People Who Don’t Belong in Church, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. How you treat the poor or how forgiving you are or how accepting you are is the indicator light of whether you understand the gospel. You want to know if you understand the gospel really? It's shown in your generosity of spirit toward people around you, whether that means accepting those who are different, receiving those with troubled past or sharing resources with those who do not have it. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Bitovitch. Today we're jumping back into James Chapter 2 as Pastor J.D. unpacks a section of scripture that talks about what a serious error it is when we show partiality to anyone, especially in the church. If we are to truly fulfill Jesus's command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, we must be willing to see others as He sees them, people made in the image of God, worthy to be treated with dignity and shown mercy. And that goes for everyone, whether rich or poor, regardless of race or skin color or what talents they can offer to the church. God loves us all and we ought to mirror that love to others. If you missed the first half of this teaching from yesterday, you can listen online at J.D.

Greer dot com. Right now, let's rejoin Pastor J.D. for the second part of his message titled People Who Don't Belong in Church. The gospel is that before God, we were all poor, blind, wretched because of our sin.

Children of wrath, sons and daughters of disobedience, enemies of God, outcast strangers to the covenants. But now in grace, God has brought us near. And now our hope is in His promise that He will not judge us according to our sins, but He will judge us according to the mercy given us in Christ.

And a Christian who understands that should treat others in the same way. God set you free from your sin, the law of liberty. You were judged by the law of freedom, of liberty.

Now you should receive others the same way. And then verse 13, James says something that at first seems kind of harsh to us, verse 13. Judgment, you see, is without mercy to the one who is shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. In other words, he says, if you don't show mercy, you won't receive mercy.

Now, hold on. Does James mean that we earn God's mercy by showing mercy? Well, no. That would contradict so many other clear teachings of the Bible. You can't earn God's mercy by showing mercy or anything else. God's mercy is a free gift you received by faith. It's by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, even the work of showing mercy so that nobody can boast. Nobody's going to be in heaven saying, I'm here because I showed so much mercy to other people. What James is saying is not that we earn God's mercy by showing mercy. Listen, he's actually saying the flip of that.

Follow me, okay, lean in. James means that the evidence that we have experienced mercy is that we show it. If you really have received God's mercy, you can't help but show it to others. It is impossible, James says, to have any true awareness of the gospel and remain a judging, unforgiving, locked up person.

And if you are a judging, unforgiving, prejudiced person, the only explanation is that you have not really received mercy or at least for real with any significant experience of it. I think the best place that Jesus made this point was in the parable that he told about the man who was forgiven 10,000 talents, which is my favorite of his parables, which is why you hear it from me about every six months. Basically, you've got a man in court with a debt of 10,000 talents that he owes to this other man, this loan shark. I've told you this before, but a talent was equivalent to about 20 years of labor for the average worker.

That means in your whole lifetime, your whole lifetime, you might earn maybe two or three talents. This man owes 10,000, 5,000 lifetimes of work. 10,000 was the nice number you would count to in Greek.

So when you said 10,000, it was like saying a gazillion dollars. Point is, that's a debt he could never repay. Well, the day the debt's due, this man's now in court. In those days, you couldn't pay your debt. Then you went to prison, not just you, but your kids. And by the time you died, you hadn't paid your debt off.

They stayed in prison, in debtor's prison, which usually meant enslavement to the family you owed the money to. This man, now overwhelmed, not just at his prospects, but the prospects of his family, does something that I'm sure was common, but was awkward all the same. He falls down on his knees in this courtroom and he says, please, sir, I don't have this money, but please don't put me and my children in slavery. Please give me one more week he asked for, just one more week and I'll pay you back every penny, which is ridiculous. I mean, the man owes 5,000 lifetimes of work. He's not gonna pay it off in a week.

You can imagine at this point in the story, everybody's kind of shuffling their feet, looking around, cause this is awkward. Cause this guy that loans other people money doesn't get into the position he's in by being a softy, a pushover. Today, what do we call them?

We don't call them lone puppies, lone bunnies, lone sharks. You don't pay your money, they bring a baseball bat to your doorstep and they break your kneecap, that kind of person. But all of a sudden, this story, this man feels an emotion. Nobody's expecting it, it's called compassion. He gets a tear in his eye and a quiver in his voice. And he, I don't know, we don't know why, didn't even say, it's just unexpected. And all of a sudden he looked at this man and says, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't have another week to pay me back. Because as of right now, this moment, your entire debt is forgiven, all of it, gone. Nobody can believe it.

Certainly not the man who's been forgiven. And they're like, he's like, what just happened? And he stands up and for the first time, and who knows how long, he feels as light as air. He walks out, cross the street, he's kind of dazed. When suddenly in Jesus' story, a man crosses the street toward him, who owes him $2 for a mountain dew that he borrowed the week before.

And this guy suddenly snaps back into reality. He's like, hey, where's my $2? Just been forgiven a gazillion dollars, he's now asking for two. And the guy says, man, I'm sorry, I don't have any cash on me, it's been a hard week.

I'll hit you next week, I promise. No, if you don't have my $2 right now, I'm taking you to court and you're going to debtor's prison. Now, at this point in the story, when Jesus told that, his hearers would have said, no way.

Come on, man, I thought you were telling a true story. There's no way that somebody who just got forgiven a gazillion dollars would hold somebody else accountable for $1.50. And Jesus is like, exactly, exactly. In the same way, there is no way you could receive the kind of mercy that God gave you in forgiving your sins and then withhold mercy from others. There's no way that you could experience that kind of generosity and not be moved to give to those around you in need.

There's no way, no way to believe that God received you when you were an outcast and then look down on or show prejudice towards somebody else. The fact that you are like that means that you've probably never experienced the gospel. See, that's what James is actually saying right here.

That's what James is saying. Last week to the middle schoolers, I described it like being hit with a, I said, all right, here's what I'll just say, a little story I told. I was like, imagine that I was late getting up here to speak at camp. Where's JD?

Nobody knows where JD is. Suddenly, my car pulls up outside the worship center, screeches to a halt, I hop out, I run up on stage. I'm like, y'all, I'm so sorry. Man, I did not mean to be late. I was looking forward to this, but Ronick and I were driving up here and on the way up here, our car had a flat tire right there on I-64, whatever it is up there. Right there, right there in the middle of the road, we had a flat tire.

I got out and started changing tire and I was taking the lug nuts off and one of those lug nuts rolled across the road. So I went out to get it and I reached down to pick it up. And right as I reached down to pick it up, I heard this loud horn. I look up, y'all, there's a tractor trailer coming at me going 75 miles an hour. Just hit me square.

Probably not me, 300 yards. And I skidded to a halt. And that tractor trailer slammed on his brakes and then just ran over me. I guess he didn't know what happened because he put it in reverse and ran over me again, backed over me. Y'all, that hurt. It took me a minute.

I got up though and I found that lug nut and I put the tire back on the car and I drove straight here and that's why I'm late. And I asked all these middle schoolers, I'm like, what would you say if I said that? And they were like, we would say you were lying. Because there's no way, there's just no way you could get hit by that kind of force and stay the same. If you really got hit by a tractor trailer going 75 miles an hour, you'd look different. You'd walk different, you'd talk different, smell different.

Everything about you be different at this point. What James is saying is those who genuinely encounter mercy, they become merciful. And so from one angle, you can say that only those who show mercy toward others should expect it from God because if you don't show mercy, there's no way you really could have experienced it.

The little indicator light that you have received mercy is that you become merciful. Jesus repeated this theme often in the gospels and it's why some of what he says confuses you. He taught us to pray, for example, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. In other words, we can expect God's forgiveness in similar measure to how we forgive others. Because again, it's not that we're earning God's forgiveness, it's that the sign we've received the mercy of the gospel is that we show the mercy of the gospel. Showing mercy and receiving others and mercy is the indicator light you've experienced the gospel. If I look at that last line, mercy triumphs over judgment. In this context, that phrase means that on the final day, watch this, your acts of mercy will triumph over judgment. In this context, that phrase does not mean that on the last final day, God's mercy will triumph over judgment in his heart. His mercy triumphs over judgment. No, it's that your mercy will triumph over his judgment of you because your acts of mercy will demonstrate that you understood the gospel and you received it.

By the way, that is not original with James. James picked this principle up from his half brother, Jesus. In Matthew 25, Jesus said that on judgment day, he will separate the sheep from the goats. And in this particular judgment scene, everybody present believes the same thing. They all confess Jesus is Lord. But he divides that group of believers into the sheep and the goats, the sheep on his right, the goats on his left. In fact, stay right where you are in James, we'll come right back to you.

But let me just walk you through this passage real fast. Verse 34, Jesus says, then the king will say to those on his right, to the sheep, come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

And the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry? When were you on earth and we fed you? When were you thirsty? We gave you drink. When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you?

When were you naked? And we clothed you in prison and we visited you and the king will answer them. Truly I say unto you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. And then he will say to those on the left, apart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger, you didn't welcome me, naked and you didn't clothe me and sick and in prison, you didn't visit me. Then they also will answer him and say, Lord, when did we miss doing all those things? I mean, we would have done it for you if we knew it was you. And he'll respond by saying, truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not unto me and these will go away into eternal punishment for the righteous into eternal life.

I want you to let this settle in, Summit. According to Jesus, look, the only difference between the sheep and the goats was what they did and did not do. They were not separated according to what they believed. They were not separated based on who prayed a prayer and who got baptized. They all believed the same thing, they'd all prayed the prayer, they'd all been baptized. The difference between the sheep and the goats was whether their understanding of the gospel produced tangible acts of mercy in them.

And again, I wanna be super clear. It's not that their acts of mercy earned salvation, salvation is a free gift that we only receive by faith, but their acts of mercy demonstrated they'd experienced salvation. So on Judgment Day, their acts of mercy triumphed over God's judgment. Their acts of mercy demonstrated that they'd understood it and embraced the gospel. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. For free resources, visit us anytime at jdgreer.com. You know, I've come to believe that one of the best habits a disciple of Jesus can build into their lives is the discipline of memorizing scripture. What better way to know God than not just see and hear his word, but to commit it to our minds and our hearts. That's why we created a pack of memory verse cards this month to help you learn and recall God's word in a fresh way this year. It's sort of like a nice deck of cards, and with 52 of them, it's designed for you to learn a new verse each week of 2024. Imagine getting to the end of this year and having that many scriptures committed to your mind. Memorizing scripture, though, can go beyond just your own personal growth. It can give you a great opportunity to encourage others to fight temptation, believe God's promises, and conform more to the person of Christ.

Give us a call today at 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgreer.com to reserve your set with your gift to the ministry. Now let's return for the conclusion of our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D.

on Summit Life. So here's the question. What if we evaluated your belief in the gospel solely by how generous you were? What if we evaluated your belief in the gospel solely by how nonjudgmental you were, how accepting you were, and how you treated the poor?

Now I know some of you are gonna get overwhelmed right now. Just because you have relapses in this or you're inconsistent with this doesn't mean you're not saved. In fact, in Galatians 2, Paul confronted Peter, the apostle, the leader of the early church, because Peter had started to act in a racist manner. He doesn't say, hey, Peter, you're not really saved. We all need renewals to bring our behavior in line with the gospel. So I'm not trying to tell you you're not saved, but I'm just saying the point remains. How you treat the poor or how forgiving you are or how accepting you are is the indicator light of whether you understand the gospel.

That's James's big point. You wanna know if you understand the gospel really? It's shown in your generosity of spirit toward people around you, whether that means accepting those who are different, receiving those with troubled past, or sharing resources with those who do not have them. So let's end our time.

Let's just end it with a few really, really down to earth practical application questions. In what ways are you personally involved with the poor? That'd be my first one. If Matthew 25 happens tonight, what are you gonna hear from Jesus?

Let me be clear. We got some amazing people in our church doing amazing Matthew 25 type ministries. With prisoners and unwed mothers and high school dropouts or kids here at the church or students. But I will just tell you as a church, we are not known for this as much as we are known for other things.

And we should be known for this. I've been praying about ways that we can up our engagement with the poor of our city, which leads to this question we have to ask as a church. My second question, how many of our ministries in the church are focused on those who cannot pay us back?

Let me tell you why I phrase it like that. A lot of our ministries and facilities bring people into the church, people with bank accounts and means, and they can help pay our bills. And they are indeed ministries.

I'm not taking away from them. But in another sense, having those kinds of ministries, you business people recognize that just makes good business sense for us. So we have to ask, are we running a business here? Or do we have ministries toward people who will never be able to pay us back? Over the years, we've talked about the homeless orphaned prison or unwed mother high school dropout in our city, and we have seen some amazing things happen in each of those areas. We are funding thousands of compassion children around the world and refugee centers in places like Ukraine and India.

So there are some amazing things happening, but honestly, as a church, we have a lot of room to grow here. One of the ways we've tried to apply this principle is through church planting. Each year, Summit, we give away millions of dollars to missions and to church plants.

And like I've explained to you, those plants rarely benefit us, but we do it because we know that's about the kingdom, not about the Summit Church. We got close to 300 of our members serving overseas right now. And we give millions of dollars to the International Mission Board each year to help fund them and to other mission agencies. Of course, we gotta ask, are we planting those churches? And are we planting campuses as much in poor areas as we are in affluent ones?

Now we're trying to be intentional with that. For example, we planted churches in red light districts in India and slum adjacent areas in the Dominican Republic. Closer to home, we planted campuses in several prisons and in many poor urban areas. There've been a couple parts of our city that we became convinced after talking to people there that a style of our church would not reach them. So instead of putting a campus there, we funded an independent church plant there in that area instead of a campus. Right now, we're funding a Farsi network of church plants over in Central Asia.

Each week, we host Hispanic, Arabic, and Mandarin language gatherings at our church each week. So we are trying to be intentional with this, but we gotta stay vigilant. For example, we don't yet have a great strategy for reaching rural areas, but we're gonna keep all this in front of our church if we are truly gospel people.

Here's one more, one and a half more. A little closer to home. How quickly do you identify and reach out to disconnected people in this church? Is this a church that's a welcoming community, especially for those who feel isolated elsewhere?

Or do they experience the same hostility in here that they would out there? I mean, y'all, who can forget that moving scene in the movie 42 based on Jackie Robinson's life where Jackie Robinson, remember this, he's standing all by himself on the baseball field as all those Cincinnati fans are calling him the worst names. Jackie was the only black player in the Major League Baseball in the league.

He was the recipient of the most despicable kinds of hatred. And there in this scene is Jackie stands there all by himself, all alone. Some of you remember this, one of his white teammates, Pee Wee Reese, just walks out to him, chew in the back of, puts his arm around Jackie's shoulder, looks up into the stands and says, Jackie, I want them to know. I want them to know that you're my teammate and I stand with you. It is so moving. It is so moving, it's one of those, I'm glad we're in a dark theater so nobody can see my tears kind of moments. There's something powerful in showing love to somebody that the world says is not worthy of love. Church, this ought to be the place where people from various ethnicities and classes and backgrounds put their arms around each other and love each other.

Is that what people experience here or do they experience the same isolation in here that they do out there? How quickly do you identify and reach out to disconnected people in the church? Or how about people who just look alone at church?

Let's make this really practical, okay? How quickly do you reach out and talk to somebody who looks alone? I hear so many people complain that they went to some church and nobody ever talked to them. Rebecca McLaughlin, our friend here, she's been here several times, she says an alone person in the church is an emergency. Your friends, she says, they can wait. Meet them at Chipotle later. At church, you need to find those people who look alone and introduce yourself to them. Then introduce them to somebody else.

When somebody is sitting alone on their phone, she says, you must approach them and you must ask them if they've got somebody to sit with. It should not be said that they came to church and left without anybody knowing their name. So what if we reserved, let's just say the first seven minutes right before church starts and the seven minutes right after, just to do this. Wouldn't that be a way of demonstrating the gospel, saying here, you matter and you are important. You're not invisible in here.

Do you know what kind of place this would become if we did just that? Here's the last one, the half one. How quickly do you embrace people of questionable circumstances?

You're the kind of person who, if somebody doesn't fit, just the right profile, just the right pedigree, they come from questionable circumstances that you keep your distance from them. My quiet time reading this week took me through John 4. I was thinking about this woman that Jesus found by the well.

I mean, let's think about it. Just put that in modern times. This was a woman who clearly did not know how to run a family. She'd had not one, not two, not three, not four, but five felled marriages. And she's shacking up now with a guy who's not even her husband. For many of us, this is the kind of woman you would whisper about or complain about. Not somebody you want in your small group.

It's not somebody you want hanging around your family and influencing your kids. And yet, and yet Jesus made her the greatest evangelist in Samaria. Would you have recognized that when it happened?

Would you have embraced her? You know, Christianity is supposed to be good news for the poor. So here's the question. Does it feel that way at the Summit Church?

And what do you need to change so that it does? I call this message people who don't belong in church. And I hope you see that the irony is that there is no one who doesn't belong in church, except for those who think that their status makes them more welcome here than others. This is a place where the entry doors are red, so to speak, because broken outcast sinners find welcome and acceptance at the arms of their father.

And we should demonstrate that in how we greet people and how we receive people and what we do with our money. Encouraging words today from Pastor JD Greer here on Summit Life. If you missed any of today's teaching or would like to catch up on previous messages in this series through the book of James, you can find it all free of charge at jdgreer.com. Pastor JD, when we think about scripture memory, most of us remember it kind of being an activity for kids, right? So tell us, why is it important for us as adults to keep up the practice?

Why would adults exempt themselves from that? Jesus, when he resisted Satan, quoted scripture. And so if Jesus needed that, then certainly JD Greer does, and so do you. God calls us to memorize his word. He said, let the word of Christ well in you richly. How can a young man or an older man cleanse his way by taking heed according to God's word? It renews your mind, it transforms you, it gives you hope when you're in the midst of darkness, and it gives you power when you're in the midst of temptation. So to help you on this incredible and essential journey of scripture memorization, we've prepared something for you here at Summit Life called our Summit Life scripture memory cards. 52, one for each week of the year, that are a fantastic tool to aid you in the memorization of scripture.

Don't wait on this. Go right now and secure your set today at jdgreer.com. The 2024 scripture memory cards comes with our thanks when you donate today to support this ministry. Give and request your set when you call 866-335-5220. One more time. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can request the set when you donate online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Bidevich. Come back tomorrow as we continue this teaching series called the book of James, the gospel from the outside in. See you Thursday for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.