Real with Ourselves, God, and Others

Intro

Honored to be here

What a cool space

So blessed

Incredible church

Incredible Pastor

Incredible Youth Pastor

Caleb

One of the most talented people I know

Incredible leader

I’ve had the opportunity to drum for Caleb a couple times

Your leadership ability in those moments is very evident

I know exactly what you want

But not in a domineering way

More like an encouraging and clarifying way

You’re blessed

Thank you so much for this opportunity

I heard a rumor that your theme for the year is ROGO

Real with Ourselves, God, and Others

That’s fantastic

I’ve been studying the sermon on the mount recently

It’s really challenge me in this area

So much of our lives is about appearance

Trying to get the right angle for our photos

Making sure the right moments in our lives make it online

There’s a version of us that we want to present

Athletic

Smart

Attractive

Talented

Religious

We make sure that we do everything we can to uphold a certain reputation

If we’re not careful it can become more about activity than identity

We can put a lot of effort into looking like we’re following Jesus

But very little effort into becoming a follower of Jesus

Or a lot of effort into appearing righteous

Rather than being righteous

Context

The Sermon on the Mount

Beatitudes

Blessed are the poor in Spirit...

Salt and Light

Then Jesus clears some things up for the people

This is early in His ministry and people have questions

Matthew 5:17-20

Matthew 5:17–20 “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things are accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.”

Pray

Open our eyes to behold the wondrous things of your law.

Image

I have a wife named Abby

Got married in 2020

Been married now for 4 years

She’s about got me trained

There were some things that I needed to learn

Fold towels the right way

“So you leave the shower curtain open?”

I also had to learn how to clean the house

My version of a clean house

Laundry is done and hung up

No dishes in the sink

No junk on the counter

My shoes aren’t in the kitchen

Sweeping

Vacuuming

Get the dog hair off the couch

Boom… Bob’s your uncle… you’re good to go

I’m off on Friday’s and she works on Friday’s

Several times that she’s called or texted me

We’re having company tonight, can you clean up the house while you’re at home today

Of course, I’d love to

She’d come home

I would be proud of myself

She would come in

“I thought you said you cleaned the house?”

“I did…”

“What you did was straighten up the house… You didn’t clean it.”

Abby’s version

Getting on your hands and knees and crawling around the house cleaning baseboards

Getting on a ladder and dusting the ceiling fans

Getting out the Clorox wipes and wiping down the walls

Doing a deep scrub on the toilette

Mopping everything

The whole house is completely spotless and smells like essential oils

Comes by it honestly

Her dad…

Vacuum at 10pm

Mow the yard late at night with his headlights on

When they go on trips, he mops his way out of the door

I’ve never met anyone that works as hard as he does

He passed it down to Abby

I’d be very proud of what I had done

And then soon find out that wasn’t what she had meant

My version of cleaning the house was just about straightening things up and making it look clean.

Abby’s version of cleaning the house involved actually cleaning the house.

“This isn’t what I was talking about at all…”

Transition

In this passage Jesus is clarifying what it means to be righteous.

There were different ideas

The pharisees were leading the way

The were the teachers

The religious

The righteous

“This isn’t what the law is about at all…”

You got it all wrong

I believe Jesus is trying to make two points in this passage

His teaching is in no way different from the Old Testament

His teaching is very different from that of the scribes and pharisees.

Jesus’s Teaching is in no way different from the Old Testament

Matthew 5:17 - “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

Don’t Think

He begins on the defensive

People had their questions about Him

Healed a couple people on the Sabbath

Touching people with leprosy

He’s not following the rituals

His followers aren’t fasting twice a week

He’s not honoring the Sabbath in the way the expect him to

He didn’t go through the typical route to become a Rabbi

Not a pharisee

Not an expert of the law

He didn’t follow the traditional path

He often denounced those who did follow the traditional path

Told them they were wrong

Told others how dangerous their teachings were

He lived a different lifestyle

Often spending time with those that the religious leaders would never talk to

People have their questions

Who is this man?

Where did he come from?

What does he believe?

Why doesn’t he follow the law?

Why is he so different?

Does he even care about the scriptures?

Jesus wants to clear this up

Abolish

Dismantle

Tear down

Lincoln Logs

Like when you’re finished playing with Lincoln logs

You take the house apart piece by piece until no house exists at all

Abolish

That’s the word

Removing stones from a structure

Piece by piece

Until the law doesn’t even exist anymore

The Law and the Prophets

The Old Testament

Fulfill

This is where this passage gets tough

What does that mean?

Why didn’t he say “obey?”

Or honor?

Instead he chose to use the word fulfill

He did this on purpose

Fulfill

To complete a period of time

Such as in a prison sentence

Did you fulfill your requirements?

Yes. I stayed in prison for this long.

D. A. Carson - “To be that to which the other party pointed.”

Here’s what I understand to be going on

Jesus is saying the law and the prophets were pointing to something.

I’m who they were pointing to.

Jesus isn’t doing away with the law

But he’s also not just keeping the law or honoring the law

He is who the law was pointing to

This same thought is echoed throughout the New Testament. I’ll give you a couple moments.

Romans 10:4 - For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes

Christ is the goal of the law

Like a race… What’s the goal? Follow the path until you get to the finish line

What’s the goal of the law? To get to Jesus Christ

It’s pointing you somewhere

Or rather it’s pointing you to someone

That someone is Jesus

Romans 3:21-26 - But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets.

This is what the law and the prophets were trying to tell you about this whole time

This is what Jesus is saying…

The law and the prophets were always pointing to something

I am who they were pointing to

This makes sense when it comes to the prophets

The prophets often made predictions about the coming messiah

Where he would be born

The lineage he would be born into

The events surrounding his birth

The type of life he would live

The type of death he would die

Jesus fulfilled all of those

But it doesn’t just say the prophets are fulfilled in Christ

It says the law is fulfilled in Christ

Even the law was pointing forward to something

Passover

Jesus is our passover

Through his blood we can be saved

Jesus was the ram that took Isaac’s place

Everything to do with the temple was pointing us to Christ

Jesus himself equates himself to the temple

Tear down this temple and I’ll rebuilt it in 3 days

The sacrifice system

Never meant to take our sins away

But was to point us to the one who could

All of the moral laws

Were to show us that we could never be perfect

We are in need of a savior

i didn’t come to abolish. I came to fulfill.

the law was pointing to something. That was me.

and

Why study the Old Testament?

Because it points us to Jesus Christ

This is going to be important until the end of time

We read the Old Testament

Because it points us to Christ

It teaches us about Christ

There are principles to be learned throughout it

The Jewish law may not bind us

We learn what it looks like to fear God

What it looks like to trust God

We get different glimpses of who God is

Jesus loves the Old Testament

Sees every single bit of it as important

He did not come to abolish it

His not teaching anything different than that of the Old Testament

But here comes the meat of the passage...

Jesus is teaching something very different than that of the scribes and pharisees

Matthew 5:20 “For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.”

Your religious leaders have gotten it all wrong

What God expects from you is a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees

Imagine that statement

Your religious leaders have lead you astray

They’ve gotten it all wrong

The best people in your culture?

They’re still not good enough

There is a way to be righteous but you’re going to have to be better than the best person you’ve ever met

The Pharisees have gotten it wrong

The Pharisees

Where did they come from

Period of history for about 400 years before Christ was born that we have nothing recorded in the bible about

400 years of silence

There are history books

Just not bible books

Rose to prominence early on in that period

Believed that a strict adherence to the law would bring about the messiah

Jesus was just waiting on everyone to be good enough

Boy were they good

Pharisee = Separatist

Set apart

Most outstanding people in all of the nation

Spent their lives studying the law

Teaching the law

Dissecting the law

Highly respected men of God

Looked up to

They took God’s law and then added more laws to it that made them keep God’s laws

Sabbath

Added laws about knot tying

Moving dirt

Sweeping floors

How far you could walk

Just to make sure no one broke the Sabbath

Moses’s law you were required to fast once a year

Pharisees made you fast twice a week

You want me to be better than those guys?

We’re already falling short of keeping their commands

How can we be any more strict?

But it’s these guys that Jesus calls out more than anyone else…

What was the issue with the pharisees?

The religion of the Pharisees was just about looking righteous

Matthew 15:8 “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”

Matthew 23 - White washed tombs

Look perfectly fine on the outside

The inside is full of death

They were all about appearance

Looking righteous

Looking good

Looking holy

Had nothing to do with their character

Didn’t actually love people

Didn’t actually have a heart of generosity

Weren’t humble

Weren’t meek

Didn’t long for righteousness

You have heard that is was said...

Don’t murder

Don’t even have hate in your heart for someone else

Don’t commit adultery

Don’t even have lust in your heart

Don’t break your oaths

Let’s just always be honest people

Then he ends that section

I want you to actually care for people

Not just people who look like you and talk like you

I want you to love even your enemies

This isn’t just about looking righteous

This is about having a righteousness that comes from within

It’s from the inside out

This is someone I wish I would have understood early on… Especially when it comes to lust...

I’d set these boundaries

As long as I don’t cross this boundary I’m good

Think I’m righteous because I hadn’t done certain things or looked at certain things

Meanwhile I had done nothing to clean up my thoughts and imagination

You’re still not there

The religion of the pharisees was more about doing righteous acts

Going through the motions

Attending the services

Giving the sacrifices

Often seen

Praying on the street corners

They’d let the crowd know when they gave to the poor

When they fasted they made sure it could be seen all over their faces

Jesus corrects...

No that’s not right

This isn’t about going through religious motions

It’s about having an authentic love for God and love for others

Pray

Go into your private room

This is a conversation between you and God

Be okay with no one else knowing about that conversation but you and God

Give

Don’t do it for attention

Do it because you care about people

Do it because you care about the Kingdom

I know someone who can’t help but to let everyone know every time she gives her offering

It’s like it’s burning within her

She’s so hungry for the applause of others rather than the approval of God

Fast

Just do it privately

Don’t tell anyone

Learn to be satisfied with God alone knowing about your quiet time

So many of us only have a quiet time with the Lord because it looks good on our snapchat story

We just do it for the likes

We just do it for the comments

We just do it because it fits the brand we’re trying to portray

The goal is that we would spend time in prayer and studying scripture because we have this internal desire to be with our heavenly father

We want to talk to Him

We want to be with Him

We want to hear from Him

We’re not satisfied with just putting on this religious mask.

We actually want to become like Christ.

We want to love God.

We want to love others.

It’s not just about maintaining an outward appearance of righteousness. It’s about being transformed from the inside out.

This is why Jesus says… “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the pharisees you’ll never get into the kingdom of Heaven.”

Because what I’m looking for isn’t just external. It’s internal.

The true fulfillment of the law… is righteousness that comes from within.

Poor in Spirit

Broken over sin

Humble

Hunger and thirst for righteousness

“I’m convinced that much of Christianity for the last 100 years has had it’s focus more on looking like a Christian than on being a Christian.” - JP

How to be righteous?

Rather than just maintaining outward appearances, the goal is transformation from the inside out.

call Carley up to play

An external righteousness isn’t it

That’s fake

It gets you nothing more than the occasional applause of man

If you want the applause of Heaven, it’s going to have to be a righteousness that comes from within

You may be able to manage your outward appearance for a season, but to be transformed from the inside takes a work of God

Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3)

Jesus tells Nicodemus he needs to be born again

Become a new creation

You need to be completely changed

You need to be changed from the inside out

How?

John 3:14–16 - “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Call on Jesus and ask him to change you

If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation

The interesting thing...

In one sense… If you’re in Christ you’ve already been declared righteous

Your punishment for sin was placed on Jesus Christ

Now standing before the father he sees you as righteous

Nothing can take that away

The blood of Jesus covers you

But in another sense… you’re being made righteous

You’re righteous

And you’re being made righteous

On this side of eternity God is still shaping you into his image

Working to get rid of the flesh

Working to get rid of sin

This sermon isn’t about how to become a Christian… It’s about how to follow Christ

If you want the applause of heaven...

It’s about being transformed from the inside out

Not about maintaining outward appearances

Not about going through religious motions

But becoming more and more like Christ from within

So that even our thoughts line up with his thoughts

How does this happen?

1 Corinthians 15:10 “10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”

It’s God who changes us

But we work as hard as we can

What does that mean?

We study scripture

Not for attention

But for transformation

Praying

Begging God to change us

Begging God to help us love others

Having a group around us to hold us accountable

We’re honest with them when we’re tempted

We pray for one another

We call each other out when we see each other slipping

Getting plugged in to church

Worship and serve and learn with other believers

Not for the applause of man

But for the approval of heaven

We do these things so that God can use them to transform us from the inside out