Summit Life with J.D. Greear

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Greer, every other false religion, every other false God, favors
or rewards the insiders. He loves and accepts you because
you keep the rules. But the True God reaches out
for the outsiders, because truth be told, we're all outsiders
and we're all desperately in need of God's great grace.
God seeks the outsider. He's seeking the outsider in this story.
He still seeks the outsider.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Today, Welcome back to summ At Life with Pastor JD. E. Greer.
I'm your host, Molly Videvich. You know, a lot of
us can tend to think of people from the Old
Testament as a bit primitive and backward, worshiping little stone

(00:43):
statues or golden images. And while you may not find
too many statues being worshiped today here in America, rest
assured that idle worship is still going strong. In fact,
we might be worshiping a false God even when we
think we're worshiping the God of the Bible. I mean,
that's a little scary, right. So today Pastor JD explains
how we can tell if we're worshiping the True God

(01:05):
or a self created segment of our imagination. It's part
of our new teaching series called Something Better, and Pastor
JD titled this message a God Like no Other, So
let's join him now. In the Book of First.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Kings, One King seventeen, if you recall, God picked a
fight with evil King Ahab and his pet god Bail
by declaring that it wasn't going to reign until Elijah
said it was going to rain. You see, Bail specialized
in me and the rain maker. So Elijah basically gets

(01:38):
all up in his territory and says, you're not the
rain maker. God is the rain maker, and it's not
going to reign until God says it's going to reign
and He's going to do it through He's going to
say that through me. Well, then God puts Elijah. Remember
I told you that Elijah's stories go back and forth
between the big picture of what God's doing in the
world through Elijah, and then it zooms down like Google
Maps is zoom right into the small picture of what

(01:59):
God's doing in Elijah's heart. So, after Elijah declares that,
God sends him to a little secret brook called Jeriff
where God is gonna give him water through this secret brook.
Since there's not any rain, and he's going to feed
him through a fleet of courier ravens who give him
beef jerky in the morning and night. And that's how
he's going He's going to eat well. After a while,
the brook drives up. And so then God says to Elijah,

(02:21):
I'm going to provide for you through a widow that
you're going to meet in the region of Sidon. Now
siden if you recall, was outside of Israel, and it
was where Jessebel was from. It's her hometown, and it's
also the place where bail that's like his home territory.
So you got to think for a minute about how
scary this is for Elijah. He is a wanted man

(02:43):
at this point. Ahabs said, if you find him killing,
he's a wanted man, and he's got to walk on
foot through the wilderness to the right to the hometown
of his primary enemy. I mean, I mean, it's this
is scary. He's got no food, he's got no jobs,
his pet ravens heads of falling off. Everything has gone
wrong for him. And what I told you is that

(03:04):
what God is doing is God is making him weak
so that he can learn to depend on him because
that's what he needs to have in order to experience
the power of God. Here's our big takeaway from last week.
If dependence is the objective, then weakness becomes an advantage.
And what we meant by that is, if dependence on
God is the objective, if what God really wants from
you is he wants you to be fully dependent on Him,

(03:26):
then weakness has become an advantage because those are places
that you more naturally begin to depend on God. And
that's what God has been doing. I explained to some
of you that that is what God has been doing
to you. You suffer a set back recently in your job,
or maybe a setback in your health, something that came
out of the blue you didn't see coming, and you're like,

(03:46):
I don't understand, because this cripples my ability to be
able to do what I think I need to do.
Maybe you feel powerless in your parenting for the first
time you're looking at you're like, I just don't want
what to do. Or maybe you feel powerless in your marriage.
Maybe you're single and you feel powerless to be able
to obtain a relationship that you really want to have,
and you're like, I've tried everything, and I just feel
like nothing's really worked, you know, and I don't know

(04:09):
what to do. Maybe you feel unsuccessful in your ministry.
I've been there, many, many, many times. These things are
divinely ordained to teach you to depend on God to
make you weak so that you can be strong, not
in yourself, but in Him, because then the power of
God is able to really display itself through you, and
you become somebody that's not someone who simply displays your

(04:30):
strengths that everybody is impressed with. You become somebody who
is full of the power and grace of God which
other people can benefit from. That's a big decision you
got to make. What do you want from life? Do
you want to go through life showing how awesome you are,
demonstrating everybody so they can look up to you and
admire you. Or do you want to be a source
of healing and help and grace to people. If so,

(04:51):
then you're going to glory in your weakness so as
because those are places you can point people to the
power and grace of God that has been so beneficial
to you. So that's where we're going to pick up
this week, is as God continues to take Elijah to school,
preparing him for this epic battle that he's going to
have next week. First King's eighteen on top of Mount Carmel.
All the stories are leading to the top of that
mountain because he's preparing him for that battle. So here

(05:12):
we go firset ten, First King seventeenth. And when Elijah
finally after one hundred miles, got to the gate of
the city, he saw a widow there gathering sticks, just
like God told him would be there, and he asked her,
would you please bring me a little water in a cup.
As she was going to get it, he called to
her and said, hey, bring me a bite of bread too.
But she said, I swear by the Lord's your God,
that I don't have a single piece of bread in

(05:34):
my house. I have only a handful of flour left
in the jar and a little cooking oil on the
bottom of my jug. I was just gathering a few
sticks to cook this very last meal, and then my
son and I will die. But Elijah said to her,
do not be afraid. Go ahead and do just what
you said, but make me a little bread first, then
use what's left to prepare a meal for yourself. And

(05:55):
for your son, is Elijah a jerk? Is that what's
happening here is like, hey, I know you're angry, but
make something for me. For No, there's more happening, and
I'll explain it in a minute verse fourteen. For this
is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. There
will always be flower and is of oil left in
your containers until the time when the Lord sends rain
and the crops. Girl Again, so she did as Elijah said,
and she and Elijah and her family continue to eat

(06:16):
for many days. There was always enough flower and ilive
oil left in the containers, just as the Lord had
promised through Elijah. All right, being lesson learned, I mean,
it's an awesome lesson. God can provide for you anywhere.
Even in Bale's hometown, he can provide rain. It's like
a little cloud of blessing goes above the head of Elijah.
Bail cannot even provide for the people in his hometown,

(06:38):
and here God is taking care of just through this
one little rave cloud of blessing that just follows Elijah
everywhere he goes. That's an important lesson to learn. Essentially,
what Elijah has learned is what David said and saw
them twenty three. YEA, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil,
for you are with me. You're roight, and your staff
they come for me. You prepare a table for me

(07:00):
in the presence of mine enemies. You anoint my head
with oil. My cup runs over. Surely, goodness of mercy
will follow me all the days of my life, when
I'll dwell in the House of God forever. That's a
great lesson to learn. I would put a period there.
I would move on to the next subject. But that's
not what happens verse seventeen. Sometime later, the woman's son
became sick. He grew worse and worse, and finally he died.

(07:21):
Then she said to Elijah, old man of God, what
have you done to me? Have you come here to
point out my sins and killed my son? But Elijah replied,
give me your son, and he took the child's body
from her arms, carried him up the stairs to the
room where he was staying, and laid the body on
his bed. Then Elijah cried out to the Lord, oh Lord,
my God, why have you brought tragedy on this widow
who has opened her home to me, causing her son

(07:43):
to die. And he stretched himself out over the child
three times and cried out to the Lord, Oh Lord,
my God, please let this child's life return to him.
The Lord heard Elijah's prayer, and the life of the
child returned, and he revived. Then Elijah brought him down
from the upper room and gave him to his mind. Look,
he said, your son is alive. Then the woman told Elijah,

(08:03):
now I know for sure that you are a man
of God, and that truly the Lord speaks through you.
Four things that you're going to see in this story
about the True God. Things that make, if you will,
the Christian God different from every other God that has
ever been concocted in the minds of man. Here we go.
I give you four things. Number one, the True God
is a God of the outsider. The True God is

(08:26):
a God of the outsider. Now let me ask you
a question. Do you not think that there were a
lot of widows in Israel? Sure there were there are
a lot of faithful widows in Israel during that time.
And wasn't Israel God's people wm in his hometown? Why
did God send Elijah to a gentile widow outside of

(08:48):
the region of Israel. Do you know what the first
sermon that Jesus of a priest was, Who's will? Bible
trivia for you. You know what the first sermon Jesus ever
a preach was. It was on this passage. It's Luke
chapter four is where the it's recorded. Let me read
it to you. But in truth, I tell you there
were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah,
when the heavens were shut up three years and six
months and a great famine came over all the land,

(09:11):
and Elijah was sent to none of them, but only
the Zaraphath and the land of Side into a woman
who was a widow. The famine, Jesus said, affected everybody
in Israel, but the only one that Elijah was sent
to rescue was a pagan widowed woman in Bale's hometown.
And that truth made the Israelite leaders who were listening

(09:32):
to Jesus' first sermon so mad that they tried to
kill him on the spot. I was thinking back to
my first sermon and the reactions I got to head.
I was seventeen years old. I preached my first sermon.
Everybody came down afterwards, pated me on the back, told
me how proud they were of me, and my parents
took me out for ice cream. That was my first sermon,
jesus first sermon. They tried to throw him off a cliff,
and it was because of this message. This first point

(09:55):
I'm making to you is what caused them to be
so angry they wanted to kill him. God is a
god of the outsider. You see, every other religion focuses
on God rewarding the insider. God blesses you and rewards
you if you keep the rules. This woman was an
outsider in just about every possible way, was she not.
She's a gentile, which makes her a racial outsider. She

(10:18):
is a pagan, which makes her a religious outsider. She's
a woman, which makes her in those days, a gender outsider.
She is a widow, which makes her an economic outsider.
This is the one that God sent Elijah to save
this path. You think that's significant, by the way, significant
enough for Jesus making his first sermon This past Christmas.
I pointed out to you that there are some interesting

(10:40):
things in Jesus's genealogy and genealogy. If you recall I
told you. It was like a resume. In those days,
if you were going to be the ruler of a region,
you publish your genealogy. And what you were trying to
show is that you had a lot of great rulers
in your past, so that they would just know that
awesomeness is in your blood. And so I told you
that when kings in those days will publish their genealogy,
I know we know this for historical fact. Herod when

(11:02):
he publishes genealogy, omits people in his bloodline that were
shady or you know, embarrassing. So Jesus, what's interesting about
his genealogy in Matthew one is not only does it
not skip over the people that are embarrassing, it almost
seems to celebrate them. That there's a lot of women
in Jesus's genealogy, which again no offense. In those days,

(11:23):
that was considered totally insignificant. You never put a woman
in your genealogy. And not just women, by the way,
not just faithful good. It was like women with a
shady past. Father Abraham is mentioned right alongside gentile prostitutes
because in Christ they're equals. And that's because the basis
of their acceptance before God is not on their righteous living.

(11:43):
It's on God's miraculous grace. And that applies to Father
Abraham and to gentile prostitutes like Rayhab and God includes
their names in the line that leads to Christ, so
that you can be sure that your name can be
included in the line that leads from Christ. That means,
no matter who you are, what you've done, there is
room in His family for you. Do you feel like

(12:04):
an outcast, You're not. He came for you. Do you
feel like you're worthless, You're not. He purchased you with
his blood, which is the universe's most valuable possession. If
you feel like an outsider, listen, that's actually an advantage
because maybe you understand that a lot of people have
trouble understanding, and that is that God doesn't come for

(12:24):
people on the inside because there is nobody in the inside.
All falls short of the glory of God. And if
you are at a place where you realize that there's
nothing about you that makes you acceptable to God, that's
when you're in a place where you can feast on
the richness of God's grace. If dependence is the objective
and weakness is an advantage. If dependence on God's grace
is your hope of salvation, then realizing that you're morally

(12:45):
weak becomes your advantage. Every other false God favors or
rewards the insiders. He loves and accepts you because you
keep the rules, but the true God reaches out for
the outsiders, because truth be told, we're all outsiders, and
we're all desperately in need of God's greg grace. And
when Jesus preached this, they tried to kill him because
they wanted a God that rewarded them for how good

(13:06):
they were, and Jesus had a different message.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Thanks for joining us today for summitt Life with Pastor JD. Greer.
We'll resume today's teaching in just a moment, but I
want to make a special announcement about a brand new
group that we've started here at Summit Life. We now
have a special Facebook group for our Gospel Partners. Our
Gospel partners are people who commit to a regular monthly
gift to this ministry and truly make this ministry possible.

(13:32):
We couldn't do this without them. This private Facebook group
allows our Gospel partners to connect with one another from
across the world. Pray together and discuss exclusive content that
we share with them, as well as allowing us here
at Summit Life to communicate directly throughout the week or
month in an informal and casual environment. We want to

(13:53):
pour into our gospel partners as much as they pour
into this ministry, and this exclusive Facebook group is one
one of the ways that we want to say thank you.
If you would like to join our team as a
Gospel partner and then become a part of this exclusive group,
just give us a call at eight six six three
three five fifty two twenty or visit Jdgreer dot com.

(14:15):
Now let's get back to today's teaching here on Summit
Life once again. Here's Pastor JD.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Jesus was the friend of sinners. He hung out with prostitutes,
he he hung out with tax collectors, and he embraced leffers.
And that's still where you're going to find him pursuing
people today. And for some of you, he's pursuing you.
By the way, if you know God, listen, that means
that you become a friend to the outsider. If you've
ever really understood the gospel. I don't mean if you

(14:42):
grew up in church. I don't mean if you prayed
some little prayerdash Jesus in your heart. I mean if
you've actually been embraced by the Gospel. One of the
things that always becomes true of your life is you
become somebody that is characterized by reaching for those on
the outside, not as somebody who just hangs out with
a bunch of save people. Here's a gut check question
for you I have. I've asked you this before, But

(15:04):
if God today right now answered in one fell swoop
every prayer you prayed last week said yes to all
of them, how many new people would be in the
Kingdom this week? If God, in one fell swoop answered
every prayer you prayed last week, how many new people
would be in the kingdom next week? How many people
are you engaged with on the outside. If I were

(15:26):
to say, right now, pull out your phone and tell
me how many numbers of people on the outside that
you could text right after this service and say, hey,
come meet me for coffee because I want to talk
to you about some things. How many people would that
be in your phone? Is your life characterized to somebody
who reaches to those on the outside? Are you involved here?
At our church, helping reach out to those outside of

(15:46):
our normal or normal circles, the refugee, the recovering prisoner,
the homeless. But let me give you a little insight here. Okay,
for a move on our next point. I don't mean
to preacheck a fortune cookie, but just let me do this.
This woman came to know God because a weirdo entered
her life. Fair enough, I mean, this is weird. Elijah

(16:06):
shows up, it was like, hey, you know you're hunger
once you made me something to eat. That's weird. Some
of you who aren't Christians, listen, this is the fortune
for you bart have been recently engaged by weirdo. I know,
they's sit in my body and it's just it's awkward again.
And you're like, I'm not really sure why we have
this relationship. I'm just trying to get you off my back.

(16:27):
I'm here at church. Okay. What if I suggested to
you that you may not brush that off quite so
quickly because there might be something divine in it. God
revealed himself to this woman through a weirdo who reached
out to somebody he shouldn't have reached out to, and
showed some compassion to her, and she couldn't understand why,
but that was the vehicle that God used to display
himself to her through some at church. My challenge for

(16:49):
you is this, be that weirdo. Okay, that's the coolest
sermon point I've ever come up with in my life.
All Right, be that weirdo. Be that weirdo. Then the
word of the Lord came to him. Arise, go to Xerophath,
which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I've commanded
a widow there to feed you. Dwell there. That's good weird.

(17:13):
That's good weird. And I want you to be that
weirdo that's characterized by reaching out to people that have
nothing really in common with you, because that's just what
Gospel people do. Be that weird. And I'm not talking
about creepy Christian weird goofy, like you need to put
a bumper sticker in your car. Its like in case
of rapture, this car will be unmanned. Or you know
the Darwin fish with all the piranha Christian fish eating

(17:34):
that fish, or you having twelve cats named after the
twelve apostles. Are you starting a coffee shop called Hebrews.
I'm not talking about any of that stuff, all right,
that's just goofy. It's some of it that's bad, goofy,
bad weird. I'm talking about you being weird because they're like,
I don't understand why we have this relationship. I don't
know why you're showing this kind of interest in me.
You're kind of weird. But that weirdness is the vehicle

(17:57):
that God uses to display his grace to the outside.
Number two. The true God is a God who sometimes
contradicts and confuses us. The true God is a God
who sometimes contradiction confuses us. This woman's son dies and
she doesn't know why. She's like, God, is is because
of my sins? And you kill my son because of
my sins. She goes to the prophet of God, Elijah.

(18:19):
Elijah's a prophet, He's a theologian, he is a seminary graduate.
To what's his response, Well, let me just explain to
you while all this is no, he doesn't know either.
He goes to God and says, God, I don't understand
why this kid's dying either, Can you help here. Notice
what they don't do. They don't blame God. They don't
start accusing God. The woman acknowledge that she's a sinner

(18:39):
and so God has every right to do what God
is going to do. They don't. Elijah doesn't give her
a pat answer and say, well, here's the easy answer
for why this happens. You know, it turns out, from
our perspective, we realize had nothing to do with her sin.
It had to do with a battle that was going
on between God and bail and God was going to
glorify himself. Elijah doesn't promise her that if she'll just

(19:00):
have faith, she'll never again have any pain in her life. No,
they just go to God, asking God for help, appealing
to his mercy. They have what I call a humble faith.
A humble faith. Humble they recognize that God often does
things that they don't understand. Faith that never sees believing
in the goodness of God even when their questions aren't

(19:21):
being answered. A lot of people attempt to have faith
listen to this without being humble, and it will never
work ever, I know from experience. Here's what I mean
by that, in order for you to really believe, God
has to pretty much do exactly what you think he should.
And if God doesn't do that, then you're gonna lose
your faith. Or how about this. I know a lot

(19:44):
of people who in order to obey God's laws, they
pretty much have to agree with them. And that's why
you got sections of God's laws. You're like, I just
want to not me My God doesn't know. I'm gonna
opt out of that section of what God teaches about
this or that subject. But can I tell you something

(20:07):
humbly but harshly, if you're God doesn't say things that
offend you, do things that confuse you and sometimes enrage you,
I would suggest you probably don't know the real God
at all. You just know a projection of your own imagination. Yeah, yeah, Stepford.
I it was an old movie Stepford Wives. Old movies,

(20:28):
maybe something you haven't seen him. But you've got a
group of guys in the movie who get really sick
of how difficult their wives are, and so they come
up with these robots who look like women, but they'll
do exactly what they want them to do, and so
it's awesome for a while, but at the end it's
very unsatisfying because they're not actually in a relationship with

(20:49):
another person. They're just in a relationship with a projection
of themselves. Tim Keller says that many people have what
we would call a step for God, in that it's
not a real God who sometimes prediction confuses you. It's
simply a projection of what you want, and you don't
know the real God. You know, a projection of your
own imagination. Write this down. A God who always conforms

(21:10):
to your mind is usually a projection of your mind.
A God who always conforms your mind is usually just
a projection of your mind. Listen, do not hear arrogance
in this. One of the ways that I know that
I know that God is the true God is because
of how many unanswered questions I have. I who would
have made this up? If I am vented a God,

(21:31):
he would always reward the righteous, he would always take
care of the people that I like. But God, the
God that I see in the Bible, is confusing. He's
constantly doing things that made me say what, Why would
you say that? Why would you do that? I don't
get that humble faith, willingness to live with unanswered questions,
yet confident in God's goodness even in the midst of
those questions. That's what you see going on with Elijen

(21:53):
this woman. Is that like your faith? Is that like
your faith? Some people, when they suffer, I assume that
God just doesn't care. Some people begin to rage against God. God,
how dare you other people? Turn God into some kind
of genie that'll always heal and always bless if you'll

(22:14):
just show enough faith that works awesome until it doesn't.
And then you show up in my office. Haven't been
in one of those kind of churches? And you're like,
I did everything right. I named it, a claimed it,
a prayde all night, confessed every known sin, thank God
in advance for the answer, and my son still died.

(22:35):
It's because you never had humble faith. Humble faith is
a willingness to live with un answered questions that you
cease never, never cease to believe in the goodness of God.
I can't tell you. Just listen to this humble faith
as a miracle in the whole spirit.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Do you believe in a God made in your image
that always agrees with you? Or do you believe in
the true God who sometimes contradicts, challenges it, and even
confuses you that takes humble faith. You're listening to Summit
Life with pastor, author and apologist JD. Career, So pastor JD.
It's interesting that the prophet Elijah confronted a religious environment

(23:13):
like our own, right.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, you know, we hear words like deconstruction, de christian,
post Christian for a lot of people. It's just you know,
especially if you're in a part of the country where
a lot of people go to church. It's just well,
the old fashion word we used was was backsliding Christian.
But whatever it is. It's kind of like religion is
a very private thing. You got your God, I got mine.
You got your way of doing this, I have mine.

(23:35):
Elijah shows us that knowing the One True God requires
something different, and it produces something different. That study that
we're providing is called Elijah and Elisha, a devotional through
First King seventeen through Second King six. You can work
through it on your own and bring somebody along in
the journey with you by just taking a deeper dive
into First and Second Kings. That goes along with the

(23:55):
messages that we're doing here on Summit Life. We would
love to give a copy of this team when you
support the ministry of Summit Life, if you'll just take
a look at Jdgreer dot com. You can get that
process started. We are so thankful for our listeners and
for those who reach out to us, and for those
of you, especially who financially partner with us to be
able to keep this ministry on the air and to
expand it into in the new places.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Request your copy today when you donate at the suggested
level of thirty five dollars or more, call eight six
six three three five fifty two twenty. That's eight six
six three three five fifty two twenty, or if it's easier,
you can give and request the book online at Jdgreer
dot com. I'm Mollie Vidovich. I am so glad to

(24:40):
have you with us today, and be sure to listen
tomorrow when we continue our study of Elijah and the Widow.
That's Friday on Summit Life with JD. Greer. Today's program
was produced and sponsored by Jdgreer Ministries.