Summit Life with J.D. Greear

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today on Summit Life, a challenging message from Pastor JD.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Greer. What if you knew the cure for cancer but
you were like, you know what, I just don't want
to to go public with it because it would end
up on all these legal battles, and I don't want
the fame of it, and I just it's just a hassle.
So I'm just going to be quiet about it. How
cruel and heartless would you have to be to know
that and to not share it with a world that
is literally dying because they don't know it. I don't
think it's a problem that you need to motivate it.

(00:25):
It's a belief problem.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author and apologist JD.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Greer.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
As always, I'm your host Molly Vidovich. Today we are
kicking off a new teaching series called Scent. It's a
study in the Book of Acts, and Pastor JD will
be unpacking the birth and spread of the early Church
and furthering the Gospel message. But don't worry, this isn't
just a history lesson. Pastor JD is challenging us to
reframe how we think about the church. It's not just

(01:01):
a place we attend once a week. It's actually a
worldwide movement of God, and we're called to be an
active part of the team. Now, remember, if you ever
miss a message in our teaching series, you can always
catch up on our website Jdgreer dot com. So are
you ready, Grab your Bible and turn to the Book
of Acts, and let's get started.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm not sure what images come to your mind when
you hear the word church, but I'm pretty sure that
it's a good ways all from how church was understood
by the first people who use the term and how
they saw church in the first century. In the Greek
New Testament, the word translated church is the word ecclesia,
and the word ecclesea literally means an assembly. It means

(01:45):
a group of or a gathering. It means a group
of people who gather or as symbol around an idea.
In fact, you want to learn a Greek word, I'll
say it. You say it ecclecia everybody. When I say that,
I mean everybody. Eclaca eclasea right now, if you break
the word down, it actually comes from two Greek words
ech and kalo k means out of caloo means called out,

(02:09):
so eclasea literally means a group of people who were
called out around an idea. The church was a movement
of people. It was a movement of people who assembled
around a common conviction. That's how the church started. But
over the years a terrible thing happened. People began to

(02:30):
think of the church as a place that you went
to for religious services. In fact, our English word church
comes not from the Greek word eclesea, but from the
German word kirk. I think it's how you pronounce it.
It's you can hear the similarity to church kirk and
kirk in German meant a sacred place where you gathered

(02:52):
for religious purposes. You hear the subtle distinction. That shift
in thinking changed the fundamental way that people related to
the church, and so throughout the Middle Ages people went
to church. Church was a place you attended or an
event that you sat through, rather than a movement that
you were a part of. And so the church became

(03:12):
an institution that essentially provided services for people and was
controlled by powerful people who used it to serve their
own interests. Right, but then something awesome happened. God raised
up in the sixteenth century a group of people known
as the Reformers, and one of the main ones for

(03:32):
the English speaking world was a guy named William Tindale.
Tyndale came to the conviction that Christianity was essentially a
movement and that if people were going to be devoted
to the movement, they had to understand the message. And
so Tyndale's life's work was to translate the first copy
of the Bible into readable English Common English. And every

(03:53):
time Tyndale came to this word ecclesea, he translated it
as congregation instead of church, because he was trying to
emphasize that the church was not a place you went to,
it was a movement you belonged to. In fact, I've
got a page somebody gave me a gift one time
of a page I've it framed in my office of
a page out of Tyndale's the Bible that he produced

(04:14):
in the sixteenth century. And every time if you see
the word church in his Bible, you're going to see
the word see, you're going to see the word congregation. Well,
that infuriated church leaders because that undercut their authority, and
so eventually Tyndale was tried as a heretic, hanged and
burned to the steak, which seemed to be like a
little overkill no point intended. But during his trial, right

(04:35):
before he died, Tyndale said to these religious leaders that
had him on trial, he said, if God spares my
life or protects my ministry ere many years, I will
cause the boy that drives the plow to know more
of the scriptures than you do. His last words, as
he was being burned at the steak, someone heard him say.
His last words were, Lord opened the King of England's eyes,

(04:58):
and if you've ever held a copy in your hands
King James Bible, you will see that God answer his
prayer in a very literal way by having the most
famous English version of the Bible named after the King
of England. Here's the point, the danger of the church
in every age. The danger of the church in every
age is to cease being a movement of people moving
and then become instead a ministry that provides religious services

(05:22):
to people, or even worse, a place that people begin
to attend. The most important thing about movements is that
well they move right. And so if you're not moving,
you're not part of the movement. No matter how many
times you come to the place, Ryan, if that makes sense.
Over the years, I've told you the church is a

(05:43):
lot like a football game. Football game, you got twenty
two guys in desperate need of rest, it's around about
twenty two thousand people in desperate need of exercise. Right,
that is the question for us as a church. Are
we as a church just doing ministry we run in
an institution, or are we part of movement? For you personally,
the question is is the church a place that you attend,

(06:06):
Is it a place where you have religious services provided
to you, or is it a movement that you personally
are a part of. Movements? Move And if you're not moving,
you're not part of the movement. So let's go to
the scripture and I want to show you how all
this started. Acts one. Let's come down to verse six
and we'll start there. Jesus had just resurrected, and now
he's standing from on the hillside with his disciples, and

(06:26):
he goes through this verse sex. They asked him, Lord,
will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
In other words, what's your next move? What's you're going
to do? Verse seven, He said to them. It's not
for you to know the times or seasons that the
Father is fixed by his own authority. In a few years,
I will raise up my servant Tim Lahay, who will
write the left behind books, and then you'll have all
your questions answered verse eight. But you will receive power

(06:50):
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you
will be my witnesses. Now, that word witness meant essentially
the same thing then that it does today. Witness was
somebody in a court of law who testified about what
they had seen and heard. The primary purpose of a
witness is not to do anything. The primary purpose of
a witness is to tell you about what's already been done.

(07:13):
You're gonna be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and samari Endo the ends of the earth. And
after he'd said these things, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out
of their sight Verse ten. And when while they were
gazing into heaven, as he went, behold, two men stood
by them in white robes. So he got twelve guys
or eleven guys looking up into heaven. And all of
a sudden, these two other guys are standing with them,

(07:35):
but they got on white robes and they're like, men
of Galley, why do you stand here looking into heaven?
And they're like, because there's a guy floating up into
the atmosphere. And they say, well, this Jesus, who was
taken up from you into heaven will come in the
same way as you saw him go. Now, this has
got to be one of the strangest scenes ever, doesn't it.
I mean, he gives these people the largest assignment that

(07:58):
you could possibly comprehend. Every people on every continent. You
don't even know about, all the continents, all of them.
You're gonna make disciples of them. It's a group of fishermen,
it's a group of carpenters, it's a group of tax collectors.
Most of them have never been more than fifty miles
outside of their hometown. Right. Never has a more important

(08:18):
assignment been given to a less capable group of people. Never,
And then without any explanation, with no plan of action,
with no marching orders, he leaves. He just leeved. They're like, why,
whoa wha what the whole world as he's ascending to him,
and they're like, the whole do you know how big
the world is. He's like, I can see it from here, fellas, Yep,

(08:39):
I know how big the world is. You don't know
how big the world is. That's where it all began.
Two thousand years later, here we are, several thousand miles away,
completely different language, still reveling in the movement that was
started on a hillside with eleven fishermen, carpenters, collectors, and

(09:02):
it's still reverberating. Two important things about that movement that
made it move that I want to commend to you
because they ought to be true about you. This is
the secret. This is the secret sauce. So the whole thing,
these two things, it's it's very simple, Okay. Wants you
to write them down and wants you to think about it,
because this is going to come out of this ax one.
You're going to see it and ask if it's applies

(09:23):
to you, unimber one. The message capture their hearts and minds.
The message absolutely captured their hearts and mind and so
my question for you is as it captured yours. Their
conviction was that Jesus had died as a substitute for sinners.
He wasn't just another religious prophet with another religious message.
He was God himself, their creator, who had come on

(09:44):
a rescue operation to save them. We humanity had greeted
his appearance on earth by murdering him, because we are
a rebellious, traitor race of people who would rather run
our own lives than submit to God, our creator. So
we murdered him. But in the universe's greatest irony our

(10:05):
murder of him. His sacrificial depth was the payment that
God accepted for our sins, if we would acknowledge it
and repent of our sins and receive the gift that
He gave through our murder of him. They believed that
Jesus had risen from the dead, and they believed that,
many of them by the way, against their wills, because
they had no room in their theology for a messiah

(10:25):
who would come and suffer and die and disrepute as
a criminal missions to be a political figure. They'd never
heard of somebody come in and raise him from the dead.
Yet they believed that against their wills, because they'd seen him.
Many of them hardly believed it. After they'd seen him,
they continue to doubt, Matthew twenty eight says, But eventually
they got to the place where they said, we can't

(10:46):
deny it because I saw it with my eyes and
I touched him with my hands. And the apostles understood
that if this were true, if he was resurrected from
the dead, then Jesus really was who he said he was,
and that this were true, this was the greatest act
of grace ever. Imagine God the Creator dying for his
rebellious creation calling a bunch of slaves and rebels, sons

(11:08):
and daughters. They knew that if this were true, it
was the most important message ever given, because it was
our only hope of salvation. That if Jesus really had
died as a sacrificial death for sinners, then there weren't
multiple ways to get to God. Because if there were
multiple ways of God, Jesus would never have died like that. Right,
Why would God have sent his son to go through
that if there were multiple ways to get to God.

(11:29):
When Jesus was in the garden against Semone and he
looks at God, his father, and he says, Daddy, if
there's any other way which you let this cut pass
from me, how cruel would God the Father have to
be to be like? Well, actually, there is a bunch
of other ways. As long as people are sincere and
do what they think is right and share their lunch,
they're going to get in. But you, I just need
you to go through this because I don't know why.

(11:49):
I just want you to the fact that Jesus went
through that shows you that there is no other way
of salvation. He had said on the Way, the Truth
and the Life, no man comes to the Father but
by me, and the apostles believed him because they understood
that if that was who God said it was, then
that was God saving us and doing for us what
we could never do for ourselves. That man had done

(12:10):
everything he could to save himself and ended up worse
than he started. So God said, well, you can't do,
I'll do because beside me there is no savior, and
you will glorify me forever because you can't pull yourself
up by your bootstraps, you can't be a good person,
you can't put your life back together. So I'm gonna
do it for you, and you're going to receive it
as a gift. They knew that if all this was true,
that this Jesus that they saw a sin like the

(12:30):
angels told him, was going to come back, and that
suddenly helped them see that everything in life was temporary.
Nothing else they built on earth was really going to last.
No house, they built, no business, they built, no nation
they established. Those things are all temporary. And there's not
that there's anything wrong with participating in those or having
a nice version of those, It's just that they understood it.
It's temporary. The only thing that lasts are the souls

(12:51):
of men and women. Because Jesus Christ was a sacrifice
that determined whether or not somebody went to heaven or hell.
And suddenly their priorities came in a line, because they said,
this is the message that has to be heard by
every person on earth, because Jesus makes the difference. They
knew that if all this were true, this was a
god so beautiful and so glorious that he was worth

(13:12):
giving away their whole lives for a god whose glory
deserved they believed to be spread among all peoples of
the earth. They'd seen this Jesus command hurricanes, They'd seen
him converse with angels. They had seen him controlled demons,
walk on water, heal lepers, and raise the dead. Yet
in the hour he needed access to those powers the

(13:33):
most he turned his back on them willingly so he
could offer his life as a sacrifice for their sins.
And they said, that is a God who needs to
be glorified and known throughout all the world. And so
when they dragged these apostles in front of the Sanhedrin
and they told them, if you don't shut up about Jesus,
we're going to kill you. The apostle Peter, speaking for
all of them, says, well, you got to do what

(13:53):
you got to do. But as for us, we cannot
help but speak what we have seen and heard, and
because of what God has done for us in Jesus,
we will never close our mouths about him. When you
see what Jesus had done, you begin to see that
he's worth nothing less than all.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Thanks for listening to Summit Life with Jdgreer. If you'd
like to know more about this ministry, visit us online
at Jdgreer dot com. You know what, we appreciate you,
our faithful listeners and supporters. We love being a source
of encouragement for you each day because we know that
there's no greater joy than having a relationship with Jesus.

(14:29):
Did you know that these Summit Life broadcasts are only
one of the ways that you can keep up with
Pastor JD's ministry. There are emails, blog posts, our entire
sermon library, and so much more available on our website.
But did you know that you can follow Pastor JD
on social media? Why not get some biblical wisdom and
encouragement as you scroll. Just search for Pastor Jdgreer on Facebook,

(14:52):
at Pastor JD. Greer on Instagram, and at Jdgreer on
x We're also ramping up our presence on YouTube, so
check us out there for some great content as well.
Follow along on all your favorite social media platforms and
stay up to date with this ministry. Now, with all
that said, we need to get back to the purpose
of our program today, the unapologetic teaching of God's work.

(15:14):
So let's rejoin Pastor JD. Career here on Summit Life.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
I have a friend from Egypt who a few years
ago told me this story about how he became a Christian.
He was an Islamic e mom in Egypt in a
relatively small village, and he said that he he started
a pimpal thing with a guy here in the United States.
Make a long story short, the guy in the United States.
He led him to Christ through reading the Gospel of

(15:39):
John my friend, didn't you know. He didn't know what
to do with that, so he began to record his
faith in Jesus and prayers to Jesus in his journal.
He would still go to the mosque where he would pray,
but he would pray to Jesus to God through Jesus.
One day he came home from work. It was a
Thursday afternoon, he said. When I got home, he said,
there was a mob of about two hundred people standing
outside of my house. And they're standing on my doorstep

(16:02):
was my mother, and she had a copy of my
journal in her hand that I'd hidden, I thought, with
its open to the page where I had confessed my
faith and in love for Jesus, he said. My mother
walked up to me. She asked me if I wrote
these things and if I believe them. I said yes.
She spit in my face in front of these two
hundred people. She took off her shoe. She slapped me
in the face, which was a symbol. He said. In
my culture of you are dead to me. You are

(16:24):
no longer my son. And she said, you shame me,
and I do not consider yourself to be my son
any longer. She says. She went back in the house,
and that crowd of two hundred, he said, beat me
until they thought I was dead. They broke several of
my ribs, he said. My face was all swollen, he said,
I passed out. He said, they thought I was dead.
But five or six hours later I came to. It
was the middle of the night, he said. I came to,

(16:45):
he said, and I dragged myself to a bus where
I was able to go to another city, where I
found a Christian missionary who was from the United States,
and I asked him if he could help me find
asylum in the United States. He said he did, and
that's how I got to where I am. As he's
telling me this story, I asked him, I said, because
he mentioned several times in the story siblings. He had
three or four younger siblings. And I asked me. Seemed

(17:06):
especially affectionate about his younger sister, and I said, have
you seen her since you became a believer? And this
has been like five years. And remember he hadn't been
emotional to this point. But he kind of stopped and
he he swallowed it, and he he said, he said,
he said, no, he says, and I will never see
her again. I don't think, he said, And he looked
at me right in my eyes, and he said that
was the price. That was the price, he said. But

(17:29):
what I know is as much as I loved my family,
as much as I loved my community, he said that
if Jesus did what Jesus said he did for me,
then there is nowhere that I cannot go to be
with him, or nowhere I will not go with nothing,
I will not do nothing, I will not endure her.
It is impossible for you to understand the glory of
Jesus and not have your heart rise up to say
what he has given to us is not worth nothing

(17:50):
less than all. Right, So here's my question for you.
It's very simple. Do you actually believe this testimony? Do
you believe it? Has it captured your until you can't
shut up about it? Are you willing to go anywhere
with it and give up anything for him? Because if not,
you're not part of the movement. And honestly, if you've
been captured by this message, you probably don't need a

(18:12):
vision weekend to motivate you. Can you see the apostles
need a vision weekend. We're all here dying. What's this
fore again? Oh yeah, thanks Peter for remind of me
while we're dying. No, they'd seen this, they felt it,
they knew the weightingness of the gospel, they knew it's urgency,
they knew his value and his worth, and they would
never shut up about it. I'm going to tell you this. Listen.

(18:33):
If you're not the kind of person who is radically
devoted to the Gospel, and if you're not the kind
who is always talking about it, listen to this. This
will be a little harsh. You probably don't really believe it,
even that you do believe it, and your heart is
so cold and hard and callous. How could you believe
what you believe about Jesus and not urgently be telling
people about it. Well, what if you discover the cure

(18:55):
for cancer? What if you knew the cure for cancer
but you were like, you know what, I just don't
want to go public with it because it would end
up on all these legal battles, and I don't want
the fame of it, and I just it's just a house.
So I'm just gonna be quiet about it. How cruel
and heartless? Would you have to be to know that
and to not share it with a world that is
literally dying because they don't know it. My question really

(19:18):
is this. I don't think it's a problem that you
need to motivate it. It's a belief problem. It is
impossible for us to really understand and believe the Gospel
and not become radical devotees to seeing it go out there.
I just don't understand how see that could be. So
the question is has it captured your heart and mind
like it captured theirs? Here's number two. The apostles yielded

(19:43):
themselves to the leadership of the spirit. Have you yielded
yourself to the leadership of the spirit? Again, the assignment
they were given was extraordinary. Never had a more important
assignment been given to a less capable group of people.
How would theyccomplish it? The clue, very important clue has

(20:03):
given you in verse one. People always overlook this word
in the first book Acts one one, Luke the writer, Well,
what's the first book? He's referring to the Gospel of Luke.
Luke acts as like a two volume compendium. So in
the first book, Luke, oh Theopholis. Who's Theophlis? It's a
skeptic that Luke is writing the book for I've dealt

(20:26):
with all that. Jesus, look at this word began. That's
a very important word. Began to do and to teach, began,
implies continuation. It wasn't that. Watch this subtle, but it's huge.
It wasn't that. In the Gospel of Luke, you see
Jesus teaching, and now in Acts you see the church teaching.

(20:48):
What you see is Jesus begin to do and to
teach in the Gospel of Luke through his fleshly body,
and now he continues to do and to teach through
his church late body. That's why Jesus, after giving them
the great commission in Acts one to eight, tells them
to wait, which I've told you before had to be
the hardest assignment for some of them, because, I mean,

(21:10):
when you get that kind of assignment, you're like, wait,
we don't have time to wait, and we got books
to write, we got preaching conferences to organize. Paul's got
to go on a missionary journal. We don't know him. Yes,
you got to go convert him, you know, Peter or
Peter's got to preach, and we got with you. John's
got to write a book. Several of us got to
write a book. Well, what do you mean, Wait, wait,
wait for an indefinite amount of time, because I need
you to sit on your rear in and understand that
this is not something you're going to do for me.

(21:32):
This is something I'm going to do through you. And
that's going to be a huge sustinction. And so when
every chapter of Acts, as you read it, you're going
to get the sense of the church is just following
the Spirit. The Spirit is the real mover. He's working
in people over here, and he's moving believers from one
place to another. They're just yielding themselves to him as
he goes about building this church. So the question is
have you yielded yourself to him to be used by him?

(21:55):
You know I've pointed out to you before that the
Book of Acts, if you read it to the end,
it has no real ending. It ends like with Paul
in prison, which is bad, but people are getting saved,
which is good. And Paul's like, I got to get
the Gospel in the room, because then't to go throughout
the whole world. And it's is it going to be successful.
Is it gonna work? And then boom, looks like that's it,
We're done. It's a cliffhanger. You know what a cliffhanger is.

(22:16):
That's how Luke ends the Book of Acts. You just
don't know why did he end it that way? Because
the movement had just begun. It wasn't the end. It
was the end of anything, of the beginning. And so
the movement continues to move. The Spirit of God is
moving you into people's lives to complete the great commission.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Consider today just the beginning. There's so much to do.
An encouraging message from Pastor JD. Greer and Summit Life.
To share this message with a friend, visit us online
at Jdgreer dot com. And while you're there, you can
catch up on our entire library of Summit Life sermons,
all free of charge thanks to our generous gospel partners.

(22:55):
Pastor JD. In your latest book, Twelve Truths in a Lie,
you say that you provide answers to life's biggest questions.
Can you tell us exactly what you mean by this?

Speaker 3 (23:05):
Well, my guess is that maybe of the twelve questions,
nine or ten of them is one that you have
asked at some point, and maybe you've got a good
answer for it.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Maybe your answer is better than mine.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
I don't know, but these are the ones that I
get asked, most of them by just ordinary people. If
God really is in control, why is there so much
evil and suffering?

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Why?

Speaker 3 (23:24):
Why does God care so much about my sex life?
How can I discover my personal purpose on earth? The
lie that we have to address right off is that
the presence of these questions means that there's something wrong
with your faith. Charles Spurgeon always said doubt is like
a foot poised to go forwards or backwards.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
This book is for those who have.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Picked up their foot to ask some of these questions,
and we would love to give you a copy, and
we've got we've made a discussion guide to go along
with it. It's exclusive for our Summit Life audience. So
go to jdquare dot com when you donate, when you
become a part of our ministry team, then we will
give you these things just as a way of saying
how much we appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
We'd love to send you your copy of Twelve Truths
and a Lie and the family friendly discussion guide that
goes with it as our way to show our appreciation
for your gift of thirty five dollars or more to
this ministry. And remember each of our Gospel partners receives
these resources automatically as our gift for their monthly generosity
to this ministry. We couldn't do it without them. To

(24:21):
give or to become a Gospel partner, simply give us
a call at eight sixty six three three five fifty
two twenty. That's eight six six three three five fifty
two twenty, or you can always head to our website
Jdgreer dot com. I'm Molli Vinevich, and I am so
glad that you joined us today. Join us tomorrow when

(24:42):
we take a fresh look at what it means to
be on the mission field right here on Summit Life
with Pastor Jdgreer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by
Jdgreer Ministries.