Summit Life with J.D. Greear

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today on Summit Life with JD. Greer.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
When you see the great love of God for you
and the Cross, it changes your heart toward God because
you see that He was not an adversary that was
trying to lord over you. He was a father who
created you for His purposes and for you to walk in.
That is the abundant life. It's everything you've been searching for.
Paul said, it is the goodness of God that leads
us to repentance, not just the threats of God. It's

(00:23):
the goodness of God that leads you to repentance.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to Summit Life with JD. Greer, lead Pastor of
the Summit Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. As always, I'm
your host, Molly Videvich. Did you know that every week
the Summit Church meets on multiple campuses around the Raleigh
Durham area of North Carolina, But every once in a
while we get the chance to gather as one united
family at larger venues like the Durham Bulls Baseball Stadium. Today,

(00:57):
we're hearing a message from that special gathering several years ago.
As Pastor JD. Continues our study in the book of
Acts called Scent, so let's head out to the old
ballpark with our Bible in hand, ready to hear from
God today. Here's Pastor JD.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
One of the things that has puzzled historians for years
is why Christianity spread so fast. In its earliest days,
Jesus left a relatively small group of followers.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
They were not people of influence. They didn't win.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Others because of their stature and because they just had
natural followings. There were lots of persecuted groups in that
first few centuries. Christianity was not the only religiously persecuted group.
There were lots of them, But the believers, the followers
of Jesus, were the only ones that didn't fight back.
They were the ones who went sometimes usually to their executions,

(01:52):
joyfully praying for their captors.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
They welcomed the outcast.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
They had the first multi racial communities on the planet.
But where here's the question, where did that energy come from?
Where did that energy that became that kind of community
that grew faster and larger than any other religious movement
ever has on the planet.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Where did that come from?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
I want us to take a look very briefly, relatively
briefly at the first message ever preached and try to
show you what it was that released that energy. This
message that Peter gave it relatively shortened to the point,
led to.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
An extraordinary response.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Three thousand people were baptized in one day as the
symbol that they were going all the way with Jesus.
We're going to pick up in Peter's sermon in verse
twenty two. Let me tell you what happened leading up
to Peter's sermon. The apostles and the first band of
Disciples had been hiding out together in an upper room
when a mighty tornado like wind filled the room where

(02:51):
they were sitting in. Little cloths of fire began to
appear above their heads, symbolizing the presence of God. They
were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they went out
so into the crowded marketplace and the temple area, where
there were people there from all the different nations on earth.
It was kind of like a world's fair every year
that took place in Jerusalem. And they began to proclaim

(03:11):
the glory of God and proclaim what Jesus had done
in languages that they did not know were unknown to them. Well,
there were people there from all over the world who
were listening to this, saying, wait a minute. You're not
from my hometown, but you're speaking my language, and you're
doing it fluently.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
You're doing it without accent.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
How is it you having never been fifty miles outside
of your hometown, how are you speaking my language fluently?

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Well?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Peter stands up in response to the question, and he
explains that this multi language phenomenon was the symbol that
the Holy Spirit had been given, that God's promise had
been fulfilled, and it signaled that God wanted the Gospel
preached in all languages in all nations on earth. And
so Peter stands up and he says verse twenty two,

(03:57):
Men of Israel, here these were words Jesus of Nazareth,
a man attested to you by God with mighty works
and wonders and signs that God did through him in
your midst. As you yourselves already know, you're very familiar
with these. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan,
and fore knowledge of God, you crucified and killed by

(04:19):
the hands of wicked men. This Jesus God raised up,
and of that we are all witnesses. Let all the
house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has
made him both Lord and Christ. This Jesus, whom you
crucified verse forty says, and with many other words. He
bore witness to these things and continued to exhort them, saying,

(04:41):
save yourselves from this crooked and corrupt generation verse thirty seven.
Now when they had heard this, they were cut to
the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest
of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Brothers? What shall we do? Cut to the heart. It
felt like a knife had entered their chest.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Jesus had promised that when the Holy Spirit came John
sixteen eight, he would convict the world of sin and
convince the world of who he was. The word convict
that he uses in Greek is elenko, and what it
means is to cross examine.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
It's think of a lawyer.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
He's going to press the case until the inconsistencies are
exposed and you have to face and hopefully finally admit
the truth. That's what the Spirit had promised to do,
and that's exactly what's happening here in Acts chapter two,
verse forty.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
So here are two.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Questions I want to consider really quickly. First of all,
what was it that cut them to the heart? And
then secondly, what do they do in response? Because this
is the energy behind that first Christian movement. Number One,
why were they cut to the heart? Why were they
cut to the heart? Tim Keller says that there are
two things about what Peter said that cut them.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Here they are.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Number One, they realized they had been wrong about Christ.
You see, in Peter's day, in Jesus's day, there were
a lot of different theories about Jesus, but Jesus would
not conform to anybody's expectations.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
He claimed to be God.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
He claimed to be able to forgive people's sins, something
that the Jewish people thought was blasphemous because only God
forgive sins. He demanded absolute lordship over people's lives.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
He did in miracles.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
He let people worship him, saying that if they didn't
worship him, the rocks and the trees would cry out
in praise of him. He claimed to be on a
rescue mission to save people, and that he was the
only way that we could be saved. And people were like, Jesus,
we like you, and we're behind you. But you got
to be quiet about all this. God and Lord stuff.

(06:43):
He wouldn't be quiet about it, so they crucified him.
Peter said that in the Resurrection, however, God overturned their
opinions and declared Jesus to be who he was, Lord,
which means God, not another religious prophet, but the creator
of the universe. Lord Christ, which means the only savior,
not one way among many, but the only name given

(07:05):
under heaven by which we can be saved. Many of
us today have something we want Jesus to be. I
saw an interview a couple of years ago with Bono,
and in the interview the subject that Jesus came up.
It was on a public news station, but that doesn't
stop Bono if you've ever seen him. And after bringing
Jesus up, the most fascinating conversation transpire between him and

(07:27):
the interviewer, who was one of his biographers. Bono said this, listen.
The secular response to the Christ story always goes like this.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Jesus was a great prophet.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Obviously a very interesting guy. It's had a lot to
say along the lines of the other great prophets, be
they Elijah, Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, who were Confucius but actually Christ.
Bono said, says, no, I'm not saying I'm a teacher.
Don't call me a teacher. I'm not saying I'm a prophet.
Don't call me a prophet. I'm saying I'm God in
the flesh. And people say Bono said, people say back

(08:00):
to him, no, no, no, pleas, just be a prophet, a prophet.
We can take you're a bit of centric Jesus, but
we've had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey.
We can handle eccentric, but not God, not the Messiah,
because you know we're gonna have to crucify you if
you keep saying that. And he goes, no, no, no,
I actually am the Messiah. At this point, Bono says,
Everybody starts staring at their shoes and says, oh my god,

(08:22):
he's gonna keep saying this. So what you're left with
is either Christ was who he said he was. Bono says,
God incarnate the Messiah, or a complete nutcase. I mean
we're talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
I'm not joking here.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
The idea that the entire course of civilization for over
half of the globe could have changed its fate and
turned upside down the world by a nutcase for me.
Bono says, that's a little far fetched. He's going to
be pointing out what peter' is saying. Here, they killed him,
but God resurrected him. And if God resurrected Jesus, then
what you and I think about him is less important

(08:59):
than who he actually is is are you open minded
enough to consider.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Christ for who he says that he is.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Are you open minded enough for God to be what
God is and not really what you want him to be?

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Are you humble enough or you open enough for.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Jesus to be who he is? Or do you insist
that Jesus be who you want him to be? They
were cut to the hearts because they realize that they've
been wrong about Jesus. And what did they point to
that kind of prove that to them? The resurrection? The resurrection,
that's the question. Did God resurrect Jesus? The people listening
to Peter didn't see how they could deny that. I mean,

(09:36):
keep in mind, this is in the very city where
Jesus had been crucified and buried, and you got three
thousand people who.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Could say, oh no, no, no, no, we know where
his grave is But they could have said.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
That, but they didn't because they're very familiar with the
events that had taken place. They didn't see how they
could write it off as a hallucination. Paul refers to
five hundred people that saw Jesus at the same time.
Five hundred people hallucinate about the same thing at once.
They couldn't write it off as a hallucination. They couldn't
just dismiss these people as liars. What profit would they

(10:08):
have gained they thought from this lie they were telling.
This lie did not gain them money, prestige, or power.
Quite the contrary, every one of the apostles would end
up dying a martyr's death, but proclaiming to the end,
he's a lie.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
We saw him, we saw him, and they didn't believe.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
In the light of that resurrection, they could simply go
on choosing to believe about Jesus what they thought he
was Lord in Christ. So they were cut to the
heart because they realized they've been wrong about Jesus. They
were also cut to the heart number two because they
realized they were responsible for the death of Jesus. They
realized they were responsible for the death of Jesus a
couple different times verse twenty three and thirty six, Peter

(10:44):
pointed this crowd, and he says you killed him. Over
the years, this verse has been used antisemitically, claiming that
the Jews killed Christ and that they ought to be
held responsible for it. But that is a very poor
understanding of Peter's meaning. First, when Peter says you killed him,
he was speaking globally. He was speaking to all of us,

(11:07):
not everyone there had been directly involved in the Christ crucifixion.
Yet Peter looks at all of them and says you,
all of you killed him. Verse thirty nine, Peter says,
this is about you, your children, and those who are
far off, children and other nations who haven't even been
born yet. This was not about a particular group of
Jews in Jerusalem.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
It's about all people. It's about you, and it's about me.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Second, when Peter says you killed him, Peter was speaking personally.
Peter knew he himself had had a part in it.
On the night that Jesus was crucified, Peter had denied
him three times. Luke, who was recording these things, and
the last denial, records one very important little detail that
people sometimes overlook. It says that after Peter denied Christ

(11:53):
the third time that Jesus turned and looked at him,
he was close enough that he could see the face
of Jesus. Jesus, by that point his face would have
been beaten and swollen, bruised, blood and the spit of
Roman soldiers dripping off of it. And Peter realized in
that moment, as he stared into the eyes of Jesus,
that it was his betrayal that was putting Jesus on

(12:13):
the cross. Jesus was looking at Peter saying this that
I'm doing, I'm doing for you. You are doing this
to me. Those who were listening to Peter it came
to the exact same conclusion that Peter did.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
We did this. You see, the Bible says that Jesus.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Died for our sins. He was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities. Your cut to the
heart when you realize it was your sin that did this.
You're cut to the heart when you see Jesus looking
at you.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
You did this against God.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
That was for your rebellion, it was for your cheating,
It was for your refusal to do things God's way,
your selfishness, your pride, your hatred, your hypocrisy, your bigotry.
You see, before you are cut, you see sin is
breaking God's rules. After your cut, you think of sin
as breaking God's heart. You see in the look that

(13:06):
he gives to you that he came in love as
a father coming to gather his rebellious children home. But
you said, no, I don't trust you. I'd rather be
in charge of my own life. We resisted him, and
when we wouldn't be resisted, we killed him. You see,
I've heard it said like this in every part, there's
a throne and a cross. If Christ is going to

(13:26):
be on the throne, you got to be on the cross.
But if you were on the throne, then Christ has
to be on the cross. If you're going to be
in the lord of your life, then there is no
room for Jesus, and the only option is to kill him,
the one who came to save We crucified.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
You were listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD. Greer,
and we'll get back to the ballpark in just a second.
But first, did you know Pastor JD has a new
book that's been released in the past few months. It's
called Twelve Truths in a Lie, and it's all about
how to answer some of life's biggest questions. Because if
we're honest, there are questions we all have to reckon with,
like how could a good God send people to hell?

(14:04):
And how do I know what my purpose is in life?
Thankfully we don't have to search for those answers aimlessly.
God gives us the answers in Scripture, and in Twelve
Truths in a Lie, Pastor JD points us back to
the ultimate truth to help us wrestle with these big questions.
This month, we're sending the book and its accompanying discussion
guide to you as our way of saying thank you

(14:24):
for your gift of thirty five dollars or more to
this ministry. Do you know someone with questions? Maybe this
book is the right starting place. Consider joining with us today.
To give now and receive your copy, call us at
eight six six three three five fifty two twenty, or
you can always head over to Jdgreer dot com. Now
let's get back to today's teaching once again. Here's Pastor JD.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
I've grown up in church, grown up in a great family,
but I saw that my rebellion put Christ on the cross.
I saw that my refusal to follow him, That's what
cruciul fied him.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
My caring about so many many things more.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Than I cared about him, the opinion of my friends,
more than his opinion, My feeling of being ashamed of
being identified with him, my giving myself over to the
lust of my flesh, where they were in control of
me and not him.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
I saw him in high school.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Not with the eyes of my head, but the eyes
of my heart looking at me, and I said, with
John Newton, the writer of that him, amazing grace. My
conscience felt and owned the guilt and plunged me in despair.
I saw my sins, his blood had spilled. I helped
to nail him. There I was cut. Here's a question,
has that ever happened to you?

Speaker 4 (15:35):
Not?

Speaker 3 (15:36):
What do you believe or what you know? What kind
of families you were up in?

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Have you ever had a first hand personal experience with God.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
You can't come to God on the faith of your parents.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
You have to be cut personally, where you see that
it was your sin that did that, and you see
that He did it for you.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
So here's the second question, what did they do. What
was it that cut them? I told you that the
truth about Christ, the death of Christ. What did they do?
I'm going to give you just.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
A handful of things here. Number one, they sought forgiveness
from the cross. They saw forgiveness from the cross. Peter
saidn Verse thirty eight, Come and be baptized as a
symbol that you're claiming Christ's death as your forgiveness. Now
that's a little ironic, isn't it. You say, well, if
the cross is where we murdered Jesus, why would it
be the place of our forgiveness. Yes, that is the
great irony of the cross. That God used our most

(16:23):
heinous act against him, ever as the source of our salvation.
Roman six twenty three says, the wages of our sin
is death. Jesus on the cross paid that death penalty
in our place, I say A fifty three.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for
our iniquities.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
The punishment that brought us peace was put upon him
by his stripes that we laid on him.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
We are healed.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
There are two things that you have to see in
the cross. One is that your sin did that to him.
Two that he did to rescue you. The cross is
an invitation of grace. It's an offer for you to
come home back to him. It is not enough to
feel the condemnation.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Of the cross.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
You have to perceive and personally receive the goodness of
God that comes to you through it.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
You see, Peter was not.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
The only apostle to betray Jesus that night. Another one did,
name Judas. When you really look at it, Judases and
Peter's sin against Jesus were not that different. They both
betrayed him. But Judas went out and hung himself, and
Peter came back to Jesus because both of them felt
watch this the condemnation of the cross. But Judas did
not perceive by faith, God in the cross, saying, Judas,

(17:37):
come back to me. I did this to bring you back,
not to condemn you. Jesus resurrected from the dead, saying, listen,
you killed me, come back because I did this for you.
Have you heard that voice. It is the voice of
your father saying come home. It's been calling to you

(17:59):
all your life. You might have realized that you might
not have whatever religion you're raised in, whether you were
religious or not that's been calling to you. There's something
in all of us that knows we are a strange
from God. You were created to know the God of
the universe. You were created to feast upon his glory.
You were created to walk in him, in might and power,

(18:20):
to show people the demonstration of the beauty of who
he is. He created you as his son or daughter
so that you could know him and bring joy to him.
But you and I forsook that, and the ravages of
what is left is called sin. And he says in
the cross, come home. They sought forgiveness. They change. Secondly,
their minds about God. They change their minds about God.

(18:42):
The word that Peter uses as repentance verse thirty eight,
repent and be baptized. Repentance in Greek means a change
of mind, a change. It's more than just a resolve
to do better. It's a whole new attitude toward God.
You see that your whole attitude toward God has been wrong.
You saw him as your adversary. But what he came
as your father and your friend. And when you see that,

(19:03):
that changes your attitude towards sin. You see when somebody
loves you and you know they love you. It changes
your heart toward them, does it not? My wonderful wife,
Veronica loyal and faithful to me, you wouldn't look at
me and say, you know JD. Veronica is so loyal
to you. She is so tender, she is so loving
to you, so devoted to you. I bet you could
cheat on her and get away with it. I bet

(19:24):
she forgive you if you did. No Her steadfast, faithful
love toward me makes me want to be faithful to her.
When you see the great love of God for you
and the Cross, it changes your heart toward God because
you see that he was not an adversary that was
trying to lord over you. He was a father who
created you for his purposes and for you to walk in.
That is the abundant life. It's everything you've been searching for.

(19:48):
The Book of Romans, Paul said, it is the goodness
of God that leads us to repentance, not just the
threats of God. It's the goodness of God that leads
you to repentance. Lastly, they surrendered surrender verse thirty seven.
They said, what shall we do? What should we do? Not? Okay, okay,
give uswo or three things we can need to make
up for this.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
Is there an offering plate? Can we give them that?

Speaker 2 (20:07):
No?

Speaker 3 (20:08):
What do we do?

Speaker 2 (20:08):
In other words, we'll do anything. Coming to Christ means
recognizing that he is the Lord, that you've been living
in rebellion against him. There's only one appropriate response, absolute surrender,
not compromise, not negotiation. God, I'll go to church more. God,
I'll give more money. God, I'll quit doing these things,
I'll clean up my language. No, there's one response, surrender. C. S.

(20:30):
Lewis said it this way. We don't come to God
as bad people trying to become better people. We come
as rebels who need to lay down our arms when
you come. It's not about becoming a better person, being
a little bit more religious.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
It's about recognizing.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
The lordship of Christ, that he's in charge, and surrendering
to him and receiving his offer to save you, because
he's the only way. That's something. Listen that you've either
done or you haven't. You've either done it or you
have it. Think of it like a line, a line
you've either crossed or you have it. Right. You see,
if you either come to a place you've surrendered to
Christ and received him as your Savior or you haven't.

(21:05):
I don't mean you've become a perfect person. I still
struggle daily with inconsistencies and sin. But see, I do
know that He is the Lord, and I'm done arguing
about who is in charge in my life. We have
a culture where a lot of people have grown up
in or around church, but they've never crossed that line.
They say things like this, I see Jesus as my savior,
but he's not really my Lord yet. Maybe you compare

(21:28):
yourself to others all the time. You think, well, I'm
good enough. You know, as long as God greats on
the curve, I'm going to be fine. That's not the issue.
The issue is Christ is the only savior.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
He is the Lord.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Have you crossed that line and received him? If he said, well,
I grew up in church, of course, I'm a Christian.
What else would I be. I'm not a Muslim, I'm
not a Jew. I'm not an atheist. You have to
trust Christ's Lord and Savior for yourself. The faith of
your parents doesn't matter at all. Right, thank God for it,
but it's got to be your decision. Or a friend
of mine says that this way, God has no grandchildren

(21:57):
he has first generation people that have chosen Him for themselves.
Have you made that decision to trust Christ as Lord
and savior? Have you stepped across that line? With many
other words, it says that he said to that Krouka generation.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
Come back to God. He would say the same thing
to us.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Have you saved yourself from that generation by letting Jesus
save you?

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Where will you be without Jesus? What is life?

Speaker 2 (22:23):
If you accomplish everything that you want out of life
but you die without him?

Speaker 3 (22:28):
What is it profit of a man?

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Jesus said, if he gains the whole world and loses
his own soul. Have you crossed that line? Have you
trusted Christ as Lord and savior? The sign that you've
made this decision is baptism, a public declaration that you
were following Jesus. We see in verse forty one that
that day routed about three thousand souls for three thousand people.

(22:50):
That day marked a turning point in their lives. The
day they crossed the line.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Now it's just a symbol.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
It's a symbol of the fact that they had surrendered
to Christ's Lord and received him as their savior. That day,
three thousand across that line. This day could be that
day for you.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
You can come up with half a dozen excuses not
to publicly profess your faith through baptism, but if you've
trusted Christ as your savior, it is truly your first
step of obedience. We'd love to pray with you if
you have any questions about what new life in Jesus means,
so just give us a call at eight six six
three three five fifty two twenty Pastor JD. Some of

(23:31):
our listeners may already have a copy of your newest
book that we're giving away this month, But important question,
why do they need another copy?

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah, that's a fair question.

Speaker 4 (23:42):
Well, I would say it's because I wrote this thinking
that you would be able to walk a friend who
has these same questions through it with you. What we've
done here exclusively for our Summit Life audiences, we provided
a discussion guide that you could give this to a
friend and then use the discussion God to navigate. I
think it'll strengthen your faith, and my hope is that

(24:03):
it enables you to better reach out to somebody with
more confidence to be able to meet them where they
are and help them on that road that the Holy
Spirit has them on and bringing them to Jesus.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Hey.

Speaker 4 (24:13):
You can reserve your copy of both the book and
the discussion guide.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
You can get it today at Jdgreer dot com.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
To give, just give us a call at eight six
six three three five fifty two twenty. That's eight six
six three three five fifty two twenty, or you can
always give online at Jdgreer dot com. I'm Molly Vidovich
and I am so glad that you joined us this week.
Be sure to tune in next time when Pastor JD
continues our study of the early church movement here on

(24:41):
Summit LIGHTE with JD.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Greer.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Today's program was produced and sponsored by Jdgreer Ministries.