Unless We Are Sent, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Whether you're a dentist or a doctor or a stay-at-home mom, whether you're a teacher, of all the different callings you have in your life, the one you're sure of is you were called to make Jesus known to the people around you and around the world. We talk about, I don't know what God's will is for my life.

I know what a big part of it is. The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance and then won't come to repentance unless you tell them. Happy Friday, and welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. The Bible says, faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. When you hear that, does it give you any urgency about sharing the gospel with people in your community or even around the world? Today, Pastor J.D. Greer leans into the truth that those of us who have heard and embraced the message of the gospel have an obligation to share it, to send or be sent. So grab your Bible and open to Romans chapter 10, and let's rejoin Pastor J.D.

now as he concludes our teaching titled, Unless We Are Sent. How can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent?

Listen, let me tell you a very sobering truth. I want you to get your mind around this. In the New Testament, the gospel is only ever preached through a human mouth. Search the book of Acts from start to finish. You will not find a single example of the gospel being shared apart from a human instrument. Even in the story of Cornelius, the angel doesn't share the gospel.

I mean, wouldn't that have been much more efficient? The angel's already there. He's already got Cornelius' attention to be like, hey man, why don't you go ahead and explain to you the gospel?

Here's how to believe. But the angel won't do it because it's seemingly, it's against the rules. Only a human instrument can share the gospel. The gospel can only ever be proclaimed through a human mouth. Do you understand that God may be working in somebody out there because he intends to raise you up and send you to them?

The reason he stirs his people is because he has people that he is preparing around the world. People can only be saved by hearing about Jesus and they can only hear about him through the witness of a believer, which leads to Paul's final premise here. Premise number six, the task is urgent.

The task is urgent. If all this is true, you know, if what Romans teaches us about the gospel is true, what must this mean for our lives? At most, one third of the people on earth claim to be Christians. That means there are at least four and a half billion people on the planet who confess openly that they're not Christians. The Joshua Project, which is a missions research company, estimates that about half of those, half of that four and a half billion have little to no access to the gospel. That means that right now, this morning, they have no real chance, as it stands right now, no real chance to ever hear the gospel before they die. They say that if you line these people up five across, right, they would circle the globe five times.

I mean, you who hear the gospel every single weekend, you who sit in a nation of gospel privileges where you can turn on the radio and the TV and pick up a book and turn on one of a bazillion podcasts and come here and hear the gospel every weekend, I want you to get in your mind a group of people five across, circling the planet five times that are marching headlong into destruction without a single chance of escaping what is in front of them because they just have never heard. And I want you to reflect on this, that every single one of those is somebody that is made in the image of God, just like you. That means that they have the same emotions that you do. That means that they know what it's like to be lonely and afraid. That means they love their children and care about their children, just like you care about yours.

That means they were loved and cared for by their parents, by you were probably cared for about yours. It means that going to hell for them is every bit the tragedy that it would be for you. Don't turn 2.2 billion people, don't turn that number into a statistic. We're not talking about a demographic problem. Paul says, we're talking about people just like you that are no less worthy of the gospel than you were when you heard it.

And it's just not right. It's just not right, Paul says, for you to hear so much and do so little to those who have heard nothing at all. College students, you care about suffering and oppression.

It's one of the great things about your generation. You care about helping provide clean water in Africa, advocating for education reform or women's rights in the Middle East. You care about marginalized and suffering groups right here in our own country and that's awesome. But you understand that the worst kind of suffering is eternal suffering, right? You understand that?

And you know that you're not gonna hear about that in your college classrooms and they're not gonna do a special about it on CNN. But if you understand what Romans is teaching you, the worst kind of suffering of all is eternal suffering and the thing that people who care about the world and believe the gospel devote their lives to is making sure other people have a chance to hear and believe. So yeah, we go and we dig wells for clean water and yes, we provide hospitals and yes, we get involved in education and yes, we advocate for people's rights but most of all, we proclaim the gospel to them that is the one way by which they can be saved. So to the church, Paul says, how can they call on him in whom they have not heard and how can they hear unless they're sin? This is just an echo and a fulfillment of what he'd said in chapter one, Romans 1.14. Paul said, I feel like I'm under obligation to both the Greeks and the barbarians. Those are people he'd never, never really met, never spent any time with. I'm under obligation both to the wise and to the ignorant. I explained to you back in Romans one that the word he uses there under obligation literally means debtor, like you owe somebody money. And I asked you this question, he'd never met these people.

How could he feel under obligation to a group of people he's never met? You remember our answer to that question? Our answer was twofold. There's two ways to be in debt. You can owe somebody money cause you borrowed it from them.

The other way you can be in debt, listen, is you can be given money for somebody else. And so you owe it to give it to them. Say you worked as the CEO of Feed the Children and you'd just been given a huge donation of a million dollars, a million dollars to help feed the children. What would people think about you if you decided to just stash that money away for awhile, improve your house a little bit, let it gain some interest and live off the interest? You would say to yourself, that's not your money.

You're stealing it. You owe it to others to share it because they were the reason the money was given. That is why that money was given to you. That's what Paul feels about the gospel message. You were no more worthy of it than anybody around the world, but God blessed you with it. And with the privilege of hearing the gospel comes the responsibility of spreading the gospel. And to not do that is stealing. Believing the gospel comes with an obligation to the gospel.

It's just not fair if you receive so much that you did not deserve and do so little for those who are no less worthy than you. You see, it was this reality that God used when he called me into ministry. I've told you this story before, but I was reading, studying the book of Romans as a junior in college, headed into some other career field.

It wasn't a bad career field, but I was headed there and I went through the book of Romans and God just illuminated my mind to see that yes, the whole world was condemned. And yes, God had offered a way of salvation that he did not owe to anybody. And yes, I knew about it.

And yes, I was under obligation to go and tell them. And I knew in that moment, there was another defining moment for me that shaped my life. I knew that I had three options with this truth. The first option was I could deny this truth. We call this the path to liberalism. It's so uncomfortable that we just start changing different parts of the Bible so it feels better to us.

Y'all, I'm telling you, that path is so inviting. And I was standing right there on the edge of it because I didn't want the discomfort that came from believing that. But I also knew that once you do that, there really is no end. And once you start changing parts of the Bible to fit what you want to believe, then ultimately that makes you God, not God. Because the Bible is not a solid bar where you take what you want and you leave what you want.

If he's God, he wrote the book, then it's either all true or none of it's true. So I knew that that really wasn't an option. The second option I knew was to ignore it, right?

To kind of not give mental assent to it, but live like it wasn't true. And that seemed to be what most of the church was doing. Oh, let's come to church and let's, you know, let's do a little change in offering plate. Let's pretend like we're just out trying to recruit people from their club into our club and it'd be awesome. And our church is growing. And I was like, that just doesn't make any sense.

Is this true or is it not true? We're not talking about recruiting people for a club. We're talking about eternity and we're talking about the gospel, which led me to the third option, which I knew was I could embrace it and say, God, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this. I know that I'm supposed to play a role. I don't know what job I'm supposed to go to, but I know that whatever job I go into, I am called to make the message of the gospel plain and to help people understand it. You don't have to pray about that. That's what God's calling is on your life. Whether you're a dentist or a doctor or a stay at home mom, whether you're a teacher, whether you are, whatever you are, of all the different callings you have in your life, the one you're sure of is you were called to make Jesus known to the people around you and around the world. That's what we're called to, right? We talk about, I don't know what God's will is for my life.

I know what a big part of it is, right? The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance and they won't come to repentance unless you tell them. That's what Paul is saying.

I've told you before, it's kind of like, you know, if you're walking through downtown Raleigh and you go by a railroad track and there's a child on the railroad tracks, who's gotten confused and hurt and there's a train coming and you see the train's gonna run over the kid, right? You don't stop at that moment, get down on your knees and say, Lord, I just pray to you, show me what your will is in this moment. God, I pray to you, give me a piece of my heart about what I'm supposed to do. I'd be like, no, we know what God's will is, pick the child up. The Lord is not willing that any should perish.

He wants all to come to repentance. We know what God and his will is. I used to think it was unfair for God to condemn those who hadn't heard. Now I see from Romans that that is not true.

That is not true. It is fair because we've all rejected God and the gospel is an undeserved second chance. But what I see now is that what is unfair is that for those of us who have heard so much to do so little to those who have heard nothing at all about a God who has done everything. So let me conclude with a few practical steps that I have for our church because of this. Number one, we need to pray that people in our church will say yes to God. Summit family, are we not right to ask God to raise up people from our midst for this great task? I know God hadn't called everybody, but I think he's called a lot of us. Didn't Jesus command us? Did he say Matthew 9, the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest that he will send out laborers into that harvest. We have to start with prayer, daily prayer that God will raise up messengers from our midst, our sons and our daughters and people in our small groups and maybe us.

You see what I realized is that's gonna come in three varieties, I think, primarily for our church. Number one, there are those of you who will leverage your career to go overseas. I was with a summit team over there of people who sat right here in one of our campuses. Some of them became Christians here. They got this vision of how God had given them a skill that they could take overseas and pay for themselves to be there and be a part of a church planting team.

I saw a group of people that are living in one of the most unreached places on planet earth that have a thriving community built. They're part of a great church that is growing and reaching people. They have relationships where they are sharing the gospel and seeing people come to faith in Christ that may never have heard apart from them being there.

And I understood that this is sustainable and we can do this and God's gonna call some of you into that. There are some of you that are not gonna be called to leverage your career. Number two, there's some of you that will be called to leave your career, which means you're gonna sense that God is calling you to walk away from a very lucrative career and just plunge yourself full-time into this. I'm thinking of people on our teams who had very promising careers here, very promising careers here in the United States, but walked away from that because they knew God was telling them to devote themselves wholeheartedly to that task.

He uses people like Hudson Taylor and Adoniram Judson in history have done that. There are some of you thirdly who will be called to lead, leverage, leave and lead. We need seminary students and church leaders who will go over to help pastor some of these international churches and these big cities that serve as a hub for ministry mobilization for those that we sin.

I'm thinking about places like London and Kuala Lumpur and Mumbai. These are so strategic in it. And that's what I think God is going to raise up and we need to be praying for that. You can stay up to date. They include a scripture reading, a devotional thought, and a prayer prompt to help you start your day on the right foot.

It's completely free and you can sign up today at jdgrier.com slash resources. We hope that these devotionals will be a source of encouragement and growth in your walk with Christ. And remember all of our resources are made possible by listeners like you. So thank you for your generous support. Now let's get back to today's teaching with pastor J.D.

Greer here on Summit Life. Number two, number two for you, we need to give to help others go. Maybe God has not called you to live overseas, but maybe he's given you the means to help send somebody else. What we see is that sending is a whole church process. And those who help sin should be every bit as committed to the work as those who go. What John Piper says it is in light of what the Romans teaches us, we've got three options, go, send, disobey. Go, send or disobey. And if you're called to be a sender, you need to be every bit as committed to the work as those who are going.

William Carey has this famous line. He was the father of the modern missions movement. He said to the group of Christians who sent him, I'll dangle from that rope for you there in India, if you promise to hold securely to the other side. Those of us who are called to stay have to be every bit as committed to this work. We have to bear the burden as those who go. Sending is a whole church process. It's not just those who go, it's those who stay and sin have an obligation too. It's interesting to me that in Romans 10, Paul doesn't say, how can they hear unless we go? He says, how can they hear unless we are sent? He recognizes that the whole church is involved in the process. It's not just those who go, there's a whole sending process. And so here's what we believe.

Those who helped send should bear the burden every bit as much as those who go. One of the groups that our teams works with in Southeast Asia was a single lady who runs what she calls there in this country, the house of peace. She's a single lady that just loves the children there. And she's adopted into her home 20 kids who were orphans or growing up on the street. And the only reason she stopped at 20 was the government told her she couldn't do it anymore. She's got 20 living in her house.

She has no real job to speak of. She lives off the generosity of people like us. And being there, we were able to go in as a family and do the devotions and be a part of the ministry for the day. And I realized I'm like, here's somebody who's putting themselves out there and is bearing the burden.

And those of us who stay in sin, we ought to bear that burden with her. Is that not right? We were able to go and visit the school, start to get this by our teams for refugees. A few years ago, we were able to participate in a health clinic there for the neighborhood. We saw over 500 kids come through that health clinic in that one day.

By the way, this school that started a few years ago by our teams is doing such an incredible job that President Obama, when he was president several years ago, came to visit it on one of his tours through that part of the world. Here we are participating in this health clinic. We need to feel the burden of those who are out there doing it, dangling on the end of that rope. It requires something of us. Maybe God hadn't called you to be there, but he's called us to be a part of the process. And for some of you, it is to give radically to the point that you give away so much that you have to change your lifestyle. The urgency of this mission requires something of us, some at church.

And we who stay have to bear the burden as much as those who go. Number three, you need to be sent to the people in your life. You need to be sent to the people in your life. You may not know everywhere that God may send you, but you can be sure that you're sent to the people in your life right now.

Now, I don't know everything it is to know about your life, but I know that the reason you are where you are is because God put you there because he had a word for people in your life. How can they call them the one they've not heard about and how are they gonna hear unless you tell them? How are you gonna hear unless you tell them? Every once in a while, I hear from a guy that I lived across the hall from me in college for two weeks, only two weeks. He got kicked out of his other apartment. He was on school probation and they put him right across from me for two weeks, end of one semester. His name was George.

I mean, he was a mess, but we talked late in every night talking about the gospel and I was sharing Christ with him. He wakes me up one night, Thursday morning, early morning, 3 a.m., wakes me up. He's like, hey, I said, what's going on? He's like, can you get up?

I'm like, well, I'm up now. He's like, I gotta ask you a question. He said, I was walking downtown Raleigh and all this stuff we've been talking about.

My heart was just so heavy with it. He said, and I walked around this corner and I just put up my hands. I said, God, what do you want from me?

And I looked up and there was a sign and a store window. And it just said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. He said, I felt like God was trying to speak to me. I was like, you feel like it?

I think he was too. And that night he professed faith in Christ. In the two weeks, I thought that was the end of that story. He contacted me about four years later, said, hey, I feel like God's telling me to go into ministry. He said, I'm gonna go to seminary.

You think that's a good idea? I was like, I think you should follow whatever the Holy Spirit is telling you. I hear from him periodically, time to time, every few years. Last time he contacted me, he said, I'm a Christian counselor now. I had this practice where I see people and help them out who have the same problems I did.

God put him there at a specific place, specific time for me. And what I'm telling you is you got people in your life that way. And you gotta be faithful to your post.

You have to be faithful to, how can you call them your friends if you don't even tell them this? When I was a student pastor, there was a girl, 17 years old, that in our student ministry, we led to Christ. She had a younger sister who was 15. And she really wanted her younger sister to hear the message.

For six months, we prayed for her younger sister. I was like, just tell her, invite her. She's like, I can't, I'm scared. She said, you come tell her. So I was like, so I came over to her house, sat down at her kitchen table. The 17 year old, she disappeared.

Just me and this 15 year old girl, I'll talk to her for about an hour. She professes faith in Christ. The first thing she says after she gets saved, is she looks up, after she gets done, she has tears in her eyes. She says, I gotta tell my older sister this message.

I was like, all right. So she goes and gets her older sister, sits her down there. Then she looks at me and says, tell her, my older sister, what you just told me. And I was like, she already knows.

She's the one that invited me. And you should have seen the expression on this girl's face. She was like, you knew? How long? She was like, six months. Sex months?

What if I died during that six months? It was kind of funny, a little awkward in the whole thing, but listen, there's nothing funny and awkward in eternity when you got a friend who says, you called me friend? You called me friend? And you didn't even tell me about this. You didn't tell me that there was a way of salvation that I was under condemnation because of the choices that I made. You didn't tell me that there was a way.

How would you call me friend? You gotta be sent to the people in your life. Number four, you gotta start short-term.

You gotta start short-term. We believe at the Summit Church that almost every member should go on a short-term mission trip. Going on those trips is a way you can familiarize yourself with and share the burden of our missionaries.

So we have trips going out almost every week of the year, it feels like, to places far and near, to close places like needy areas in North Carolina and as far as Nepal and Central Africa. In fact, my challenge to all of you is this. What if you tithed your year? Sometimes when we talk about giving God our first and our best, you're like, you always say time, treasure, and talents, but you only ever talk about treasures. Okay, you asked for it. What if we apply this to your time?

What if we just said, God, I'm gonna tithe my year. And what that looks like is one week out of the year, one out of 52, I'm gonna give to being a part of what you're doing around the world. That is my challenge for you, which leads me to the last thing.

Number five, cross a boundary. Paul knew that if this work was gonna get done, a bunch of us are gonna have to intentionally cross geographic and cultural boundaries. Yeah, it's easier to share with your roommate. Yep, it's easier to share with the people in your soccer team.

It's easier to share with people who look like you and think like you and talk like you, who share your political affiliations. But Paul knew that if this job was gonna get done, there was gonna be a bunch of us who were gonna have to be willing to cross boundaries to other neighborhoods, other parts of the city, those who even traveled a thousand miles away to people who don't speak our language. Listen, Summit family, the gospel was not born in an English speaking context. It was not born to a group of Americans. It wasn't born whether you're of African descent or Hispanic descent or Anglo descent, it wasn't born among us. It was born among a group of people who crossed a boundary to get to us. Whether we're talking about the people who first carried it to Africa, the people who first carried it to the English speaking world or the people who carried it to the Hispanic world or the Asian world, we're talking about people who crossed a boundary many times at the cost of their life so that you and I could sit here in this morning under gospel privileges. Brothers and sisters, I'm gonna tell you right now with 2.2 billion people in the world that have never heard, it's our turn.

It's our turn. And we know the gospel and God's gonna tell some of us, yep, I know this is not what you were thinking about your life, but the gospel is worth it. And you're here because somebody crossed a boundary for you, Jesus, and then somebody following him, they're gonna be here because you're willing to cross a boundary for them.

Here's my challenge, put your yes on the table, let God put it on the map. I don't know what God's called you to, that's really not my role, right? But what I do now is that he's called you to open your hands and say, Lord, here am I, send me. He might send you to your neighbors, he might tell you to stay right where you are, but every single one of us needs to open our hands and say, God, here am I, send me. Are your hands open to where the Lord may be calling you?

Is he calling you across the room, across town, or across the world? Only you can feel that tug in your soul, but I think it's safe to say we're all called to do something. There's so much to soak up in the Book of Romans, and that's why we want you to get as much spiritual growth as you possibly can out of this book as we teach through it here on Summit Life. To help you do that, our featured resource right now is the first part of a two-part study through the Book of Romans written by Pastor Tim Keller. And later this year, we'll offer the second part of this study as well, so don't miss out on the first.

To get your copy, simply give us a call at 866-335-5220, or you can give online at jdgrier.com. And while you're there, why not consider becoming one of our gospel partners? This generous group of monthly supporters truly makes Summit Life possible, and in return, we say thank you by sending them a copy of every featured resource you hear about on this show. Again, head over to jdgrier.com today and join the gospel partner team. By the way, if you haven't checked out Pastor JD's newest podcast called Ask Me Anything, you'll want to do that today. Pastor JD gives quick, honest answers to tricky questions, and you can find it online at jdgrier.com or through your favorite podcasting app. I'm Molly Vidovitch, inviting you to join us next week when we are kicking off a new teaching series titled The Difficult Sayings of Jesus. Have a great weekend of worship with your church family, and we'll see you right back here for Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.