Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear

Each week, we’ll be posting a special short version of each 12 Truths and a Lie podcast on Ask Me Anything. To listen to the full version and subscribe, just visit AccessMore at www. accessmore.com/pd/12-Truths–A-Lie-Podcast-by-JD-Greear Show Notes:   With everything that goes on in church, do you ever wonder, “What exactly is the most important thing we’re doing here?” Most churches keep themselves-and their members-really busy. They judge their success by how many people attend or how many baptisms they’ve done. But heaven doesn’t celebrate any of those numbers. It only celebrates disciples. In this episode of “12 Truths and a Lie,” Pastor J.D. shows us the heart of Jesus’ mission. It’s found right in the Great Commission. But it’s not “going,” “teaching,” or “baptizing.” At the center of it all is one command: “Make disciples.” Disciple-making wasn’t a special assignment for a select few, but the central calling for every follower of Jesus. You’ll learn all about Jesus’ call to become a disciple, along with the five identities of every follower of Jesus-worshiper, family member, servant, steward, and witness. Most importantly, you’ll learn how you can discover your role in the disciple-making process. Because God’s method for reaching the world isn’t big ministries with uber-talented preachers, but everyday Christians, filled with the Spirit, making disciples everywhere they go. In other words, God’s method … is you. Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question. We’ll pick Ask Me Anything back at the end of the year. As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast! Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Discover how to have assurance of salvation by understanding that it is not based on our behavior but on God's love. Learn that when God sees us, he sees the perfect life of Jesus, bringing peace and confidence. Stay tuned for the next episode about discipleship.

Each week, we’ll be posting a special short version of each 12 Truths and a Lie podcast on Ask Me Anything. To listen to the full version and subscribe, just visit Access more at  www. accessmore.com/pd/12-Truths–A-Lie-Podcast-by-JD-Greear About 12 Truths and a Lie Podcast:  Whether you’re a new Christian or have walked with God for decades, life is filled with difficult questions that can feel impossible to answer. In the 12 Truths & A Lie Podcast, Pastor J.D. Greear confidently tackles some of the most perplexing issues, including our purpose, the afterlife, how to handle political differences, and more with profound insight, empathy, and scriptural application. J.D. Greear serves as the Lead Pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, NC. He is the author of several books, including “Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart,” “Essential Christianity,” and his most recent work, “12 Truths and a Lie.” Additionally, he has been a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A since January 2022 and previously held the position of the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Our prayer for you is that this podcast will help draw you closer to God and be bold in asking hard questions. Here’s the promise: with each question, we will pursue the answers according to what God’s Word says…the ultimate truth. Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question. We’ll pick Ask Me Anything back at the end of the year. As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast! Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a listener question from Cameron who asked, “Why does James say we’re justified by works?” Show Notes: That’s a great question and one that I hear a lot and it’s one that I used to ask a lot as a young college student.  Just so we’re all clear and you seen where the tension is, Paul says in Romans 3:28, “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” And yet, James 2:24 says: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” So a lot of people read that and they think it’s a contradiction. What James is teaching is actually not a contradiction to what Paul had said. It actually harmonizes the discussion. It shows us what faith that saves really is. The key point in this whole discussion is that works are the evidence of a decision to follow Jesus and make him Lord of your life. I always compare it to sitting down in a chair… how do you know that you made a decision to sit down in that chair?  It’s probably not because you remember the mental process it took to sit down. The best evidence that you made a decision to sit down in the chair is that you’re seated there now—that’s proof that at some point you made a decision to or not. In the same way, the best evidence that you put your faith in Christ as your Lord and Savior is that you are living a life of works that demonstrate that he is Lord. What Jame is saying is that if what my mouth says about what I decided and my posture says differ, my posture is a more reliable indicator. Your posture is the evidence of your decision to sit. In the same way, your obedience is your evidence of faith in Christ and recognition of his Lordship. You are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone As we’re recording this, our church is in a series on the book of James, and coincidentally, one of our teaching pastors–Curtis Andursko–just addressed this question in his sermon on James 2. I thought he did a great job explaining this, and he even addressed the “Paul in Romans versus James” confusion directly. For Paul, justified: made right with God, For James, it means the the reality of your faith is proven before others Paige Benton Brown talked about how Paul was writing more like an OBGYN—he was talking about how we are born into true faith.  James is writing like a pediatrician—his goal is to talk about how we are living out that faith. Both Paul and James both point to a couple places in Abraham’s life where we see this kind of obedience. In Genesis 15, God covenants with Abraham And in Genesis 22, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac (and of course, God takes him right up to the point of obedience and then he provides a ram) Paul points out that Genesis 15:6 occurred before that dramatic act of obedience. All there was a promise and Abraham believed it. James points to Genesis 22 as the proof that Abraham had really decided to really trust God and follow him because now he is willing to sacrifice his son in obedience. Bottom line: James and Paul do not contradict—they harmonize. And that’s actually a really good principle to take whenever the Bible seems to contradict itself. Usually the greatest spiritual truth is found beneath something that looks like a contradiction. Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question. As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast! Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

The podcast explores the reality of the occult, discussing practices like witchcraft and pagan worship. It highlights the increase in people believing in the occult in America. The hosts caution against flirting with the occult and discuss its global presence. They also delve into the struggles of finding common ground with occultists and address controversy around the Harry Potter series. The chapter explores Satan's influence in daily life and emphasizes the importance of scripture in combating his lies and temptations.

This week, Pastor J.D. finishes a two-part series about Jesus’ return. The second question is: “What does it look like to live ready for Jesus’ return?” Show Notes: Let me give you four things that will change in you if you are in a state of readiness for Jesus’ return: Spiritual alertness How would you live differently today if you knew Jesus were coming back tonight? I talked about my church growing up, and it’s a little bit funny to poke fun at now… but one thing my church had that I think we’re missing: the earnest expectation of his return… What if you knew Jesus was coming back today? Wouldn’t it make you ask the question: Am I ready? Am I living today in a way that I’d be happy to see him tonight? It genuinely could be today… this may be your last chance to repent; last chance to share the gospel. Mission urgency If you know the world has an end, and it could be soon, doesn’t that rearrange your priorities Life is consumed by vacation, hobbies, possessions and bucket lists Listen, I’m not a guy who believes God never wants us to have things we enjoy, or that he’s not glorified by our secular work. But I also know life is painfully short, and when the master returns I want to have invested my talents to the fullest for his kingdom… and not be found sitting on them. There’s nothing wrong with a little R&R, hobbies or nice things. But many of us work just so you can go on vacation. That’s the end game. A disciple of Jesus takes occasional vacations so he can work more for Jesus kingdom. Are you investing the resources of your life with the expectation of his return? Hope in suffering Jesus’ return promises us that pain and suffering won’t last forever; all pain is temporary. There’s a Christian philosopher named Cornelius Plantinga who said, “The second coming of Jesus Christ is good news for people whose lives are filled with bad news. If you a slave in Pharaoh’s Egypt or in the United States in the early 19th century; if you are an Israelite exiled in Babylon, or a Kosovar exiled in Albania; if you are a woman living in a culture where when your husband gets mad at you he can lock you up in a closet or threaten to have his buddies come and rape you… then you don’t yawn when somebody mentions the return of Jesus Christ.” I might add, if your son just died of cancer; if your marriage just dissolved; if you’re lonely; if your body is wracked with chronic pain—lift your eyes! It doesn’t last forever. It could be tonight. If your life just hasn’t turned out… “the promise of the second coming shows us the ‘good ole days’ are always ahead of us.” Power to forgive In Tim Keller’s book, Forgive,  he points out that Jesus gives you the power to forgive. I’ve seen people who really struggle with bitterness helped by grasping Jesus’ imminent return. When someone wrongs us, we want justice. So we run to the judgment seat of the world and we hop on it. We know what they deserve and we want to help them get it. “Go, God. Give it to him.” We want to be God’s adviser. But listen, we weren’t meant for that throne. It’s too big for us. And it distorts us. Have you ever seen how bitterness destroys someone? Someone is mad at someone else and it colors their whole disposition toward that person, where everything that person does becomes tarnished. Or maybe even they begin to be prejudiced toward whole groups of people. A woman who is angry at her husband thinks all men are bad; someone who suffers injustice at the hands one person in a people group thinks everyone in that people group is bad… We weren’t meant for that throne. The doctrine of the second coming helps us stay off of it because we know, he’s coming back; he will bring justice! And so I can endure injustice for the time being because he’ll set all things right. One thing we have to agree on: We ought to be expecting the return of Jesus anytime and we ought to live like it is today.  Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question. As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast! Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question submitted from Brandon. He asked, “What’s going to happen in the ‘end times?'” Show Notes: I grew up in a church a little obsessed with the Second Coming. On our Sunday School walls we had posters with dates and pictures of dragons and names of politicians. We had our annual prophecy conferences (which were the best attended events of the year); For special Sunday night services we watched the Billy Graham movies about the Tribulation. We had our rapture board games and rapture bumper stickers, “In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.” And we made rapture jokes like there was no tomorrow. As a kid, I lived in perpetual fear of being left behind. If for any reason I couldn’t find my parents or they didn’t respond in the house when I called them, I’d run through the house yelling “Mom, mom” just sure I’d see her clothes had fallen neatly into a pile on the floor… I had this recurring dream where the rapture happened—this is not a joke—and I got lifted up to the top of the house and then as everyone else went on up to meet Jesus I would drop back down to the earth, revealing that my worst fear had come true: My faith in Christ wasn’t strong enough to get me all the way to heaven. And when the roll was called up yonder I’d be here. And then, when I was in high school, a little book came out that got instant popularity: 88 Reasons why Jesus is Coming Back in 1988. The guy who wrote it said, “Jesus said we can’t know the day or the hour, but he never said we couldn’t know within a 3-day window.” It was a big deal at my Christian school… “We’re going to sit here and wait.” Of course that day came and went. And then next year the author released 89 reasons Jesus would come back in 1989—he said he had  explained he had miscounted the Gregorian calendar, which, of course, happens to the best of us. I have since learned that some of how we approached this topic lacked some balance, but, if you’ll let me be charitable for a minute, there is one thing we lived with that I believe our generation is missing and that is the earnest expectation of his return My pastor would often end our services by saying, “Maranatha.” (The Lord is coming). And then he would say, “And it could be today.” And I really felt like that could be true. I know we have disagreements about the timing of Jesus’ return, and what phrases like “thief in the night” really mean—friendly disagreement, I hope. And I have my own convictions, as I’m sure you do. Instead I want to talk about something we all should have in common: And that is the need to conduct our ministries with the awareness that eternity is real and the Lord is at hand. Eschatology is a fancy word for the theology of the end times—might be the one of the most, if not the most, neglected doctrines in the contemporary church. Many theologians seem to find it embarrassing: the crass, uneducated uncle of Christian theology. But get this: the second coming of Christ is the most talked about doctrine in the Bible. In the 260 chapters of the New Testament, there are 318 references to it. (1 out of every 13 verses mentions it.) And for every 1 prophecy in the Bible concerning Christ’s first advent, there are eight that talk about his second. (We have a whole holiday celebrating his first coming but we barely mention the second.) Furthermore: Almost every moral command given in the New Testament is tied to the second coming at some point. My pastor used to say: “How can we call this doctrine non-essential? It’s in every chapter. Every command is tied to it. To miss it is to miss the whole hope and thrust of the New Testament: ‘Surely I come quickly. Even so come, Lord Jesus.’” I just want a emphasize real quick that there is a commonality all Christians should have and that is the imminence of Jesus’s return. There are basically four positions: Some Christians think he is coming back before… Pre-trib: Tribulation is a 7 year period in which the antichrist and Kirk Cameron do battle… Raptured out before. Post-trib, or “historic premillennialism”: that is the idea that there is a tribulation coming, God will continue to work in the nation of Israel, but the church won’t be raptured up before. The church will be raptured out afterward. The major problem with this one is that it creates problems for the imminence of Jesus’ return. Post-millennial and amillennial. Both of these takes a more metaphorical approach. These positions believes the church has replaced Israel, and all the promises toward Israel have been fulfilled and are being fulfilled in the church. For spiritual purposes, there are no longer Jews and no history for the nation of Israel. That’s a real problem for me as a Bible interpreter, but let me note the positives:. Preserves the imminence: Jesus could return whenever. Help you see the spiritual meanings behind the imagery of Revelation. (my experience vs. reading Beale) There’s one more beyond those and that’s pan-tribulationists: Which means, “I really have no idea, but I know it will all pan out in the end.” Maybe you are there? If you’re curious, I would say I am in the pre-tribulation camp. I would say 80% of the time.  I’m sympathetic to certain elements of the others, but I typically land on that side. I‘ll give you three quick reasons for that.  Unconditional and straightforward nature of the promises (2 Samuel 7:12–16; Genesis 12, 15, 18: actual nation, actual throne occupied by ethnic Jew, actual earthly kingdom). Much of what was promised has been fulfilled literally (Jesus the Jew on a throne), so I assume that what is left will be fulfilled literally. The way the book of Revelation was written Daniel 9:26–27. The 70 weeks are for “my people” Israel. Some things don’t make sense if Israel is not separate from the church. For example, Acts 1:6 Romans 9:4, Paul makes a distinction. “The people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.” Romans 11:12, 23–24 So what do I mean by all that? The church is similar to Israel in that it is the people of God. Analogously the church is referred to it, as in many ways it fulfills spiritually the promises to Israel. But Scripture demands that their remains a future for the people of God, that is, Israel. For all my post-tribulation friends, you can stay and enjoy it if you want, me and Kirk Cameron are going on to heaven. Here’s the bottom line: There are various viewpoints regarding exactly HOW the End Times events described in the Bible will take place. I know what I believe, but there are very serious, scholarly brothers and sisters in the church who believe differently then I would about the timing of what will all transpire. But no matter what, we know that Christ IS going to return, and that we are to be perpetually READY. Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question. As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast! Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question submitted from Linda. She asked, “If God Draws People to Faith, Why Has God Not Drawn My Lost Family Member?” Show Notes: Linda’s question came in response to a message I preached at the Summit Church. I talked about John 6:44, Philippians 2:14, and John 1:12. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3 that you can’t say that Jesus is Lord unless the Holy Spirit gives you the power to say that. So that leads you to the question, “Why hasn’t God done that for this person that I love or the 950 million people in India?” This conversation has rules. Think of it like CrossFit. You have to obey the rules—otherwise when you start lifting heavy weights you’re going to get hurt. I want you to walk with me through them because I think they will help. A lot of this was systematized by John Calvin. I’ve always thought it was helpful that John Calvin identified his favorite verse as Deuteronomy 29:29. It says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that have been revealed belong to us and our children forever.” What this shows you is that there are secret things when it comes to theology and there are revealed things. The revealed things are where you and I live—they belong to us. So we have to ask, what is revealed about God’s desire for us to be saved? The first thing that is revealed is what we said right at the beginning: If you came to Jesus, it’s because he drew you. There’s simply no way to read the verses of the New Testament and not see that if you came to Jesus it’s because he put that desire in you and he drew you to himself. That is what is revealed. There’s another thing that’s revealed in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” So when I think about my family member that needs Jesus, I’m thinking about 1 Timothy 2:4. I’m saying “Lord, you’ve told me your desire for them to be saved. YOu’ve told me that my prayers make a difference. You’ve told me that you will bless me and generations after me and Lord I’m bringing those promises to you to be revealed.” In my mind, I don’t see how that and the truth that for someone to come to Jesus, God has to draw them to himself, I don’t how those two things can coexist in the same universe honestly. It seems like one cancels out the other, but Scripture presents both of them. We have to accept that people only come to Jesus because God draws them and God desires all people to be saved. I know some of you want a resolution on this. Well what if this was a secret thing that John Calvin was talking about? What I want to emphasize to you is that you have to play by the rules. When it comes to think about your own future, your own salvation, that’s where you’re supposed to bring those calvinistic verses in. Those verses are supposed to bring assurance. And when it comes to thinking about the lost, I apply the second one of those: that he desires all to be saved and prayer actually matters. One more thing to ask yourself, what if God’s sovereignty was to put me in this situation and to raise the concern in my heart about this person so that I will pray? What if that is his sovereignty expressed? I say that because of a story in Exodus 34 where Moses prays and as a result, God changed his mind. But then Exodus 34 goes on to say God won’t change his mind. When you put it all together you realize that God was the one who put Moses in the situation where he could see what was happening with the children of Israel, so that he would come to God to bring the request that would “change his mind.” In other words, God put Moses in a place to ask the question that would give God the opportunity to do what he wanted to do all along. So what if these people that are in my life who need God, what if the impulse to pray and share is God sovereignly moving in me so that they can hear and be saved? So here’s my final answer to Linda’s question: Applying the rules and the revealed things of Scriptures means this—you can trust that God is drawing them. You can trust that if they’re not coming, Jesus is lamenting it. You can trust that your prayers are changing things and God desires for them to be saved. He is going to work on your behalf. Don’t get stuck in the secret things. Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question. As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast! Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers a question submitted from Ruperto. He asked, “Is it ever OK to lie?” Show Notes: That’s a tough one. The easy answer is to say “no” as we point back to the ten commandments. Thou shall not lie—it doesn’t get more simple than that Matthew 5:37: “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.” So Jesus seems to saying that there’s not a lot of grey here. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. But then it becomes a little bit trickier when we consider certain scenarios, even biblical scenarios, where lying doesn’t seem like it’s wrong. It almost seems like it’s the right thing to do. For example, in Exodus 2, Pharaoh had commanded all of the Hebrew midwives to kill every newborn baby boy. When Pharaoh called the Hebrew midwives in to ask them why there were Hebrew baby boys still being born, they told him that Hebrew women were different than Egyptian women—that they were more “vigorous” and they’d all have their babies before the midwives got there, which meant they could not murder the baby boys, which was a lie.  Think about Rahab. She lied to the Jericho authorities when they came looking for the two Israelite spies that she had hidden in her roof.  She was called righteous. “By faith Rahab… did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.” Hebrews says that the proof that her faith was genuine was that she hid the spies. (Hebrews 11:31) But of course the problem with that is you start using that reasoning to justify all kinds of lies. You think “I don’t want to hurt someone” so you tell them a lie. You want to be “kind” to them.  If I tell them the truth, they’ll get hurt. If I tell them the truth, I’ll get fired and my family will go hungry. And that is sin. So, how do we interpret this? Well, there is a very important principle that we need to understand and that we also need to be very careful with, and I like how Paul Carter at The Gospel Coalition said this: There is a difference between a general principle and a recognized exception to that principle.  This is very similar to the call we have to obey our governments. Romans 13:1 says, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities… The authorities that exist have been established by God.” There is no caveat given here, and yet, the Bible also tells us that the very man who wrote those words (Paul) would “break the law” by continuing to preach the gospel when the governmental authorities told him not to. So was he a hypocrite? No! He was stating a general principle in Romans 13:1, with the understanding that there are exceptions. Those legitimate exceptions come—and only when—you are lying or disobeying government to prevent yourself from sinning/breaking God’s laws. Protecting Jews, or something like that. When someone else will use the truth to sin in a way that basically makes you complicit in it. Short of those very few, very narrow and limited exceptions, you should tell the truth and trust God with the results, good or bad, because our God is a God of truth and we glorify him most when we radiate truth like he does. Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question. As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast! Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

This week, Pastor J.D. answers the question, “How do I tell someone of another religion they’re wrong?” Show Notes: Great question. This can be one of the hardest parts of evangelism. If someone doesn’t have a religion, it can seem easier to tell them about Christianity and why it’s the only way to heaven. …But if someone is a devout follower of another religion, that can be more difficult. Well, first of all, there was a season in my life when every conversation I had was with a believer of another religion — that’s when I spent two years as a missionary in South East Asia which is a very heavily Muslim country. The role of relationship: You earn the right to be heard. Being a missionary is like paying down a mortgage. The longer you do it, you’re watching that balance shift from mainly interest to when you’re starting to pay down principle. You have to be willing to put in the time. You have to tell them the truth: Paul reasoned with people often proving to them that Jesus had to be the Christ so there is a role for truth telling even without the context of relationship. In Acts 20, Paul told Ephesians elders he was free from their blood because he had fully represented the word of God. The third thought is something I learned as a missionary: Look for the places in their religion that points to Jesus and show that. There was a very popular book that came out in the 70s called Peace Child. It’s about a missionary family, the Richardsons, who were going to minister to an unreached tribe that was pretty brutal… They idealized treachery, they were murderers, even cannibals. The Richardsons were living there and having real trouble communicating the gospel, until one day, right before a war, reps from the other tribe came and offered a “peace child” (one from each grows up in the other) And the Richardsons realized that this “peace child” concept was a redemptive analogy that they could use to communicate the gospel to the Sawi people. Finally, this goes without saying, but prayer. Never talk to people about God more than you talk to God about them. Want to ask J.D. a question? Head to our Ask Me Anything hub to submit your question. As always, don’t forget to rate and review this podcast! Find Pastor J.D. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.