The difficult statement. We're going to look at this week comes from Luke chapter 12. This is what Jesus says: Do you think? But I came. to bring peace on earth?
No. No, I tell you. But division. He said, no, wait a minute, not peace. He came to bring division.
I thought Jesus was the prince of peace. Welcome to the Summit Life podcast with J.D. Greer. I'm Molly Vidovich. Before we dive in today, I wanted to take a quick second to tell you about a daily email devotional from Pastor JD.
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So grab your Bible, turn to Luke chapter 12, and let's get started. Jesus was very polarizing. You either loved him or you hated him. At the same time that he was becoming really attractive to certain people, he was becoming really repulsive to others. And so you see toward the end of his life, after he's really revealed himself, you see great crowds thronging to him, and you see simultaneously other people plotting his death.
That's how you know, I explain to you, that you've encountered the real Jesus. You either develop feelings of intense love or intense hatred. There's really no middle ground. The great irony I told you is that a lot of people in our culture, most people find Jesus to be boring, if anything. Nobody in the Bible ever found Jesus boring.
Many hated him. thought he was full of it, thought he was a fraud, a fake, that happened. But nobody ever found him boring. And so, if that's you, chances are you've never really experienced the real Jesus or. actually heard what he has said.
So we're looking at the difficult statements that Jesus made because what they're going to do is reveal to you kind of what side of the line that you're on. Do you love him or do you hate him? And there are times that Jesus makes me mad, and I have a choice to whether or not this is going to let these things develop hatred in me for him and resistance or whether it's going to draw me to him.
So I think that's what will happen here over these next several weeks. The difficult statement. That we're going to look at this week comes from Luke chapter 12.
So, if you have a Bible, I'd invite you to take it out and open it up or turn it on and go to verse 49 of Luke chapter 12. This is what Jesus says. He said, I've come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. But I have a baptism to undergo first, and what constraint I'm under until. that baptism is completed.
Then here is the divisive confusing statement. Do you think But I came. To bring peace on earth? No. No, I tell you.
But division. He said, no, wait a minute, not peace. He came to bring division. I thought Jesus was the prince of peace. Isn't that what the angel said when he was born?
I come to bring you good tidings and peace on earth, goodwill toward men?
Some translations there even say a sword. I came not to bring peace, but a sword, which is literally, by the way, what the Greek language says. The NIV that I'm using this weekend translates it as division, because he's not talking about inciting violence. He's talking about dividing his message, dividing people, causing bitter division. All right, see how it continues?
He goes on, verse 52. From now on, there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two, and two against three. They will be divided: father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. Jesus is going to divide some families.
Some of you have experienced that, have you not? And the greatest conflict that's ever come into your family came over this issue of where you stand with Jesus. Why does Jesus divide certain families?
Well, it's because of the absolute allegiance that he demands. His claims are so absolute and so dramatic. That it divides families as to whether or not they are fully on board with him or not. Let me show you this. The Gospel of Matthew.
After recording the exact same statement that Jesus made, adds these words to the end of what Jesus said, Matthew 10:37. You see, anyone who loves their father or mother more than me. Is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds their life will lose it. Whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. All right, so he came not to bring peace, but division.
Now he'll end up separating people within the same household. Unless you love me more than you love your own kids. You can't even be my disciple? I mean, that's like the triple threat of difficult statements.
So here's what I want to do. I want to do four things today. All right, I want to firstly, I want to deal with a widely held myth. that a lot of people bring into this. Deal with the Wiley Hill myth.
And secondly, I want to try to expose for you a staggering claim. Then three, reveal an incredible motivation that Jesus puts within this passage. And then number four, I want to ask you a few very practical questions. about where you are with what he said here. Here we go, number one, a widely held myth.
Here is the myth. The myth is that Christianity And the claims of Jesus are more divisive. than other viewpoints. You see, there are some of you who hear this and you say, well, yeah. I've always known that Christians And Christianity is divisive.
Bible-thumping Christians are the bane of society. They're always causing division. And there are some Christians who are self-righteous jerks, and I will acknowledge that. But the assumption is that other viewpoints are tolerant and inclusive. But Jesus' message is uniquely intolerant and exclusive.
But you see, all viewpoints, when you really get down to the roots of them, are ultimately exclusive. Let me give you what hopefully will be a pretty extreme but clear example. Let's say, for example, that I was a pastor, not at the summit church, but I was a pastor at the Unitarian Church.
Now, the Unitarian Church, if you don't know, there's actually a couple here in Raleigh-Durham. They believe that all religions are equally valid, that they're all headed to the same place. They think God is like a mountain, and that whatever route you take to get to the top is up to you because you're headed toward the peak. It's, you know, it makes no difference.
So, say that I were a pastor at the Unitarian Church, and I decided to do a series comparing different religions.
So, I teach one week on Buddhism, and so I teach that God is not a person, He's not a personality, God is more of a life force that you kind of tap into, and God doesn't get angry at Sim because He's not a person and can't get angry. But what you can do is by being as good as you can, you can sort of get into a good karma stream so that one day the divinity will repay your goodness with more goodness. The next week, I'm going to teach on Christianity, and I discovered that here you have a God who is very personal, a God who has a mind of his own, a God who gets righteously angry at sin. And he has declared that there's nothing really you can do about that because you're so saturated with sin that by being good, you're not going to change his disposition towards you. But because he loved you, he came himself and did for you what you couldn't do for yourself, and he died to save you so that you could be fully righteous in his sight and be saved.
And so I say these both cannot be accurate pictures of God. And so I think that Christianity is right and I think that Buddhism is wrong. How long do you think that I would last as a pastor at the Unitarian Church? Not very long. That would probably be my last Sunday.
You say, well, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Maybe both of the viewpoints are true in their own mystical, kind of Obi-Wan Kenobi kind of way, and maybe it's just different.
Well, the problem when you say that is you've just told the Buddhist that his view that you cannot interact with God as a person is wrong. Because you've got the Christian over here interacting with God as if he's a person, and you're allowing him to do that. And you've just told the Christian that his view that we are too sinful to please God is wrong. Since you're acknowledging that the Buddhist over here, by doing the best that he can, can get into a good karma stream. Just do his good works.
You're claiming that both of them have found a workable system. But neither of them sees the whole picture of God. And how do you know that?
Well, evidently you see the whole picture of God. How do you know that the roads they're on are going up the same mountain? The only way you can make a statement like that is if you've got some version of Google Maps where you can see that they're headed toward the top of the same mountain.
So, in other words, you're claiming to see the very thing that you're saying neither of them see, and that's kind of arrogant to me. In fact, it's kind of like hypocritical to deny to other people the very thing you're allowing yourself to do. How do you know that all religions are the same? It's only if you know where they're headed, and that claims a superior knowledge. Or here's the other analogy that I've used with you over the years.
It's like this parable that comes out of, I think it comes out of India, of three blind men that fall into a pit, and when they fall into a pit, there's an elephant in there.
Well, they're blind, so they start feeling around, and one of them grabs a hold of the tusk of the elephant and says, Oh, it's a spear. The other one says, no, you know, because he's touching the abdomen of the elephant. He says, it's a wall. The other one grabs a hold of the tail and says, no, it's a broom. And the moral of the story is: each of them has an incomplete knowledge, and only by humbly putting all of their knowledge together will they get a fuller picture of what the elephant's like.
And the moral of the story is: that's what each religion is. Each religion sees a different part of God, and only by putting them all together do you get a full picture of God, which is a quaint little parable. But here's the question: Who is the only person in the parable who sees the whole elephant? The narrator, you.
So, you are claiming to see what nobody else can see because they're blind and you have sight. How arrogant. How arrogant that you claim for yourself the one thing you won't let anybody else have, and that is the full and the complete picture. I mean, you see the hypocrisy there? It's exclusive.
You've got a view of God, and ours does not fit into it. When Jesus came, he claimed to be the full and complete revelation of the one true God. He's either true and accurate when he says that or he's not. All our division comes from the decision that we make about who Jesus is. The Christian says he's God.
Because he's God, he gets to make the rules. And because he's God, that means it doesn't matter what I think, doesn't matter what you think, matters what he says about this.
Well, the world says, no, no, no, no, no, I want to get to make the rules too.
So I'm going to exclude Jesus' claims to total lordship. The world, for example, says, you Christians, your views on sex are too narrow. And we say, well, we just believe that Jesus gets to make the rules on all things, including sex. The world has its ways of determining what is right and wrong. They just don't like our ways.
And so they exclude our ways of determining what is right. Romans chapter 1 says that all of our division and conflict comes from this one question. Is God in charge of our lives? Or are we in charge? Does he get to make the rules or do we get to make the rules?
Either way that you answer that question, you exclude the other answer. That's why, when I'm talking to a person who tells me that my views of morality or whatever are way too narrow. What I usually added is happening just last week. I usually ask them, I say, okay. Are you saying that my interpretation of Jesus' statements Is too narrow.
And I'm wrong about my interpretation. Or are you sane? That Jesus' claims to Lordship are invalid, because that's a very important distinction. If you question my interpretation of what he said, yeah, I invite you to read the Bible and figure it out on your own. But if the question is, is he Lord or not?
You've got to answer that question because if he's Lord, then that means that he gets to decide what is right and wrong in your life, and you don't. And see, there's a lot of people that are not willing to go there. They don't want to give up any lordship over their lives. They want to help make the rules too.
So, you need to ask yourself if you've got a problem. Is my problem with the fact that there is a Jesus who said, I'm in charge, I get to make the rules. Because he's either Lord of everything that he says, or he's not Lord at all. There is no middle ground.
So, see, it is a myth to say that Christianity is unusually exclusive. The truth is that all claims to lordship are exclusive. And you got to decide: is he Lord or is he not? If he is Lord, he has total authority. If he's not Lord, then you are free to make whatever decisions you want to make about your life and what's right and what's wrong.
All right, that's That's number one. Is that is the uh The myth. Here's number two: a staggering claim. A staggering claim, verse 37: Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
This statement is staggering for two reasons. All right, the second ones, the more obvious ones. Let me do the first one. Verse one, first. Here's why it's staggering.
Jesus puts himself. Right at the center of our faith. He does not say, notice, he does not say here, love and obey God. He says love and obey. Me.
That makes Jesus unlike every other religious leader. I mean, I'm your pastor, right?
So that means in many ways I'm your religious leader. Imagine if I said that. I mean, if you're sitting here, I'm like, hey, unless you love. And obey me more than anything. If you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy to sit in here and listen to me teach.
If any religious leader ever says that, You should stand up immediately. You should walk out. Do not pass go, do not collect 200. You just get out because shortly after that, the Kool-Aid distribution happens, and you don't want to be there for that part of the service. Right?
Yet that's exactly what Jesus said. Other great religious leaders in the world never said that. Muhammad never said that. Muhammad said, love and obey God. Buddha never said that.
Great Christian leaders have never said that. John the Baptist, the greatest prophet ever lived, Jesus said. John the Baptist said, Hey, He's got to increase. God's got to increase. I've got to decrease.
George Whitfield, one of their leaders of the Great Awakening, said, May the name of Whitfield perish from the earth so that nobody ever remembers it. And may the name of Jesus grow brighter. They were all like, love and obey God. Don't put the focus on me. Jesus, by contrast, always wanted to talk about.
himself. And you need to grapple with that. He didn't tell people love and follow God. He said, love and follow me. And unless you love me more than you love everything else, you can't really follow me, which means that he's either the worst cult leader ever.
Or he's something different than every other religious leader. And that is, he is God himself, the object of our faith. You see, this is a staggering claim. And by the way, For those of you that are a little bit more on the The academic side, there's a professor over at UNC Chapel Hill named Bart Ehrman. Who's just released another book basically claiming this: that Jesus never claimed to be God in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
He only claims to be God in the Gospel of John. And his basic idea is the Gospel of John was written later.
So it was kind of this idea that Jesus was God was something the disciples developed and added in later because it's just not there in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The problem is it overlooks clear passages like this one. I mean, when Jesus says, I've got to be the sole object of your faith, and you've got to love me more than anything, he's either the worst cult leader and blasphemer that has ever walked the earth, or he actually is God. Right, or here's another one: in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus forgives sins.
I think I've explained this to you before. You can only forgive sins. Whoever sins against, sins are against God. It's kind of like if one of our worship leaders was up here on stage. and somebody walked out in the middle of the worship set and just told off and smacked them in the face.
And I'll walk up and say, I forgive you. The worship leader's like I'm sorry, bro. He didn't smack you, he smacked me. It's not your place to forgive. If Jesus is not God, he's got no business forgiving sins.
Right? Because he can only forgive sins if he's the one that we sinned against.
So, everybody recognized that was a claim to be God. Or, how about this? On Matthew chapter 5, Jesus climbs up on top of a mountain, and from that mountain begins to teach what they refer to as the second law.
Now, the first law was given by whom? By God. On a mountain.
So Jesus is kind of recreating that. And he says this, you have heard it said. First law, but I say to you, Who would have the audacity to edit God? But God. You see, that's a clear claim.
Here's one. Jesus says: if you tear down the temple, I'll raise it up in three days talking about his own body.
Okay, what was the temple? What was the main characteristic? What made the temple the temple? The fact that God lived there.
So what's Jesus saying? I'm the temple. I'm God. Because this temple is my body. To see the idea that Jesus does not claim to be God in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is a complete fiction.
He claimed to be God. He's either the worst blasphemer that ever lived or he is actually God. Bart Ehrman says that the gospels were written by Jesus' admirers. He is profoundly wrong. The gospel was not written by Jesus' admirers, it was written by Jesus' worshipers.
And the Bible message from start to finish is worship only God. And Jesus basically says, that's me. And that's why I say, love me more than anything. That's the first reason that claim is staggering. Here's the second reason.
It's also staggering because he is talking about a commitment that trumps our most precious relationships, a commitment that can have no conditions at all. Let me read that verse again. Anybody who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Can I ask you a very sober, serious question?
You love your kids more than Jesus? You cannot be his disciple. You see, a lot of us come to God. Because we want him to help our family. And God is a good means to a good family.
We're like, well, he can give my family stability. And so we want God in our lives, but God is a means to an end for us. He's a means to a stable family, and then, bonus, we all get to go to heaven when we die. Jesus will not be a means to anything else. Here's a question.
Are you teaching your kids to obey Jesus more than you? I try to teach my kids: hey, it's not what daddy and mommy want from your life, it's what Jesus wants from your life. And if what Jesus wants from your life turns out to be different than what mommy and daddy want from your life, you need to obey Jesus. You see, the Christian world is filled, and sometimes I fear even our church is filled with parents who don't want their kids to really obey God. What they're interested in is God helping their kids not have sex during high school and not be on drugs.
And that's why, when they get to college and they start thinking about where they want to live and they start saying things like, maybe I want to go to the mission field, the parent steps in and says, no. Because it's never been about you obeying Jesus. It's been about me using Jesus to get the kind of kids that I want. Parents, listen to this. Jesus says to your kids.
And to you, I am telling your kids to love me more than they love you. And that if I tell them to do something that you don't agree with. I am telling them to defy you and obey me. Does that make you hate Jesus? See, if so, maybe for the first time you're actually considering what he actually says about lordship.
You're teaching your kids to love Jesus, to give him their loyalty more than you. Where are you directing their loyalty and love? First to you or first to him? Where are you directing their priorities? Look at your family schedule.
Does your family schedule indicate that your kids, it's about them becoming you know, responsible men and women that Go to college, make lots of money. Is that kind of the, if I looked at your schedule, is that the trajectory, or is it like, nope. I can tell that their whole focus is teaching them to love and know Jesus.
Now, I do not want any of this to imply That coming to Jesus gives you some kind of brazen, unloving attitude towards your family. People who come to Jesus. Invariably become better husbands, better mothers. better wives, better children. Why?
Because Jesus teaches you to love and lay down your lives for those people. I'm just saying that for many of us, our kids and our families have become idols that we put ahead, even of God. Your kids are good things. That become God things. that then turn into bad things.
Because an idol is rarely something bad in and of itself. An idol is something good that you always just give too much and weight upon. And many of us are basically using Jesus to get a good family, which is the ultimate thing for us, and Jesus will not be used as a means to anything else. I wanted to quickly introduce you to our featured resource this month. What if prayer wasn't just about asking God for things, but responding to what he's already done?
That's the vision behind our newest resource, the Gospel Prayer Catechism. Based on the Gospel Prayer that Pastor JD has taught for years, this tool uses short biblical Q ⁇ As to help you anchor your prayer life in God's love, power, and grace. It's more than a tool. It's a framework for daily renewal. And when you support Summit Life this month, we'll send it to you as a digital download right away.
Every gift given also helps others go deeper in their faith by making Summit Life available on the radio, online, and beyond. If Summit Life has become a trusted source of spiritual encouragement for you, would you consider paying it forward by helping us reach others with the life-changing truth of the gospel? Find out more about how your support makes a difference by visiting jdgreer.com.
Now, let's return for the conclusion of today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Number three. That's a pretty severe claim, so he gives you a pretty incredible motivation. Luke 12, verse 49, I've come to bring fire on earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.
I've got a baptism to undergo first, though. What constraint I'm under until it's completed. I want to see fire. Come on the earth. You know, whenever God sends fire on the earth, It never really works out well for the Earth.
Right. It's judgment. You see a really clear picture of this, by the way, when God gave the law in Exodus 19. as a symbol of his righteous justice. and the penalty for those who would break his law.
He covers the mountain that he reveals it on in fire, and there's smoke, and there's earthquakes, and. It feels like a hurricane surrounds it, and they put a little border around the mountain and said, if anybody crosses this border, God said, then they will be killed. That's the fire of judgment that God will bring to the earth one day. And Jesus said, You see, me and the Heavenly Father, we want to see justice. We want to see holiness.
We are sick of sin. But first, I've got a baptism to undergo. Because you see there was a dilemma. If God's righteous wrath were to destroy all wickedness, Who here in this room is going to be alive?
So, what did Jesus say? I've got my own baptism to undergo first. It's a baptism of fire. He's talking about the cross. And what he means is that when he would go to the cross, he would actually be baptized in the fire of judgment that God put on the mountain in Exodus 19.
You want to do something really interesting? Read Exodus 19, then read the account of the crucifixion in Matthew. And what you'll find is there's a direct parallel. Jesus died in darkness, just like the mountain. There were earthquakes, there was thunder.
There was the fire of God's wrath burned through Jesus' body so that none of it would come to me. Tim Keller says it this way, Jesus did not come to earth the first time to bring justice or a sword. He came the first time to bear justice and to receive the sword. He came not with a sword in his hands, he came with nails through his hands. The center of Christian teaching for 2,000 years has been this.
Jesus bore the fire of God's wrath in our place, taking the full punishment our sins deserve, so that one day he can return to earth, he can end evil, and not destroy us all in the process. There was a choice that God the Father gave to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. You can avoid my wrath, but you're going to lose them. But if you're going to gain them, you're going to bear my wrath in their place. You want a motivation to give everything to Jesus?
That's it. You start lingering there. You linger there and you think about the great love of God for you until that produces love for God in you. You think about the commitment of the Creator God to you and let that produce commitment to God from you. It is the love of God for us and commitment of God to us that produces love for God in us and commitment to God from us.
Because, see, we are being asked to go in with a God. Who could not have gone more all in for us? You remember what it was like first time you said, I love you? To that spouse or to that person that when you were dating, remember how nervous you were? Because that's a big moment, right?
Because it's been some bad days, you're like, I love you. And they're like. What time is the movie? You know, I mean, it's. Do you remember this?
Like, you just kind of throw it out there and you're like, oh, what are they going to say?
Well, one of our campuses, I was talking with one of our Briar Creek campus pastors, Todd. He said, the first time I said I love you to Ashley, his wife, he said, we were in the Atlanta airport. Why you would choose the most unromantic place on the planet to say I love you, I do not know. But he said, I said, I love you. And she said, I've got to go to the bathroom.
And she went into the bathroom. It says she came out and did not say a word. He said for the next hour, he says, I just was like, oh my goodness, I just said this. And she just went to the bathroom. And that was the end of it.
And he said, about an hour later, she said, Todd, I love you. To what God is inviting you to do. is to step into a relationship where he's already gone all in. He's asking, he's like, put it there, out there for you, and said, yes, it is an extreme claim, but there is no more extreme claim than I have given to you. See, what a thought: you will never go farther for Jesus than he's gone for you.
You will never give up more for Jesus than he has given up for you. You will never love him more than he has loved you. You got to dwell on that. And guess what? This passage will not seem like a burden any longer.
You see, when Jesus, I always read that statement in Matthew 11 where Jesus said, My burden is easy and my yoke is light. And I thought, really? I mean, you just told me that I got to love you more than my kids. I got to pick up a cross and follow you, and you're calling that easy and light. The reason it's easy and light.
It's because of what I've gained. And what I've given up. What you gained is so great that what you've given up seems rather insignificant. You see, in order really to give up your life for something, you got to trust the one that you're giving it up to. I mean, if you're an investor or somebody that you've ever invested in something, you know that the one criteria you want to know when you give your money to something, if it's a large sum of money.
is you want to know that this person's trustworthy. Is this company? Have you checked it out? Have you done your due diligence? Are they going to not squander your money?
Are they going to give you a good return? Is your stockbroker trustworthy before you hand them twenty thousand, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars? Are they trustworthy? When Paul talked about giving his life to Jesus, he used investing terms. Listen to this: 2 Timothy 1:12.
I'm suffering for him, Paul said. And it's bad. But I know, you see, whom I have believed. And I'm convinced that he's able to guard what I've entrusted to him until that day. Do you know whom you have believed?
Because when you think about the glory and the love of Jesus for you, then... Even putting him ahead of your sons and daughters and fathers and mothers is not going to seem like it's that significant because you know that he will guard what you have committed to him. an actual decision regarding this. They have to choose between Jesus and their family. One of our church planners from Central Asia told me that he led a man to Christ over there.
And when his family discovered that this man had come to Christ, they. His father, this guy's father. Locked him in a room, tied him up, hung him upside down, and beat him on and off for two days trying to get him to recant. It said eventually he escaped, he ran away. end up enrolling in a college.
Several hours away, this guy says, one day my brother showed up. He said, my brother was acting really friendly, like he was on my side. He said, But after a couple of days, he says, I had to wonder. I think that. My dad sent my brother here to kill me.
And that if I'm going to walk with Jesus, it means that I might never be safe in the presence of my family again.
So he's got to choose between Jesus or his family.
Now, there are some of you listening to me right now that have had to make. Maybe not as extreme of a decision, but something similar. Most of us are never going to be in a situation that extreme. Where you're literally gonna have to choose between Jesus and your family.
So, let me ask you. A few very practical questions, which is number four. Four practical questions. Have I owned Jesus in all my relationships? That's what I want you to ask yourself.
Have I owned Jesus in all my relationships? Have you owned him in front of your family? What do you do when your family refuses to let you follow Jesus? I got asked this question recently by a high school student. Here's the answer.
You always follow Jesus. She was asking about being baptized. At our church, we tell you. If you're in high school, if you're less than 18 years old. We don't want to do that without your parents' consent because we recognize there's a certain authority they've given you over this stage in your life.
And so we're not going to do that with other consent until you're 18 years old. When you turn 18, you got to start making some of your own decisions, and that's when you've got to decide if you're going to follow Jesus in things like baptism. It means when he tells you after college, you're in college, what he wants you to do, you've got to choose to obey Jesus, even if it means disappointing your parents.
Sometimes people will say, well, what about that verse, honor your father and mother? I get this question enough. Let me just take two seconds here and deal with that. Honor your father and mother is a commandment that's given in the Ten Commandments because, follow this. Our parents are given to us for a brief time in our life.
That they kind of stand in the place of God. They're the first way we learn to relate to God.
So when I grow up and become a man. They transfer my allegiance from my parents to my heavenly father. And the irony is the way you honor your father and mother is not by being obsequious and subservient to them all your life. It is by becoming the man or woman of God that you were supposed to become. That's how you honor them.
The irony is that you might honor your father and mother most by disappointing them by doing what God tells you to do instead of what they want you to do. At different stages of your life, it might look differently. And that's why I say for high school students: yes, follow Jesus, but maybe we should all off on baptism and do not declare to your parents that you're going on a mission trip when you're in 10th grade if they're not consenting to it. Right, but but have you owned Jesus? Over your family.
And have you owned Jesus where you work? At our gospel and work conference, I heard stories, heartbreaking stories, of people who've lost their job because they decided to do what was right and to have integrity. Maintain their confession of faith. Have you owned Jesus in front of your friends? High school student, college student.
Really, everybody, but especially you guys, I will tell you this. If you are going to own Jesus and his testimony, In front of your friends, and you go to Any college in America, you are going to be subject to bewildering criticism. To the point that I it's like I'm not even sure how you're gonna survive. The way that you will survive is when you know that greater is He that is for you, and you have more joy in the one that stands with you than you do when the entire college campus stands against you. Have you owned Jesus in front of your All your relationships?
Here's the second question. Am I obeying him with what's in front of me right now? Am I obeying him with what's in front of me right now? See, it's easy for us to stand up here and talk about total sacrifice. Why don't we just connect that to actually the things that you know that Jesus wants you to do right now?
Hey, here's a question. Are you in small group? We see Jesus told us we ought to be in community with the church. You say, well, is small group the only way to be in community? No.
And if you've got another way, I'm not judging you. I'm not a small group fundamentalist. I'm just saying that for many of us, you're not in a small group and you're just not in community, period. You're just a consumer in the church. I'm not sure what we're here doing talking about you being willing to have your throat slit for Jesus when you're not willing to get in the small group.
Right? I mean, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Are you obeying him in your giving? How can you sit through a sermon where I'm talking about being willing to die for Jesus and you're not even honoring God with your finances in the richest nation on earth? You you see the disconnect there?
Here's one. It's an article on ChristianMingle.com.
Someone pointed this to me. Article: Singles aged 18 to 59. We're asked. Christian singles. All of whom in this survey identified as evangelical Christians.
Would you have sex before marriage? Sixty-three percent said yes. What business do you have sitting through a sermon about dying for Jesus and then singing a song about how worthy he is when you won't even obey a very clear thing that he said? You see? That's why we say Christians don't tell lies, they sing them.
Where we're talking about obeying God fully, and your 63% are like, I'm not even going to obey him there. We're not talking about being burned at the stake. We're talking about being sexually pure. In a clear command that he gave.
Well let me apply it one other way. I know people who are very sincere in following Jesus. They really want to follow Jesus, but their work schedule precludes them being really involved in church.
Now, I know there are a few of you that are in such extraordinary circumstances that there's really no way you can change that. And I'm not judging you, I promise. But I know for others of you, it's just that I don't want to rearrange my priorities. to put God first. And I can look and see where that's going.
It's not really a surprise. I'm not surprised when it happens. If you do not prioritize, Community and the people of God. You will not maintain your Christian confession very long, so I can predict where this is going. Before we talk about you being willing to be burned at the stake, maybe we should talk about you simply prioritizing the things God has put in front of you.
Are you obeying Him right now? Letter C. The third question: Do I have any conditions for following Jesus? Do I have any conditions for following Jesus? What do I insist that Jesus provide in order for me to follow him?
What's his side of the contract? See, the reason I say that is because I know of people, some of whom have been in our church. who have quit following Jesus because he didn't give them something that they really wanted. Hey, you were supposed to keep my marriage together and you didn't, so I'm mad at you and I'm out. Hey, you were supposed to make my kids grow up.
Stay out of trouble. Become doctors, make lots of money, support me. You didn't make that happen. You were supposed to help me get married. You hadn't done it, so I'm mad at you.
You let such and such happen. You let this tragedy happen.
So what you're showing is that you had a condition. In order to follow Jesus, he is his only condition. And what you say is, I got you. I'm asking you for a lot of other stuff, but I have no other conditions. You're my only condition.
Do you have any conditions for following Jesus? Here's the fourth thing. Where I am causing division. Am I doing it like Jesus? You see, I want to be really careful here because some of you have the personality.
That you just cause division everywhere. It has nothing to do with Jesus, it has to do with the fact that you're a self-righteous jerk. And I do not want to give you license to continue to be a jerk because you're just a divisive person. You need to cut that out. Where you are causing division, do you do it like Jesus?
How did Jesus do it? 1 Peter 2:23. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself.
To him who judges justly. Can I give you a few ways that you're, I know you're not being divisive like Jesus, whenever you force things on people. Jesus never did that. Jesus would tell people, he would tell people clearly, and then he, it's not like every dinner conversation, he's bringing this up.
Some of you force how you feel about Jesus and other people and you just need to cut it out. Because that's not what Jesus does. Jesus, he recognizes a certain A certain Dignity to an individual, and he will state it, but he doesn't. He doesn't force it on people, so you need to cut that out. Here's another one.
When you get angry, whenever you are, and defend yourself. That's my sure sign that I'm no longer defending Jesus. I'm defending me when I get angry. Because when Jesus suffered, he didn't retaliate. When I get mad and it happens frequently At somebody, I'm like, this has just become about me, not about them.
And not about them and Jesus. Are you being divisive like Jesus, which absorbs the insult and refuses to retaliate? When people say the most unkind, vicious things about you, do you just take it? And try to give them love for evil. Is that what you do?
Lastly, here's the do you judge people? That's a way to be divisive. Unlike Jesus. See, Jesus never judged people. See, judging does not mean you don't say things clearly.
Jesus was really clear and told a lot of people that they were condemned. That's not judging. Judging is when you dismiss the person after telling them what God says. Because Jesus was really clear about what God said, and then Jesus drew us close. Jesus was the friend of sinners.
So he was clear, and then he drew the person close. He didn't cast the person away. You were divisive, unlike Jesus, when. You speak a word and then push the person away and say, You're not even really worthy to be my friend. You can explore more teaching and resources connected to today's message, including the free daily devotional and our featured resource of the month.
Just visit jdgreer.com. Thanks for spending this time with us today. We'll see you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
