Jesus is the Way

Where are my 11th graders at? You’re over a month into school are you doing okay? I’m always worried about the juniors in the room because I was always told and I experienced it as the hardest year of school. That was true for me because I had the strictest teacher in the history of the world for my AP English class. It always felt like she was holding us to an impossible standard.

We would have papers due that were around 5 pages, which is A LOT in high school. On the same day a paper would be due, we would have a test and at least for me it was always up to her how to grade the tests. Like it wasn’t multiple choice it was write an essay to answer this question, and I don’t know if she just hated me or something, but it always felt like I couldn’t get the answer right. Like if she asked what color the sky was and I said blue, she would say the sky was really green if you look at it with one eye closed. It just felt impossible to get a good grade in that class.

Turn.

When you’re held to an impossible standard it’s easy to feel like a failure. Maybe you’ve felt this in different areas of life:

At school it can feel impossible to meet the standard of all of your classes, every teacher thinks their class is the most important, every assignment feels like it will make or break you. It feels like an impossible standard.

In your appearance or body image. You feel like you’re not skinny enough or that you’re too skinny. You’re not tall enough. You’re too tall. You’re not pretty enough. You’re too pretty. The standard we feel can feel impossible to measure up.

The pressure to be liked by everyone. To be liked by everyone but also you don’t want to be too much. Especially online. You’ve got to post great pictures and get tons of likes, and every like helps you feel validated. But how many likes is enough to validate you?

Tension.

And sometimes it feels like the impossiblest standard to ever be impossible, is the standard you feel like God has for you. (pause)

You need to read your bible, you need to pray more, you need to stop cussing, you need to always act the right way, especially in front of your friends you know don’t go to church, you need to share Jesus with everyone you ever talk to, and if you EVER mess up… you might as well just give up this whole faith thing. Because God only wants perfect.

How do I live up to the standard God has for me?

If you feel that way, you’re not alone. In fact, back when Jesus was alive that’s often how people felt then too. They felt a lot of the same pressure. That they weren’t doing enough and that they would always fail when held up to this impossible standard.

Jesus knew that, he probably even felt that more than anyone… like think about the life Jesus lived. Do you think it was always easy for him? Do you think… “well he was God in human form so it all had to be easy for him to live up to this standard.”

Like when I was in school if we took a test, sometimes a teacher would change our grade if the highest grade was actually low. Like if the best grade was an 80, the teacher would set the curve at 20 and then add 20 points to everyone’s grade. With Jesus sometimes it feels like he got a 100 on this impossible test, that if I’m being judged against everyone else maybe we would’ve got a great curve, but Jesus sets the curve and it's 0 and now I have to get a higher grade.

All semester we’re going to be focusing on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ most famous teaching. It comes out of Matthew 5-7.

But before we get into that, something I want to point out is in Hebrews says:

15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

Do you think this means it was easy for him to not sin? It was easy for him to meet the standard and set the curve that is so impossible for us?

Actually, it means that he understands. He empathizes with our pain. Because he’s experienced it. So it’s interesting to me that Jesus says this during the sermon on the mount:

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Wait wait wait, Jesus… unless I’m more righteous than the Pharisees, unless I do more right things than the religious leaders… I won’t enter the kingdom of heaven?!

Jesus, I thought you empathized with my weaknesses, you knew the standard was really hard for us, you knew I couldn’t get a good grade on this test and now you’re saying if I don’t get a 100 like you… I’m going to fail. And you want us to live up to that?! Well to put an exclamation point on it. Jesus says at the end of chapter 5:

48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

If you read all of this at face value, it can be easy to misinterpret what Jesus is actually saying. It can be easy to feel like Jesus is trying to hold us to an impossible standard. So it makes sense why when you mess up you have this feeling like God looks at you with condemnation. It feels like he’s mad at you. It feels like, I’m a Christian but I keep lying to my parents and God cannot be pleased with me.

But I don’t want you to misinterpret what Jesus is saying… so to better understand Jesus, we need to see a different translation of Matthew 5:48:

48 Be holy, therefore, as your heavenly Father is holy.

The best way to understand what Jesus is saying is instead of saying be “perfect” he’s actually saying be “holy”. Hold up, let him cook.

Holiness is something talked about in the Bible a lot and there might be some of you in here that aren’t really sure what it means so let me unpack that a bit more.

Holiness = the standard that God sets for us.

So that’s even more of what we talked about… it feels like theres this standard that we have to live up to if we want to be a good Christian. But that’s if we view the standard like it’s a big test we have to take and we either get a good grade or a bad grade.

But that’s not how God views it. That’s not how He intended it.

God views holiness like a vase.

(SP NOTE: illustration using bowls ahead. It would be helpful if you have 2 bowls, one that’s full and has water and flowers and then one that’s broken.)

I’ve got a bowl here with me, and a bowl has a specific design and purpose. Generally, it’s to hold things in it.

But what happens when the bowl is broken? Can it fulfill it’s purpose? No because it’s not whole. Because the true intention of Jesus here is to talk about wholeness. Jesus wants you to be whole. To fulfill your purpose. Just like a bowl.

But sin breaks our wholeness. When we sin, when we don’t meet the standard that Jesus has for us in our holiness, it breaks our wholeness. When we’re broken we tend to have a few responses.

We try to cover it up and hide our brokenness.

We pretend it doesn’t exist.

We try to put it all back together.

None of that ever works to solve anything for us, because we weren’t meant to be broken.

Wholeness is God’s design for our lives. To be holy is to be whole. To be holy is to fulfill the God-given purpose for our life.

I know what you’re thinking though… Zach you still haven’t helped me with our main problem here and it’s that I CAN’T MEET THE STANDARD… I can’t go without sin. I can’t make my life whole. That’s true you can’t.

But Jesus did. You see as Jesus lived his life on Earth he was completely holy. He was blameless. He had no brokenness. When he died, and rose again he became our propitiation. That’s a big theological word but let me teach you something:

Propitiation – the act of becoming the sacrifice for our sin.

Using the vases, if it wasn’t for Jesus when God sees us he would see a broken vase and we would be lost with no hope. But by becoming our propitiation, what Jesus did is he took our place. So now when God looks at us he doesn’t see our broken vase he sees the wholeness of Jesus. He sees the holiness of Jesus. Which is what saves us.

This is best summarized in 2 Corinthians 5:

21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Jesus fulfilled the standard when he became our propitiation.

It’s not about us living up to this impossible standard, Jesus fulfilled that for us!!! If you want to know more about that and you don’t totally understand I’d encourage you to talk to your small group leader about that!

The truth we get to live in is explained in Romans 8:

8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death.3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh,[b] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.[c] And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

This completely explains everything Jesus was saying in Matthew 5. He said he came to fulfill the law because the law or the standard was powerless because it’s an impossible standard. God knows that the feeling you have when you face an impossible standard is the feeling of being powerless.

Application.

But let’s go back to the question, How do I live up to the standard God has for me?

What does that even look like in our life, if Jesus has fulfilled it…?

This question has a two part answer first, we HAVE to know that when God looks at us he doesn’t see the brokenness of our sin, he sees the wholeness of Jesus.

It’s like God looks at this whole vase, instead of the broken one that is our life with sin. Which is why Paul in Romans 8, says there’s no condemnation for those under Christ Jesus. We have freedom and grace in our life because God sees the wholeness of Jesu instead of the brokenness of our sin.

That’s good news for us today, because there are some of you that even though you have been forgiven of your sin and you’re no longer under condemnation you still wrestle with the shame of your sin. And the freedom that God is offering you today is that you no longer are being held to the standard of being completely whole. That’s not your responsibility today. (pause)

But with all of that knowledge… with all that we’ve just said… there is something that is our responsibility.

It’s not to cover up our brokenness, it’s not to pretend it doesn’t exist, it’s not to put everything back together and try everything we can to have it all together every moment of every day…

We don’t have to live broken. It’s actually possible to go piece by piece restoring our wholeness. God wants to heal and restore you of the broken areas of your life, piece by piece.

The painful realization that you will never be fully back together is hard, but the joyful realization that you don’t have to have it all together is so freeing.

The process of putting your pieces back together, to becoming whole again, and restoring your brokenness is called Sanctification.

In fact a definition for sanctification is this: Sanctification – the process of becoming holy.

So when Jesus says in Matthew 5:48 - 48 Be holy, therefore, as your heavenly Father is holy.

He’s talking about the process of sanctification, not commanding us to live up to an impossible standard.

I want to illustrate this because there’s an ancient Japanese tradition called Kintsugi, where you take broken ceramic bowls and restore them. It was created initially as a simple way to repair broken things, but became a way that they would use to create a new thing altogether. Like check out these pictures of some bowls that have been restored.

I have a Kintsugi repair kit with me, and I want to show you what it looks like… as you begin to put the bowl back together, it becomes a beautiful new thing.

But it cannot be restored, if we don’t bring the piece of us that we’re hiding. If you have something that you’re content to pretend like it’s not there or trying to cover up… the bowl cannot be whole again.

So, what might be the piece that God is trying to put back together in your life?

In fact I want to give you a moment to pray and process through that piece that you need to bring.

(SP NOTE: Allow space in the room for pad. Let students wait for a moment in response.)

Remember this is about wholeness, God wants to help you be as whole as possible in your life. So what piece might God be bringing to you as the next piece to make you more whole?

Let’s pray.

Know: your sin isn’t forgotten its paid for

Why: your sin doesn’t follow you, its paid for

Do: Accept the invitation of transformation by viewing your past as God’s story of grace rather than your story of shame

Why: we don’t forget about our past because God uses broken pieces to make it whole again

Matthew 5:17-20

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

His invitation was transformation

The pharisees was transaction

Matthew 5:17-20

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

In your family what happens when you mess up

A family of yellers – mad until you feel bad enough

A family of pretenders – its bad to be mad

A family of passive aggressive(rs) –

Define sin – living outside of God’s design for life

Paper illustration

Notice the story of grace that God has written in your life, where no moment and no season is wasted

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