The Imminence of the Kingdom, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, it's time to get ready. Readiness.

You got to live with patience and you got to live with readiness. The less real to you his coming, the more obsessed you are with the here and now. The more you succumb to temptations.

The more you engage in materialism. Eminent expectation of the return of Jesus is necessary for living as a disciple. Are you ready to meet God? Are you ready to walk into eternity?

It could be today. Is the return of Jesus at the forefront of your mind or is this an event that you hardly ever think about? Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer explains that more people will miss the kingdom of God because they neglect it rather than because they reject it. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us.

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer explains that more people will miss the kingdom of God because they neglect it rather than because they neglect it. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us. That's an important distinction and one we should always be considering as we live out our faith with those around us.

Let me give you an example. 1 Corinthians 7. What on earth does he mean?

Let those of us who have wives live like we did not. Is that like his version of a hall pass that he's saying? No, of course not. That's not what he's saying. He's saying whatever situation you're in, you need to realize how temporary it is.

Whatever situation you're in, you need to realize how temporary it is because people, listen, tend to treat their situation in life like it is so final. You get one shot down here. You better get all you can because whatever you don't get this time around, you're never going to get a chance off again. You got one shot to be married. You got one shot to experience the beauties of this world. So we make bucket lists.

If I don't do this now, I'm never going to get a chance to do it again. I've showed you this several times through this series. Jesus' kingdom was not an ethereal experience where you sit up on a cloud sipping a tasteless margarita strumming an out of tune harp. It was a resurrection. It was a real resurrection. So what Jesus' miracles showed you, right? He showed you the way the kingdom was going to be. And the miracles weren't showing you as a disembodied spirit. He was showing you creation at its fullest. Same thing with his resurrection. I told you when he resurrected, they could see him, they could touch him, they could recognize him. He could eat fish.

He enjoyed eating fish. He could also walk through walls. He was not less alive.

He was more alive. So what Paul is saying is that whatever you miss out on down here is insignificant because the real version of it, you'll get an eternity. That's why bucket lists don't make much sense for Christians. Some of you are really depressed because you're single. You're like, well, I had one shot to get married and I didn't get it. Or some of you are like, you're at a point now in your life where you're like, even if I get married now, I miss the best years of my life and I'm a single during those. Some of you are in a bad marriage right now and you're like, the one shot I had to enjoy love on this earth, I didn't get it.

And now I'm bitter against my husband or my wife because they took that from me. Paul says, no, no, let him with a wife or her with a husband be like the one who has not, mentally speaking. And the one without one needs to think like one who does have one, he says, because the real version of that in eternity is something that all believers are going to experience. That's why when Jesus compares his second coming, he chooses a marriage feast.

It's a real marriage feast with real food where you drink real wine and you are being held by real arms and you're experiencing everything that marriage is a dull symbol of here, you get it in its fulfillment and its reality up there. And when that is real to you, you won't look wistfully at things and be bitter because you miss them. I was talking with somebody recently who told me that they were bitter because they'd had a childhood where their parents screwed it up, their parents didn't love them. And I'm like, that was my one shot to know what a father's love and a mother's love was like.

And of course, when you look at it in this light, you're like, no, that was just a symbol, it was a dull symbol of what a real father was like that you will experience in eternity. You know, I think that one of the things that keeps us from really being able to sacrifice and focus on eternity is this idea that we only get one chance in the world. And whenever we don't get this time around, we lose forever, so we've got to eat, pray, love. I've got to eat, pray, love because I only get one shot at it. I've got to see the Alps, I've got to see the Alps before I die because if I don't see the Alps this time around, then I'm never going to get to see the Alps. I've got to see the Grand Canyon. I'm going to be up in heaven sitting on that stupid cloud drinking that tasteless drink and I'm going to be strumming that out of two hearts. You know, listen, if Jesus's resurrected body was recognizable, you could touch it, right? You could see it, it could taste fish, but it was supercharged so it could walk through walls. What's the resurrected version of the Alps look like?

What's the resurrected version of the Grand Canyon look like? One of our elders told me this week that on his bucket list we'll see the space shuttle launch. So last week he took a trip down to Cape Canaveral to see the space shuttle launch.

And then they cancelled it because the Russians were doing it on the other side of the world, right? So I told him, I was like, don't worry about that, you know what I mean? We'll get to heaven, I mean, we may not even need space shuttles up there. We could, maybe we could fly to the moon. You come watch me take off, that's what I told him. You watch me take off to the moon and that'll be the fulfillment of that.

What's on your list of things you have to experience before you die? I've got to have a wife. I've got to have kids. I want to own a home. I want to have a house at the beach. I want to skydive. I want to own a Porsche. I want to take the Lord of the Rings tour in New Zealand. I want to run with the bulls. I want to streak in the Super Bowl.

I want to throw eggs at Justin Bieber. What's on your bucket list? What's on there? You see, could, listen, could you not be content, could you not be content to make eternity your obsession and not be obsessed with what you're missing out on down here because you know that in the resurrection, the ultimate party, the ultimate kingdom, everything you miss on down here is not made up for by simply giving you a bunch of gold and rewards in heaven but you actually experience the fullness of it. That's why I say a bucket list doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a Christian because we got it all up there.

I don't have to be obsessed with it down here. The only thing on your bucket list, the only thing on your bucket list, the one thing that you cannot do in eternity that you can do here is bring people to Jesus. That's the only thing. I get one shot at my family. We get one shot at this community.

We get one shot at the unreached people groups in the world. I cannot do that in eternity. I'll get to experience all the glories of creation one day. So I'm not obsessed with what I'm missing out on down here. Paul tells you every single part of your life has to be read through the imminence of Jesus return.

I've got a list of like 10 other things. I'm just not going to give you one more. All right, pain. When Paul talks about pain.

What does he say? Paul doesn't say to your pain. It's not real. Spiritful people don't feel pain.

Name a claim. No, he says your pain is real. But then he compares it to labor pains. And says you need to see the pain now in light of eternity. And the pain now is to eternity what labor pains are to birth. Labor pains are real. I don't know that personally.

Right. And I think it's really dumb when guys say that my wife and I are pregnant. No, you weren't pregnant. She was pregnant. You were not. You watched her.

Right. I've watched my wife go through that time of labor. It was real. It was painful.

But it's interesting now because now, even after that 18 hour labor ordeal on our first kid, she still has to ask me what it was like during that time because she can't really remember it. Because he gets swallowed up immediately in the joy of the child that's born. Right. So what he's saying is your pain is real. But when you look at it through the lens of eternity, it just seems very, very temporary. So in the midst of your pain now, he said hang on to what will be swallowed up in eternity when it takes everything and makes all the sad things in your life come untrue. Everything in your life ought to be read through the lens of eternity. Verse 32. He begins these warnings.

Watch this. Remember Lot's wife. Remember Lot's wife. Who was Lot's wife? Do you remember, again Sunday school. Firearm brimstone coming down from heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah.

Lot and his wife and his family are fleeing to the hills. Lot's wife turns around, looks back at Sodom. Now why is she doing that? Does she have to lock the door, leave the oven on? Is that it?

No, at that point that doesn't matter. Evidently she's wistfully looking back at Sodom wishing she could have some of the things she had there. And what happens to her? She turned into a pillar of salt.

That's right. Salt in the Bible is a metaphor for spiritual death. He's like, Lot's wife spiritually died because she was so attached to things here. You will pour salt into your soul when you are attached to things here and you will be unable to live as a disciple of Jesus. That's what that image means.

C.S. Lewis said it like this, wealth has a way of knitting a man's heart to this world. And it creates an inability, it creates a spiritual infertility for you to really be able to live your life in the kingdom of God. Verse 33, whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, whoever loses his life will keep it. The one who builds up life on this earth loses it, but the one who angles everything to get eternity is the one who keeps it.

It's like I told you a few weeks ago with your money. You can't take any of it with you, but you can send it on ahead, all of it. None of it you can take with you. In fact, if you're focused on things that you can only do here on earth, your whole soul is going to turn into salt. And your kids are going to start to drink from a salty fountain that will destroy them. He said, but if you can take your eyes off of those things and you can begin to leverage your life for eternity, you become a fountain of fresh water that blesses your children and your family. And you keep your life for eternity.

You can't take your money with you, but you can send it on ahead of you to enjoy it in eternity. Let me put all this together. Two qualities he's telling you to live with, right? Readiness, readiness. The church I grew up in, man, we talked all the time about the second coming of Jesus. We had charts.

I got some of the charts and they're like, you know, got beasts drawn on them. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff we don't do but anymore. But there was one thing that I always remember is I remember the eminence of Jesus return. How close it felt. In fact, I remember at six years old, one outside because the preacher had said we need to watch and pray. So I went outside on the porch, watched and prayed. And my wife, I mean, my mom said, what are you doing? And I said, well, the pastor told us to watch and pray. Isn't this what he meant?

She was like, well, I'm not really sure, but probably not. But this is not a bad idea. So we sat and watched for 10, 15 minutes and we prayed and we went back inside. There's something about the eminence of eternity that means that that's the way you should be. It's the posture you should have in your soul. He might come today. He might come today.

Are you ready? It also means when you understand that your life becomes light and mobile. Think of it like walking through a department store. You're walking through a department store and you're seeing all the stuff you like, but you don't have any money. So what you do, you grab everything you like and you get in your arms and you carry it around the store. How dumb is that knowing that when you go out, you got to drop it all and go home as empty handed as you came. Can you take anything with you that you collect on earth? No. If you understand that, in fact, it's actually a more enjoyable experience if you don't encumber your life with all that stuff.

What you can do is you can send it on ahead of you. You live light and mobile knowing that eternity is when the real party is. You're not an ascetic. It's not like you hate enjoyment. You just want to enjoy it there eternally.

So you leverage it down here for enjoyment there. Patience is the other thing you live with. Patience means delayed gratification. It means working faithfully even when you can't feel the outcome. This is where most of us falter. Most of us like immediate results to our obedience, don't we?

I see this all the time. People are like, oh, well, I started to do what I was supposed to do with marriage and my wife was supposed to just immediately quit nagging me and start rubbing my feet every night. That didn't happen. What's wrong with God? I started to tithe.

How come I didn't have a rich uncle that called me out of nowhere telling me he's leaving me a million dollars? We want immediate gratification. Listen, if you are going to be able to walk with Jesus, you've got to live with patience because there is so much that will be unfulfilled and unrewarded until the second coming. And if you cannot live with patience, if you cannot live with delayed gratification, if you cannot live with faithful obedience that you don't really see a whole lot of reward for in this life, then you're never going to make it. Readiness. You've got to live with patience and you've got to live with readiness. The less real to you His coming, the more obsessed you are with the here and now.

The more you succumb to temptations, the more you engage in materialism, the more you get focused on things like suffering and things that you don't have. Eminent expectation of the return of Jesus is necessary for living as a disciple. So let me play prophet here for just a minute. I think this is completely absent from most churches anymore. I think it's probably an explainable reaction to all the goofy, you know, prophecy prediction kind of stuff.

I understand where it comes from, but you never hear this talked about. Literally every book of the New Testament talks about the return of Jesus and its eminence to us. The last words of Revelation, you know what they are? Last words of the last book in the Bible. Surely I'm coming quickly. John's response, even so come, Lord Jesus.

The last words of the New Testament are a prayer with their face looking up toward the sky saying even so come. Come. We're waiting. We're waiting.

You don't hear that ever talked about. Are you ready to meet God? Are you ready to walk into eternity?

It could be today. One last warning he gives you, verse 34. I tell you in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken on the other left.

There'll be two women grinding grain together. One will be taken on the other left. What's his point here? It's very important. Family relationships won't save you. Being a part of the right church will save you.

There's a couple in bed, one taken, one left. Friends won't save you. The division in God's kingdom is not between nations. It's not between people inside the church and outside the church.

The division is within families, within groups of friends, in bedrooms, in dorm rooms, in this room. Are you ready? Are you ready to meet God? Are you living light and mobile, focused on eternity? Are you ready for his coming? Have you leveraged your life for eternity with eyes fixed on eternity? Or are you looking back, looking down, fixated like Lot's wife on the here and now? You're listening to Pastor J.D. Greer on Summit Life.

Find us online at jdgreer.com. J.D., speaking of the here and now of this life, do you have a bucket list? I know it's a silly question. You know, it's one of those lists of adventurous things that you want to do before you die. Well, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to answer here because in the book that I have coming out, What Are You Gonna Do With Your Life?, there's a chapter called Kick Your Bucket List. So yes, the short answer is yes, but what I explore in this chapter is why a bucket list doesn't really make sense for a Christian.

A bucket list comes from a concept of just like things you want to do before you kick the bucket because if you don't do them before you kick the bucket, then you'll never have a chance to do them. You know, according to the Bible, heaven is a glorified heaven and earth, which means everything you love down here, there's an eternal perfected version of up there. In the book, I make the case that there's only one thing, only one thing that you can't do in heaven that you can do here, and that's bring people to Jesus. So what it means to not waste your life is to figure out how your life is supposed to be a part of directing people to Jesus. And I just ask questions, help you lead you on some exploration that will show you really how to do that.

I think it really is a chance to be a defining moment. And you might want to get that and a copy for somebody that you know that is at a place where they're thinking about, you know, I really want my life to count. So again, go to jdware.com and all that information about how to become a gospel partner will be there. And in Bible studies, like I said, that the team and I have written toward this book will be available to.

Yes. Let us make you one of the first to get Pastor JD's newest book. What are you going to do with your life? It comes as our way of saying thanks when you donate to support this ministry. Summit Life wouldn't be possible without the generosity of friends like you. We're so grateful to call you our partners.

Ask for What Are You Going to Do With Your Life? by JD Greer and the companion devotional and scripture guide when you give a donation today of $25 or more. You can also request the book when you join our team of monthly gospel partners.

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Or you can give and request the book online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. Thank you for joining us today. And be sure to listen again tomorrow when Pastor JD discusses the King's Joy. That's Friday on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.