The Seeker’s Chapter

Today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. Each of us is looking for ultimate answers. We want security and we want to know that we're okay and we're going to be okay, not just today but tomorrow. We want to be significant. We want to know that our lives have meaning beyond the grave.

We want fulfillment that satisfies our souls in the deepest places. Thanks for joining us today here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, back in the day, most Americans spent Sunday morning at church. It was just the cultural norm. And today, only 30% of Americans go to church on a regular basis. But interestingly, that doesn't mean that they've lost interest in God. Today on Summit Life, as Pastor J.D. Greer looks into the story of the wise men, he argues that all of us are actually hungry for God, whether we realize it or not. He titled this teaching The Seekers Chapter.

And if you miss any part of the broadcast, you can always hear it again online at jdgreer.com. Right now, let's join Pastor J.D. in Matthew Chapter 2. There are a lot of things that we celebrate during this time of year, several major holidays. A friend of mine put together a list of holidays besides Christmas that we celebrate. Of course, you know things like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, but December 5th. December 5th is officially National Ninja Day.

Some of you are like, well, I didn't see that one coming. That's because it's Ninja Day. If you had seen it coming, it would not be Ninja Day. December 16th is officially Chocolate Covered Anything Day, which I think is awesome because chocolate covered anything is awesome because you can just suck the chocolate off of it and throw away the rest, which I wish more things were like that, metaphorically speaking. December 18th is National Wear a Plunger on Your Head Day. So if you have had a secret desire to wear a plunger on your head, that is the day you can do it without shame.

I think it is tradition that you buy a new plunger and not use your current one. Just no disrespect to any of those other holidays, New Year's, any of those, but I think there is something very special about Christmas. Yes, for us as Christians, but I think even beyond that, beyond the traditions, beyond the family get-togethers, beyond the gifts, there is something special about the story of the divine intersecting the human. I have friends who are not Christians who still seem to have this mysterious appeal to everything that's communicated and many of them don't believe it, but the idea that God would become man, the transcendent would become tangible. Many of them say things to me like, I would like to believe that.

I wish that that were true, but for whatever reason, they just can't believe it. So I want to spend a few minutes just thinking about a very familiar Christmas story, the story of the wise men who came to find Jesus. The story takes place in Matthew chapter two, which I would call the seekers chapter in the Bible.

It deals with how many people search for God, how many people find God, and is even going to take some time to deal with probably the number one objection that many seekers have to knowing and loving God. If you're unfamiliar with this story, it basically goes like this. A group of wise men from the east, traditionally we think of them as three different wise men. I think in actuality it was a much larger group, but a group of wise men in the east see a sign, a divinely appointed sign in the heavens, and they figure out that it means something significant, and the sign is pointing toward Israel, and so they travel to go to Israel to see the new king that has been foretold by this star. When they get to Israel, naturally they go to the capital, which is Jerusalem. They go to Herod's palace, who is the current king, and ask him where this king is to be born, and what he knows about it, thinking he would know, not realizing, of course, that Herod is a psychopath who is paranoid about losing power, and so these, Herod goes and gets his religious rulers together, religious leaders, and he says, hey, what is this I'm hearing about a new king that's being born, the Messiah? And the religious leaders go back, study, and they're like, yep, sure enough, it's, you know, that all the prophecies point toward Bethlehem. When the Messiah is born, when the new king is born, it's going to be Bethlehem. So Herod goes back to the wise men, and he says, he says, well, you know, we think it's going to be in Bethlehem.

Why don't you go and find him, and when you find him, bring him back to me, because I want to worship him, too, which is, of course, a lie, because Herod has every intention of murdering him because he sees him as a future challenge to his throne. Well, the wise men travel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. When they leave the palace at Jerusalem, they see the star again. It takes them right to the place where Jesus is being born, and that's where these two verses right here take place, Matthew 2, verse 10. When they saw the star again, they rejoice exceedingly with great joy, and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary as mother, and they fell down, and they worshiped him. The wise men are then warned by an angel in a dream of what Herod wants to do, so they choose a different route home that doesn't go through Jerusalem, and the same angel warns Mary and Joseph about what Herod's intentions are, so they take Jesus, and they flee to Egypt. When Herod figures out that he has been foiled, he sends out a decree. He goes on one of his maniacal murderous rampages and sends out this decree to have every baby boy two years old or under taken out into the street and slaughtered all in Bethlehem and all around around Judea. The seekers chapter in the Bible. Here's what I want to try to show you very, very quickly. I want to try to show you, I want to try to show you how there were some things that God was showing to you about people who seek God, that whether they're seeking God through the means of a star 2,000 years ago or whether you're seeking God today, these things are going to be true and this is going to be your obstacle.

Here's number one. For many of you throughout your life, God has been guiding you toward Jesus. For many of you throughout your life, God has been guiding you toward Jesus. These men did not find God by pooling their wisdom and unwrapping the mysteries of the universe.

God guided them to Jesus through a special sign in the heavens. For many of you throughout your life, this is what God has been doing with you. You see, I would say that whether we are religious or not, almost all of us are on a search for God.

Now you may or may not have called it that. You may or may not have recognized that what you were searching for is God, but each of us is looking for ultimate answers. We want security and we want to know that we're okay and we're going to be okay not just today but tomorrow and not just tomorrow but the day after that and then 10 years from now and then really eternally that we're going to be secure. We want to be significant. We want to know that our lives have meaning beyond the grave.

We want to know that we're not just a biological lump of flesh that's breathing up air. We want fulfillment that satisfies our souls in the deepest places. I think it's why some people strive so hard to get money.

You think of money as not really being a religious quest, but I think that's why some people seek it so much and why they worry so much about losing it because money seems to offer us those things. I mean, for example, if I told many of you that next year you would make $50,000 more than you did this past year, many of you would think that all your problems at that point would be over. But money is elusive.

You can't hang on to it. A lot of people have found that out. You know, a couple of years ago, a few years ago, when the Wall Street crash, a crash happened, they had this rash of high-powered Wall Street executives who committed suicide because something that they thought was permanent and lasting turned out not to be.

Plus, even if you do get it and hang on to it, you often find out that it's not really what you thought it was. Some of the richest people in the world are also the least happy and have the most dysfunctional families. You can pick up any, you know, People magazine and learn that in a few seconds. I mean, think about it. I mean, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan.

Do these look like happy people to you? A hundred million dollar net worth can't buy Donald Trump a decent haircut, much less security and significance. Plus, you can't carry it past death. Some of the richest monarchs in the world have tried that. And their attempts now seem to us as laughable.

King Tut, famously buried with a large amount of his treasure, only to be dug up by archaeologists. Years later, it's all still sitting there. You know, his kids did with him exactly what our kids will do with us. When we die, they'll divvy up the few things they want. They'll give the rest of goodwill.

It's not the kind of thing that you can carry with you. There's a sense in which death strips everything from you. You know, when you lay down on that gurney to be wheeled into the operating room so that you can undergo an open heart surgery, you know that your family and some of us are going to get around your, that gurney, and we're going to lay our hands on your shoulder. And we're going to say something like this. We're going to say, hey, we're with you in this. We're going to be with you the whole time.

But you and I both know that in that moment, we are lying because when you go under anesthesia and when you go under that knife, you're all by yourself. And unless you have a God that is larger than life and death in your hearts and surrounding you, then in that moment, you are absolutely and totally all alone. Money is not something that provides any of those things even though it looks like it does. I remember years ago reading this article in Forbes Magazine where one of the wealthiest CEOs in America said, he said, I spent all my life climbing the ladder of success only to find out when I got to the top that it was leaning against the wrong building. A lot of people look for the divine in romance. People think that if they are happy in love, then they will be happy. And so we put an enormous amount of weight on finding love. And we're stressed out about being single or being unhappy in marriage. And we think, well, if I could just find real love, then everything would be okay with me.

And if you're in a marriage where you're not finding love, it's why you're so driven to get out of it and find it somewhere else. I've known a lot of young men over the years who were floating, drowning in a sea of loneliness and despair and low self-esteem. And along by floats a five foot two well-shaped life preserver. And what does that young man do? Well, he does what any guy to do that's going to drown.

He grabs a hold of her and he clings to her and he suffocates her and sucks the life out of her. Why? Because those things were never designed to be found in her. Here's what I have learned as a very happily married man. Lonely, insecure, bitter single people become lonely, insecure, bitter married people. And lonely, insecure, bitter married people in their first marriage become lonely, insecure, bitter people in their second marriage and their third marriage. And then they become lonely, insecure, bitter older people because problems like loneliness and insecurity and bitterness are never cured by another human being.

They're only cured by the love of Jesus Christ that was born into a manger 2,000 years ago that these wise men find themselves in front of. I think of Blaise Pascal who said that the human heart, what you'll learn through life is that the human heart has a God-shaped vacuum in it, a God-shaped void that we spend most of our lives trying to figure out what goes into that place in our heart that is missing. He said, but we will try in vain to put everything in there because that hole is specifically in the shape of the love of God given in Christ. I have even heard it said that the man who knocks on the door of the brothel is searching for God. Some pleasure, some union that gives meaning, that gives transcendence, that gives satisfaction.

I am not sure where you have been searching, but my guess is that you have been searching. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life. We're glad that you've been with us this week as we've reflected on the birth of the Savior through these short teaching series. We'll finish up here in a moment, but first let me tell you about a daily email devotional that's available to our Summit Life family.

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Once again, here's Pastor JD. For many of you, God has been guiding you into seeing that it's not working. Maybe it's coming from this growing sense of dissatisfaction like I referred to a moment ago, or maybe it's a worry or a fear that is beginning to dominate your heart, a health scare that you had, or maybe the health scare of a loved one that you couldn't imagine what life is going to be like without them, or maybe it's just a fear over our country and what's going to happen in the next couple years, and are our children going to be able to grow up in a place where they can have the kind of prosperity we have? Maybe it's come in the form of unanswered questions for you. Maybe you're listening to your college professor very eloquently explain that life evolved from nothing, that nothing times nobody equals everything, and there's something inside of you that says, I don't think that's true. I don't believe I came from nowhere, and I'm not going anywhere, and my life has no significance.

It's just biology and chemicals in reaction. Maybe there's something inside of you that says your search is not over. That star has guided you to this.

Maybe that's why you're here, is maybe that has brought you to a place where you don't exactly know even what the question is, but you know there's something not settled in your heart. These wise men, when they encounter Jesus, it says they had, you see this? It says they had, let me read verse 10, when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Now Matthew, who is not one for over speaking, uses four words there when one would have sufficed. When they saw the star, they rejoiced.

That's it. He made the point, but he said, no, when they saw they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy, with joy, joy, joy, joy, joy to the fourth power. He didn't need to say all that, but he was just trying to show that this was the greatest quest of their lives, and they had found him at last. This was God. The love that they had sought all of their lives was in him.

The arms they had sought in romance were his arms. He was born as a baby in poverty who would grow up to die for their sins. No greater love had ever been known in the universe than the creator God that would become a servant and a slave and bear the penalty of the rebellious race. This was a love that God said was in his heart for humanity before he created the very first human beings.

Before the foundation of the world, he had already slain Jesus Christ in his heart. This was a security that they looked for. The security would be in him, not in their treasures. The security would be in him because in taking the penalty for their sin, he would remove their condemnation and thereby remove their fear of death and reunite them to God. The sense of significance they had looked for would be found in playing a part in his kingdom.

This was the end of the search that they had been on. Psychologists say, and I remember learning this in college, that the human soul has three primary needs. A human soul needs to feel safe, a human soul needs to feel significant, and a human soul needs to feel clean.

And by clean, I mean not morally guilty. It needs to feel approved. It needs to feel like it's okay. And psychologists say that when a human soul feels those three things, then they would consider it to be a healthy soul. Many of us, this is the source of the quest because those are three things we do not feel. We do not feel eternally safe.

We do not feel that significant. We do not feel clean. That's what makes Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 6-11 so profound. He says that through Jesus Christ you are washed, which means that his blood has removed your guilt. You are a new creation. The old is gone.

The new has come. You are sanctified. That means you are set apart and you are made significant because of the role you play in God's kingdom. You are justified, which means that everything that God could hold against you was put out on the head of Jesus Christ when he died in your place. So there is nothing left to fear, no condemnation, because everything that could have made you afraid and separated you from God was put onto Jesus Christ.

He is the end of that quest for all three of those things. Let me tell you about how this played out in my life. My life, for as long as I can remember, has always been dominated by at least two fears. The first one I remember was the fear of death. I can remember this as a kid, thinking, if I die, my mom and dad cannot go with me. And what is that like?

It's alone. And then the things about heaven and hell and just being terrified of what eternity would be like. The other fear that my life has been dominated by is a fear of rejection, fear of people not approving of me. I can remember this all the way back to middle school. The thing that I was probably most terrified of is getting the reputation of not being cool, of people thinking that I was on the outside. As a type A, people-pleasing firstborn, it just dominated. I can remember going through high school and getting up in the morning and putting on clothes that I thought would make everybody else think that I was cool.

It didn't work, but I remember thinking that. I remember using certain words that would have made me sound cool. I remember acting certain ways that would have made me sound cool. When I graduated high school, I realized that I had spent my entire high school career trying to please a bunch of people I didn't really even like.

And I would love to tell you that after I graduated high school, I quickly grew up, but that's not true. I just found different things that would make other people approve of me and admire me. My wife and I was getting ready to do something at our church. I was like, I want to figure out the sins that I struggle with and that recur the most in my life. I asked her to help me make a list of those. For the record, I am never, ever doing that again. Next time, I will make that list all by myself because she started firing stuff off it.

I think she'd been thinking about it for years. I was just like, I can't write fast enough. But the first flaw that we came up with for me is that I tend to overwork. I tend to overwork because I want to be successful.

And so I work, and sometimes I will cheat my family because I'm trying to get ahead because if I'm successful, then people admire me and I will have their approval. I worry. That's one of my recurring sins. What do I worry about? I worry about the church I pastor falling apart and failing. Why?

Because then everybody will think that I'm a failure and I won't have people's admiration and their approval. You'll think I'm joking about this. Our church has about 7,000 people or so on the weekend, so it's a fairly big church. And when I drive up to our church on the weekend, I still will from time to time have this recurring fear. And I know it sounds crazy.

Even saying it sounds crazy. I will drive up, and as I'm getting ready to pull in the parking lot, I will think this is it. This is the weekend because, you know, church is a volunteer organization. This is the weekend everybody figures out that I'm not that good of a preacher and everybody at once leaves and goes to another church. And it's just going to be me and my wife all by herself in that big auditorium, and she has her headphones on listening to Mark Driscoll because she thinks he's a better preacher than me anyway. That's just how it's going to go down.

Because if I'm not successful, then I don't feel approved. I'm angry. My wife said, when you get angry, it's always around one or two things, and it's almost always that somebody has made you look stupid or they've disrespected you because, you see, if people disrespect me, if they don't feel like I'm smart and I win arguments, then I don't have their approval. Now, it's dark in here, but I can see in your eyes some of you are like, bro, you are one sick dude. So are you, all right? I just got the courage to stand up here and admit it, but maybe the reason I'm being honest is so you'll admire me for my transparency. I mean, you see all this? It just, it never ends.

It never ends. I will tell you this, that both of these fears that have dominated my life, both of them have been answered in Jesus Christ. Because in Jesus Christ, the God of all the universe, who created it all and spoke it all into existence, has removed every bit of guilt and condemnation from me so that I have nothing to fear, so that death no longer holds a fear over me, because if God is for me, who can be against me? And if the God of all the universe looks at me and says, you are my beloved son and I am pleased in you that I am your father and you are my child, then what do I care what a bunch of no account earthlings have to say about me?

No offense to you. Those fears have been removed by coming to, by coming to Christ. This is the end. All these things that God has been doing in your life have been to bring you to Jesus. Number two, you need the scriptures to complete the journey.

That's probably the second and very important thing that you, you got to get from this. This, here's a trick question, very important. How did the wise man actually find Jesus? Don't say the star, because the star got him started, but the star didn't complete the journey. They had to go consult the scriptures and the scriptures told him he'd be born in Bethlehem. The only thing that can bring you to the knowledge of Jesus is the scriptures.

That's what Jesus said in John 5 39. He says, you want to know me? You want to know God?

Search the scriptures, because these are the ones that tell you about me. I give, simply give this to you as an invitation for you to come back and for you to learn, if not at our church, at another church that preaches the Bible. You see, around Christmas, we, we have what we call at our church a lot of CEO Christians, Christmas and Easter only.

You know, and they come and they feel like, hey man, I got my emotional, was I, I feel tingly and I got a little tear in my eye. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now, you will never know God that way. If you're gonna know God, if your kids are gonna know God, it's because they take time to learn the scriptures and because you put them in a place where they can learn the scriptures.

I will say this as a father to you other fathers, the most important thing in my life, the most important assignment I have ever received is to teach my kids to know the Bible, to know the scriptures and thereby to know God. You're listening to Summit Life and a teaching pastor J.D. Greer called The Seekers Chapter.

Christmas is almost here and we know this is a busy time of year. We're so glad that you set aside time to join us today. This program is here every day on your radio and online because of friends like you. Summit Life is listener funded, which means that your gifts are the driving force that enables us to reach people with this gospel-centered Bible teaching. As we're coming to the end of 2023, your gift today is even more important.

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The articles go in-depth with many of the topics we cover here on the broadcast. Sign up online at JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch, inviting you to join us again next time as we continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus together and conclude today's teaching called the Seekers Chapter, right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.