Paul’s Tombstone, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Have you been clear with your friends and your family about God's Word to them? See, that doesn't mean that you've made them all believe. All Paul said was, I didn't shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. He didn't persuade them all. He was leaving a lot of them unconverted, but he had been clear.

That is the question. Have you been clear with the people that God has put in your life? Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Okay, truth time. Have you ever left a sermon at church feeling like the weight of the world was on your shoulders? Like the whole saving the world from sin thing was your job?

Well, this is partly true. We do have a responsibility to tell our world about Jesus. Pastor J.D. explains today that only one person is truly responsible for saving the world. And guess what?

It's not us. We'll be learning five things that we should focus our attention on instead. It's part of our teaching series titled Scent. And if you've missed any of the previous messages in this series, you can listen to them online free of charge.

Visit jdgreer.com. Now let's get started. Today, I'm going to give you the five things that I believe the apostle Paul would have wanted written on his tombstone. These are the five things that I once said about my life too.

This is the outline. If you're taking notes for my funeral sermon. So if you get called on to preach my funeral sermon, this is what I once said in it. Number one, I have been faithful to do what Jesus told me to do.

That's the first thing Paul wanted on his tombstone. Probably the most important thing. Verse 24, my single focus has been and is to do what God has told me to do. That's why none of these threats or dangers that I know are ahead of me.

They don't move me because my one great ambition in life is to hear from Him well done, good and faithful servant. You see, at the end of the day, that's all any of us are really responsible for. So my very simple question is, what is Jesus called you to do? You're not responsible to save the world. You're responsible to fulfill the assignment or the assignments that God has given to you.

Now write this down. Success and failure are master words. Faithfulness is the concern of stewards. So to those of you who tend to carry around the weight of too much responsibility, what God requires of stewards, all that He requires is that we be faithful with what He assigned to us because, listen, God doesn't need you.

God can do more with one act of faithfulness than you could accomplish in 10,000 lifetimes on your own. Acts chapter 8, Philip. Philip is in Samaria. Philip's preaching. God's using him. Hundreds, thousands of people are getting saved in Samaria.

And then the most unexpected thing happens. The Spirit of God says to Philip, I want you to leave Samaria where hundreds of people are getting saved, and I want you to go stand by yourself on the side of a little dusty road leading down to Africa. And Philip is like, what?

I mean, I'm having a big impact here, but you want me to go stand on a dusty road where there's no traffic? Samaria says, yep. And Philip stands there. But sure enough, soon comes this single chariot, and in it is a guy that we now refer to as the Ethiopian eunuch, and Philip leads him to Christ. And this guy goes on, scholars say, to found the church in Africa. And what you see is that God does more through one act of faithfulness than Philip could accomplish in 10,000 lifetimes on their own. So the better question for you is, what has God told you to do? I have a friend right now who's making a very difficult decision about whether he should transition in ministry somewhere. And he told me, he said, you know, Mo, for most of my life, I've always asked myself the question, where can I have the biggest impact?

Where, you know, where, where's the best investment of my, of my talents? He said, after studying the book of Acts, I realized the only question I need to ask is where does God want me? Because God doesn't need me. He doesn't need me to have an impact.

He doesn't need my talents. He just wants me to be faithful because he can do more with one act of faithfulness than I can accomplish in 10,000 lifetimes. It's not your ability that God needs.

It is your availability, because the point is not what you can do for him, but what he can do through you. When you get to heaven, I think you're going to be blown away at how God used small acts of faithfulness to do the greatest things. Every once in a while, God will give you a glimpse of it now. I think when you get to heaven, you're going to be blown away at how much that kind of stuff happens when God takes the smallest act of faithfulness. College student, you feel like you lost the argument in that classroom. You feel like you got humiliated. You feel like your commitment to purity is not making any difference.

When you get to heaven, then you realize that God used your courageous stand as the catalyst for somebody else to actually come to faith. I remember what it's like to be in college. Sometimes you feel like, you know, you got this, like, you ever watch a football game and there's like a sea of people all wearing one-collar cheering for their team? And then you've always got the one or two guys, like, right in the middle that are wearing the color of the other team, and they're just cheering their heads off. And you're almost like, why are you doing that?

Nobody can hear you. You're just making everybody mad. You're not making any difference at all in the game, right? That's what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And many of these environments, you feel like I'm cheering for the other team.

Nobody's paying attention. I'm just irritating everybody, but God uses that kind of faithfulness for His spirit to do things through you that will blow you away. Mothers and fathers, I can tell you that what God uses in your kid's life is consistent faithfulness, not some big dramatic conversation. As a guy who was deeply impacted by his mom and dad, I can tell you the biggest impact didn't go back to a conversation they had with me so much as it is the ordinary faithfulness I observed in their lives over a lifetime.

Write this down. Success in life is identifying what God has called you to and being completely faithful in it. For a servant, success in life is just identifying what God has called you to and being completely faithful in it.

What's it like to look into the face of Jesus when the world recedes behind you and all the applause there is done and the opinions of a bunch of no-account earthlings are fading in the distance to have the Creator of the universe who loved you, who spoke the N from the beginning, who cared for you and died for you, who is your inheritance, who is the Alpha and the Omega look you in the eyes and say, Well done, good and faithful servant. You were the mother I told you to be. You were the father I told you to be. You did for me what I told you to do. That is success in Paul's life. Is that what you want? Is that what you want to hear?

And you start living that way now. Number two, I told the truth. Paul said, I told the truth. Verse 20, I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable. He says it again, verse 27, I didn't shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Paul saw himself, 1 Timothy 2.7, as a herald of truth.

Paul saw himself as the watchman, listen, for the group of people that God had assigned him to. Because the gospel is an announcement, listen, that the human race stands underneath the judgment of God because of our rebellion. And because of that, we are dead in our sin. We are hopeless. We are helpless. There is nothing that we can do about our condemnation. But God so loved us that God so loved the world that he gave his only son who would come and do for us what we couldn't do for ourselves.

Namely, he would live the life that we were supposed to have lived and then he would die to death that we were condemned to die in our place so that whosoever would humble themselves to admit that they are a rebel deserving only of judgment and would receive that gift of grace as their only hope of salvation to all them, they could be saved. I am not responsible for how you respond to that message. I am responsible to make sure that you understand it. And so when people react to me and they don't like the message, I mean, yeah, it bothers me on one level, but on another, it doesn't. I'm responsible to tell you that you're underneath the condemnation of God and your hope is not potential in yourself. It's grace in God's heart. And if you will humble yourself enough to believe that, then you can be saved.

Now, here's my question. Do your friends, they understand that? Because I'm trying to faithfully execute my role in your life, you've been given a community to watch over. Have you been clear with your friends and your family about God's word to them? See, that doesn't mean that you've made them all believe. It doesn't mean that you grind them into the ground that every time you talk to them, it's all you talk about.

You always got your finger in their face going, you better turn or burn. That's not what this means. All Paul said was, I didn't shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. He didn't persuade them all. He was leaving a lot of them unconverted, but he had been clear.

That is the question. Have you been clear with the people that God has put in your life? Notice by the way, that what characterized Paul's attitude was tears, not anger. You see verse 19, I was with you in tears. Verse 31, I didn't cease to admonish you night and day with tears. For many of us, our attitude toward friends and family who don't know Jesus toggles between apathy and anger.

Does your presentation of the truth, does it flow with tears? Listen to Charles Spurgeon, if sinners be damned, at least make them leap to hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped around their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions and let not one go unwarned or unprayed for. Some in church, should this not be true of our city, that not one in our city went to hell. If they had to go, they didn't go unwarned or unprayed for.

Shouldn't that be true of your circle of friends? And God help us if someone in our family would go to hell unwarned and unprayed for. Surely they will die in their iniquity, but God's will require their blood at your hand. What makes you weep? Do you weep over lost friends and family who don't know Jesus? Do they know that you weep? Do you weep over entire nations and villages that are lost without the good news of Jesus?

When you hear about what's going on in Libya and Afghanistan and Iraq and all the numerous places is your heartbreak and say, it's not a political solution they need. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ. You got a friend, you got a family, you're going to need to get on the phone.

You're going to need to go have a conversation with them and you need to say, I can't call myself your friend and not have told you this. Paul said, I told the truth. I'm free from your blood. Number three, I directed people's attention toward Jesus and not toward me. I directed people's attention toward Jesus and not toward me. Verse 19, see where Paul says, I serve the Lord with humility and with tears and with trials. That's not typically how we would describe a great leader, right? Nobody wants to be that. So why, listen, why does an insult outside of the gospel become a virtue inside of the gospel?

Here's why. Because Christian ministry is not about extraordinary men and women of great character worthy to be praised. Christian ministry is about a great savior who can save the weakest and most broken and most guilty of sinners. So Paul does not want to leave them with a memory of his example that they should emulate. He wants to leave them with news of a savior that they can trust in. Because see, he might impress them with his example, but he can only save them with the message about Jesus Christ. Tim Keller says, a humble and weak person can show a crucified savior better than a polished, pulled together expert.

Why? Because that's how it happened for us, didn't it? We weren't saved by pulling ourselves together.

We were saved by admitting that we were sinners and calling on the one who was pulled apart for us. I realized the greatest help I can be to you is not to stand up here and pretend that I'm awesome. Why?

Because it's not true. And even if you thought that, I might inspire you and be like, I want to be a husband like him. I want to live a Christian life like him.

But that's not going to get you very far. I would much rather stand up here and tell you about my weakness and tell you about how Jesus has been a great savior to me and show you that the same savior who saved my soul and helps me and strengthens me is a savior that can help you and strengthen you. I just think, y'all, about how much different today's religious leaders are presented.

Right? I mean, today, great religious leaders are people of power and triumph and positivity and happiness. Is it possible that the ones that God deems to be great leaders and the ones that we deem to be great leaders might not be the same? Because God said, my leaders are people who don't put on an impressive show.

They put on an immaculate savior. Number four, I finish strong. I finish strong. After explaining that the Holy Spirit has told him that the only beating, that only beating and imprisonments are going to await him in the future, Paul says, I don't want that. None of those things move me or dissuade me, but if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus. Many people start well in the Christian life, but they don't finish well.

I always call them one-hit Christian wonders, the Milli Vanilli of Christian experience. It always breaks my heart because they come, they get really excited, and as you sit down here in the front rows, no offense to you guys, but they're super excited to take notes. They start well, but they don't finish. Three things that I've noticed over the years that keep people from finishing strong, maybe jot these down because one of them may be your weakness, pain. Pain, the people that you're ministering to don't appreciate it.

You're not rewarded with gratefulness. It's easy to quit when the people that you're trying to minister to don't appreciate it, and they take advantage of you and abuse you and talk badly about you. That's what Paul faced. He experienced betrayal.

He was forgotten about. He was abused and ripped off. Pain. Here's the second one, fatigue. The sense that it's just not working.

Nobody's listening. By the way, Paul experienced that. Have you noticed in the book of Acts that a good sermon for Paul is two people coming up at the end asking him to have coffee later? That was like Paul's success in a sermon. Peter is the one who preaches and 3,000 people get saved. Paul, good sermon.

Two dudes want to have coffee later on in the week. A bad sermon for Paul is they drag him out of the city and they stone him. So Paul knew what it was like to be fatigued and say, it's not working. Nobody is listening. But in both of those things, Paul kept going.

Why? Because Paul understood how the gospel worked. Jesus' ministry had not ended in triumph. Jesus' ministry had ended in sorrow and death, and God brought a resurrection out of his sorrow and death. So Paul would tell his congregation in 1 Corinthians 15, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord, even when it looks to you like it's not working, because the same God that brought the dead body of Jesus out of the grave is going to bring life out of what looks like death to you. So you keep going and you be unmovable and you keep doing it because we serve the God of the resurrection, and the God of the resurrection means that the death you and I experience in our ministry is never the end because our God raises the dead.

Here's the main reason that people have trouble finishing. Let her see divided hearts. You want to complete the assignment that Jesus gave to you, but other things start pulling at your heart. I want to follow Jesus. I really do, but I love comfort, so I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to go there.

It's these divided loves that keep us from finishing. I told you, I think I told you a few weeks ago, but I was sitting with these four planters for the year, and as they're telling me about who they're going to take out of our church, some of them were giving names. I'm like, no, don't take that guy. That guy's awesome.

He's a great leader. He gives. Take these other people.

They just sit there all the time. You can have any of them, but don't take that guy. And I told you I had to put my hands underneath the table and open them up and say, God, this church belongs to you. And God, I want to follow you. And God, my own heart doesn't want to. My own heart wants to hang on to what's best for me, but God, here. Here's a verse I quote.

I pray all the time, and I would give it to you to pray. Psalm 86 11. Give me an undivided heart that I might fear your name because my problem is part of my heart wants to serve you, and part of my heart wants to do its own thing. That's why Paul would say none of these things move me, not because he's okay with pain. He would say none of these things move me because my heart is united in its hope that one day it's going to look Jesus in the face and hear well done, good and faithful servant. So I don't need your approval.

Why? Because I live for an audience of one. And if God is for me, who can be against me? I got a greater thing in Christ than anything that you could offer to me. That's how you finish strong is that Jesus's approval becomes greater than all the things that are trying to divide your heart. Paul didn't want to just start well.

He wanted to finish well. I mean, I feel like this is like one of the biggest problems we have, isn't it? I mean, it's for my kids. This is like the biggest lesson I'm trying to teach them. Just finish what you start. Life will go so much better for you if you just finish your carrots. Start right there.

Eat your carrots. Parents, isn't that right? I'm just trying to finish what you start. Turns out it's what we adults most need too.

Different ones of you are in different chapters and you want to quit. Let me give you something really practical here. You want to know how?

Here's a little thing. Paul didn't say this directly, but I think you see it played out in his life. You want to know the ways that you can finish? It's by focusing only on the thing that God has put right in front of you and not what you're supposed to do tomorrow. Martin Luther said that there were only two days on his calendar that made any difference to him. This day and that day. That day means the day that he sees Jesus. This day means the day that's right in front of me because God will give him the strength to get through this day.

But what he's saying in the spiritual realm is 100% true. This day, that day. That's how you finish strong.

God will give you the strength to finish this day well. Number five, last one. Paul says, I gave more than I took. I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. I worked hard. I made tents. I supported myself, people around me. And I taught you to remember the words of the Lord Jesus who taught us that we got to help the weak. He himself said, it's more blessed to give than to receive. Paul thought of a successful blessed life as one in which you gave more than you took.

Why? Because that's what Jesus had said and done for him. So Paul said, if Jesus lived like that for me, then doesn't it make sense in every relationship that I'm in that I should always give more than I take? So that's a good question for you to ask in any relationship that you're in right now. Do you give more than you take? In your marriage, do you serve your spouse more than you expect them to serve you? Guys, whose preferences do you think more about yours or hers?

Ladies, whose comfort and happiness are you more devoted to? And what you do with your career and your money-making potential? Who's it for? Is it about taking all you can? Or are you asking, how can I leverage my career and my money to advance the mission of God? You know, I tell you this all the time, but there's a misconception that there's a few of us who are supposed to give our lives to advance the mission of God, and the rest of you are supposed to go out and develop a career, make a bunch of money, live for yourselves. Oh, by the way, make sure you tithe and tip God.

No. Every career is given for the advancement of the Great Commission. And you have got to ask yourself, how can I leverage this career not to take, but to give?

The money you make from that career. For followers of Jesus, we don't work so that at the end of the day, we can have more money in our pockets. We work so that we can give more. Greater financial capacity should increase our standard of giving, not just our standard of living. In your friendships, do you give more than you take?

In how you relate to your parents, do you give more than you take? We had a guy recently send something into our church that just wants you to know, I'm including you in my will. He said, the largest gift I've ever given to the kingdom of God, I'm going to be able to give at my death. And he said, what's awesome about that is he says, it affects how I live in my retirement now.

Yes, I'm enjoying myself, he said, but it's not spending all my money on me. He goes, I am even living frugally in my retirement because I want the greatest gift that I give to be when I die. Why did Paul think this way? Why did Paul want to give to others more than he took?

Here's why I listen. Because there was one relationship in which Paul would always take more than he could ever give. Five things on your tombstone. I've been faithful to do what Jesus told me to do. I told the truth. I directed people's attention toward Jesus, not toward me. I finished strong.

I gave more than I took. That's an awesome funeral sermon. Do you want that to be the sermon we preach at your funeral?

Then start writing it right now. Psalm 90 verse 12, Lord, teach me to think about death. So from that perspective, I can figure out now how to live. Thinking about the end of our lives so we can live more fully and with purpose today. That's a much healthier perspective as we grow and mature in Christ. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer.

At our home church, the Summit in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, we're thinking about that proverbial tombstone every day. With that in mind, we've committed to planting 1,000 new churches within our generation. Talk about lofty prayer goals.

JD, can you explain why that is so important to us? Well, it's certainly not about extending the name of the Summit Church. In fact, these thousand churches are independent churches. We just believe that God has called us to multiply. For the last century in America, it's been the age of the mega church where churches get bigger and bigger and bigger. One of the most sobering statistics, Molly, is that as churches have gotten bigger in the United States than they've ever been in history in any country, at the same time, the percentage of Americans going to church on a weekly basis has gone down, not up. What we see is that it's not a handful of congregations growing really big that's the answer.

It's multiplication. We have taken on our church the mission of planting 1,000 churches. Hey, I don't know if you know this, but Summit Life is a part of that mission because we're able to be into new areas, new cities, and be able to see what the response to the Word is like. We've often sent church planters from our church who've gathered teams from the local city and from our congregation and moved there and started a new work. We would love to see you be a part of this.

If you want to find out more about just that strategy, then you can go to jdgrier.com. You can also reserve there your copy of Scent, which is volume 2 of our study through Acts that takes you a little deeper into the stories and the promises that we're covering. Volume 2 is going to cover chapters 9 through 28.

If you missed volume 1, which covered chapters 1 through 8, there's still time to get that as well. When you give today to support this ministry, we'll express our gratitude as well as the gratitude of your fellow listeners by sending you the workbook Pastor JD mentioned titled Scent, the Book of Acts Volume 2. It's an interactive study guide created exclusively for you from the Summit Life team, and it's yours with your donation of $25 or more. Request your copy by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovich, and that is all the time that we have for today, but be sure to come back tomorrow as Pastor JD turns to Acts 28 to explain how Paul furthered his mission of getting the gospel to Rome, all while sitting in jail. Hear this powerful message Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.