Follow Me

Today on Summit Life with Jiddy Greer. Only awe compels obedience. Until God is big to you, you'll never have the strength to obey Him.

In fact, for some of you, I would say that's your problem. You don't obey God. You don't seek God.

It's not because you're not self-disciplined enough. It's because God is distant to you. He's small. He's almost unreal. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. I am your host, Molly Vitovich. So we've all heard sermons about Jesus calling His disciples to follow me, right? Well, today pastor J.D. invites us to view Jesus the way His original disciples did, with overwhelming awe at His radical love. Because when we see this unique love of Jesus for us, we will respond with radical surrender to Him. Our lives and the world will never be the same. So grab your Bible and a pen and let's join pastor J.D.

now. Luke chapter five, if you got your Bible. Before we jump into the passage for this weekend, I want to throw out a picture for you. If you'll give me just a few minutes leading into the passage, a picture of who our church is and where we are going. Because I think Luke chapter five explains beautifully why we do this and why this church strives to be what it strives to be. Our mission statement at the Summit Church is following the Holy Spirit. We want to create a movement of disciple making disciples in Raleigh-Durham and RDU and then around the world. A movement of disciple making disciples.

We believe that that is more important than simply growing a big audience. You know, sometimes I think we think of the book of Acts as the good old days of the church. We think, you know, small groups regularly prayed through the night. Peter and Paul preached with breathtaking boldness before seething Caesars and cantankerous crowds. Martyrs cheerfully sacrificed their lives on the Colosseum.

Peter's hankies healed the sick and imposters got struck dead in the offering. And we think, man, that would have been awesome to be alive during that time. The church must have felt like this unstoppable powerful movement. The only problem church historians say is that had you been alive during this time, it would not have felt to you like an unstoppable movement.

Here's what I mean. The best estimates, the best estimates that historians can come up with to the total number of believers followers of Jesus that were alive in 99 A.D., that were at the end of the first century. Total number was 7,530, which I know is oddly specific, but that's what they say.

About 7,530 total. I want you to let that sink in. In fact, the early church father Origen, who was born late in the second century, described the Christian movement in his day, which would have been a couple hundred years after Jesus lived, he described it as still just a few scattered communities, geographically broad, but numerically insignificant. And yet, by 312 A.D., Christians have become so numerous in the Roman Empire that the Emperor Constantine felt like he needed to convert to Christianity for political reasons. Over half of the Roman Empire had converted to Christianity and to keep favor with the people, Constantine had to follow suit. So here's the question. How do you go from less than 10,000 in 100 A.D. to over half the Roman Empire by 312 A.D.?

I mean, think about it. The early church had very little compared to what we have today. They didn't have big budgets. They didn't have grand auditoriums like the one that I'm standing in. They didn't have publishing presses or TV station.

They had no representation in the Senate. But what they did have, church historians say, one thing they did have that we don't is an ingrained sense that the Great Commission belonged to everybody. They believed that every single Christian and every single church, every follower of Jesus was called to multiply.

They believe what I'm going to show you today from Luke chapter 5, and that made Christianity take off. Y'all remember that annoying math riddle from middle school? You remember this?

Hopefully. Where you were given a choice between receiving one penny and doubling it every single day or getting $10,000 a day? By the way, this is not $10,000. I can only get our CFO to give me $1,000. So it tells you a little bit about my trustworthiness. He's like, I'm not sure you'll come back with all of it. But here it is.

Okay? So this is $1,000. So let's just pretend this is $10,000. Kids, if you get a choice between you get $10,000 today and then $10,000 every single day for 30 days, that's option one, or you get one penny today and then we double it tomorrow and then double it the third day and then keep doubling it for 30 days, which of those two would you choose? Well, like most middle school students, I chose the $10,000 a day.

And then my math teacher explains to me that that was a foolish choice because it's true. After 30 days, I'd have $300,000. And I was like, I could buy so many pairs of Air Jordans with $300,000.

Every video game available on the Atari 2600 and even get one of those DeLoreans like Michael J. Fox drove him back to the future. So it seemed like a no brainer. But my math teacher explained that had I started with the penny, sure, after the first week, I would have only had a couple of bucks. But by the end of the month, I would have $10,737,418.23.

I asked our CFO if I could bring that amount up here, and he definitely said no. But that's a whole fleet of DeLoreans, right? That's the power of multiplication.

That's the power of multiplication. And that was what was going on in Luke 5. Did you know today, today there are more Baptist churches, there are more Southern Baptist churches in America than there are the number of Starbucks, Subways, and McDonald's combined? The question is, what if every single one of those churches saw that it was their responsibility to multiply? What if every believer in these churches saw the Great Commission as their responsibility? What if just a handful of people in each of those churches did?

Might not our great grandchildren look back on this time period and see these as the good old days? But what this means for us, if that's true, is that we've got to have a change of emphasis in the mission of the church. It means that we're not just going to be focused on church expansion, we're going to be focused on church multiplication.

We're not going to be focused primarily on growing a massive audience, we're going to be focused on creating a movement of disciple-making disciples. The church, I've heard it said, often functions in practice like an ACC football game. At an ACC football game, you've got 22 guys in desperate need of rest, surrounded by 22,000 cutouts of people in desperate need of exercise.

No, that's just 2020, but 22,000 people in desperate need of exercise. Or I've described it like this to you before. Say you were watching the most recent Super Bowl and Tom Brady. By the way, could we just stop for a minute and just acknowledge that's a 43-year-old man that has won his seventh Super Bowl.

Okay, that gives a lot of us mid-40s guys a lot of hope. All right, so here we go. Tom Brady, you're watching the Super Bowl and you watch him get his team out there. I don't know who it's going to be next year, but he gets everybody out there and he calls this play. And you don't know what the play is, but you watch all the players stand up and be like, wow, that was an amazing play. We have never heard a play caller like Tom Brady.

Is he not the greatest of all time pray call? And they clap and they go back and they sit down on the bench. And then after a couple of minutes, they run back out in the field, they get back in the huddle. He obviously calls another play and this time they're like, whoa, that was amazing. Literally, this is the greatest play caller of all time. I got chills when he was calling that play. And they call their friends and they podcast the play and they pass it around to all their friends. Are you going to listen to this guy call the play?

And they keep doing this over and over and over again. At some point you're going to look at this team and going to say, guys, run the play. The point is not how well Tom Brady calls the play. The point is running the play.

What I think we've got in a lot of churches like ours is you got a lot of people who were like, man, I love hearing the pastor call the play. The point is not me calling the play. The point is you running the play. The point is you running the play. The point is you running the play. And the play is not what takes place here on the weekend. The play is what you do in being a disciple making disciple in the world. So it's time for us to run the play. I think our dream for what our church should look like was summarized by a guy named Francis Chan, who made this statement.

I thought it was fantastic. Listen, long gone are the days when we should be content with a bunch of people who sing out loud, don't divorce and give to missions. I want to know that I can drop off any member of my church in a new city and that person could grow in Jesus, make disciples, and help start a church.

That's the vision. All this leads to Luke 5 and something I want to call you to here in a couple weeks. In a couple weeks I'm going to ask you, you've heard about this, to renew your commitment to being a disciple making disciple and to making disciples. One of the things we've talked about as we emerge here from lockdown is that we ought to look at this season like a church relaunch. When we come back we're going to ask, what new ministry should we be starting back?

Which ministry should we stop? Well part of this relaunch is I want you to recommit to being more than just a spectator here. I want you to commit to being part of the mission. I want you to commit to not just hearing the play but running the play and not just gathering together weekly in a huddle. For Jesus there was no such thing as a follower who wasn't actively engaged in the mission.

Let me show you. Luke chapter 5. As the crowd was pressing in on Jesus to hear God's word, he was standing by Lake Gennesaret, which was another name for the Sea of Galilee, which name you might have heard. He saw two boats at the edge of the lake.

The fishermen had left those boats and were washing their nets after a day of work. Verse 3, he got into one of the boats which belonged to Simon, which was another name for Peter. And he asked Simon, Peter, to put out a little from the land.

Then he sat down and was teaching the crowds from the boat. That served two purposes. First, it gave Jesus a little distance from the crowd, those who were wanting to touch him or get his autograph or take a selfie with him or whatever. Secondly, water of course serves as a natural amplifier.

If you've ever stood on a boat on a quiet lake and yelled at somebody across the water, the amplification is amazing. And so pushing back a little bit gave Jesus both benefits, a little distance and natural amplification. Verse 4, when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Peter, put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Now, here's what a New Testament fishing net actually looked like.

This is not an actual ancient Jewish one. This one comes from Dick's Sporting Goods, but it'll give you the picture. You've got these weights all around it. And what the fishermen would do is he would just cast it out, goes out into the thing, he pulls up the string, pulls up the fish.

And it was quite a bit bigger than this, but they would do this over and over again. Cast and pull, cast and pull, cast and pull. Peter has been out the entire night casting this net, drawing in fish, and he has caught nothing. So Jesus tells him, go out a little deeper and try again.

Here's the problem. That's what Peter has been doing all night, casting and picking up, casting and picking up. Peter is a professional, and he knows when the fish aren't biting, and Jesus telling him to give it just one more toss, frankly, is a little insulting. Plus, we know that Jesus was not a fisherman professionally. He was a carpenter, and Peter was probably like, listen, man, if I got a wobbly chair, I'll call you, but don't be giving me any advice about fishing. Verse 5, master, Simon Peter replied, respectfully, but I'm sure with a little irritation. We've worked hard all night long and caught nothing.

But if you say so, I'll let down the net. Y'all, sometimes I like to think about how much Peter's life changed in that pause. I call this the pause of eternal significance. Your heart is filled with doubt, but you decide to obey anyway. How much did Peter's life change because of that pause? Can you look back on your life and see places where your heart was filled with doubt, but you decided to obey anyway?

That pause of faith can make an eternal difference in your life. Verse 6, when they did this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets began to tear. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, get away from me because I'm a sinful man, Lord.

Verse 10, don't be afraid, Jesus told Simon. From now on, you're going to be catching people. This net, Peter, this net that used to just bring in fish that were only worth a few pennies. From now on, you're going to cast that out, and it's going to come back not with fish that's just worth enough money to get you through the day. It's going to be filled with the souls of people. It's going to have eternal significance.

Your life is going to become something valuable and meaningful that lasts even longer than your life. And so they brought the boats to land. They left everything, their nets and all, and they followed him. Let me give you, use this passage to give you three qualities that are necessary for you to be a disciple. All right, number one, verse one's the longest.

Number one, awe. Chapter five, verse eight, a sense of awe. In Luke, chapter five, Peter got overwhelmed by a glimpse of Jesus's power.

So overwhelmed, verse eight, that he fell at Jesus's knees and said, get away from me because I'm a sinful man, Lord. Now that might seem like an odd reaction to you until you really think about it. You see, when you're in the presence of true greatness, you ever notice that your heart is mixed? It's filled with a weird mixture of attraction and repulsion at the same time.

You're not sure if you want to draw close or run away. If you've ever been in the presence of true greatness, you've had those conflicting feelings. I've told you before, when I was in middle school, I got to meet Michael Jordan. I don't know if you could actually call it meeting Michael Jordan, but that's how I see it. He came to a golf tournament. And this was, by the way, when I was in middle school, he was in the height of his fame. You know, everything was just getting going with him. And so he was the hottest thing around. And so found out it was going to be this golf tournament.

I go to this golf tournament. My best friend and I looked all day long for Michael Jordan. We could not find him.

So whatever his security detail was had successfully hit him from people like me. So the whole day felt like a waste. I'm waiting on my mom and dad to come pick me up at the end of the day. And I'm standing there along the road. And I see coming down the road, this purple Porsche Carrera that I knew it was like, that's Michael Jordan's car. So I turned and yelled at my best friend who was getting something from the concession stand. I was like, hey, it's Michael Jordan.

So a group of people heard me. They all come running up. Michael Jordan comes right, starts good, gets really slow. He lowers the window down, that dark tinted window.

He's obviously looking for somebody, not me. And he lowers the window down. He's going about five miles an hour. So I walk on the side of the car. My best friend takes me from behind, shoves me into the car.

So I'm now like waist up, you know, leaning through the passenger window. I was this close to that man's face. I could have licked him.

And one of my lifelong regrets is that I did not. And I had all these things I just wanted to say to Michael Jordan. And in that moment, I couldn't say any of them. I remember he's driving his car. He looks over at me and he says, get out of my car. And I said, yes, sir, Mr. Jordan. And I pushed back out of that car and I turned around in that crowd. And I was like, he talked to me.

We had a conversation, right? Attraction, I just overwhelmed at his greatness. But there's also something about their greatness that just makes you feel really, really small, right? In the presence of true greatness, you're both attracted and you also want to run away. That's what happens to Peter. When Jesus calls people to follow him, he often begins with this overwhelming vision of terror.

I mean, think about it. Think about the stories in the Bible that you might remember. God called the Old Testament prophet Isaiah to be his messenger.

And what was the first thing he gave to him? Isaiah 6, a glimpse of his glory. So much so that Isaiah cries out, woe is me, which means let me be cursed.

Let me be damned because I'm a man of unspeakable filth and I've got a dirty mouth. When Jesus called the apostle John, Revelation 1, to prepare his church for what was ahead, he gave to John a glimpse of his glory. And so that John, who had been a friend of Jesus's in his earthly life, John was so overwhelmed at what he saw that he fell on his face, just positive that he was going to die. I'll tell you that when God called me, he did it by first giving to me a glimpse of his awesome glory. And just his awesome power, how long eternity was, how terrible it would be to go into eternity as his enemy. And as a teenager, that kept me up late many a night, scared to death of dying and meeting God and being under his judgment. Question is, why does Jesus do this?

Why does he sometimes terrify you before he calls you? Here's the reason. It's because only awe compels obedience. Until God is big to you, you'll never have the strength to obey him. In fact, for some of you, I would say that's your problem. You don't obey God, you don't seek God. It's not because you're not self-disciplined enough. It's because God is distant to you. He's small.

He's almost unreal. One of my favorite stories I love to tell here is when I got invited a few years ago by a group of fraternity guys that went to the summit church from UNC Chapel Hill, they invited me to come into their fraternity and do a Bible study. Well, I definitely want to take that opportunity. So I went in and I was doing this Bible study and the subject they had chosen was sexual temptation. And I know this is all ironic, but I'm in there doing a Bible study on sexual temptation. And I made a comment, just kind of offhandedly, that you could turn off your sexual desire.

You could turn it on and off like a light switch. I'll never forget the look in these 19-year-old guy's faces when I made that statement. One of them actually shook his head. He said, bro, that's crazy talk. And I was like, no, no, that's true. He said, we knew that your body changed when you got older, but we had no idea that when you were 40 years old, you would say something that dumb. And I said, no, even for you at 19 years old, you could turn your sexual desire on and off like a light switch. The guy said, that's crazy. I said, no, it's not. Here, let me prove it to you. Say you're with your girlfriend and you're at her apartment, you're by yourselves and lights are down low and one thing's leading to another.

I don't know what y'all call it anymore, but when I was in college, it had something to do with a baby. And I said, it's a baseball diamond. And so you're working your way around the baseball diamond and you get to that point, the point of no return. They're all nodding their heads. I'm like, you feel like at this point, there's no pulling back.

They're all nodding their heads. Like that's what we're talking about right there. I was like, okay, there you are in the apartment, right? You're at the height of your passion and all of a sudden in that moment, into the room burst this girl's Navy seal father, who's just gotten back from Afghanistan off like a light switch. And the guy was like, oh yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I was like, no, what happened in that moment? Is it that's, you know, like you just lost all your sexual desire? No, the problem in that moment or the solution was your sexual desire got outweighed by a larger desire, the desire to stay alive, right?

To keep all the limbs of your body attached to your body, whatever. And I told them, I said, the problem with you guys is not that your sexual desires are so big. The problem is that your God is so small. When God becomes big to you, when you have a sense of awe over God, then you'll have the strength to obey. It's why I tell you, if you got an obedience problem this weekend, it begins as an awe problem. God's just simply not big enough to you.

Big enough to you. Aw, it's the first quality of the disciple. There are three qualities needed to be a disciple, according to Pastor J.D.

Greer. A sense of awe is the first one. There's much more to come, so be sure to join us again tomorrow for the conclusion of this message titled, Follow Me. If you missed any part of today's teaching or would like to study the full unedited transcript, visit us anytime at jdgreer.com. Hey, J.D., we have a handy new resource this month to help us memorize 50 verses in the Bible this year, but I know what some people are thinking. Scripture memory seems like an activity for kids, so why is it important for us as adults to keep up this practice too?

You know, Molly, I could list probably a dozen reasons off the top of my head that this is an essential thing to do. It's one of the most neglected, overlooked disciplines in the Christian life. Thankfully, I was raised in a church and by parents who, they just, I mean, they drilled Scripture memory into me through, you know, memorizing whole chapters and, you know, Awana, where we dress up in little paramilitary uniforms and they give us candy and medals for memorizing Scripture. I'm so grateful for that because in moments of darkness and temptation, doubt, despair, the Holy Spirit takes Scripture verses. I learned some of them when I was a kid, and He brings them to mind to counteract these lies.

What I've learned is that the Spirit of God can do amazing things in your heart, but He cannot use what you haven't put in there. And so, Scripture memory is something we want to encourage here at Summit Life. Jesus memorized Scripture.

We know that because of how frequently He quoted it. If Jesus needed it in His life to do spiritual battle, then we certainly do as well. So what we've done is we've produced a Scripture memory card set. It's 50 cards that have some just incredible promises, some warnings, some just gospel truth that will counteract Satan's lies in your life. We would love to give these to you. Psalm 119 11 says, I've stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

This is a great tool to enable you to do that. Make sure you get a set of our new Summit Life Scripture memory cards. They're different than the ones last year. Get the ones for this year that will take you through one verse a week for the entire year of 2022. You can get yours today at jdgrier.com. Colossians 3 16 tells us to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. Deuteronomy 6 4 through 9 tells us to bind God's law on our foreheads, teach it to our children, talk about it wherever we go, and make it an integral part of our lives.

We must know Scripture first before we can teach it or apply it as God desires. This is a unique set of cards that we'd love to give you today, and it comes with our thanks when you donate to support this program. Summit Life is kept on the radio and online by listeners like you.

So when you tune in, you've got another listener to thank for the message, and you can extend that gift to someone else by doing your part to keep this program going. Give today and remember to ask about becoming a regular monthly gospel partner when you request your set of cards. Call 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220. Or you can donate and request this resource online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us Wednesday when we continue our look at the three necessary qualities to be a disciple of Jesus and what it would look like if all of us committed to fully surrendering control of our lives for the sake of the gospel. We'll see you Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.