Who’s at Your Party, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, a question that needs an answer. That's the general question I want you to ask about your life. If your life were depicted as a party, who would it be being thrown for? Who would the guest be at your party? I want you to think about that. I want you to lose some sleep over that this week because I promise you you're going to be asked that question in eternity. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian, J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. You know, I think a lot of people believe that they have to travel overseas in order to fulfill the Great Commission. But today, Pastor J.D. reminds us that God's mission field is all around us, even in our own homes and neighborhoods.

Discover how to serve God and others, often without ever even leaving town. This message is part of our series called Kingdom Come. And if you'd like to follow along with the message transcript, visit J.D.

Greer.com. Here's Pastor J.D. with a message titled, Who's at Your Party? Do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, you should invite the poor.

You should invite the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And then you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

Most of us, generally speaking, invest in people who can benefit us. Jesus says you should not live that way for a few reasons. Number one, you do not want to live by the law of reciprocity before God. When it comes to God's party, what did you deserve?

You deserve to be rejected. Why were you accepted at God's table? Because Jesus left everything to come to earth to rescue you. He turned his back on his interest and gave them up for you, and because of that, you have a seat at God's table. How could somebody who recognizes that they're present at God's party entirely because of a gift of grace that cost him everything and cost us nothing, how could they continue to pursue a life of self-interest and selfishness?

It is utterly inconceivable. The second reason Jesus says we should invite the people to our parties who can't pay us back is that he gives you reward in heaven. Do you see this, verse 14? If you live this way, you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. Personally, I think that one of the things that keeps most people from being generous is really believing this, really taking into account this promise or actually taking it seriously, at least. Randy Alcorn, in a book called The Treasure Principle we use a lot around here, has said that the bald truth about your money is that when you die, you can't take any of it with you, but you can send it on to heaven ahead of you. But you do that here by investing it in God's kingdom now.

Do you really believe that you will be repaid? Because if so, your life would be characterized as a party that you throw for people who can't pay you back. Now, here's what I want to do with this in the time we have left.

I want to do two things with it. The first thing is I want to ask you a general question about your lives, and that is if we chose the metaphor of a party to depict your life, who would the guest be? That's what I want to ask you because Jesus' main point in this parable or this story is not trying to give you rules about your next birthday party.

That's not his point. His point is that you begin to think about your life and think about who it is being lived for. Then the second thing I want to do is I want to apply this to a part of the Christian life, which I think has all but been forgotten. It's something we hardly ever talk about anymore, and I want to try to get it back on your radar screen. So that's the second thing we're going to do.

All right, here's number one. If your life were depicted as a party, who would be the invited guest? Is it primarily for people who can benefit you, or is it for people who can't necessarily pay you back, people for whom you pour out your life like Jesus poured his out for you?

Some of you college students and young professionals need to ask this question now because you are making big decisions about your career. And Jesus said that following him means that you looked at your life in many ways like he looked at his. You see, the truth is that we still live in a world where there are 6,500 what we call unreached people groups. An unreached people group is a group of 10,000 people or more that are united by a common language who have no viable witness to the gospel in their culture. What that means is that barring some supernatural act of God none of us can explain, there is no chance that they will hear the gospel before they die. If you were to line all those people up in a single file line, they would circle the earth 25 times.

Can you imagine seeing a line of people as long as the circumference of the earth 25 people wide, trampling hopelessly toward hell? If that is true, then what does that mean about how you ought to be thinking about your life? I've told you before that many of us seem to me to be asking fundamentally the wrong question. We're like, God, what do you want to do with my life?

Like, we're waiting on God to appear to us in a dream to tell us what to do as if we don't know what he wants us to do. And I would say that every follower of Jesus asked this question instead. God, how can my life best be leveraged to bring other people, the poor, the lame, and the blind, how can it be leveraged to bring them to the knowledge of the gospel? I mean, if I had credible evidence that Obama was going to go off in a public place somewhere today in Raleigh, Durham, I don't go home and pray about whether or not it's God's will for me to do something about that.

I know what his will is. We know that his will is to save the lost, and every follower of Jesus ought to say, God, how can my life be used for the poor, the lame, and the blind, which are going to be people without Jesus? We live in a world where many people live without the basic necessities of life, 100,000 kids a week die of starvation and hunger-related diseases. I don't say that to guilt you, just to try to give you some perspective. The average American makes four times what people outside of America make, and yet the average American spends 98% of their money on themselves.

You're like, well, Americans are the most generous people on earth. Yes, I agree with that, but I'm just trying to say, don't you realize that God gave us what he gave us, not for the purpose of simply benefiting ourselves, but he gave it to us so that we could leverage it for the purpose of the poor, the lame, the blind, and the crippled? Some of you need to think about the career that you're going into and where and how you're using it in light of global lostness. This is not optional for a select group of you that are going to seminary. This is what every follower of Jesus must consider. How can my life thus be leveraged for the Great Commission?

For you students, we give you a really practical step. We're like, hey, unless you've heard from God, unless you know clearly where he's taking you, when you graduate, why not spend two years with us overseas in one of our unreached people group projects, just discovering what God is doing around the world? Now, some of you are hearing that and you're like, well, but I know that God is leading me into some kind of secular business, or maybe you're there right now. Maybe you're a business person, you're a lawyer, a real estate agent, whatever, and you're like, I'm in a secular business.

Are you saying that I missed it? Are you saying that I really can't be used by God? Are you saying that this only applies to people going into ministry?

Not at all. In fact, there are very few of us that God calls into vocational Christian ministry. For many of you, the gift that you've been given is what we would call a secular gift.

You're good at law, you're good at medicine, you're good at teaching, something like that. But you still have to look at that gift as something given to you to serve others, as given to you for the purpose not of benefiting yourself and filling up your party with people who can pay you back. It's given to you for the purpose of the poor, the lame, and the blind. Here are three questions for you, those of you that are going into more of what I would call secular work.

Three questions. Number one, do you look at your job as a way of serving others? Do you look at your job as a way of serving others? Everybody ought to be able to say that in their job. Everybody.

Right? I mean, if you're a lawyer, you can be serving other people by making sure that fairness and justice is served. You work at Starbucks, you can serve others. You're like, well, I don't really feel like getting coffee for people is that important.

Well, washing people's feet may not be that important either, but Jesus did that, so it's not too good for us. What we do, even in this world that is secular, is a way of serving other people. And if you see your job that way, it changes your whole attitude in that job. It changes, by the way, also some decisions that you make in that job. If you're a business person, you may decide to get involved in some ventures with the company that you're with that may not necessarily just benefit your bottom line of profit because you got another bottom line and that is the poor, the lame, and the blind.

Right? If you're a lawyer, you may choose not to go into certain lawsuits which might make you a lot of money, but you know that they end up cheating other people of money, legally cheating other people of money. You say, well, but my job is to serve people and not to just profit off of them. It changes your attitude in that job.

Here's your second question. Are you looking for ways to leverage your job for the Great Commission? If you're in secular work, are you looking for ways to leverage your job for the Great Commission? You realize that the only witness to Christ, many of the people in your workplace will ever get is from you.

Right? I mean, these people at your workplace are not listening to my podcast. I know that. That's not what they do. They don't even know about us. The only ones that they'll ever be able to hear about Christ from are going to be people that are in the workplace with them. That's how God sends you out like missionaries into the marketplace. Some of you are in positions where you could use your company, leverage your company in a way to serve the community, even if it's not optimal for your bottom line.

You're just like, you know what? I mean, this is, I got another bottom line. My other bottom line is the Great Commission and serving others. And so it's not just about profit. I'm not against profit.

Okay? I'm a free market capitalist through and through. So I'm not trying to slam on profit. I'm just trying to, because good profit is good for everybody. But I'm just telling you that when you become a follower of Jesus, you start to say it's not just giving in a way that receives.

It is also giving to people who can't pay me back. Some of you might be in a position to expand your company to places in the world with no gospel witness. Business can now get into places in the world that church planters only dream of getting into.

For example, where I served overseas. Where I served, the word for missionary and the word for terrorist were the same word. I just said, I'm a missionary or I am a terrorist.

You take your pick. Business gets into places that church planters can't get into. Let me tell you one of my convictions. It undergirds how we do missions here as a church. One of my convictions is that these 6,500 people groups, the gospel is going to go to them not on the wings of church planters.

It's going to go on the wings of business. You want to know how I know that? Because I've studied church history. And one of the things you'll find as you study church history is you'll find that everywhere the gospel has expanded radically.

It's not come from people like me. You've got a few exceptions, but it's come mainly through business people who carried the gospel with them. Great example, the early church. The early church was one to Christ on the backs of businessmen and soldiers.

Not soldiers like crusaders, but soldiers who were one to Christ and then as they were stationed in various places carried the gospel with them. One of my favorite stories from Acts actually isn't in Acts, but it happens around Acts. I'll tell you real quick.

I've told you this I think before. Paul. What was Paul's life ambition? To preach Christ where he'd never been named.

Right? I want to preach Christ where he's never been named. So he's going to Rome because Christ has never been named in Rome. Acts 28, Paul gets to Rome where Christ has never been named.

Guess who greets him at the door? A bunch of Christians who had come there as business people and other walks of life because God had used them to bring the gospel to Rome before Paul ever got there. So some of you are going to be in places where you can take business into unreached people groups, even if it's not necessarily the best for your bottom line. But it's you got a great commission for a bottom line. Number three, do you share your money that you make from your job? Those of you who are well off, which in the United States is pretty much everybody comparatively speaking. This parable teaches you that God did not give you your money to throw parties for yourself. He gave it to you for the purpose of the poor, the blind, and the lame.

To use it for others as he used this for you. That means that you don't make the money you make so that you can buy the nicest cars, live in the nicest houses, and have a life filled with the nicest amenities. He gave it to you so you could leverage it for the poor and for the needy.

Now, I know what you're saying. You're like, JD, are you trying to say that we should all be poor? That God likes us more when we're poor and this is the annual guilt sermon where I make everybody feel guilty for how much money they make.

No, not at all. Because one of the things I believe is that God loves to give us gifts. He loves to bless us.

This is like a daddy. He loves for us to enjoy the money that he's given us. 1 Timothy 6 says that God gave us these things to enjoy. Proverbs has multiple verses that talk about God using money in your life as a blessing to bring enjoyment to you. So I'm not against that. What I'm just saying, though, listen, is there's a big difference in enjoying things along the way as your life is being poured out for the Great Commission. There's a difference in that and living a life that is basically in the pursuit of enjoyment with occasional sacrifices thrown out for the Great Commission.

Do you understand the difference? I'll give you a metaphor real quick. I was on vacation recently and I was hiking up this mountain because we were in the mountains. That's why I was hiking up a mountain as opposed to being in the desert where there are no mountains. I was on a hike and as you were going up this mountain trail, every once in a while it would open up into an unbelievably scenic overlook. It was just breathtaking.

And then I'd run another mile and there'd be another breathtaking scene. And I remember thinking, I really want this to be kind of a metaphor, a picture of my life. My life is a difficult hike. It is a life that is being poured out, hopefully, for the Great Commission. Occasionally along the way, God will throw some blessing into my life that's just breathtaking. But it doesn't mean that my whole life, the metaphor is a vacation.

It means that the metaphor is a difficult hike in pursuit of the Great Commission with blessings mixed in along the way. For most of us, it's the opposite. We have a life spent seeking pleasure with a little ministry thrown in as opposed to a life that is leveraged for ministry with enjoyment mixed in. So I'm not telling you, okay? I'm not telling you you can't enjoy your money.

I'm not telling you you have to be poor. But what I am telling you is that you're going to give an account to God for what you did with what he gave you and who you threw the party of your life for. Let me be very, very clear on this. I am talking about a radical reorientation toward your possessions. Some of you feel like you've been fine because for the last several years you've given 10% to God.

Great. That doesn't count. It doesn't matter if the other 90% of your life is leveraged for yourself.

It doesn't. Jesus said that to follow him meant that you looked at your whole life as an investment given to you for the Great Commission. That's why Jesus in the middle of this parable or right after this story gives us verse 33 in chapter 14.

You see it? Verse 33. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. I know a lot of you have accepted Christ.

Have you done that? Because that's pretty clear. If you have not renounced all that you have, you cannot be his disciple. Do you see why the Bible says, why Jesus said that it was harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle?

C.S. Lewis said wealth has a way of knitting a man's heart to this world where you can't renounce it. That's why my role is your pastor. 1 Timothy 6. Paul says tell those who are rich to be primarily rich in good works.

Tell them that God gave them what he gave them to enjoy, but tell them to be rich in good works so that they take what I have given them, what God has given them, and know that they're going to answer to God for it and they're going to leverage it for the purpose of the Great Commission. That's the general question I want you to ask about your life. If your life were depicted as a party, who would it be being thrown for?

Who would the guest be at your party? I want you to think about that. I want you to lose some sleep over that this week, and I want you to have an answer for it. Now, because I promise you, you're going to be asked that question in eternity. You might as well go ahead and think about it now. Here's the second thing I told you I wanted to do. I'm going to do this kind of quick. As I told you, I want to give you a real obvious application to this that addresses something that I consider to be almost completely overlooked in the Christian life.

Here it is, number two. Do you practice biblical hospitality? Do you practice biblical hospitality? The actual practice that Jesus is talking about here of inviting outsiders, of inviting the poor, the lame, and the blind into our homes is called in the Bible hospitality. Sometimes when it comes to this issue of hospitality, people completely misunderstand it. People think hospitality is hanging out with Christians or having the preacher over for dinner or having a perfect southern living home.

You ought to hang out with other Christians. In the Bible, that is called fellowship, however. When you hang out with other Christians, that's called fellowship, not hospitality. When you have a perfect southern living home, that is called annoying because it makes my wife feel bad. You're like, oh, it's all perfect.

That's annoying. Hospitality in the Bible literally means to welcome the stranger. Hospitality is when, in addition to your Christian friends, you invite strangers to hang out with your friends so that they too start to become friends. Jesus lived this way. Jesus hung out with prostitutes and sinners with Zacchaeus. And the point was not that, contrary to what a lot of uber cool Christians with goatees and ripped jeans like to say, Jesus did not hang out with sinners and prostitutes because he had more in common with them.

I've heard that foolishness for 20 years. He hung out with sinners and prostitutes precisely because he didn't have anything in common with them. And he wanted to have something in common with them. So he invited them into his presence so he could spend his time with them and make them who were his enemies, make them his friends. Hospitality is commanded of pastors in places like 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

It's something that's required of all Christians in Romans 16 and in passages here like Luke 14. You want to get people's attention in our culture, practice hospitality. In our day, in our day, any kind of community now hanging out is kind of countercultural, isn't it? There's a book, Bowling Alone, by a Harvard sociologist in which what he did is he tracked what's been going on at Bowling College for the last 30 years and tried to show that 30 years ago everybody bowled in leagues and now nobody bowls in a league anymore.

Everybody bowls alone. And he used that to try to show how American society has fundamentally changed and he reveals all these unbelievable statistics. I'll give you a few of my favorite ones. The number of people playing cards together, down 25%. The number of bars, nightclubs, and taverns where people used to congregate, down 40%. Number of movie theaters, almost double. Why? Because everybody likes to go sit in the dark by themselves.

You don't have to talk to the person next to you. Full service restaurants where people walk in, sit down, and have a meal are down 25%. Fast food restaurants doubled in the last 30 years.

Why? So you can sit in your car and eat by yourself. Having a social evening with a neighbor, down 33%.

Having friends over to your home, down 45%. So just inviting guests into your life today is countercultural. When you mix into that that the guests you bring into your life are outsiders who can't pay you back, that's revolutionary. Some of you guys feel like being countercultural is putting fish in your car wearing Jesus bracelets and not drinking beer. That's not countercultural. Countercultural is opening up your home and your life and your table and your refrigerator to serve, throwing parties that you bring people who would be considered outsiders into.

That would get the world's attention. Your community can be transformed by your hospitality. The gospel most often moves through our intentional relationships. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. Our mission here at Summit Life is simple, to dive deeper into the gospel and to help others do the same. And J.D., throughout your ministry, you've spent a significant amount of time talking about missions and unreached people, just like in today's message. So why have you put so much of your time and energy specifically there?

Well, I mean, there's a couple of reasons. One is because Jesus' last marching orders to the church, Matthew 28, were to take the gospel and make it known among all nations. And all nations don't know. I mean, listen, I'm a pastor in America and there are lots of lost people in America. Most of the people I pray for every day to come to Jesus live in America. But I mean, right now, there are 2.2 billion people that don't even have access to hear the gospel. And when you think about that, that they're passing into eternity without even the first chance to hear the gospel and believe that.

I feel like you only have one possible response to that. And that is what Isaiah said in Isaiah 6, Lord, hear my sin me. I know God hasn't called everybody to go, but God's called everybody to leverage their life for the Great Commission. Yeah, I wrote a book called What Are You Gonna Do With Your Life?

because I wanted to help people answer that question at whatever stage of life they're in. How can you leverage your life for the Great Commission so that you don't waste it? I know he hasn't called everybody to pastor and lead movements or even move overseas, but he's called all of us to say, God, how can my life be used? Whether it's in resourcing and sending and short term or whether it's actually going myself long term, how can I be used to help make the gospel known? Simply go to JDGrier.com or give us a call at 866-335-5220 to get your copy of Pastor JD's new book and the Summit Life exclusive companion workbook as our way of saying thanks when you donate to support this ministry.

That number again is 866-335-5220. And remember to ask for Pastor JD's new book titled What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? Don't forget to follow Pastor JD on Facebook and Instagram for daily encouragement and ministry updates. I'm Molly Vitovich inviting you to join us again tomorrow when Pastor JD discusses the eminence of the Kingdom of God. That's Wednesday on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.