We Send Every Member, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Let me just ask you, have you wrestled with the obligations that you and I owe to the gospel? Have you squarely faced the fact that 2.8 billion people in the world have little to no access to the gospel? People who who who were no more unworthy of the gospel than you or me?

People that are made in the image of God like us. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. So have you ever wondered what your purpose in life really is? What is it that you're here for? When it comes to our spiritual lives, sometimes it's easy to think about missions and evangelism as a task for the elite Christians, you know, who God calls to be pastors or missionaries. But today, Pastor J.D. shows us that God wants to use all of us to live on mission for him. Yes, God wants to use you. He titled his message, We Send Every Member, and it's the conclusion of our study called Be the Movement.

Let's rejoin Pastor J.D. in Acts Chapter 7. God wants to use you. Historically, ordinary believers like Stephen have always been the tip of the gospel spear.

He's got an intention to use you in the life of somebody to bring them from darkness to light. If you go back and you study, if you study Christian history, what you'll see is that the gospel has always traveled around the world faster on the wings of business than it has through apostolic effort. There's a writer named Stephen Neal. He's a church historian. He wrote a classic book called The History of Christian Missions, and he said the only thing that was more remarkable than the rapidity of the spread of the gospel in the first century was its anonymity. He said by the time you get to the end of the first century, 99 A.D., he said you've got three major church planting centers, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome. He said what they all have in common is that we have no idea who founded the churches in Antioch, Alexandria, or Rome.

No idea. No famous apostle founded any of those churches. The founding of the church in Antioch is actually recorded for us in Acts 11.

You could read it later. All it says, I'll give you a little spoiler here, all it says is some brothers, some brothers moved to Antioch, and the hand of the Lord was with them when they planted a church in Antioch. Them. Everybody say them. Them, right? Them means a bunch of guys who's, they're like the credits at the end of the movie, like bystander number three, a bunch of guys whose names I'm not going to mention because you've never heard of them, and you probably won't hear about them again anyway, just ordinary guys. Yet these ordinary men and women planted a church that would one day send out the apostle Paul and become the greatest mission-sending church in the first century. Ordinary people, see?

Them. Good news, we're all part of the them. You haven't all been to seminary.

You don't have a professional ministry job, but you're part of the them, and that means you're God's plan A for impacting the world. Hey, I would tell you the same thing is true today. The same thing is true today. You look at where Christianity is spreading fastest in the world. You won't find people like me.

You'll find people like you. Here's your vision for following Jesus. Whatever God made you good at, and He didn't make all of you good at being preachers, public speakers, or worship leaders, or writers, whatever He made you good at, you should do that well to the glory of God, but why not also do it somewhere strategic for the mission of God? Of all the factors that go into where you pursue your career, why wouldn't the kingdom of God be the largest of those factors? That's living sin. Here's the second conviction that we see from Stephen's life.

It's going to go hand in hand with the first one. Number two, the Holy Spirit fills me. You know what makes Stephen remarkable is his confidence, the confidence that stares down the Sanhedrin, a confidence that he apparently gained from an awareness of the fullness of the Spirit within him. The most common characteristic that is repeated about Stephen was that he was filled with the Spirit. What gives ordinary people such extraordinary confidence and effectiveness is the knowledge of the power of the Spirit within them. All believers, of course, have the Holy Spirit, right? So you have that, but what gives you confidence, like Stephen, is your awareness, your knowledge of the Spirit within you. You know, I'm going to get on very familiar territory here for the Summit Church, but you know Jesus made such extraordinary promises when it comes to the power and the potential of the Spirit in believers.

They are so staggering that if you don't consciously pay attention to them, they go right over your head. I'll give you one, one of my favorites. If you've been around the church, you've heard me talk about this one. John 16 7. Jesus said, John 16 7, nevertheless, I tell you the truth.

By the way, stop right there. Jesus was not in the habit of telling lies. He didn't have to clarify like, hey, actually, I'm about to be serious.

No, whenever he says something like that, it's because what he is about to say is so kind of mind-blowing. If you don't turn your mind on, it'll go right over your head, and that's what happens with this verse. It is to your, see the next word, advantage. It's to your advantage that I go away, because if I don't go away, the Helper, the Holy Spirit, won't come to you. Now, here's the question that we ask about this verse.

Put yourself honestly in this situation. How absurd must that have sounded to those first disciples? It's to my advantage that Jesus believed? How awesome, think about it, how awesome would it be if Jesus was your ministry, or your roommate, right? You come back in after a tough day of ministry, and you got a theological question about Calvinism, bam, Jesus answers that right there.

He gives you a perfect answer, right? At your small group, they run out of checks mix, bam, Jesus multiplies the checks mix so that there's 12 baskets left over. Your dog dies, right? You're sad, bam, Jesus raises your dog back from the dead.

Your cat dies. Jesus digs a hole, buries that cat, gets rid of it forever. That's like my favorite joke to tell at the Summit Church, and I know some of you are already composing an angry email, but yes, Jesus loves cats, but not as much as dogs, and surely not as much as people, but you know what I mean, okay? That's probably not exactly what it would be like to walk around with Jesus, but the point is, it would have been awesome. If you had a chance to be friends with Jesus, side by side with Jesus, how awesome would that be?

Yet, Jesus is telling them, and he's saying, I'm not even exaggerating, that if you understood who the Spirit was, and if you understood what the potential of the Spirit was, you'd be more excited to have him inside of you, even than me, besides you, right? I mean, if I told you guys that I was resigning, I'd hope you'd be sad, you know, if I was your pastor, right? I hope you'd be sad, but if I'm like, don't worry about it, next week, God's going to teach on the live stream is Jesus of Nazareth. He's going to be the new pastor.

I mean, you'd be calling all your friends, right? Like, you're not going to believe that Jesus is going to be our pastor. He'd be way better than our other pastor, right? Are you as excited that there in your home group, wherever you are, you've got the Spirit of God in you as you would be if Jesus came to be your new pastor? If not, doesn't that show you that you haven't grasped whatever it is that he is promising there? In that verse, God's plan to reach the world is just ordinary people filled with the extraordinary Spirit, and just walking in obedience to him, and he says that they're going to have a collectively greater impact than if Jesus himself stayed.

Stop thinking about how incapable or unqualified you are. Don't you understand that because the Holy Spirit is in you, because it's the Spirit of God who does it through you, don't you understand that it's now more about your availability than it is your ability? Because see, the Holy Spirit can do more through one surrendered vessel than the most talented and richest people in the world could could accomplish on their own. By the way, we got a really good example of that in the last part of Acts 8. There's Philip, who's another ordinary guy, not an apostle, who's directed by the Spirit to go up in obedience to the Spirit.

He goes up out in this little dusty road out in the middle of nowhere, and he's like, why am I here? And the Spirit of God is like, just trust me, just stay here for a minute, and he's kind of staying there looking around. All of a sudden, the guy comes down the road that is in a chariot that we call now the Ethiopian eunuch, and the Ethiopian eunuch is reading from the book of Isaiah and doesn't know what he's reading, and the Spirit directs Philip to go up in the chariot with him and explain the gospel to him, and that guy gets saved, and he gets baptized.

Eusebius, who was the third century, fourth century church historian, says that that Ethiopian eunuch went back to sub-Saharan Africa where he was from and planted a church and started a church planting movement that is still in existence today. One act of obedience by an ordinary person, the Spirit used that to accomplish more than all the apostles had been able to accomplish in seven chapters up to that point in the cause of world missions. I need you to understand that the Spirit is still doing that today. He's still using ordinary people just like you and just like me to do extraordinary things if they'll just listen to him, so that's my question.

Are you listening to him? The Holy Spirit shows up 59 times in the book of Acts, 59. In 36 of those 59, he is speaking. I've told you what's frustrating about that is it doesn't always tell us exactly how he speaks. It doesn't say, like, you know, everybody, like, you got a message on your, you know, cell phone, or everybody thought the same thing at once, or, you know, it just says he speaks. By the way, I think that ambiguity is intentional because Scripture never wants, God never wants us to put as much confidence in what we think the Spirit is saying as what we do what the Bible actually says, but he speaks.

Acts 13 2, the Holy Spirit said to the church, separate Barnabas and Paul for a missionary calling. There might be ambiguity in how he speaks, but there is no ambiguity in whether he speaks, and I would even say right now he's speaking to some of you, right? You listening to him? He's stirring in you, and he's like, hey, I got something for you. Can you just respond and say, yes, Lord, I'm ready. I'm ready to go where you tell me to go. Here am I, Lord.

Send me. Conviction number three. Let me keep moving. Conviction number three, as Jesus was to me, so I will be to others. You know, verse 59 might be my favorite part of this whole, of this whole, of this whole passage. Look at this, because what it does, before I read the verse to you, it gives you a window into Stephen's soul, showing you what he was thinking about at the very moment of his death. Verse 59, as they were stoning Stephen, as the life was literally draining out of him, he called out, Lord Jesus, perceive my spirit. And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Question, where have you heard those two phrases before?

Right? Lord Jesus, perceive my spirit, and Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Are they not almost identical to what Jesus said when he died on the cross? Jesus said, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit, and Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they do. You know, it seems that in Stephen's dying moments, Stephen was thinking about what Jesus had prayed on the cross for him, and now he is praying that for others.

Right? Get your mind around that. What Stephen saw Jesus do for him, he's now doing for others, because that's what it means to follow Jesus. It means to look at your life like a sacrifice for others, the way that Jesus sacrificed himself for you.

Let me ask you a very practical question, okay? I want all of you to think about it. Where would you be, where would you be if Jesus chosen not to come and die for you?

He didn't have to. If he'd chosen that, where would you be? Let me give you a sort of a twist on the answer.

You'd be at exactly the same place that millions of people in the world are without you. Why do I say that? The act of salvation is not complete until people hear about it. They have to believe, they have to hear to believe, they have to believe to be saved. It's like Martin Luther used to say, it wouldn't matter if Jesus died a thousand times if nobody ever heard about it.

Carl F.H. Henry, a theologian, said the gospel is only good news for somebody if it gets to them in time. If it doesn't get to them in time, it's not actually good news. And see friends, that demands something of us. Let me just ask you, have you wrestled with the obligations that you and I owe to the gospel? Have you squarely faced the fact that 2.8 billion people in the world have little to no access to the gospel? People who who who were no more unworthy of the gospel than you or me. People that are made in the image of God like us. I think of a place like northern Yemen has a population of 8 million, almost the size of North Carolina. You know how many believers there are in that whole nation of 8 million?

20 or 30. Every single one of them is made in the image of God like you. They know what it's like to be afraid.

They hurt like you. They know what it's like to be lonely and lost. Is it fair for you and me to know so much about a God who did everything and do so little to take the gospel to people who know nothing? I think sometimes y'all feel, I think sometimes about being in heaven and meeting somebody up there that is there because I shared the gospel with them or because I sacrificially gave and somebody else shared the gospel with them. These people I'm going to spend eternity with, and they're going to be my brothers and sisters, and I'm going to learn over the course of 10,000 years to love them. And sometimes I think like, won't I be grateful then when I've gotten to know and love this person that I did what it took to be able to get the gospel to them? I mean, I know them that well now may never see their face, but I know I'll be glad then that I did what I needed to do so they could be saved.

Don't you think that's the way that you're going to feel too? See, friend, if Jesus sacrificed himself to save us, it makes sense that we ought to sacrifice ourselves to bring salvation to them, just like Stephen did for his countrymen. For some of you, that means that you're going to leave here and move somewhere to take the gospel.

For others, it means you're going to give like crazy so that other people can go. So conviction number three is, as Jesus was to me, so I will be to others. Conviction number four, last one. Conviction number four is that Jesus is worth it. Y'all, let's return one final time to Acts 7. As they began to hurl stones at Stephen, Stephen says, verse 56, Behold, I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Scholars point out that Stephen's standing here is odd because everywhere else in the Bible that we see Jesus at the right hand of God, he is sitting. It's actually an important theological point because it's showing that he is finished with the work of salvation, yet here he is standing. Why is he in this one place standing? Well, the only answer is he is standing to receive home his son. The world, it seems, has risen up in unison against Stephen to tell Stephen that he is a fool, a traitor, that his life is a waste. Y'all, and it's almost like Jesus can't contain himself.

He stands up and he says no. Well done, good and faithful servant. They're calling you heretic. I'm going to welcome you home. Y'all, and Stephen looks up with face beaming with angelic brightness, and Stephen says, in essence, yes, I see him. It's worth it. I'll tell you, the only thing that will give you the power to live a life of truly being sent is a deep conviction in your soul that Jesus is worth it.

Whatever you got to walk away from, he's better and he's worth it, and we like to talk here in this church about how coming to Jesus brings peace and makes your family whole and brings fulfillment, and that's all true, but at some point you understand if you're really serious about following Jesus, obedience to him is going to take you 180 degrees opposite of the direction that you think you want to go, and in that moment, in that moment, the only thing that will compel you forward to go all the way is the belief that Jesus is worth it, and there's a story I love to tell here, and I'll tell it quickly, but I think it just so encaptures this, and some of you heard this before, but I spent the first two years of my ministry over in one of these unreached people groups over in Southeast Asia. After I've been there a few months, I got a call one night from a Christian friend who lived about three hours south of me, and he had a guy with him, and he said, hey, I need you to come, and I need you to meet me at the place. I was like, who is it? He said, you know, he got real quiet. He's like, you know, they're listening. It was true because our phones were bugged, and he said, just meet me at the place. I knew where that was, but it was three hours away, so I had to go out, find a bus, middle of the night, three hours down to this place, go to the place, and I go in, and these two guys are sitting there, and my friend looks at this guy and says, okay, tell him what you told me. This guy's name was Fajar. Fajar was a 32-year-old Muslim, and Fajar said, he see, and he starts to say to me through the language, because I was still learning, and he didn't speak English, so he says through my friend, he says, he says, he said, well, he said, about a month ago, I had this, I don't know what you call it, dream.

It didn't, it wasn't really like a dream, he said, but in this dream, I was standing in this field, and as far as I could see in front of me, behind me, to the right, to the left, he said, there was nothing, and I walked for what, what felt like days in this field, and he stopped, and he said, he said, I, you know, that, that, I felt like that field is supposed to represent my life, and I, because I just feel lost. He said, after walking for what felt like days, I suddenly heard a voice behind me, heard a voice behind me, and I turned around, and there was this, I don't know what you call him, a man, he's towered above me, he was dressed in this white robe, his face, sparta matahati, is a word to use, I remember that, and that, like the sun, it just shone in his brilliance, and he, he reached inside of his robe, and he pulled out a copy of, he called it the Injil, that's their word for gospel, pulled out a copy of the gospel, and said, Fajar, this is the only thing that will get you out of this field, he said, I pulled that, because that was Christian, and I am Muslim, and I could not touch it, he said, I woke up immediately, and I knew that I made a terrible mistake, he said, next night, I went to sleep, I had the exact same dream, again, I walked what, for what felt like days in this field, and again, this man appeared, and reached out the Injil, and said, take this, it will get you out of this field, he said, this time, I wanted to take it, I wanted to, but I couldn't get the strength in my hands to do it, and he said, I woke up, suddenly, he said, I knew I'd made another terrible mistake, he said, third night, I didn't even want to go to sleep, he said, I was afraid, and he said, sure enough, the moment I closed my eyes and sleep, it was me and him in that field, and this time, there was no walking, just me and him, and he looked at me, and said, this is the last time I will tell you, this is the only thing that will get you out of this field, he said, I watched in my dream, my hands, they were trembling, he said, I wouldn't even, felt like I wasn't even in control of them, they just reached up, and they took that copy of the Enjil, he said, I pulled it in, and I hugged it into my chest, he said, I woke up peacefully in my bed the next morning, he said, looked at me, and he said, now my friend tells me that you are expert at Enjil, he said, please tell me what my dream means, now y'all, I grew up in a a really conservative Baptist church, okay, and I'm just going to tell you, we didn't do dreams and the interpretation thereof on the reg, but I knew exactly what to say in that moment, I was like, bro, you were so in luck, dream interpretation is my spiritual gift, and I was like, translate that, so I sat there, listen, I sat there for the next two hours, till the wee hours of the morning, explained to him, just really just going from Genesis to Revelation, how Jesus had done everything, and who Jesus was, and I got to the part in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus dies on the cross, and I'll never forget these big old tears, I see them well up in his eyes, and he says, you're telling me that this is God the creator, that is dying for me, and I said, well yeah, and I remember he just said, he held out his hands, he said, which is their way of saying, God is the greatest, and I was like, well, we got some discipleship to do, but anyway, it was awesome, and he said, God is the greatest, and we get to the end, and I was like, do you want to trust Jesus as your Savior, do you want to become a Christian, and he said, oh, with all my heart, and I was like, well, I mean, I only know one way to do this, you know, every head bowed, every eye closed, let me lead you in the sinner's prayer, he bows his head, and I start leading him in this sinner's prayer, we get about two phrases in, about two phrases in, and I was like, I was like, stop, I was just kind of overwhelmed, I said, Fajar, you understand that this is a big deal, when you trust Jesus, your life changes, when your life changes, you get baptized, and if you get baptized, you know that you might get cut off from your family, and you might get, lose your job, and you, you and I both know people that have been killed because of this, in this city, and I'll never forget, he looks up in a big old smile, he says, of course I know that, he said, 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 this Jesus was who you Christians said he was, right, and if Jesus did for me what you Christians said he did, then I would go with him, listen to this, I would go with him regardless of what I had to leave behind. Now, at that point, I was like, I feel like you need to lead me in the sinner's prayer, because I think I might need to get saved again. In the heart of every true Christian, when I tell that story, there's something in you that rises up and says, yes, yes, yes, Fajar, he's worth it, even if it cost you everything. Let me just say this, and I say this as humbly but directly as I can to the Summit Church, it is hypocritical for you and I to say amen to Fajar, and then not be willing to do what it takes to get the gospel to people like Fajar. The cost to follow Jesus in places like Southeast Asia is severe, the cost to get the gospel to places like Southeast Asia is severe, and the only thing that will compel you to go all the way to do the hard work to leave your family and endure the hardships and loneliness of missionary life is a sight of the worthiness of Jesus.

Is he worth it? At some point, you got to decide who is is worthy or what is worthy of the offering of your life. If Jesus is worthy of your absence, of your absolute total and unconditional obedience, listen, what is it that you're trying to please? What's waiting for you?

What's standing by the throne of God? Your parents love you, but Jesus created you, and then Jesus died to redeem you. I'll tell you, your parents are awesome, but they're not going to be waiting for you at the end to receive you into eternity, and you're not going to be standing around their throne proclaiming their worthiness for eternity. A job is a great thing to pursue, and it can provide a lot of benefits, but it's nothing to give your life for. Your parents are precious. Your dreams are important.

Your career hopes are bright, but none of those things is worth the offering of your life. Jesus is worthy of it. He's the only one that is worthy, for by his will, Paul said, all things are created. By his blood, we were redeemed for his glory.

We now exist. Jesus is worthy. You only got one life, and you got to dedicate it to something.

You got to give it away to something. You got to make it count. What is God calling you to?

When things still don't feel normal after nearly two years, there's never going to be a better time to make a change. Will you go where he tells you to go and do what he tells you to do? A convicting and challenging message for all of us today here on Summit Life. Are you looking for more of Pastor JD's teaching?

You can find all of his resources online at jdgrier.com or find them through your favorite podcasting app by searching for Summit Life with JD Greer. We would love if you would consider partnering with us today in furthering our mission by bringing the gospel to the radio, tv, and web. And as a token of our thanks, we have a brand new resource to help you dive deeper into the topic of this teaching series that we just completed here on the program. So JD, what can people expect to take away from our new study titled Be the Movement? Times like this are like, what am I really supposed to be doing?

You know, like what, what's life supposed to be? What's success? Our mission in the church ought to be shaped by what Jesus said success is like. So at the Summit Church, we've tried to do that. We prioritize the gospel above all. We do whatever it takes to reach all people because that's the heart of Jesus. We want to make disciples, not converts. And then we send every member. Those ought to define our church for us. Literally the Summit Church, they actually do define our church, but it also ought to define our individual lives. And so what we wanted to do is we thought, well, you know, it's worked so well in our church and created such a movement here. Let's create something that would enable people to live that out on a practical basis.

I actually think this will help coming out of the chaos of the last two years. I think this will help people get a bearing on what they should be doing and then reverse engineering their life and start doing it. Each part of this new study has a few pages of teaching from Pastor JD following the same outline as our sermon series, and it includes a handful of questions. We also included a significant prayer section with prompts to help you respond to what you've just spent time studying. You can work through the book at any pace that you'd like. We'd suggest it about once per week and take about a month to process through the content.

And while it totally stands on its own for you to do it alone, it really is much better for you to work through the scripture and questions with someone else or a small group. Ask for your copy of our newest resource titled Be the Movement when you give us a call at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or give and request the study book online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vinovich inviting you to join us again tomorrow when we kick off a new teaching series titled All In. We hope you'll join us for a few minutes on Thanksgiving Day for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.