For most of us, we see prayer As simply preparation for the ministry. The preaching of the word is the real ministry, and prayer is what you do to get ready for that ministry. But see, in the early church, prayer was not just preparation for the ministry, it was itself the ministry. Thanks for joining us today for the Summit Life podcast with JD Greer. Before we get started, let me share how you can get quick access to more gospel-centered resources.
Did you know we have a weekly newsletter packed with free content just for you? Every Tuesday, we'll send you the latest from Pastor JD. links to recent radio, YouTube, and podcast episodes, news on free downloads, updates on new releases, and even stories from fellow listeners. And when you sign up today at jdgreer.com, we'll send you our latest free download, a PDF featuring a set of powerful Bible verses to memorize in 2026. This guide will help you meditate on scripture regularly and grow in gospel confidence.
It's all free, so don't wait. Head to jdgreer.com now and sign up.
Now let's get to our topic today. Pastor JD will be walking us through three foundational lessons God intentionally taught the Israelites about life together as a redeemed community. And God made it clear that everything wasn't meant to revolve around a single leader. Let's join Pastor JD in Exodus 17. Exodus 17, if you got your Bibles this morning, Exodus 17, we are following the children of Israel as they are on their journey to the promised land, as God teaches them the basics.
The 101 courses, if you will, of knowing and walking with him. As we learned, God is not simply trying to get his people into the promised land, he's also trying to put the promised land into them.
Well, today we're going to see God teach them three things about life in the redeemed community. By the way, it is extremely significant, I think, that in the foundational lessons that God gives to them about walking with him, the 101 courses, that he emphasizes the importance of them playing their role in the redeemed community. This whole Exodus thing, you see, is not about gathering people around one charismatic leader, Moses. It is about creating a body of people, all of whom have a role in God's kingdom, a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. In the kingdom of God, everybody is important.
Every follower of Jesus is important, but no one is that important, including Moses. In fact, it reminds me of a lady I heard about, a little old lady that came in a little late to the church service, and she asked the usher if she could be seated on the front row. And the usher said, Well, ma'am, I am happy to take you down to the front row, but I have got to tell you, you do not want to sit on the front row in our church because our pastor is really, really boring. And for sure, he's going to put you to sleep. And that might be embarrassing to you.
She said to him, Young man, do you know who I am? He responded, no, ma'am, I do not. She said, I am the pastor's mother. Man dropped his head in embarrassment for a second. Then he looked up at her and he said, Ma'am, do you know who I am?
And she said, No, young man, I don't. He said, thank God, and turned around and walked the other direction, right? No one person, not even Moses, is that important in the kingdom of God. Y'all, listen, I love this portion of the Exodus story. At first, admittedly, it feels kind of random.
At least that's how I read it.
Sort of random. We're going through these amazing, big picture, you know, big picture faith lessons with the manna and the water from the rock. And then it's like we just suddenly detour into some random and practical lessons about life and leadership in Israel. But like I said, God is showing us the importance of being in the family and also playing our role in the family. By the way, let me teach you a little something about Bible interpretation if you're sort of new to the game here.
Whenever you're trying to interpret a passage of scripture, you've always got to keep in mind when it was written down and for what purpose it was written down. You see, these stories were not written down the moment that they happen as if Moses is just live tweeting the events of the Exodus. No, these are written down a few years later after Israel has started to settle into their life as a nation. And so what Moses is doing under the direction of the Holy Spirit, but Moses is highlighting lessons to help them live as the people of God. Moses is not telling you every single thing that happened.
No, he is picking and choosing certain events, again, under the direction of the Holy Spirit. And the filter. That Moses is using for what he includes is what is most helpful for life in the community at the time that he's writing it. The Gospels in the New Testament are the same way. The Gospels are all about the life of Jesus, of course, but the Gospel writers, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, chose what to include from Jesus' life based on what was most helpful for life in the church after he had returned to heaven.
In fact, there's even a couple of places in the Gospels where the writer refers to the church. And the church obviously wasn't even around until after Jesus left. The writers are using things from the life of Jesus to guide the church. Does that make sense? Moses chooses these three events to emphasize their ongoing role in God's community, and by extension, our role too.
So we will call these Church 101. And the first lesson comes to us courtesy of Miley Cyrus. Put your hands up, put your hands up, you know. You know, they're playing our song, the butterflies fly away, that deal, okay? Chapter 17, verse 8, then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim.
So Moses said to Joshua, by the way, the first mention of Joshua in the Bible: choose for us men and go out and fight against Amalek. I want you to notice that now we're at a stage where God is empowering Israel to fight. No longer is God doing this all by himself, like he did in the Red Sea deliverance, where they had only to stand and watch as God did it all.
Now God is empowering them to do it. It's still him, he's just now working through them. And how is his power going to come to this fighting army? Verse 9: Moses says, Tomorrow I will stand at the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand. And so Moses did, as Joshua did as Moses told him.
And he fought with Amalek while Moses, Aaron, and her went up to the top of the hill.
Now, watch this. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. And whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. When Moses' hands are up in the air, they win. When they're down.
They lose. Kind of makes you wonder what would have happened if Moses started to do some jumping jacks, right? Win, lose, win, lose, win, lose. But Moses' hands grew weary. He'd neglected his shoulder workouts, right?
So they took a stone and they put it under him and. And he sat on it while Aaron and her held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side.
So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. You say, What's wrong with Moses? Other people out there literally risking their lives in battle. He can't even keep his hands up. I'm not sure you fully appreciate how difficult that would be.
So I'm going to prove it to you by using a representative from our congregation. And so I've asked my friend Doug to come up here. Doug's going to play the role of Moses on your behalf.
Okay, so Doug, come on up here. I got an Aaron and her that are going to come out here, Kaliana and Melody. Why don't you come up here? Doug, stand right up here behind me if you would.
Now, Doug, uh, Doug's a young in-shaped guy, can't you tell, right? In fact, if I remember correctly, is a Division I athlete, play basketball, is that correct?
Okay, so I feel like he's gonna do pretty well considering Moses was 80 plus.
Okay, and Moses had to do this all day.
So stand right here behind me.
Okay, now what I'm gonna get you to do is I'm gonna get you to do exactly what Moses did. You're gonna put your hands out. And you're going to pray. And I'm going to start a little timer here. To see how long, how long you would have made the battle win.
Now, Aaron and her.
Okay, so I know the girls are airing her, but E-R-I-N and H-E-R is how we'll think about this.
So when his hands drop, then you support him, but not until they drop.
Okay. All right, and by the way, if he starts to drop it and I miss it, just kind of point it out and I'll know what you're pointing out and I'll turn around and I'll rebuke him, okay? All right, and we're gonna see, we're gonna see how long you get because I've done this at other services, and so I kind of know and I'll tell you at the end how well you did, okay?
So good luck, Doug. Go with God. There we go. By the way, summit, listen. I'm going to leave him up here.
But I'm gonna need you to pay attention to me. Can y'all do that? I know how ADHD some of you guys are, and they're like, oh, new stuff on stage. Can you listen to me if I leave them up here?
Okay? Put your hands up, like Miley says. There we go. Start the timer. Here we go.
All right, so what is being taught here through this scene? What's being taught is that more important than the guys out on the field fighting Is the one up on the mountain pray? It's not the skill of the fighters. Or even the leadership of Moses that wins the battle, it's the power of God. And that power flows through Moses' hands raised in intercession, which makes Aaron and her this day's players of the game.
By the way, some of you are totally nervous right now because when we do one of those prayer times where you extend your hands, you make it about 15 seconds and then you're like, you know, putting your head like this. I see you, okay?
Now here we are, our Moses has already made it. 39 seconds and going strong, okay?
So, I got two main applications for you here. And we're going to have a Jesus application and we're going to have a practical application. First, the Jesus application. All right, I want you to look up here on stage, look up here. How do you not see in this a picture of Calvary?
Here you got a man on top of a mountain with his hands raised and two people on either side of him. Jesus is the ultimate intercessor for the church. That's what this whole thing means. He prays for the church based on his finished work and praise God, unlike Moses, he never drops his hands. It is his intercession that you and I tap into when we pray in Jesus' name.
By the way, most Christians conclude their prayers with the words in Jesus' name, but I bet a bunch of y'all have never even stopped to think about why you say that. A lot of Christians think it's like a signal to God that you're about done. You know, letting the tower know you're bringing the plane in for a landing. And so they use the phrase in Jesus' name like you might use sincerely to close a letter. But when you pray in Jesus' name, what you're saying is, God, I'm asking you to grant this because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross.
I am praying in his place using his expressed intentions for the world. Praying in Jesus' name means literally asking something of God as Jesus' representative. It means you imagine what Jesus might pray if he was in the situation you were in, and you ask him to consider what he would, you ask the father to consider what Jesus would want in the situation, and then you pray that in Jesus' name as his representative, in his place. And if that is the case, by the way, then you will understand that the problem with most of our prayers. Or not usually they're too big.
In fact, they're usually way too small. Because we've never really tapped into the heart of Jesus for the world. We always pray according to the heart of us for ourselves. When you tap into the heart of Jesus for the world, there is so much that you can ask for. Years ago, I encouraged you to meditate on this phrase before you prayed.
It was part of a four-part gospel prayer that I wrote in one of the first books I published called Gospel. It's a four-part gospel prayer. The book was built around. And the fourth part of that prayer was this: As I pray, I will measure your willingness to save by the cross. and your power to save by the resurrection.
As I'm praying, I want to remind myself of the compassion that Jesus showed on the cross. and the power he showed at the resurrection. And then I want to pray according to that. John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace, wrote a lesser-known hymn that we don't really sing that much anymore. But here's the way he said it in that hymn: Thou art coming to a king.
So with the large petitions bring. For his grace and power are such, I love this next phrase, that none can ever ask too much. That's what it means to pray in Jesus' name. Jesus is the main intercessor for the church. His intercession from the cross stands as the constant hope of the church, and we now pray in his name.
It's obvious, even after the Jesus application, that we're being shown something practical through the labor of Aaron and her, right? Their labor in keeping Moses' hands raised is going to become the deciding factor in this battle. That's why I say they are the players of the game. You might argue that the main work of the people of God in the Bible is intercession. And listen, that is not me exaggerating just to make a point.
Jesus said My house. shall be called A house of prayer for all nations. I want you to notice shall be called is passive voice. This is not what the church calls itself. It's how others describe the church.
It's not so much about our aspirations. It's our reputation.
So we should, right?
So we should ask. Is this our reputation summit church? In this community, when people talk about our church, when other people invite other people to this church, what do they bring up? Is it our preaching or our worship? Or are ministries, or do they say, man, those people over there, they talk to God?
That's the main thing that happens over there at that church. The apostles fully embraced this, and they lived it out. Right? Or what's the image you see there? It's it's not a preacher on the stage preaching.
It's It's a church interceding.
So, at every major turning point in the book of Acts, you're going to see them praying. In fact, it's quite amazing. All the major things that happen in Acts. happen out of prayer meetings, not out of church leadership initiatives. Think about it.
At birth of the church, Acts 1, Jesus gives what we call the Great Commission to the apostles. The great commission is to carry the gospel to every nation on earth. And he gives that to a bunch of blue-collar workers who have no formal training or education, never in the history of the world. Had a more important and urgent assignment been given to a less qualified group of people.
So what did they do? Instinctively, without even being told. Acts 1, they ran to the upper room to pray. They prayed on their faces. For 10 days, and then the power of God fell on him.
I often ask myself What would I have done had I been the apostles in that situation? What would you have done? Right, if you were the leader, Jesus just gave you your assignment. You know what most of us would have done. we'd have gotten out our whiteboards and started to plan.
Organize, take ideas, figure out how to raise money. They got on their faces and prayed for 10 days. At the end of 10 days, the power of God failed. Then Peter stood up, Acts 2, preached for about 10 minutes. 3,000 people get saved.
They prayed for 10 days, preached for 10 minutes, 3,000 got saved. Today we plan for 10 days. Pray for 10 minutes. And three people get saved. You see, it's all about where you place the zeros.
The apostles didn't see prayer as something they did at the margins of their ministry.
So, not something they did at the margins of their ministry. They saw it as the center of their ministry.
Okay. There we go, in Act 6. In Acts 6, when the apostles urged the church to appoint deacons to assist in meeting some of the needs of the church. They explained they didn't have time to do it. But what they said is appoint deacons to meet these needs, but we are going to devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.
What's interesting about what they said is that they put prayer and the ministry of the word on equal footing. And I know you can't see this in English, but there's a definite article in Greek before prayer and the ministry of the word.
So, what it really means, it's kind of awkward in English. It says, we will devote ourselves to the prayer and the ministry of the word, which means that in the apostles' eyes, they were equal. Both are the ministries that they are dedicating themselves to. And the reason I point all that out is because, watch this: for most of us, we see prayer. as simply preparation for the ministry.
The preaching of the word is the real ministry, and prayer is what you do to get ready for that ministry. But see, in the early church, prayer was not just preparation for the ministry, it was itself the ministry. Let me say that again. In the early church, prayer was not just preparation for the ministry, prayer was the ministry. It's arguably the most important thing that we can do as a people.
Okay. I can see it. Literally quivering, okay. The church, by the way, when he starts to drop, even an inch, you can help him, okay? He'll be grateful.
The church should be known. This church should be known as a house of prayer for all nations. That shouldn't be our aspiration summit. It ought to be our reputation. Here's how we're trying to do this here.
And our Sunday services. We often take time to pray. Right? Eight minutes, you have broken the record, by the way, Doug. That is the longest thus far.
Literally, previous record was 852, 852.
So, all right, just hold his hands for a minute here, and we'll see if you guys get tired. All right. In our Sunday services, y'all, we often take time to pray. Church growth experts. Would tell us that we should not do that.
In fact, I've never read one that says you should add that into your strategy on the weekend in your services. They say don't do that because it makes new people feel weird. But honestly, we don't care. Right? Because this is to be a house of prayer, and you might as well learn that right from the start.
Okay. We often say that the times at the end of service that we provide for prayer might be the most important part of our service. And saying that, I'm obviously not devaluing the importance of what I do up here or what the worship teams do. It's just that you're in prayer, you can't connect with God. Which is the point.
Of having this place. This is a house of prayer for all nations. It's the one thing to sit here and listen to me talk about God. That's a moment where you can actually engage with God. And I know I know some of you are like, well.
I don't ever go down and do that because, you know, I can do that on my own in my house. True. But you know, there's something special about doing it with the gathered people of God, right? It's the house of prayer for all nations, it's what the church is supposed to be. You say, Yeah, but that's it.
I just don't want people looking at me, I'm all self-conscious. See, that's your problem right there. You're more concerned about your image than you are about humbling yourself before God, and that's why the power of God is missing from your life.
So all right. It's a house of prayers. Here's something else. One of our most important ministries on the weekend is what we call the boiler room prayer hour. We got a group of volunteers at every service, at every campus, who pray through the entire service while me or whoever else is up here preaching.
We get the name Boiler Room, by the way, from a story that was told about Charles Spurgeon. He was once asked the secret to his great power in preaching. And so he walked, the person asking the question down to a big basement room under the church called the Boiler Room, where they kept all the boilers that provided the building's heat. And there was this big mass of people on their faces praying throughout the whole services. It's this right here, it's a bunch of people just praying with their hands up.
We have that. Ours is not a literal boiler room. We don't heat places like that anymore, but it's one of our most important ministries. And you're small groups. We try to provide you with an outline each week that can really help you make prayer a central component of your small group gathering.
not just something that you use to open and close the meeting. By the way, it's one of my biggest pet peeves is when you just use prayer as a way to open and close meetings or in a church service, a way to get people to close their eyes so we can change the setup here. Prayer is supposed to be the core of what we do, not what we tuck in at the margins. and your personal quiet times. Summon, I want us to be called a house of prayer for all nations.
I want that to be our reputation. I want it to be that when people talk about summon. They don't just talk about the worship or the preaching, but they say, man, over there at that church, you can connect with God. Can we give a round of applause to Moses and Aaron and her? Excellent work.
Well done, record holder. Thank you, Kaliana and Melody. Y'all listen, it is no accident. that almost from the outset in the book of Exodus, God will establish But his people are going to be a community whose power is found in intercession. God's people will not be famous for their fighting skill.
Or for Moses' oratorical skills. In fact, if you remember, Moses had a speech impediment, and at this point, they have no organized army. God's people are going to be famous for the power they access when their hands are lifted in prayer. By the way. Before we move on to the other couple things.
Notice that we're introduced here in this story to a new name for God. Verse 15, and Moses built an altar and called the name of it, the Lord, is my banner, or in Hebrew, Jehovah Nisi. Right, which some of us actually sang about. We sing that in our worship stuff: Jehovah Nisi. And that's what it means.
What it means is the Lord's name is the banner, the army, the power we march under. This is the flag we wave when we are people of prayer. When we're people of prayer, we're waiving, the Lord is my power. When we are people of preaching, we waive the power of the preacher. We put his personality, his abilities on display.
When we are people of worship excellence, we wave the talent of the musicians and the singers. But when we pray, literally, our hands are up in the air like a flag saying that what makes us special is not our strength or our skill, but that we have a God who answers prayer.
So thank you. Miley Cyrus for putting words to this. Put your hands up. They're playing our song, prayer. the butterflies and the Amalekites and the demons all fly away.
By the way, I'm pretty sure that is not what Mila was thinking about. When she wrote those words. Of course, I'm not really sure what she is thinking about nowadays, but Miley, we miss you. Would you come back to us, please?
Okay, but these words are a good way to sum up that first point, okay? Put your hands up. Mm. It's a new year with new challenges and opportunities on the way. But how will this year truly look different from the last?
Carrying God's Word daily in your heart just might be the answer. After all, the Bible encourages us to live in obedience, fight temptation, renew our minds, and conform more to the person of Christ. It also gives us the strength to share these same truths with those we love and be a light in a dark and confusing world. Our world is filled with lies. Every day we are bombarded by false promises about what will make us happy, false hopes about what will bring us security.
We need a weapon to fight back, and the best one available is God's Word. After all, the best way to confront a lie is to know the truth. The Word of God is light. It is life. It is salvation.
It was by a word that Jesus gave sight to the blind. By a word that he healed the sick, by a word that he overcame temptation. It was by a word that Jesus was raised from the dead. By a word, God will destroy the works of the enemy and eventually make all things new. The word and the word alone prepares us to stand up to every challenge we face with courage and certainty.
The word is our life. If you want to carry God's promises in your heart in a new way this year, our new Summit Life Memory Verse cards make it easy to memorize scripture. You can keep these cards or share them with others. They're small enough to put on the fridge, stick in your wallet, or give away in a greeting card, place on a bulletin board or a mirror for daily encouragement. They're an inspiring reminder that God is always with you.
He is always enough, both now and in the days to come. Request your pack of cards when you give to support the Ministry of Summit Life. Give us a call at 866-335-5220. Or go to jdgreer.com and request this resource today. The second event title comes to us courtesy of Billy Joel.
Tell her about it, okay?
Now, this one should really be tell him about it, but I couldn't find a good song specifically by that name that I liked. Chapter 18. The children of Israel are now pretty deep into the wilderness, but remember, this is a wilderness that Moses knows pretty well because it was the place he'd fled from Pharaoh after he'd killed the Egyptian some 40 years prior to this. One of the first people that Moses met in the wilderness 40 years before this. When he fled there, was this man named Jethro, who had this pretty daughter named Zippara, that Moses ended up marrying?
Moses then moved into Jethro's compound and he kept Jethro's sheep for 40 years.
Now, Moses has not seen Jethro since he'd gone back to Egypt to lead the Exodus.
So Jethro comes out to see him. It's a little family reunion here. By the way, Moses' wife had to go with him, so she's there too. It's a little family reunion. Verse 7: Moses goes out to meet his father-in-law and bows down and kisses him.
And they asked each other their welfare: how's it going? How's the family? How's it going for you? How's the business? And then they go together into the tent.
Then Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh. All he'd done to the Egyptians for Israel's sake. all the hardship that had come upon them in the way. how the Lord had delivered them. And Jethro said, watch this, now I know.
But the Lord is greater than all gods. Because in this affair, the Egyptians dealt arrogantly with the people, and the Lord delivered them. In Jethro, Moses' father-in-law brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God. And Aaron came with all the elders of Israel, and he sat down to eat bread with Moses, father-in-law, before God. Moses shares with his father-in-law.
Personal stories. And it's it. of how God has worked in his life. And Jethro becomes, after that conversation, A follower. A worshipper of Yahweh.
So I emphasize the word now.
Now I know. If you recall, when Moses was in the wilderness for those 40 years, he hadn't really been walking with God. That really didn't happen for Moses until he met God at the burning bush. And then after the Bernie Bush experience, he immediately left for Egypt. In fact, like I said, he didn't even take his wife with him.
Point is, Jethro didn't really know the whole walking with God side of Moses. Plus, Jethro is a Midianite. Who were very closely related to the Amalekites, which are the ones that Israel just fought, you know, the story before. They're basically Israel's enemies, so Jethro is not one of God's people. What you're witnessing is basically a conversion.
In verse 11, Jethro gives a statement of faith.
Now I see that your God is above all gods. Then, verse 12, Jethro makes a burnt offering to atone for his past sins. Then he begins to participate in a covenant meal with other Yahweh followers to show that he is in. That's basically an Old Testament ceremony of conversion.
So what do we see and hear about life in the community? An important role. That you have In God's community. is giving personal testimony to God's power in your life to others. That's what God's trying to teach you.
You telling your family and friends about how God has changed you. Y'all think about it. It wasn't Moses' preaching. It wasn't even his books that he wrote. That brought Jethro to faith.
It was sitting down over a meal with his father-in-law and telling his father-in-law personally how he had met God. This church grows best not through my preaching. But through your personal testimony with others. and your story of how God is changing you. And y'all, that happens right from the beginning.
There's a mistake that new Christians often make. They think that bringing others to Jesus is something you do only after you've grown for a while in the Christian life. And it's like it's what we do when you're mature. And it's like the 401 level of Christianity. It's for super Christians.
Yo, here's what I've learned after 20 years of being a pastor. The most evangelistically contagious time of your life. It's usually the first six months to a year after your conversion. It's like how they say that the most contagious you are with a cold virus is the first day or two after you catch it. You're the most contagious for Jesus when you first come down with him.
Now, listen, we've had 785 of you baptized in the last year here. And we got a bunch more that have professed faith in Christ. To all of you in that category, I want to say to you: listen, this is the most evangelistically fertile time of your life. Don't waste it. Thank Jesus always encouraged people to do this immediately.
Remember the story of the woman at the well in John 4? She just gotten saved. Immediately, she goes out and starts to testify to Jesus. In fact, she hadn't even officially dissolved the adulterous relationship she's in. I mean she dissolved it in her heart, but she hadn't officially dissolved it.
That's going to come later. But already she's going through towns telling people, hey, you got to come meet Jesus. He told me all that I ever did. He saved me. And they're like, aren't you the little lady that's shocking up with this other guy?
And then she's like, listen right now, you've got to come hear him. Mark 5, 19, Jesus cast a bunch of demons out from a A guy, not one, but a bunch. And after Jesus delivers him from all those demons, the guy's like, Jesus, let me follow you. I just want to sit at your feet. I want to learn.
I want to soak up everything you got to teach. And Jesus said, no. First, go home to your friends and tell them how great things the Lord has done for you and how He has had mercy on you. Go home is the first assignment. But Jesus, don't I need some training or some seminary to do that?
And Jesus said, Yeah, training will come in time, but outreach starts right away.
So at our church summit, we encourage every follower of Jesus to have, every follower of Jesus to have a one That you're committed to praying for? That you're committed to sharing Christ with. And telling them about the great things God has done for you and how He's had mercy on you. Y'all, it is the most basic form of outreach possible, and we believe every follower of Jesus should have a one, whether you've been a Christian for 10 years or 10 minutes. For most of you, that one is not going to be some random guy you met at a gas station.
For most of you, that one, as we see with Moses, is going to be a. a member of your family or it's going to be a close friend.
So, what about you? Do you have a one? Is there somebody right now that just popped into your head that the Holy Spirit has put in your life and you play this role with them? By the way, you don't have to be scared about doing this. I know a lot of you are like, uh-uh, evangelism.
And you get really nervous because you think of it as this big, scary thing where you show up on somebody's doorstep with a big old Bible asking questions like: if you died tonight, you know for sure if you go to heaven. In fact, my favorite definition of evangelism is two very nervous people talking to each other. Maybe you think of evangelism as awkwardly working in evangelistic questions into everyday encounters. Hey, I see we've got your name on our mailing list, but more important, is your name written down in the Lamb's Book of Life, huh? Right?
Or if you work at Chick-fil-A, you're like, here's your spicy chicken sandwich. Have you thought about how to avoid a spicy eternity and stuff like that? And you're like, hey, JD, that totally works for you. I get that, but that just doesn't sit right with me. I don't think I could do that.
Y'all, listen, listen, listen. The most common form of evangelism in the Bible. Is not somebody like me standing on a stage? The most common form of evangelism in the Bible is sharing a meal with somebody and telling them how God has been at work in your life and offering to pray for them. That's Jesus' style of evangelism.
In fact, scholars point out the whole narrative of the Gospel of Luke is organized around meals. One scholar says that Jesus basically ate his way through the Gospel of Luke. Honestly, somebody, that's my kind of savior. Amen. That's somebody I can get excited about following.
One scholar points out that Luke uses the phrase, the son of man came to. To kind of encapsulate Jesus' ministry. And he uses it twice in the gospel. Once Luke says, the Son of Man came. who seek and save the lost.
That's Jesus' mission, seeking and saving the lost. The other place you see the phrase is Luke 7, 34, the son of man came. Eating and drinking. That gives us the method for the mission. Eating and drinking with people.
This is the mission, seeking and saving the lost. This is the method for accomplishing the mission. This is what the Bible, by the way. Calls hospitality. Which means opening up your meal times to share with unbelievers.
Most of us have the wrong definition of hospitality. You think of hospitality. is making your kitchen and your living room look like something out of Ballard designs. And then inviting over your Christian friends or your small group to come admire what a great housekeeper you are. That's awesome, but biblically, that's called fellowship, not hospitality.
Hospitality, literally in Greek. It means welcoming into strangers, the word Philozania. Philoxania. Phileo means love somebody like family. Zenos means a stranger.
The foreigner, the non-Christian, hospitality is showing family-like love. to the outsider.
So here's my challenge for you this week. Why not share a meal with somebody who's not a Christian? And just tell them how great things God has done for you and has had mercy on you. The average person eats around 1,095 meals every year. Let's just be honest for some of you it's way more than that, okay?
Why not eat 24 of those 1,000 plus meals? with somebody you can tell about Jesus.
So invite that relative, invite that friend, invite that coworker over for a meal, and just tell her about it.
So thank you, Miley Cyrus, and thank you, Billy Joel, for our first two points. We got one more important dimension of God's covenant community, and this one comes to us courtesy of high school musical, okay? Number three, we're all in this together. This next story is, y'all, it's such a great one. I'm just going to read it.
And then I'm going to draw just a couple of quick lessons from it, and then we'll be done.
Okay? While Jethro is there. He notices verse 13, the next day Moses sat to judge the people and People stood around Moses from morning until evening. When Moses' father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, Man, that's impressive. But why are you all by yourself?
All the people standing around you from morning till evening? What you're doing is not good. You're going to burn yourself out. Moses, obey my voice, and I'm going to give you some advice. I've been a Christian for about 10 minutes.
But I got some advice for you, Moses, you man of God. You will represent the people. Mike. You will represent the people and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. You'll be the teaching bastard, okay?
Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God. who are trustworthy and hate a bribe. and place such men over the people as chief of thousands, of hundreds. of fifties and of tens. And let them judge the people at all times.
Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they should decide among themselves.
So it will be easier for you. They will bear the burden with you. If you do this, Moses, God will direct you. You will be able to endure. See at this point the nation of Israel is about 600,000 people strong.
Moses basically serves as the police, the judge, the crossing guard, the family therapist, the pastor, and the DMV all in one. All by himself. And Jethro, his father-in-law, who's a brand new believer, says, Moses, you're going to kill yourself. And that's going to make my daughter sad. and leave my grandbabies without a without a without a dad.
So let me help you out here, Moses. God never intended for you to do this all by yourself. I know you had a whole Bernie Bush experience and you think you're all real special and stuff, but. What you need to do is subdivide the people. Subdivide the people into groups of thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens.
Moses, you should still serve as the visionary, obviously. You should still be the teaching pastor. You could even be the Supreme Court. But let other leaders handle everything else. What is God showing us?
What God is showing us is that in his community, leadership and ministry is supposed to happen. by all people at all levels. The church is never supposed to be a ministry built around one person. Every believer has a role in the ministry. We're a kingdom of priests.
This is the body of Christ. Summit, we like Israel are one body of people. Several thousand big. But we are divided into groups of hundreds. That's on the campus level.
And that's under the direction of a campus pastor and their staff and their shepherding elders. Shepherding elders are basically biblically qualified lay pastors in the church. Then after that division, we got groups of 50s. Those shepherding elders and those ministry leaders each watch over about 50-ish people. Each campus elder usually oversees around five or six small groups.
In addition to that, we've got small group leaders who are over tens. We always say that this, the small group, is the first and best unit of care in our congregation. By the way, y'all, one of the things that most encourages me. Are all the stories I hear about how well people take care of each other on the small group level? I cannot tell you.
I simply could not tell you how many times.
Somebody in our church is going through a rough time, and I give them a call and I ask them if they need anything, and they tell me, y'all, and I hear this a lot: like, oh, Pastor, it has been a tough time. But the body of Christ has been awesome. We got meals. We got people helping take care of our kids. They got a prayer chain going.
And you know, I usually hang up the phone and I bow my head and I'm like, thank you, God, for letting me serve among a people who are so committed to loving and caring for each other. Let me say something that I hope. You will not hear as defensive, okay?
Sometimes people look at a big church like ours. Especially a multi-site one. We've got 14 campuses in the triangle. And they say, well, this is just a big production, it's just a big show, or, oh, that's just a cult of personality over there because I'm on the screen or whatever. But y'all think about it.
The definition of a cult of personality is when the ministry is centered around one person. And that is the exact opposite of what we are doing here. Listen, I will say this without any caveat or any qualification. Our church is better pastored now than it was when we were only about a thousand people and we were all meeting at the same location, and everybody considered me to be their primary pastor. We now got more pastors, and elders, and ministry leaders, and small group leaders, and higher ratios of leaders to people than we ever have.
People say, well, I don't want to be at a church where I'm not personally connected to the pastor. I'll be honest with you, that feels like a curved personality to me. If you're in a place where everybody's got to know the pastor has to be ministered to directly by him, that feels like an overemphasis on one person. I often say to people when they request a meeting with me, and for whatever reason, I just can't do it, right? And then they object to that.
And I usually say something like, hey, do you want pastoral help or do you want me? Because if you want pastoral help, we can supply that. But in a church our size, it can't always be, and it shouldn't always be me. It doesn't need to be me. It's not good for you or me.
I may not be the one that walks into your hospital room. In fact, you don't want me walking in your hospital room. If I walk in your hospital room, that's bad news. It means whatever you got is way worse than they've told you. And I am there, okay, for you when there's final moments to help you make that transition to glory.
So if you were sick in the hospital, pray that I do not walk through that door, okay? But you're gonna have somebody Because we've done what Moses and Jethro did here. We've organized by thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens. Again, my point is not to be defensive or make excuses. It's just to say that a big church, a big congregation, does not have to be an impersonal one or one where people aren't taken care of.
And it certainly does not have to be and should not be a cult of personality. That's what we see God addressing here in Exodus 18. And the way he does it is not by, you know, Shattering the congregation and saying you can't be big. He's just showing Moses and his people. They shouldn't be like that.
At this church, we fight hard to keep it from being like this.
So we have multiple pastors and leaders at every level. Multiple teachers who teach from this pulpit, it's not just me. I don't make all the decisions around here. I sit as one on a team of 10. That we call the directional elders, and my vote doesn't matter any more than any of theirs, and I lose votes sometimes on that team.
We were a big congregation summit, and that's okay. Israel was big too. About 600,000 bay. And I know that creates some issues for us, and some messiness, and some growing pains, and some traffic problems. Can I get an amen?
But our calling Our calling is to reach this city.
So I always say we don't have a mega church as much as we have a mega city. And we're trying to do whatever it takes to reach that city.
So when people complain to me about our growth, I'm like, well, who do you want me to uninvite? Why don't you just point to them and say, I'm going to uninvite that person, you shouldn't come? You know who loves a growing church? Have a learned day. You loves a growing church, somebody with a prodigal son or daughter, that's who loves a growing church.
That grandparent who is concerned about their grandchildren, they thank God for our growth. You know who doesn't love a growing church a lot of times? It's those who like their comfortable seat not having traffic issues on the weekend. Yo, we're just trying to reach one more person. And yeah, it creates mess.
But it's a good mess. People say, wow, yeah, with all these people coming, they need to be discipled. Yeah, we're working hard on that. Why don't you help us? Right.
You're like, yeah, but when you do one of these big baptisms, I feel like some of the people that lip in there probably shouldn't be baptized. Yeah, I get that, okay? We try to have good conversations with people, and we end up telling a lot of them that it might be best for them to hold off for a while, a few weeks, figure all this out. But you know what? When Peter preached at Pentecost and 3,000 people got saved and spontaneously baptized in one day, And the church was only 120 big.
What's the ratio of that? These people were counseling a lot of people. I'm sure they felt a little chaotic, and I'm sure a few people even slipped into baptismal who weren't quite ready to be baptized yet. People say, well, JD, all you care about is numbers. Yeah, I care about numbers of souls saved, numbers of marriages restored, numbers of prodigals brought home, and if that's one of your prodigals, you'll care about it too, right?
Yeah. Each Number represents somebody precious to Jesus, and so they're precious to us too. Growth creates problems, but y'all those problems are worth it.
So Summit we're committed to growing, that's our evangelistic mission. But we're committed to doing so God's way in ways where leadership is shared and people are taken care of and the ministry is not focused on any one person.
Okay. I'll say it one last time. Yo, it's no accident. That right after God teaches them the basics of faith and walking with him, He teaches them the importance of belonging to the community. And playing your role in intercession, evangelism, and care for the body.
This is not an audience. It is a kingdom of priests to holy nations. It is the body of Christ.
So, summit, how about it? Let's not just come to church. Let's... B. The church.
Thanks for being with us today. Remember, you can explore more teaching and resources connected to today's message at jdcreer.com and then keep the gospel in view all year long with our brand new scripture memory cards. Yours this month when you donate to Summit Life, a simple, powerful tool to help you meditate on scripture daily. Take a look at jdgreer.com. See you next time.
Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries. Uh
