The Making of a Witness, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. If salvation belongs to God, then prayer, asking God to do what only God can do, should be our greatest resource. Now here, Jonah's not an example for us. Jonah wasn't praying for the nanomite's salvation. In fact, he was praying against it. So here's a question. You ready for this? If God answered right now, in one fell swoop, every prayer you prayed last week, would anybody new be in the kingdom? Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of Pastor J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Since the internet boom of the 90s, top tech companies across the country have employed a buzz worthy business model of schmoozing clients and entertaining audiences to promote their goods, services, and company brands across the globe. Called the art of evangelism, this method of pushing products and services has revitalized the tech industry. But today as Pastor J.D. continues our study in the book of Jonah, he reminds us that biblical evangelism isn't about schmoozing or entertaining.

In fact, there's really no art to it at all. It's simply about sharing God's free gift of salvation to those in need. Grab your Bible. We are in Jonah chapter three. Verse three. So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breath.

Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey, and he called out as he went. Yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast, and they put on sackcloth, and from the greatest of them to the least of them, the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and he sat in ashes.

Here's a question. What made them believe like this? Jonah's message doesn't appear to be that persuasive.

We don't know. It's just that God sovereignly arranged the events that were going on in Nineveh, and he prepared their hearts. Verse seven.

And he issued a proclamation and published it through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles. Let neither man nor beast heard nor flock taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. And let them, he says, call out mightily to God, and let everyone, says the king, turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.

Who knows? God may turn and relent from his fierce anger so that we may not perish. Verse 10. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them.

All right. There's a lot of different directions we could take this passage, but I want to use this passage to reflect a little bit on the nature of how God uses you to work in people's lives. God using you to bring people to himself is what we call evangelism. Becoming an effective evangelist comes from believing two things, two very simple things, both of which you're going to see in this story.

All right. Here's number one. Number one, or letter A, salvation belongs to the Lord. It comes from believing that salvation belongs to the Lord, Jonah 2 9. It's like I showed you in this text, Jonah's sermon was not even that impressive.

Five words long. His heart wasn't even in it. But God used it.

Why? Because God is the one who works salvation. John 6 44. Nobody comes to me unless the father who sent me draws him. That means that people can't come unless God draws them. And if God's drawing them, they'll come.

Now, that might make your mind hurt, but it should also make you relax because that means the weight is off of your shoulders. It's not on you to convince them. God does the drawing and the convincing and the persuading. You can give the finest presentation of the gospel ever. And if God is not working in their hearts, then what you said won't have the slightest effect. At the same time, you can give the lousiest presentation of the gospel.

And if God is working in their hearts, like Jonah gave the lousiest presentation of the gospel ever, God will use it because salvation belongs to whom? To God. Salvation belongs to God.

Number two, or letter B. Faith comes only by hearing. Faith comes only by hearing. That's Romans 10 17.

Now, that's not obviously in Jonah, but you see it there in Jonah 2 or Jonah 3. God's instrument of life is his word. The word of God is not just information that God wants us to know.

It's not commands. The word of God has a power in it. The word of God is a power. So here is the important part for you. The word of God cannot do its work where people haven't heard it, which means that our objective is to get the word of God into people's lives, to get them in the presence of it, because then and only then can God do his work. You see, God is at work all around you, like he was in Nineveh.

But there's a part that only you can do. You study the book of Acts. The only beings who preach the gospel in Acts are humans. If you've never seen this, there's this big point trying to be made.

I'll give you some examples. Acts chapter 8, there's a guy that they call the Ethiopian eunuch who's reading the scroll of Isaiah, and he comes to the part in Isaiah 53 about Jesus dying for sins, and he's like, I don't know what this means. Okay, so what God does is rather than like appearing as an angel to him and explaining to him what that means, he gets Philip from over in Samaria, and he teleports him, teleports him out into the desert so that Philip's like, what am I doing here?

He's like, just hang on, just wait. He's like, oh, I know why I'm here, and he shares the word of God to him. Now, why would God, a God who could do anything, why would he just like save Philip the trouble, let him stay there in Samaria? If he's going to go do all the magic stuff, why not just do it himself?

Only a human being can do it. Acts chapter 9, Paul, Saul, at this point, Jesus appears to him and says, Saul, what are you doing? It's hard for you to kick against the prodding of the Holy Spirit, and Saul's like, oh, I'm sorry, you know. So what does Jesus tell him to do? He says, go talk to Ananias, and Ananias shares the gospel with him. The point that's being made dramatically is that the word of God has to be spoken to the lips of a human, but God is all around you doing the rest. See, if you would just open your eyes to those two facts, that salvation belongs to God, and that faith only comes by hearing, and hearing only by you, it would have the most profound effect on you.

Believing those two things makes you into a bold, confident, and effective person who shares the word of Christ with others. I've seen so many illustrations of this through my life. Years ago, I had a part-time job as a, I worked in yard maintenance, and I worked with a group of guys that were just very, very rough, you know, just, and they cursed like, I mean, like nobody's business. I got, I mean, I learned some new, this, they could creatively cuss. I'd never realized it was an art. You know, these guys, it was like, man, I need to write that down.

That's totally foul, but that was, that was great, right? So they would cuss all the time. This one guy who was the leader of it, I never even learned his real name. We called him Ivan because he looked like a big, I don't know where his ethnicity was from. He looked like a big Russian guy. He's a huge guy, and he just cursed.

I mean, he could not speak a sentence without, you know, dropping all these foul words in it, and one day he got on a kick saying like, the queen mother of all curse words, you know what I'm talking about? G, D, that one, and he just, and just, I'm just, I'm just, it's stuff coming out of his mouth about God, and I was provoked, and I was like, I was sitting there, and I was just, I mean, I was boiling the way that just the disrespect he was showing toward God, and finally, I felt like the Holy Spirit rage into my chest, and I turned to him, and I was like, I was like, Ivan, you need to shut your mouth. I was like, I put up with all this other stuff, and that didn't really bother me, honestly, all that much, but here you are blaspheming God, and one day you're gonna stand before God, and one day you're gonna have to look at his face, and you do not want to stand before him, having treated him with the disrespect, and having taken his name in vain, the way that you do so casually.

Then the Holy Spirit completely left me right at that moment, just all by myself. I'm out, you know, and I turned, and I started to walk away, and he, I heard these big feet run, and he comes, and he says, what did you say to me? And I repeated the gist, but in much gentler tones of what I had shared with him, and he says, he says, you know, he said, I've known that something is not right between me and God, but I just don't, I don't know, and I'm condensing a long conversation.

He says, I haven't really known who to ask or where to start, and this led to this conversation that took place over several days, where I kept talking to him about this, and I remember being in the midst of this thing, and he revealed to me that he had just been diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer. He didn't know, he was causing all this chaos in his life, and he and his girlfriend that he lived with were starting to ask these questions, and I remember sharing with him one afternoon, just talking to him, and there was this, not far from where we were, this huge accident where I don't think anybody ended up dying in it, but it was bad, and this truck had flipped over on its side, and there was a kid trapped on the end, and so we're all, there's two or three guys trying to lift the truck up, I mean, he goes tearing across this field, he comes over to this truck, and he hits it, like just knocks that truck up on its side, just, he was a beast, and he, it just, it was this moment where, where he's just, it was, you know, after seeing this kid, and it looked like he was dead, and he's just like, he was just overwhelmed with emotion, and he, we're standing there, we have to wait for the police to come, since we were witnesses of the accident, he's like, he looks at me, he's like, he was like six, six or something, he said, he's like, hey, you think God's trying to speak to me? I was like, no, man, I think God's screaming at you, I think it's probably time for you to listen. It was very shortly thereafter that he, his girlfriend, trusted Christ. God is all at work around you, but see, there's a part that only you can do, it's speaking the word of God in that moment.

God is, salvation belongs to him, to the part that he's given to you that only you can do, does that make sense? I got more times than I can tell you where I was doing something, sharing Christ, and I ended up, like, it ended up being for the purpose, not the person I was talking to, but somebody that was listening in. Now, I was on a bus trip one time, and I'm sitting there, and I was talking to this person next to me, and the conversation turns to the gospel, it was like an hour and a half trip, and man, I just was like, I was going after this person, like, you know, because they kept arguing, and it was so cynical, and I was just explaining to them, and this person's heart was so hard, and they kept asking me, snide comments, saying all these attacking things.

At the end of like an hour and a half, the bus stopped, we were both getting ready to get off, I'm thinking like, you know, total failure, I stand up, and the girl behind us stands up, she's got big tears in her eyes, and she says, that was awesome. I call that ricochet evangelism, where God's word bounces off one hard heart, and like goes into another one this morning. I don't know how it all works. I just know that there is a role that God has given to you, see, and if you understand that, it should lead you to do two things constantly, all right? Number one, to get the word of God into people's hands.

Now, what do I mean by that? I'm not talking about the whole, remember that first week I talked about tracts, you know, where you like, look at the leave random gospel pamphlets in restrooms, and with the, you know, to waitresses, you're like, hey, here's a tip, try Jesus, and it's a fake $10, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the word of God in the context of a relationship, where you speak the word of God to people, in the context of relationship, because that's always how you see it. You put the word of God in their hands, and then you guide them.

I'm gonna give you a really simple idea to help you with this, all right? Listen, make a list of verses for this person, verses that are very significant to you, right? And then give them to them, and say, here's a list, what I want you to do is read two to three of them a day, and I want you to write out in one sentence what you think it means, and then write out what it means to you. What does it mean, and then what is it saying to you, and then in another week we'll come back together and we'll discuss some of these verses. Get them in the presence of the word of God, and let God's word do the work. Just get them in the Bible.

Sometimes you carry this like weight of like, oh, I've gotta like, I gotta be ready to answer all the questions. You don't. The second thing that you will do is you will pray like crazy.

Pray like crazy. If salvation belongs to God, then prayer, asking God to do what only God can do should be our greatest resource. Now here, Jonah's not an example for us. Again, Jonah wasn't praying for the Ninevites' salvation. In fact, he was praying against it. Jonah wasn't praying for the Ninevites, get this, but Jesus was.

You know how I know that? Because when Jesus was on the cross, what'd he say over and over again? Father, forgive them. By the way, John Stott says that in Greek, it's written in the clause, which means that he repeated that. He didn't say, Father, forgive them one time. He prayed it over and over and over and over again. Jesus prayed for the Ninevites. And what you essentially do when you pray is you join your faith to Jesus' faith.

That's pretty good company to be in. Father, I'm just praying the same thing Jesus prayed. I've described it before like a laser. You know how a laser works?

So you've got like a light wave, and then you amplify it by adding another light wave. Look at Jesus' prayer, Father, forgive them as one wave. And then what God is allowing you to do is join your wave to his, and that becomes a laser of God's power into that person's life. Father, forgive them. You are joining that God let them see.

God, do what only you can do. By the way, you want motivation to pray? Realize that when Jesus prayed that, Father, forgive them, he was praying for you. Because he prayed for you, that gives you the ability to pray for the Ninevites. Jonah didn't think he needed prayer.

Jonah thought he was the prophet. If he'd understood that Jesus had prayed for him, that would have created in his heart the love to pray for Nineveh, all right? So here's a question. How many people are you praying for right now to be brought into the kingdom? Or here's a question.

Ready for this? If God answered right now, in one fell swoop, if God answered every prayer you prayed last week, would anybody new be in the kingdom? If like in one fell swoop, God said, I'm going to answer every single prayer you prayed last week, would anybody new be in the kingdom?

I say this gently, but if not, shame on you. What are you doing? Who is Jesus to you? What is the gospel to you? If you understand what Jesus has saved you from, then you understand that what he saved you to is for you to preach to people that were in the same way that you were.

When I say preach, I don't mean what I do, I mean just sharing God's word to them. My whole point is that God is all at work around you. God wanted to, he could, save the Ninevites. The obstacle was Jonah.

God wants to, and he can, save people all around you. For many of us, the obstacle is us. We've just never shown up and given the word of God to them.

Now, before I close this really quickly, I want to deal with one objection, because some of you have the opposite problem of what I'm saying. You're like, well, I've been giving this person the word, and they're totally closed. Nobody listens to me. What does that mean? All right, all right, follow me.

Ready? When you have a time of fruitlessness in your life, you can have one of three reactions to it. One of them is bad, two of them are good. All right, one of them is self-doubt. You're sharing with somebody, you're sharing with somebody, they're not listening, and so what do you conclude? There's something wrong with me, my Christianity, something God's mightily displeased with in me, and that's why I can't be fruitful. You ever felt that?

I have. There are times I've been struggling, and I've thought, I'm spiritually sterile. Of course, the gospel is that there was something wrong with you, and you are spiritually sterile, and God was mightily displeased with you, and God gives his grace to those who acknowledge that. So, of course, you're spiritually impotent.

That's gospel 101, and when you get gospel 101, you can understand that the gospel is for those who embrace that God gives them his power, not as something they earn, but as a gift. In fact, only those who are spiritually sterile will have access to the mighty power of God. Those who believe they have internal spiritual power will end up impotent. So that's one, self-doubt. Here's the second thing it can lead you to. It can lead you to make more demands on God's grace.

That's good. Now, I use that word, demands, on purpose, even though I know it's going to make some of you uncomfortable, because you're like, well, we shouldn't be demanding anything of God. Let me tell you this. Some of the greatest movements of God came from a bold presumption on God's grace. Somebody's saying, God, don't you care? I've told you before, Charles Spurgeon had this way of praying that kind of creep people out around him, because he'd be like, God, don't you care about this situation? I care about it. I know you care about it, because you're a more loving father than I am.

How can you watch this and not do something? That's presumption, and that's the kind of thing Jesus actually really likes. He said the kingdom of heaven is taken by force, by people who understand these things and ask for them. Think of Jacob wrestling with God. Remember this Genesis, where he holds God down, the angel down, and says, I won't let you go until you bless me? That sounds sacrilegious, but God was pleased with it. Moses, I won't go up unless you go with me. Luke, chapter 8, verse 44, the woman who comes up and presumptuously grabs a hold of Jesus' garment, even though she was ceremonially unclean, because she said, I know how loving and compassionate he is.

The woman who goes up to Jesus and says, hey, come heal my daughter. He's like, I can't, you're a gentile, and it's not right to take the bread that was intended for children and give it to dogs. I was like, dang, did Jesus call her a dog? I've read scholars, by the way, who are like, oh, no, no, what he meant there was little puppy. OK, yeah, but he still called her a dog. Even if it's a little cute little dog, it's still a dog.

But she didn't blame because she says, yeah, but even the dogs get to eat what falls off the master's table. In other words, there's so much grace on your table, Jesus, that there's enough even for a dog like me. You understand the depth of God's grace, and you make demands on it. Luke 18, Jesus compares prayer to an annoying widow who won't let the judge go until he gives her what she wants.

These are the metaphors Jesus chose for prayer. I read this story this week. You know who Tony Evans is? African-American pastor out in Dallas, fantastic speaker, was doing this big rally, or big evangelistic meeting, whatever, down in South Carolina. It was open air, several thousand people there. Right before they're getting ready to start, these huge rain clouds come billowing in, and it's raining, and the people on the news are like, it's 100% chance of rain. So all the pastors that are part of this get together, and they all start praying. Tony Evans said, everybody's praying these nice little kind of polite, God, we want your will, and God, you can do what you want kind of prayers and everything.

It was all theologically correct, and they're going around. He said, this woman, he gives her the name Linda. I don't know if it's a real name, but he said, I'll never forget, she stood up, and she said this with all these pastors. She says, Lord, thousands have gathered to hear the good news about your son. It would be a shame on your name for us to have all these unbelievers go without the gospel when you control the weather, after all, and you don't stop it. In the name of Jesus Christ, address this storm.

That ended the prayer meeting. Everybody goes out, takes her places under the dark sky. Everybody's on stage, all these pastors, all these umbrellas start opening up because the rain's coming.

This woman, Linda, sat on the stage, and she's like, uh-uh, I'm not putting up an umbrella. He said it was one of the most bizarre things he'd ever seen. He said this huge storm, it comes right over to where they are.

He said it literally split into and went to the right and to the left. He said not a drop of rain touched anybody. He said, now, why was it that she prayed like that? Why was it that God heard her prayer? See?

It's because there was a shameless boldness in it. Prayer, you see, is not overcoming God's reluctance. Prayer is laying hold of God's willingness.

The floods of salvation come when you presume upon the compassion of God, when you hold up God's compassion in front of his face. That's what we're supposed to do. Jesus, I know how compassionate you are. Interfeit. Here's the last thing, a little literacy.

This is also a good response. Wait upon God. Some of the greatest movements of God happened after somebody labored for years with no fruit.

Adoniram Judson, for whom I named my son, first American missionary, was in Burma for seven years, now Myanmar, but that time it was called Burma, for seven years. Not a single convert. He said, but after he labored, he kept holding this up in front of God's face and said, God, you care about these people.

Conversions, he said, came like rain. So don't give up. There's nothing wrong with you the gospel doesn't address. In Christ, there's nothing you could do to make God love you anymore, nothing he could do, could do that would earn his power anymore.

The gospel is that God cares for people, preserves them, people presume upon that and ask God because salvation belongs to God and faith comes only by hearing. Y'all, the bottom line is this, Jonah is what stood in the way of Nineveh's forgiveness. Their sin was not the obstacle. Jonah's failure to get them what the word of God was. I told you Jonah 2 8 was a key verse in Jonah.

You remember this? Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. From Jonah 3, what you see is those who cling to worthless idols forfeit not only their own grace, they also forfeit grace that could have been other people's too. Who is there in your life that is not experiencing the grace of God, not because God's not willing or able, but because you have never simply spoken the word of God to them, you've never put them in a place for God to be able to take five words and open their hearts. Salvation belongs to God, faith comes only by hearing.

That's where you are. You understand that you should pray like crazy. Get the word of God. Don't give up on the one you're praying for. Continue to ask God for their salvation and give the word of God to them. What a challenging message from Pastor J.D. Greer on Summit Life.

If you've missed any of the previous messages in this Castaway series, you can find them online at jdgreer.com. We are committed to equipping you for great commission work and sharing the gospel. So the most important tool that we have is the word of God.

That's why our latest resource is designed specifically to help you know the Bible better. If you want to carry God's promises in your heart, our new Summit Life Memory Verse Cards make it easy to memorize scripture. We'd like to send you a set of 50 scripture memory cards as a thank you when you support the ministry of Summit Life today. The cards are made small, similar to playing cards for a quick reference.

You can put them on the fridge with the magnet that comes with the cards, or you can stick them in your wallet. You could pin them to a bulletin board or mirror for extra encouragement. And these scripture cards remind us of God's steadfastness and his unchanging promises now and in the days to come. Going back over the ones you've learned and adding to the number weekly or monthly will ensure that God's word is being stored both in your mind and in your heart. Something we say a lot at the Summit Church is when life cuts us, we want to bleed God's word. That comes from a desire that we be saturated in scripture so much that we can't help but talk about it, share it, and apply it. The word of God is light.

It's life and it's salvation. The word alone prepares us to stand up to every challenge that we face with courage. So let's prioritize memorizing it this year together. We're so grateful for you and your partnership with us as we begin a new year of ministry together. Ask for the all things new memory verse cards and magnet set when you become a gospel partner or when you give a single gift of $25 or more. Call 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220. Or you can give online at jdgrier.com. And if you're new to Summit Life and you'd like to get to know us a little bit better, sign up for our email list. You'll receive Pastor J.D. 's devotional blog posts as well as the popular Wisdom for Your Weekend posts. Subscribe right now when you go to jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Benovitch inviting you to join us tomorrow when Pastor J.D.

continues this study in the book of Jonah calling us to a whole new kind of obedience. That's Tuesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.