Speaker 1: I'm like are we sure we really want to like race that?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like those guys kind of know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Like, if they're about to like shut this show down, then like I don't want to be like taking off, going hundreds of miles an hour into the air and so, sure enough, like they throw all the bags on, they like close everything up.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure we like drifted onto the runway and homie like punched it and then it felt like we were in a blender all the way up to like feet.
Speaker 1: It was great.
Speaker 1: I loved it.
Speaker 1: I was super relaxed the entire time.
Speaker 1: You can ask whoever I was sitting next to I don't think that one was Landon, but she likes to make fun of me for that and so I was thinking back and obviously I get nervous around flying.
Speaker 1: We've done a little bit better.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking like, well, why was I so afraid?
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of the fear came from the fact that, you know, I'm sure those pilots were nice guys, but in my core being is like, did I really trust them with something so important as my life?
Speaker 1: And because I didn't trust them, it made the entire experience difficult when in reality, had.
Speaker 1: I just trusted them from the get-go.
Speaker 1: They were reliable and they were going to take care of me.
Speaker 1: So why do I tell you this story?
Speaker 1: Well, many of us in the world today, the world that we live in, kind of feel the same way about God's word.
Speaker 1: Right, we feel the same way about scripture.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people think, hey, that might be a good book, it might have some good stories.
Speaker 1: You know, it might be some good things to teach my kids, but I don't know if I really trust this with my life.
Speaker 1: Some people that are fully, you know they don't believe to be Christians, they don't claim to be Christians.
Speaker 1: It's, you know, to them it's outdated.
Speaker 1: It's at best outdated, at worst it's racist or sexist or all these labels they like to throw on it.
Speaker 1: Other people they like to pick and choose what they want to follow.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll take this, this and this, but I'm going to kind of cut out these parts because that's like, that's cultural, that's like back in the day, it's like a buffet.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm going to, I'm all about the love, your neighbor stuff, but the other stuff not so much, so much.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, even in Christianity, lately you're seeing a lot of differing opinions on how do we handle God's word, and you have some well, some parts of Christianity or who would claim to be Christianity that have kind of really done away with the authority of scripture as a whole, like, hey, this is a nice book about how much God loves us, but nothing he really says in here matters.
Speaker 1: And so the question is like, how in the world do we think about the Bible, how do we think about scripture?
Speaker 1: How do we hold it?
Speaker 1: And thankfully that's not a conversation that has just started today.
Speaker 1: In fact, that conversation was going on even back in Jesus's day, and that brings us to our text tonight.
Speaker 1: We've been walking through this series on the Sermon on the Mount, and what we hear Jesus say and what we're going to look at tonight is actually really jumping straight into this conversation between some people that argued over how they were supposed to view the Scriptures.
Speaker 1: For them it was called the Torah, for us we would consider it like the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: That's what they had as Scripture back then.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to see that, instead of just dealing with what everybody else says, like, let's see what Jesus has to say about the word.
Speaker 1: And so if you have your Bible.
Speaker 1: We'll go ahead and flip back to Matthew 5, 17 through 20.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read through it one more time, real quick.
Speaker 1: I'm actually only going to read to verse 19.
Speaker 1: Jesus says do not think that I've come to abolish the law or prophets.
Speaker 1: I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Therefore, anyone who sets aside 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.
Speaker 1: Let's pray, and, lord God, we thank you for your word tonight.
Speaker 1: I pray that you would help us to God, just be challenged, encouraged, convicted, but healed through your word, and I pray that, as we leave here tonight, we'd leave here different Holy Spirit, that you would change hearts and minds like only you can.
Speaker 1: Father, we love you, we praise you, and we pray these things in the name of Jesus, amen.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know how many of you have heard this passage before, but it's one that's actually caused a little bit of confusion because it seems a little out of place.
Speaker 1: Like we just talked about the beatitudes and salt and light and now you have Jesus talking about keeping the law, and the really confusing part is it really makes it sound like he's saying that we need to keep the law, but then you look at our lives today and it's like, well, we eat pork that would be scratched off.
Speaker 1: That's sad.
Speaker 1: I can only do so much.
Speaker 1: Turkey bacon it's not the same, I don't care how many times I try it.
Speaker 1: Try blend like shirts.
Speaker 1: Like that's out.
Speaker 1: So like, what are we supposed to do here?
Speaker 1: Is Jesus saying that we've had it wrong this entire time?
Speaker 1: Well, the way that he addresses this issue actually makes it seem like there's people who are accusing him of being against the authority of scripture, what we would call the Torah, the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: And this would make sense because there were some different views on how to observe the law.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of times, we just think everybody was on the same page, but even in Jesus's day, these scriptures were thousands of years old.
Speaker 1: These were ancient right.
Speaker 1: None of these guys it wasn't like Moses was their great uncle.
Speaker 1: Like they are very distant from when these were written, and so there were different interpretations on how to best fulfill and absorb the law.
Speaker 1: And you have some, like the Sadducees, who are kind of, you know, flippant, you know no big deal, kind of what we would consider like a liberal approach to it, of, like you know, it's some great, like moral teachings, but it's really not supposed to be that literal.
Speaker 1: It's no big deal, you know, we'll do some of what the Greeks talk about, some of what the Romans talk about, it's fine.
Speaker 1: And then the Pharisees were super strict.
Speaker 1: They were like literal to the T.
Speaker 1: In fact they were so strict that they created their own separate set of laws and rules on how to follow the rules.
Speaker 1: So not only did they have rules, but they had rules on how to follow the rules that are about how to follow the rules.
Speaker 1: So they were the complete opposite end of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: And these Pharisees probably had a pretty big issue that Jesus didn't adhere to a lot of their man-made rules.
Speaker 1: In fact, Jesus, they thought, was pretty flippant with some of those rules.
Speaker 1: Obviously, we know that he wasn't just like doing whatever he wanted, he was perfect, he never sinned.
Speaker 1: But they didn't like that.
Speaker 1: He didn't play by their rules.
Speaker 1: And so he says guys, don't worry, you know, I'm not against the Torah.
Speaker 1: That's how he opens up this section of the sermon.
Speaker 1: He's like well, hold on.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not coming to abolish this thing, I'm not coming to tear it down.
Speaker 1: In fact, what you guys don't realize is this whole thing points to me.
Speaker 1: He said I came to fulfill the law and we understand this now.
Speaker 1: And what he meant by that was that all of scripture is actually a part of God's rescue plan for humanity, and Jesus is at the center of it all, all the way back to Genesis, where God is cursing the serpent.
Speaker 1: You see, hey, he's going to strike your heel and he's going to crush your head.
Speaker 1: Talking about the seed of the woman, like that's about Jesus, like even back then, god had all of what he was going to do through Jesus in mind.
Speaker 1: And so all of this has Jesus at the center.
Speaker 1: And so he's saying, hey, nobody has a higher view of scripture than I do.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say that God's word doesn't matter, I'm not trying to wipe any of that.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm trying to double down, right.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, hey, if anybody opposes this, then you make the least commandment.
Speaker 1: If you try to like do away with it, then you're gonna become the least.
Speaker 1: And a side note he's not saying that.
Speaker 1: There's like important commandments and then there's least commandments.
Speaker 1: Least means like most specific, like smallest detail, whereas greatest is like broad and general.
Speaker 1: And so what's the point for us?
Speaker 1: Right, I'm not just trying to sit you through a theologian seminary class.
Speaker 1: The question is well, are we supposed to keep the law?
Speaker 1: Is that what Jesus is teaching here?
Speaker 1: And the reality is no.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about that later, and that's a whole nother discussion for a whole nother day.
Speaker 1: But Jesus and the whole rest of the New Testament says, hey, he fulfilled the law.
Speaker 1: And there's certain things that aren't binding to us anymore.
Speaker 1: Where, in the past, we were made clean to be able to approach God by cleansing rituals?
Speaker 1: Right, you had to wash your hands a certain way, you had to abstain from certain foods.
Speaker 1: But now, after Jesus, Jesus's blood makes us clean and able to approach God.
Speaker 1: Right, there was a time when sacrifices were required for sin, animal sacrifices, but now that Jesus has come, he's our once and for all sacrifice.
Speaker 1: We don't have to sacrifice animals anymore, because he was sacrificed for the sins of the whole world, those who would place their faith in him.
Speaker 1: And then you also see that you used to have to worship in a temple, right, you had to go to a certain place to worship, and now we are a temple of the Holy Spirit, like God's present resides in us, and so we don't have to go somewhere to talk with God.
Speaker 1: And so there are certain things that are fulfilled and changed on this side of Jesus.
Speaker 1: But the point is, all of scripture points to him and all of it should be super important.
Speaker 1: The Old Testament, the New Testament.
Speaker 1: Many of us kind of go about life like, well, you know, the Old Testament didn't really have a big deal, it's kind of outdated, I don't know what to do with it, so I'm just going to set it over here.
Speaker 1: But that's not how Jesus viewed it.
Speaker 1: Jesus says, hey, this is eternal, this is God's eternal word, this is not going to pass away until earth and heavens, and it's a figure of speech.
Speaker 1: He's not talking about the end of the world.
Speaker 1: He's saying this is God's eternal word, it's valuable, and so, more to the point, what he's really getting at and what we can take away from this today, is that if we call ourselves followers of Jesus.
Speaker 1: We should treat it that way, right, and that needs to be said, because more and more you see people who just treat the Bible like it's this old, outdated story.
Speaker 1: Or I'm just going to pick and choose what I like.
Speaker 1: Like you know, I'm going to love my neighbor.
Speaker 1: I like that part of Scripture, but the whole thing about like not getting drunk, or the whole thing about how we're supposed to you know, watch our tongue, like Ephesians says or the whole thing about sex being something God created for marriage, I don't like those parts, so I'm just going to set those over here and ignore them.
Speaker 1: Jesus set those over here and ignore them.
Speaker 1: Jesus doesn't give us that option.
Speaker 1: He says this is all God's word, this is all important.
Speaker 1: And if the Bible is really God's word and his revelation of himself to us, like how we know about God, then it should be our everything.
Speaker 1: One of the best examples of this was a guy back in the early 1500s named William Tyndale, and he was very devoted and he deeply believed that the Bible was God's word and he was going to risk everything he had to get it to everybody.
Speaker 1: And the reason that was so important was because back then the only Bible was in Latin and most people couldn't read Latin and so we take for granted like I've got an app, I've got 15 Bibles on my home and in my office, but they didn't actually have access to a Bible that they could read.
Speaker 1: And he thought that was wrong.
Speaker 1: And Tyndale was convinced that if the Bible was truly God's word, then every person, whether they were rich or poor or educated, needed to be able to read it for themselves, that it was for everybody, that it was life-giving.
Speaker 1: And he believed that so much that, even though translating that Bible was considered illegal, he would smuggle Bibles into England.
Speaker 1: He would do everything he could to get that.
Speaker 1: He would smuggle Bibles into England, he would do everything he could to get that just God's word into the hands of everyday people.
Speaker 1: And ultimately he was betrayed, he was killed.
Speaker 1: He was strangled and burned at the stake in a very terrible, terrible way, all for just trying to get the word of God into people's hands.
Speaker 1: But the crazy thing is you think okay, well, maybe when he got caught, like, did he have any regrets?
Speaker 1: Like, was he mad about it?
Speaker 1: Was he like man?
Speaker 1: I wish I would have just stuck with Latin.
Speaker 1: No, his last words were Lord open the King of England's eyes.
Speaker 1: And that prayer was answered just a few years later because King Henry VIII allowed the first English Bible that was heavily based on that guy, william Tyndale's translation, and so he didn't just think the Bible was important, but he staked his entire life on it.
Speaker 1: Like that is such a high view of, hey, this is God's gift to us and so I'm going to treat it that way.
Speaker 1: And look, you know, if we truly believe that the Bible is God's word, then why do we?
Speaker 1: Why do we, why do we treat it like it's optional?
Speaker 1: And while you might not ever be in a position where you need to die for the Bible, right, we've got the Bible app, we've got 15 different ways to read it.
Speaker 1: You do have to ask yourself is that how you view God's Word, you know, do I view it as God's revelation of Himself to us, how we know about Him in the world around us, or is this just something that I kind of think is you know, no big deal?
Speaker 1: And there's really three quick questions.
Speaker 1: As I was writing this sermon that I kind of came up with that I think you can ask yourself to see if you kind of fall into the camp of people who's like you know Bible's not a really big deal.
Speaker 1: I don't really value it that highly.
Speaker 1: So ask yourself these questions and see where you land.
Speaker 1: One do you know the Bible?
Speaker 1: And I'm not trying to shame anybody here, but like, do you have a habit of reading the Bible, learning from it?
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you have to be a scholar, but if we believe that it's the source of life, that it's useful for us for encouragement, for teaching that it's God showing us the world that we live in and how we're supposed to live in it, like, do we have a habit of reading it?
Speaker 1: And I'll be the first one to tell you like that can be difficult.
Speaker 1: I would love to help you find resources and tools.
Speaker 1: One thing I've used is this thing called the Bible Recap.
Speaker 1: It's a Bible in a year plan where there's a short description of what you read after each day and that's just one version.
Speaker 1: There's countless different ways.
Speaker 1: The Bible Project has one of those.
Speaker 1: The Bible app has a lot of those where it actually can explain as you're reading, like what you're reading Anybody like, not a reader, like you're super auditory, like you can learn from, like sitting in lectures or sermons or whatever.
Speaker 1: But if you ask you to read a book, like nothing, I'm the same way.
Speaker 1: There's an app called Dwell.
Speaker 1: It's like an audio Bible app and you can actually have scripture read to you, which, interestingly enough, before the English Bible, is how everybody learned scripture.
Speaker 1: We didn't have copies before the printing press, and so if you're that way, man, look into Dwell.
Speaker 1: I'd love to help hook you up or get you a way to have access to that.
Speaker 1: We have some connections and things, but so you can just let scripture wash over you, right?
Speaker 1: There's an app called the Bible Project that has these little breakdowns of pretty much everything in scripture.
Speaker 1: That explains it, gives you the context and look, these are all tools, but I'm just saying we live in a time where it's easier than ever not only to have access to the Bible but to actually understand it.
Speaker 1: And if we believe as Christians, if you're a Christian here in this room not everybody is but if you are and you believe that it's the word of God, then, man, why in the world are we not taking advantage of all these resources?
Speaker 1: So that's the first question Do you know it?
Speaker 1: Two, do you submit to it?
Speaker 1: Right, it's one thing to believe in the Bible, like you would believe in a textbook, but it's a different thing to actually believe that it's true, right, like I can read a book and say, okay, you know, I know it, but do I actually like hold to the truths that are found in it?
Speaker 1: Because a lot of times we read the Bible at kind of a distance.
Speaker 1: You know, I know the answers to give, but do you surrender?
Speaker 1: You say, hey, you know, I have my own ideas about how I should use my money.
Speaker 1: I have my own ideas about how I should live my life, about who should be at the center of my universe.
Speaker 1: Like I have all of my own ideas.
Speaker 1: But submitting to the Bible and submitting to God's Word is saying I'm going to take all of that and I'm going to lay that down at the foot of Jesus.
Speaker 1: And let's be realistic, any of us who read the Bible thousands of years after it was written, there are going to be things that challenge us and I would say, hey, if there's nothing about your God that doesn't agree with what you believe, you probably made him up Like.
Speaker 1: The reality is, of course God's word is going to challenge us because we aren't God and there's going to be things we might not agree with.
Speaker 1: There's going to be things that might be difficult to understand, but that's all part of it, and part of faith is saying I might not understand why God did things a certain way or why he said things need to be a certain way, but I trust him and so I'm gonna take his word over my own.
Speaker 1: So do you submit to God's word?
Speaker 1: And then three do you live it out?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 1: You can know the Bible, you can submit to the Bible, but at the end of the day, you still have to apply it.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 1: It's like medicine, right?
Speaker 1: I can have the flu and I can go to the doctor and I can get Tamiflu works.
Speaker 1: No matter how much I understand what's in it, no matter how much I believe that it would work if I took it, I still have to take it.
Speaker 1: And so how do you in your life actually apply God's word?
Speaker 1: Do you live it out on a daily basis?
Speaker 1: Do you have people that you're in community with, who are encouraging you, who are keeping you accountable?
Speaker 1: Right, because those are all ways that you actually put it into practice.
Speaker 1: And I want you to hear me, I'm not trying to load you down with to-dos, and that's not what Jesus is talking about, and we're actually going to get to that in a second.
Speaker 1: But the point here is, guys, at the end of the day, if we call ourselves followers of Jesus, then we should treat the word of God like he did right.
Speaker 1: We should treat it like it's essential to us, like it's water, like it's air.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying you need to read five hours a day, find what works and start there, but start somewhere, not because you're trying to earn God's love and again we'll talk more about that in a second but because it's good for us, it's his gift to us.
Speaker 1: Because at this point you might hear me say that and think well, this kind of sounds like legalism, like I thought Jesus pushed back against the Pharisees and now it sounds like he's kind of agreeing with them and taking their side.
Speaker 1: But that's actually not what's happening here, because you have to read verse 20.
Speaker 1: In verse 20, jesus says 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.
Speaker 1: And I think it's kind of funny in my mind, because Jesus spends the first part of this passage kind of putting the Pharisees at ease.
Speaker 1: Like I imagine some Pharisees sitting in the crowd and he's like, don't worry, guys, it's okay, I'm not trying to do away with the Torah, but also everybody else.
Speaker 1: If you're not better than them, you're not getting into heaven.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: So we're hitting on both sides at this point.
Speaker 1: But the question is, what does he mean by righteousness that goes beyond the Pharisees?
Speaker 1: Because I thought Pharisees were like the super strict, legalistic.
Speaker 1: Like are we supposed to like out, legalize the legalistic people?
Speaker 1: Like are we supposed to just really try hard so that God might love us one day?
Speaker 1: Well, no, that would be ridiculous even in Jesus's time.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of why he says it this way, because they were known to be the most like righteous religious people ever.
Speaker 1: And so he's not saying, hey, beat them at their own game.
Speaker 1: He's saying you need a total different kind of righteousness.
Speaker 1: We're changing the game here.
Speaker 1: And so what is Jesus talking about?
Speaker 1: Well, we said that the Pharisees were like really literal rule followers, but sometimes they would miss the forest for the trees.
Speaker 1: They would get so zoned in on following the rules to the T, to the letter of the law, that they would miss God's actual heart behind those rules, and they actually get roasted for this by Jesus in Matthew 23.
Speaker 1: He says Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisee.
Speaker 1: You hypocrites.
Speaker 1: You tithe and I'm paraphrasing here but you've neglected the more important matters of the law justice, mercy and faithfulness.
Speaker 1: You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former.
Speaker 1: Woe to you, you hypocrites.
Speaker 1: You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but the inside are full of greed and self-indulgence.
Speaker 1: Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees.
Speaker 1: You are like whitewashed tombs who look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of bones of the dead and everything unclean.
Speaker 1: In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Speaker 1: And righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Speaker 1: And so he's saying hey, I'm not here to tell you you need to be really good at following rules.
Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you you need to get to the heart of those rules, the heart of the matter, and the rules and the following and the obedience that will come.
Speaker 1: But you can't just miss following the key point.
Speaker 1: And so then the question is well, what's the key point?
Speaker 1: Well, after this passage, jesus actually talks about six things, and we'll walk through these in the next six weeks.
Speaker 1: He talks about anger, adultery and lust, divorce, making oaths, retaliation, loving your enemies.
Speaker 1: But even that's not the whole picture, right?
Speaker 1: He's not just saying, hey, these six things are the key to righteousness, because in Matthew 22, a scribe who's another one of these, like religious groups that would argue over how to interpret the Torah would come up to Jesus and be like yo, jesus, what's the greatest command?
Speaker 1: And he was trying to trap him.
Speaker 1: But Jesus says, hey, love your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.
Speaker 1: And there's a second one like it love your neighbor like yourself.
Speaker 1: And so what he's saying here is all of the law, all of God's word, right, even the parts that don't necessarily apply to us anymore and all those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: All of that can be summed up in these two things Love God and love others.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the anger, the adultery, the divorce, the oaths, the retaliation, all of those fall into one of those two camps.
Speaker 1: And so when we say the greatest commands again, it doesn't mean that these are the priorities, like, hey, if you do these two things, then the other stuff doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: He's saying these are the broadest categories.
Speaker 1: So if you love God, if you love others and actually do that, you will be doing all the rest of the commands.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 1: If you love God, then you're going to treat people who bear his image with kindness, with love, right.
Speaker 1: If you love others, you're not going to be angry and hurtful and mean towards people.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's grace.
Speaker 1: But what he's saying is, broadly, everything can be summed up in loving God and loving others.
Speaker 1: And so what Jesus is saying here is hey, I'm going to raise the bar for what that looks like, like I'm going to press in these areas and we'll see that in the next six weeks.
Speaker 1: But he's not trying to be a literal, legalistic rule follower either, because the Bible is not a rule book to check a bunch of boxes and earn God's love.
Speaker 1: He wants us to be transformed by his word, and not only to be transformed but to look out and to see the world the way that he does.
Speaker 1: An example of kind of how we do this as people I do a bedtime blessing at night with Leighton, and so what we do, we lay her down and I ask her a series of questions.
Speaker 1: I read it from a book.
Speaker 1: I basically ask her hey, do you see my eyes?
Speaker 1: And she says yes, do you know that I see your eyes?
Speaker 1: She says yes.
Speaker 1: Do you know that I love you?
Speaker 1: She says yes, do you know that I love you no matter what bad things you do?
Speaker 1: And she says yes, do you know that I love you no matter what good things you do?
Speaker 1: And she says yes.
Speaker 1: And then I ask her do you know somebody else who loves you like that?
Speaker 1: And she goes Jesus, because she knows that's the answer.
Speaker 1: And at this point we've done it enough to where, if I mess up a single word or go in the wrong order, I get corrected immediately.
Speaker 1: Or if Christine tries to do it slightly different than I do, it's like drop the hammer.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: We need to do this the right way, and so the reason we do that is not because I want her to believe that it's so super important that you say a bunch of words at bedtime.
Speaker 1: No, those questions are meant to point her towards the fact that God's love, through the gospel, is unconditional.
Speaker 1: If you place your faith in him, you're his child and there's nothing you can do to earn or lose his love.
Speaker 1: And in the same way, we're very serious with her saying yes, ma'am and yes sir.
Speaker 1: And it's not because we just really want her to appear polite, but it's because we want to teach her to respect people, to love other people who are made in God's image, so she can go run around and say yes, ma'am and yes, sir to everybody.
Speaker 1: But if she doesn't treat people with respect in her heart, then she's missed the point.
Speaker 1: And so, in the same way, these practices, these actions, these rules are not bad things, but you cannot separate them from the heart of the matter.
Speaker 1: It's those guidelines that bring us closer to God's heart and actually transform us to not just follow a bunch of rules and check a bunch of boxes, but to see the way, see the world the way that God sees it.
Speaker 1: And in the same way, god calls us to obey him.
Speaker 1: Because that's what happens we start to become like him as we start to do those things and those habits and those practices, they're just means to an end.
Speaker 1: Right, the rule itself is not the goal of life.
Speaker 1: Right, reading scripture is not the point of life.
Speaker 1: Like life is not to be really, really knowledgeable about the Bible.
Speaker 1: The goal of life is to know God and to make him known right, and a way of doing that is by getting in God's word.
Speaker 1: So you just can't get the cart before the horse.
Speaker 1: Anytime you start to do that, you start to slip into legalism.
Speaker 1: And we have three questions as well, to kind of see if that's where you're at.
Speaker 1: One am I more concerned with the what or the why?
Speaker 1: So in your own walk with Jesus, do you care more about making sure that you're doing the right thing or the motive behind why you're doing what you're doing?
Speaker 1: And again, we should want to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: We want to read our Bible, we want to go to church, we want to be in community, we want to serve people and share their faith.
Speaker 1: But do you ever stop and think about why am I doing this?
Speaker 1: Am I doing this so I can have something really spiritual looking to post on Instagram?
Speaker 1: Am I doing this so that I can say that I was at this Christian event that everybody's going to be at?
Speaker 1: Because that's like how I get popular and how I climb the social ladder.
Speaker 1: The motive matters.
Speaker 1: Two does knowing people are watching you change your relationship with God, because one of the most probably identifiable things about legalism and being a Pharisee is that it's all performative.
Speaker 1: Jesus says, hey, you're a whitewashed tomb.
Speaker 1: You look good on the outside, but inside you're bankrupt.
Speaker 1: And so often we can slip into this trap of, hey, I'm trying to earn God's love.
Speaker 1: Or, and I'm trying to earn people's favor, I'm trying to earn reputation, I'm trying to make myself look good for the people around me.
Speaker 1: And then three, is your spiritual life so that, or because what do I mean by that?
Speaker 1: The things that you do in your walk with the Lord, if you have a walk with God, if you're really, really honest, is the motive so that you would have God's favor and love?
Speaker 1: Or are you reading your Bible, praying and going to church because you have God's love?
Speaker 1: And that little distinction will change everything in your walk with the Lord.
Speaker 1: Because if you're doing it trying to earn some favor, trying to earn some love it's always going to be this hamster wheel of anxiety and performance and it's never going to satisfy and it's going to leave you high and dry.
Speaker 1: But if you realize, hey, god loves me, right?
Speaker 1: Scripture says that Christ died for me when I was his enemy.
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything to make him want me.
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything to make myself worthy of his love, like he chose me when I was in the pit playing in the mud with my own sin, and because he loves me so much, how could I not let that change everything about my life?
Speaker 1: How could I not want to do what he calls me to do?
Speaker 1: How could I not trust him when he tells me not to do something that's either for my good or to keep me from harm?
Speaker 1: And so you have to operate out of understanding.
Speaker 1: If you've placed your faith in Jesus, you are his child, you are beloved.
Speaker 1: You already have all the favor that you're ever going to earn.
Speaker 1: You don't have to earn it, even if you come in a relationship with your parents where you had to feel like you had to earn love, or you came from a sports team where you feel like you had to earn favor.
Speaker 1: That's not how God works.
Speaker 1: And so we have to separate our image of our earthly fathers, our earthly parents.
Speaker 1: Some of them are great, some of them are less than great, and we're all broken people, but have to understand that's not how God works.
Speaker 1: God chose us, he loves us.
Speaker 1: Nothing we can do, nothing we do can earn God's love, but God's love should shape everything that we do.
Speaker 1: And so, to recap, as we close, if I lost you, lock in for this and hopefully it'll get you back.
Speaker 1: But to close, jesus emphasizes the important and the permanence of God's word.
Speaker 1: Right, if you're his follower, you should follow his word.
Speaker 1: You should be in your scripture, not from a legalistic standpoint, not to earn love, but because it's good for us, it's his gift to us.
Speaker 1: Right that he's not doing this because we are trying to earn his love, we're trying to check a box, but he's doing like he gives us this as his gift to exist and to thrive in the world around us.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that, hey, if you obey the commandments, you're going to be healthy, wealthy and happy, like.
Speaker 1: That's not always how it works, but let me try to explain it with this and we'll close.
Speaker 1: Pretend with me for a second that you know you're up here like you're on a piano or something and you know there's sheet music and maybe there's a few different sets of sheet music one you're actually using and then a few that you aren't and imagine that they just like all fall on the floor right and you gather them back up and you have one that you know you're trying to use.
Speaker 1: And then you have a piece that you're not sure if it fits or not, like I don't know if this is a part of this one or one of the other ones that fell on the ground, and so what in the world am I supposed to do?
Speaker 1: How do I know if it fits?
Speaker 1: Well, what you do is you put it in and you see if it plays.
Speaker 1: And so you start to play that symphony or whatever it is, and you see if it fits.
Speaker 1: And it's the same with scripture.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you're here tonight and you say, hey, this is all fun.
Speaker 1: You've been talking a lot about being a Christian and what that means, but man, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not a believer, I don't have a relationship with the Lord.
Speaker 1: And if that's you, I would just encourage you, man, put it in and see if it plays.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 1: Test it, try it, see it, take God's word, put it within the grand symphony of your life, and I promise you it will play.
Speaker 1: True, it will align with reality.
Speaker 1: You will see how it harmonizes with everything that we see in the world human nature, history and what's wrong with us, our deepest longings.
Speaker 1: I promise you, if you take God's word genuinely like, give it a chance and see if it aligns with everything in your life.
Speaker 1: It will.
Speaker 1: It will, It'll play Because it was written by the ultimate composer.
Speaker 1: And the more you listen, the more you'll realize that this isn't just a song like.
Speaker 1: This is reality that God created everything in this universe, everything you see, from the grains of sand to the stars in the sky.
Speaker 1: That God created everything in this universe, everything you see, from the grains of sand to the stars in the sky.
Speaker 1: And he created you specifically.
Speaker 1: He gave you his image and he made you to know him.
Speaker 1: Yet we, in our free will, we chose to take that and we chose to rebel.
Speaker 1: We say, hey, god, I know you've got this whole thing going, but I'm going to do my own thing.
Speaker 1: I can be my own God better than you can be my God.
Speaker 1: We don't want you.
Speaker 1: The problem is, god is the source of life and so we separate ourselves from that and we choose death, we choose separation from him, we choose evil, and God has to punish evil because he's good and he's just.
Speaker 1: But God didn't want us to be separated from him.
Speaker 1: So he sent Jesus to live a perfect life, did nothing wrong, yet died on the cross for our sins.
Speaker 1: Not because he stumbled into Jerusalem, but because he chose to step into our brokenness and take the penalty that we had earned.
Speaker 1: We had a death sentence and Jesus stepped down.
Speaker 1: The judge stepped down from the seat, said I'll take it on myself.
Speaker 1: And in that he says, if we place our faith in him, we'd be saved, We'd become his children, we'd be adopted, chosen, redeemed, made new, a new creation having the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: And I promise you that if you'll take that step, you'll see that it plays.
Speaker 1: The world around us is broken, right, all the things we run to don't work.
Speaker 1: We can distract ourselves, but at the end of the day it just leaves us wanting more, and the only thing that will satisfy you is the God who made you to know him, in a relationship with him.
Speaker 1: And so I'd encourage you, if that's you maybe you've been riding the coattails of your parents' faith, your grandparents' faith, your siblings' faith Take a step, ask the question, be present here, show up, keep coming.
Speaker 1: We want you to be here.
Speaker 1: I won't want you to be anywhere else, but God's word is good and his grace is enough, no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, to wash you clean.
Speaker 1: And you can ask your leaders in this room that there is nothing that I've ever done in my life that's been more meaningful and more impactful than bowing the knee to Jesus, and so I would just encourage you, if that's you today, ask those questions, come, show up, play it and see if it plays, and I promise you, as you do, you'll see that it's life, life to the fullest.
Speaker 1: And so the question is will you let your life be shaped by his word?