Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Our answer to the problem of our sinfulness is to downplay God's holiness, but scripture never does that. God demands perfection. The gospel is that he also supplies it. The cross was your fate. His grave was your eternal destiny. And Jesus took that penalty and entered your grave and shattered it. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.
I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Okay. So as believers, we know we're saved by God's grace alone and not by any works that we do. So then it begs the question, why does the Bible give us so many rules and regulations?
No doubt you've wondered that at some point. So you've come to the right place today. Pastor J.D. answers that question as he describes the purpose of the Old Testament instructions and the depths of God's love for us. It's a message on the Ten Commandments and it's part of our series called The Whole Story.
To catch up on any previous messages, be sure to visit jdgreer.com. But right now, here's Pastor J.D. He titled today's message, Great Failure, Greater Hope. The place we're going to look at in Scripture today, it's one of the most recognized passages in the Bible, Exodus Chapter 20. It's the story of when God gives to the people of Israel the Ten Commandments.
So let's walk through this. Exodus 19 is where we're going to begin, one chapter back from Exodus 20. The giving of the Ten Commandments began like this, verse 10. And the Lord said to Moses, tell the people to wash their garments, be ready for the third day. And on the third day, the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai and the side of all the people. You shall set limits for the people all around this mountain where God is going to descend. And he's going to say, take care not to go up into the mountain or even touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death.
Whether beast or man, he shall not live. On the morning of the third day, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, mysterious trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought out the people out of the camp to meet God. And they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The whole mountain looked like it was ablaze. The smoke of that mountain went up like the smoke of a furnace.
The whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses on the people's behalf called out to God and God answered him in thunder. The message that is given in Exodus 19 is clear.
God's majesty, his holiness is an awesome and terrifying reality. And it is out of this scene in Exodus 19 that God gives the 10 commandments. 10 things God says, Leviticus 18 five, if you do these, if you do these, you shall live before me. But if you cross this line, if you disobey these things, you will die.
I want you to make yourself two little columns, like a W column, a win column, and a loss column. And I'm going to walk you through these commandments, give you a short explanation of what they mean. And then if you feel like you have consistently kept this commandment throughout your life, then you give yourself a W. And if you feel like you haven't, you give yourself a loss.
Now, here we go. Number one, commandment one, you shall have no other gods before me. Can you say I've never put anything before God in my life? Nothing's ever gotten the place of God.
He's always been preeminent in my thoughts, in my affections, and my actions. Here's number two, you shall have no carved images of me. This commandment is about reshaping God according to your liking, believing wrong things about God, because you would prefer God to be a different way. Here's number three, commandment three, you shall not take my name in vain.
This has to do with more than just not saying GD. It has to do with how highly we regard the name of God. Here's commandment number four, remember the Sabbath.
This has to do with giving God fully what belongs to him. Commandment five, honor your parents. Honor your parents. This has to do with how you relate to the authorities in your life. Because see, your parents are the first representation of the authority of God to you. Number six, you shall not kill.
You're like, finally, one in the W column. And Jesus came along and he messed that up, because Jesus said that to hate somebody in your heart or to desire their harm is to commit murder in your heart. Commandment seven, you shall not commit adultery.
He said, I think I'm good on this one too, because I'm not even married. And Jesus messed that one up, because he said to think even lustful thoughts about somebody to whom you're not married is committing adultery in your heart. How about commandment eight, you shall not steal. Can you say I've never taken anything that doesn't belong to me? Commandment nine, you shall not lie. Can you say I've never lied, never exaggerated, never slandered another person? Commandment number 10, you shall not covet.
This is probably the worst one. Can you say I've never been greedy for something that wasn't mine? Be honest with yourself. What are you?
What's your score? Folks, if you get zero on the only exam in a class, do you really think you're going to pass that class? Now remember the setup for this chapter, cross the border one time, one sin and you die. There was one man in Jesus's life who had the audacity to say to Jesus, after Jesus walked through a list like this, the man said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, all these I've kept since my youth up. So Jesus looks at this guy and he says, all right, one thing that you like, go sell everything that you have and give it away to the poor and follow me.
The man couldn't do it. He says he loved his possessions too much. Jesus's point was not, hey, there's one more bonus one I forgot to tell you about. Jesus's point was to turn it away from actions that you took into a heart and how you felt about God. He was trying to put the focus on what this guy's heart loved the most. And he was saying that the essence of the commandments is that your heart loves and prioritizes God above everything. Has that always been true in your life? You see, you were created for God to have the first place in your heart.
Has that been true? These laws, these 10 laws don't change you. Obeying them don't change you.
They just reveal how messed up your heart actually is. God's not after you coercing your behavior and earning your way into heaven. God wants people who obey him because they love him.
He wants people whose hearts desire to obey them. I've used this example and I apologize a little bit because it's a little bit of an earthy example, but he gets the point across. I've described it before. Like if somebody before the service started had an accident and just threw up right here in the middle of the floor. I would never need to look at this congregation and say, hey, rule of the summit church is you are not allowed to come down here and lick up this vomit.
Nobody needs me to say that, right? It's disgusting. Now, if you're a dog, if you're a dog, I do need to make that rule because you're like, oh, you know, warm vomit, half-digested hot dog.
And the moment I'm not looking, you're going to be down here looking it up. So I'm going to have to put a couple of big old guys with sticks beside, you know, to beat the dog when the dog tries to come lick it up. God does not want spiritual dogs in heaven who only obey God because they're afraid they're going to get beat with a stick. He wants people there who do righteousness because they love righteousness.
He wants people there who do loving things because love is what in their heart. He wants us to obey, not because we have to, but because it's just the impulse of our heart. God's holiness in these 10 commandments reveals how sick we are. It's why the prophet Isaiah, after seeing how sinful his heart was before God, uses this metaphor.
Isaiah 64, six, when Isaiah the prophet finally sees himself in the light of how God sees him, Isaiah 64, six, he says, all my righteousness, all my good deeds. They're like a filthy rag, filthy rag. The way it's written in Hebrew doesn't mean like a rag that you use to change the oil or clean something in your house.
It's a pretty disgusting term. It means a rag that they would use to wrap the body of somebody who had an infectious skin disease like leprosy. After the blood and the pus and the infectious disease, the rotten skin had soaked through these rags, they would take them off and burn them.
They were filthy rags. And what Isaiah sees is this is how I appear before the throne of God. Even my righteousness is like this filthy rag that has been soaked through with the defilement of the sin of my heart. You say, well, this isn't a very uplifting message. You will never appreciate the true lifting power of the resurrection until you come face to face with what he has lifted you out of. You see, our usual response to this is we try to diminish the holiness of God.
We're like, oh, well, you know, nobody's perfect. I'm sure God grades on the curve. Scripture never does that. Scripture says consistently cross this line one time and you will die. Scripture points to a different solution.
We're going to see that solution given toward the end of the book of Numbers. Israel specifically has broken one of the commandments. It is commandment number 10, the you shall not covet commandment. And Israel is coveting and it's shown by the way they're complaining about all the things they wish they had that other nations had. God, you are not taking care of us. We're not content with the way that you're leading us.
We want this other stuff too. So God sent snakes among them called fiery serpents. They were symbolic of death. The curse that was brought on by sin and the people having been bitten by these snakes cry out to God. And so God tells Moses to make an image of bronze of a serpent looking like one of these fiery serpents and to put it on top of a pole and to put that pole on top of a hill. And he tells Moses to tell the people that if they will come to where that serpent is mounted on the pole and they will look at it and believe that God will heal them. God's response was not to downplay their disobedience. His response was to, in love, provide a means by which they could be healed.
You only get a glint a dim glimpse of it in the bronze serpent because that was just a symbol of what God one day would do. And what is perhaps the most well-known passage in the Bible. Jesus, listen, takes this metaphor and says, this is how you understand me. Jesus says, John 3 14, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness. That's how I'm going to be lifted up.
That's how I'm going to be lifted up. It's just like the people when they came and they looked at this bronze serpent and they believe God healed them. So the ones who believe in me are going to have eternal life. Because God, you see, so loved the world.
He loved it so much that he gave not a bronze serpent. He gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him. What's it mean to believe in Jesus? It doesn't mean that you believe that he existed.
It doesn't mean that you just come to church all the time. Believing goes back to what they did when they looked at that bronze serpent. You look at it and you believe this is what was given to you as your healing. You believe that Jesus took the curse of that snake.
He was bit by it so that he could die in your place. And if you believe that, if you look to it, you would not perish, but you had have eternal life. Here's how Paul says the same thing. Romans 10 9 and 10. He says, if you would just confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you'll confess with your mouth that Jesus was lifted up for you. And then you'll believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. See, then you'll be saved. It's when you look at that empty tomb and you say that it was a tomb occupied by my sin. And God resurrected Jesus showing that he had paid the full penalty of my sin.
When you believe that, that's when healing and forgiveness flows to you. Again, our answer to the problem of our sinfulness is to downplay God's holiness. But scripture never does that.
God demands perfection. The gospel is that he also supplies it. The gospel is that our sin was so bad that Jesus had to die to save us. Y'all, why do you think Jesus had to die? Why do you think he died exactly? A lot of people say, when I asked that, like, well, he wanted to show us that he loved us.
How does him die? How does that show us that he loves us? I mean, think about it. If I go come to you and I'm like, I love you so much, and you're like, prove it. I'm like, watch.
And I go out and throw myself into oncoming traffic in the middle of I-40. Does that prove that I love you? It might prove my insanity.
It might prove my insanity. How does that show you that I love you? It only shows you that I love you if I'm doing something for you by putting myself in harm's way. Jesus' death for us was not just a statement of love. It would only be love if he were doing something for us that we desperately needed to be done.
And he was. He was dying in our place. He was dying to give us the righteousness that we could not obtain on our own. We say he wasn't just dying for us, he was dying in place of us. He was becoming our curse of sin so that we could receive his gift of righteousness. You will never understand or appreciate the resurrection until you see the grave that he lifted you out of.
Until you understand the price that he paid and why he paid it. He went into your grave. The cross was your fate. His grave was your eternal destiny.
And Jesus took that penalty and entered your grave and shattered it. Listen, the resurrection is not just about giving you a little religious pep in your step. A few giddy thoughts about the afterlife. Sometimes I feel like people come in here on Easter and they want me to do this religious, religious motivational talk that makes them feel good. I want you to feel the flames of hell. Because only then can you understand how Jesus saved you. And people want me to create this moment where they have, you know, chill bumps about the resurrection.
I want to create disciples and that begins with you understanding why Jesus saved you and starts with you understanding the grave that he pulled you out of. I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. But the master of the sea heard my despairing cry. From the waters lifted me, now safe am I. Love lifted me. When nothing else could help, love lifted me. He saw that I couldn't do what I needed done, so he came and he did it for me. The gospel is that I was so bad that Jesus had to die for my sin. He was so loving that he was glad to die for my sin. The gospel declares, come you weary, weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love and power. So here's the question.
Have you ever done this personally? Have you ever looked in faith and experienced his forgiveness and his healing? One of the most famous preachers of Christian history was a man named Charles Spurgeon. He was a very educated man. One of the most eloquent men that's ever occupied a Christian pulpit. He pastored in London in the 19th century.
He's been called the prince of preachers. My favorite thing from his life is his own recounting of his conversion. It came from one of his sermons.
He says this, and I quote. He says, I sometimes think that I might have been in darkness and despair until even now, had it not been for the goodness of God and sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning. When I was trying to find my way to a certain place of worship. There was a respectable church in town and he was spiritually seeking. And so he wanted to go to the place where all the educated people were, where they dressed in really nice clothes so we could hear an educated message because he was super smart.
He said, but because of the snowstorm, I could go no further. So I turned down the side street and came to a little primitive Methodist chapel. First church and only church I could find open. In that chapel, there might have been a dozen, maybe 15 people. I'd heard of the primitive Methodist, how they sang so loudly that they made people's heads ache.
Some of you felt like that in here this morning, didn't you? But that didn't matter to me. I wanted to know how I might be saved.
And if they could tell me that, I didn't care how much they made my head ache. The minister did not even come that morning. He was snowed in, I suppose. So at last, a very thin looking man, a shoemaker or a tailor or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. Now it is well that preachers should be instructed and learned men. But this man was really stupid and just goes ahead and says it. He was obliged to sit closely to his text in the Bible for the simple reason that he had little else that he could think of to say. The text that morning was Isaiah 49, 22, look unto me and be ye saved all ye ends of the earth. He did not even pronounce the words rightly. He could scarcely read, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me, and I thought, well, look unto me in that text.
The preacher began thus, my dear friends. This is a very simple text indeed. It just says, look. Now looking don't take a great deal of scale.
It ain't lifting your foot or your finger. It's just look. Well, a man needn't go to college to learn to look. You might be the biggest fool, and yet you can still look. A man needn't be rich to be able to look. Anybody can look. Even a child can look. But then the text says, look unto me.
I said he in this broad SX accent, that's probably the equivalent of a North Carolina, Eastern North Carolina twang. He said, many of you are looking to yourselves, but it ain't no use looking there. You'll never find any comfort in yourselves. Look to Christ. The text says, look unto me.
Then the good man followed up his text in this way. Look unto me. I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me. I'm hanging on the cross. Look unto me.
I'm dead and I'm buried. Look unto me. I rise again. Look unto me. I ascend to heaven. Look unto me.
I'm sitting at the father's right hand. Oh, poor sinner. Look unto me.
Look unto me. When he had gone to about that length and managed to spin out 10 minutes or so, the poor chap was at the end of his tether. He could think of nothing else to say. Then he fixed his eyes at me in the back under the balcony. And he must have known that I was a visitor. So fixing his eyes firmly on me, as if he knew everything that was going on in my heart, he said, young man, you look very miserable. Well, I knew that I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance.
However, it was a good blow and it struck right home. He continued, and you will always be miserable, miserable in life and miserable in death. If you don't obey my text, but if you obey now at this moment, you will be saved.
Then lifting up his hands, he shouted as only a primitive Methodist could do. Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look, look, look. You had nothing to do but to look and live. And at once I saw it. I saw the way of salvation. I know not what else he said that morning. I didn't hear anything after that. I was so consumed with that one thought, just like Moses lifted up the serpent.
The people only looked and were healed. So it was with me. I'd been waiting to do 50 things. But when I heard that word, look, what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh, I looked, I looked and I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away there. And then the cloud was gone.
The darkness had rolled away. And in that moment I saw the sun. Then I could have risen in that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith, which looks alone to him. Oh, that somebody had just told me that before. Trust Christ and you shall be saved. Yet it was no doubt all in God's timing. And now I can say ever since by faith, I saw that stream thy flowing wounds supply. Redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till I die.
Here's a question. Has that happened to you? Has that happened to you?
Do you remember when it happened to me in my first year of college? When I finally understood that he died for me. I'd known that he died for the world. I could tell you that, but it was in, I suddenly saw that it was for me that he died. I wanted to know how you could know for sure that you would go to heaven. And then it, it just finally made sense. It was in the middle of Romans chapter four. And it finally made sense that what he had done, he'd done for me in love, that he bore my sin and took my curse. That when he got out of the grave, it was for the release of penalty from my sin.
It was like the world dropped off my shoulders and love lifted me. You feel trapped by sin this morning. Look and live. Look and live. Are you fearful about what's going to happen to you in your life? Look and live.
Are you frustrated at how much you try and fail and try and fail? Look and live. Because I can promise you that if Jesus went into the grave to deliver you from sin. He's going to give you whatever power is necessary to be able to live the way that he wants you to live. And to soar victoriously as he wants you to soar. The choice is yours. Nobody's stopping you. You can look whenever you want, whenever you want.
Look to Jesus, he took every ounce of punishment for you. Look at the tomb, it's empty. Look and believe and be healed. The bloody cross and the empty tomb are the greatest news in all the world. This morning the cross is bloody, the tomb is empty, the throne is occupied.
So you can look and you can live. Listen, you need to look because you're dying. You may not feel it, but like the people of Israel bitten by those vipers.
Every one of us, the most healthy among us. Those with the greatest potential for money or success were dying under the curse of sin. You don't need a moral improvement. You don't need a religious booster shot.
You don't need a fresh start. You need to be born again. That's why I can't get away from the word saved. I'll be honest with you, I don't like the word saved. I don't like to use it because I feel like it sounds kind of redneck to me. Look at this image of this pudgy preacher in a suit that doesn't fit.
Who's you know screaming in like six syllables the word saved. I don't want to be that guy, but I can't come up with a better word. You don't need to be improved. You don't need to be tweaked. You don't need to be enhanced. Come to Jesus and get enhanced.
That's not what you need. You need to be saved because you are under the curse of death. Your heart is wicked. And the gospel is not that you're not really that wicked and God's really not that holy. The gospel is that God demands perfection, but God is so loving that he supplied it to you. It's a gift if you'll look and live.
Have you ever done that? What he offers is to wash away your sin and start the process of new life in you. And you this morning can look just like Charles Spurgeon did 200 years ago. You can look and you can live. If you've never looked to Jesus for salvation, we'd love to help you take that step today.
Get in touch when you visit jdgrier.com. We're just a few weeks into this new study called The Whole Story, and there's still a lot more to come. We're praying that this series helps you see these familiar Bible stories with fresh new eyes so you can get the full picture on God's overarching plan. And this month, we're also focusing on prayer. It's another way that we can get to know God more deeply. So J.D., let me ask, how can we be more real in our prayers instead of trying to get prayer just right? You know, I love that question because for many years I obsessed over my prayers or my motives, because if my motive wasn't right, God would never hear me.
Paul Miller, who did me the favor of writing the foreword for my book, I learned something from him in his book, A Praying Life. And that is, when God talks about us and our relationship to Him, He uses fathers with children and children, they don't think that much about motives. They don't think, they just ask. My kids need something. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, how exorbitant the request, how unable I actually am, and they just come right in and say, Dad, this is what I need. The same way, that's how we're to approach our Heavenly Father, like dependent children saying, Daddy, Heavenly Father, I need, I need this. And the first place I'm going to look is for you to instruct me on how I should go about pursuing this.
So you just ask, you go like children and don't obsess and just be a kid with their dad. Listen, Molly, I know that prayer can be a struggle, so I want to do everything I can to help you make it a delightful and an essential, what you feel is essential part of every single day. That's why I wrote this book, Just Ask, and you can check it out at jdgrier.com. In the book, Pastor JD tackles some of the most common struggles we face with prayer, like how not to pray and praying for guidance. If you find it hard to make prayer a staple in your relationship with God instead of a sporadic existence, then you'll really enjoy this insightful book. Request the Just Ask prayer book when you donate today at the suggested level of $25 or more. It's our way of saying thanks because your financial support makes this ministry possible, and it helps people around the world dive into the gospel message every day. Donate and ask for your copy when you call 866-335-5220.
That's 866-335-5220. Or you can request the prayer resource online at jdgrier.com. You also don't want to forget to follow Pastor JD on Facebook and Instagram for more updates and encouraging content. I'm Molly Bittovitch. Thank you so much for joining us today. Come back Wednesday for a message titled I Need a New Moses on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
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