October 26, 2020 9:00 am
If you were going to throw the party of a lifetime, who would be on your VIP guest list? Pastor J.D. explains that God’s idea of a A-list is probably different than our own.
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Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Jesus left everything to come to earth to rescue 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. Welcome to a new week of Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of Pastor J.D. Greer and I'm your host Molly Vitovich.
It might seem far-fetched to some of us but have you ever been outside a VIP event like an award show or a political event and wondered how those people get an invitation? Well today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. dives into the Gospel of Luke to share with us God's idea of an A-list event as he teaches from a message he's titled, Who's at Your Party?
J.D. reveals more about God's kingdom perspective and what the invitation list actually looks like. Here's Pastor J.D.
as he continues our series titled, Kingdom Come. You got your Bible? You got your Bible I want you to open it to Luke chapter 14.
Let me just remind you the context in case you weren't here or just to bring everybody up to speed. Jesus is at a party and while he's at this party he uses that opportunity to teach everybody that is present at the party that the kingdom of God is like a party. Well while Jesus is at this party he looks around at the party and he notices a couple of things.
The first thing that he notices is how everybody is angling to choose the best places to sit at the party. The seats of honor, the places that are closest to the important people or the one that's closest to the host and Jesus said, you know when you guys come to a party don't take the high place because then if the host sees you in the high place and doesn't think you belong there and sends you back to the low place well that's going to be pretty embarrassing. Well on the other hand Jesus said if you choose the low place to sit in a place that's not a place of honor and then he calls you up to the place of honor he said that's honoring and he said that's how you ought to live. Now I told you at first that just sounds like good social advice and I don't want to ignore that because for many of you that is social advice that you need to hear right so that you don't embarrass yourself but it's not just good social advice it's also the path of salvation because the truth is that none of us deserve the high place at God's table. We don't even deserve to be at the table but the gospel is that Jesus who did deserve the high place took the low place for us. He took our place on the cross suffering the penalty for our sin. He took the low place taking the role of the outcast and because he did that he offers us his place at God's table in exchange. But you see in order to get that you have to acknowledge that you deserve the low place you have to go to the low place and say this is where I deserve to be and you have to receive God's offer as a gift as a gift say the word gift gift say it again like you like like you heard what I said say gift gift gift is something that most people don't get about Christianity because there is something instinctive in us that feels like that we have to earn our acceptance it's like the way of life we are constantly trying to demonstrate to ourselves and to others that we're worthy of acceptance we're always trying to show them that there's something about us that makes us distinctive something that sets us above others something that makes us worthy we're successful we're talented we're good parents we're good people if you're rich you feel like the fact that you've made a lot of money shows that you are a worthy person and worthy to be accepted if you're not rich you look down on rich people you're like well they're a bunch of snobs they're stingy I may not be rich but I'm a good person I'm a good mom or dad I've explained before that it's it's like life for us is one big survivor episode where we're always trying to convince everybody else that we're not the ones that ought to be thrown off the island and then we end up approaching a God that way God that way too like God is going to accept us at his table based on our worthiness to be there but God's acceptance is only given as a gift and it has to be received that way by grace the truth is that all of us are so guilty in our sin we are the lame the blind the poor and the crippled before God that none of us could ever earn a place before God so God has to give it to us as grace Jesus says that if you choose the posture of trying to earn your place before God you'll be rejected but if you acknowledge that you deserve to be rejected but that Jesus was rejected for you then you will be received up into the high place you see in Christianity and this is the part everybody stumbles over in Christianity the way up is the way down it doesn't work that way anywhere else in our world but with God the way up is the way down if you exalt yourself before God you will be rejected but if you like first Peter says humble yourself under the mighty hand of God he will exalt you second thing that Jesus noticed at the party was he noticed at the party that the Pharisee throwing this party had invited all of his rich friends to be at the party now Jesus was not himself rich but he was pretty well known he did some really cool party tricks which made him a popular guy to have there he had a lot of twitter followers he was pretty you know popular with the common folk and so he had a reason to be there as well so this rich guy had invited all his rich friends in Jesus and that's where you begin in chapter 14 verse 12 when Jesus saw that he said to the one who invited him when you give a dinner or a banquet 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 by the way Jesus showed absolutely no evidence of caring whether he ever was invited back to a party at somebody's house twice in fact there's no evidence in the bible he ever did get invited to a party twice because the man was not afraid to speak his mind okay uh he just called it like he saw it when you have a party don't invite people who can pay you back invite people who can't pay you back then you'll be blessed and you'll have reward in heaven now a few observations first of all what Jesus was instructing here was economic suicide because in those days a party was your primary business forum that is where rich people got to know each other and what would happen is when you invited your rich friends to your party they would in turn invite you to their party so when you invited them to your party you had a self-interest because you knew they would turn around and invite you back to invite the poor the crippled the lame and the blind meant that you were inviting people who could never pay you back people who could not reciprocate that has a lot of r's in it reciprocate is that right people who could not reciprocate this is how we live still is it not i mean i know we're removed from this context but isn't this still the way of life most of us generally speaking invest in people who can benefit us it's not like we're trying to take from others or to steal from them but generally speaking we make decisions we form relationships we pursue life in a way that benefits us in return 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 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 what jesus is doing in this parable is attacking the entire idea of reciprocity which so undergirds how we think and how we operate again this is how most of us live most of us feel like we get what we deserve and we give others what they deserve i mean veronica and i live that way my wife and i when somebody invites us out for dinner what is the first thing that you think after they've invited you out for dinner and paid for you you're like well we gotta invite them out for dinner now and pay for them when somebody invites you or somebody gives you a gift the first thing you think is well i gotta get them a gift because i've got to pay them back but you can't do that with god the most fundamental tenet of the gospel is that you and i owed a debt we could never pay so god had to give us a his grace entirely as a gift a gift that cost him everything but one that we just received freely and he did that for us gladly and see if you understand that if you understand that that should shatter the whole idea that we would invest our lives primarily in those who could pay us back god poured himself out for us when there was nothing we could do in return how would it be possible that you and i would actually understand that and still continue to live our lives and leverage our talents and spend our money and use our stuff and throw parties in a way that primarily just benefit ourselves 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 jesus told one parable that i think kind of encapsulates that it really is one of my favorite all-time parables i know i reference it a lot but it's not like i'm telling the same story twice this is jesus's story right and so you need to hear it more than once um this is my my the parable that for me demonstrates gospel response more than anything else that i know it's the story of the man that was forgiven of 10,000 talents now nobody knows exactly how much a talent is but we think it's about 75 dollars all right so you take 10,000 talents you're looking at you know almost just a little bit less than a million dollars that's how much this one guy owes another some of you guys got credit card debt and you got a credit card debt of a million dollars then i want to know what credit card company gave you um that kind of limit um all right so you you get this massive credit card debt this guy in those days you know you couldn't declare bankruptcy they hadn't invented that yet if you owed somebody else money and you couldn't pay back you went to something they call debtors prison which was basically enslaved labor that you did for somebody until you paid off your debt and when you died if you hadn't paid off your debt then your kids would become their slaves and then if they hadn't paid it off by the time they died then their kids this is how whole generations of families got enslaved to another another family that's it's indentured servanthood um well this guy who owes this other guy money the day comes for it to um to be paid and he doesn't have it he goes in front of this guy and he he says he says sir i don't have your money and this guy you know says well what do you mean you don't have my money this is the day that it's due the guy says please sir one more month one more month give me one more month and i promise you i will get you every single penny that i owe you now you know this guy's looking at him saying no you know that's not how the money system works you can't pay me you're going to jail right and you're going to become my slave all of a sudden this guy drops to his knees and he begins to plead and can say no sir please don't don't make me a slave don't make my children slaves my family don't i don't want to see my kids grow up as slaves and he begins to pour his his heart out all of a sudden this man looking at this other man he feels something in his gut that jesus called splogma splogma we translate it as compassion but i think splogma is a much better word because it means coming from the gut can you can you feel it when you say it splogma right splot he felt splogma which meant from his gut this feeling came up of tenderness and compassion maybe he thought about his kids who knows but his lip begins to quiver and he gets a tear in his eye and he looks at this man and says the absolutely unexpected he says he says i'll tell you what you owe me a dime every single penny you owe me gone i've paid it back i have cleansed your debt entirely now nobody can believe this right i mean everybody in the courtroom is watching this no i mean because you don't become a money lender by being a softy right that's why they don't call them you know lone puppies or lone bunnies what do you call them loan sharks that's right and if you don't pay then they send some guy named bruno with a stick to break your kneecaps um that's how you become a loan shark uh so everybody's like what is going on and and this guy's forgiven and he stands up and for the first time in his life he feels as light as air i mean his first time in his life he doesn't know any money and he feels like he could fly and so he walks outside and he's just as light as air and he's walking across the street thinking about this money that he's been forgiven of and across the street comes a buddy of his who owes him three dollars that he borrowed from him the week before for dinner he says give me my three dollars god says man i don't have your three dollars it's been a really rough week next week i'll get it to you no you give me my three dollars now god says well i don't have it he says well then you're going to prison and he goes over and he grabs his neck and drags him and throws him into prison for three dollars as jesus is telling this story you can hear the whole audience going are you kidding me nobody who had ever been forgiven of 750 000 would throw somebody else in prison for three dollars and jesus's point was exactly so if you don't live a life of generosity if you don't live a life that is spent pouring itself out for others if you don't have a life that is characterized by forgiveness and one that is characterized by grace and one that's characterized by leveraging your life for the poor the lame and the blind it must be because you have no concept of what the gospel actually is and what jesus did for you the first reason jesus said it you don't want to do this is you don't want to live by the law of reciprocity 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 jesus life on earth was not one of luxury he never owned a house he certainly never owned a second one he lived poor as a servant and he poured his life out for us to the point of giving away his very lifeblood so that we could be saved he did that not because he enjoyed poverty not because he enjoyed pain not because he even enjoyed living simply he did that because listen he set his focus on eternity he was willing to be impoverished here so he could be enriched there and part of his riches there would be the fact that we would be able to enjoy those riches with him so he expanded the circle of his joy key phrase he expanded the circle of his joy beyond himself so that it now included us and he was willing to be impoverished here so that he could have riches in heaven with us and then he tells us to live that way what we sacrifice down here will be abundantly 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 i mean first of all most of us have the image of heaven as you know sitting on a white cloud in a robe sipping a tasteless margarita without alcohol and strumming a harp that's the image that we have of heaven but heaven is always described in terms get this of the resurrection when jesus was resurrected he was kind of our picture of what the resurrection would be like it was the same body they recognized him but it was perfected right a couple things that we see from his resurrected body first of all he ate fish you know the reason that he did that he was trying to show us that in the resurrection the same things we've learned to enjoy here are the things we will enjoy there and i don't sit a cloud on a cloud right now and strum a harp that means i'm probably not going to be doing that up there either right the same things that he and we enjoyed here we enjoy to a much greater degree there he was listen more alive not less alive in the resurrection the other thing that we know is that he walked through walls which means that not only did he have the same body that he had it was supercharged well when this world is resurrected it's going to be like that the new creation has similarities to the old creation it's just so much more right so it's the resurrection second we know we'll be repaid so what we do here lays up treasures for us up there when we're more alive get this most of us save for retirement right if you don't save for retirement yet and you have a job then you need to immediately after this service come to our financial peace university class and we will teach you why and how you have to save for retirement the idea of retirement is that you sacrifice a little now to prepare then but here's the dilemma with retirement okay i'm gonna try to say this sensitively but clearly right and that is you save and you save and you save but by the time you finally get to retirement you're not really able to enjoy it as much as you could have when you were saving for it i mean when i think about owning a beach home and not having to go to work i don't picture myself hobbling down the sand with a walker you know getting sand all up in my depends that's not how i see a vacation at the beach and so the dilemma of retirement is we save for retirement when we're less able to enjoy it because in retirement please hear me sensitively and retirement in some ways we're less alive not more alive now listen you guys that are retired do not send me a note saying i love my retirement playing golf all the time and and you know gum and applesauce i just i love that you know don't i don't i understand okay the point is you spend your life investing for luxury during a time that only lasts for a few years which in many ways are not even your best years and that's fine listen you ought to plan for retirement but what i really want to invest in see is my eternal retirement because then i'm gonna have a supercharged superhero body that can walk through walls through walls and then i'm really going to be able to enjoy it in that retirement i'm not using a walker with a pint of fluid in my back completely unable to remember where i left the keys that's not what what what i'm going to be in eternity i'll be like jesus that's what i want my beach house you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just do you actually believe that do you actually believe that because if you did your money would follow 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 and 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 you understand what i'm doing we pick a metaphor for your life it's going to be a party if we chose that metaphor in that metaphor who would the invited guest be who would your the party of your life who would it be thrown for 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 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 it's time to stop wasting your life god has a plan to make your life count for eternity it's time to put your yes on the table and let god put it on the map you're listening to summit life the bible teaching ministry of pastor jd greer we are here daily on your local radio station and online 24 7 at jdgrier.com we make these daily bible teaching messages available because we're committed to making an impact for god's kingdom on the world around us and one of the ways that we do that is by providing these messages and resources to take you deeper into the gospel just like jd asked today how are you thinking about your life he asks this question and considers jesus's radical call to give your life away to the greatest cause of all to view your life from a perspective of eternity in his new book it's called what are you going to do with your life the beginning of the rest of your life can start anytime this isn't a message for just young people trying to figure out their path this is for all of us it's even an excellent resource for people nearing retirement age and we'd love to get you a copy of this brand new book along with a special edition devotional and study guide to go along with it you'll get both resources when you give to summit life today ask for what are you going to do with your life by jd greer when you give a donation today of 25 or more just call 866-335-5220 or you can give and request the book online at jdgrier.com i'm molly vidovich be sure to listen again tomorrow to learn more about god's coming kingdom that's tuesday on summit life with jd greer so today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-08-15 09:50:12 / 2023-08-15 10:00:09 / 10