SOM Right Motivations

Vision

Its been about a month since I have shared with you where we are at with Multiply 2025 our vision for the next three years

There are three areas to this vision…first and foremost it is to become a church that has a multiplying DNA…We need to be a church that is a multiplying church. To bring the Good news of Jesus everywhere…To multiply disciples leaders and churches and in order to get there there are a few things that we need to address

Right now we are about 1/3 of the way there on pledges: We have $109K of the $300K pledged

We have brought in a little over $27K

and already you have seen the improvements

Facilities: We have painted the entry way and worship center. Bob Puliz and his team have installed a new ceiling and Sonja Hak has done an incredible job decorating…And we are just getting started there…We have parking lots and the children’s building…bathrooms and roofs to do in this plan

Worship: But one of our next big steps is to hire a worship leader. This is one of the things that we need to do to take us to the next level. I do have good news. Angelina (Although she couldn't be here today) is going to continue leading worship through the summer. I have been telling you about her plans to become a pilot. Well some classes changed and she is going to be able to stick with us for a few more months…and this will allow us time over summer to do a very good and thorough search to find a worship lead.

Planting. Lastly, we want to plant a church to help us kick start multiplying this church. The first church is a water project in El Salvador…We are going to bring fresh water to an impoverished community and plant a church around the fresh water well. Right now we don’t have a ton of progress on this but it is a part of our plan

Made to rule

In February we began a journey together to crawl through the sermon on the mount.

It is Jesus’ Magnum Opus..

It is a sermon that is both brilliant in its content and yet so accessible..

It is a sermon that is simple in that it has a plain meaning but it is so hard because it gets at the core of who we all are as humans

And the entire sermon begins with an invitation.

It is an invitation to the gospel or the good news

Jesus goes all over Israel and says “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”

What he is saying is that an entirely new way of life is made available to you today

That the rule and reign of God is now at hand

And again you have to remember that you were created to have a rule and reign on this earth

Genesis 1:28 NIV

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

From page 1 of the Bible, God is showing us the intention of all of humanity

In other words:

you were created for both relationship with God and responsibility to God

Of course all of this gets broken when Adam and Eve sin for the first time

But Jesus comes on the scene and he is now saying…My rule and reign is here...’

You can have life with God again

Jesus’ gospel announcement is a reversal of all that was broken in the garden!

He is saying: What you were created for..>Relationship and responsibility…That was all hindered due to sin…But I am making a way back!

This is good news...

Its an invitation for all of humanity to go back to Eden.

And this is so key when it comes to talking about the Sermon on the Mount…Why?

Because The Sermon on the Mount is what it looks like. when God extends his reign through your life...

So the sermon on the mount is what it looks like when you and God partner together for life

People read the sermon on the mount and say…I wish I could live like this but it is impossible.

NO IT’S NOT…Living life with God actually makes the sermon on the mount accessible and easy

I’d go as far as saying this is what it practically looks like to be saved! That you are experiencing the rule of God in your life

So everything we are talking about in the Sermon on the mount is that this is what it looks like when God rules through you

Its not impossible

It is actually the much easier way of life

SOM Recap

One of the things that Jesus hits on early in the sermon is that our righteousness needs to surpass that of the scribes and pharisees

And the point that I made is that, Apart from Jesus, that is just never going to happen...

And here is what I think Jesus was saying there: The scribes and pharisees were trying hard to do nothing wrong.

their faith was rooted in just trying not to make a mistake!

Many of us have lived a version of Christianity that we parceled together from the scribes and pharisees. It is not Jesus’ gospel…Its called the gospel of sin management

Sin management is where you try as hard as you can to just not sin any more

You try to be a better person

And while obviously our own effort matters…sin management is not good news!

Trying to follow God in such a way that is just managing which sins you commit is a heavy burden

Instead Jesus offers a different kind of life

We call it the with God life

When you live daily with God he will transform your inner character and desires so much so that to do the things that you used to do would be unthinkable.

The with God life is character and inner life transforming

See living with Jesus shapes our internal character…He shapes our motivations

As human beings our wanter is broken…That is to say…what we want is corrupted by sin…Living life in apprenticeship to Jesus slowly begins to transform what we want

And that means we want what God wants...

Living life with Jesus reshaped our “wanter”

See when our desires are shaped by God then it frees God up to use us and to bless us.

So today in the Sermon on the mount…Jesus is again digging deep beneath the surface and he is hitting on some very personal things…and it may not seem personal when you first read it but it is intensely personal

Its about our need for significance

I call it the respectability trap

We all want to be respected right?

We all need to feel significant

And apart from Jesus there are two main ways that people go about meeting this need:

Both start out innocent enough but can be destructive

Money

Now its not to say that money is bad…if you have amassed wealth, good for you, God can use that to do incredible things

No it is not money itself that is destructive…

It is finding your significance and your identity in the amount of money that you have.

It’s finding your hope and your security in money that is dangerous

Its buying certain things so that you can show the world that you are impotrant

Wealth is a handy tool to make sure that our reputation stays solid and therefore our significance level goes up

Flaunting money is an easy thing to do and to fall into because we live in a society that rewards and looks highly on people with wealth.

Elon Musk is asked his opinion about everything these days. And he is not the smartest man in the world, he is the wealthiest man in the world

There is something in our brains on a subconscious level that says, if that person has money, then they are smarter than the rest of us.

The reason why money is such a block to our relationship with God is that we find our security and our confidence in it rather than in Jesus. By definition, we are leaving Jesus out of it

Now there are people who have tons of money and don’t treat it that way at all…People who have wealth but don’t find their identity in it…I know people who just can’t stop making money…But they know the trappings of it so they live simply

but I bring this up its a struggle for everyone…our society ascribes great importance to people with money

the second destructive thing is this:

Reputation

And our world is perfectly designed for us to think about our own reputation all the time isn't it.

The challenge is that we live in a world where we are always playing to an audience

Kids today grow up with a crazy pressure of feeling like they have to entertain their audience of followers

Their significance is in how many follows they have or likes they get.

from our earliest moments we are always curating our own reputation...

People love love it until they become slaves to it

The desire to secure our own future by the means of money or reputation will block or hinder you in living a life In constant connectivity with God...

Because you will always return to the need for money or the need for reputation or both in order to feel significant…in order to feel worthy

You will keep going back to money and reputation as a source to make your life feel meaningful

But its a trap…Its a shallow well that doesn’t last long

so these 2 issues are what is at play in the sermon on the mount today

I call it the trap of respectability

Beware of the trap of respectability

Matthew 6:1–4 NIV

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

To be Seen

Now I feel like I could summarize the words of Jesus this way: be careful of organizing your life in such a way that you need to be respected by others

Watch out for “needing to be seen”

Now before chapter 6 Jesus said to his disciples and his audience that:

their righteousness needs to surpass that of the scribes and pharisees

Now Jesus doesn't specifically say the pharisees here but it is obvious that he is talking about them

Later in his ministry when Jesus will be more direct with his listeners and he talks about the pharisees and the religious leaders and he says this

Matthew 23:5–7 NIV

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.

SO here Jesus deals with the Motives that he dealt with in the sermon on the mount

The Pharisees did things, “to be seen”

Their entire motivation was to gain higher and higher levels of respectability and status and therefore authority

Here Jesus is directly calling out the religious rulers for desiring the praise of people over the praise of God

Isn’t this what it amounts to when you do what you do...”To be seen”???

The religious leaders enlarged their religious symbols that they wore

They loved being noticed and took steps to make sure that they were noticed..

They would practice giving to the poor in the most public places and never behind closed doors

It was literally a big show for them to show off how religious they were

And what Jesus is saying is be aware of these practices

Because it is easy to look at this as a problem with those people but the most obvious place to see the problem is in the mirror

Our world is perfectly designed for us to find our significance in the amount of followers we have

in the people we know

in the way we use money

in how religious we are

But at the end of the day, Jesus main point is the reward that you get is temporary respect

And even though you acted very religious, you left God out of it…Because all of your attention and intention was to obtain respect from others

Honoring God wasn’t on the agenda

But this brings up another issue

In Jesus’ day he was dealing with people who found all of their significance in being respectable people…People who had a good reputation, people who were highly religious

People who had money and announced how they helped people with it...

This is where they hung their hats

And Jesus called them Hypocrites

Its a term that probably would have been lost if it were not for Jesus

It is a term that means someone who is a “pretender” or an “actor”

let’s look at that verse

Hypocrisy

Matthew 6:2 NIV

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

First of all: Jesus says, “when you give to the needy” This is an assumption that Jesus makes that his kind of kingdom people do give to the needy

Just don’t announce it like the Hypocrites do

Hypocrisy is when we weave self-deceit to our spiritual formation

Think about this for a minute

What Jesus is aiming at is not simple fakery…What Jesus is aiming at is the self deceit that has woven itself into the fabric of a persons spirituality....

To which there is a “Notice-Me” approach to life....

And here is the deal. In Jesus’ day announcing your giving was seen in the broader context as a very religious thing to do.

The “notice-me” issue was so woven into the fabric of who they were that they didn't even notice that they were becoming the center of attention and not God.

Are you picking up what I am putting down?

This is the air that we breathe in 21st century America

The water we swim in

is a “notice-me” culture

And it is monetized and capitalized on

And not that there is anything wrong with being an influencer…as long as you are influencing for Jesus

But everything in our society says “notice me”

we still seek after the praise of other people...

we want to be significant

We want to be the person that people go to

So this is the water we swim in

This is the air we breathe

How do we climb out of the respectability trap?

Matthew 6:3–4 NIV

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Don’t Let your left hand know what the right hand is doing.

Focusing on not paying attention to one of your own hands is precisely a way of noticing what that hand is doing.

When I was a kid I remember an egg hunt at my grandparents house and I was so close to the golden egg…and my uncle said…whatever you do don’t look up...

Obviously…I looked up and found the egg

Telling us not to focus on something is a way to focus on it...

So what is Jesus doing here?

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus always pointed beyond the actions and into our character...

I think what Jesus is saying here in “Don’t let the left hand know what the right is doing”

Is that we have to:

become the kind of people where the goodness of God flows out of us so often and so much that we don’t even notice it

How many of you have had the experience of driving your car and then all of the sudden you are in your driveway?

Its because you do it so often it becomes automatic

This is who Jesus is shaping us to be

A people who do his goodness so automatically because our character is transformed from being with God

When we live out of the goodness of God then we will do good deeds in front of others and we will hardly even notice it ourselves because that is just who we are as a people. It will be like automatically driving to your house on auto pilot

This is who we are intended to be

Jesus is building a kingdom of people where his goodness simply flows out of them because their character is transformed!

And God rewards this...

Because the one who gives without any regard to who is watching doesn't even notice something special about themselves…it is literally no big deal to them...

These are the people who have captured the attention of God and have fellowship with God

In addition to that

Challenge

I think the real challenge today is to think about how do I become the sort of person where the goodness of God naturally flows out of my life?

John the Baptist was confronted with a question by his disciples…His disciples were saying, Hey John, everyone is going after Jesus…His ministry is getting bigger and ours is shrinking…Shouldn’t you go get notice more?

Maybe we should make our ministry more visible

John’s response

John 3:30 NIV

He must become greater; I must become less.”

When our life is all about making our deeds known to others…When our life is about finding our significance in wealth or respectability then what Jesus is saying is that it is invisible to God

But when you live out God’s Goodness in your life then you will learn to love invisibility and anonymity

When you live out the WITH GOD LIFE =....Then you will become more concerned about God growing greater, God receiving the credit…And whenever you get the credit you will feel like you have just cheated God

Where are you falling into the trap of respectability

is it reputation or wealth?

Because you are weaving self deceit into your spirituality and into your relationship with God

Where do we fall into the trap and how do we lay that down at the feet of Jesus?

Because remember when our motivation is to be seen by others, Jesus isn't involved

God wants to be freed up to bless you in your life

And when our lives are organized around getting praise for ourself, we rob God of it

When our life is organized around receiving acceptance and honor from other people, then we by definition become our own God

Jesus will sum up much later what his disciples have to do

Matthew 16:24 NIV

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

In a world that is focused on self acceptance and believing in yourself

Jesus says, you wont get anywhere without denying yourself

Maybe your here and you have considered yourself to be a Christian for years…But you have never denied yourself...

Thats the call of Jesus this morning.