The Prophet

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. God has left an imprint in your heart for him. And when we excise God out of our lives, there's a heart hunger that will find something to substitute for it. You will find something to worship. You will turn some created thing into an ultimate thing.

It is a hunger in your heart that you cannot turn off. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. We're so glad that you're back with us today after what I pray was an amazing celebration yesterday with your family and friends. Okay, so everyone kind of knows the Christmas story, the baby in the manger, the shepherds being visited by angels. It's familiar, it's beautiful, even comforting.

But have you ever quietly thought that maybe it all sounded a little larger than life, maybe a little too perfect? Like maybe it's just another fairy tale that's part of this season? Well, today Pastor J.D. explains what sets the Nativity apart from any of the other stories we tell at this time of year. We're learning why we can trust the Bible as we kick off a new teaching series today called Foretold. Pastor J.D.

begins with a message he titled The Prophet. Well, before I start officially this morning, let me give a little spoiler alert about this introduction. If you have young children, as I do, and they are still really into all the stories that we tell at Christmas, are you catching my drift? I want to warn you that there might be a couple of things in this introduction that could challenge those stories a little bit. You follow what I'm saying? It's only going to last for a couple of minutes and then I'll be done. I'm going to try and be very subtle, but still, if you've got young kids in here, now might be a really good time to take a family bathroom break.

We're tracking, all right? I'll just mention this stuff right in the introduction, then after that you'll be totally safe. If you have been a Christian for a while, especially if you were raised as a Christian, then there are a lot of things about what we believe as Christians that you probably take for granted. You don't realize how absurd and how unbelievable they sound until you're explaining them to somebody who doesn't believe the doctrines of Christianity. Then as you're explaining them, you ever caught yourself where you're like, yeah, this is totally crazy, what I'm telling you.

It's happened to me recently with my kids. As you get ready for the Christmas season, we unpack the manger scene and I'm explaining to them what the different pieces are about. I'm like, yeah, this little baby in the manger in the hay, that's God.

We all believe that. When he came, millions of angels appeared in the sky to shepherds. They sang to them all night long. Nobody else heard them, but we believe they were there. A woman with no husband claimed that God made her pregnant.

You say these things, you're like, what is this going to sound like to somebody on the outside? Fat guy coming down a chimney? Not true. Jesus returning in the clouds on a white horse?

That's true. Flying reindeer? Be serious.

Flying horsemen of the apocalypse? Of course. You catch what I'm saying?

You get outside and you're like. I know that Christianity appears to many on the outside like it's unbelievable. I know many of you here are that way.

I'll just tell you sometimes it strikes me that way too. I want to explain today one of the most important reasons why I believe the Bible is true and why I believe that it is God himself that it speaks to us in the Bible. That the Bible is the very voice of God. If you have your Bible, and I hope that you do, open it to Deuteronomy chapter 18. As you're getting there, let me explain to you what's going on in the book of Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy, Moses is giving his farewell speech to the nation of Israel. You see, Moses had had a moral failure as a leader.

Because of that moral failure, he is not going to be allowed to accompany Israel into the promised land that they're about to go into. In chapter 18, he's giving them his farewell address. Starting in verse 9, he gives them a very important instruction and then he makes an incredible prediction.

We're going to look at both of those things. Begin here in verse 9. He tells them, when you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who would burn his son or his daughter as an offering.

Anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or who read palms or does horoscopes or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium. For everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you. No, no, but the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, and it is to him that you shall listen.

Now let me explain what just happened. God is explaining to the Israelites that when they go into the land, they are not to try and access the divine, the supernatural. They're not supposed to try to communicate with the supernatural the way that the people of the land, the Canaanites, the way that they do.

You see, every culture has its ways of connecting with the supernatural. I would say that in our culture there are basically four views about how we connect with the supernatural or the divine. And so to apply it to our context, let me outline those four views for you fairly quickly here.

Okay, here's view number one. View number one is that there is no voice of God to be heard in the world. There's no voice of God to be heard in the world, so you don't listen for him.

This view has three main varieties to it. One is atheism, which of course says that there is no God, so obviously there's no point in trying to hear him. Then there is its, you know, stepsister agnosticism, which says that we're not sure if there's a God and there's no way we can know, so we can't listen to him on earth because he's not really speaking.

And then there's the cousin deism. Deism says that there probably is a God out there somewhere, but he never gets involved with what's going on on the earth, and so there's no purpose in looking for him or listening for his voice. This view says that we should always look for perfectly natural explanations for whatever happens on earth. Science, it believes, can always eventually explain whatever happens, so we should entertain no hypotheses about God's intervention in science or history. Now let me make clear, I believe science and the historical method are wonderful advancements and things that I would suggest you arise right out of our study of the Bible. But this view can actually become, listen, it can become quite closed-minded. The purest form of the scientific method is that you would follow evidence wherever it leads, right? Even if the evidence contradicts some of your preconceived theories, and so if from the outset you just decide that there can be no supernatural appearances on the earth, then that makes you closed-minded. If you are not open to evidences that would contradict the worldview that you have, then at that point you haven't become scientific, you become a bigot.

That's what we call prejudice, when you're not open to certain evidence because you have a preconceived theory. Let me give you an example. If we discovered at our church office that somebody was stealing money from our office, and so we called a po-po and they come over and they're doing an investigation. They said, you know, we're going to make a list of suspects, and the detective began to write down suspects. I looked at the list and I'm like, well, you got guys on that list. He's like, well, yeah, these are the suspects. I'm like, no, I don't want you to put any men down there, only women.

He was like, well, why? I said, well, I just don't think any of the guys in our office would steal money. That's why I only want you to investigate the women. His response to me would be, well, you've got to explain that bias because if you go into this investigation biased, you might miss some of the clear evidence that's right in front of you. For you to not be open at all to where God might have revealed himself in history is not scientific.

It's actually quite prejudiced. All I'm saying is that you should at least be open to wherever the evidence might lead. That's all I'm pleading for. Now, for those of you that are in science, which I realize in this area is quite a few of you, let me make clear that I'm not talking about simply plugging God into the gaps. You know, wherever we can't come up with a good scientific explanation yet that you just shrug your shoulders and say it's got to be God. I'm just saying that you ought to be open to a supernatural explanation where science is not able to give a satisfactory answer or where science is not equipped to give an answer.

For example, when naturalism has to conclude about the universe that nothing times nobody equals everything and you say that doesn't make sense to me. That's not satisfactory. Or when you look at what birthed this incredible movement known as Christianity, that you at least be open to the fact that Jesus really might have been raised from the dead the way that he and his followers and his predecessors all claimed he would be. And I just want you to be willing to investigate the evidence on its own terms.

That's fair. Here is view number two. View number one, there's no voice of God to be heard in the worldview. Number two is like the opposite of that. God is in everything and so we can all access him equally.

This is two varieties. One is what we call pantheism, which literally means God is everything. It's got a cousin, panentheism, which means God is in everything. God is in you. You just got to get in touch with your inner deity. The force is strong with you, young Skywalker. This is Buddhism. This is Star Wars.

This is Deepak Chopra. This is the Gospel According to Oprah. View number three in our culture is that there are multiple deities and spirits at work in the world. There are multiple deities and spirits at work in the world. That's what you see here in this passage that he is addressing.

That's got two varieties. One is called polytheism, which is the belief that there are many gods. That's what the Romans and the Greeks and many Hindus believe. Then related to that is a view called spiritism. Spiritism, which says there are lots of spirits in the world that we can tap into. The occult, horoscopes, superstitions. Now, interestingly, there's a lot of Christians who have their own version of spiritism and superstition.

You don't believe me? Just go on to Google and type in Virgin Mary appearances and you will be overwhelmed at where poor Mary has been at work here in our world recently. Poor Mary is always showing up in a bowl of soup or a slice of bread somewhere as a way of guiding people. That's not how God speaks.

Or Christians who think that God is always giving them signs everywhere. I didn't know if it was God's will for me to ask her out or not, but on the way home I was driving. I saw a billboard. The first letter of the billboard was the first letter of her name. The last two digits of the phone number of the billboard were her age.

I knew that God was telling me to ask her out. That's new. That's not how. No, I'm not reporting a real counseling situation where I've changed the identities to keep people safe. Thanks for listening to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. There's more teaching in just a moment, but before we return, let me tell you about our latest resource created exclusively for our Summit Life listeners. It's time for our annual day planner.

Yep, it's back again. This is one of our most popular resources each year and for good reason. You see, there's nothing magical about January 1st, but it does present a natural opportunity for us to really think about the future and where we'd like to go with our lives in the coming year. It's a great time to take stock and set some goals for the way that you want to grow in the coming months. Maybe you want to start reading your Bible every day, or maybe you want to get involved in a new ministry opportunity.

Maybe a relationship needs some time and energy. Whatever it may be, we know that this planner can be a great tool to help you prioritize your time and meet those goals. Reserve your copy with a generous end of year gift today by calling 866-335-5220 or visit us online at jdgreer.com. Now let's rejoin our teaching on Summit Life. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Let me point out a real quick irony before I go to view number four. View number one was there's no voice of God to be heard. View number two is he's everywhere. View number three is there's multiple spirits speaking.

Here's the irony. People who espouse view one, that there's no voice of God to be heard in the world, end up gravitating toward views two or three. Right toward the end of last century, there was a set of very scholarly books that came out called Megatrends that analyzed cultural developments in the 20th century. In the introduction, the authors, who were not Christians, explained that one of the things that they found most surprising in this study, one of the most surprising things in the 20th century, was the growth of religion and spiritualism in the western industrialized nations. They had expected that as technology and science was able to explain more and more of the natural world, they expected that the desire for spirituality and religion would go down. But what they found to their surprise was that people at the end of the 20th century were more religious and spiritual than people at the beginning of the 20th century. As science and technology went up, so did religion.

Rodney Stark, in his incredible book, which I would commend to you, called What Americans Really Believe, points out that the percentage of atheists in our country has stayed consistent at 4% from 1944 through the end of 2007. He says, and I quote, despite all the biological and technological advancements, the predicted godless age has never dawned. The reason is because God has created you for interaction with the divine. Sociologist Peter Roszak, again not a Christian, said that trying to cut worship or religion or spirituality out of your life is like trying to put a cork in old faithful.

You might be able to stop it once or twice but eventually it's going to build up so much pressure that it just blows everywhere. If you don't think there is a personal creating God behind creation, you end up turning the creation into God. You will worship something.

As I've explained to you before, you can no more quit worshiping by not being religious than you can turn off your sex drive by remaining single. You will turn something into an ultimate thing and you will give it the weight of divinity. Studies show that atheists end up being some of the most superstitious people in the world. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that did a study on what kinds of people were most prone to believe in paranormal activity.

Paranormal stuff like bigfoot, goblins, aliens, the Loch Ness Monster, little sadomasochist dolls named Chucky, that kind of stuff. The studies showed that people who believed in God were three times less likely to believe in all that paranormal stuff than people who were agnostics or atheists. Guys like Bill Maher, who did the movie Religulous and all that, they would end up being the worst ones for superstition.

Bill Maher told David Letterman on the David Letterman show that he ought to quit taking his heart pills because western medicine was all a sham and he should only go with eastern varieties. The study showed that the least get that love is the least likely group to embrace weird paranormal beliefs. Born again Christian college students.

Rodney Stark said this in his book, for those concerned about shielding young people from the prevalent occult and paranormal beliefs in our society, a better solution to sending them to college seems to be to send them also to a conservative Sunday school class. Again the reason the reason that this happens is because you were created for a closeness with the divine. God has left an imprint in your heart for him. And when we excise God out of our lives there's a heart hunger that will find something to substitute for it. You will find something to worship. You will turn some created thing into an ultimate thing.

It is a hunger in your heart that you cannot turn off. All that to say God is saying to them, I know. I know when you go into the land you're going to want to hear from me. But don't do it like they do it. Don't try to find it in spiritism. Don't commune with yourself.

I'm not going to be found in the horoscope or by staring into your alphabet soup. These are what the Canaanites try and do to hear from God. Verse 14 and he says, I find that abominable. That's a strong word to use when you're God.

I find that abominable. He says that word three times. He says, don't do that. Verse 15, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you from your brothers. Here's your fourth view. God said that he would give us his word through his specially appointed prophets or what we call special revelation. View four, God gives his word through specially appointed prophets, special revelation. And he says, verse 15, it is to him, it is to that specially appointed prophet that you shall listen. I'll speak to you through my appointed prophets and when I do, did you get this?

You have to listen. You're going to have to be humble enough to listen to what I say about myself because undoubtedly, he says, I will challenge your views of me. Now, I'm pointing this out before, but we live in this culture that likes to say, well, we got certain parts of Jesus that we really like. We like what he says about himself here. But these other parts we find offensive. And so we'll take the parts that we like of Jesus and we'll jettison the parts that we don't. And, you know, sometimes as a culture, we're arrogant enough and historically naive enough to think that we're the first ones in history to do this.

This has always been the case. Even back then, he knew there were things about himself that he was going to tell them that were going to offend him. That's what people do with Jesus now in our culture. This is a good time of the year for Jesus. Everybody likes Jesus, the Christmas Jesus, you know, eight pound, six ounce, newborn, infant Jesus, don't even know a word yet, still omnipotent, all cute and cuddling, your little Golden Fleece diaper. Everybody likes that Jesus. Are you aware that I'm quoting a movie?

I just want to make sure you know that I didn't just make that up. I like to think that Jesus is wearing a tuxedo shirt. He's formal, but he's here to party. Yeah, parts of Jesus everybody likes. Parts of Jesus everybody likes, the Christmas parts. And so we take the parts of God's revelation that we like and we leave the others as if we are now so enlightened that we can tell God what he ought to be like. God is not a salad bar.

You don't take the parts of him you want and leave the parts you don't. If you want to know God at all, you're going to have to let God speak for himself. I'm not saying let me teach you what God is like. I'm saying you've got to at least be open to let God defining himself even when it offends you and challenges and destroys your categories. This is my prophet. He says listen to him. What God says to them is your opinions of me, how you think I'm supposed to act.

I mean they're cute, but they're they're pretty much irrelevant. You want to be God? Create your own universe. And by the way, you can't use anything that I created in your universe.

You got to all start from scratch. And when you create that universe, you can be God in whatever way you want. I've explained this before, but some of you your whole life you just kind of listen to what people said about God and you've taken little parts of it. You're like, oh I like that about God. That's gonna be part of my God. And then parts that you don't like, you're like I don't like that part of God. That's not part of my God.

You've kind of hodgepodge this God together. I want to have challenged you before and I'm totally serious about this. Go home. Not right at the moment, but go home this afternoon. Yeah, go.

No, no, I'm gonna say that. Go home this afternoon and get a sheet of paper and just you're a big boy now so it's time to quit shooting from the hip. Just I want you to make a list. I want you to make a list of everything that you think God ought to be like. And just and if you need more than one page, turn it over right in the back page and make a list of every possible descriptor you can come up with what God ought to be like.

And then I want you to go back after you're done and read back through that list and here's what you'll find. You want to be God. And you at least need to recognize that about yourself that you interpret what God says about himself a lot of times. And you need to know what God says about himself a lot of times based on what you like and what you don't like. And I'm not saying that I'm right and you're wrong. I'm just saying that you and I both have to be open enough to let God shatter our categories. Because if God is going to give especially a point of profit who is going to speak for him, he says you ought to at least be humble enough to listen to God. 322 specific prophecies that all came true.

They are pretty convincing proof that Jesus really was from God. A good start to our new teaching series here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. We've been sharing some stories that we've collected throughout the year from Summit Life listeners who've been impacted by this ministry. And this is a special one. It comes from a listener named Elliot. Hey, my name's Elliot. I was actually released from prison a couple of years ago. And when I got out, I knew I needed to make some pretty big changes in my life. I just didn't know where to start. My dad was the one who recommended Summit Life and started listening, started reading. And God really used it all to make me into the man that I am today. And I can just say that, you know, my wife even comments on the changes that she's seen in me.

We're attending a Bible teaching church together. I just wanted to say thank you. I just wanted to thank you for all the hard work and all that you're doing to help people hear the gospel and then grow in their relationship with God. It certainly made a difference for me. So just want to say thank you and keep doing what you're doing. Wow.

What a powerful testimony from Elliot. Pastor JD often talks about the importance of using our resources for God's glory, and that's what we seek to do here at Summit Life. But it's only possible because of you and your generosity. And right now, when you give, you'll receive our 2025 Summit Life Day Planner as an expression of our heartfelt thanks. Ask for the planner when you give a critical year-end gift. Right now, by calling 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220. Or you can always give online at JDGrier.com. And if you haven't signed up for our email list yet, be sure to do that today. It's the best way to stay up to date with the ministry. You'll get Pastor JD's latest blog posts, and we'll also make sure you never miss a new resource or series. Sign up today at JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Join us tomorrow as we continue our brand new sermon series called Foretold. We'll see you Friday for Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.