The single focus of the Bible is Jesus. And as we see the glory of Jesus in the pages of the Bible, we are transformed and we become people who seek glory because we love glory. We do righteousness because we love righteousness. And that does not come through religious to-do lists. And it does not come by me giving you a motivational speech.
It comes by you leaving this place in awe of the greatness of the glory of God who gave himself for you at the gospel. Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast. I'm Molly Vitovich. To learn more about this ministry, visit us anytime at jdgreer.com. Did you know that there are other ways to stay connected with Pastor JD and keep growing in your faith throughout the week?
One easy way to do that is by visiting our YouTube channel where every week you'll find these same full-length sermons from Pastor JD, plus additional encouraging content to help keep you rooted in God's Word. For all of you visual learners, it's a great way to go deeper with the teaching you hear right here on the audio podcast. Just open YouTube and search for JD Greer.
Now, let's get to today's message. We often refer to the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as the Gospels, right? But today, Pastor J.D. reveals that the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is all one big story, the story of Jesus Christ. It's all the gospel.
Grab your Bible and take some notes. Here's Pastor J.D. John chapter 15, the gospel is not just the way that we begin in Christ, the gospel is also the way that we grow in Christ. You see, for many of us in church, the gospel functioned for us something like the diving board off of which we jumped into the pool of Christianity. It was a prayer that we prayed.
to invite Jesus into our life that began the Christian life. But now that we have become Christians, we are going to grow in Christ by all these different new things we're going to learn: precepts and principles and practical steps on how to do this. And what I tried to show you was that that's not true. People start thinking you grow in Christ by learning five ways to be a better husband, and here's how you control your temper, and that's what it means to grow in Christ. What I tried to show you was that according to Jesus, the gospel is not just the diving board off of which we jump into the pool of Christianity.
The gospel is the pool itself. And so we grow in Christ never by going beyond the gospel. We grow in Christ by going deeper into the gospel. You see, it is as God enlarges your understanding of the glory of who He is in the gospel, as you see His holiness. As you see what your sin against him was really like, when you see how much generosity and mercy and grace that he showed to you.
It is when you see those things in the gospel that you begin to change. Not just your behaviors change, but you change. Your desires change. And you begin to act righteously because you begin to love righteousness. Because, see, there's something that the gospel does that no religious to-do list can ever do, and that is that it changes your heart.
It changes your desires. God wants you not just to act righteously. He wants you to act righteously because you love righteousness. And the only thing that can produce that kind of change in the heart is the gospel.
So that's what Jesus tells in John 15. He tells us to abide in the gospel. Abide means literally to make your home in it, to dwell there. And as we do that, he says, you will grow. As the roots of our lives grow deeper in the gospel.
Spiritual fruit, spiritual behavior comes as naturally to us as roses on a rose bush. Listen, the hard part of Christianity is not earning God's love. Because God gives his love and acceptance as a gift in Christ. Christ did the work for you, and he gives it to you as a gift. The hard part of Christianity is believing in that love.
abiding in it, remaining in the presence of it. That's the hard part of Christianity. It's not that you are in God's love, it's that you believe that it's been given to you. It's so counterintuitive. And so what these spiritual disciplines do is they keep you in the presence of that.
I explained to you that they're like wires that connect us to the power of the gospel. Wires don't have any power in themselves. But wires connect you to the place from which the power comes.
Well, see, in the same way, listen to this. The same way spiritual disciplines have no power in themselves. but they keep us connected to the place. that the power comes from. which is the gospel.
And that's what they help you abide in. Do you get that analogy?
Okay, so here's command number one that we see in John 15. Command number one, here we go. It's John 15, 7, which we're going to look at today. Abide, Jesus says, in my word. That's his command.
Abide in my word. 15:7. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish. And it'll be done for you. Abiding in the word of God is going to give you access to the power of God.
He also says this to him just a few verses before. If you go back one chapter to chapter 14, verse 23. And by the way, you remember. In the original writing of this, there was no break between chapter 14 and 15. This was all part of one discussion.
So right before this, Jesus had made the statement, look at this. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word which you hear is not mine.
But it's the Fathers who sent me.
Okay, there are four things that Jesus is teaching us about his word, the Bible, in these verses. that I want to develop for you. They all kind of build on each other. I'm going to give them all to you right here. Don't try to write all these down because we'll go through them one at a time.
But for you, type A people that love to know where we're going, this is it. Number one, the first thing Jesus does is he shows us the divine nature of the Bible. Shows us how he views the Bible, its divine nature. The second thing that he does is shows us the single focus of the Bible. Then the third thing he explains is the benefits of abiding in the Bible.
And then the fourth thing that kind of flows out of these is he urges us. toward a radical commitment to the Bible.
So here we go, number one. Jesus explains to us the divine nature of the Bible. This is in verse 24 of chapter 14. Jesus claims that the words that he speaks are not just the words of an enlightened man. They're not heightened God consciousness.
They are the very words of God. You see that in verse 24? The word which you hear is not mine. It is the Father's who sent me.
Now This is not just an attitude that Jesus had toward his own words. If you have a red-letter Bible, the words in red. This is the attitude he had toward all of Scripture. Every word in the Bible he said is the word of God. The reason I point that out is because there's a lot of people who like to say, That the Bible contains this kind of like enlightenment by God that's like God's ideas, but when it was recorded by human beings, it got mixed up with a little error.
Because, you know, humans are perfect, and when they're writing it down, they got some stuff wrong.
So you got God ideas mixed up with faulty human expressions. Because, I mean, you know, these authors had their own cultural biases and traditions, and sometimes they couldn't see out of them, and sometimes they just made mistakes. But of course, now we, 21st-century Americans with the internet, You know, we're all sophisticated and we're scientific, and sometimes we just have to correct some of their archaic ideas or their historical inaccuracies because we know better. Jesus did not feel that way about the Bible. There are three words that we use to describe Jesus' attitude toward the inspiration of the Bible, inspiration meaning the fact that it's from God.
There are three words we use to describe it that are a little nerdy and theological, but I would encourage you to write them down because they are very important. The three words are verbal, plenary, and infallible. Verbal, plenary, and infallible. Verbal means not just the ideas, but the words themselves. Plenary, of course, means the whole of them, not a part of them.
And infallible means that they are unable to lead us astray. that they are without error.
Now, let me give you a couple examples of this that sort of put all of them together. Matthew chapter 19, Jesus is. teaching something to his disciples and he makes a quote from Genesis 2. And when he quotes from Genesis 2, he prefaces it by saying, God says. And then he quotes from Genesis 2, and if you go back and look at his quotation that he's making, it is clearly the words of the narrator of Genesis.
Well no, we assume Moses.
So, what he is doing is saying that what Moses said, it's not even what God in Genesis is saying, thus says the Lord, it's what Moses is saying, and Jesus says, what Moses says is what God says in Scripture. Here's another example, very important one. John 10:33. Jesus is in an argument with the Pharisees about whether or not it's okay for people to worship him. And so Jesus, to show them that it is okay that they worship him.
He quotes from the Psalms. Psalm chapter 82, and he says this. Is it not written in your law? And then he quotes a verse from Psalm 82 that has one word in it. that refers to the Messiah as being God.
Now here's what's significant about that. First of all, the book of Psalms is not the law. The Psalms are clearly psalms that are written by Jewish people about God. It's not the laws that are coming from God. Secondly, he quotes Psalm 82.
which is written by a guy named Asaph. who nobody's ever heard of. We don't know anything about ASAP. He's a lightweight. He's JV.
David is like the superstar of the Psalms. He didn't even call one by David. And then he takes one word out of that psalm and bases the argument for his deity upon it. I love how Roger Nicole summarizes all this. He says, quote, Jesus Christ bases his argument for his deity on a single word and a secondary clause in an unimportant psalm by an obscure figure in the seemingly least authoritative part of scripture, the Psalms.
You know what the point is that I'm making? Every word Jesus viewed as being the words of God, so that he could build an entire argument off of one word in one verse in an unimportant part of the scripture, we think.
Now, some of you are like, well, okay, well, I understand that deals with the Old Testament, but I mean, you know, the Bible I got in my hands right here has a lot of books that are written after Jesus. You know, it's written by guys like Peter and Paul, Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and John. How do we know those guys got it right? I mean, maybe it was them trying to think about what they wanted Jesus to say, and maybe they had their own agenda. You ever heard that?
Da Minchi Code. You ever heard that kind of argument? That people, you know, oh, well, it's not recorded accurately, it's what some people wanted Jesus to be.
Well, that's a great question. A great question. Look in verse 26 of chapter 14. You'll see something pretty interesting. Jesus says to the apostles, look at this.
The helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you.
Well, didn't you just promise them? He promised him two things. Did you catch it? Number one, he promised that the Holy Spirit would bring to their remembrance accurately everything that he taught them. That is his promise that they would record accurately the emphasis of his teaching.
The second thing that he promised them, did you catch that? Is that the Holy Spirit would teach them all things. which means that the Holy Spirit would clarify. and deepen. And help them apply Jesus' teaching to places that Jesus never really discussed.
That's the epistles of Paul. That's books like Revelation and Hebrews and James and Jude. Which is why Peter and Paul refer to each other's writings as scripture. The same name that Jesus gave the Old Testament. The whole point I'm making is the Bible is the very words of God, verbal, plenary, infallible, which means that you can trust it.
And it means you can build your life on it. And that's going to be the basis of everything else we talk about today. This is God's word to us. It is infallible. It is trustworthy.
You base your life around it. You don't correct it, it corrects you. Listen, it is more trustworthy than if God spoke to you in a dream. How cool would that be? God speaks to you in a dream and just like tells you exactly what He wants from you.
Wouldn't you have a sense of confidence when you got up the next day? Did you know that if God speaks to you in a dream, and I think He does that from time to time, I wouldn't take that away from Him. But if God speaks to you in a dream, you got a one in three chance of it being God. You're like, one in three, yeah, it could be a hallucination. It could be something you ate that day that had some image come up in your mind that you think is God, but it's really not.
That happens. It could be an evil spirit. Satan loves to impersonate God, and the scripture says sometimes he appears as an angel of light, and he will whisper in our mind and head as if he's God. And he loves to confuse us.
So it might be Satan. Or number three, it might be God. If God speaks to you in a dream or a vision, you got a one in three chance of it being God. You pick up that book that you got in your hands and you read it, you got a one-in-one chance of it being God. Because it is the very words of God.
It has the authority of God. It is God's word. Words. It's always God. Number two.
The divine nature of the Bible. Number two, the single focus of the Bible. This is verse 7. You see on verse 7 Jesus equates, look at it. His words abiding in us, with us abiding in him.
See how it just kind of moves between those two, abiding in my words and abiding in me are the same thing. That's because the words of the Bible, listen, are always about Jesus. Everything in the Bible points to Jesus. Luke chapter 24, Jesus explained this. in what had to be the greatest Bible study moment ever.
Jesus is talking with his apostles, and it says that he begins with Moses and the prophets, and he explains to them. how every story, every chapter, all of it is about him. How the point in everything that he has taught them is about him. That's because the point of the Bible is one. It's about Jesus.
Every story of the Bible, every chapter of scripture is pointing you to Jesus. I try to show you that every time I preach. I don't always do a great job. When we studied 1 and 2 Samuel together last year, which is about David. Remember how I explained to you that the point of those stories about David is not to give you a new hero to emulate?
I mean, sure, I get inspired by the story of David too, but that's not the main point. The main point of David's life was giving you a foreshadowing of a... greater king who would come, who would fulfill what David foreshadowed. And then succeed where David failed. These are just examples.
Joshua and Judges in the Old Testament. In the Hebrew canon, those are one book, so they go together. Joshua and Judges, if you're unfamiliar with the Bible, Joshua and Judges are always what Sunday school teachers teach from because they got the coolest stories in the universe. Joshua marching around the walls of Jericho, knocking the walls down. Then you got Judges, you got Samson, and you got all these cool battle scenes and battle stories, Gideon and all these things.
The guy that I was reading, who was explaining these books, said, There's something we do wrong in Joshua Judges. in that we always end up taking these as like examples for us to go and face our enemies. He said, when you read Joshua and Judges, watch, there's a very clear progression that is developing. Joshua I mean, Joshua is like a man's man. He's a stud.
He is the captain of the army. He's got swagger. And he commands things. He's got a kicktail army that just goes through the land of Canaan, and they get it done. Judges opens up.
Guess who the army, the captain of the army is in judges? Deborah. Who's a woman?
Now, I know in our politically correct culture, we're like, well, you know, it's all equal. But to the Hebrew people, That was, I mean, again, no offense, this is just their culture. That was a step down. When you go from Jack Bauer to Barbara Walters at the head of your army, Step down, okay?
So now you got a woman leading the army. Then a few chapters later you got Gideon Remember, he didn't even have the army. He just takes 300. Then you got Samson. Who doesn't have an army, period?
He just got the jawbone of a donkey and opens up a can of whoop trash on the Philistines. Right? Then you got after that. The book of Judges closes and you go to David in 1 Samuel, because that's the next book. David isn't even a strong guy like Samson, he's just a teenage runt.
with a leather strap and five rocks. What's the whole point of that? What's the author trying to show you with this downward progression? He's trying to show them that Israel will not be delivered by economic, military, or political might. Israel is going to be delivered by one who comes in weakness, born in a manger, lives as a servant, dies as a criminal, and by himself defeats all of Israel's.
enemies and delivers them. The whole point of Joshua Judges is not to give you cool battle heroes to emulate. The whole point of Judges is that Jesus overcame it. And you worship him. The whole point of every story of the Bible is that not you leave it a list of what you're to do for God, but you stand in awe of what he has done for you.
You are to leave worshiping and in love with Jesus. which is why i often explain to you the goal that i have in preaching for you Is that you worship? Yeah, and the way I say it's like this, the goal of a lecture is that you leave with information. Isn't that what a lot of churches are? Where you just like use a good church service is where you copy down like five pages of notes.
It's like, ah, look how much I grew in Christ today. Then you got, that's the goal of the lecture, is that you leave the information. Then you got the goal of a motivational speech, which is action steps. That's what a lot of churches do. right you said you always leave with a new to-do list of things that you need to be fixing and doing for god The goal of a lecture, you leave with information.
The goal of a motivational speech is that you leave with action steps. The goal of a sermon is that you leave worshiping. You leave in awe of what God has done for you, because when you are in awe of what God has done for you, then what you are to do for God will come as naturally to you. as roses on a rosebush or fruit on a vine. In one of my favorite verses where Paul explains preaching, he says this: I love this.
Look at this. To this day, whenever Moses is read, He's speaking about unbelieving people, unbelieving Jews in his generation. To this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. And we all With unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord.
Where? Where? Where are we beholding the glory of the Lord? Look back in verse 15. in the reading of Moses and the prophets.
With an unveiled face, now we are beholding in Moses and the prophets the glory of the Lord and are being transformed. into the same image from one degree of glory to another. Because this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. How are we transformed? The Spirit enables us to see the glory of Jesus as Moses and the rest of the Bible is read to us.
And as we see the glory of Jesus in the pages of the Bible, we are transformed. Not our behavior, but us. We are transformed and we become people who seek glory because we love glory. We do righteousness because we love righteousness. And that does not come through religious to-do lists.
It does not come through information and it does not come. By me giving you a motivational speech, it comes by you leaving this place in awe of the greatness of the glory of God who gave himself for you at the gospel.
So the single focus of the Bible is Jesus. Here's number three. The benefits of abiding in the Bible. Jesus explains. The divine nature of the Bible, then he explains the single focus, then he gives you the benefits of abiding in the Bible.
Now I'm going to have to do these quickly, but I see three different ones in these verses. Oh there'll be A, B, and C. Here's A. A recreated heart. You have a recreated heart.
That's verse 5. Jesus says that when you abide in the gospel, His word, his life comes into your dead heart and begins to make it spiritually alive. The Gospel of John draws a really interesting parallel. Through the word. Jesus And through the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1.
All right, again, if you're not familiar with the Bible, this might be kind of new to you, but Genesis 1 opens up with these words: in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. How did God create the heaven and the earth? Did he, like, you know, get together some chemicals and potions and put them in a little Bunsen burner and mix them up? And, you know, is that how he did it? Yeah.
He spoke. It says he spoke. He says, first, he created the earth, and the earth was formless and void. And then he spoke into the formless void world, and as he spoke, light came out of darkness. Order came out of chaos.
Beauty came out of emptiness and ugliness. And as God spoke, everything came out of nothing. And it was good.
So when John, the Gospel of John rolls around, You ever see how the Gospel of John opens? You ever notice this? In the beginning was... The word. A direct allusion back to Genesis 1.
The word now is Jesus. Watch. Just like God's word in Genesis 1 spoke beauty and order. and life into darkness, chaos, and death. Jesus, the word of God, is now going to speak.
beauty, order, and life. into those of us whose souls are consumed by darkness, chaos, and death. It is the word of God that is going to recreate life from death.
so that the Gospel of John ends with the most curious scene in the Bible to me. Which is the last thing Jesus does with his apostles. You ever see this in John 21? You know what the last thing he does after he gives them the words and he's about ready to go out? It says that he looks at them and breathes on them.
But how awkward is that? You know, it's like You're like, is that like a Hebrew way of saying, you know, I love you, I'm going to miss you? No. That's awkward then, just like it is now. You're like, hey, man, see you later.
We just breathe in their face. But what Jesus says next is really important. He breathes on them and then he says, receive the Holy Spirit. You know what he's doing? He's going back and replaying Genesis 2.
Remember when Genesis 2, when God made man out of clay, Plato made him? The last thing he does is he breathes into his nostrils the breath of life and man becomes alive. Jesus is saying that he is going to breathe the Holy Spirit through his word into their hearts. And those who are consumed by death, disorder, disease, and chaos are going to have life and beauty come into their lives. It recreates your heart.
For those of you that have marriages, that are in chaos and disorder. that are empty and void. You know what you need? You need the word of God. Because no amount of counseling is going to be able to do for you what the Word of God can do in your heart, which is recreate beauty and order.
For those of you that are in the confusion of unbelief, you're in depression, you are in sadness, you need to be liberated and set free, not just by new habits, but by the Word of God that creates everything out of nothing and creates life out of death. Benefit number one is it recreates your heart in new life. Uh Partnering with Summit Life is more than just supporting a radio program. You're actually helping make the gospel accessible to people who may never step inside the walls of a church. Every day, men and women tune in looking for answers, for hope, or maybe even for a fresh start with Jesus.
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So if Summit Life has been a trusted source of spiritual encouragement to you, would you prayfully consider partnering with us financially today? You can learn more or give a gift now by visiting jdcreer.com. The second benefit is it gives you effective prayers. Effective prayers or answered prayers. This is verse 7.
Again, look, if you abide in me and my words, abide in you, ask whatever you want, it'll be done for you. That's a pretty big promise, is it not? Whatever you want. It's gonna be done for you. When you're filled up with the word of God, you see, listen.
Your requests come into line with the purposes of God. And when your requests are in line with the purposes of God, you have open access to the power of God. You see the reason, listen, the reason many of us don't get any answers to our prayers. Is because our requests of God are so out of step with the purposes of God. When the people of God know the purposes of God, they have open access to the power of God.
The reason some of you have never really seen major answers to prayer is because God's word has not transformed your heart to put you in line with his purposes. I love John Piper's image here. He says, prayer is like a wartime walkie-talkie. You're on the front lines of battle, and you use that wartime walkie-talkie to radio back to headquarters to get them to give you the supplies to get the battle won. Prayer is not a bell that you ring for a butler as you're lounging around the pool and you need more ice in your drink.
That's not what prayer is. Prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie for those who are engaged in the purposes of God to have access to the power of God. You don't have answered prayer, it's probably because you're not in line with the purposes of God. The disconnect is never between the power of God and the purposes of God. The disconnect is usually between the people of God and the purposes of God.
And if the people of God would get in line with the purposes of God, they would find their lives overflowing with the power of God.
So that's the second benefit: effective prayers. Here's your third one: your third one, letter C. That is my favorite one. Fullness of the Spirit. Fullness of the Spirit, verse 23.
This verse is awesome. Look at this. If anybody loves me, he will keep my word. And my father will love him, and we, who's we, my father, and I, we will come to him and make our home with him. I mean, you've heard about fullness of the Spirit, right?
That's fooling us with the whole Trinity. Which I don't even really get, to be honest with you. I mean, because the Father, Son, and the Spirit are in some ways different, but the fact that they're each God means that somehow they're all present in one another, which means that when one of them's with me, all of them with me. mind explodes. And that's fine because you're thinking about God and that's just what happens when you think about God.
But what it's saying, watch. Is that the promise and the benefit of the Word? Is as you abide in the Word, as it abides in you, the fullness of the Spirit of God comes into your life, the fullness of the Trinity. I love that this verse, watch it, this verse addresses the two different extremes of Christians. We got both kinds of these Christians in our church, and I love both sets of you guys, even though I'm about to make fun of you.
One set of Christians always prioritizes the Spirit over the Word. I mean, they're all about getting filled up by the Spirit, knocked out by the Spirit, baptized by the Spirit. I mean, that's what they want. They want, I just want the, I want the warm fuzzies of Jesus. I want to be knocked out.
I want to speak in another tongue. And I just want to have these crazy experiences with the Spirit. That's one set of people. On the other side, there are those who prioritize the Word over the Spirit. Their idea of growing in Christ and is just taking a lot of good notes and learning more doctrine, reading theology books.
You talk about these people about, you know, 1st, 2, and 3rd John, they're thinking John Calvin, John Piper, John MacArthur. That's what they do. They want word, they don't want spirit, they want word. Here in verse 23, the two are inextricably joined. Did you see that?
Verse 23, if you keep my word, I will come and abide in fullness in you. As you grow deep in God's word, you will increase in the fullness of the Spirit. And that addresses both sides, both extremes.
So to one group of you, okay, the spirit side. I would just ask you this, how do you get the presence of God in your life? How do you do it? Is it through some special ceremony? You come down here, me lay my hands on you, you get knocked out, you start laughing, and the Holy Spirit foaming at the mouth, and that's it?
No! According to this verse, you get the fullness of the Spirit of God by abiding in the Word of God. Paul says the same thing in Galatians 3. To the Galatians, he says, how did you receive the fullness of the Spirit? How did it happen?
He said, it happened when you believed the gospel. And then he goes on in verse 6. He says, just like you believe the gospel and God gave you righteousness and forgiveness, as you continue to believe the gospel, he fills you with his spirit. That is revolutionary. for some of you that come from a charismatic background.
You want the fullness of the Spirit? It's not an especial ceremony. Abide deeply in the gospel, and you will be overflowing with the Spirit.
So don't seek the Spirit, seek the gospel. And as you grow deep in the gospel, as you abide in it, you will be filled with the Spirit. And by the way, Where the Spirit really comes and is present, that's his whole focus, to draw your attention. to the gospel. Theologians call him the shy member of the Trinity.
Because he never wants to point people to himself. He always points people to Jesus.
So wherever he's present, the focus won't be on him. It'll be on Christ. You won't hardly even notice him because he's magnifying and bringing Jesus' qualities out. Jesus said this, John 16:14, the Holy Spirit, He will glorify me. And I say this humbly, but because I love you.
A lot of these churches that teach you to be filled with the Spirit, their focus is on the Spirit. And that is proof that they're not really full of the Spirit because the Spirit would never do that. The Spirit always focuses on Jesus.
So this speaks to those who prioritize spirit over gospel. But see, it also speaks to many of you who have no concept. That there really is a Spirit of God. You know it like theologically, but You don't know experientially that he speaks to you and communes with you and fills you. You know, for 2,000 years, the saints of God have talked about these incredible moments where they're filled up with the Spirit of God.
The book of Acts talks frequently. About the apostles being filled with the presence of God and having a sense of boldness and clarity, understanding of his love, and preaching with boldness. Paul, 1 Corinthians 14, 25, talks about a church being filled with the presence of God so much so that even when somebody who doesn't believe in God comes in, they're suddenly filled with this awareness that there is a God who knows everything there is to know about them, and they fall on their face and they worship. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, one of my preaching heroes.
He talks about these repeated moments of ecstasy he had in the presence of God. He said it's like It's like I'm walking along with my five-year-old daughter. And suddenly I look at her and I pick her up and I spin her around and I kiss her on her cheek and on her neck, and I look her in the face and say, You know who loves you? Your daddy loves you. He said, now truth be told, I didn't love her any more in that moment than I did in the moment before.
She probably knew that I was no more her daddy in that moment than I was in the moment before, but her perception of it changed. And in that moment, she was filled with awareness, a felt sense. of who I was and how I felt about her. He said, that's what God does with me. Suddenly, he sweeps me up in his arms and fills me with the spirit, and I have a felt sense of his glory and his love and his presence with me.
I love how he concluded this. He said, I spent half my time telling Christians to study doctrine. And the other half telling them that doctrine is not enough. Word, spirit, both. As you abide in the Word, you abide in the Spirit.
So, the divine nature of the Bible, the single focus of the Bible, three, the benefits of abiding in the Bible, that leads us lastly to number four. See, that calls for a radical commitment to the Bible. You see, if all these things are true. We should be radically committed to this book. That's why the center of our church is the Word of God.
This is what I'm doing when I'm preaching to you. What I'm doing is not standing up here giving you a bunch of opinions and insights that I have about things. Even if those are any good, which they're usually not. It's not really going to help you. What changes you is not my insight, my eloquence, my wisdom, my funny stories.
That's not what changes you. The word of God is what changes you.
So the center of all we do here is I walk you through the Bible and I get you deep into it because that has the power to transform you. The Spirit of God doesn't float through my stories that happened to me when I was a kid or what happens to my kids now. The Spirit of God flows through the Word of God. That's why it's the big thing in what we do. It's the big thing of our worship.
Have you ever noticed that? We anchor our worship in Scripture. Why? Because it's not the style of music. It's not anything about music that brings you into the presence of God.
The Word of God brings you into the presence of God. You ever hear somebody say, man, that worship leader really brings me into the presence of God? No, he did not. Unless he lived a perfect life and died for your sins, he did not bring you into the presence of God. Jesus.
brings you into the presence of God. The worship leader may remind you. That Jesus brought you into the presence of God, but that's all he's doing He's not pointing to a style. He's not pointing you to God. He's pointing you to the scriptures.
You ever hear people say this? They're like, hey. Worship, you know, it's not about what God's doing for us. It's about what we're, we got to give God something. We got to, we got to bring something to God, we got to offer something to Him.
Newsflash. God doesn't need anything from you. Nothing. Worship is about him declaring his word to you. Because he is the giver, you are the receiver.
And as you are given the word of God in worship, the response of your heart naturally is worship. See? Starts with the word. The center of all we do here at our church is the word of God, the focus of every ministry, because the word does the work. If I just get the word out there, the word will do the word.
For your part, what that means is that you resolve to know it. You got a resolve to know it. I love what Moses said, Exodus 34, to the children of Israel. He said, These are not idle words. This is your life.
It is your life What I stand up here and do every week, the reason I take it so importantly is because this is not an idle word. I'm not filling your head with knowledge. It's your life. You ever notice this how in Jesus' darkest hours? You read the accounts of Jesus' darkest hours, what he is always doing.
You ever notice this? He's quoting scripture. To whom? He's not teaching anybody. He's quoted to himself.
Why? Because the way he sustained himself in his darkest hour was through the Word of God. When he's tempted by Satan face to face, what's he do? He quotes the Word of God. In his darkest, most troubling hours, he sustained himself through the word of God.
Did you know there are 1,800 verses in the New Testament that record Jesus' words? Of the 1,800 verses that record Jesus' words, 180 of them are quotations from other parts of the Bible. 10% of everything Jesus said was a quotation from the Bible. That was how he had the strength to endure darkness and temptation. Here's my question for you.
How much of your speech? is the Bible. When you get into the darkness and temptation. What sustains you? Most of you have a lazy attitude toward the Bible because you don't really think it's all that essential.
You're like, well, I go to church and J.D.O. explained to me, and I got friends. Seriously? In Jesus's Hour and moment of trial, what sustained him is the word of God, but you. You got something Jesus didn't have.
We don't know what it is, but you got it, and that's why you don't need to know the Bible so well. Jesus didn't have time, by the way, to run and get his Bible and look up some stuff that he was going to go through. He just quoted it. Psalm 22 comes out when he's on the cross, when he's in front of Pilate, of the scriptures come out. You see, in the moment, in the moment, you have no time to go back and think about what you want to think about.
It just, what's inside of you, comes out. You know, I grabbed you and get ready to throw you off a cliff. What's going to come out of your mouth is not a prepared remark. What's going to come out is whatever is inside of you. When Jesus was stabbed in the heart, he bled God's word.
And because of that, he... was sustained in the hour of temptation and trial.
Some of you college students. are going to be. Destroyed. this year. I see it every year.
You're gonna be about to go through temptation. You have not ever gone through. You're going to go through questions of belief. You're going to go through darkness. And it's going to crush many of you because the Word of God.
It's not sustaining you. This is not enough. Idol word. It's your life. You resolve to know it.
Parents, that means I resolve to teach it to my children. Deuteronomy 6. It says, You write it on the tablet of their heart, you write it on the doorpost of your house, you write it on your walls. Which is not a decorating scheme. It means that my most important role as a dad is teaching my kids the word of God.
I know we got different styles in how we parent. I get that. I have no problem with that. But I do not understand a dad that does not look as his primary responsibility in life. teaching his kids the word of God and discipling them.
Which is why the most important time in my day is what I do with my children after I get home from work. You know what, 8%, 8% is what they say of a church like ours. 8% of our kids will be following Christ the second year of college. 8%. Percent.
92% of our children, if statistics hold true. will not follow Christ beyond their second year of college. You wanna know why? Because you didn't prioritize the word in their life. You got them involved in extracurricular activities.
They're going to dance, they're going to soccer, they're going to all this stuff. You're like, oh, but I got to make sure they get into the right college. Yeah, I'm concerned about college too. But can I just submit to you that where they go to college is probably not as important as where they spend eternity? This is not an idle word.
This is not an academic exercise. This is their life and they will be destroyed. By our enemy. Unless they are sustained in those moments by the scripture that you have put into the doorpost of their lives and written on the tablets of their hearts. For you.
You've got to prioritize it in your life. I know who I'm talking to. I'm talking to mothers who have three kids, two kids, four kids. And you're like, you don't understand it. My day, by the time I get up, my kids are yelling at me and they yell at me all day.
And then we go to bed and they yell at me. It's just, I never have any time to do anything to tell me to prioritize the Bible in my life. I understand. I have four kids. I live in that world.
I'm saying that for some of you, mothers, you're probably going to have to get up a half hour earlier. Which means you got to go to bed a half hour earlier. which means you gotta turn the TV off a half hour sooner. Which is where the discipline really starts. You businessmen are like, oh, well, you know, no, I mean...
I work like 70 hours a week, dude. It'd be nice to live in your world. All you do is read the Bible, show up on Sunday, go home. It'd be awesome. This is not me.
First of all, I don't buy that. Because somehow you managed to squeeze in three rounds of golf a month. All right. Second of all. If that's true, then buy yourself a listening Bible on MP3 on your iPod.
Get your teenager to show you how to use it. And listen to it on the way to work. I used to have one time in my life, one chapter, where I felt like I was so busy I was just cutting everything. And I said, you know what? I'm going to buy it.
And I listened to it 20 minutes driving to work, 20 minutes back. Get the word of God in you. But probably most importantly, I just don't buy it, period. You could, you just don't prioritize it. That's why you don't make time for it.
I'll prove it to you. You eat. Right? You're like, nah, man, sometimes I get so busy at work, I forget to eat. Fine, you never do that two days in a row.
You'll squeeze it in somewhere. When your spirit craves the Word of God as much as your body craves food. You won't skip it. for days on end either. You got to prioritize it because it's your life.
You've got to open yourself to what it teaches.
Some of you, you'll never really know anything about God. You want to know why? Because you come to God with a bunch of biases and preconceptions about what God is allowed to be. Let me tell you how dumb that is. I mean, just, and I say this humbly, I'm just using this as an illustration, and I'm not making any political statements here.
Let's say that you and I were going to be friends, and I come to you, and you're like, I was like, well, tell me about yourself. You're like, well, I'm kind of a pretty ardent Democrat. God, I really want my friends to be Republicans, and so in my mind, you're going to be a Republican. I'll never know you that way. Because I'm not knowing you for who you are.
I'm knowing you for how I think you should be. There's a lot of people come to God exactly that same way. God, this is what you're allowed to do. This is what you're allowed to be. I don't like this part of you, so I'm just going to ignore this.
You will never know God that way. You have to let God challenge you, contradict you, even tick you off. for you to know the real him. You have to open your heart to his teaching. Listen.
You and I are rebellious against God. We're sinners. And because of that, There's a penalty that we owe, but God in his love came as Jesus and suffered our penalty in our place.
So that the word of God to us is repent and believe. Repent means surrender control of our lives. Believe means to receive what He's done for us. And if we repent and believe, we will be reconciled to God. That is where it begins.
Everything else from there is just going deeper into that. Maybe you're here and you've never done that. You've never repented and believed. I would invite you, as I do every week, that that be what you do. You receive the message of the Bible, you turn over control of your life to Jesus, and you receive what He's offered to you.
Bother in these moments. Make the gospel and the word and the spirit large in our eyes because they are all the same. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We need more gospel power in our lives.
Amen? At Summit Life, we're always praying for one thing above all else. fruit that lasts. That means lives changed by Jesus, people finding forgiveness, freedom, and new life through the gospel. It means believers growing stronger in their faith, rooted in God's word, and equipped to follow Christ in every area of life.
It also means local churches being strengthened, pastors encouraged, leaders equipped, and congregations sent out on mission. And ultimately, it means multiplication, disciples making disciples and churches planting churches so the gospel continues to spread. That's why Summit Life uses media as a tool, not as the destination, but as the megaphone to proclaim the message of Jesus clearly and faithfully. If you'd like to learn more about this mission or explore free resources, visit jdgreer.com. We'll see you next time.
Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries. Yeah.
