Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Jesus died for the church. We should be deeply committed to it and very connected into it, not just a casual attender on the weekend, but involved and invested. God has a body.
God has a body and that is the locus, the central point of what he does on earth. And if you and I understand that, like Paul, we'll figure out our role in it and we'll be deeply committed to it. Welcome to another week of trusted biblical teaching here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.
As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, I think everyone wants to feel like they've succeeded in life. But what does success even mean? Our world tends to point to fame, wealth or accolades from peers.
But as believers, shouldn't we have a different metric? Today, Pastor J.D. describes the biblical standard for a successful life and how we can truly make our days count. It's a challenging message from our teaching series called The Whole Story. And if you've missed any part of the study, remember, you can always catch up at jdgreer.com.
Right now, let's dive on in. Here's Pastor J.D. One day can make your life. One day can ruin your life.
When you look back over your life, you're probably going to realize that it was four or five days on which you made major decisions and set major trajectories that ultimately shaped your entire life. Well, see, in Acts chapter 20, Paul is giving us a farewell speech in which he summarizes what I think are the six values that Paul has built his life around. He is saying goodbye to the church leaders in Ephesus, where he spent the last three years. As far as he knows, he's never going to see any of these guys again. He is headed from here to Jerusalem and then from Jerusalem on to Rome, where Paul assumes he's going to be martyred. This is his farewell speech to them. Here's the question. If you were making a farewell speech, if you were addressing the people that you had known and loved for most of your life and you had one chance to make a speech to them, what values would you include in it?
What would be in that? I used to lead a Bible study here called Men's Fraternity. One of the things that we would do at some point in the Bible study is that people would draw out a tombstone and they would write the five or six different things they would want written on their tombstone, what they wanted to be remembered by. I give these guys examples of famous last words of people. You've got Nathan Hale, the great American patriot who was like, I regret that I have but one life to give for my country or a lot of country boys from Person County. Y'all watch this.
I'm like, what is it that wants to shape? How do you want to define your life? Well, these are the six things that Paul would want written on his tombstone. These are the six things Paul wants them to remember. By the way, a little Bible trivia for you. This is the only extended speech in the book of Acts that's actually made to other Christians. Every other sermon, every other speech in Acts is always made to unbelievers. And so there's a reason this one's included and I think it's because this gives you kind of the crucial components that the Holy Spirit wants every believer to live their life around. These are the six values I think you should live your life according to and if you're going to write your funeral speech, this is how essentially I think that you should write it.
Okay. Acts chapter 20. Let's begin in verse 20 here and I'll give you the first of these six statements. I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.
Here is number one value for Paul. I made sure that my generation, I made sure that my community knew the truth. Twice in this speech, Paul says to them, I did my duty. I delivered the message that God gave me to give to you.
I told you everything that I was supposed to tell you. You see, Paul saw himself primarily as the bearer of a message. As a messenger, he was not responsible for whether people liked his message. He was only responsible for whether or not they heard it clearly. And for Paul, this was very serious business, which is why he says in verse 26, I am innocent of the blood of all.
Now that's kind of dramatic language, isn't it? Why would Paul talk like that? It's because Paul saw his message as a matter of life and death.
Paul is likely here thinking about a passage in the Old Testament. I think he's probably quoting it where the prophet Ezekiel said it this way. Ezekiel 33, eight, God speaking through Ezekiel, when I say to the wicked, you wicked person, you will surely die. And you do not speak out to dissuade them from their ways. That wicked person will die for their sin, right?
They're doing wickedly. That's why they're gonna die. But I will hold you accountable for their blood. They're gonna die because of their iniquity, but I'm actually gonna hold you responsible for it. Why?
Because I had a message to give to them and you never gave it to them. I was watching a talk show years ago where there was a guy who was on there who had saved all these people's lives after an earthquake out in California. What happened was he was driving along at 3 a.m. in the morning outside of Los Angeles. One of the earthquakes takes place out there and he thinks everything's fine, but he turns to go across a bridge. As he's driving across the bridge, he notices the taillights of the car in front of him just disappear. So he slows his car down, curious as to what happened and realizes that the middle section, one of the sections of the bridge has dropped out. And what he's just seeing is the taillights of the car disappear off the side and plunge down to the death of everyone in the car. And so the guy, he panics because this is a bridge. It's late at night, but there's people still coming across, cars coming across the bridge. So he stands there where his car is parked. He starts to wave his arms to get people to stop. Now, question for you. You're driving along at 3 a.m. in the morning outside of Los Angeles and there's some dude out there on the side of the road waving his arms. You gonna stop?
No. He says, this guy watched. This guy said, I watched as four different cars went by me at 65, 70 miles an hour plunging to their death. He said, I saw a bus begin to come across the bridge. He said, and I made up my mind that if that bus was going to go over that bridge, then it was going to have to take me with it. He said, and so I stood right there in the middle of the road. He said, and that bus started to flash its lights and honk its horn to get me to move.
And I wouldn't move. I just had my shirt off, my jacket, I was waving it. And he said, the guy finally stopped.
He gets out and he's cussing at me. And he said, but I showed him like this section of the bridge has dropped out and the bus driver, you know, parks the bus in a way that keeps other people from dropping off the edge of the bridge. As I'm watching this, the question that I, you know, ask myself is if I had been the first one to notice that, what would I have done, right? Well, I think I would have done the same thing, right? I mean, would I have cared that everybody thought I was an idiot and I was a zealot and that I was a little crate? No, because I knew something they didn't know and I'm responsible to tell them.
I'm responsible if I see something they don't see. And what Paul said is, God has given me a message. And that message, it starts with bad news. The bad news is you and I are condemned because of our sin, because we have lived in rebellion against God, God's rightful anger and his wrath is on top of us. And we are alienated from God and things are not right in our life. And there's a missing piece and there's all kinds of things going wrong because we're under the wrath of God. But then it's good news. The good news is that God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that Jesus would come and live the life that we were supposed to live, a sinless life, then die to death, that we were condemned to die in our place, a sinner's death, so that if we would receive him as our savior, he would forgive our sins and change our life.
The gospel is that all those who are humble enough to admit they need a savior and to call out on Jesus for salvation will be saved. I'm not responsible for how you respond to that message. I am responsible for making sure that you have heard it and that you understand it clearly. Here's your question. Does your community, does your generation know the truth?
Have you made it clear to them? Is everyone in your life, is everyone, Paul's not talking about the whole world here. He's talking about the people to whom God has sent him. Does your family, does your school, does your community, did they know the truth? Have they felt its weightiness?
Verse 31, Paul tells them for three years, I didn't cease night or day to admonish every one of you with tears. Can people in your life say that, that they felt the weightiness? Have they felt its weightiness from you? Have they sensed how real it is? And that really is kind of the question for us, isn't it? Do we really actually believe it?
Have you ever asked yourself that? Do you really actually believe this message? Do you believe that heaven and hell are real?
Sometimes people say to me, they're like, you're an educated person. Do you really believe in a hell? My response is always, well, Jesus believed in it. Jesus believed in it.
He talked more about often about it than he did heaven. And they're like, oh, like with literal flames and fire and smoke. Listen, the Bible uses a lot of metaphor and I do not claim to know everything, but I'll tell you, even if those things are symbols, whatever they're pointing to is a terrible reality. Revelation 21, eight calls hell the fiery abyss of burning sulfur, where there is weeping and darkness and gnashing of teeth and the smoke of their torment ascends forever.
If those are just symbols, what are they symbols for? It's not a beach vacation or a winter retreat. It's a terrible reality. And some at church, listen, I'll say this as clear as I can. I believe it is morally wrong to know that and to claim to believe it and to live in complacency. I think it demands something of us.
It ought to change how we look at our stuff. In Long Beach, California, you can visit a ship that has been turned now into a museum. It was originally launched in the early 20th century as the Queen Mary, the ultimate luxury cruise liner for rich people with every possible convenience. In World War II, however, it was commandeered to carry troops back and forth across the Atlantic.
You can go onto the ship now and see examples of how the ship was set up in both settings. When it's set up to be a luxury liner, it housed about 3,000. When it was set up to go into World War II and to carry these troops back and forth, it had housed 15,000.
To rooms that used to sleep one couple would now sleep 16 soldiers. And the point you see right played out in front of you is that wartime and peacetime demand different things. The same thing is true for us.
Wartime and peacetime ought to demand different things. This is not simply trying to recruit people into a religious movement. We think this is a life or death message. And as best we can, this mentality forms our approach as a church. We are not trying to build the Queen Mary luxury liner for Christians. We think we've been commissioned to build a rescue station for lost people.
Now, that doesn't mean it has to be trashy. We want it to be a warm, inviting, well-kept environment done excellently for the glory of God. But everything we do, we do so with the understanding that our resources were not given to us to create a cruise liner with luxuries for Christians.
It was given to us to create a rescue station for the broken. One of the phrases you'll hear us use around here is the phrase resourceful excellence, which means we do it excellently for the glory of God, but we do it with the knowledge that resources were given to us not to build a big, beautiful monument to Jesus, but to create platforms on which we can preach the gospel and make disciples. I believe this principle should also shape your approach to life. As I've often told you, there is nothing wrong with you enjoying God's blessings.
There is something, however, morally wrong with you putting your head in the sand and pretending the world is not lost. The old Christian saying or Keith Green, a converted hippie who died in the early 80s, used to say, this generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls all over the world. The only chance that our generation has to hear the gospel is going to be the generation of believers that are alive right now, and that demands something of us. Paul says, number two, I directed people's attention toward Jesus, not toward me. Notice verse 19, what Paul says, I serve the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials. Now, that's not typically how great leaders describe themselves, is it? Leaders like to talk about their victories.
They want to talk about their accomplishments, their strengths. In fact, that word humility right there in verse 19, that word is a word in Greek that was usually used as an insult. It meant low, defeated, weak. Yet in the Bible, it's used 200 different times and it's almost presented not as an insult, but as a virtue. Now, why? Why would Paul take a word that was normally intended as an insult and then, and then turn it into a virtue?
Here's why. It's the counter cultural gospel message. Christian ministry at its core is not about extraordinary men and women of great power that you should emulate. At its core, Christianity is about a great savior who can save and then use the weakest and most broken and most guilty of sinners. Paul does not want to leave these people with an example to admire.
He wants to leave them with a savior to trust in and weaknesses and trials and tears are how God demonstrates the sufficiency of that savior. The gospel is not about how awesome I am or how awesome you can be. The gospel is about how awesome Jesus is. Tim Keller says, a humble and weak person will show a crucified savior better to a listener than a polished, pulled together expert because that's how it happened for us, right? We weren't saved because we pulled ourselves together. If you ever hear somebody give their testimony, how they came to Christ and it's all about how they pulled themselves together, said person does not understand the gospel. The gospel is not how you discovered your inner awesome child and suddenly no, it's the gospel is about how you discovered that you were a sinner with no hope and then call it on the one who was pulled apart for you. And so we can demonstrate that better through weakness and trials and tears than we can through victories and accomplishments. I will just go ahead and tell you as your pastor, as your pastor, I want your attention to be on Jesus, not on me. I don't want to posture myself up here as a man who has it all together for a couple of reasons.
One, it's not true. B, I want to show you, I want to show you, I really feel like the best thing I can do for you is show you that I'm a recovering sinner like you are so that you can learn to hope in Jesus like I have. I really feel like what you most need is not an impressive example to emulate, but an all sufficient savior to hope in. This kind of forms my philosophy as a parent. I want to help my kids see that I'm a sinner like they are. My kids already think that I'm Superman. I don't have to like tell them that. But when I admit my sin in front of them, maybe it's my sin toward their mother, maybe it's my sin toward them and I ask for their forgiveness and prayer. Dads, do you do that with your kids?
I do. Here's the reason. I want them to learn that daddy's a safe sinner too so that they can learn to hope in Jesus in their insecurities and failings which I know they're going to grow up with. I don't want them to grow up trying to live up to a model like Pharisees.
I want them to grow up hoping in a savior like Christians and it's confession of sin. It's weakness. It's trial. It's tears that demonstrate to us the sufficiency of the savior. This is also, by the way, I mentioned this before we move on. It's the heart behind sacrifice. Sacrificial generosity is deliberately divesting yourself of resources that you could use to strengthen yourself so that you can use them to redirect people's attention toward Jesus. When you give sacrificially, you're saying my life is not about me. When you give sacrificially, you're saying my talent, my time, my resources, my treasure, all of it.
None of it was given to me for me and so I'm going to redirect the use of my resources away from personal personal enrichment and I'm going to use it to direct people's attention toward him. I'm voluntarily putting myself through tears and trials so people can see Jesus. Paul said, number three, I invested deeply in God's community of the church. I invested deeply in God's community of the church. In verse 28, Paul, talking to the Ephesian elders, the leaders of the church, he says, verse 28, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, watch this, which he purchased with his own blood. Jesus Christ shed his blood for the church.
He purchased it with his blood and Paul says, if Jesus Christ shed his blood for the church, I'm going to give my life to the church. Now I'm going to go ahead and tell you, I understand your role is not the same as the apostle Paul's. Your calling to the church is not the same as mine. I've been called to pastor and lead the church, but I will tell you without any question or hesitation that the church, if Jesus poured out his blood for the church, the church ought to be the center of your life. The church, Paul tells us, is Christ's body.
It is the means by which Jesus does his work on earth, which means if you separate yourself from the body, you separate yourself from Jesus, right? That analogy, Paul says, is how God works in the world. When God wants to work in your life, hey, newsflash is going to really mess some of you up. Rarely does he just answer with a zap from heaven.
That's what you want. Oh, just zap it down and God's like, that's not the way I work. It's a body, which means if I got something to say to you, I probably won't say it to you whispering in your heart. I'll probably use somebody in the church to do it, which means that when you cut yourself off from my body, you cut yourself off from me. So if you're not really connected to the church and you're sitting on the sidelines and complaining, I'm not working in your livestock, complaining to do what I said, and then I'll start working on your life the way that I told you I would work. He says, it's Christ's body. So I'm going to be connected to it. He says, it's Christ's bride.
And which means that if Jesus loves the church like his bride, then I got to be committed to it. You can't be like, JD, we think you're awesome. We think you're cool once you come over to our house. We hate that Veronica. You better leave her at home.
You and I are going to have problems. You can't love me and hate my bride. You can't love Jesus and hate his bride. If Jesus died for the church, you should be deeply devoted to it. I know it's not perfect. Jesus died for it.
That's how I know it's not perfect. The church is so screwed up that Jesus had to die for it. So you don't have something that you know about the church that Jesus doesn't know. And so if Jesus died for the church, we should be deeply committed to it and very connected into it.
Not just a casual attend on the weekend, but involved and invested. God has a body. God has a body.
And that is the locus, the central point of what he does on earth. And if you and I understand that like Paul, we'll figure out our role in it and we'll be deeply committed to it. Number four, Paul says, I've been faithful to do all that Jesus told me to do. I've been faithful to do all that Jesus told me to do.
Look at verse 24. Paul said, I don't count my life of any value nor is precious to myself. If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus. Paul was very personal about his ministry assignment. My course, the ministry I received. Paul felt like he had been given a personal assignment from God. God does not give the same assignment to everybody.
But listen to me, follower of Jesus, listen to me. God has given you a particular assignment and the mission of God and the body of Christ. And at the end of the day, you're going to answer to him for what you did with what he gave you. The point is not, you know, you don't really control what assignments you get. The point is, are you faithful with what you've been assigned?
A lot of us are really focused on success and failure and how big of an impact we're going to make. Paul said, that's irrelevant because you're just a servant. In fact, here's how he said it in first Corinthians four, two, moreover, it is, or all that is required of stewards is that they be found faithful. A steward was a household servant. A steward was not responsible to provide for the house. Wasn't responsible to design the house. Wasn't responsible to make big decisions for the house. A steward, a servant was simply responsible to do what the master of the house had commanded that servant to do. You are not going to be responsible for the role that you were assigned. You are going to answer to Jesus for whether or not you played out the role that he had given you to play.
Success and failure and impact are master words. Faithfulness is the concern of stewards. And here's what we find in scripture that Paul seemed to understand is that God uses ordinary acts of faithfulness to accomplish his most extraordinary things on earth. I challenge you, go through the Bible and look at where God does something amazing. More often than not, it's just an ordinary believer in an ordinary act of obedience. And God just delights in taking the five loaves and two fish, a little boy sharing his lunch or giving his lunch when Jesus asked it. And God says, that's what I'm going to use to feed the multitude. And every once in a while, every once in a while, y'all, we get a glimpse of how God does that.
I think God withholds most of them from us, but every once in a while, just to keep us in the game, he'll just give us a little taste of it to see how he'll use one of these acts in something extraordinary. I had one of these personally. It happened recently. A couple of years ago, I got a letter from a guy that I haven't talked to since I was in college. This guy, I met in college. He was in the dorm, the same dorm I was, not a believer. I met him, I gave him a Bible and I said, let's read it together. We read the Bible together for about 10 days.
About four or five times over there, we're doing that. I really thought he was coming along. The gospel was really seemed to be taking root in his heart. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, he showed up and said, I don't want to do this anymore.
I don't want to do it because I don't believe it. And I found out he'd met this girl and they started to sleep together and he knew he couldn't pursue both. And he just said, I just don't want to talk about this anymore. And for the next two years, I didn't talk to him, I think a single time. He totally cut off our relationship.
All right, so let's see. So how many years after how many years I've been out of college? Five years later, I got a letter from this guy just a couple of years ago and he said, hey, you probably don't remember me. And he tells me the story.
I remember exactly who he is because I was actually kind of hurt by it. He said, well, I want you to tell me, I want to tell you. He said a couple of years after college was over. He said, I found that Bible. I picked it back up and I started to read it. He said, I really got engaged in it again. And he said, I went to a church where I learned more about Jesus. And he said, I became a Christian. And he said, I want you to know that the first Bible ever put in my hands was by you and you started a process. And I just wanted to say thank you. He said, what's even more is I got so into it.
He said, I quit my job. I went to seminary and now I'm pastoring a church myself. And I just thought I'd let you know that back all those years ago, you handed me a Bible and that made all the difference. Now I'm like, okay, what is heaven going to be like?
What's heaven going to be like when all these little things that you and I did that we never saw the result of. Maybe it was just praying for somebody when God put them on your heart. Maybe it was making a financial sacrifice.
Maybe it was telling somebody about Jesus, leaving the waiter or waitress a big tip and say, Jesus loves you. Maybe it's just faithfully parenting your child. And all of a sudden God begins to pull back the curtain and say, the act of faithfulness I used in my plan, not a cup of cold water was wasted in my name. We know that God holds us responsible to be faithful and he uses ordinary faithfulness to do extraordinary things.
Where's he called you to be faithful. Pastor JD Greer is redefining what a successful life is here on Summit Life. And I love what JD just said about God working through our faithfulness in little things to accomplish extraordinary outcomes. That's something we witness every day here at Summit Life as God works through the faithful support of people like you, giving what you can to reach people around the country and in fact, around the world with gospel centered Bible teaching. And when you give towards that mission today, we'll say thanks by sending you a custom Summit Life Bible. We partnered with the publisher Crossway on a custom Bible. No, we didn't change any of the words of the Bible, but we were able to add some pages to the front of the Bible to give you one of our custom Summit Life reading plans with little checkboxes and everything for 52 weeks of Bible reading. So you can pick up where we are in the teaching series or start at the beginning or give it away to someone who you think might need some encouragement in reading their Bible.
It's the English standard version of the Bible with a blue leather cover. We'll send you the custom Summit Life Bible as an expression of thanks when you donate today to support this ministry or when you become a monthly gospel partner. Ask for it when you give by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or you can give online at JDGrier.com. If you'd rather mail your donation and request for the Bible, our address is JD Greer Ministries, P.O.
Box 122-93, Durham, North Carolina, 277-09. I'm Molly Bidevich inviting you to listen again Tuesday as we continue learning how to live a truly successful life on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-08-07 17:36:47 / 2023-08-07 17:48:08 / 11