be able right now. Just you just gotta believe what Abel believed. That's all it takes, the belief that God has sent a deliverer to take away your sin, just like he promised.
Yeah. And that he fully accepts you now because of what this deliverer has done. God did not accept Abel's offering because he'd lived a better life than Cain had lived. That's kind of the whole point. He accepted Abel's offering because Abel believed that God would do what God said he would do.
And he made his offering trusting in that promise. Listen, in case you're not connecting the dots, God. has provided the deliverer he promised in Genesis 3.15. The deliverer's name was Jesus. He paid for your sin and covered it over through his death, just like God promised to Adam and Eve.
The deliverer who would cover our sin debt and crush the head of the serpent has come. All you have to do is believe it and then make your offerings in response to God's favor, not as an attempt to earn it. Cain makes his offering to earn the approval of God. Abel makes his offering because he's assured that he already has it. that he's received it as a gift.
Which leads me to the second thing about Abel's offering that demonstrated faith that was absent from Cain's. Number two, Abel gave his offering, trusting in God's provision. Abel's faith extended beyond. Just a belief that God would cover his sin debt. Abel also believed that God would provide for his future.
How did Abel's offering demonstrate this in a way that Cain's did not?
Well Genesis 4 explicitly says... That Abel gave the firstborn of his flock. That's verse four. If you look at it in Genesis 4. What that means, the firstborn of his flock means, listen.
That before any other animal had been born. Abel gave the first one to God.
Now I'm sure, just think about it. Abel had to have been a little apprehensive. Surely he would have asked. When that first little baby lamb was born, But what if no more animals are born? What if this is the one and only?
If I give this one to God, I'm going to have nothing left. But instead, he declared, God, I'm just going to trust you with that. Given the firstborn was his way of saying God. I trust you to provide whatever I need from this point on. You get the first and the best.
And I'll trust you to bring in the rest. Cain, by contrast. didn't trust God. You see, Genesis 4 does not use the word firstfruit with Cain's offering, which is a distinct omission. That means Cain Waited to see if he had enough.
after the whole crop had come in. Only then did he give some to God out of the overflow, out of the excess, once he'd made sure that he had all he needed and wanted. Abel gave the first, trusting God to provide the rest. Cain gave out of the overflow after he was sure that he'd have enough to take care of himself. Here is the question.
Which one better describes? Your approach to offering. Are you the kind who says, okay, after I pay my bills? After I've gotten what I really want to get, I'll give some of the leftover to God. Or do you say, God, you get the first and the best before anything else comes in, and I'm going to trust you to bring in whatever else I need.
See, Abel believed that if God would keep his promise to take care of his sin. He could surely also trust God to provide for his needs. I mean, that's a really simple logical syllogism, right? If you can trust God to take care of your sin, of course he's going to take care of your physical needs too, right? Why would he take care of the greater need that cost his son his life?
and then not be willing to take care of the lesser ones that really don't cost him anything at all. He who did not spare his own son, Paul says, will he not also with him? All he also freely give us all things? That's the simplest logical syllogism in the world. Tell you reminds me of when I when I would take my kids to Disney World when they were younger.
Y'all know that Disney World is absurdly expensive, okay? And I know some of y'all love it. and think it is worth every dime, but I would sometimes. And by sometimes, I mean all the time. Find myself, they are saying.
Yeah. I'm not sure that the fun we're getting out of this is proportionate to the money that I'm putting into it. This might be a huge money-making scheme and maybe... Maybe, just maybe, I'm the willing victim in this whole thing. But I did it because I thought that's what a good dad does at least once or twice with his kids if he can't.
And so we're down there and I'm hot. And I'm miserable. And it's 11.30 a.m. and Veronica and I have been there since 7 a.m. for extra magic hours.
And I make the spontaneous decision at 11:30 that instead of eating lunch in the park, which will cost me approximately $442. That we're gonna run back to our hotel, which is on property Take a little break, have a swim, eat some lunch. But the net result is that we're about 30 minutes behind when we usually eat lunch. And one of my kids, I won't say which one, but his name rhymes with Madden, okay? Cries out in despair, Dad, are you going to just let us starve?
And I think, kid, I'm down here. I'm out several thousand dollars.
So that we can ride Dumbo and the bumper cars, because when your kids are young, you can't even ride the cool rides. And you think I brought you down here to let you starve? I would think that all this money and all this inconvenience would show you that I've got your best interest at heart and that I'm worthy of at least a little bit of trust. How does God feel? When we say that we believe he's taking care of our sinned dad.
I mean, we believe he loved us so much that he died in our place for our sin, but then we refused to trust him. For our daily provisions, I imagine that he feels similar to how I did in Disney World. Hang on, we'll continue this message in a moment, but first, let me share about a special free resource available to you today. When you sign up for the weekly newsletter I mentioned at the start of the program, we'll send you our latest free download. questions to kickstart spiritual growth.
It includes five sets of thought-provoking questions designed to spark meaningful conversations about what it truly means to follow Jesus with your whole life. These questions explore five key identities of a disciple. Worshipper? Family member, servant, steward, and witness. Use it with your small group at the dinner table or over coffee with a friend to take that next step in your walk with Christ.
It'll be available during the month of September at jdgreer.com free of charge, so don't wait.
Okay, let's finish up this teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JP. Abel's offering was given from the first fruits, and that proved that he really trusted God. Cain didn't give from the firstfruits. He gave only out of the excess, out of the leftovers.
Hey, I'll just say it straight.
Sometimes it helps just to cut through all the chase and say it as directly as I can. Whether or not you tithe. Giving the first fruit. determines in part Whether you have the heart. of a cane or an able.
You see, the Bible teaches that the first tithe of everything we receive, the first 10%, at a minimum. should be given to God as a declaration of our dependence on Him. And here's the deal. In our last church, we called a church survey, spontaneous church survey, snapshot is what we call it. We pass out a sheet with some questions.
We ask you to leave it anonymous. We want you to be completely and totally candid, transparent. The last one we did of that just a few months ago. Only 24%. Of the people at our church on the weekend, 24% of you.
Say that you tithe.
Now, again, this is self-reported. This is not my guess about you. This is what you say about yourselves. Thank you for being honest, by the way. But only 20 4% of you say that you tithe.
Now, I am not your judge. But what does that say? about whether or not you have the heart of Cain or Abel. What if you saw tithing? As a fairly reliable indicator of whether you actually believe the gospel.
That God will keep His promises to you, whether it's His promise to absorb your sin debt or to take care of your daily provision. And if you feel like this is manipulative, like I'm trying to collect an offering, that's not what I'm trying to do. In fact, if that reaction just happened in you, then please give it somewhere else. I'm not trying to raise money from you. I'm trying to ask you whether your faith is genuine and real, whether you're Cain or whether you're able.
Cain and Abel were both religious. They both brought offerings. Abel's was accepted because it was given in faith. Cain's was rejected because it was not. Because without faith, you see, it's impossible to please God.
It doesn't matter how much you give, doesn't matter how big your offering is, or how flawless your Christianity is. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Whoever comes to God must believe that He exists and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Yo, listen, the Bible teaches that there is an eternal, listen, dividing line. that runs right down the middle of families.
Right down the middle of small groups. Right between friends. right down the middle of local churches. It runs right through this audience. This is a recurring biblical theme.
Two people sitting side by side. Your outside activities look exactly the same. You both carry your Bibles. You both put an offering into the bucket. You both raise your hands in worship.
You know the same verses, but inside your polar opposites: Cain and Abel, the ten foolish bridesmaids and the ten wise ones, Judas and the rest of the disciples, the group in Matthew 7 who at the last judgment say to Jesus, Lord, Lord, didn't we do many mighty works in your name? And Jesus responds, Depart from me, I never knew you. The sheep and the goats. That dividing line runs through this audience this morning. There are people sitting side by side this morning.
Both of you are making an offering to God. One offers in faith, believing that God has already paid his or her sin debt and that this offering is an act of loving gratitude. The other makes their offering hoping it's going to earn for them God's acceptance. One gives his tithe, giving the first and the best, trusting God to take care of him. The other says, God, after I'm sure I'm taken care of, I'll see what I got left over for you.
Everybody in here is either Cain or Abel. That dividing line runs right through this audience. The question is, which one are you?
Okay, I promised you two examples.
So let's briefly consider our second example. Enoch. Any verse 5, by faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death. And when he was not found, or he was not found because God. had taken him.
Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. Full disclosure. We aren't told a lot about Enoch. Ending stories comes right after Cain and Abels. It's in Genesis 5, takes up a grand total of seven verses.
Five and a half of those verses are about how long he lived and who his relatives were. That means that what he did in his life, all that he did, is encapsulated in just one and a half verses. Genesis 5:22. Enoch walked with God. Verse 24.
Enoch walked with God. And he was not. For God took it. That's it. 16 words total.
Four of those words are repeated. which means 12 whole independent words, unique words about Enoch's life. And yet... And that was enough. to get Enoch into the great hall of faith.
So what was it about Enoch that made him so special?
Well, again, we don't know much. But what we do know is significant. Enoch lived about 400 years before Noah. Noah? was Enoch's great-grandson.
The Bible describes the days of Noah as exceptionally wicked. A time when virtually nobody paid any attention to God. And so we've got to imagine that that was true in the days of Enoch, also. In fact, Jen Wilkin, who's one of my favorite Bible teachers, says that the fact that Enoch was set apart. Because you walked with God indicates just how rare that must have been in those days.
Enoch went entirely against the flood. Choosing to walk with God when nobody around him was. If you're taking notes, write this down about Enoch. Enoch A was set apart by walking with God. We also know that B, he testified to coming judgment.
We knew that because the New Testament book of Jude, that little book in your Bible is just before Revelation that you always skip over. In verse 14 of that book, it only has one chapter. Verse 14, Jude mentions how boldly Enoch testified to God's coming judgment. In other words, Enoch didn't just walk with God privately and keep to himself. He faithfully testified to anybody around him who would listen.
including a bunch of people who didn't want to. that God was in charge and that ultimately they were all going to give an account to him, even in an age where that was wildly unpopular. In fact, you want to hear something absolutely fascinating? Enoch's son was named Methuselah. Have you ever heard that name before?
Methuselah, the guy famous for being old. According to Genesis... Methuselah lived longer than any other human in history, 969 years to be exact. You say, well. What was that, a literal 969 years?
To which I would say, honestly, I'm not entirely sure. It seems to be written that way. And it's not like the original author didn't know about average lifespans or years. The point is, Methuselah lived a ridiculously long time. And here's where it gets good.
Scholars generally agree that Methuselah's name means death.
Some say Methuselah literally means, and they've got good reason for this. Methuselah literally means when he dies, judgment comes. Enoch made his son's name a sermon. And this is so awesome. If you put together all the timelines in Genesis, you will see that the flood came the exact year that Methuselah died.
Enoch named his son As a warning of coming judgment. And then God let that son live longer than anybody else in history, showing that God was long-suffering. That he did not want to send judgment.
So he just kept letting this guy live. Methuselah must have been like, come on. And what do you do for 969 years? I'm not even sure what you do for the 850 or so years of the end of your life. God was like, just calm down, Methuselah.
Okay, I'm doing something here. Sadly, Noah's generation didn't listen. And when Methuselah died, The flood came.
So we know Enoch was set apart by walking with God. We know he testified the coming judgment. Finally, we know that Enoch made walking with God the defining reality of his life.
So much so that that's literally all that's said about him. He lived for several hundred years. But these four words sum up his whole life. He walked with God. What four words?
Would we choose? For your life. Doctor, businessman, dad, grandpa, mom. Athlete. Success.
Friend. One of a kind. Those are all great words. But the greatest four words That could ever be spoken over your life would simply be: he or she walked with God. What would we use in your Hall of Fame speech?
Would it be about how much you accomplished? How much you made? How good of a dad you were. How much your grandkids loved their grandma.
Something like that. In its four words were, they drowned out all the rest. He walked with God. God let. That defined my life.
Yes. Yo, we know that Enoch was so close to God that God one day just took him on up to heaven. I heard Tony Evans say that Enoch and God were out for a walk one night, and God said, You know, Enoch? My place is closer to here than yours. Why don't you come on out and just stay with me?
And God walked him right up on into heaven. That is amazing.
Now, what side of the diamond of faith does Enoch show us?
Well see, Enoch represents a life that Looking back at those three things. Number one, it's set apart from the world around it. Number two, testifies boldly to the gospel. Number three, makes walking with God its defining reality. Regardless of your profession, or your age.
or anything else about you. Those three phrases. Should describe your life if it's a life of faith Do they? Are you set apart? Are you distinct?
Do you stand out? You say that you're a Christian. But do you look any different from your work friends or your school friends or your neighborhood friends around you? Like my pastor growing up used to say when I was a student: if you were put on trial for being a Christian. And the only evidence we could submit was what You were like when you were with your friends away from the church.
Would there be enough evidence just from that to convict you? You're supposed to be different. You're supposed to stand out. Do you testify boldly to the gospel? Is your faith a private thing that you keep to yourself?
Listen, honestly, I'm not trying to beat you up. But how could you say that you actually Believe the gospel if you're not telling anybody about it. I mean just think about it. The real gospel. The gospel says that one day every person we know Is going to give an account to God for their sin.
It means the plumber who comes to work in your house. It means God sits next to you in the airplane. It means your neighbor. It means your friends. It means your kids.
The only ones who go to heaven are those who trust in God's provision of a Savior. If you believe that. How could you not tell people that you care about? About that. Listen, people sometimes hear my stories of sharing Christ, and they think that for some of us, this just all comes so naturally.
Yo, listen, I'm just going to go ahead and tell you, evangelism rarely comes naturally for me. It's often inconvenient. I have to practice it as a discipline because it doesn't come naturally. A lot of times, in an airplane or in an Uber, I will tell myself, I'm going to use the last 15 minutes so that I can bring this up. And y'all, I suppose that if I was more spirit-filled, I'd just always be so excited to talk about Jesus that you couldn't shut me up.
And sometimes I'm like that. But usually it feels inconvenient and I do it as a discipline. And sometimes it's awkward. I get shot down a lot. After I bring it up, people avoid me or they act weird around me.
That happens. Sharing the gospel can be dangerous. It can get you labeled as a zealot. For some of our missionaries, it's literally dangerous. Testifying to the gospel can get them put into prison or kicked out of their country or even killed.
So, why do it? Why do it? Because like Enoch, you believe God's judgment is coming even if nobody else does. You talk about it, even though it feels like you might as well be talking about an alien invasion that's going to happen one day. Many of you remember the terrible tsunami on December 26, 2004 that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Southeast Asia.
Even more, they say Even more lives would have been lost. Were it not for the heroic efforts of a 10-year-old girl, English girl, named Tilly Smith. Tilly Smith was on vacation with her family in Thailand when she. She felt a rumble. She saw the receding water line.
Well see, just two weeks prior in her fifth grade geography class, she'd learned what happens before a tsunami hits. She was one of the only ones who recognized what was actually happening. She went hysterical. You know, you've seen the video, people just walking out on the beach, you know, totally unsure what's happening. She went hysterical and began to scream to her parents that they needed to get out of there.
Eventually, Eventually her parents believed her and together they convinced the security guards to evacuate the beach. Because of a 10-year-old Tilly Smith, over 100 people were saved that day. I'm sure y'all, some people at first waved off. whatever she was saying as the ravings of a silly hysterical girl. I'm sure people look weird at her parents.
Now get your girl under control. What's wrong? Give her medicine. But honestly, if you had been Tilly Smith And you knew what you knew. Would you have cared what they thought about you?
Not if you were a person of faith. Not if you understood what was coming. Enoch knew the flood was coming. He didn't care that somebody thought of him as a madman. Here's the question.
Can you actually say you believe the gospel and not fervently be trying to tell others about it? Finally, is walking with God the defining reality of your life? There's God something you schedule in for a few hours on a Sunday. For Enoch. You don't get the impression that walking with God was one item on a to-do list.
One prominent activity out of seven days in a week. Walking with God for Enoch was the list on which every other item was listed. God's kingdom was not one of Enoch's priorities. God's kingdom was the framework through which every other priority got filtered. Listen, in the true life of faith, everything, everything from your job.
to your relationships, to your hobbies, all of it. is about pursuing God's kingdom, glorifying Him, and walking with Him. That's why the Apostle Paul says that, whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God. Without faith. It's impossible to please him.
Whoever would draw near to God must believe that He is, He exists. and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Faith's threefold conviction. God is real. He will keep his promises.
Seeking him is worth the effort. He's something worth giving your life to pursue. The life of faith, a life of total abandonment to God. Total trust in his promises. Years ago.
Several of our staff took our You take our cars. of to this great country boy mechanic in East Durham. I cannot even remember how we got connected to this guy. He had a garage in his backyard. He was a genius for the car.
He could fix anything and he did it at one-third of the price that the dealer would charge you. Your car just smelled like cigarette smoke for about six weeks when you got it back. And several of us went there, and some of us got a chance to share the gospel with him. Get a lot of questions. We spent collectively several hours in conversation with him.
Turned out that This guy was really afraid of What it would be like to give up full control of his life to Jesus.
Well one day he and I went really really deep And I was really pressing him on the Jesus stuff. He said, I know JD. I know, I know, I've still got too many questions. I said, Lynn, at some point. You have to decide that if Jesus is there.
If Jesus is really real. You just gotta decide that you can trust him.
Well, next time I came to see him, brought my car, He came walking up with a big old grin on his face like my broken car was an answer to his prayer. Cigarette still hanging out of his mouth. He said, JD, you ain't never going to believe what happened to me. He told me this story about a kid in their neighborhood who had used a ladder, he said, to climb up on the roof of. His house to retrieve a frisbee or a football or something he'd thrown up there.
And when he got up there, he looked down and realized how high he was, and you know, the slant on the roof. He panicked. He grabbed hold of the chimney and he wouldn't let go. Lynn said, JD, I could hear him four houses down. Help me.
Somebody help me.
So I ran over there and I climbed up the ladder and I went over to Sam and I said, son, Come with me. I'll take you down. He said, but the kid was so scared that he wouldn't let go of the chimney. And I kept urging him to let go, but he wouldn't. And eventually I got mad.
And I said, son, if you don't let go of this chimney, I'm going to knock you off this roof myself. At which point he let go and I was able to carry him down. And he he paused and he said, I reckon that's what you and Pastor Danny and Pastor Chuck. are telling me I got to do with Jesus. Just let go and go with him.
And I said, Lynn, you are not far from the kingdom of God. A short time after this, he told Pastor Chuck Reed, Lynn sent him a note and said, He's given me an opportunity. I'm going to get saved and see what the life of the Lord is. At the age of 68, Lynn gave his heart to Jesus and we baptized him right here at the Summit Church. Lynn, unfortunately, I'm not able to bring up here on stage with me, or so you a current picture of him because sadly he's gone on to be with the Lord.
But I will never forget his epiphany, his moment of faith. Faith is believing that God is there. that invisible realities that the voice you hear in those things is actually a real voice perceiving that voice. Saying yes and coming to him, even with all your questions and all your doubts and all the things you can't figure out. You just say, I know it's something there that's speaking to me.
And then trusting that he'll keep those promises, whether it's the promise to cover your sin, dead, or the promise to care for you in the future. believing that seeking him is worth the effort. You say, Oh, but JD, how do I know that he's real? That's the problem. How do I hear him speaking?
I don't know what his voice sounds like. I look at all these people in the summit church. They look like they have it all together. They look like they get it, but I just don't hear his voice. Listen, it doesn't mean that you get overcome with some emotion or flooded with warm fuzzies.
Sometimes it's just a firmly growing conviction that he's there. Of that, there's something unusual about Jesus that you just can't get over, or that there's more to the world than blind accidental forces coming from nowhere and going nowhere and signifying nothing. And maybe you're right now just starting that journey. If that's you, I just want to urge you, keep. Coming.
Keep listening. Find that Christian friend, probably the one that invited you today, and start a dialogue with them. Start reading your Bible together. Discuss it with them. Keep visiting our church.
And in all of this, seriously entertained the idea. What if he's real? And what if he really is speaking to me or maybe? Maybe like my friend Lynn, you're ready to let go and begin the life of faith. In fact, If that's you.
Why don't you just come on over? Thanks for joining us today and don't miss the next message in our series on broken people and famous faith.
So, JD, tell us a bit more. Why do you think media ministry is such a powerful tool for sharing the gospel today? Yeah, Molly, I didn't really start out in media ministry. I started out just teaching the Word of God to some guys in my dorm room in college. As God called me into ministry and now I do that with a church.
Eventually, we realized that there was a way that you could take the word of God to people who weren't coming into the church. And one of the ways we do that is through media. I mean, think about it. Right now, listening to this, there are people. That are scrolling on their phone.
That's how they got here. They're driving in their car. And in that moment, that's when we're there on the radio, through the internet, and we're able to speak the word of God and His promises and His hope into their lives. None of that's possible without the generous support of our Summit Life listeners. And so, for those of you that support us, I want to say thank you.
If you're interested in being a part of this ministry through your prayers, your generosity, just go to jdgreer.com. You can also find a lot of free resources there that we'd love to provide you to help in your world with God and the ways that you are helping others with theirs too. When you give during the month of September, we have a special digital gift to share with you. Every believer is called to be a disciple, but few know how to grow beyond church on Sunday. The Whole Disciple Journey Map is a six-week digital guide designed to help you follow Jesus in every part of your life.
To get your copy immediately emailed to you, you can give online right now at jdgreer.com. See you next time here on the Summit Life Podcast. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
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