Go Tell it on the Mountain, Part 2

Today on Summit life with Jeannie Greer as this is really where matter how broken or lost, not shepherds or slaves were homeless were surrounded by whatever mountains of oppression through Jesus has not won the victory.

You gotta scale those mountains. You gotta go everywhere to all groups of all peoples and all places at all times in all situations and tell them the battle is been one of their author and theologian Jeannie Greer. I'm your host Molly, but abets you know something the road ahead of us is blocked by obstacles or mountains that seem to take to overcome. We've all been there, myself included, looking to the left and the right and were wondering how do we move forward. But today Pastor JD reminds us that no matter what were facing.

We need to remember that all of our battles have already been one as we continue our Christmas teaching series titled Carol's.

We are looking at the old Christmas song go tell it on the mountain, penned by someone who wasn't afraid to stare down the mountain to tell everyone about Jesus Christ. So let's join Pastor JD for the conclusion of this important do not know exactly who wrote go tell them about what we do know that it was a slaves song most likely composed in the South sometime between 1848 to 60. Right before the United States Civil War. The text of the song goes like this. While shepherds kept there watching over silent flocks by night behold throughout the heavens there shone a holy light. Shepherds feared and trembled, when low above the earth rang out the Angel chorus, that hailed our Savior's birth down in a lowly manger the humble Christ was born in God's salvation that blessed Christmas morn.

He made me a watchman upon the city wall. If I am a Christian I am the least of all, go tell it on the Mountain, over the Hills and everywhere go tell it on the mountain. But Jesus Christ is born so much wonderful imagery in this song the song appears to be based on two primary passages of Scripture. First, obviously the store. The shepherds in Luke chapter 2. Second, maybe less. Obviously, Isaiah 52 seven Isaiah 52 seven where the prophet Isaiah foretells a day when the good news of the Messiah will be announced throughout the whole earth, and after he talked about the death of Jesus Christ and how the Messiah would die for our sins. Isaiah says this in chapter 52 verse seven how beautiful upon the mountains, go tell it on the mountain of the feet of him and brings good news publishers, PC brings good news of happiness. He publishes salvation, he says to Zion, your God raise so the writer of this Carol this slaves says go to the mountains and tell this good news about Jesus being born. So what the song dies in picking up on Isaiah 5270 to take this verse and it connects the Christmas story to the great commission and it highlights three very important and I would say rather surprising things about the good news of Christmas and they are these three number one, to whom the good news comes number two what the good news brings in the number three where the good news sins one to whom the good news comes this song notes in the first three verses of the song that the message came first to the shepherds now, but the slave who wrote the song felt drawn to the story of the shepherds is not surprising since shepherds were considered to be the lowest class of people in Jewish society at the time, much like the slaves would then consider the lowest class in their time you see them coming to the shepherds. God reach down to those that everybody considered to be on the bottom showing that there was no one to broken no one to pour no one too insignificant for Jesus's kingdom. In fact, to find out in the ministry of Jesus that he prefers the poor and the broken. Why would he prefer is because they're in a better position to receive the good news. They realize they need it. In Christianity, all you need is need, but you need me.

Even if you don't have need, and you will have Jesus number two what the good news brings the good news comes number two other good news brings like many Negro spirituals.

This song focuses on God's promise of relief from suffering. You see a slaves the world they lived in was a terrible world, but they knew that the birth of Jesus Christ was bringing about a new world in which sin and suffering and slave masters would no longer reign over them. So again Isaiah 52 seven that the writer of this Carol is thinking about how beautiful upon the mountains of the feet of Emma brings good news publishers piece suit brings good news of happiness and publishes salvation. That's good news for shepherds. That's good news for slaves is good news for you and for me, number three, where the good news sends this Christian brother of ours.

This slave is you gotta tell this everywhere is the good news really means and there's nobody to lowly forgot to pursue no one so lost that God couldn't find them and you gotta tell this everywhere with me now explain the mountain imagery you see in those days most cities in the Middle East were settled between mountains and soda data for cell phones before radio communication when the city was awaiting some kind of news the city waiting on this news would look up to the top of the mountains because of the first place.

You see the messenger come carrying the good news.

She had a watchman on the city walls who are waiting and watching, looking on the crest of the mountain for the messenger to come over the mountain with the flag of a certain flag that represented this is good news and then the watchman would begin to publish the news that the messenger is coming. The battle has been one and we have been saved. That's what a writer of go tell the mountain uses that the fifth verse, a watchman on the wall. He made me that watchman I'm the one who is seen salvation on the one who is experienced it and I get the tell the rest of the city that salvation is come. See Isaiah 52. Isaiah imagines groups of people scattered all over the world in different cities different nations different languages different situations different classes of people all waving, all waiting overwhelmed and oppressed by the curse scared of death without hope. And here comes the messenger to announce the battle is over and the kingdom is been restored to read this reminded me of that scene from the second book of the Lord of the rings nerd alert the two Towers, Aragorn theater in Fayette in a legless who are the good guys I got this little small remnant Army there trapped by these huge armies of works of Sauron and are about to be destroyed all hope is gone when Aragorn remembers the promise that Gandalf gave him the last time he saw it. The promise was at first light. On the fifth day look to the East look to the mountain of the East and you will see my coming day in office. A good wizard so so Aragorn walks out and looks out there's always armies of oppression that are about to destroy them. He looks up to the East right as the sun is coming up and it pops his head over the mountain and there is a standoff with all the cavalry of the Roku ream coming over the crest of the hill bringing rescue and salvation but is exactly the kind of seeing that J.R.R. Tolkien may been thinking about that when he wrote that, but that's the scene that Isaiah pictures is that there's a group of people that are surrounded by hopelessness and oppression, and over the mountain come salvation, but it's a messenger whose feet are beautiful. You're not a beautiful part of the body. They are not right you want to see my feet. I don't want to see your feeble your feet carry good news of salvation than they see themselves become beautiful and Isaiah sensors. The group anywhere there's no matter how broken or lost, not shepherds or slaves are homeless who are surrounded by whatever mountains of oppression.

Jesus has not won the victory. So you gotta scale those mountains.

You gotta go everywhere to all groups of all peoples and all places at all times in all situations and tell them the battle is been one. I know the pastor up in Newark, New Jersey will couple of Christmases ago was preaching.

Yeah, she was using. Go tell it on the mountain and EE said he wanted to get out of this cute little nativity scene mindset that everybody got a house you want to find a way to make this real joy. Just ask the question, he said it would Jesus come to today. If he came to 2000 years ago we came to the shepherds over the equivalent of the shepherds be today and he figured the closest equivalent of the shepherds in our day would be the homeless.

So we decided that week in preparation for a sermon rather than just pouring through commentaries is not even live on the street for a couple of days as a homeless man usually shares it with his congregation that Sunday he told them on Wednesday this week I decided to be homeless. The live on the streets for a couple of days he went down the Penn station in downtown Newark New Jersey because that's where he said he most often encounter homeless people. He said the first thing I noticed was that the homeless were kind of a mixture of different kinds of people that a lot of them were old, some of them were mentally disabled. Some of them were drug addicts, many of them had good jobs at one point but some kind of tragedy set them on a tailspin and they try to medicated to alcohol and drugs and so eventually destroyed their lives on the said that the next thing I noticed about the homeless is that they always seem to be seeking rest is as an Penn station. They were always trying to get close to the benches in the public restroom so they can lay down and sleep for a while but every 10 or 15 minutes the police would come along with the total metonymy would smack the badger smack their legs and make them get up and walk around at 3 PM.

He said the shelters for homeless shelters in Newark close their doors is if you're not in by 3 PM and you get to be on the streets for the night is at 11 PM. They closed Penn station and so we all got kicked out and I walked out with a homeless woman whose name was Milagro and I asked her what I was supposed to do next and she graciously told me about a bridge that she slept under that had a few extra spots and invited me to come in and out and be close to them for the evening is as we walk along the streets. I then learned that the first spots to go in the city streets are the benches benches are like VIP seating for homeless people. If you can find a spot next to a storm drain were hot air was blowing out and that was awesome to. She taught me how to sleep on the street. Should you put on your cardboard box. The menu you on the stretcher blanket on and you lay on it is I was pretty uncomfortable so she showed me how to sleep with my back against the wall against the stairs. That way, she said nobody can attack you from behind at 1 AM, I finally fell asleep. He says and was woken up just a few minutes later by somebody kicking my boots. It was a guy who goes around cleaning up cigarette butts on the street and all he said was out out out at 230. I saw my first drug deals regarding the morning all these teenage kids showed up under this bridge with cash so they could buy hit since her mom came over. Not she offered it to me and I said now I mean I got a preaching three days so probably would be good so the police drove by multiple times that evening and they paid no attention to us. It was just a normal night in Newark went over to a woman I saw on the ground. Offer her pair socks. She freaked out and recoiled. She thought I was going to rape her attacker who said this wasn't the homeless. It turns out they never really rest the next morning I decided to ask passersby for about for coffee. He said it was like I was invisible. It was like the Red Sea partying around me and then I realized at that moment that I'm normally on the other side of this equation, I'm the one coming out of the concerts, the games I'm the one coming out of the coffee shop telling the kids not the pain reminded these people. It was devastating to be on the side to be invisible. Imagine taking this day after day, month after month, maybe even year after year, what's it like to live this way for years and not be able to go home after two days, my family and my warmth in my comfort. What if your primary hope in life is just to get the good bench at night. Mother Teresa says it's the poverty that of being unwanted, unlogged and uncared for, which is the greatest poverty of them all.

The writer of this Carol the writer, Isaiah knows that these are the ones that Jesus came to first bid that was the mountain.

He scaled so that he could come to bear in public salvation and the writer of this Christmas Carol says don't they deserve to know. Should we be scaling the mountains of homelessness to get the gospel to them over Thanksgiving my my oldest two daughters and I took a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. When my daughter turned 10 years old, try to take them on a mission trip so my oldest daughter 12.

My second daughter is 10 and so we went back to the Dominican Republic with a group called compassion in the way compassion works is you sponsor a child that is in a poverty-stricken country and so we have one for each of our children and they sponsor them and then they write them letters throughout the year and to stay up with their lives unto you go when you take a trip me and a few dads here the seven churches and our kids went and the way it works is this is you go visit some of the projects in the Dominican Republic where this is one of the countries therein but you visit these projects where they are.

They are helping kids get their basic needs met. They are in education some really impressive education and technical skill training programs and then I'm spiritually the teaching them what it means to walk with Jesus. They always work through a local church there in one of these places and so you spent time a couple days of the project. They do what they call an in-home visit where you visit one of the kids that's just been inducted into compassion and so the little girl that we visited with metal and in the program. About two months and she had two months before had been rescued out of the sex trafficking industry in the Dominican Republic at five years old and now she's here. I'm in the place you live was a way. One of my daughters described it was a tin can. It was a hovel but she was safe and I she was involved in this program and you to see is just amazing.

I'm seeing how these kids are being transformed been changed. We had three translators with our group, all of whom were in their early 20s, Dominican Republic, young adults, and judges. Most immunosuppressive people are been around. They were smart they were.

Articulate how they love Jesus.

It was contagious. You just blown away by these you know this is back there was a most impressive feat a €20 I've ever been around anywhere and on the last day of your trip off. At one thing on the day before you did bring in all the kids you sponsor and you hang out with them for an afternoon to get to meet him and just love them and and just get to know them and got a well given gifts in this it's all some of the last 83 translators reveal that they grew up in the compassion program that they will once that had been born either in poverty or been impoverished. One of the girls on translators. Some name was Diana. She starts telling us her story up on the last day and she says the little five euro girl you visit it was all like me, just as my dad abandoned us when I was a kid and it sent us in the poverty and she said probably the biggest thing was his rejection of me. I took as a rejection of my whole life up of the nobody love me.

I thought that his he left me because of something wrong with me and she said it wasn't just here, just like a cloud for the next several years. She said it was my sponsor in the United States somebody like you to begin to write me and begin soon. I'm just tell me over the years that I matter to God and that I matter to them and I God had not forgotten about me and that God loves me and I gotta say this on the die. Fermina gave me a plan to believe them enough like nobody else believed in me and she said, so I completed this program and now you know. She said I've got a job. I've got a future ahead of me that was just somebody bridge this gap and somebody enter my life and told me about these things. The question that you are presented with on a trip like that when it's not out of sight out of mind as you say you skills that mount detailed those kids that they matter to God Amy Carmichael who was a missionary to India hundred years ago started an orphanage over there sin is a nonstarter of our hearts, to go forth and help them visit not make as long to leave our luxury are exceedingly abundant light to go to them that still sit in darkness of the good news really means there's nobody to lowly the guy whatever look them there's nobody so guilty.

The godforsaken no one so broken that God would not heal them. How could we not scale that mountain to take the gospel, the good news of liberation to them said that Hudson Taylor who was one of the early pioneers secure the gospel to China back in the 1850s it Billy said he could barely stand to be in a church service like this 1000 English people use from from England.

It is that we would go back. I couldn't.

I couldn't stand to be in the service not it's not that I didn't like worship. It's not that I didn't like crowds. He said I just couldn't stand the sound of a thousand people were just bathing in the light of the gospel, knowing that there were millions of Chinese are never even heard Jesus's name.

It's it's when I would just think of these churches.

I literally could not stay in there for the worse but have to go outside because it was too overwhelming to me.

I know that there's this mountain that mountain for him represented Chinese culture. He had to scale it up. They had to hear this. Most of us are sitting around still talking about.

Why don't know if I'm called waiting on some special Damascus Road experience to tell us to get engaged, William Booth, who found the Salvation Army minister to the homeless who still ministers of the home was used to say this white not called not called did you say refused to hear the call. I think you should say just put down your ear to the Bible and hear him bid you go and pull centers out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the bird and agonized heart of humanity and listen to its pitiful well for help go standby the gates of hell and hear the dandy treat you to go back to their father's house and one their brothers and sisters not to come there and then look Jesus in the face of mercy you have professed to obey and tell him you will not join heart and soul and body and circumstance, in this March the published his mercy to the world is no longer a question of call. He says the question of obedience like we often say the summit church. The question is no longer if you're called that call was given to you when you began to follow Jesus, follow me and I'll make you a fisherman. The question is only where and how you are called the great commission is not a special suggestion for a sacred view of us and went to seminary the great commission is a mandate for everybody go tell it on the mountain is not a sentimental song we sing at Christmas time. Go tell it on the mountain is the marching orders and the mandate for every person who knows the name of Jesus to the question that I have for you is who are you telling what mounds God called you to go scale to go across. I know you're not all called to the homeless. I understand that I know you not all called China novel called the Dominican Republic, or Indian, but everyone is called somewhere.

Every single one of you. That's what Paul takes adversity says how how they were consummated. Never heard about how to get your letter sent everyone of you said that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus else in the same people. But since somewhere is what we end every service here. The summit with that admonition summit church you are sent because that's what your role is to you as your pastor, what I think about a lot of times for you when they rinse them for Jesus. You can answer the call you and answer is whether or not you when we told you go that I was told to go somewhere everyone of you still to go somewhere you preached about Sodom and Gomorrah couple weeks ago.

Few weeks ago and we talked about how God destroyed the city. Yes, the average Christian what was the sin that made God's destroyed Sodom right every Christian I know would just reflect, recite homosexuality.

That's what I got shorts on and it's true.

Homosexuality was a bad sin in a certain part of the wickedness of Sodom. But Ezekiel 1649, when the prophet Ezekiel talks about why God destroyed Sodom. He did not mention any form of sexual impurity. What he said is 6049 was the people Sodom lived in luxury and ease by the neighbors around them suffered and they didn't do anything to help you. Not all called the same places, but I know you're called to scale something.

I know that your call to scale some mountain to cure the gospel for some of you. It's good to begin by walking across the street and begin a relationship with a neighbor that's going out of your comfort zone with us. The first night you can scale walking across the office into the cubicle and beginning a relationship or even to share the gospel for some unit means a change of career for some it means a change of where you live. For some units coming going on unreached people group or somebody that means getting involved with almost orphan.

The prisoner them about of a high school dropout he's getting involved with ministries hear the church administer to teenagers or minister to kids in our website this weekend summit RTE.com.

There's a little place where you can see our church engages with the ministries of the city and how you can take mission trips and I know you're called to go somewhere to do something I don't mean physically necessarily moving your call and I want you to be able to stand before Jesus with a clean conscience and say I know I wouldn't called everywhere but I was called somewhere and underwear that was in I went I went who were you telling you telling you what you realize hopefully is what the slave who wrote the song relies listen as I was the homeless, spiritually speaking. I was restless I sought the solace of apartments in the city of sin. That was my whole life and I was when Jesus found me. He healed me, and he restored me I was the shepherd spiritual condition of me was the same as the physical condition of almost 7 I was the slave. When Jesus emancipated me now having been emancipated. The Cisco telling on the mountain cross that mountain and go to people and valleys at value-oriented. Tell them the Savior's been born that your commission that your college or mandate much of value. Hence, we pray for his father renew this church's commission in its vision to see the gospel to see the gospel transform our city. Our neighbors are children and nations around the world would pray in Jesus name, amen telling distancing. How are you scaling mounds to make the gospel new you're listening to summit like the Bible teaching ministry pastor and author Jeannie Greer Julie to be here with you on your station on your TV and online that you can dive deeper into the gospel message with stay while these messages come to you free of charge actually take financial support to produce and distribute and that's where friends like you coming when you donate to Senate life you are bridging that gap. At this time of year. Your donation is more important than ever and we have a special offer for you this week. Only through tomorrow December 17 when you join with us today as one of the first 500 people to commit the gospel partner you a signed copy of Pastor Jeannie's new book on prayer title just where inviting you to join in what God is doing 390 coming of regular monthly donor go all in with Senate life today part of the tenets reaching people with gospel centered Bible teaching easy to sign up right now by calling 866-335-5224 might be easier to learn more and sign up online.com you can also join the mission by giving a special intonation five dollars or more will say thanks for the 2022 seven I'm not even it's inviting you to join us again Friday is the continuing teaching series called Carol on Senate night