April 19, 2022 9:00 am
In the parables, Jesus reveals the beauty of the gospel, but only for those whose heart is in a posture to perceive it—only for those who truly listen.
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Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. It's true once saved always saved. It's true that once Jesus grabs hold of your heart he's never going to let you go but it's also true that once saved forever following. It means that once Jesus has really transformed you and once he's saved you yes you'll fall into sin from time to time but he will always bring you back because the proof of saving faith is not intensity at the beginning it is enduring to the ends. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.
Greer. I'm your host Molly Vidovich. Yesterday on Summit Life we began a new teaching series about the parables of Jesus titled Listen. In these stories Jesus reveals the beauty of the gospel but only for those whose heart is in a posture to perceive and understand it. Only for those who truly listen. And if you recall we started by hearing a parable that's actually about parables.
Seems like a good way to start the series right? So if you missed yesterday's program be sure to catch up right away at jdegreer.com but for now grab your bible and a pen and let's join pastor J.D. as he teaches from Matthew chapter 13. I thought of the high school student that I sometimes see who goes off to college and stops believing in God right and but here's what I know about them when they were in high school and they did believe in God other people's opinions mattered a whole lot more to them than the God that they believed in so it's no wonder that when they went to college they lost the knowledge of God because God said the reason you lost the knowledge of me is because when you did believe in me other people's opinions matter more to you that word weight I've told you and uh in Hebrew what Jesus would have been using probably to speak there chabod means the word glory means weight it means a weightiness how much weight do you give other people's opinions or God's opinions when somebody does this it usually means that their unbelief is not a matter of their head it's a matter of their heart it was their heart that was wrong that made their head go wrong an idolatrous heart almost always will lead to an unbelieving head Tim Keller one of my favorite pastors he says that when when somebody that's young comes to him and says they don't believe in God anymore he said my first if they grew up in church he said my first question is who you start who did you start sleeping with he said it almost always knocks them off guard he says but 99 times out of 100 there's an answer to that question and it was ultimately this heart away from God that led to the doubt that plagued their mind maybe that's been happening to you you see my point in all this I'll say it again insight into truth is as much a matter of the heart as it is of the head so Jesus sometimes spoke in parables so that those with a heart to know God could see the truth and everybody else with the wrong kind of heart would be confused Paul would say the exact same thing another way in second Corinthians 2 we are he says the pleasing aroma of Christ to those who are being saved and to those who are perishing we are the stench of death talk about a distinction one smell to some it's a pleasing aroma of life to others it's a stench of death the condition of your heart determines which one of those reactions that the gospel will produce in you the same sun that hardens the clay softens the wax the difference is not in the sun that shines on it the difference is in the material on upon which it shines upon that's the whole point Jesus is making with this parable the condition of your heart is more important than the intelligence of your head which by the way is good news for some of you amen because maybe you're not that smart but you can submit your heart to God and God will show you the truth so listen to Jesus explain listen to him unpack the specifics of the parable he's going to interpret this one for us which he doesn't always do so this is a special treat verse 18 so listen to the parable of the sower you see when anyone hears the word about the kingdom and doesn't understand it the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart this is the seed that is sown along the path we're going to look at four different types of soil really quickly that just illustrate the big truth that we just unpacked here's the first kind of soil we're going to call it the hard heart the hard heart this is the person who is interested in what the word of God says just not that much and so they leave here and almost immediately after they leave satan like a bird like a bird snatches away the word snatches away the ideas that they were having snatches away their thoughts by planting doubts in their minds or maybe he just distracts them with something else by the way not necessarily a bad thing it's not a bad thing he uses to distract you just something that takes your mind off of what God says some of you that's going to be your experience today you're sitting here right now in our church thinking oh this is really interesting i've never really thought about this before this is speaking to me and you're sincere in that thought but as soon as we dismiss you're going to start thinking about where you're going to go eat and that's going to be the end of it others if you are going to sit here and think man i so wish so and so we're here to hear this and that concern for them is good but the problem is that thought is from your enemy and he is using that distraction to catch you to stop thinking about it and thinking about what the word of God is saying to you put on your own oxygen mask before you try to help somebody else distraction sends more people to hell than doubt ever has because satan will do anything to get your mind off of what the word of God is saying to you so when moses gave the word of God to the children of israel he says this is not a curiosity this is your life it is your life it is a matter of life and death don't be distracted by your enemy here is verse 20 the second thing on the one shown on rocky ground this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy but he has no root and is short-lived when distress or persecution comes because of the word well then immediately he falls away let's call number two the shallow heart the shallow heart this is the person who hears the message is initially moved by it but whatever decision they make a lot of times it's an emotional decision a lot of times it's a sincere decision it just doesn't last that long and that's because the root doesn't go very deep and the slightest difficulty the slightest challenge and obedience the slightest persecution is going to make that wither away i used to see this all the time graphically illustrated when i used to speak at a lot of student camps in the summer i still do one or two weeks of summer but i used to do it a lot more and i would always see it there's a certain logic by the way you know it's a new youth camp a little formula basically you keep the kids up all night every night until you get to thursday then they're emotionally spent they're worn out they're you know just kind of hanging on by a thread then you play an extra long music set then i get up and tell some emotional story and give an invitation and the whole camp gets saved that's how it works and i would watch it from up you know here and i would see like you like a row of teenagers and i would watch one in the end would you know kind of start crying and then you get it's just like a disease but it goes all the way down and they're all crying then they all come up together they huddle up they cry they weep they blow schnitzels on each other they vow to be missionaries they're not going to date till they're 35 just a whole bit right and that really sincere commitment to jesus which felt sincere in the moment it lasts for about an hour and a half until the emotion wears off because they were never really into jesus they were just into this emotion and the slightest challenge and difficulty the slightest challenge and difficulty showed that the root didn't go that deep you see a lot of people a lot of you respond to an emotional moment and that's great you should respond it calls for emotion but the point is is is your trust in jesus so deep in your heart that you'll go through whatever it takes to be able to possess him what's often confusing about these people is that they look so convincing when they make the decision because they look so sincere and the tears flow down their face in a book i wrote a few years ago called stop asking jesus into your heart i tell a story in there of a guy that i shared christ with a few years ago that would go into this category just sort of slightly different way he was um it was at the gym that i was working out at the time the gym i was working out had a basketball court so just him and i out there and so we started playing one-on-one together now and he sort of painted a picture of this guy to you he um he was about my age he had hair down to his lower back back here tattooed every square of his body was tattooed that i could see not a not a i don't know what his skin color was it was just you know everything was tattooed then there was uh appear everything was pierced on him looked like he'd fallen face first in a tackle box and nothing wrong by the way with any of that okay i'm just painting you a picture he cussed every other word just threw in gratuitous curse words for i don't know why just like salt and pepper on his meal they didn't even make any sense the point is i'm painting you a picture of a guy that is not the kind of guy that you would think is regular in a church so i start sharing my testimony with him because that's what you're supposed to do i get about three lines into my testimony he grabs the ball puts it on his hip and he says dude are you trying to witness to me now i was shocked he knew the word witness because that's insider language right i was like maybe and he said um he said that's fantastic he says man nobody is nobody has shared christ with me in years and he said he said he said man let me tell you you're wasting your breath he said because he said uh i grew up in church uh he said i got saved at youth camp i was like was i the speaker and he said um he said i got saved in youth camp and he goes man i i just didn't get saved i got really saved he goes i came home from student camp and i was like jesus champion i started a bible study at my school i led other kids to christ i went on mission trips i memorized verses i was a president of my youth group he said i got into high school and he said then it started to kind of fade away a little bit i started to lose interest he said then i went to college and i just quit believing in god altogether he said i'll be honest i started to sleep with people and i really like you know the way he described it i really liked sex and so i just decided i'd put my belief in god on hold for a while and then i just came to the point that i didn't believe he said he said but here here's what's awesome about this he said i was saved in a baptist church he says no you're a baptist right and i was like can you just look at me and tell is that it's something that i give off and i know shirt tucked in today makes me look like that but but i'm not sure when i'm tucked there but uh you know it's like i was like how do you know he said well i just i know you are and he said um he said so he said in a baptist church he said we believe once saved always saved right and he was like no comment he said um he said because what that means is even if you're right even if jesus really is the way the truth and the life i got saved he goes so even the fact that i don't believe in god he said that doesn't matter because once saved always saved and so even if you're right i'm secure in heaven now some of church how do you respond to that person right i mean like i had lots of seminary classes none of them ever prepared me for that moment there what i ended up talking about with him was this parable of the seeds because what you've got is somebody whose faith springs up quickly and it looks so convincing at the beginning but one of the signs of saving faith is not its intensity at the beginning that can be misleading the sign of saving faith is its endurance to the end and there are some of you who started so well and it was so sincere and it was so explosive but you're no longer walking with jesus and that means that whatever decision you made back three four ten twenty years ago was the wrong one because one of the signs of saving faith is that it goes deep enough that it lasts your entire life now i know what some of you are asking right here you're like well wait a minute can't you backslide yes you can all right king david uh you know king david committed adultery with his best friend's wife had his best friend murdered and lied about it for a year that's varsity level backsliding king david was a christian but see the point there is god still brought david back eventually you can't wander but so far before god brings you back there are some of you that are revealing that you never really became christians you were just a shallow soil because you sprang up quickly and then you faded away the way i say it and stop asking jesus into your heart is this it's true once saved always saved it's true that once jesus grabs hold of your heart he's never going to let you go but it's also true that once saved forever following it means that once jesus has really transformed you and once he's saved you yes you'll fall into sin from time to time but he will always bring you back because the proof of saving faith is not intensity at the beginning it is enduring to the ends this is summit life with pastor jd greer and a message titled a parable about parables we'll be right back with the rest of our teaching here in just a moment but i wanted to share a little bit about our current resource this month we've just begun this new teaching series titled listen and our gift to you this month follows right along with that program so if you have a desire to dig deeper into these lessons jesus has for us through his parables our new 10-day devotional study guide will bring comfort and understanding to some of his perhaps harder to understand principles make these lessons personal and drive them deep by reaching out today in support of this ministry give us a call at 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgreer.com and get your copy today now let's return for the conclusion of today's message here's pastor jd here's our third kind of soul verse 22 another one sown among the thorns this is the one who hears the word but the worries of this age and the deceitfulness of wealth choke out the word and the word becomes unfruitful so let's write down number three the divided heart this is the person jesus says who hears the word he hears the word he responds to it sincerely he wants to follow it but other things begin to choke it out specifically he says the worries of this age the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth you say what does that mean exactly well let's unpack that here's what it looks like it means for some of you you're genuinely interested in what i'm saying up here you would love for god to be a part of your life god would even you would even say is important to you but as soon as you get out of here what's going to consume your mind are the bills that you have to pay which are important but you're going to get consumed with the deceitfulness of riches the the pursuit of wealth and more or what other people are thinking about you so the point is you don't deny god's word it just takes a back seat in your life or you like being here in church and hearing the word of god you like your family hearing the word of god but you know what your kids got travel soccer and your kids got dance and so you just can't really afford to come that much you come every once in a while and you wish you could come more but but the cares of the world oh those things are a little more important than the word of god or how about this one you gotta you got that new lake house or beach house and man you just love your weekends there you just like and god wants you to enjoy nature right so so you'd rather you'd rather devote yourself there than devote yourself to hearing the word of god there's nothing wrong with any of these things i'm talking about right so don't hear me say that what i'm saying is for some of you it just reveals a priority you place on the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and not on the hearing of the word of god and that's going to reveal itself and how the word dies in your life for many high school students here they're listening this weekend and they're saying they're sitting there saying yeah this is important and i want god to be a part of my life but the moment that you leave here maybe even while i'm talking you're kind of looking down at your phone and you're checking that text message stream and who's saying what or snapchat or whatever and you're going to be more consumed about those things not bad things but those things that choke out the word of god in your life some of you are not going to follow through on obedience because of the cares of the world it's just too inconvenient for you to get involved in ministry or to go all the way or go on mission or tell people about jesus you won't obey god with your first fruits you won't give them your first and your best and and tithe because there's so much other stuff that you want to afford that you can't afford yet so you got to hold on to your money and it's never it's just not a conscious decision that you make to reject god it's just that god's word gets crowded out in your life by other good things distraction sends more people to hell than doubt ever has by the way this is not just for those of you who are not christian for me i thought this week about how many times god will speak something to my heart and i i'm sincere i'm like yes i need to and then immediately almost as soon as i get up i out of my chair and stop reading the bible i'll i'll just get consumed with what everybody's saying about me or what i want to afford or or how much money that you know i i need for this or that when god speaks to you you have to obey definitively and clearly and it has to get not just a top place in your life but the unchallenged first place period or it won't grow in you at all here's the last soil number four here then there's the kind that's sown on the good ground this is the one who hears and understands the word who does produce fruit and yields some 100 some 60 and some 30 times what was sown let's call this one number four the open heart the thing that i want to focus on here with the open heart is how fruitful the seed is when it goes in you see agriculturalists farmers scholars tell us that in those days at least the average yield of a seed was about eight times eight times so when jesus says 160 even 30 he is talking about something that is nothing short of miraculous something that people look i mean when the farmers that jesus was talking to would have heard this it would have been like whoa 30 60 100 times that's divine it's talking about a yield in your life of fruit that other people can notice and recognize there's something at work in you that is not of you that it is something that god is doing in you it starts to show up in how you treat people it shows up in your generosity of spirit it shows up in how quickly you forgive it reveals itself in your excitement for worship and how you tell other people about jesus it is miraculous other people see there is something that is happening in you and what jesus is saying is if there's not that miraculous evidence it's probably because jesus isn't really there you all listen god's word is powerful it was one of god's words that created the entire universe as we know it one word created all this when god's word comes into your heart it will make a change in fact in a few verses jesus is going to tell another parable and in this parable he's going to compare it to an acorn little acorns you crush under your feet and destroy but when that acorn gets planted it grows up into an oak tree that is larger than you can imagine i mean here you got a tree that's roots can split a sidewalk that you could never do in your own strength yet that started with a little tiny seed that you could crush under your foot and jesus said that's what the word of god is like it looks insignificant you can even ignore it you can get up and go to the bathroom when it's being taught you can just totally blow it off but that word comes in your heart if it takes root it will grow in your heart into something that will split addiction it will split depression it will break through your unbelief and it will produce in you a harvest of righteousness if jesus's word is taken root in you see if his word is taken root in you we will be able to see it now hear me i'm not trying to get you to compare yourself to the best christian you know and say well you must not be saved because you're not like them in fact it's interesting admit that jesus says 160 and 30 because here you got people who only have 30 fold you know in creation they're looking at people with 100 they're like what's wrong with me it doesn't mean that they're not really saved it just means that god you know grows at a different rates in people's lives i don't want you comparing yourself to other people what i do want you to do is i want you to be able to say yes god's word has a powerful effect on me and it's showing up in how i treat people it's showing up in every possible way in my life reading about the power of the word always gets me excited about sharing it with others i can't go through this without just being like i just want to preach all the time i don't want to tell people about this work because i love watching the word could work in people's lives i love watching that acorn split the cement and slabs of depression and addiction and a pride and apathy i know a story i told some of you this uh last week one of the services there was uh somebody who came the week before easter here a girl who came that was invited by somebody she hadn't been in church in a long time and came in and that was the week we were talking about the cross and she said it just she got i don't know what it did to me but it just overwhelmed me and opened my eyes and so i came back to the good friday service by myself just showed up there then i came back uh you know the next day for the first easter service four o'clock at briar creek i showed up there then i stuck around for the 5 30 service just sat through that service too then i came back the next day and went to the services that day then i went home and watched the service you know three or four times online and then showed up at starting point uh which is you know kind of the first step we have inviting people in showed up and said i think i'm ready to get saved well my mom and dad happen to be the table host of that table and they're like we think you already are saved we'll just kind of commemorate that right here because obviously god has gotten a hold of you that's the word of god in somebody's life or i think about the story i heard about one of our students who came to christ here last year only christian in his family starts praying for his family for his mom and dad to come to faith in christ on easter sunday brings his dad they walk the aisle together and he baptizes his dad at one of our campuses that is the multiplying power of the word of god and i don't see how you can't want that to be reproduced in the life of everybody you know and i can't help but think about neighborhoods and nations all over the world where we want to see the word of god go to work don't we want to be moved to see this multiply in every highway and hedge and don't we yearn to see it happening in the the places all over the world where we send our people to go and see the word of god multiply so let me just ask you to consider which soil which soil are you i've given you a number of different ones let's let's turn it back here first are you the kind that's just been easily distracted you got good intentions but there's just so many other things that crowd out your focus on the word or maybe you're the kind that you would like to obey but you'll be honest this weekend that the cares of the world and the cares of what other people say it's choking it out in your life and maybe you today need to draw a line in the sand so to speak where you say today things change and god and his word are going to get the place in my life that they deserve let me raise the stakes for you just a little bit the seed that we keep talking about what is the seed jesus would call himself the seed he was the seed he said that went into the soil and died so that he could produce in us a harvest of righteousness and what that means is that you are hearing a message about your father god who died for you who was tortured and executed and died for you you can't treat that with a passing glance it demands a decision and for you just to get up out of here and go think about what you're going to eat after this that is in itself a decision it is an insult to god that says it's just not that important it is time for some of you to look jesus christ in the face and acknowledge what he did for you and respond in the way that he deserves for you to respond to him my question is are you ready to respond like that take the incredibly bold and humble step of drawing the line in the sand you're listening to summit life with pastor author and teacher jd greer jd i think we've gathered the big idea of what this new series titled listen is about but tell us a bit more about it what does this new series actually deal with well as you've probably realized it's about the parables of jesus that was one of the key things jesus would always say listen listen and listen not just with your ears but listen with your heart these are stories so simple that a child can understand the plot line yet they are so profound that we can never really exhaust the the wealth of their wisdom jesus was a master storyteller and the stories that he he conveyed had behind them eternal truths we want to give you a copy of this new book of 10 devotionals that i've written that'll help you refocus on the gospel and the teachings of jesus following right along with the five parables we are covering in this series we would love for you to reserve your copy at jdgreer.com head over there right now or when you get home and uh and take a look at it and and get your copy today because i think you'll find it to be a blessing we believe this devotional book will help you feel more confident and more joyful in reading the bible and applying it to your life right away when you give 35 or more today we'll send you a copy of listen up as our way of saying thanks for your generous support give us a call at 866-335-5220 or you can give and request the book online at jdgreer.com i'm molly vinovich encouraging you to join us tomorrow as we continue our new teaching series titled listen be sure to join us wednesday on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-04-29 21:36:46 / 2023-04-29 21:48:01 / 11