Today on Summit Life, much needed encouragement from J.D. Greer. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.
Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. If you're new to the program today, we're glad that you joined us. We're actually wrapping up a teaching series from the book of Acts called Scent, exploring the mission of the early church. And today Pastor J.D. reminds us that God often uses us in the middle of storms to make the biggest impact on the lives around us. With any of the previous messages in this study on the book of Acts, you can always listen online free of charge.
We also provide the message transcripts for you to study at jdgreer.com. Now turn in your Bible to Acts chapter 28. Here's Pastor J.D. And that's gonna bring us to the end of the book of Acts. In these last few chapters, Luke basically recounts for us Paul's harrowing journey into Rome. There are four things I believe the Holy Spirit wants us to see about our lives as we continue this journey that Paul and the apostles started.
Okay, I've got four of them. Open your Bibles to Acts 25. Write this first one down. Number one.
Live provocatively. Let me catch you up on what's happened between chapter 20 and 25. When Paul left the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, which is what I preached through a couple weeks ago, if you recall, when he left there, he got to Jerusalem to observe the Passover just like he had planned. That's what he told the Ephesian elders that he was going to do. Well, when he gets there, some of the Jewish authorities recognize him, and they go tell the Roman rulers that Paul has come there to start a revolt. So they send him to the regional governor, which is a guy named Philip. Felix questions Paul, realizes he's innocent, but doesn't know what to do. So he leaves Paul in prison for two years. Eventually, Felix, the governor, is succeeded as governor by a guy named Festus. So he calls Paul to stand in front of him. Now, recall that Paul has been languishing in prison for two years wondering what is going on. So the first thing Paul says when he comes out to stand before Festus is, I appeal to Caesar.
Then I'm going to get the gospel to Rome. Well, before Festus ships Paul off to Caesar, another governor in a neighboring region, Herod Agrippa, comes to visit Festus and says, hey, I hear that you've got Paul. And Festus says, yep. And Agrippa says, I've heard about this guy. I would like to hear, Agrippa says, this man myself. Then tomorrow, said Festus for the rest of us, you will hear him.
So Festus puts on this big fiesta for all the local authorities. The centerpiece of that fiesta is Paul defending himself. Agrippa wants to know, why is it that all the Jews hate this guy?
Why is he in prison? Paul's manner of life provoked a question. Our lives should provoke a question.
So you ask, well, how do you do that? It is when you have joy in the midst of things not going well, that you show that you've got a foundation for joy that people in the world just do not have. Your life was supposed to provoke a question that I don't get why you do what you do. Is your life doing that? Live provocatively in a way that provokes the question.
Seize opportunities. At the end of Paul's message, we're in chapter 26 now, flip over a page to that. Paul goes on this role at the end of his message showing how all the Jewish prophets have talked about Jesus. And then he looks at King Agrippa and he says, King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? Agrippa was an ethnic Jew.
And he would have been about eight years old when Jesus died on the cross. So he likely, living in Jerusalem, remembers all this stuff going down. And Paul's like, do you believe the prophets?
I know Agrippa that you believe. And Agrippa says to Paul, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. In a short time, you're going to try to persuade me to be a Christian? Paul, this is not about you trying to convert me.
This is about you trying to save your own life. Paul said, whether short or long, whether it took me a long time or a short time, I would to God that not only you, but also all those who are hearing me this day might become just like me, except of course, for these chains. Paul's life is on the line, but he thinks, hey, I've been given an audience to proclaim Jesus to the governors. Here's my question for you. Is that how you see your life? Paul saw whatever situation, whether advantageous for him or not, as a platform that God had given him to proclaim Jesus.
Are you capitalizing on your platforms? Which leads me to number three, embrace sovereignty. We're going to flip over again to chapter 27. Herod and Festivus put Paul in a boat to sail into Caesar, but the boat gets swept up in a hurricane and blown out the sea where they basically get lost for a month.
I mean, seriously, this guy, Paul, cannot catch a break, can he? Verse 21, since they'd been without food now for a long time, Paul stood up among men and said, men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. Paul had warned them at the beginning of this chapter through a special word from the Holy Spirit that they shouldn't do this. Verse 22, yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, only of the ship.
For this very night there stood before me an angel of God to whom I belong and whom I worship. And he said, do not be afraid, Paul, you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.
Isn't that great? Paul's like, hey, God's got to get me to Rome and he's just going to lump all you in with me and so you're going to get there safely too. So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told, but we must run aground on some island, small detail.
All right, here's the deal. Paul did not let the storm make him doubt God's control. In fact, Paul saw in the storm God arranging an opportunity for him to share his hope in God. As a Christian, God does not always shield you from the storm. He allows you to go through the same storms everyone else is going through because demonstrating the presence of God in the storm is more powerful to them than calling to them from outside of the storm.
It is on the cancer bed that you can more persuasively say to your child or in the midst of your third year of not being able to be pregnant or after your fourth miscarriage, that you can say, bless the Lord, oh, my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases and redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy and satisfies your soul with good. It is from the position of being treated wrongly or when you have been forgotten about, when you have been fired for doing the right thing that you can proclaim to others in the same situation, though my father and mother have forgotten me, you, oh, Lord, will take me in, you will lift up my head high above all my enemies. It is easier to proclaim hope as a fellow traveler than it is to call people from a place of a perch of safety who are in a storm. That's when God helps you preach your best sermons. Listen, it is when you've been broken by sin that you can proclaim the sweetness of God's forgiveness and the healing power of his grace. Do not buy into the lie that you need a perfect life to share the gospel. The testimony of a fellow traveler is the most powerful testimony of all. One of the reasons we show so many testimony videos around here is we know that sometimes it is somebody who is speaking from the midst of the storm that can be more effective than a guy standing up here on stage that some of you think, well, he's got nothing in common with me. Then this person said, yes, here's why I want you to be able to share my story. This person was coming to Christ out of just a life of some really bad decisions, a lot of sin.
And they said this, and I wasn't offended. They said, because it wasn't you on the stage. It wasn't the guy on the stage that convinced me to become a Christian. It was when there were a couple of people in this church who had the same sinful struggles I had that befriended me and they shared their hope, their redemption in Christ.
That's what changed my heart and showed me that the gospel could heal me. You need to proclaim Jesus in the midst of a storm of doubt. You know, I found that when I go on college campuses and I'm talking to students who have questions, they tend to listen to me more when I share with them my own doubts than when I sound like a Wikipedia answer man for Jesus. You need to be honest about your own questions and tell people, yeah, I got this question too.
And sometimes this doesn't make sense, but here's my anchor. You know, listen, you're like pastor, but I just don't have any equation. I don't ever doubt.
You're saying, or you just don't think that much about stuff. The greatest Christians in the world have asked questions. Listen, your testimony to Christ is more powerful if it comes from within the storm, in brokenness, in weakness, in pain, contrary to the prosperity gospel.
It is your place of weakness, not your place of strength that provides the best platform for you. Your testimony, because God did not put you on earth and save you to demonstrate your awesomeness. He puts you on earth and saved you to demonstrate his graciousness. So God puts you as a fellow traveler through storms to experience the same things everyone else experiences so he can put on display his hope in you.
And he controls even the angry winds and the waves and the husband who deserted you and the friend who betrayed you for his purposes. So embrace that God has sovereignly placed you where you are to proclaim him. Thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. Remember our website has a plethora of free resources available to encourage you in your walk with God.
And you know, I say it often here on the program. We love our entire Summit Life listening family. But did you know that there's a special group of MVPs who go above and beyond each month?
Yep, they make the broadcast you're listening to right now available here on your radio dial. And they also support our daily devotional emails, our podcasts, and so much more. Who is that group of people?
I'm glad you asked. It's our gospel partners, the incredible team of people who give generously each and every month to support Summit Life impacting untold thousands of people each and every day with the gospel. Now, if you're a gospel partner already, we share our most sincere thanks for your generosity.
And if you're not, I want to invite you to become one right now. If you feel the Lord leading you to help grow and support this ministry, call 866-335-5220 or go to jdgreer.com and join us there as a gospel partner. Okay, now let's head to the finish line in our study in the book of Acts.
Once again, here's Pastor JD. Which leads me to number four, Live Sent. And this brings us to the last two verses of the entire book. So flip over there, chapter 28.
Live Sent. Here's how Luke ends the book. Verse 30, Paul lived there, Rome, two whole years at his own expense under house arrest. He welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance, the end. Well, that's awesome, right? Paul's proclaiming Jesus there with nobody stopping him. Awesome.
But wait a minute. He's there on trial. Is he going to be released? Is his appeal to Caesar work? Is Nero having a good day? We don't know. We do know, by the way, that Paul wanted, he intended, to go from Rome to Spain.
He tells us that in Romans 1522. So he could be the first black guy to preach Christ there. That's one of his dreams. Well, does he make it?
Does he get to Spain? We don't know for the book of Acts because Acts ends, as I've often told you, in a cliffhanger. You're not told what happens to Paul and his dreams.
Why? Because it's not about. Luke is trying to tell you something by ending the book this way. It's not about Paul or his dreams.
It's about the spirit and the gospel. In fact, we know from history that eventually Paul would be released. He would go to Spain. Then he'd be re-arrested and beheaded by Nero.
Why not record all that in this book? This is Luke's way of saying to the Nero's of the world, you can kill and imprison Paul, but you can't stop the gospel because it was never about him anyway. So cut off his head and the gospel goes on. Paul is dead, but the spirit remains.
Paul's going places that nobody's ever gone and trying stuff nobody's ever tried. That's what we're trying. And hey, not all of it works. Sometimes you end up in proverbial prison and we got to back up.
We got to try something else, but we dust ourselves off and we keep going because it doesn't start with us and it doesn't end with us. The torrential wind of the spirit we see fill the church in Acts and blow Paul 2,997.4 miles across the planet is the same spirit that is at work in us and wants to blow through our DU. So here at the very end of our series, I want to give you, leave you with four ways that I want to ask you specifically to live sent. Letter A, I want you to live sent in your inviting. I want you to take risks in your invitations. I want you to invite neighbors to come to our church that you think would never come.
Why? Well, it'll do two things. One, it's going to grow your faith when you do that. Number two, it's going to give the spirit of God to do some apostle Paul moments where he knocks one of the fiercest persecutors off of a horse and he transforms and changes a person. What would it look like for every follower of Jesus in the Summit Church to say, God, could you use me to do something incredible because it's not about me and my ability to persuade, but God, spirit of God, I know you are seeking and saving those who are lost. God, who is it?
What neighbor, what coworker, what friend is it that you want me to open my mouth and let you begin to pour through me to them. This week, I was out on my back porch and we're back deck and my nine-year-old, she just turned nine, comes out and says, dad, how do you spell the word literally? I was like, one, she said one T or two. I was like, no more than two. I think one.
I don't think there's a D in there, but I don't know. Just go ask your mom. And so later, this is on the kitchen counter on this note. There is a couple, there's a family that are friends with our family that haven't yet crossed the line of faith. And my daughter knows that.
She writes them. I had to work up all my courage to write you this because I'm usually scared or shy in front of adults that I don't know too well. I wanted to encourage you to keep thinking about how much God loves you and all that he did to take away your sins. God loves us all. And he gave his life for people who bullied him to death and literally to death.
There it is, literally, boom. I pray for you a lot, hoping you will decide to follow Jesus. God is working in you because he wants to adopt you as a part of his family and you can become his child. I'm really praying for you, loving Christ, Ali. What does it look like for the Summit Church to have people that hick the courage of a nine-year-old and just say, God, I know that you have me here. And I just want to say to somebody, Jesus loves you and Jesus has a plan for you.
And that's why we're friends. I want you to live sent in your invitations. I want you to live sent in your volunteering. Live sent in your volunteering. This year, I want some of you to start giving back to those areas of the church that have been giving to you. People in this church have been a blessing to you and it's time for many of you to start being one back to them.
I saw one of the sweetest testimonies about this. The other night, a few nights ago, I was at one of our high school testimony services and a young man in our church who's graduating high school this year. His name is Preston. Preston is a remarkable young man in multiple ways, but his dad passed away a couple of years ago. His dad was very involved here in our church. Now, Preston is getting ready to go off to college and somebody pointed me to a Facebook post that he had put up. And when she talks about how after his dad died, there were a couple of men in our church who really began to invest in him after his dad passed away.
And he said this at the end of that Facebook post, he said, but as much as I love and appreciate those men, they would have been a failure at their job if they were the ones that I remember and thought about most. They pointed me to eternity. They helped me realize that there's a mission before me in this next stage of life. And I'm going to walk through that mission with the leadership of the King of Kings and my Prince of peace.
And I would add my eternal father, Jesus Christ. See, that's what the church is, is we are a father to the fatherless. We are a family and that didn't come from you sitting every week, listening to a guy give a sermon.
It comes when you volunteer and you get involved. Now, if you've been here less than three months, I'm not talking to you. Okay. I'm talking to a lot of you that treat this church like you treat your favorite restaurant. You're like, well, they got a new special.
I really like the series. I'm gonna come here for a while. And then I'll just kind of flit around over there. You need to get off your rear end and you need to get involved in the ministry of the church. You need to go from consumer to disciple. Okay.
The people that are clapping are the ones that are volunteering each week and are really burned out because they need you to help them. Okay. So I want you to live sent in your volunteering. I want you to live sent in your generosity. Well, listen, we don't need your money.
I hope you understand that. And God certainly does not need your money, but to build campuses and RDU, to reach new areas, to train up new leaders and missionaries and pastors takes millions of dollars. And I'm not worried because the money's already in the bank. Just God has temporarily held it in some of your banks for right now. And all I want you to do is ask. I just want you to ask what has God had trusted to me that he intends for me to use for his kingdom. And I want you to start to live sin in your generosity. I want you lastly to live sin in your faith. Live sin in your faith.
I want you to believe God with us for the future. This is not my dream. It's not my ambition. It's not what God put me here because it's not about Paul. And it's certainly not about me.
If it's not about Paul, it definitely wouldn't be about me. So I want you to begin to dream with us about the future, not just our church's future, but the mission of God in the world. I want you to pray for that person in your workplace or neighborhood that you think would never darken the doors of a church. I want you to pray for them starting today, every single day. I want you to pray for unutilized church assets around the country and here in Raleigh, Durham, that you've seen them as well as I have.
They're just sitting there. There are churches that are dying inside. And I want you to pray that one of two things would happen, that God would either revitalize that church, or he would take that asset, which is worth billions of dollars once you add them all up, and he would put it in the hands of some of our church planters or church planters like ours around the country that will take them and leverage them and use them to extend the mission of God. Why not ask God to do that? I want you to pray that God would dump millions of dollars onto the local church, not just ours, but other local churches.
I want you to pray that he would take all the trillions of dollars that are out there running around our country, that he would put them in the hands of local churches, and that God would give local churches the ability to be great stewards of those monies. Parents and other adults in our church, I want you to pray boldly for our teenagers that God would raise up this next generation, that this next generation would get it. And they wouldn't leave the church after high school. And they wouldn't only not leave the church after high school, but they would go on to call our nation back to Christ and to see the great commission spread around the world.
I want you to believe God for the people in your life specifically. Acts doesn't end because it's still being written. It ends in a cliffhanger because you and I are writing the next chapter. Paul got the gospel to Rome. Will you get the gospel to your community?
We don't know because you're writing that chapter. But the Spirit of God, that was carrying through Paul's heart, is available to you. And he can write that chapter as effectively through you as he could through Paul. So wake up, church, wake up. Wake up and pray up and sing up and read up and pay up. Just don't give up, let up, or shut up until everybody in your community has heard because that's what the Spirit of God is wanting to do. Believe God with us for the unreached people groups in our day. There are 6,546 unreached people groups, a group of 10,000 people or more that have no access to the gospel at all. I want you to believe God with us that our generation, our generation will see all these people groups have a church, a thriving church established in all of them. You say, well, I'm not really sure.
I think it's too big of a... Really? Did you know that in Paul's day, listen to this. Put your math brain on. In Paul's day, there was one church for every 12 unreached people groups. So one church in order to complete this would have to plant a church in 12 unreached people groups.
That doesn't even sound that undoable to me. Today, listen, there are 680 churches for every one unreached people group. Every church has to take one 680th of a people group, just United States churches, and we would see this thing finished.
Why don't we ask God to do it? Because Jesus said that when we do that, He's going to come back, and I would like that to be sooner rather than later. As we come to the end of our lengthy study in the book of Acts, I hope that the primary message of this teaching series has been clear. Being sent isn't just for professional Christians. We've seen over and over again how the gospel goes into new areas first through regular people like you and me. So J.D., we've talked before about how our listeners can get connected to a church planted through our church, The Summit, before. And as we wrap up our series through the book of Acts, it's a perfect time to talk about that again. Can you remind us how to find those churches?
Yeah, Molly, that's an important thing for us to talk about. We don't talk about probably as much as we should here on Summit Life, and that is, we have committed ourselves to planting a thousand churches within our generation. Right now, there are 80 some churches in different U.S. cities that have been planted by The Summit Church that we've done our best to try to train these leaders to just multiply. And we've got new ones that are going to be launching out soon this year in Fort Campbell, Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia, Charleston, South Carolina, and another one right here in Raleigh, North Carolina. And so I actually would love for you as a listener to maybe you're at a place where you could be part of one of these. If you just look up The Summit Collaborative, you can find out where these are.
There might be one near you. When you give toward our ministry, part of that ends up helping sponsor these church plants and to just be a part of this strategy of reaching the nation with the gospel. Thanks, J.D. If you're looking for a local church in your area, we'd love for you to check out our Summit Collaborative family of churches, which share the same DNA as the church Pastor J.D. leads here in Raleigh, Durham.
Head to jdgrier.com, scroll to the bottom, and you'll see a link for Summit Collaborative, or you can go directly to their website, summitcollaborative.org. I'm Molly Vitovich, and that's a wrap on another powerful teaching series from Pastor J.D. Greer.
Be sure to join us tomorrow when we kick off a series about one of the Bible's most famous and instructive people, King David. That's Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
