Seeing Jesus -- Knowing God

All right. Well, good morning again, everybody. So good to see you guys. Thanks for being here.

You guys are the ride or die. It's the diehard church people. I appreciate that. Some of you guys are like, no, we didn't lose power. You're fine. But the rest of you, we're all happy. We're happy everybody's here. All right. Well, so I've got a lot to say this morning. First is an announcement. OK, so I wanted to keep you updated on the building. So if you have been around I-90 for the last several months, we've been praying through a possible change of location for some time now.

Actually, it's been years that we've been praying about this. This building that we're in has been just a huge blessing for I-90. I wasn't actually here for this, but when COVID came along, this church was like a refuge for us because we couldn't keep meeting in the space that we were at for various reasons. One being that you couldn't meet in gyms anymore, and we were meeting in a CrossFit gym. So this place was a refuge for us when we had to leave our old space.

And now we've been just praying for years now and praying very seriously for the last year with the elder board and discussing what the next step is for us in the life of this church. If it's to stay here and reinvest and really make this place work for us, or if it's to find a new space, And so we've been working, we've just been exploring what our options are. And we have been praying and feel like the Lord is leading us to a different location.

And so with that in mind, we've been like just putting out feelers and seeing if someone would want to make use of this space. And over this past week, which is a great week to have lots of business meetings for me personally, over this past week, we've like identified a good candidate who's interested in this building. Now, we haven't formally signed anything, but we've identified—we think we've identified our last meeting was we're going to talk again after church today.

But I think we've identified a good candidate who will honor the legacy of this building because they are a church, which we're really happy about, a church who does not speak English, but who would love a location like this. I'm not going to tell you more information because it's all pending and everything like that, right? But they're very interested in this property, and it's like they're a gospel preaching church. They seem to be like spirit-filled believers who love the Lord.

And so it's really exciting that that could maybe be something that the Lord is going to bring together. Now, you know, there's still a lot to be done and a lot of things to see come together, right? So would you pray for that this week? Because we're just going to have some back and forth and figure out terms. And we're really hoping to find as much runway as we can have, right? As we consider the next really important question, which you're all probably

sitting here. Well, what's the next step then, right? So I get that. I will tell you this, you know, we've been floating around in focus groups and stuff. one particular idea. We now have a second option that we're considering in terms of potential moves. So we have two potential places that we could go in the upcoming weeks. If this does appear to be moving forward, we will talk about this a lot. Might kind of infringe on our Christmas cheer a little bit, right?

Focusing on some urgent business. I hope that's okay.

You know nothing says says christmas like moving low stress happy joy all that stuff but we'll be talking about that a lot more but we have multiple options that we're praying through and considering right and we will continue to have lots of smaller discussions and then a lot of bigger discussions coming up here does that make sense so i'm not again until we until it seems clear that we're definitely moving forward i don't want to get really specific about stuff because i get it Like,

I know you want to know, but also there's, you get how progressive this is and how it's hard to say this is definitely happening when we actually don't know if the first three steps are happening. So I know that's a little bit annoying. I apologize about that. But again, we are going to get, if this appears to be moving forward further, we will get really specific really soon. And I actually think, I think the Lord is going to do good things.

I'm excited about the options that we have before us. I think they're all actually quite good. So all that's to say is that's what's going on. And would you please pray? And we have a worship and prayer night coming up on the 5th. That's not this Thursday, because this Thursday you're going to be eating ham and turkey. But the next Thursday, we're going to be gathering here for worship and prayer.

And I would just really encourage you, if you want to participate in the prayer side of this thing and in discerning what we should do together, would you try to come out on Thursday night, next Thursday at 7 the 5th? And we're just going to pray. hey, I'm urgently about this together. You know what we should do, assuming things continue to move along, which again, a lot of things going on. Sound good? Was I clear? I don't, like, honestly, I'm operating on a little bit of sleep.

And I did get a shower, but it was getting pretty bad there for a little while. So, all right, there we go. Man, I have had a week. We finally got power back last night and the, you know, the tree tunnel held up by the power wires that was our, our road. It was cleared. So it was such a relief to be, to be back to normal. And here's the thing, like, this has been like a hard week to communicate. Like nobody's had power and everything like that.

But if you need anything, just let us know. Like we, I'm sure that we can organize teams of people. If you have like stuff you need to clean up, like let's, let's help each other. So let us know about that. If there is help that we can provide for you in the midst of all of this. This has been, I don't know. I was just, I was not expecting this. I realized how unprepared I am for a lot of things. So that was a little bit of a wake-up call for me. But anyways, it's wild.

So we are continuing on here. We're continuing on with the Sermon on the Mount. We're gonna finish it up today. So open your Bibles to Matthew chapter seven if you have them. And of course, we'll put up the verses on the screen.

But we are just been in the Sermon on the Mount for, I think this is seven weeks now, going through the Sermon on the Mount. And I've really enjoyed it. It's actually probably one of my favorite sermon series we've done in a long time. Just because it's so refreshing just to get back to Jesus's words and just be like, hey, man, Jesus, he said a lot of crazy things.

Like he had so many clear ideas that we continue to find challenging, even as people who are saying we're Christians, like we'll take on the name of Jesus. And yet when we come to his words, we're like, wow, we're finding more and more of what he has to say. And in this sermon, this Sermon on the Mount, which is kind of the definitive statement of Jesus's approach to what he thinks it's like to follow God, right? We've seen and we've talked about that this is a sermon that's about righteousness.

Righteousness for Jesus is right at the core of what it means to follow after God, what it means to have a life with God. Jesus cared so much about righteousness to him that, It's not some kind of abstract idea, which I think is sort of the way that we've made it in our culture.

He insisted, like we've looked at a couple of times here at the beginning of the sermon, Matthew 5, 20, he said, I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven. That's how Jesus started out and framed up his message as he's going in and talking about what it was to look like to be a part of the kingdom.

He says, look at a lot of this hinges on righteousness. And I just want to note three things that we've looked at so far, and I'm not going to justify all these. You've got to go back, and if you've been following along, these will make sense. Just three things to note about his beliefs or his approach to the idea of righteousness throughout the sermon. Number one is that Jesus believes that righteousness is meaningful.

By meaningful, I mean that Jesus does not have an idea of righteousness that's kind of abstract or out of touch. are just like, oh, it's kind of a nice feeling. As he goes along and he's teaching on righteousness, he is challenging those who are listening to him, challenging them in a big way. I mean, like Matthew 5 is a good example that your righteousness needs to surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees.

He's going out of his way. I mean, there's no way you can read about Jesus's teaching on righteousness and think that righteousness can be whatever you want it to be, which is kind of the way we approach the idea of being good, right? We think, oh, well, I'm just a good person. What does that mean? Oh, nothing really. It means I have a good heart. It means I feel good about myself. Like, you know, it's like I'm not –.

Trashing that or whatever. But honestly, like we, we, as a culture do not have a lot of clarity or agreement about what in a meaningful way, it means to be a righteous person. What do we, I mean, what is the best thing that we could come up with? Like you aren't mean. Some people think it's, well, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican.

You know, we, we, we stake it out in politics. We stake it out in like the kind of person we think, we think about the company that we keep and we use these things as kind of the standard for righteousness. Sometimes we think about, oh, well, what do I do with my money? If I'm selfish or not selfish, you know, if I'm generous or not generous, but how we actually define what those things are is all really squishy and ambiguous and not clear.

Jesus is like going way past that. There's not a lot of room to think that Jesus doesn't have a very clear notion of what true righteousness is. And I think, as we've talked about before, that is the whole point of the sermon. He is narrowing in on something very specific and very meaningful that is called righteousness, and it matters. It matters. The second thing we can see very clearly is that Jesus believes that righteousness is beyond the law, not in contradiction to the law.

As we've looked at chapter 5, 6, 7, Jesus is playing with, he's in dialogue with the law of Moses, which was the standard agreed upon in his culture by the Jewish people. They were like, hey, we're going to know that we're righteous because we keep the law of Moses. That's our standard. So we have an agreement about this. And what Jesus says is, yeah, you scribes, you Pharisees, you're really excited. You've come to an agreement that if we keep the law of Moses, then we'll be right.

And then we've come up with these kind of extra rules so that we're extra sure that we can keep the law of Moses. And if we do all that and we keep that in a stringent way, difficult, like challenging sort of way, and we're really self-controlled, then we're going to know that we've achieved righteousness. But what Jesus points people to throughout his sermon, and it's really disturbing to the people who are hearing, is that there is something beyond that kind of standard of righteousness.

There is a true righteousness that is not reducible to law alone. And he's really pushing this so hard to the point where if you are a Pharisee, a scribe, you know, these people who are really into the law, you are really left struggling and wondering, well, what does that mean for what I thought was my own righteousness? Because Jesus is pointing to a kind of righteousness that is beyond the law, not in contradiction to it, but surpassing it.

And then finally as Jesus makes really clear here in Matthew 5 and then in particularly in the passages that we're about to get into Jesus believes that righteousness is required to enter into the kingdom of heaven I mean that Matthew 5 chapter of that Matthew 5 20 section is pretty clear he says unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees you will never get into the kingdom of heaven that is a difficult thing to get around sounds.

What does that mean, though? That's, I think, really what I want to focus in on today. See, Jesus' Sermon on Righteousness is wrapped up in his broader message, the broader message that he went around preaching about the kingdom of heaven, right? This righteousness is a major topic in this umbrellas thing, this idea that he was preaching about the kingdom of heaven.

In Matthew 4, 17, right, before the Sermon on the Mount starts, And as Jesus comes out of baptism and begins his ministry, he begins his ministry this way. From that time on, Jesus began to preach, repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near. So if you were around in Galilee as Jesus was teaching in this time, and someone asked you if you heard about what Jesus was teaching, and you say, oh, he's the kingdom of heaven guy, right? Yeah, that's what Jesus was known for.

He's a guy who has a message about the kingdom of heaven. He has a gospel, a good news, a proclamation, an idea that he's super fixated on that has to do with the kingdom of heaven coming near. And that in order to be a part of that, he says repentance is necessary. The preparatory work for the kingdom of heaven coming among the people in Galilee at the time was repentance. He went around proclaiming that the kingdom was coming and repentance was the logical response.

And so Jesus's sermon on righteousness, right? It's filling out his vision of what it looks like to be a kingdom person. A kingdom person is a person who has repented and taken on this idea of righteousness as defined by Jesus Christ, defined in his way. And so his righteousness sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, fits really well within that broader message. And he's making a serious point that righteousness really matters. A part of coming into the kingdom is righteousness.

Because Jesus understands this bigger picture thing that's going on. He's coming to Israel. Israel are people who, like, they believe they're in God's story. And Jesus understands his own role as Messiah, as the one sent to save, as the one sent to be like a prophet, priest, king to his nation and to the whole world. He understands and he takes up that mantle and he says, what I'm doing now is I'm taking Israel's story to the next place.

I am fulfilling all of God's promises. I'm bringing about this kingdom through my work, through my ministry, through what I'm calling you to. And what I'm telling you is that what God is doing is he's taking Israel who he called out of nothing, right? If we think back on Israel's story, Abraham was just like the first person called by God, the first father of Israel. He was a nobody. He was not like distinguished by God. There's no reason it seems that he was chosen.

Abraham wasn't like, oh, look at that, Abraham. He's pretty good. I can work with that. God just shows up and says, you, pagan worshiping Abraham, leave your family behind. Come and follow me. Leave your father behind. Come and follow me. And then what does Abraham do? He doesn't leave his father behind. He waits a really long time. He goes halfway to where God tells him to do until his father finally dies. Like he is immediately disobedient to God, right?

And so this is the beginning of God's working in Israel. The Israel story is that Abraham dull his stuff. Though Abraham is commendable in some ways because at times and in meaningful ways, he had faith in God. Romans 4, Paul talks about that. This Abraham believed God, it was credit to him as a righteousness. And so right in the beginning of Israel's story, there's this idea of righteousness. And it matters to be God's people because righteousness matters.

And what in Israel's story, it's defined as faith. Wow, I'm really getting ahead of myself. So Jesus understands he's continuing on in Israel's story. Israel has continued on a lot like Abraham was, sometimes faithful, oftentimes sinful, oftentimes selfish, oftentimes disbelieving, right? But God was faithful to them. And Jesus is coming along and saying, look it, now God is really doing something.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. And Jesus is presenting this idea of the kingdom coming and he's focusing in on righteousness. And that's where we are as he wraps up the sermon. So we're picking up in Matthew 7, verse 13. And we're just going to go all the way to the end. This is Jesus's conclusion. And man, I mean, it's a true conclusion. All that Jesus is doing here is just turning up the heat, turning up the urgency. He's saying, don't think this doesn't matter.

And it's intense stuff. Okay. So here's what he says. He's presented this way of righteousness by faith. We talked about this. And here's what he says. He says, enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction. And there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life and few find it. So Jesus is wrapping up. He's teaching on righteousness, which is a part of

the coming of the kingdom of God. It's a necessary part of being a part of that. And he's turning up the urgency. He uses this imagery of a narrow gate and a larger gate, a broader gate. Scholars argue about what the image is rooted in. Some people say, oh, it's like the gates of Jerusalem. There's a big gate. And then there was a narrow gate at night. But then other scholars come along and say, you don't know that. That's not really true. Archaeologically, the gates of Jerusalem were destroyed

in the 1500s. So you can't actually know if there was this lesser gate. Like, you can know of some of the bigger gates because we know about that, but you don't know about this narrow gate. And so there's a lot of debate about this. But I mean, I think the image is clear enough, right? He's saying... There is a kind of righteousness and a life that Jesus is inviting us to, but it's easy to miss.

This is because of whatever, the distractions, because of going with the crowd, because of all the things, all the reasons that we get put off and we get confused and we go the wrong ways. He says, all that's true. The kind of righteousness, right? Wrapping up his Sermon on Righteousness, the kind of righteousness that he's calling people to, he's saying it's easy to miss.

There are lots of people who think they know what's up with righteousness and what he's saying is and they're mistaken there is a a narrow gate that can be missed for the broad way and anyone who is able to find like the it's it's a narrow gate it's a he calls it a difficult road and he says and few find it now like if you're hearing this live when it was spoken and you're a Pharisee and you are known for doing things in the difficult way,

then you're probably starting to feel pretty frustrated, right? Because what Jesus seems to be doing is correcting you. And in fact, I mean, yeah, that's how he started his sermon. He says that I have this way that's even better than the scribes and the Pharisees. And he says, and it's a difficult road and it's a narrow gate and few will enter it. And you think, but I am the elite. I am the Navy seal of worshiping God, right? I have been so hard on myself and so stringent and so intense.

And what you're telling me is that there's an even harder, even more narrow road. And I was already among this elite crew of people. Is that what you're telling me, Jesus? You can imagine how frustrated they would be because they were totally into self-control. They were totally into austerity. They were totally into being serious and solemn and like totally like we are gonna like worship God and give him everything. They had a rule for every situation. They were known for their rigor.

And Jesus is telling them that there is some kind of righteousness beyond it. And you are probably sitting there wondering, what is going on? What are you talking about? In the beginning of his famous sermon, The Way to Glory, C.S. Lewis, I think does a good job of pinpointing what the Pharisees were missing, kind of where they were falling apart and how they were not really understanding what Jesus was up to.

What he's doing is in the beginning, he's reflecting on the idea of unselfishness, the virtue of unselfishness. He says this, the negative ideal of unselfishness carries with it the suggestion, not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves. As if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think that this is the Christian virtue of love.

The New Testament has a lot to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. See, the Pharisees, they were the kings of self-control. They knew how to control their passions. They had mastered their bodies. They said, we are giving our whole lives to God. They tamed everything within them, their desires, and they directed them to God. And they were serious about God, but they had lost point, lost sight of the point of all of this.

They thought, oh, God will recognize us for our performance, for our self-control. How great will that be? We're going to come before God and he's going to look at like, oh man, nobody, nobody takes the harder road than you. They thought that was what was going to matter before God. But the point of righteousness, the point of law, the point from the very beginning of what God had called Israel into was love. And yes, to love other people, you need self-control.

To love other people, you need unselfishness. but restraint and unselfishness alone is not a beautiful thing before God. So the Pharisees were looking at all the things they were doing before God. They're saying, isn't this great, God? This is all this stuff. And God says, no, like that's the law, but this is so that you will come to love others the way I love them and love me the way I love you to reciprocate the love that I'm demonstrating to you.

You were made for righteousness. You were made for love. They were made for love. And they thought they were just made for rule following. Like they weren't wrong. But on the way towards love, self-restraint, self-control, these are a part of it. But it's not the end all, the be all. Law alone doesn't lead you to righteousness because law alone can't lead you to love. Law will not keep you focused on your purpose, which is to become a person who

loves God and loves others. It's your highest and truest calling. And the Pharisees forgot what all of it was for. And how easy it is for us to forget what all of this is for. It's hard to go about your life and you want to do well and you want to be intentional. And sometimes it just can become about the perfunctory doing of things. Sorry, perfunctory, another word. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Just like formally, like I'm just doing something just as a performance.

I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it because God wants me to do it. Why? I don't know. But there's so much more to following after God than that. Actually, God has things for us, like good things. He wants things for us. He doesn't want things from us. He wants things for us. The Pharisees were like, oh, God wants something from us. I'm going to give him something. And they've lost sight of, actually, no, what God wants is your hearts.

He wants you to love him. He wants you to love other people. And as you pursue that, then you're going to find that this law makes sense again. But there's so many ways to miss out on that. Let's keep going. Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You'll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree produces fruit, but a bad tree produces bad

fruit. A good tree can't produce bad fruit. Neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So you'll recognize them by their fruit. Jesus just keeps bringing up the urgency. At every point, he's just hammering away like at a piece of steel. There's sparks flying.

And Jesus begins to warn against those who are teaching in God's name, false prophets, right? And I mean, he's probably avoiding making eye contact, because there were probably people among him who claimed to speak in the name of God. But what he's doing is he's saying, man, if you have somebody who comes to you in the name of God, he's just warning them against him. And he's saying, there's going to be false people coming among you, and there's a way to recognize them.

And this is, I think, really important for us to consider. How does Jesus say that you'll recognize somebody who's false? Is it because they teach the wrong doctrine? Is it because, I don't know, whatever the things that we would assess a teacher by? He says, I mean, very clearly, he knows that they're teaching doctrine. They're teachers, right? It would be easy for us to decide that, well, we find the people who are teaching the right things and those are the good people.

But what he's saying is not that I think he's saying that this doesn't matter. Doctrine doesn't matter. I think he does. But he makes it very clear that you're going to recognize a false prophet by their fruit. Doctrine is important, but fruitfulness matters. See, the Pharisees who are really just, I mean, I don't want to say they're the target of this message because Jesus is talking to a lot of people. But they certainly have a lot to answer for when it comes to what Jesus is laying out here.

The Pharisees had great doctrine, except on one very essential point, that the whole point of all this stuff, all this stringency, all this obedience was love, loving God, loving others. They messed up on that. And so Jesus is asking and he's asking us to consider those who are teaching us and asking, where's the fruit? And so what is fruit biblically? This is actually like a really strong image. And we have a really clear understanding of what fruitfulness is.

I think Galatians 5.22, anyone know the song? No? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If you want to memorize scripture, just learn a song. The fruit of the Holy Spirit working within us, fruitfulness of righteousness, the kind of work of God within us, what he's calling us to do is to be people who are bearing this kind of fruit. And it's first and foremost, the fruit of the Spirit is love.

Again, here we are. We're coming back to this one essential thing, love. And all these accompanying attributes, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And Paul says, the law is not against such things. Love is at the center of God's whole plan for righteousness. And even if you come up with some great doctrine, even if you have powerful teachers, if there's not love, Jesus says, be warned, be warned.

And I just say to the church in general, without being specific, we have to get over being enamored with loveless people who teach great sermons. I think they're false. Now, it's hard for me to look at someone from a distance and who I don't know, I don't have a relationship with, and say, do they have love in their life? Like, that's difficult. I'm not saying that I have a certainty about what somebody's up to.

But at some point, people show us enough of who they are. And we can just say, hey, there's lots of people to learn from. There's lots of people to listen to the word of God expounded from. Because according to Jesus, there is such a thing as a false, fruitless sort of teacher and it's worth recognizing. Now look, could you look at my life and point out areas where I don't love? Yes, you can. I could probably give you some.

That could be true of everybody. Can you look at your own life? I hope that you can. I hope that you recognize your own failings and the places where you're not loving. I'm not saying that Jesus is lifting up this standard of perfection. But I do think what he's doing is he's saying, look, here's the plumb line. Here's the point of certainty. Here's where you know if you're building on something that's stable and secure is love really at the center.

Because if it's not, then you're probably just going into this kind of this falseness that he's telling us about. There's lots of people who are going to tell me lots of technique about how to impress God. And yet Jesus seems so fixated on the fruit of love. He seems to think that that is really essential for this righteousness, which matters.

Let's keep it going. He says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven.

On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name? And then I will announce to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers. And these are some sobering words, right? I'm sure if you've read the Bible, you've come across these, and they're meant to stop you in your tracks.

These are words that are meant to just knock those who are just feeling super confident and high on their horse, just like throw you off kilter a little bit and to make you ask a question of your own life, like, what am I really pursuing? Because what he says here is a little disturbing. If you are convinced that all God wants is for you to do more and better stuff for him. Then these words are going to give you pause. Because frankly, these are some pretty awesome things.

Do miracles in your name, drive out demons in your name, prophesy in your name. Jesus doesn't say, oh no, you didn't do those things. Jesus says, you did those things, but you never knew me. You never had love for me. You never cared to follow after me and to appreciate me for my own sake. It is so easy for us as people to be so outwardly focused, right? And yet never asking ourselves, what is going on in our own hearts?

Jesus says that there will be people who, when everything's said and done, have just so convinced themselves that they're good because they did stuff for God. But what he's saying is that, no, man, you missed out on what really matters. They never knew me. They never knew the purpose of all of these things.

What I feel like, the more I grow up in Christian maturity, the more I know Jesus, the more I understand that God has such a better, more beautiful, more awesome life than what I ever imagined. And sure, I want to do big things for God. But I come to accept that the only way to do big things for God in the right way is to just focus in on asking, seeking, knocking.

You know, these things that Jesus talks about in the prior chapters of seeking first the kingdom of heaven, of knowing him and walking with him and listening to him. See, it's so easy to just say, okay, God, I know what I'm up to. I'm going to go about my life. I'm going to do my things. I'm going to be fine. And what Jesus says is that is not wisdom. And he goes on. And I mean, this is where he wraps up, continuing on, talking about another startling possibility, right? He goes on here.

He says, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it did not collapse because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn't act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the rivers rose, the wind blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed.

It collapsed with a great crash. Appropriate for the week that we've had, right? A metaphor of a storm. We're familiar with that. We're familiar with what can happen when the winds rise and the rain comes down and things get wild. And what Jesus says is like, there are two ways. There's a ways of responding. He's like, you can take my words and you can just ignore them and you can continue on the path that you're on.

And what he likens that to is the kind of person who builds their house on sand, right? They hear the words, they don't act on them, and that's a foolish person. And the storm's going to come, and it's going to expose what was really going on in that person's life. Or he offers a more commendable way. He says, take these words of mine, hear them, these words on righteousness, and act on them. And that is wisdom. That is like building your house, your life, the life that you live in,

the life that you have. It is like building things on the rock. And when the testing comes, when the rivers come, when the rivers rise, when the winds blow, and they pound against that house, it will stand. Jesus is making things very clear. He's doing this traditional way of teaching of laying out two possible options. And he's wrapping up this instruction on righteousness here. Oops, sorry, went the wrong page. Wrapping up this instruction on righteousness and making it super clear.

It says the kind of righteousness that he calls people to is a righteousness that comes from love, love rooted in him, built upon his words. It's not as so many people have come. The thing is like the Sermon on the Mount, we started this out in the introduction. We talked about the ways that theologians have treated the Sermon on the Mount over the years.

And so many of them have this idea, particularly around early reformers, read the Sermon on the Mount and they said, oh, this is just like an impossible ideal. Jesus is telling us nice things, but it's really for the new age. These are really just like ethical commands for a later time, because who could possibly in this day and age live like this? And yet I have trouble believing that's what Jesus was saying. Jesus is telling us there's some practical

things. There is a kind of righteousness that he calls people to. It's not an impossible ideal. In fact, he says it's actionable. Whoever takes these words of mine and acts on them. That's very actionable. Take these words, act on them. He says that there is something that we can have and a way of following after him that is meaningful, that is significant. A kind of righteousness that comes through faith, through love.

And we've talked so much about this, but I want to just encourage us as we're going along here to think about what this means, right? Because those who stand before God at the end and who are disappointed are those who Jesus is. They never knew him. They never knew him. And so, I mean, like we've asked a number of uncomfortable questions along the way. And I think this is another one to ask is, do we really know God?

Are we, do we know him like we know our friends? Do we know God like we know our family? That is, do we share this kind of mutual love and affection, right? Because there's a lot of people in the world that I don't know. I don't have a relationship with them. And I might have kind of an abstract love, but I don't have history.

And I don't have that kind of forged love. And I think what Jesus is inviting us to is to be the sort of person who is leaning into this kingdom of God, this trusting of him, this walking into the love to receive the love that he's given and demonstrate on the cross and to let that love change everything about your own life. Paul talks about the way this has changed his life in Philippians. Philippians 3, 7.

Paul says this. I think he's just putting flesh on the bones of what does it look like to know God. This is what happens when we know God. I think Paul makes it clear here. He says, everything that was gained to me, I've considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

Because of him, I've suffered loss of all things and consider them as dung so that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from the dead. See, Paul has heard, he has studied.

Paul was a master of Pharisaical religion, an expert on the topic. And then he had this powerful encounter with God. And he doesn't at that point just say, oh, it doesn't matter. My obedience to the law is not important. He actually continues to obey those things, But he has now a greater passion that comes from not just doing things for God, but doing things with God. The point where he says, I used to kind of like manage my relationship with God, right?

And so I would say, I'm going to do enough for God so that I can be absolutely sure that he's satisfied, right? But then the rest of my life is like, so that's like a little compartment in my life. And then I have the rest of my life, right? And I have freedom in the rest of my life. And as long as I'm keeping God satisfied on this side of my life over here, managing him, doing the serious things, being serious about it, and then I can do the rest of my life.

And what Paul is saying is that this knowledge of God, which has captured him, this finding himself in Jesus Christ has resulted in a change of mentality where he no longer sees managing God, doing things for God over here and the rest of his life over here. He actually sees his whole life as one thing. And what he understands is that what matters now is the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. And so everything has become relative now that I understand what I am called to.

C.S. Lewis, continuing on a little bit from the quote we had before, he says this. He says, we're told to deny ourselves and take up the cross, take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ. And nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospel, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, and we are far too easily pleased.

What Lewis recognizes is that if we're going past this simple way of, I'm going to satisfy and manage God, that the way through that towards true righteousness is to understand that actually what God is calling me to is not just merely self-control.

He's calling me actually to unleash a desire for him, to know him, to put him in his kingdom above all other things to the point where all the other stuff just becomes so unimportant because I have this great, awesome, and satisfying desire to seek out the Lord and to live my life in surrender to him. And as I do that, I find that I'm not so concerned anymore. My only concern is how do I love my Lord? How do I know him more? How do I care about the things that he cares about?

How do I care about the people? How do I give my life to him in greater measure? How do I overcome my sin and the obstacles of my flesh? And how do I just surrender those things and let them die so that I might have more and more? What Jesus calls people to is a kind of righteousness that comes from the gospel. The gospel is talked out in 1 Peter as like a word that is implanted, a seed that's implanted that grows up into true righteousness.

Jesus Christ died on the cross. And we think, oh, that's nice. Jesus took care of my management of sin so I can go about my business, right? No, that's not the gospel. Jesus Christ died on the cross so that you could have a life with God and that life could grow up into something that is more surpassingly beautiful than anything else you could want or do or desire.

If you take this new life you have in Christ and you just pour everything into it, all of your hopes, all of your joy, if you put everything behind knowing God, seeking out his will, following after him, what we find is our life grows into this beautiful, flourishing thing. And we're no longer managing our desires, but finding true joy and peace and all the fruits that are coming along with this thing. And we're not asking the questions, how much should I owe? And how much can I keep?

And what does God want from me? And do I feel guilty? Because all of that has just been blown out of the water because the love of Jesus Christ is putting me back together. And it's teaching me to love again. He's putting his spirit within me. And it's not anything that I'm doing, but I'm just finding myself caught up in a beautiful, flourishing relationship with God. And it's leading to righteousness. Not that I'm managing, but that God is overseeing.

And yet, so many of us, myself included, are too easily pleased with less than that, with less than knowing God, with less than seeing my life come into order and into beauty. And so what is Jesus calling us to? It's not, worship team can come up. It's not this really straightforward of three steps and this is the thing you need to do, but it does begin with this message that Jesus starts to proclaim. Repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You want this kind of life.

You want this kind of knowing of God. You want to step into this kind of righteousness that he invites you into. It begins with this message. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven comes into our life. It's as a gift. Jesus just shows up and he says, hey, you want to be a part of this kind of life with me? Do you want to have forgiveness? Do you want to see your life totally transformed? God invites us in. He says, and the way in is this kind of repentance.

And we have a lot of ideas about what repentance is. And there's certainly a degree to which it is a moral reformation, right? Which we're just saying, man, God has made it really clear what is not good for me. And so I'm just going to be open-handed about that stuff and I'm going to lay it down. But that's not all of repentance. Repentance is letting God take every part of my life, like Paul's talking about here, and saying, just clear it out.

Maybe it's over time, but having this sort of mentality where we're open-handed with everything. So like, what am I doing? Like, what's my vocation? Like, who should I marry? Not if you are married. If you are married, you are to marry and stay married. No, that's not an open question. Like, I know, God already told me that. But, you know, asking all these questions, like, what should I do with my life? Like, what is it going to mean for me to have a satisfying, joyful kind of life?

What Jesus says is, yeah, like all of that is a part of the kingdom of heaven. As you repent, as you start to find your life coming together in trust, in faith, it's going to be held together in love. You're going to find all this joy, all this great gift of life in Christ Jesus. As you walk into what the Lord has for you. And so it involves like repentance. But I can't even tell you like, I can't even tell you what you need to repent of.

Maybe you're sitting here, maybe you have some sin in your life. Like, you know, it's sin. You and God agree. You don't want to give it up. Well, you know, like a lot of like coming in and trusting God and receiving what he has for us. It's just laying our lives before him, laying our will before him and letting us kind of work with him. So, so maybe my invitation to you today, if you want this kind of greater, more fulfilling kind of life is, well, just man, just go back and talk with

God about that again. and probably figure out a way to put that thing down, whatever that thing is. Or maybe there's something in your life, it's like, man, it's not like sin. You say, no, there's not any particular verse that I can find that's against this thing. Yeah, but like, is it consistent with you having all your desires, like having these strong desires for what God has called to?

Is it consistent with this kind of knowing him that puts him first and exalts him above all things and pursues his way above everything else? Are you holding something back from God? Are you just trying to manage God, keep him at bay? Because so many of us spend so much time just being like, yeah, God, I'll get you later. But the kingdom of heaven is at hand and it's a matter of repentance. And we're invited into this kind of surpassing righteousness that comes in life with him.

And so what I want us to do is take some time as we are gonna worship, Um... Music. That to mean that we should sit around and make sure we haven't done any sin like today, because then God will be really upset. I mean, honestly, yeah, like if there's some sin on your heart, you should confess it. You should leave it behind. You should ask God to empower you to leave that. Music. Behind, and he'll be faithful to do that.

But also, I mean, we're understanding that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and that God is doing things not because we've done so great, but because Jesus did something.

What we do and when we take communion in a worthy manner, what we do is we get our eyes off of ourselves and we say, Lord, I want the kind of righteousness, I want the kind of joy, I want the kind of peace, I want the kind of relationship with you where you're doing the work and I'm not bearing the burden anymore because you did it all. Music.