Mission

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. What was special about Noah? Nothing. He just listened to God and did what God said. What is special about us? Nothing. We've just believed God and taken him at his word.

We believe that Jesus was serious when he said through Peter's mouth that he wasn't willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Happy Thanksgiving, and we trust that you're enjoying time with family and friends celebrating the goodness of God in your life. And let me start by saying we're thankful for you. Summit Life would not be the same without you here, so welcome, and we're excited to be jumping into a new teaching series today that Pastor J.D. originally preached a few years ago, and it contains a familiar story. If you ever flip through one of those picture book Bibles for kids, one of the first stories you'll notice is Noah in the ark with the cute little animals walking up onto the boat. But this account isn't just a nice story about God saving some animals from a flood. It's actually a powerful foreshadowing of the gospel. Today, Pastor J.D.

is unpacking the biblical account of Noah's ark. It's the first part in our brand new study called All In, and Pastor J.D. titled today's message Mission. We are starting a new series called All In in which we are going to take a look over the next five weeks at five different Old Testament characters who went all in on the mission of God, because I want you and I want us as a church to consider what it looks like for us to go all in with the mission of God. So here's the question I want you to consider over the next several weeks.

We're going to consider it from multiple angles. Are you all in on the mission of God with your life? Not just are you committed to the church on the weekend.

I want to know are you all in on the mission of God with the biggest parts of your life? If you're a sports fan, you probably saw the same statement that I did by Dr. John Jenkins, who is the president of Notre Dame University, when they joined the ACC. This is a direct quote.

I'm going, I could not believe, so I copied it and I said I gotta use that. He said this, I just want to say emphatically and clearly, football aside, we're all in in the ACC. We are deeply committed to the ACC. And I want to be like, you're all in in the ACC except for football?

I mean, no offense, but what else does Notre Dame actually bring to the table? Right? I mean, how would you say I'm all in except for football? Right? Well, what, here's the question, what is the football of your life?

What's the football of your life? And are you all in with that? For some of you it's your money, for some of you it's your time, it's your reputation. Are you all in with not just the weekend stuff but with the big things? Or think of it like this, if you have a breakfast of bacon and eggs, both the pig and the chicken contributed to your breakfast but in different ways. The chicken made a contribution but the pig was all in.

Right? So which of those two metaphors better describes you and your relationship to the kingdom of God? Here's the first story we're going to consider. It's in the first book of the Bible so it should be easy to find. Genesis chapter 6, it is the story of Noah. Here we go, Genesis chapter 6 verse 5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I've created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am truly sorry that I even made them. Now, if you know your Bible at all, you know that he did this through a worldwide flood. By the way, it has always been amazing to me that Kiv's books usually pick up this story as their favorite one to feature for three-year-olds. You know, with the little bunnies and the furry animals and in came the animals two by two, the hippopotamus and the kangaroo, and that's like the kid's favorite. But this is a terrifying story of God's judgment. Massive destruction, dead bodies everywhere. I mean, plus this man Noah and his family get trapped on a wooden boat for several months with all these animals.

That doesn't sound like there's anything fun about that. You know, so make sure you have this thing in the right category as we go into it. Verse 8. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Now, real quick, people encounter stories of judgment in the Bible like this. And one of the first questions that modern people ask is like, well, was this really, really necessary? I don't really like this picture of God. I prefer the precious moments Jesus who, you know, likes to pat little children on the head and that kind of God.

So is this really necessary? Well, see, verse 5 diagnoses the problem for you. It says that God saw that every intention of the human heart was only evil continually. There's an interesting word play that goes on in Hebrew. The word used to describe human wickedness in verses 12 and 13, if you jump down there, the word used to describe human wickedness is the same word used to describe what God does to the wicked on the earth.

The word is mashit. And what it means is destruction. Sinful humans are destroying God's good creation, so God is going to mashit the mashiters.

He's going to destroy the destroyers. So he does so out of holiness and love the same way that if you love someone who's being eaten up with cancer, you hate the cancer destroying their body and you are willing to take radical measures like chemotherapy to eradicate their bodies from the cancer. That's what God is doing is that there is a cancer that is destroying his creation and creating disharmony and creating violence and creating all kinds of destruction. And God is about to go to radical measures to get rid of that. Verse 6 says that human wickedness grieved God to his heart. The word for greed there is the same word in Hebrew used elsewhere in the Old Testament to describe an abandoned wife, what she feels when her husband leaves her.

A soul-wrenching, despairing grief. So a holy God, a perfect love cleansed the earth of sin. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Grace, undeserved kindness. And God preserved Noah and his family as a representative of the human race and through Noah he would repopulate the earth. Now you say, well, was this solution effective? Well, look around.

The short answer is no. I mean, Noah screws up his own family within one chapter of being off the ark, right? By the end of chapter 9, Noah's family looks like an episode of The Jerry Springer Show. You go down to 821 which is after the ark, you can just note that in your margin, the author repeats that the intentions of the human heart were still only evil continually. Which tells you that a greater kind of salvation would be necessary than destroying the world through a flood and giving a wooden ark for people to get into.

We need a salvation that would go to the core of the human heart, which is the real meaning of the story, which we'll get to in a minute. But first let me draw four points about Noah that I want you to see that are I think very relevant for us. Number one, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. What was special about Noah?

Nothing. Nothing special indicated in these verses. He simply heard the voice of God and he responded. Verse 9 tells you he was a righteous man. Why was he righteous?

Why? Because he responded to God's offer of salvation, period. That was it. Number two, Noah was chosen to be a channel of salvation to others. Noah was not only selected for personal salvation, he was chosen to build an ark that would be a vehicle for salvation to whoever would listen. Now that would end up being only his family, but the point is that God's grace toward him was never intended for him only. He was to be a channel of grace toward other people. He was given grace so that through him grace could come to those who would listen to him. Number three, Noah had to dramatically rearrange his priorities in light of God's grace toward him. After this announcement, he could not go on with life as usual, make a few tweaks to his life, pray an extra 10 minutes in the morning during his quiet time, and give a little, you know, at wherever he went to worship. I mean, the difference from this point on, imagine the difference after God had said this to Noah, how he saw the whole world. Everybody that Noah knew would either be saved on the ark or destroyed in the coming flood.

It required a radical reorientation of his life. Number four, Noah was grateful. If you fast forward the story to the end, after God sent the flood and God saved Noah and his family, Noah exits the ark and the first thing that Noah does is he offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.

Let me give you a little interesting textual note here. This is the first thing in Noah's story that he does of his own volition. If you go back and you read it, and you can do this, you know, maybe this week, you'll see that what characterizes Noah's interaction with God is God commands and Noah does. God tells him to build the ark. He tells him how big to make it. He tells him when to get on and when to get off. The sacrifice, however, was Noah's idea.

It was his initiative. He overflows with gratefulness and wants to say thank you to God. God, why did you choose me to show grace to? God, why did you save my family? I wasn't more righteous than everybody else. Well, because I was better. You didn't choose me because I was a great carpenter. You chose me.

Why? I don't know, but I'm just going to respond with gratefulness and a sacrifice that comes from the deepest places in my heart. We, Summit Church, we, I believe, are in a place very similar to Noah. Here we go. Number one, we as a church have been selected for grace. I don't know why.

I really don't. But we can look all around us and see that the evidences of that grace are everywhere. Over the last three weeks, God allowed us to baptize 414 people. 414. That was the final count. Praise God.

And that, that's not just a stat. It's made up of people like, like this. Let me share with you some letters I have received here. One came in and said this. I'm ready to tell you that my baptism, this baptism was actually, this guy was this past spring. My baptism this past spring has been the best decision of my entire life. When you gave the call to be baptized, I hesitated because I was making excuses in my head. I rode with a friend and his wife to church and I didn't want to keep them too long afterwards, nor did I have a change of clothes.

Well, you mentioned that we had a change of clothes for me, towels and everything I could possibly need. Then you asked everyone in the audience if they would raise their hand if they drove somebody here and they were not willing to wait. I looked out of the corner of my eye at the people that had driven me and their hands were not in the air.

In fact, nobody's hands were in the air. Well, I was all out of excuses by that point, but I still had that hesitation. Finally, right before we were dismissed, my friend leaned over to me and said, man, if you want to go, I'll go with you.

I'll go with you in support. Since my baptism, I've made a large change in my life. I had a huge drinking problem, which I thought was okay because I was a college student, but I realized drinking every night wasn't the fun that I once thought it was. I had originally started drinking to try to pick up girls.

I'm not totally sure the logic here, but you know, there it is. But now I was drinking because I was depressed and I was missing something or someone in my life. After my baptism, he says, the last time I had a drink was the Friday before Easter and this guy was saved and baptized on Easter Sunday. He goes, and that same night, I attempted to take my life that evening, but I had this rush of ideas that maybe I was here for something else and I came to the Summit Church that Sunday.

God saved my life in every possible way that Sunday and I was baptized. Attending this church has made me realize that the pain that I'd been feeling was loneliness because for a time, I turned my back on Jesus and it's hard to be close to God when I'm in pain and I'm lonely. I am so happy that I've joined the Summit family because they are supporting me. I'm happy that I've joined the Summit family because they are supportive and they are loving in every way. I wake up every morning and thank Jesus for dying for my sins and saving my life and I want to do everything I can to serve Him. I've joined a small group with my friend and his wife.

Although I'm the only single person in the group, they still welcome me with loving arms every time we get together. I've been told by many people that I am so much happier since I stopped drinking and started to put my trust in Jesus Christ. I have genuinely been saved.

Isn't that amazing? Or how about this one? I am 39 years old, a divorced father of two girls, now teenagers. In 2000, I was destroyed by my sin and double life of homosexuality. Fast forward, I'm convincing his letter here, but fast forward 12 years. Two months ago, I was happily living my gay life. While driving one day, the Holy Spirit said to me in my car, it's a lie.

For the first time in years, my heart actually hurt it, not just my head. My brother pointed me to your church. You have no idea how the sermon last week in the Can't Believe series on the sexual captive pierced my heart. I still cannot stop thinking about a statement that you made that Jesus's last words on the cross were not, go fix yourself. His last words on the cross were, it is finished.

I've always thought I had to clean up to come to Jesus, tortured by past mistakes and sin, which are really only the lies of the enemy. Through the ministries of your church, I found the gospel and I am just writing to say thank you. Isn't that amazing?

This is not somebody that's hearing something that's entertaining and engaging to him. This is something that exudes the power of God. I don't know why God chose to select us for that. For the past four years, we've been in the top 25 fastest growing churches in the nation. We've grown by nearly a thousand people each year for the past four years, made up of many people like those. And God has allowed us not just to reach them, but to train them up and send them out. You've heard me say several times probably that we just sent a team of people out to Southeast Asia, a team of eight, who were all people who came to Christ when they moved here and got involved in our church.

Or seven out of eight of them at least. They were saved here at our church and are now taking the gospel around the world. Our church planting pastor tells me that as we gather this weekend at the Summit Church to worship, there will be about 7,000 people here in the triangle that will attend the Summit Church this weekend. But while we gather, over 2,000 people are worshiping in churches that we've planted around the country, around the United States. Places like Murfreesboro and Nashville and Greensboro and Denver. And one of the guys who sent out Brian Barley, who is our planter in Denver, Summit Denver. We don't make them take the name Summit, but they chose it because he said we actually have mountains in Denver. I don't know what you're thinking in Durham.

But he said it's really exciting. We just baptized three people this past month. He said what was most exciting about those three is that none of them were brought to Christ by the people that the Summit sent out here. These people were brought to Christ by people we've reached. Our influence in the city just keeps multiplying. This past fall we had 19 schools contact us about launching a mentoring and tutoring program in the public schools. Summit members going into these public schools during the school day to serve at-risk students and their teachers on a weekly basis.

This summer we put 2,500 volunteers on the street in one week to serve our city. Probably most fulfilling to me was as I visited some of these different projects that our church was involved in. What I saw were not people who were doing a one-time project where they would come in and, you know, get involved with somebody who's, you know, kind of down on their luck and down on their luck and then rush back to their car for two hours and, you know, put Purell in their hands and then go away and think about it again next year. What I saw were people that this was their year-long project. That this has become a part of their life.

Their small group now consists of people that are from these groups that we are doing ministry among. What was special about Noah? Nothing. He just listened to God and did what God said. What is special about us?

Nothing. We've just believed God and taken him at his word. We believe that Jesus was serious when he said through Peter's mouth that he wasn't willing that any should perish but that all come to repentance. We believed him when he said that he would do exceedingly abundantly through us of anything we could ask or think or even imagine. We believed him when he said that if you would call on my name and you would ask me, I would do great things through you that you probably could not even describe to somebody. We just believed it.

We're like Noah. We just believed that God was serious and God's grace began to flow through us. Number two, we've been given a very clear mission. We've been given a very clear mission. Like Noah, we've been given a very clear description of what we should be doing. Jesus summarized our mission.

It's really short and really tight in Matthew 28 18. Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all that I've commanded of you. Here at the church, we've interpreted that primarily in three ways. Three kind of ways we focus on making disciples. One is our families. We believe that our families are our first mission field and we are committed to discipling those we win to Jesus. That starts with our families because we want them to grow up strong in God's kingdom.

That is very personal to me. If you've been around here, you've probably heard me share this before, but it's personal to me because in 1975, Lynn and Carol Greer moved to a new city and they just had a son. I was two years old at the time and they moved to a city and they thought I was their first son. They thought we need to get back involved in church because people do that a lot when they have kids.

They're like well you know we got to quit messing around. We got to get serious in a church somewhere. So they heard about a church that was exciting.

It was growing. They had a pastor who could hold everybody's attention and they went and God saved my mom and dad. But because this church was committed to not just seeing people respond and come and be baptized and putting their name on a list somewhere and reporting them to some agency that counts how many people you baptize and you don't know who that is. But you know because this church wasn't, they weren't content with that, they were committed to discipling my mom and dad. So I had the privilege of growing up at a home where my mom and dad walked with Jesus and loved Jesus and taught me to do the same. Now because of a church that was committed to discipling families, I didn't just get reported or my parents used to get reported on a list somewhere.

Right? My eternity is different. So are my children's eternities now because of the faithfulness of that church to discipling its families. That's what we are committed to.

We are committed to discipling the nations. When Jesus says go into all the nations, he used the term ethne which means it's what we now call an unreached people group that have a language and it's a people group that has no gospel witness. There are 6,640 unreached people groups in our world today. We are committed to being a church that raises people up and sends them out to take the gospel where the gospel is not known.

Not also is very personal to me. Because when God called me into ministry, I was in college, I was not headed toward ministry, I was headed toward law. And what God did is he called me to the ministry by calling me to the mission field.

That's where I originally thought that I was headed. And God has never relinquished that call off of my life to the mission field. He's just shown me that the way that I will serve the mission field is as a pastor in a church here in the United States. The way I say it is God started my call to ministry by calling me to the mission field. And the way I'm fulfilling my call to the mission field is as a pastor. Which is why we talk about this a lot because we believe this is what the great commission is all about. And so we're always talking about sending, I know not everybody is supposed to leave Riley Durham and go there, but I know a lot of us are. And I know a lot of us are supposed to be involved in sending. Which is why I'm so very grateful to be here in Riley Durham.

Because honestly, this is not rhetoric. I cannot think of a better place in the country to be more strategic for raising people up and sending them than right where we live. I didn't want to pastor a church in Riley Durham. I wanted to pastor a church in Fort Lauderdale.

That's not a joke. I had a piece of property picked out that we were going to build a church on. I'd started to line up sponsors. You're like, why Fort Lauderdale? Because God and lost people are everywhere, but the beach is in Fort Lauderdale.

That was kind of my mentality. I wouldn't think in Riley Durham, but now, and just seeing the sovereignty of God, that this was the place that we could most effectively raise people up and send them out. This weekend, we got 160 of our members, members who are living overseas on one of these church planting teams.

It's one out of every 20 Summit members lives overseas on a church planting team. We say our families, we say the nations, we say our neighbors because we know our presence in this city is not incidental. We love our city.

We are committed to this city. We love our college campuses. They provide a lot of challenges for us. You know, in ministry, I was looking over our attendance records over the last 10 years the other day, and there's just like one season where we just exploded in growth. And I was looking at with one of our, and they're like, well, that was the season all the college students came.

Our attendance tripled in like three months, and our weekly given went up $13.18 on average. So there's a lot of challenges with that, but that's our field. These are our workplaces. The Research Triangle Park and all the places here on the triangle, these are our neighborhoods. They're our schools. Especially the broken parts, we consider them to be ours.

That's where Jesus's heart would have been. That's why we identify the homeless, the orphaned, the prisoner, the unwanted mother, the at-risk child, the dropout here, because we're responsible for them. We want to take care of them.

This is our city. So that's how we interpret that making disciples. The church exists to show grace. We do that by meeting people right where they are. You know, Noah wasn't special. He simply listened to and obeyed God.

That's something that we all can do. So with the first message in our new series called All In, you're listening to Pastor J.D. Greer and Summit Life. Today's message was titled Mission, and you can listen again or download the message transcript at jdgreer.com. Well, this Thanksgiving, our team here at Summit Life is thankful for you. And I have a special message that Pastor J.D. wanted to share with all of you listening today. You know, unfortunately, this year has not been quite the dramatic shift from 2020 that I think we'd all hope.

It's been a tough year. And yet you, our Summit Life audience, you have made this ministry possible again and again. And I would argue the need for ministries and outlets for the word to be preached like this one are more important now than ever, because so many people are still unable to get out and go about life the way that they are.

And for many of them, this is still their primary way of hearing the word of God taught and finding themselves spiritually enriched. We get story after story and letter after letter of people that God is using this in, especially during this difficult time. And so to everybody who has given anything at all this year, I just want to say, I want to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you. The ministry that your generosity has made possible is something I don't take for granted for one second. And I want to say a special thank you to those of you who've joined what we call our Gospel Partner Team. By committing to monthly giving, your generosity, what you're giving, it's translating into tangible ways that people are hearing the message and believing in their lives are changing.

Here at Summit Life, a lot of times we like to say that you don't give to Summit Life as much as you give through Summit Life. So thank you. Thank you. And thanks for making it possible for us to have an even happier Thanksgiving.

We really are thankful. And as a token of our thanks to those who give today, we would like to send you Pastor Jadie's newest study guide titled Be the Movement. It follows many of the same themes as our message today and finding your place in the mission of God. Remember to ask for your copy when you become a monthly gospel partner or when you make a one time donation of $25 or more. Call us today at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can give online at JadieGrier.com. I'm Molly Bidevich. So glad that you joined us today. We'll see you tomorrow as Pastor Jadie continues our study of Noah and shows us how his story applies to us today. That's Friday on Summit Life with Jadie Grier. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.