In Earth as it Is in Heaven

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer offers clarity on a familiar story. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch, and I've got a question to start our time together. How good do we have to be to get into heaven? This important topic is where we'll camp out today on Summit Life as we begin a new teaching series called In Earth As It Is In Heaven. Pastor J.D. will be unpacking a story that Jesus told to an expert in the Jewish law, getting right to the heart of the difference between man-made religion and the gospel of Jesus. We're discovering why religion and good works will never be enough to save us.

So let's get started. Grab your Bible and turn to the book of Luke. Here's Pastor J.D. We're going to do a two-week series called In Earth As It Is In Heaven. And I want you to see in that how God intends to use you to bring heaven to those who are around you. Just think of it like this. In earth as it is in heaven, you're on a part of the earth and you've got a circle, you have family, friends, place you work, place you go to school. I want you to substitute wherever that is into that phrase.

I want it to be in blank as it is in heaven at UNC, at Duke, in the Research Triangle Park, wherever your neighborhood in blank as it is in heaven. So Luke chapter 10, this is one of the most famous stories that Jesus ever told. It's one of those stories that even if you have not grown up in church, you know the basic gist of this story. Though I have found that very few people understand, even in the church, understand the real meaning of this story or much less its implications.

Luke chapter 10, verse 25, here's how the setup of the story goes. Behold, an expert of the Jewish law stood up to put Jesus to the test. And he said, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

Notice a couple of things there first. The context of the question is the guy's asking, hell, he can know for sure he's going to heaven. That's the most basic of all religious questions, right? How do I know that I'm going to go to heaven?

Second thing you should notice is that it's not entirely a sincere question. He's doing it to try to trap Jesus, to put him to the test. So Jesus says to him in response, well, you tell me what's written in the law.

How do you read the law? The Jewish expert in the law answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and you should love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, verse 28, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. I almost laugh out loud when I read Jesus' response.

That's a big old do. Love God supremely. Love God supremely.

Make God the highest passion in your heart, the one you think about first and most. Make sure he is the undisputed champion of your affections. You should care more about pleasing him than anything else in your life. When your mind is idle, it should automatically turn to delighting him. You should never tire of that. You should never be distracted from it.

It ought to dominate your life. And make sure you love everybody else just like you love yourself, which means to care about your neighbor's needs as much as you care about yours. Be rejoiced in their happinesses. Worry about their futures. Weep at their sorrows just as much as you do your own.

Who wants to raise their hand and be like, yeah, that describes my weekend. That's my attitude coming to here this morning. And here's the dilemma of that commandment.

I've asked you this before. How do you command that? How do you command love? Love is one of those things that you either do naturally or you don't. If you love something, you don't need to be commanded to love it. For example, I've told you, you don't ever have to command me to kiss my wife, eat a steak, take a nap, or enjoy my kids. I need no commands to do those things.

I do them instinctively. And on the flip side, if you don't love something, then no command can change that. I hate with a deep dark secret passion mayonnaise. I just hate mayonnaise.

And I hate tomatoes, raw tomatoes. So if you want to make me a raw tomato and mayonnaise sandwich, you can command me to eat it. And if you are big enough, then you might coerce me to eat it, but no command of yours is going to make me love it. Love is one of those things that if you have it, you don't need to be commanded to do it.

If you don't have it, no command will change that. Therein lies the dilemma. Do you see that? So verse 29, but he, the law expert, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus and who is my neighbor, see, he feels the squeeze of that impossible standard. And so he is trying to justify himself. He's trying to wiggle out of that standard by limiting the scope of what Jesus said and keep in mind, this man's primary concern is still his own soul, which you see presents another dilemma.

A lot of atheists have pointed this out, and I think it's a very important observation. Here's the dilemma. If you think that you have to earn your way to heaven, then every good thing you ever do, you're actually operating out of self-interest, right? If I have to earn my way to heaven and if I have to love you to go to heaven, then loving you is actually a way of loving me. The way I've illustrated that to you before is the story is told of an ancient King who was beloved in his kingdom. And so one day, one of his subjects, a poor carrot farmer showed up in his court and said, King, I'm a poor carrot farmer.

I have very little, but I dug up a four and a half foot carrot. And when I saw that carrot, I thought that's a carrot that's only fit for a King. And I love you and I am devoted to you and you are an awesome King.

And I want to give it to you as an emblem of my devotion. Well, the King was genuinely moved and he said, well, where do you live? And the guy told him, he said, you know, I happen to own all the farmland around your little farm. And because you're such a good subject and because you so bring delight to my heart, I'm going to give you all that farmland.

And he basically quadrupled the size of his little farm. Well, one of the noblemen was standing in the back of the court and he kind of watched this thing and he thought, wow, if that's what the King would give in response to a carrot, imagine what he would give in response to a real gift, like a horse. So he went out and he found the most magnificent horse in the kingdom. And he brought the horse in the next day and he said, Oh, King, you're an awesome King. And I love serving you. And you're so wise. And I thought you should have this magnificent horse as an emblem of my devotion to you. And so the King who was shrewd and wise on his own, right?

He says, he said, well, yesterday, the carrot farmer was giving the carrot to me. Today, you're giving the horse to yourself. You see the dilemma of religion is that if I'm serving God as a way of earning heaven, then I'm not actually loving God or people, I'm actually loving me. That is what atheists point out about religion and they are 100% correct. And it's the dilemma of all religion. Here's one more thing that you ought to read as you get into it while we're at it. Based on what you know about the Bible, can you actually do something that could earn your way to heaven?

No. I mean, the whole point of Jesus' life was that we couldn't earn our way to heaven. That's why Jesus had to come to earth to do for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. He had to come live the life we were supposed to live so we could die the death that we were condemned to die. See, all these things are at play in this question.

Which means you read the whole story through the lens of those problems. Thus, and get this, Jesus is gonna tell a story that is gonna subtly shift the question and He's gonna turn it on its head. And in the process, He's gonna show you what it means to love your neighbor and then He's gonna show you maybe more importantly how you can actually do that. So let's go, verse 30. Jesus replied, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. By the way, going down literally means down.

Between Jericho and Jerusalem, it was a 17-mile journey. It drops 3,000 feet in elevation. And all along the side, there are these, it's a really straight path, there are all these rocky outcroppings that are perfect for robbers and thieves to hide because they can see for a long way and there's lots of places for them to set up an ambush. And so as this guy is going down, he falls among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Or you could read that, leaving him four dead.

They thought it killed him. Now that chance, a priest who is of course the most religious person in society, the religious leader, the best of the best, he's going down that road. And when he saw this beat up Jewish man, he passed by on the other side. Now, we tend to really give this guy a hard time because we get the image of some guy that's stepping over a bleeding man on his way into the donut shop.

But Jewish audience that heard this would have immediately recognized a few things in this story that would have made this guy a little more sympathetic of a character. First of all, the Jericho road was a very dangerous path. Literally in those days, it was called the pass of blood because it was such a natural place for robbers to hide. The one thing was true, if you had to travel the Jericho road, you certainly did not stop.

Because if you stopped, then the robbers could figure out where you were and they could come ambush you. Second, the priest was returning from Jerusalem where he had purified himself. That's why he would have gone to Jerusalem so he could return back to his hometown and perform religious duties there. According to Jewish law, if you touched a man who died or was in the process of dying after you'd been purified, you had to go back to the temple and go through another purification process which could take up to seven days. The point is it would have been massively inconvenient and dangerous and really expensive for this priest to stop and help this guy.

So he thought somebody else is going to have to feel called to do this and he passes by. So likewise, a Levite. Now, Levite were like JV priests. They were of the priesthood clan, they just weren't full priests. They worked to priest what mall security are to cops. Does that help?

Okay. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side. Now, here's the other thing about the Jericho road.

I told you it's long straight. You could see for miles. You could see three or four miles ahead of you, which means the Levite would have seen the priest. He would have seen him pass by and he would have thought, well, that's my religious leader.

If the varsity can't handle it, the JV shouldn't touch it. So he just follows his leader and he passes by on the other side also. But as Samaritan, as he journeyed, when he came to the place where he was and when he saw him, notice it doesn't say he did something first, it talks about what he felt.

He felt compassion. Now, if you know anything about the Bible, you know that Samaritans were the sworn enemies of the Jews. Jews regarded Samaritans to be unclean because Samaritans were the half Jew, half Gentile offspring of the Assyrians. When they come into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and taken Israel captive, they forced the Jews there to intermarry and they spawned this race of half Jewish, half Gentile, half bloods, mudbloods for you Harry Potter fans is how you read that today. The Samaritans on their part, they retaliated by saying that they were actually the true people of God because they lived in the land of Joseph. And if you've ever read the Old Testament, you know that Joseph was like the stud of the Old Testament and he was the best of the best. We live in his land.

We're his descendants. So we're the real Jews, not you. And so they set up their own altar. They said they were the true people of God. They were, you know, they proclaimed themselves the right ones.

And so there was all this racial animosity going back and forth. To a Jew, the only good Samaritan was a dead one. Get this, Jewish people considered just eating the bread that had touched a Samaritan as equal to eating the flesh of a live pig, which was the most defiled animal to them of all. And Samaritans were not the nicest people either. They would frequently rob caravans of Jews on their ways to Jerusalem.

They were known to desecrate the temple on the Eve of the Passover by, and I shouldn't laugh about this, but they, uh, they would launch dead pigs by catapult on the Eve of the Passover into the temple where they would splatter and get, you know, all this defiled blood all over, which is kind of like a funny college prank, but the Jews did not think it was funny at all. So there was all this strife and animosity that went back and forth between them. That's the Samaritan. He goes up to him, however, fills compassion and he binds up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal, which means by the way, that he would have walked the other 17 miles and the other guy would have ridden. And he brought him to an inn and he took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii of his own money and he gave them to the innkeeper and he said, you take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. He gives an open line of credit to the hospital. Now that's a dangerous situation because you don't know what's going to happen. He gives an open line of credit.

All right. So Jesus then turns and he asked this Jewish expert, he says, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers. And so the Jewish expert said, well, of course, the one who showed him mercy. He can't even say the word Samaritan. He so hates the guy.

He's just like, well, the one who showed him mercy. Jesus said to him, you go and do likewise. This is Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. For more information about this ministry, visit JDGrier.com.

We'll get right back to today's teaching in a moment. But first, did you know that Pastor JD has a brand new book coming out? It's called Twelve Truths and a Lie, answers to life's biggest questions. And just like the title suggests, it tackles some of the biggest questions we all face, like how could a good God send people to hell and how should Christians handle political differences?

Talk about some hot topics. This book releases nationwide on December 5th. But right now, when you become one of the first 100 people to either join our team of gospel partners or are an existing gospel partner who doubles their monthly donation to this ministry, we'll send you an early release copy of Twelve Truths and a Lie signed by Pastor JD himself.

So why wait? Join us as a gospel partner today by calling 866-335-5220 or by heading to JDGrier.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Here's what we got going on in this story.

Jesus shows us what it means to love our neighbors. Then he shows us why we do that, which is the part nobody ever gets. So what we're going to do first is discuss the what, and then we're going to discuss the why. And then at the very end, I want to give you a few practical insights on how we can do that. So you got to have the what, the why, and then the how.

Here we go. Number one, what it means to love our neighbors. Let me divide up the what into the who, when, and how much. Is that confusing?

That probably is confusing, but it's all I can do. So the what it means to love your neighbors, I'm going to give you the who as our neighbor, when we're supposed to love them, and then how much is supposed to cost us. So here we go. Letter A.

Who? The answer is anyone we see in need. The Samaritan and the Jew could not have had less in common. In order to meet the need, the Samaritan had to cross an incredible social barrier. You see, it is natural for us to help those who are like us, those with whom we identify and feel like we have a lot in common. But Jesus here teaches that we are to help those, especially those with whom we have little in common, even those who might have wronged us, which could mean the person you barely know, the person on the other side of the political aisle from you, those whom you feel are suffering because of mistakes that they or their family have made, the boss at work who has taken advantage of you. It could be Muslims fleeing from Aleppo.

It could be the illegal immigrant who broke the law to get here. By the way, I always point out when I say that, I'm not trying to make a statement on what I think the government should or should not do. The government has its own questions.

It has to answer about that, and I pray that God gives them wisdom. But I'm saying that for me as an individual, I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. When I see someone made in the image of God in need, I'm not asking questions about how they got there.

I'm saying that I want to love them the way that Jesus loved me, which means that when I put myself on the path of sin, Jesus came to rescue me. It's anybody that is in the midst of need. That's the answer to the who. The answer to the when. When do we help?

That answer whenever you see the need. You see, Christians come up with all kinds of excuses for why they don't need to help somebody in need. They'll say things like, well, I don't mind helping people who are truly victims of injustice, but those people over there, they're suffering because of their own dumb decisions, and they don't really deserve our help. Their suffering is their fault.

Look at this. The Samaritan would have had plenty of reasons to believe this Jewish man deserved his suffering. The man was a Jew, and as we've seen, the Jews were cruel to Samaritans. They were often downright racist. This man might have thought, well, this is what happens when you foster a culture of racial superiority.

You produce a culture of violence, and the violence will end up biting you. He had every reason to think that, but the Samaritan just reaches out in mercy. In the 1700s, Jonathan Edwards listed out the most common excuses that people gave Americans, like in the pre-American days, the most common excuses that Americans gave for not helping those who were in need in a little book called The Duty of Charity. It is amazing to me how timely these excuses still are.

He identified three excuses that Christians in his day gave. Excuse number one, we only help people when they're in dire need. We really only have to help people when they're in dire need. Jonathan Edwards' answer, well, that violates the principle of loving our neighbor as ourselves because we come to our own aid long before the situation is dire. I don't wait till I'm near death to help myself.

I wait till I'm merely uncomfortable, and then I start helping myself. Excuse number two, he identified. Christians in his day would say, well, you know, they brought that trouble on themselves.

Jonathan Edwards' answer, but Christ relieved the misery that you brought on yourself should you not love somebody else like Christ loved you. Now let me ask you to think about something. Liberals and conservatives in our culture have different explanations for why the poor are poor, why, for example, kids in poorer schools continue to struggle. And those who are more on the left, the liberals, they say things like, well, it's systemic evil.

It's racism. The system is rigged to support those in power and keep them in power. And conservatives say, well, no, no, it's their family's fault. Their family's never taught them right from wrong. Their family's never taught them responsibility or read to them at night or pushed them to succeed. Even worse, they taught them to hate those who succeed.

But both liberals and conservatives agree on one thing. It is not entirely the kid's fault, right? I mean, I'm thinking of it like this, the fact that my sister and I were born to a family that loved us and my parents read to me every night and taught me that if I applied myself, I could succeed. That was due to nothing on my part. It's not like God rewarded me after a life of good behavior with good parents.

I hadn't lived any day yet. It was a gift of grace that he gave to me. In the same way, the kids that were born into poor families, bad families, they didn't ask to be born there. Therefore, we who have been a part of blessing ought to do what we can to help them and not isolate ourselves from them. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be careful or holistic in how we help.

We shouldn't do it in a way that teaches dependency or in a way that ignores the family structure. But the point is, we have to do something. We can't just pass by. Proverbs 3, 27, Solomon said, do not withhold good from your neighbor when it is in your power to act. When you see the need, when you got the ability to meet the need, the opportunity to meet the need, you also have the responsibility to meet the need. So the answer to the win is whenever you see somebody in need.

The third question, how much? How much are you obligated to? The answer is, in a way that takes their burden onto yourself. You see, in order to help this beaten up Jew, the Samaritan put himself at great personal risk.

And like I showed you, he even used his own money and opened up a line of credit. The third excuse that Edwards identified that Christian people in the 1700s used to excuse themselves from engaging those in need is, they said, well, I got a lot of my own problems. I'm barely as ends meet as it is, and I can't afford to help somebody in need. Jonathan Edwards' answer, verses like Galatians 6, 2 tell you to bear one another's burdens, which means that you are to give and live in such a way and get involved to a point that somebody else's burden becomes something that you share.

Isn't that what you see in this story? The Samaritan takes on this guy's burden as his own. Some at church have often explained to you, there is no magic number I can give to you when regards to how much to give. There's not even a magic percentage that I can give to you when I'm talking about how much of your time or your money you should give. But the one thing I've told you that you can be sure of is that when you are following Jesus in this area, you will feel like you are shouldering some of the burden of others.

That's why C.S. Lewis said the only safe rule when it comes to giving. Well, we want rules.

He said the Bible doesn't give us rules. The only safe rule, if you've got to have one, the only safe rule when it comes to generosity is that you ought to give more than you think you can spare. In other words, you give until it pains you until you take on somebody's burden as your own. Listen, if I could say this very gently, some of you give and based on relative measures, you give a lot, but you give at no personal cost to yourself. Our giving ought to be at a level that we experience some of their difficulty because of the amount that we give. This is the core of what it means to follow Jesus.

You understand that, right? This is the great commandment to love people like you love yourself. Let me say something to us in particular. Believers in churches like this one face a particular temptation that Jesus is taking direct aim at. Like this priest and this Levite, we're all into religious duties, right? Where we're talking about reading the Bible and tithing and volunteering in small group. But when you look at our lives, there is very little giving away of ourselves. We're talking to a group of people that we are in a privileged part of the most privileged part, one of the most privileged parts of the world.

And we're very conservative. Just like the priests and the Levite, they would have fit that profile. And Jesus said, you got a danger and that is you perfect the marginal and you ignore the essential. He took direct aim at this in Matthew 23, 23, woe to you scribes and Pharisees. You can read that priest and Levites.

You could read that, you could read that summit church elders and deacons. Woe to you, you tithe mint and dill and cumin. These people tied their spice rack.

That's varsity. I mean the offering plate goes by and you're like, here's some oregano and here's some crushed red pepper. I mean, you know, they tied to everything. Yet you neglected mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, meaning the tithe, you should have tithed without neglecting the others. The weightiest part of the law, the weightiest part of the law is to love your neighbors yourself, which means if you want to evaluate your walk with Jesus, don't ask how many Bible verses you know, don't have to know how often you come to church. The question is what amount of your resources and time are being poured out for others like Jesus poured his out for you. Believers in churches like ours can tend to studiously emphasize the marginal while neglecting the essential, which is loving people. God is not after rule followers. He wants people who love like he loves and who respond like he responds. And that can only come by receiving radical grace. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor and author J.D. Greer. Pastor J.D., we have talked a lot recently about our monthly donors on the program, but it's because they're that important and special to us.

Yeah, Molly, that's exactly right. Our monthly donors whom we call gospel partners give us the opportunity to plan for the future and expand into new places. So, yeah, we want to take care of them when we can because they take such good care of us. And so we got a special offer this November, and that is for every new gospel partner or any existing gospel partner that increases their giving. We will send you a signed copy, a signed copy of my new book, Twelve Truths and a Lie, before it is even released to the public. The body of the book is about just questions that I get asked as a pastor. And so I put all those together in a book that kind of represent the twelve most frequently asked questions I get as a pastor. I think it will be a help to you.

I think it will help you in talking with others, maybe to give to somebody else. If you've got questions about becoming a gospel partner, then go to jdgreer.com today and you'll find all the information there. Not only will you start receiving our premium resources each month as our way to say thank you for your gift of thirty-five dollars or more, but right now the first one hundred new gospel partners or existing gospel partners who double their monthly gift will receive an early copy of Pastor J.D. 's newest book called Twelve Truths and a Lie, signed by J.D.

himself. If you'd like to become a gospel partner today, give us a call at 866-335-5220 or visit us online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch.

So glad to have you with us today and be sure to join us tomorrow when we continue this new series called In Earth As It Is In Heaven. That's Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.