The Weightiness of the Kingdom, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Those who try to establish their worthiness before God will be rejected but those who admit their unworthiness before God will be accepted.

Those closest to the nexus of societal and religious power have almost always rejected the Gospel. Welcome to Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

I'm Molly Vidovitch. Today we're continuing our study in the Gospel of Luke where Pastor J.D. teaches us a lesson in how so many of us approach God with wrong motives or wrong goals. As he unpacks the meaning of two seemingly different parables, he'll show us how they tie together and how our posture toward God is of utmost importance. He loves us in our series titled Kingdom Come. Here's Pastor J.D. with today's message.

Now, at first, this just seems like really good practical social advice, doesn't it? Is that Jesus' point? No, there is actually a profoundly important point in this that explains what he's about to say in the next story.

So let's go ahead and get to that one and then I'll show you how the two tie together, right? Verse 15, when one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. So verse 16, but Jesus said to him, well Mance once gave a banquet and invited many. Real quick, I love the fact that Jesus so often and so consistently compares the coming of his kingdom to a party. My kingdom is a banquet. It's a party. It's a party of all parties. He's saying everything your heart has yearned for will come true.

It is everything that you've been looking for. It is a banquet. And so he consistently compares it to a party.

Keep going. Verse 17, and at the time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, come for everything is now ready. They all alike, however, begin to make excuses. And the first one said to him, I bought a field and I got to go out and see it.

Please have me excused. That's a pretty lame excuse. Verse 19, another one said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I need to go examine them. Well, that didn't make a whole lot of sense either. Verse 20, and another one said, I married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. All right, right.

See, these are pretty lame excuses. Verse 21, so the servant came and reported these things to the master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, go out quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame. What?

What rich person does that? Verse 23, the master said to the servant, go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in so that my house may be filled. Now we really go a step farther because now he's telling him to go out to the highways and hedges. In Jewish parlance what that meant was, I want you to go outside of the city to where the outsiders live, people who live in the hedges, people with rough past centers.

And I want you to bring them in. Verse 24, for I tell you, notice by the way, that at this point he switches into the first person. I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet. Verse 25, it says right after this, he turns to this big group of people that are following him and he makes this statement. He says, if any of you comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he can't be my disciple. And so what Jesus has done in these two parables is he has taught us the two reasons that most people miss the kingdom of God. The two reasons that most people miss the kingdom of God.

I would encourage you to write these down because most of the people that are going to miss the kingdom of God are going to fall into one of these two categories right here. Number one, some fail to recognize the importance of the invitation. The excuses that are given in this story are not outright evil. They're just lame compared to the weightiness of the invitation they're receiving. All excuses are lame is his point. So the question being asked here is, how important is an invitation from God?

That's the question. If there were an invitation from God, wouldn't it trump everything else on earth? Any excuse we give, ever give, pales in importance to the invitation we've received. Listen, what if what the Bible says about heaven and hell, what if it's true? What if it's true that heaven is an eternal banquet in which every one of our hearts desires what we have yearned for and longed for is fulfilled and it comes true?

What if it's true that the opposite of that is a place called hell where people go, which is a place of anguish and torment. I get notes here from people who visit our church, they're like, oh, I love your church, love the music, but you know, I felt like you were a little too passionate. I felt like you yelled too much. There's a reason that I talk like this. And the reason, listen, the reason is because I believe what Jesus says about these things are true and I believe because of that they have the weightiest importance. There are three things you can do, see, when you understand this. One is you can deny part of it. You're like, well, that's just not really true.

A lot of people do that and they write books and they sell really well. This isn't true. I can't do that. You know why? Because the Bible's not a cafeteria line where you take what you want and leave what you don't. Either Jesus knew what he was talking about or he didn't, right?

You don't get to pick what parts of him you like and what parts you don't, like it's, you know, a salad bar, right? The second thing you can do is you can ignore it. We can go on and play in church like, hi, this is cool, we got a little club, you should join our club. That's, to me, just nonsensical. The third thing you do is you embrace it. You yield your life to it and that's why we give our money. That's why we live the way we live because we believe the things written here are true and they are the weightiest importance. Jesus gives you a second reason why people miss it.

The first one is that some people just never understand the weightiness and the importance of it. The second reason people miss it is some don't understand how willingly Jesus receives the unworthy. They don't realize how willingly Jesus receives the unworthy. Did you notice in this story who it was that received the invitation and who went to Jesus' party? Remember it was the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame?

That probably sounded absurd to the audience. Go get some street people, some poor, some homeless, some people who can't get jobs, who can't walk and bring them to your birthday party. What rich person would do that? Here's a question, who do you invite to your party? Well if you're a rich person you invite other rich people.

Why? Because you want them to invite you to their parties. So you invite people to have some kind of worthiness and that's why they come. See but God only invites, listen, the lame and the poor and the crippled because that's what we all are before Him. And a lot of people miss the invitation because there is something instinctive in us that feels like we have to that feels like we have to earn our way there.

That's just instinctive. I mean you ever go to one of those potluck dinners where everybody's supposed to bring their you know food and then you all eat and you share it together and you realize that you forgot the food that you were supposed to bring? What do you do at that point?

Now when I was a college student I had no problem. I just went right into the feast. I was like yeah you know what I'm just gonna embrace grace and receive it and I just go in and enjoy it.

When I got married my wife totally put the kibosh on that. She's like no we didn't bring any food we're not going in to eat because we need to be able to offer something here. What Jesus has taught throughout the Gospel of Luke is that there is nothing we can bring. There's no worthiness. We are all poor, blind, crippled, and lame before God. We have sinned against God and we deserve God's condemnation. You see in those days the poor, the lame, the blind, the crippled, those are people who couldn't get jobs. These are people who could never be able to earn money.

They could never pay anything back. Anything that we think gives us worth and makes us worthy to be there does it. We were in a condition that we could never fix ourselves. God's invitation to his feast was grace because it had nothing to offer. Christ gave our acceptance to us as a gift that he earned for us.

You see the Gospel is that Jesus lived the life that we were supposed to have lived. He's the one who deserved to be at the feast. He was the one who should have been invited but he died the death that we should have died.

He was rejected in our place so that we could receive his invitation. He offered us his place at the feast as a gift and a lot of people miss that invitation because it's too insulting to their pride because we spend our whole lives trying to establish why we're worthy. We spend our whole lives whether you're religious or not trying to show why you are worthy, more worthy than others, why you should be distinguished above others because you make more money because you're a better person, whatever.

Here's a truth that has been born out for 2,000 years. Listen, those closest to the nexus of societal and religious power have almost always rejected the Gospel. Those closest to the nexus of societal and religious power have almost always rejected the Gospel because they just find it unpalatable and insulting when they really understand it. The idea that we are hopeless sinners, poor, lame, blind, and crippled who needed a Savior and Jesus had to die a bloody gruesome death to save us, that's not what we want. That's not what I want to hear, right? The idea that we need to be born again, that sounds redneck and backward and uneducated.

It just doesn't sound like. I'd rather have a religion that just teaches me to live a good life, teaches me to care about the poor, to be a social activist, to be generous, to be a better you, to live strong. So as Christianity has gone mainstream, people have corrupted Christianity to say just those things, but that's not the Gospel. The Gospel is that we have no worthiness. We were the poor, the blind, and the diseased. And Christ died a bloody gruesome death in our place to save us because we were otherwise hopeless. We needed to be saved, rescued, born again.

That might sound redneck to you, but it is the Gospel, it's the plan of salvation. And the powerful almost always reject that because they're proud and they want to feel better than, distinguished from others, from the common people, but the marginal people get it. That's why throughout Jesus' life what do you see? You see the marginal people flocking to him while the religious and the power leaders are over in the corner plotting his death.

Jesus' crucifixion was a joint project between religious power, the Jewish leaders, and political power, the Romans and the Greeks. Here's the point, listen, if you see yourself as poor, blind, and lame, you'll receive this invitation. If you don't, you won't. If you receive yourself as the poor, the blind, and the lame, you'll receive it.

If you don't, you won't. And now, see, now you can understand that first parable about the humbling. If you take the lower place, admitting, in other words, that you are the poor, the lame, the blind, and the crippled, he'll call you up to the high place at his party. But if you think you deserve the high place, you'll be humiliated and sent back to the low place. You see, the Gospel is that Jesus is the one who deserved the high place, but he gave it up and took the low place for us, so that he would offer his high place, he would offer his position at the table to us as a gift, he traded places with us. The Gospel, in order to be understood, has to be received as pure grace, God giving us something that we did not deserve. And so when we admit that we deserve the low place, that we are the poor, the lame, and the blind, who didn't even deserve to be at the party, then he calls us up to his high place.

This is what we call the Gospel irony. Those who try to establish their worthiness before God will be rejected, but those who admit their unworthiness before God will be accepted. Those who take the high place with God will be sent to the low one, those who take the low place before God will be sent to the high one, which is why 1 Peter says, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God and he will lift you up. This parable is not just good social advice. This parable is the only plan of salvation. The way up with God is the way down in humility, admitting that you have no worthiness to be there and that he gives it to you as a gift. You see now let's return to those last verses, verses 25 and 26. When Jesus says that this is so important that to come after me you got to hate your father and mother, you got to hate your home life. The weightiness of this issue is so important that there's nothing that trumps it. There's nothing that is more important. Nothing.

Nothing. Jesus knew how to kill a movement, didn't he? All these people following him, can't you see this scene?

Everybody's excited. The disciples are like, hey man, this is working. Jesus is popular. They're making bracelets, you know, WWJD and they're like, we just ordered 10,000 of those little fish bumper sticker cars put on everybody's chariot. You know, we got a Jesus is my homeboy t-shirts. I mean, we are taking this thing mainstream. Can't you hear him when Jesus turned around and starts giving this bit about hating your mom and dad and your kids and your life and picking up your cross and they're like, what are you doing?

We were just getting some momentum. Now you're talking about hating your parents. Let me make this very clear. When you become a follower of Jesus, there's no conditions, no barriers. He trumps everything, even your most important and most tender relationships.

He trumps all of it. I need you to understand very clearly that there's a huge difference in a fan of Jesus and a follower of Jesus. Hey, Jesus is interesting. Jesus is my homeboy.

I go to Jesus when I'm in a jam. They call on him when they're in need. He gives them good advice.

He influences them a little bit. I need to make this very clear. The following of Jesus is someone who has surrendered his or her life to Jesus totally with no conditions, no barriers. There's something we say when we baptize people here.

It's a little line. It's a question we ask him. Will you follow Jesus wherever he leads you to go and do whatever he tells you to do? That's not something for seminary students. That's something for every single follower of Jesus Christ. Surrender is only surrender if it's total.

That is very steep. I understand that. But Jesus's point is God is worth that. God is worth that. Because if you die without God, if you live without God, does it really matter what else you obtain in life? Let's say that you get everything in life that you've always wanted, but then you die and go into eternity apart from God. Haven't you lost everything in your life compared to eternity just like a wisp of smoke that appears for a minute and then vanishes? On the flip side, if you live a life of pain, if you live a life of deprivation, but then you die and you go eternally to be in the greatest party banquet feast that has ever been thrown, don't you really have everything? No, we're talking about God. This invitation comes from God. It trumps everything. And when you understand the weightiness of God, you say, I'll turn my back on everything if I need to because possessing God is that important.

He's something worth leaving everything for. Whenever I talk like this, there's always a story that pops in my mind. I've told it to people in our church before. They've heard that.

Let me say it for the rest of you. Years ago, I had the situation where I got a call from a guy who said, he said, hey, we never met. I'd like to talk to you.

I can't really tell you what it's about until we get together. He was a Muslim and he said, I just need you to help me. So I agreed to meet him somewhere. He didn't speak the same language I spoke. Neither of us spoke the other language fluently. So we had a third person who was an interpreter.

So it was just the three of us. And he said, okay, a month ago, he said, I had this strange dream I want to tell you about. He says, in my dream, he said, I was walking through this field. He said, as far as I could see in front of me, behind me, to the right and to the left, he said, was nothing. I walked for what felt like days. Then he stopped and he said, you know, he said, it's kind of weird because I felt like that was somehow a picture of my life because that's how I feel. I feel like I'm wandering aimlessly. He said, I'm a Muslim. I've been a Muslim all my life.

I'm 32 years old. He said, but I feel like I just have no real direction. He said, so after walking for what felt like days, he said, suddenly from behind me, somebody called my name. He said, no, there was nobody there before, but when I turned around, he said, there was this being. He said, I don't know if I'd call him a person, but his robe was bright.

His face was shining like the sun. He said, and I looked at this guy and he called my name and he reached inside of his robe and pulled out a copy of the gospel and he handed it out to me. And he called my name and said, this is the only thing that will get you out of the field. He said, I recoiled. He said, because that's Christian literature and I was a Muslim.

I couldn't touch it. He said, then I woke up. He says, then I knew that I'd made a terrible mistake. He said, next night I went to sleep. He said, same dream.

Again, I walked for what seemed like hours, days. And then he called my name again and I turned and there he was again. And he reached out the gospel to me and he said, again, this is the only thing that will get you out of the field. He said, this time I wanted to take it.

He said, but I was just so afraid. He said, third night I went to sleep. He said, this time he was waiting on me. He said, I woke in this field and there he stood. He looked at me and he said, this is the last time that I will tell you. He held out to me the gospel.

He said, this is the only thing that will get you out of this field. He said, I watched. He said, I could see my hand. It was like it was shaking in my dream. He said, I reached up and I took that gospel and I grabbed it. I held it into my chest. He said, then I woke up. He looked at me and he said, my friend tells me that you are expert at the gospel. Can you tell me what my dream means? I was like, man, I was raised a really conservative Southern Baptist.

We didn't believe in dreams and visions. No, no, I didn't say that. I said, I said, bro, you are so in luck. Dream interpretation is my spiritual gift.

So let me talk. And so for the next, next hour, I walked him through what the gospel meant. I got to the part about Jesus being crucified.

And I never forget, just wept, just tears rolled down his face. And he said, you mean the creator God, Allah died for my sin. That's what you're saying the Bible said.

I said, yeah, that's the core of the message. Then he started to say, God is the greatest. God is the most merciful.

God is the most high. He said, these are phrases I've learned in Islam, but never known what they meant. We talked for another 15, 20 minutes. And I said, do you want to trust Jesus as your savior? And he said, yes, I do. I said, well, every head bowed, every eye closed.

How do we do this? So bow your head. And he bowed his head and I said, all right, well, here's what a prayer of repentance would sound like. Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that I need you.

And he said it back in his own language. And I was like, hold on a minute. Stop, stop. He's like, but we're praying. I'm like, I know, but Jesus will wait.

I need to, I need to ask you something. I said, you understand what this means. You understand that when you do this, Jesus commands you to be baptized. And you know that when you are baptized in your society, you might lose your job. You might get kicked out of your family.

You know people that have been killed for this decision. I just need you to make sure that you understand what you're doing before you do this. He looks back at me and he got a big smile on his face. He said, of course I know that.

So why do you think it took me a month to work up the courage to come and talk to you? He said, but in that month I decided that if it was God speaking to me and if Jesus was God and Jesus had died for my sin, then I would go anywhere with him regardless of what it cost me in terms of friends, family, anything, because I'd really rather be anywhere with him than I would be anywhere without him. When he said that I felt like I needed to pray to receive Christ at that morning. You understand that there is a God who extends an invitation to you who suffered the full wrath, the full penalty for your sin, and he does not look on it lightly if you spurn or deprioritize that invitation. When we truly understand the significance of the gospel and understand that weight and its implications, we'll accept that invitation and we'll be changed. That is such good news. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. If you'd like to catch up on previously aired messages in this series, listen free of charge at jdgreer.com. J.D., your new book is about the Great Commission, and I understand that the Great Commission's call is to go and make disciples, and that applies to all of us, but what do I do with that now? How do I make that true in my life? Well, what it means is that you ask yourself, where does God have me? What has he given me, and how does he want me to use that to help people understand Jesus more? You know, in the book I talk about even how in a moment of pain God intends that pain for you to use that to direct people to Jesus. If you are a college student or a young professional, it means you ask the question, what talents do I have and how are they supposed to be used as part of the mission of God? I realize not everybody's called to do what I do and not everybody's called to be, you know, professional, full-time Christian minister, missionary, or pastor, but all of us are called to be a part of the Great Commission. Jesus said, follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.

This book, whatever stage you are in your career, whether you're starting it, whether you're at the halfway point, whether you feel like you're at the tail end of it and thinking about retirement in that chapter, it'll help you ask the questions of, am I wasting my life and am I investing my life in eternal things in ways that I will be grateful for, for eternity? We would love to get you a copy of this book. You'll become a gospel partner with us, which enables us to get this program into places where the gospel is not as well known. We'd love to get you a copy of this book.

It comes from devotionals that we wrote to go along with it that will take you deeper into some of the Bible passages. You can go to jdgreer.com and reserve your copy today and start that process, but we'd be grateful. And I'm looking forward to you reading it and even hearing what you think about it.

That title again is What are you going to do with your life? And it's Pastor JD's newest book. We'll send you a copy along with its companion workbook exclusively created for Summit Life as our way of saying thanks when you donate $25 or more to support this ministry today. It's easy to donate when you give us a call at 866-335-5220. That number again is 866-335-5220. Or you can give online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to tune in next week to learn more about the wedding feast and your invitation to the party. Have a great weekend and join us right back here on Monday for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.