Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] All right, we're in this series on the Sermon on the Mount. We're going through this as a whole church, and we're going to get right into it today.
[00:00:14] And I believe this, as we get into what Jesus has to say to us today, that I think it's the intention of Jesus to lift some burdens off our shoulders.
[00:00:23] I think if there's one stereotypical thing about religion, religious spaces, churches, church people, is that to enter into these kinds of rooms, we are signing up for a burden. We are signing up for a heavy weight. And here's the thing about Jesus that I know to be true is that the great surprise of Jesus is that the closer you get to him, the more you realize his invitation is not to be burdened, but it's to come and find rest in him.
[00:00:52] And that as we, as he says In Matthew chapter 11, as we take his yoke upon us, we'll find that his burden is light. And so today, as we get into this part of his Sermon on the Mount, where he is going to get into some challenging statements, I want you to know that it is the intention of the gospel, it is the intention of Jesus to lighten the load.
[00:01:14] And that is the kind of faith that I want to have. And so let's get into it right away, if you're able. I want to invite you to stand with me as we read this passage from Jesus most famous teaching, Matthew, chapter 5. Starting in verse 17, it says, don't misunderstand why I've come.
[00:01:32] I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. And I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God's law will disappear until its purpose is achieved.
[00:01:46] So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.
[00:01:52] But anyone who obeys God's laws and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. But I warn you, unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And so, Lord, as we open your word today, as we hear your words, I pray that it would be the same for us in a way as it was for those hearing these words coming from the mouth of Jesus on the mountain, that we would be changed and transformed, not just by good ideas or helpful thoughts, but by the power of the word of God, through the mouth of Jesus, Today we pray this in your name. Amen. Amen. You can have your seats. Thank you for standing.
[00:02:40] When I was growing up here in Bend, we used to go after church to a place called JJ Norths.
[00:02:48] And some old time Bend people might know we were famous for more than just blockbuster, folks.
[00:02:53] We had J.J. north's grand buffet. You've had buffets? Have you had a Grand Buffet?
[00:03:00] And one of the things that they would often do at J.J. norris is this is the early 90s. And I'm sure at some managers meeting of J.J. norris, they thought, how can we get families with young kids excited to come to JJ North? And someone must have had the bright idea, clowns. Clowns will do the trick.
[00:03:20] And so we'd go, and oftentimes you'd sit down at your table and then there would be a roving clown that would come around to the tables to perform magic.
[00:03:29] And I don't know if we were terrified of clowns as children. I know today that would not be a selling point for JJ Norths. But alas, they are no more. But the clown would come around, and I remember two things that the clown would do. One would be magic.
[00:03:45] I remember him pouring a pitcher of milk into a newspaper and then opening the newspaper onto you. And then, surprise, surprise, there was no milk in the newspaper. And then there was these clown gags, you know, the squirting bow tie. And then of course, the scarf that just never ends. You know what I'm talking about?
[00:04:06] Fun for the whole family. The scarf just keeps going. You're like, let me eat my nicely sliced ham, right?
[00:04:13] But there's this thing about this scarf that would never end, or the clown car. And the clowns just keep coming out of it, and they keep coming out of it. And I think when it comes to Christianity and Christian faith, a lot of times we have this fear that if we pull the thread of following after Jesus, that the requirements and the burden and the instruction list and the rules will just never stop. Stop.
[00:04:39] And I often think that many have kept themselves at a distance from following after Jesus or accepting faith for themselves because they have this fear that if they say yes to a little, it's just not going to stop. And the burden of the instructions of religious thought and life will be too great.
[00:05:00] And here is what is at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, of the life of Jesus, of the gospel and itself.
[00:05:08] It's this language of Christianity that says that following after Jesus and becoming a kind of good person that we all hope we might be is not about doing something more. It's about receiving what has already been done.
[00:05:26] That is at the heart of following after Jesus. It is not what must I do more to get on God's good side. It's about how can I receive the finished work that Christ has done on my behalf?
[00:05:42] Pastor Rich Philotas was teaching on this passage and this is what he said. I want to quote him verbatim. I thought it was so good. He says, our salvation is not based on us being good. Our salvation is based on God being good.
[00:05:55] The invitation is not to do more. The the invitation is to go deeper.
[00:06:01] That for all of us who have thought, what must I do to clean up my life in such a way that I will be approved or please God, Jesus comes back and says, that is an unwinnable game. You wanna play?
[00:06:18] I've got something better.
[00:06:20] I've got an invitation not to do more, but to be more at rest in my love.
[00:06:27] That the work of Jesus is something that we did not initiate, we did not come up with.
[00:06:35] The book of Romans says, while we were yet sinners, Christ did the work.
[00:06:40] And so today, as we lean into saying, lord, how can you transform how I live, how I think, how I act? How can you, Lord, please take away from me those things that separate me from your presence? We are not doing so in such a way, saying, lord, fill out my to do list, give me more stuff to do that I might please you. No, we were saying, lord, I want to follow you and find myself at rest in you.
[00:07:08] This is the heart of the kind of radical discipleship that Jesus preached and Pastor Ben talked about this last week was he was preaching on the Beatitudes, the fruit portion of the Sermon on the Mount, where if you were here last week, you heard Jesus starts with blessing.
[00:07:27] He starts before he encourages them to do anything, before there's any discussion of behavior.
[00:07:33] He begins with this declaration of who the blessed ones are, who the luckiest are, who are those that have come into great fortune in this new kingdom that he is announcing. And to the shock of everyone listening, it is not the powerful and the affluent and those that have everything going for them.
[00:07:53] It's not those who take what they want in this kind of Roman Empire world that they live in. Instead, Jesus says, these are the blessed ones, the poor, the mourning, the humble, the hungry, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers and the persecuted.
[00:08:08] That these in this new upside down kingdom are the ones who find themselves receiving great fortune, not because of what they've done, but because there is a new king in town.
[00:08:20] And Jesus is declaring blessing after blessing before they've done anything.
[00:08:26] And then in Matthew 5:13, he says this to them. He says, you are the salt of the earth, and you are the light of the world.
[00:08:34] And all these folks following him in the wilderness and listening to him teach in Galilee, and now following up the side of the mountain as they're listening, and they realize their condition, and they realize that they are not at the top of society, they're at the bottom. They look around each other and say, we're the salt of the earth, we're the light of the world.
[00:08:54] My grandparents met in the 1950s in high school in Cedar Rapids or Cedar Falls, I'll have to clarify, in Iowa.
[00:09:03] And so both of my dad's sides of the family came from the Midwest. And I love my grandmother's cooking. She just turned 90 a couple weeks ago, and still she will out cook anybody. She'll outbake anybody.
[00:09:19] And here's the thing about Midwest cooking. And if you're from the Midwest, you know this.
[00:09:24] A lot of good use of dairy.
[00:09:29] I mean, really, the butter industry has been propped up, really by second and third generation Midwest families. They just have an insatiable hunger and thirst, not for righteousness, for butter, right?
[00:09:42] And if you have not put two full cups of heavy whipping cream in your mashed potatoes, you've not experienced the good life.
[00:09:50] It's amazing how much dairy goes into these delicious feasts. And the thing about Midwest cooking, and for all of its goodness and sweetness and creaminess, there's not a lot of heat. All right? We have a joke in our family that, you know, if table pepper is causing you to beat up with sweat on your forehead, you must be from the Midwest. All right?
[00:10:11] But I've noticed this as over the years, more and more different styles of restaurants have made it out here to our town of Bent, Oregon.
[00:10:19] I've come to appreciate that there's more to this culinary life than just sweet and bland foods. There's spice, there's heat, right? Northern Thai. Come on, somebody.
[00:10:35] Mexican food. Come on, somebody.
[00:10:39] Indian food.
[00:10:40] I'm not there yet. We'll get there.
[00:10:43] We'll get there. Too hot.
[00:10:47] Jesus is looking at these folks who have come to accept that they have really no influence or place in society.
[00:10:56] And he's saying, actually, all of you who are in the bottom rung, you're the ones that is gonna make this world come alive.
[00:11:06] With flavor and texture. People are gonna experience the goodness of God in the good world that he has created because you're in it.
[00:11:13] You are the salt of the earth. You are that thing that if you're not present, things decay. You're that thing that if you're not present, people can't taste and see that the Lord is good.
[00:11:25] You're that thing that people are gonna walk in darkness, except that you're in the room.
[00:11:29] And Jesus is pushing back against this idea that we as his followers are called to be so camouflaged in the society that we live in that there is no discernible difference between us and people who do not experience following after him, that to follow him is to be transformed. And if what comes to your mind is the same thing that comes to my mind, I'm thinking of like 90s Christian subculture, like Christian T shirts and Christian bumper stickers.
[00:11:54] And I think, I hope that's not all Jesus has to offer is some kind of side culture that has its own, you know, fashion, bumper stickers, music, all this stuff, and we just come apart and be separate. For its own sake, I hope that there is such a radical transformation in communities like this when we follow Jesus and take him at his word and take him seriously, that it transforms us from the inside out.
[00:12:20] And so it's not, can I put a bumper sticker on the back of my car that tells everybody that I'm a Christian? No, it's can I have such a deep work of Christ that happens on the inside that when someone slice me or is angry at me or ridicules me, when I have real enemies that come for me, can my response be something different?
[00:12:39] In a world that is saturated with sensuality and sexuality that has gone off the rails, do we have something on the inside that is at work that has us live a different way?
[00:12:52] There is a transformation of Jesus that looks less like the outward behavioral modifications that signal one tribe or the other. And it looks like radical inside out kind of transformation. I will tell you, if you follow Jesus in a way that just changes the external stuff that is a poverty.
[00:13:12] Because what Christ has called us into is not the religion of the religious leaders and the Pharisees that were around him because they had all the external stuff figured out and they missed the Son of God when he was in their midst.
[00:13:25] And for all of us, I would rather us walk away completely from faith if it's only the external stuff, because we might actually find and encounter Jesus on the outside better than if we come into this place, refuse internal transformation and just do all the motions.
[00:13:43] That is the most dangerous place we can be is when we become like the religious leaders in Jesus day who do all the right stuff, but they've missed the whole point, which is to know him.
[00:13:56] And these Pharisees, I mean, they get a really bad rap. I think they were doing their job and they were faithful to what they had been taught.
[00:14:03] There was many Pharisees that would follow Jesus and be counted among his followers. And so I don't want to get too, you know, anti Pharisee in here, especially if you came from a long line of Pharisees, I know you might be offended by that.
[00:14:19] But these Pharisees, they were so certain of what they knew about the Bible, the Old Testament, the Torah and the prophets that they were made it their job to put that on everybody else. They took that burden as they read it, and they put it on the shoulders of everyone around them in a way that was crushing.
[00:14:41] And so when Jesus is saying this in the sermon that, that your righteousness has to be more than the righteousness of the Pharisees, I think what he's doing, he's pushing back against this idea that the Pharisees, because they were the most intense in the rules, that they were the closest to God, because Jesus comes and he does. He does things that the Pharisees would never be caught dead doing. Things like sitting down at the table. And on one side he has thieves and tax collectors, on the other side he has prostitutes. And they're saying, well, I guess Jesus doesn't even believe in the Bible anymore.
[00:15:14] Cause look at this.
[00:15:15] How dare he? Doesn't he know that to talk with that person that has leprosy is against our Torah? And to actually touch that man with leprosy to pray for him, that is an abomination.
[00:15:30] You can't be that close to unclean people, Rabbi.
[00:15:34] And Jesus again and again is expressing a kind of closeness that God wants to have with humanity, that the people had never, in all the days of the law and the prophets.
[00:15:47] And if you look at how the Bible is structured in our Old Testament, which is what Jesus is referring to when he says the law and the prophets, which is our Old Testament, their scriptures.
[00:15:57] And he says, I didn't come to abolish that or set it to the side. I came to fulfill it, what he's saying is, I am the one that is coming to do what those scriptures always were pointing to, but could never get done.
[00:16:10] And the Bible is written in the Old Testament, really In four Acts, act one is creation. God invites humanity to partner with him and to live in a world marked by his peace, his shalom, his harmony, where everything is right.
[00:16:25] Act two, very quickly in the book of Genesis, we find is the Fall where humanity prefers to go their own way, but God continues to pursue them, calling us back into relationship.
[00:16:35] Then Act 3, we see with the story of Abraham where God calls Abraham as the father of a new nation, Israel, to lead the way and to demonstrate God's reign and rule on the earth. But over and over again, we see all the way through the prophets, they could never get it done.
[00:16:53] They could never live up to this high bar of God's chosen people. And so by the time we get to Act 4 at the end of the Old Testament, the beginning of the New, we see this desire for God to reconnect with humanity in unbroken communion and no one could get it done. And then Jesus comes, and Jesus does what David couldn't do, Jesus does what Abraham couldn't get done. Jesus does what none of the prophets could quite get their hands around, which is the perfect expression of God's covenant relationship with humanity.
[00:17:30] And it's in this perfection of the law and prophets that Jesus is explaining. Listen, I'm not disregarding what the religious leaders are talking about. I'm saying they've missed the point because the point is me.
[00:17:43] And so in Jesus we find this perfect expression not only of acceptance and mercy and grace, but a fulfillment of the law of God.
[00:17:54] And it's a beautiful story and it's one where it requires Jesus. I saw a pastor talking about the Lord of the Rings movies way back, you know, 25, 26 years ago, they started filming those and obviously became these huge, huge films.
[00:18:12] And there's one role that just seemingly couldn't be given to anyone else. That's the role of Gandalf, played by Ian McKellen.
[00:18:20] And now, 25 years later, they are doing a new, like, prequel sequel to the Lord of the Rings.
[00:18:28] And so they need to cast a Gandalf. And so you know who they're getting?
[00:18:32] Ian McKellen.
[00:18:33] He's like 136 years old and they're just going to wheel him out, put the hat on, because no one else can do it, right? No one else can do it. No one else is that role.
[00:18:46] And I hate to compare Jesus to a fictional wizard, but here's the thing.
[00:18:56] The whole Old Testament is a story without the lead role filled.
[00:19:01] It's one where everyone is reaching and stretching and looking and hoping and trying and trying and failing to be acceptable to God.
[00:19:11] And Jesus comes and he says, I'm the perfect sacrifice. I'm the lamb that takes away the sin of the world. I am the one in which all these things that have been trying to get to God and failing, I'm the one in which they will be fulfilled. And he does the work.
[00:19:27] This winter was one of the driest and warmest I can remember. And so I was thinking back to the opposite of that in 2016.
[00:19:36] Anybody know what we called it?
[00:19:38] Snowmageddon. You guys are like snowmageddon. Still Sad about this.
[00:19:44] Snowmageddon 2016, just a wild amount of snow came down 2, 3, 4ft on some days. And all across town we had roofs collapsing and the Kenwood school gymnasium collapsed. Before school. Thank God it was before school. I mean, a lot of snow. Heavy, heavy, wet snow.
[00:20:08] And I was remembering back then, our next door neighbors with whom we share this alley that connects our garages and our driveways to the street.
[00:20:19] He was a landscaper.
[00:20:21] And so I looked out one of those mornings when there was three feet of snow, and I looked out at my driveway and I knew that my neighbor Brian, he owned a landscaping company. And so he had a skid steer with the snowplow in the front, and he had snowmobilers, snow blowers, and he had a crew of guys. And so you know what I did when I looked out at that driveway? I did absolutely nothing.
[00:20:49] I did not go outside.
[00:20:51] And as I sat there and sipped my coffee, I waited for the sound, that sweet, sweet sound of the snowblower firing up.
[00:20:58] And I thought, I don't have to do the work because of who I'm next to.
[00:21:03] And here's the thing.
[00:21:04] We can treat our faith like me with my little plastic shovel.
[00:21:10] And we can go out there and be like, see Jesus? See how hard I'm trying?
[00:21:13] And Jesus will say, you're in too deep, bro.
[00:21:17] You're in too deep.
[00:21:19] And your best efforts.
[00:21:22] That is a nice sentiment. And you are way over your head.
[00:21:26] Because no matter the amount of morality and work you do and behavior modification you put into practice, it is like a little tiny snow shovel on Snowmageddon. And what you need is someone who is equipped, who has the tools and the authority and the power.
[00:21:41] Come on, the power to get you out of the hole you're in.
[00:21:45] And so in the Old Testament, when we see the psalmist writing, you have picked me up from the miry clay, taken me out of the pit and set my feet Back on the rock, he's saying, listen, I couldn't get out of the hole I was in.
[00:21:58] But God, you made a way. And I believe that was a prophetic looking towards the moment when the Messiah would come and do what all of us could not do before, which is to dig ourselves out. And so as I sat there and I watched the snowblower clear the alley and then come back two hours later as the snow still falling and clear it again, I thought, praise God for neighbors with snowblowers. And praise God for a Jesus who keeps coming back again and again when we screw up, and he keeps clearing the way for us to know him.
[00:22:30] This is the work of grace.
[00:22:35] I think the danger we run into with this approach is we could assume that sipping our coffee and watching Jesus do the work is the whole of Christian experience. But. But what he always does is he always invites us from that place of radical, undeserved, unearned grace to be transformed and to live a new way, because we have been changed by grace. And Bonhoeffer, the famous German theologian who was killed in World War II by the Nazis, he said, there is an easy capacity to affirm within faith all manner of ideology.
[00:23:19] The church becomes so welcoming that the demands of the Gospel evaporate in a general offer of welcome, friendliness, and good feeling. And to that I would say, if we become a place where our welcome is the end of the road. We have missed the prayer that we should be praying every week, which is, Jesus, transform my heart.
[00:23:43] And too oftentimes churches will pray prayers like lord, change everybody else's hearts and make them like my heart.
[00:23:51] But in this place, we want to have wide open doors. And then we invite people in to pray this prayer alongside me.
[00:23:57] Sit right next to Pastor Evan on the front row as he is praying. Lord, save me again.
[00:24:03] Free me from my sin.
[00:24:05] Lord, change my heart. Revive in me a clean spirit. Come on. That we all pray this. Not that God would change everybody out there and make them like us, that God would change us to make us like him.
[00:24:16] That is the prayer of any true apprentice of Jesus.
[00:24:21] And so our welcome and our acceptance, which I hope we are known for, it does not stop with a social club where everybody just decides what they want to be. It's a place where we all come together and none of us assume that we have some kind of religious superiority over anybody else, but instead we all turn towards Christ and we pray, Lord, let your kingdom come and will be done in my life. Amen.
[00:24:49] And then Jesus starts talking about the religion of the Pharisees and how we as his followers actually have to see the bar that the religious leaders set, which is don't murder, don't commit adultery.
[00:25:01] Like, don't do any of the external stuff that gets you on God's bad side. And Jesus says, actually, we're going to up the bar.
[00:25:08] And now it's not gonna just be about our external behavior. It's gonna be about what our heart does.
[00:25:13] And for everybody who has ever had a wicked thought, they thought, yeah, oh, whoops.
[00:25:20] Cause he says, man, you've heard it said, don't commit murder. I say, you can't even be angry with somebody.
[00:25:27] You've heard it said, don't commit adultery. I say, you can't even lust after somebody. And everybody's like, ugh, it's getting warm out here on the mountain. Jesus.
[00:25:36] And he goes on and on, and he keeps seemingly raising the bar for performance.
[00:25:44] And it's almost as if Jesus is saying, I'm going to raise the bar so high that it looks exactly like what happens when the kingdom fully comes, so that you will all look at yourself and realize that without me and my power, you're going to be buried.
[00:26:01] You're never getting out of this.
[00:26:03] You're never going to be able to dig yourself out of the sin. Not that it's just on the outside, but that's on the inside. And so come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest for your souls. What a brilliant, brilliant way that Jesus sets the bar so high. And when all of us look at it and say, I don't know if I could ever do that, he says, you're right. So come with me.
[00:26:26] Hop on the back of the snowblower. Let's go.
[00:26:32] There was another Pharisee that thought he had it all figured out. In Jesus day, he was so confident of his knowledge of the Torah and the Old Testament, he was so confident that he was certain of his righteousness.
[00:26:49] And he encountered Jesus one day on the road.
[00:26:54] And a life that was completely given to being always the most right in the room in a moment, because he encountered Jesus, became a life completely given to knowing him. And this is what that Pharisee wrote in Philippians 3, the apostle Paul said, as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.
[00:27:18] And I once thought that these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.
[00:27:25] Yes, everything else is worthless when compared to the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. And for his sake, I've discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with Him. And I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law.
[00:27:43] Rather I become righteous through faith in Christ.
[00:27:46] Come on, let's give ourselves permission to say yes to what Paul wrote to the Philippian Church.
[00:27:53] And I know some of us were like, yeah, I want to follow Jesus, I want to trust in his grace, and I really want to prove that I actually can be a really good person.
[00:28:05] We're just going to say all the way yes to Paul's sentiment today, that good doing that, filling out the list, that checking all the boxes. He would say, it's not that it's bad, it's garbage.
[00:28:19] It doesn't deserve your time. It doesn't deserve the effort that goes into produces no fruit. It's stapling apples to the tree. It will never create life. So let that rest in the garbage can of dead religion and come and follow him. Because there is an infinite value in knowing him and abiding in him and being found in Him.
[00:28:44] And this is the only way.
[00:28:47] This is the only way to experience faith.
[00:28:50] And so if you bow your heads, I want to pray altogether that this knowing Christ would take preeminence and in first position and all those other ways that we try to religiously perform would fall into the trash can so that we might know him and be found in him and find our rest in Him. And so Lord Jesus, all of us, those who have been in church for so long that we lean towards self righteousness, those who have felt like an outsider in these spaces and today are here maybe hoping for the first time that this might be for them. Lord, I pray for all of us that we would experience the great grace of Jesus, the great invitation not to do better, but to be transformed and to go deeper into a life that is touched by your grace.
[00:29:47] Lord, we love you and we receive you.
