Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

The number one substitute for true surrender is religious activity.

In fact, sometimes the least surrendered people who know God the least are the most busy in religion.

Because religion can be a very effective way of avoiding the authority of God in your life.

If you don't want to surrender to God everything, you can come up with a scheme to be busy that you think will keep God at bay.

Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist, J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host,

Molly Vitovich. You know, sometimes it's easy to

look at history and assume we won't repeat the same mistakes. We feel like we've learned from the

past and look down on the actions of previous generations. Uninlightened thinkers, barbaric

practices, we're better than that, right? But in reality, what is so different about our

hearts today? Don't we still have the capacity for evil and ungodliness if left unchecked?

Today, Pastor J.D. Greer encourages us to look within as he continues our teaching series

titled Listen. If you'd like to follow along with the transcript of each message, you can find

them free of charge at jaddygrier.com. Today, Pastor Jadie is teaching from Matthew chapter 21,

the parable of the tenants and the vineyard. Well, this is the last week of our series on the

parables of Jesus called Listen. So I think it is very

appropriate, Matthew 21, verse 33, that this last parable we are going to look at opens with Jesus

saying, listen, listen to another parable. What we've learned in this series is that Jesus

sometimes spoke in parables so that those who were not really listening,

at least from their heart, would miss the meaning of his words. Listening, we've learned

throughout this series as a critical life skill. Early on in my ministry here, I was asked by

somebody in our congregation if I would do their wedding, and I knew them, and I said, I'd be happy

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