Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Some things God does just to prepare you for Himself. God wants your heart to belong fully to Him, to love Him, to trust Him. God calls you first to Himself and only secondarily to a task. And that means, by the way, that what God is doing in you is just as significant as what He is doing through you. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D.
Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. I'm sure we've all had moments and even seasons when we wondered why God works the way that He does. Why does He answer a prayer there but was silent here and then out of the blue seemed to randomly perform a miracle? Today, Pastor J.D. explains that God really does have a method to what might look like madness to us. It's another lesson from our study in the book of Acts.
And if you missed any of the messages in this series, be sure to listen at jdgreer.com. Now let's join Pastor J.D. as he teaches from Acts chapter 9 verses 19 through 31. Number one, Paul was chosen, yet he was opposed. Number two, Paul was chosen, yet God took many years to prepare him.
Then number three, Paul was chosen, yet he suffered. This in many ways, again, is a pattern for you. You see, my goal is I want to give some of you hope regarding what God is doing in your life. Hope, you see, is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. And hope enables you to endure some things that you are not able to endure without it, no matter how strong your character is or how strong the support group that you have around you is. If you are not a Christian this weekend, my hope for you is that you will learn a little bit about why those who are around you who are Christians, maybe they're sitting next to you this weekend, why it is that they seem to be able to go through certain things differently than you are able to go through them, and for you not to look at them and admire them, but for you to ask yourself some questions about do I have the same kind of hope that takes me through these same kinds of chapters in my life.
Here we go. Number one, Paul was chosen, yet he was opposed. People rejected his message, they impugned his motives, and they tried to kill him. Sometimes, honestly, this is your biggest surprise when you become a Christian because people were supposed to listen. They were supposed to be excited about what God was doing in your life. They were supposed to praise the great decisions that you were making. That's certainly what I experienced when I first began to get serious about God.
God began to do a lot of things in my life when I was in college, and I started to share it with everybody that was around me. And there were a lot of people who listened, but there were a lot of people who didn't. And even the church did not have Paul's back. You see that in verse 26? They were all afraid of him.
They didn't believe that he was even a disciple. Where's Paul going to turn? Can I ask you a question? Are you ready for this?
Are you ready to be criticized, belittled, to have your motives impugned, to have stuff written about you on blogs and in newspapers? And when it happens, are you going to keep on preaching? Notice on the next few verses how often the word boldly is used. At Damascus, Paul preached boldly. Verse 28, he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.
He spoke, verse 29, the implication is boldly and disputed against the Hellenists. Here's my question for you. What if Paul had not continued to preach boldly? You and I would not be sitting here.
That's what would have happened. So here's my follow-up question for you. Whose life is depending on you being bold? Whose life is depending on you being bold? Do you understand how important the gospel is?
Do you think it's worth a little or maybe a lot of bad things being said about you? There are some things that are so important that it's worth the loss of almost anything. Is not the gospel one of those things? We're talking about a message that determines people's eternity.
We're talking about the difference between heaven and hell. We're talking about the love of Jesus and our enemy will do all that he can, all that he can to silence you. But Paul kept preaching boldly and thank God that he did because you and I are here. Somebody's life is depending on you.
Somebody's life is depending on you and whether or not you will respond boldly in this moment determines their future. Number two, Paul was chosen yet God took nearly two decades to prepare him. Something you don't immediately see here. There's a lot of time that passes in these verses.
You won't really see that until you start doing some cross-referencing. You get some clues in his epistles. Here I'll give you one of them. Second Corinthians chapter 11 verse 24. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked.
A night and a day I was adrift at sea. I was in frequent journeys and danger from rivers. Danger from robbers. Danger from my own people. Danger from gentiles. Danger in the city. Danger in the wilderness. Danger at sea. Danger from false brothers.
And toil and hardship through many a sleepless night in hunger and thirst often without food and cold and exposure. Never make the mistake of asking Paul, how are things going? This guy would have had a killer blog though, right?
If he'd written an autobiography it would have been called my worst life now, right? Because that's pretty much what he's describing in verses 24 through 27. By the way, most of that happened. Most of that happened in that little white space right there between verse 26 and 27.
That's when most of that happened. A little white space that includes all the things you see there in second Corinthians chapter 11. Don't waste your white space. That's what some of you are right now and I know it's frustrating.
I realize that. I'm ready coach. Put me in. I want more. I want a position. I want recognition.
I got these dreams. Don't waste it because that's where God does his best work. Your white space for you might be the white space of singleness. It might be the white space of not having being recognized. It might be the white space of obscurity. It might be the white space of serving on the rest of a prison sentence. I don't know what it is but I'm telling you God does his best work in the white space because in the white space is how he prepares you for the ministry that he has for you. That's what Billy Graham is saying. God takes a long time to prepare his servants.
He's going to take time to prepare you and you just need to be in there and you need to take your white space seriously and not waste it. All my life, all my life has been spent trying to run out of one white space into the time when the next words were getting written and it's been one of the biggest mistakes that I made because God was sweetly trying to teach me who he was and how to relate to him. Number three, Paul was chosen yet he suffered. Paul was chosen yet he suffered. If you had to choose one word to characterize those first 17 years, it is the word suffering and that's what God had said was going to happen to him, right?
He's a chosen instrument of mine. I'm going to show him how much he must suffer. Suffering you see is one of God's primary training tools for his people. Suffering does not mean that you're doing something wrong.
Hardly. That's how he's preparing you. In fact, the word instrument that God used in verse 15, he's a chosen instrument of mine in Greek is the word that really ought to be translated vessel. It's the same word that Paul used in 2 Corinthians 4 when he said we have this treasure, the Holy Spirit, in an earthen vessel. A vessel has no value of its own. It has no power of its own. It's a conduit for power or value that comes from something else. What Paul was saying when he said vessel in 2 Corinthians 4, in fact, I'll just use his words, we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that people would know that the surpassing power didn't come from us.
It comes from God. You see, up until his conversion, Paul had seen himself as a pretty valuable tool for God. He was academically smart. He was persuasive with his words.
He must be pretty awesome. But God did not want him to be an instrument that God used. God wanted him to be a vessel of his surpassing power. And the only way that he could do that is to break down Paul's confidence in his own abilities and humble him. Saul the mighty needed to become Paul the small.
So God took 17 years to humble him and break him because only then would he be filled with God's power and not his own. There is a tribe in Mesopotamia, an ancient tribe that was famous in the ancient world for its pottery. A lot of places made pottery, but there was one unique thing that this tribe did with its pottery that set it apart. After they would finish making these beautiful pots with all the design on them and beautifully sculpted, they would then take it and hold it above a rock and throw it down and shatter it into 100 pieces.
Then they would melt gold and they would piece back together this pot using the melted gold as the adhesive to hold it together so that the value of the pottery having been broken and put back together was now exceedingly more than it was before it was broken. That is what God does with his people is he does not want an unbroken instrument. He wants those who are infused with the power of God and the only way that he accomplishes that is by breaking you. You see, as I read Paul's epistles, I would tend to think, knowing Paul, that what I would find is a really smart guy who would always make me feel inferior and always making me wish that I could be more like him. But that's not what I get when I read Paul's epistles.
I see a guy who's broken. I see a guy with humble dependence on God's power. I see a guy who says things like, I am convinced that in me and my flesh nothing good dwells, that I am the chief of sinners.
I'm the one who says there's no possible way that I could do what God wants unless God was doing enemy. Where did he learn all that? Where did he learn all that? Not through his triumphs and successes, not through his accolades. He learned it through suffering.
Do you remember this statement? It is doubtful whether God can bless or use a man greatly until he's hurt him deeply. It's doubtful whether God can even use a person greatly until he's hurt him deeply or this one.
Remember this one? If dependence is the objective, then weakness is your advantage. You see, weakness is how you learn to operate in the power of God. And suffering is what helps you get in touch with your weakness. Suffering is also where God purifies your heart and he strips you of your idols. You see, listen, sometimes I think we do wrong when we try to find a silver lining in every bad thing that happens to us. Oh, I didn't get into medical school at UNC, but I got into Elon and that's where I met my spouse. And now everything is awesome.
That's just nuts. That's not always how it works. And if you are captive to always feeling like you got to be able to explain the good thing in your life that happened out of the bad thing, then you're going to come up with a lot of things that you're just going to put you in despair. See, listen, some things God does just to prepare you for himself because he wants you to love and trust him more than any. See that phrase in verse 15, chapter nine, he is a chosen instrument of mine. God wants your heart to belong fully to him, to love him, to trust him. God calls you first to himself and only secondarily to a task. And that means by the way that what God is doing in you is just as significant as what he is doing through you. Because we glorify God, see, not just by what we do for him, but by who we become in him. Let me do that again real quick.
Okay. God calls you first to himself and only secondarily to a task. And that means that what God is doing in you is just as significant, if not more so, than what he is doing through you.
Because we glorify God, not just by what we accomplish for him, but by who we become in him. He is preparing some of you for himself in these most painful times of your life. It's like Tim Keller says, the most painful times of our lives is usually when God is removing an idol from us.
That's what God is doing for some of you in your singleness. It's what he's doing in your pain. It's what he's doing in your disappointment. It's what he's doing in your obscurity. It's what he's doing in the betrayals. It's what he's doing in your failure.
So quit fighting God on it. He's chosen you for that. And you just got to trust him.
You have to trust him. And sometimes realize it's not even about you. Listen, here's another big mistake we make. A lot of us feel like we're willing to suffer if God is committed to explaining to us what's happening.
Isn't that right? We're like, it's a contract. Hey God, I'll go through anything.
You just got to tell me what's up. God, you explain it to me and I'll go through it. That's not going to happen sometimes. And sometimes you're not going to know the explanation. You're just going to have to trust what God says that God has showed you what he's doing in the cross of Jesus Christ. You don't have to walk with him.
You just got to trust him. Paul was chosen, yet he suffered. Paul was chosen, yet he was opposed. Paul was chosen, yet God took many years to prepare him. You're chosen, yet you are opposed. You're chosen, yet God takes many years to prepare you and he delays your chosen, yet you suffer. So let me end this by reflecting for just a few minutes on that word chosen. Because see, that word is the key to understanding everything else that's happening. Now I will tell you the concept of being chosen by God is hard to understand.
And I realize it raises a lot of really difficult questions. But it is very easy, is it not, to look at the Apostle Paul's life and see very clearly that Jesus chose him. Paul was not looking for Jesus. Paul was not on a spiritual quest with unanswered questions, reading some books about how to know God. Paul was heading to Jerusalem to kill the followers of Jesus. Paul was not looking for Jesus. Paul hated Jesus. Jesus chose him.
Jesus knocked him off his horse and Jesus revealed himself to him. Your conversion may not have been that dramatic, but the exact same patterns were at work in you. If your heart belongs to Jesus, it is because he chose you.
Paul's conversion, 1 Timothy 1 16, was a pattern for my and your conversion. Now again, I realize that raises some really difficult questions. Well, if God chose me, do I not have free will? Well, the Bible says that you do. Well, if God chose me, why didn't he choose everybody? I'm not going to unpack all those things here.
And to be honest with you, I'm not sure that I'm even smart enough to unpack all those things. But see, there are two things that I know. Number one, God does not owe mercy to anybody. So I am not in a place to be lecturing God about who he should be choosing and who he should not be. The fact that I am chosen to share mercy because I deserve hell and so do you and every single one of us does. So I'm not in a place to lecture God about how he shows mercy.
And that's number one. Number two, the sweetest doctrine in all of my life is that God chose me. You say, well, how do you know that you're chosen? Because I believe in and love Jesus. And scripture says there is no way that I would do that apart from the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12 3, no man can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Philippians 2 13, it's God who works in me both to desire and then to do of his good pleasure. John 1 13, those of us who have received Jesus were born out of the will of the flesh, not the will of man, but they were born of God. Ephesians 2 9 says that even the faith that I have in Jesus is a gift of him to me. So the fact that I love Jesus is not something that came up inside of me. It's something that he gave to me. That means, listen, I'm not here because there was some good in me.
God didn't look down and be like, oh, there's still some good in him. I see it. That's Star Wars. That's not Bible. Remember Star Wars back in the 80s? Here we go. Remember the scene where Luke Skywalker rips off Darth Vader's helmets like there's some good in you.
I see it. That's not how you were converted. Jesus did not see good in you. There was no good in you or in me. I was spiritually dead.
I was in my trespasses and sin. The people that Jesus raised out of the grave, he didn't walk around Jerusalem going, oh, I see some life left in that one. I see some life in that one.
Let me call him out of the grave. No, they were dead. There's only one category of dead and that's dead. There's no nearly dead princess bride. There's third 80s reference right there. There's only dead.
There's only dead. And that means that for me to follow Jesus is not because I had good in me. I was just like Paul. I was against God's rule in my life.
I hated him and he pursued me. And here's why that is so comforting to me. If I did not begin to follow Jesus because of my goodness, then Jesus is not depending on my goodness to keep me following him. See, you see, if it was a good moment in which I found Jesus, then what would happen to me in my bad moments?
See, one thing I've learned over and over and over again is that my flesh is wholly evil. And if God took his mercy away from me for even a second, I would turn away. But see, I have this assurance that he that began a good thing in me, Philippians 1 six out of the mouth of the apostle Paul will complete it all the way to the day of Jesus Christ. And so though I am unable, though I am fickle, though I am blown about by all different kinds of temptations, God started it. And if what God started he is going to complete, Charles Spurgeon said it this way, I have no questions that God chose me because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen him. And I am sure he chose me before I was born or else he never would have chosen me afterwards.
He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love. So I feel like I'm forced to accept that doctrine. I have a pastor friend who about four years ago got involved in a moral failure. And I realized that there were some guys who go through that and they had this kind of fake repentance, but his was genuine.
But it was totally broken, resigned out of ministry as he should have. And talking with him one day, I told him, I said, you're going to have to let this idea that God chose you, you're going to have to let that become sweet to you. Honestly, I don't even remember telling him that.
But about two months ago, he texted me and said, you may not remember this, but one day you made the statement to me, let the idea that God chose me become sweet to me. He said, I want you to know that for the last four years, that statement has sustained me in my darkest hour. He said, because I look at my life and I'm so ashamed.
He says, I look at my life and feel despair. I look at the grace that God showed me and I realized that I just squandered it and threw it away. And if it were not for the understanding that God chose me when I was dead and trespasses and sin, and though I sin against him is great, that God's grace in me is greater, that what he started, he surely will finish.
I would have despaired even of life itself. I know that you're dealing with, I'm dealing with some people in here that you're looking at your life and you're saying, it's just a mess. God, what he started in you, God is going to finish it. And when you can't hold on to God, he's holding on to you.
And you need to let that become sweet to you. You see, I do not know all the answers to the questions about the doctrine of how God chooses people. But what I do know is this amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. I couldn't find myself.
If I could find myself, I wouldn't really been lost, right? I was blind. I was blind, but now I see because God gave me sight long. My imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's might.
Thine eye diffused, a quickening ray. I rose the dungeon flame with light. My chains fell off. My soul was free. I rose, went forth and followed thee.
That's what I understand. That God chose Paul also shows me that he's fully in charge of the world evangelization process. God is not sitting in heaven right now, ringing his hands going, whoa, wait a minute. I think we might've been a little premature with that every tribe, tongue and nation thing. And we hadn't figured out fundamentalist Muslims yet.
They weren't around when I said that. And Putin, where'd that guy come from? I mean, that guy's really difficult.
I mean, how are we going to deal with this? No, that God chose the number one public enemy of the church and turned that into his premier apostle tells me that God is fully in charge of the evangelization process. And I can go forward in boldness, even when nobody else is listening to me, because God is the one who is going to ensure that every tribe, tongue and nation under heaven is going to be around that throne. And see that doesn't keep me from sharing Christ. That actually empowers me to share Christ and it ought to empower you. So from our perspective now, we see that Paul won, but from Paul's perspective, then even at the end of his life, as the axis swinging through the air, sure seemed like he was losing.
From your perspective now, does it seem like you're losing? Don't you think that God will be as faithful to you as he was to Paul? You, you, you're a chosen instrument.
You are unstoppable. So see when I am opposed, I'll respond with boldness. And when he delays, taking many days to accomplish what he has promised, I'll respond with faith. And when I suffer, I'm going to respond with resurrection hope. Because see, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. We are struck down, but not destroyed. Always, you see, carrying about in our bodies, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, the life of Jesus may be manifest in your bodies. You see, Paul says, death is at work in us, but life through that is at work in you, as it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all the day long. For your sake, we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
Yay. But in all these things through him, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor principality or power, nor things present, nor things past, nor things to come, that nothing shall be able to separate me from the love of God that is in Christ. I know that I have committed to him. I know who I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to keep what he has committed unto him.
And I know that what he has started, he will finish. Summit, we are chosen. You're chosen.
You're chosen. You can't fail. You can't fail.
You cannot fail. And sometimes that's all Paul had to hold on to is the scene he had of Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And there were times when he was in prison. There were times when his friends had turned his back on him. Even the church didn't understand.
Paul just kept going. Why? Because that one vision of Jesus. Don't look within for hope. Don't look to your friends.
Don't look to your past, your present, or future. Look to Jesus and hear him say, You are chosen. Follow me. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.
Greer. Here at our home church, the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, we're firmly committed to the Great Commission. And as part of our work towards that mission, we've set a goal to plant a thousand new churches in this generation. But we're not just doing that so we get more churches with the Summit name. We're equipping and providing resources for other churches to plant and grow.
Because in the end, we're all one body. And we want you, our Summit Life listeners, to be a part of that mission too, wherever you are. We have three new churches just beginning in St. Louis, Missouri, Orlando, Florida, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. If you are in one of these areas or have family or friends in these cities who need a local church community, listen up and write these church names down. Check out Storyline Church in St. Louis, One Family Church in Orlando, and Coastway Church in Myrtle Beach. We'd like to get you a copy of a book that we created just for our Summit Life family.
It's titled Scent, the Book of Acts Volume 2, and it covers chapters 9 through 28. So call us today at 866-335-5220 or request the book when you give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovich. Thanks for joining us this week. We'll see you Monday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
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