Level Up |Life Giver or Life Taker

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Transcript

January 14 and 15, 2017

Level Up | Life Giver or Life Taker Aaron Brockett | Matthew 5

It’s good to see everybody and I want to welcome you if this is your first time to be here. And I want to welcome our Downtown and North campuses right now. They’re tuning in with us. So let’s show them some love. We love you guys. We’re really excited about what God’s doing at all of our campuses. The Downtown campus had their first gathering on New Year’s Day. It was a Sunday. I told you last week they had a little over 400 people then. Last week they had 560 people and just meeting in the public library. So it is awesome. Their permanent facility is going to be ready on February 26. It’s looking amazing. And then the North campus, your permanent facility will be ready on February the 19th, and it’s looking incredible. I’m just really excited for all God is doing on our campuses. I really want to welcome you if this is your first time. I know it can feel a little overwhelming to be a new person in a new place, even in a room like this or maybe at all of our campuses you might be looking around. I just want you to know this is a safe place for you to belong regardless of what you yet believe. I hope you get a chance to meet some friendly people and that this place begins to feel a lot like home. If you have a Bible or a device with a Bible on it, go ahead and get to Matthew 5 because that’s where we’re going to be today. We are in this series called Level Up, which is just another way of saying, “We want to make some progress in our lives. We want to advance—we don’t want to stay where we are—we want to move things ahead.” I think that all of us want that in our lives. That’s why we made some New Year’s resolutions a couple of weeks ago. It’s why we set some goals for our lives. We want to level up. But the thing we don’t necessarily like, that is oftentimes required to level up, is maybe some kind of a challenge or some kind of sobering news in our life, maybe a tough experience. That becomes the very platform that helps us to level up. This has looked differently to me in different seasons of my life. There have been some areas of my life where I’ve realized I’ve needed to level up. There have been times in my life where I’m like, “I really need to level up in my relationships,” or “I need to level up at work,” or, “I need to level up in my spiritual life, in my walk with God.” When I was a freshman in high school I got cut from my high school basketball team. I know, I know, I know that’s a big shock to you as you look at this physical specimen in front of you. I don’t know why you’re laughing. But it happened. I loved basketball and it was kind of like my life. It was probably an idol growing up. I really wanted to be on the

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Level Up | Life Giver or Life Taker January 14 and 15, 2017

team. It was a three day tryout and I was working really hard for it. It came down on the last night of tryouts there was one spot left on the team and two of us fighting for it, me and a good friend of mine. His name was Bobby Breckel. Bobby was a really good guy. He was a natural athlete. He was several inches taller than me and his primary sport was baseball. Bobby was a baseball player, which really kind of got under my skin because he didn’t even really want to be on the basketball team. He told me, “I’m just trying out to have something to do during the off-season.” And I’m like, “You’re going to take my spot on the team. Could you just roll over please and let me be on the team?” But Bobby was competitive like I was. And it came down to the last night of tryouts, and we both knew it, we were fighting for the last spot on the team. And one of the coaches said, “Brockett and Breckel, why don’t you guys go one on one.” I was like, “Oh great.” And he said, “Let’s play three games of one on one,” and he would size us up. All the players who had already made the team circled around us from half court. The coaches all had their clipboards out. I’ve got to tell you I felt like a gladiator in the coliseum fighting for my life. Because Bobby’s got the height advantage on me, he was more athletic than me. I thought, “What I’m lacking in height and athletic ability, I’ve got to make up for in hustle. I’ve got to outwork this guy. I want it more than him and I’ve got to show the coaches that.” I think what it came down to is Bobby won the first game, I won the second game, and we tied the third game. And I walked off the court and I went, “That was respectable. They are going to see my work ethic. They’re going to see my heart.” But apparently they had not seen the Rudy movie yet, the whole Mark Wahlberg invincible thing. That’s what I was going for, and apparently they hadn’t seen that and I got cut from the team. If any of you have ever been cut from anything, if you tried out for something and you didn’t get it, if you were interviewing for the job and they gave it to somebody else, you know what that feels like. I remember just being heartbroken over it. Here’s the thing though. It took me a few days to come out of that then I was like, “Okay man, it’s time to level up.” So I started hanging from door jams trying to stretch out, trying to grow. I don’t think that worked. I started exercising and I worked on my jump shot. I even bought the strength shoe. I don’t know how many of you ever had the strength shoe. Any of you? This thing, they still have it out today. You basically walk around on your toes the whole time. If you work out in the strength shoe, you are guaranteed, guaranteed to increase your speed, your agility, and your vertical leap. I bought the strength shoe and I was like, “It’s time to level up.” Here’s the thing. That was a painful experience, but it revealed to me I Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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Level Up | Life Giver or Life Taker January 14 and 15, 2017

needed to level up in some areas. It motivated me. It inspired me to do so. This coming summer my wife Lindsay and I will celebrate 18 years of marriage. Thank you, one person to start that off. On anniversary number three, three years into marriage, we went out for our anniversary. I made reservations at a very nice restaurant. We’re sitting across the table from each other with candlelight, a very romantic dinner. I’d ordered a crab cake appetizer for us. And then I’d read in one of my marriage books that it was a good thing to do to ask your spouse to rate your marriage on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being not so good and 10 being amazing. I can’t necessarily recommend that. It sounds good in theory. But anyway, I asked my wife, “Hey honey, three years into marriage, how would you rate our marriage?” She goes, “Why don’t you go first,” which should have been a sign. I’ve grown wiser since then. So I was like, “Sure, it’s not perfect. We’ve got some areas we need to grow in. But I think I would give us an 8.5. I think it’s pretty good. I’ve got to work on my abs, but an 8.5.” That’s usually how men kind of rate it. So I said, “What about you?” and she took another bite of crab cake appetizer so I knew she was stalling. So I asked her again, and she looked at me very lovingly, very directly, as she so often does. She looked at me and said, “Honey, I think I would give us a 4.5 right now,” and I was like, “What?” The record scratched in the restaurant and the waiters looked us like, “Bro, you’ve got problems.” And I was like, “Honey, how are we this far off?” And she began to reveal some things to me I just didn’t see. I needed to be more emotionally available and I needed to be more fully present with her. There were some things I just wasn’t aware of and it wasn’t very much fun to hear those things. I’d love to stand before you as your pastor and say that’s the only time we’ve had that conversation but that was just the first of many, many. And each time, and many of you know what I’m talking about, it wasn’t much fun. It can be uncomfortable to have those types of experienced. But it was the thing that revealed to me and then motivated and inspired me to level up. And maybe you’re in the midst of your own level up experience now. I’ve heard from a number of you this last week, after week number one. You’re just kind of sharing with me some of the things God is leading you through, and some of the things you’re feeling, and some of the pressure and the weight you’re experiencing. I think God’s got a lot of us, I think He’s got our church, our country in kind of a level up sort of season. In order for us to even have the motivation, or the inspiration, or even the information to level up it’s going to require some bad news first, maybe just a challenge or something that convicts us. What I want you to see is that is what the Sermon on the Mount is. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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If you missed last week we kind of gave some introductory content over this. It’s found in Matthew chapters 5 through 7 and it’s a sermon Jesus teaches early on in His ministry. Matthew is the only one of the four gospel writers who gives us the entire discourse, like word for word. Matthew wants us to hear what Jesus has to say. I said to you last week that Jesus is going to say some very challenging things, some things that may not make sense to us at first, some things we may not like at first, and some things we may not appreciate. I just ask you, don’t push away from the table but hang in there. Jesus is going to say some things that make your head spin that you may not know and you may say, “That’s impossible. I don’t know that anybody could do that. I don’t know why Jesus would say that.” If that’s the case it’s not an uncommon response. In fact I was reading this last week about a lady named Virginia Owen and she’s an author and an English professor at a major university. She said one of the assignments she would often give her class was to read the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety and then write a report on it. She said many of the students either didn’t grow up in church and they’d never heard it before, or they did grow up in church but they’d only heard bits and pieces of it. They’d never sat and read the whole thing all at once. So she said the responses she gets from these students when they write the report on the Sermon on the Mount are refreshingly honest. I just want to read a few of them to you. One girl wrote in. She said on her report, “I did not like the essay Sermon on the Mount. It was hard to read. It made me feel like I had to be perfect and no one is.” Another one said this, “The things in the short story are absurd. To look at a woman is adultery? That is the most extreme, stupid, and inhumane thing I’ve ever heard.” You’ve got to love her honesty. One more said this, “This stuff is so extremely strict and allows for almost no fun without thinking that it is a sin or not.” I love their honesty. I love how they are free to just kind of say, “This is how this is hitting me.” I want to give you the same freedom. Here’s the reason why. I think Jesus can handle it and I think Jesus would welcome it. What I want you to see today as we look at Matthew 5 is that when Jesus says some of these challenging things on the Sermon on the Mount, He is teaching with a wide-angle lens. He is saying some of these things to all kinds of people. He is saying this to everyone, regardless of where you’re at in life or what things are looking like or what challenges you are facing. Matthew wants us to know that. Look at the first couple of verses in Matthew 5, look with me or if you don’t have a Bible Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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look at the screen. It says, “One day as He,” and that He is referring to Jesus, “saw the crowds gathering, Jesus went up on the mountainside and sat down.” What you need to understand is that thousands of people were gathering around Jesus and so He goes up on a mountainside. They didn’t have microphones, they didn’t have stages to amplify His voice but they just had a natural amphitheater. So Jesus went up on the mountain so they could hear Him, and then it says, “He sat down,” which in our culture looks like a casual gesture. But in the first century that was a sign of authority. Jesus just sat down so everybody was like, “He has a position of authority. He has something to say. Everybody be quiet so we can hear Him. “His disciples gathered around Him,” and Matthew wants us to see a distinction between crowds and disciples. The disciples were these 12 guys who’d left everything to follow Jesus. They trusted Him with their entire life. “And He began to teach them.” So the three words I want you to notice are crowds, disciples, and them. Matthew wants us to know Jesus is teaching here with a wide-angle lens. He knows this content is going to be challenging but it is designed to hit people in different places in their lives. One of the things in Bible interpretation is you’re going to misinterpret what the Bible is teaching if you don’t understand who’s writing it, when they wrote it, and why they wrote it. And Matthew, what you’ve got to understand about him is he’s got a big, big heart for people. Matthew is the teaching gospel. There’re four of them: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and all of them have different characteristics to them. Mark is just an action guy, he just gives you the facts and it’s all action based. Matthew is the teacher. Matthew wants us to know specifically what Jesus has to say because Matthew has a really big heart for people, all kinds of people, people who are far from God and don’t understand what it is that God is offering through Jesus. I think it’s because it hadn’t been all that long since Matthew had met Jesus and had his life changed by Him. We read about his conversion in chapter 9 of Matthew, but Matthew if you know anything about him, is a tax collector making a good living. Jesus meets him and says, “Matthew I want you to leave everything and I want you to follow after Me.” You know the very first thing Matthew does? He throws a party. I love that about him. He throws a party at his house and invites all of his friends who aren’t into religion to meet the Jesus he had met. He’s basically like, “Jesus, I just want You to hang out with my un-churched friends.” That was the kind of heart Matthew had. That’s the kind of heart I long to have. That’s the kind of heart I want our church to have. A good friend of mine started a church right in the heart of Hollywood, California a few years ago. They are just reaching hundreds of people who wouldn’t normally go to Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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church. He’s reaching a lot of people in the Arts community and on the music scene, the movie scene. His name is Joseph. Joseph is a friend of mine. He’s got this epic beard down to the middle of his stomach. I was talking to him last year about his church and what God is doing there. He said, “One of the things we’ve been doing over the last few years we call Matthew parties. And basically … We don’t do a church event. We don’t invite people over to the church building. We just get groups of people in the church together and they throw a party. They just come up with a list, a guest list, and these are friends, families, co-workers, neighbors whatever who would never come to a church service with them but they’ll come to a party at a house. It’s pretty loosely put together. It’s roughly maybe about half who are Christians from our church and half who would never come to our church. We just kind of get together and it’s like a mixer. We’re just there. There’s no agenda. Nobody’s going to bait and switch and pull out a Bible and say, “Now is the time for the Bible study.” They’re not going to do that. They’re just going to hang out and be real with them and show them the love of God. Joseph said, “Aaron, when I go to these I don’t go as Pastor Joseph. I just go as Joseph and I just kind of hang out.” He said, “At one of these parties I was standing in the backyard, they’ve got the grill fired up, the music was going and the Tiki torches were lit.” He said, “I was standing around with this guy. We were just talking. We were just talking about life and family and work and all that. The guy finally leaned over to me and said, ‘Hey man, I heard there’re like a bunch of Christians here.’” And Joseph was like, “No, really?” and he was like, “Yeah.” Joseph was like, “Which ones are the Christians?” And he was like, “I’m not quite sure, man, but I heard there were a bunch of Christians here. I don’t even know if I have a Christian as a friend.” And Joseph was like, “That’s why we do this.” It’s a Matthew party. It’s kind of addressing the heart we have for people who aren’t into religion, they would never come into a church, but they need to meet the Jesus we’ve met and hang out with Him.” This is the desire and heart we have as a church. We don’t do it perfectly. I just want you to know, I just want to remind you that is what we’re chasing after, that’s what we want. This last Monday in staff meeting I stood in front of our staff to give an annual kind of a year challenge or charge, “This is our vision. This is what we are going to do.” I just stood up in front of our staff and said, “Man, just the word that God keeps bringing to my mind and my heart is story.” Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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Everybody’s got a story. You look through the gospels, you look through the Bible, and there’s a story that is written. I said, “I believe that everybody’s got a story and God wants to intersect with their story.” As a staff I said to them, and I just want to extend this to our entire church, that we desire that everything we do, and all the responsibilities we have, and even on the weekends when we serve here in church that we would come with our heads up, our eyes open, our hearts attentive to the story of people. I recognize that it’s going to change the way I talk to somebody if I realize they’ve got a story. It’s going to change the way I serve. It’s going to change the way I maybe volunteer if I realize God is chasing after the hearts of people and He just might use me or you. You don’t even have to say anything super compelling to them, just be warm. Just the look in your eye, be authentic and be real, and be like, “Me too. Are you struggling with that? So am I.” And I love this about Matthew and I want you to know this about Matthew. Matthew’s got a story and Matthew wants his friends who aren’t into religion to meet the Jesus he met. This is the Matthew who’s writing to us about the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. My favorite story that really captures the heart of God is found in Luke 15. Many of you have maybe heard this story before and maybe you just need a refresher on it, but it’s the story of the prodigal son. Jesus teaches this story and He teaches it within the context of God’s heart for people who are far from Him. And in the story you’ve got these two boys—you’ve got a younger son and an older son. The younger son says to his Jewish father, he says, “Father, give me my share of the inheritance. I want to be on my own,” which was the equivalent of telling his father, “I wish you were dead. I wish you would go away. I want to do life on my own.” And his father gives him his share of the inheritance, which was just unheard of. The older brother was like stunned like, “I can’t believe you are doing this.” The younger son goes off to a distant country, Jesus says, which would kind of be the Las Vegas of the first century world, and he just blows all his money in a matter of weeks. That would be easy to do. He finds himself with absolutely nothing. The only job he can find is feeding pigs and he is like, “Man, what they’re eating looks pretty good to me.” He realizes he’s hit rockbottom and he says, “I’m going to go home but I know there’s no way ever my father would accept me back. So let me go home, offer an apology, and ask if my father would give me a job as a hired hand.” Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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So the boy picks himself up and he’s on his way back home to his father. I love how Jesus paints this picture. He says, “When the father who sees his son at a distance,” meaning his father was looking every day. “He sees his boy at a distance and he runs to him.” That doesn’t sound too unusual to us in this day and age because if you were to put yourself in that situation you’d be like, “Well I would probably do that too if one of my kids went wayward and I saw them come home. I’d probably run to them as well because I really, really missed them.” That’s really not the point Jesus is making. You see, in the first century world in the Jewish culture, if a young man would have had the nerve to do something like that, that offensive, the community, if he had the nerve to show his face in that community once again, the community would have stoned him to death. I think what Jesus is saying is that the father ran to him to protect his boy from the stones that would have started flying. Do you want to know who was upset about the younger boy coming home? The father brings him back, puts a ring on his finger, puts a coat on his back, and he kills the fattened calf for him. So do you know who is really, really upset about it? The older brother—the older brother who never left, who always had his father’s blessing, who always had his father’s love, he gets upset about it. His father looks at him and says, “I’ve always loved you. You’ve always been here. But this younger brother of yours, he was lost and now he is found. He was away and now he’s come home.” I remember the first time I heard that story as a young man. Do you want to know which of those brothers I really resonated with? It was the younger one. I thought, “Man, that’s me. I’m rebellious and I need the Lord, and wow that’s amazing and it’s moving.” But you want to know the longer I’ve been following Jesus, the longer I’ve been a pastor, who I’ve really had to fight against the mindset with? It’s the older brother. It’s easy to become the older brother and forget that God is after the hearts of those who are far from Him for whatever reason. When Jesus sets out to teach the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew wants us to see the crowds that are there, people who aren’t yet fully convinced. Much like even right now. Maybe there are some of you here and you came because somebody invited you, you came because maybe you thought, “This is a brand new year. I’ll give this church thing another shot but I’m not quite sure I’m in on this. I don’t know that I believe everything you believe.” I’m so glad you’re here. There’re those of you who would say, “I’m kind of in that disciple camp as imperfect as I Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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may be. I need no further convincing. I believe in Jesus and I want Him in my life. I’m running after this,” and Jesus teaches the Sermon on the Mount to both. What He is saying to the disciples is, “I want you to level up to represent who I am to a world that desperately needs to know Me.” And what He would say to the crowds is, “This is My heart for you. This is My heart.” So I said this last week: The Sermon on the Mount is an extended explanation of what the Great Commandment is supposed to look like. The Great Commandment is simply to love God and to love people really, really well. That’s what it means to follow Jesus, to love God and to love people. When those things get out of balance, then we don’t represent Him very well. Some of us love God so much, but we’re not very nice to people. We need to remember to be more gracious, more compassionate, and more kind. And some of us love people so much that we see no practical use for God. In fact, maybe some of us are a little bit embarrassed for God or think we need to update God. The Sermon on the Mount brings these two things together and says, “Not only is it possible for you to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, but it’s also possible to love people really, really well. Which leads me to the big idea of this series: The Sermon on the Mount is an explanation of the life Jesus died for you to live. When you read the Sermon on the Mount and you’re like, “That’s a challenge. I don’t know if I can live up to that.” Yeah, you’re right. But this is the life Jesus died for us to live; this is what we are striving for. I want to be super clear on this. The Sermon on the Mount is not a to-do list. It’s not a code of ethics. It’s not a list of morals you and I are supposed to live our lives by in order to gain the approval of God or in order to gain His affection or, especially, our salvation. This is Jesus saying to you, and to me, and to the person sitting beside you right now, and in front of you and behind you, “You can have God’s love, affection, and approval through Jesus.” In other words, God doesn’t want you to be religious, He wants to have a relationship with you and these are fundamentally different things. Just like in any relationship, God wants to change things from the inside out. If you are approaching the Sermon on the Mount or the Christian faith, for that matter, in such a way as to say, “Okay, there are these two lists. And this is the naughty list and this is the good list. These are all the things God tells me I need to stop doing, and these are all the things I need to start doing. These are all the bad sins I need to refrain from, Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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and these are all the good acts I need to do so that way I can be in God’s good standing,” you won’t hang with it very long. What do you call it when you have to suppress natural desires for an extended period of time? We call that a diet and that’s why we don’t like them. And you won’t hang with it, right? And many of us are treating the Sermon on the Mount, or maybe in a much broader sense the Christian faith like a diet and wondering why it’s not working. My wife and I are doing this thing, maybe you’ve heard of it, called Whole 30. Have any of you heard of it? Yeah, not that excited about it. Right after the New Year she comes to me and she’s like, “There’s this new eating plan I want us to do together. It’s called Whole 30.” Basically you just eliminate sugar, wheat, and dairy from your diet. I’m like, “Alright.” We’re going to do this for 30 days. We’re a week into it right now. So I’m preaching a little hangry. You know how to pray for me moving forward like, “That’s what’s wrong with you. I get it. I get it right now.” So anyway over this last week it hasn’t been so bad. My wife is just an amazing cook so the way I’m doing it is like, “Honey, the only thing I’ll put into my mouth is what you put in front of me.” That’s how I’m doing this. So she makes me breakfast and packs my lunch and all that. So this whole week it’s not been that bad, because it actually tastes pretty good and all that. But Friday night we went on a date to a restaurant and that was hard. We go into a restaurant and we sit down and I see this amazing food passing me by. And we’re looking at the menu and I’m trying to figure out what to order. I’m like, “Can I order that?” She was like, “No.” I’m like, “What about that? That looks healthy.” She’s like, “No, you can’t get that either.” So the waiter comes up and there was this soup appetizer that kind of looked good to us and she asked the waiter, “Is that Dairy?” And he was like, “No.” She was like, “Aaron, you can have the soup.” Great, I’ll have the soup. So the soup comes out and we both get the soup, and it came out with this warm garlicky breadstick like right in front of us. She will deny it, but I saw her face. Both of us were like, “Ohhhhhh.” I was like, “Honey, I won’t tell anybody if you don’t tell anybody.” She was like, “How can you say that?” So we ate the soup and we pushed it away. It took all the willpower within me. I was like, “How much longer are we doing this?” She was like, “Three more weeks, just three more weeks. You can white-knuckle this another three more weeks.” Okay, I can gut it out three more weeks. You towel me off and … Then she said this, “If Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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this works the way I’m hoping it will work, at the end of the three weeks it will change your appetite.” I was like, “You didn’t tell me that.” She was like, “No, I don’t want this to be a thing where you have to grit your teeth at every meal. I want you to actually adjust yourself to eat real food.” “Oh, that’s different.” You see, many of you have approached the Christian faith and church the way I’ve approached Whole 30. How long do we need to do this? It’s the beginning of the New Year and I’m in a new series Level Up, yeah. You’re going to get in and then by midFebruary you’re out, “I don’t think I can do this for very long. Jesus just told me if I look at a woman it’s adultery. I’m out. I don’t think I can suppress my natural desires for that long and I don’t think I can live up to this thing over here.” Maybe for some of you it’s the reason why even years ago you walked away from the church. You de-converted so to speak and said, “Man, I don’t think I can live up to that. I don’t think I believe what my parents believe. I don’t think I can live up to my grandma’s faith.” What I want you to entertain, even for just a minute, is maybe what you walked away from was a version of the faith that is not what God is offering. God’s offering something fundamentally different and it’s better than you think. Instead of refraining from sin, Jesus wants you to crave righteousness. It’s something that’s fundamentally better. Jesus would say in verse 13, follow along with me. He would say, “You are the salt of the earth.” He’s speaking to those of us who have trusted Jesus now. He says, “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.” What He is doing here is He is using the analogy of salt to describe who we are to be in the world, especially as it relates to those who are not yet sure about this whole faith thing. Jesus says you are to be salt. It’s an interesting analogy. I’ve already had that question come in. Why does Jesus call us salt? Jesus could have used any number of things similar to salt to communicate to us what He wants us to be to the world. He could have said, “Listen, you are to be the sugar of the world, making everything sweet and attractive.” Or, “You are to be the caffeine of the world, waking people up to the reality of God.” But He doesn’t say those things. He says, “You are to be the salt of the world.” What do you think He means? One potential meaning, maybe the easiest meaning that would Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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come to mind is we need to make the world a better place. We need to flavor it with the things of Jesus. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad description or a bad connection to make. I just don’t know that it’s the most accurate. You see in the Old Testament God made a promise with Israel. He said, “You’re going to be My people and I’m going to be your God.” And He said, “I’m going to bless you.” And it wasn’t God saying, “I’m going to give you preferential treatment.” This was God saying, “I’m going to actually give you grace so you will be gracious. I’m going to actually give you love so you’ll be loving. I’m going to give you the truth so you’ll live your life around that truth. You’re going to be blessed to be a blessing.” And there are a number of analogies in the Old Testament God used to describe that kind of relationship and one of them is salt. It goes all the way back to Numbers 18:19 which says, “It is a covenant,” and the word covenant just means promise, “of salt forever before the Lord for you and for your offspring with you.” So here’s the translation. This is a promise that is permanent. This is a promise that is to be preserved. In the first century world they didn’t have deep freezers or refrigerators. So if you wanted to keep meat from going bad you would pack it in salt and you would preserve it. I think this is the deeper meaning Jesus is getting at. He is saying, “For those of you who are disciples, for those of you who are following after Jesus, you are to be salt in the world.” What’s He mean? He means you are to preserve the Kingdom of God that is coming to this earth. You are to preserve the love and the truth of God and give it to others. He would say to Christians, to those of us who are imperfectly following after God, “Don’t isolate yourself from the world or from those who don’t get Jesus but pack yourself in there and demonstrate who Jesus is and live out the truth and demonstrate love for others. Don’t ostracize yourself from others.” Do you know somebody who’s going through a painful divorce? Pack yourself in there and love on them. If you work with somebody who’s really hard to love, don’t just write them off and give them the cold shoulder. Pack yourself in there and be the hands and the feet of Jesus to them. When it comes to neighborhoods and communities don’t just write those neighborhoods off but pack yourself in there. The world left unattended just falls apart. And God is saying to the church, “Be like salt to the world and preserve My Kingdom coming.” That’s one of the reasons we, as a church, have gone multi-site, why we are one church in multiple locations. It’s because we’re like, “We love our city but we don’t think everybody is going to make the drive to this one campus in the northwest suburbs. Let’s go to them. Let’s spread out.” Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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Level Up | Life Giver or Life Taker January 14 and 15, 2017

Have you ever had the cap of your salt shaker come off over all your food? It just kind of ruins everything. When you just pile up the church, it’s kind of like that. We want to spread it out because we’ve got a heart for the entire city. Jesus is going to use another analogy that’s going to help us understand this. In verse 14 He says, “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house.” Not just a certain group of people, but everyone. “In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” So He says, “This kind of light I am talking about is to be accessible to everyone.” What does it mean to shine? Well let your actions line up with your beliefs and then shine out. Illuminate the path that will lead others to Jesus. Don’t shine the light in their face through morals and ethics, but shine it out toward Jesus and let Him deal with their heart because He is the only one who can change them anyway. Have you ever been in a really, really dark room where you can’t even see your hand in front of your face and somebody turns on a flashlight? And then shines it in your face. It’s like, “Thanks, that not helping. I’m blinder than I was with no light.” And God says to the church, “Don’t turn on your light and blare it in their face, turn on the light and illuminate the path to Jesus.” In other words, let your actions, words, and speech always point to Him. Always be humble. Always be like, “Yeah, I get it. I’m struggling with this too but let me introduce you to the Jesus I met. Why don’t you hang out with Him?” So Jesus is going to show us really briefly how to do this in chapter 5. If I’m counting right, it’s about six times in chapter 5 that Jesus says these words right here. He says: You have heard it said, but I say to you … What He’s referring to here is the law of Moses. Look with me here in verse 17 of Matthew 5. He says, “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish,” or get rid of, “the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets.” If you know anything about the law of Moses, the standards are pretty high. And I think one of the unfortunate things we do is we think grace has done away with law, but it hasn’t. Grace has accomplished what the law never could. And Jesus came and He said, “Listen, I’ve not come to get rid of the law. I’m not actually against the law.” Sometimes the Old Testament law gets a bad rap. I love what the psalmist says in Psalm 19:7. He says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” That’s what it was meant to be. The law of God is not our enemy. The law of God actually reveals God’s justice, His righteousness, and it’s actually designed to point us to a relationship with Him. And the psalmist says, “It can revive our soul.” Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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Level Up | Life Giver or Life Taker January 14 and 15, 2017

So Jesus says, “Listen. Listen. I’ve not come to abolish the law or do away with it because the law is there for our good.” I think we can all agree that maybe even the laws of our land, the laws of our country, we may not like every single one of them but we could agree the concept of having laws is for everyone’s good. I’m trying to raise four kids right now and I’ll tell you I don’t want to raise them in a lawless community. So I’m not against law. Now the application of those laws can be used to abuse people or enslave people when you mishandle it. Here is what Jesus is saying, “The law is not bad. The Old Testament law you find is not bad.” Now He says, “The application of that law might be another thing.” And the Pharisees, the political leaders of that day, they were using the law in such a way not to lead people to God but to keep people separated from God. And Jesus cannot stomach that. So He says, “I’ve not come to abolish the law. I’ve come to accomplish what it never could do.” So Jesus comes to us and says, “You’ve heard it said,” which means this is what the Pharisees taught you about the law, “but I say to you ...” Here’s what Jesus is going to do. He’s going to turn things on their head. He is going to say, “Following me is not about suppressing your desires and trying to sin less. Following me is about pursuing and craving righteousness more. It’s about changing your appetites.” In other words, God wants some things for you. He doesn’t want some things from you. So listen to what Jesus says. He is going to say, “It’s time to level up,” and here are a few examples. Matthew 5:21, this is my paraphrase. Jesus said, “You have heard it said, don’t murder, but I’m telling you don’t even harbor a murderous thought.” So the Pharisees and religious leaders, they were abiding by the letter of the law and they totally missed the spirit of the law. So they were saying, “You should never murder somebody,” but they were not very nice to people. And Jesus was saying, “You’re totally violating the spirit of the law.” In other words, they were basically saying, “As long as I don’t take somebody’s life, then I’m okay,” and they were completely missing what Jesus was saying here at a heart level. In other words, if you nurse a grudge or if you give somebody the cold shoulder or if you are indifferent towards someone, or as verse 22 says if you ever call someone Raca, which means you’re a nobody—you’re dead to me—I’ve written you off, Jesus says you’ve violated that law at a heart level because you trampled on their humanity and on the Creator of that humanity. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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Level Up | Life Giver or Life Taker January 14 and 15, 2017

So many of us would say, “I’ve never taken anybody’s life,” but have you ever murdered somebody in your mind 100 times over? Yeah, me too. Jesus says, “Level up your internal thought life.” Can I just ask you, as uncomfortable as this may be, is there anybody in your life right now you need to have a conversation with and you’ve been avoiding them? You need to reconcile with them. I know, you may have all these good reasons to not. Maybe you’re like, “Aaron, I understand. I tried. They didn’t want to hear it. They were impossible.” I know. I know. Maybe that’s all the more reason you need to pursue it. In verse 27, Jesus says, “You have heard it said, don’t commit adultery, but I’m telling you don’t even give a lustful look.” And this is certainly a challenge. Jesus is not saying you can’t admire someone else’s physical beauty. That’s not what He is saying. He is saying, “Don’t allow it to turn into lust.” So here’s a question for you. When do you stop noticing if somebody else is attractive? You’re afraid to answer. When you die, that’s when you stop noticing. Just in case you need to know that. I’ve counseled young married couples who have come in and were just devastated. “I thought I married the one, and I can’t believe I find someone else attractive. I must have married the wrong one.” No, you’re just a human being. So He’s not saying you can’t admire somebody’s beauty. He is saying, “Don’t allow it to turn into fantasy, emotional affairs.” How do you know the difference between saying, “That person’s really pretty,” and a lustful thought? It’s usually found in the second or the third look. This is fine, this is not. And He’s saying whatever gets kind of borne out in our heart will eventually make its way to action. Some of us are drawing a line and stepping right up to it with that person in the office, maybe that co-worker, or that old flame on Facebook. And Jesus says, “Hey, why don’t you draw a line and step way back here because you don’t want to allow your heart to go there?” He says, “Level up your relational intimacy.” One last thing that I’ll give you, but there are others. “You have heard it said, you can swear something will happen just as long as it does, but I’m telling you let your word be enough.”This is just another way of saying, “Don’t be the kind of person who has to convince others to believe you by saying, ‘I promise. I swear on a stack of Bibles on my mother’s grave.’” Why do you even have to do that? Let it be that your actions and your character are so authentic that whatever comes out of your mouth, people believe it. Jesus says, “Level up your authenticity.” And all of this is pointing to this simple truth and reality right here: People need to see Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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Level Up | Life Giver or Life Taker January 14 and 15, 2017

Jesus in you. They need to see Him in your actions. They need to see Him in your words. I love the challenge in Colossians 4:5-6 and this could be a theme verse for us as a church, all of our campuses. “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders,” and I think in the original Greek it says Facebook, “making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” We come back to these words of Jesus in Matthew 17. He says, “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose.” Jesus did not come to do away with the law, Jesus came to accomplish it. And I hope that comes on like a light bulb in your mind. Jesus is not saying to you, “Live up to this standard and then I’ll accept you.” No, Jesus came to be the standard you and I could never live up to. So when it comes to leveling up I hope you begin to see this early. Jesus is the ladder. Jesus is the staircase. If you’re trying to level up without Him you’re missing the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount. I love what John Stott says. He says, “The standards of the sermon are neither readily attainable by every man, nor totally unattainable by any man. To put them beyond anybody’s reach …” In other words, when you read the Sermon on the Mount and say, “I think I’m pretty good there,” and you read another part and say, “I’m not good there,” that’s what he is talking about. He says, “To put them beyond anybody’s reach is to ignore the purpose of Christ’s sermon; to put them within everybody’s is to ignore the reality of man’s sin. They are attainable all right, but only through Jesus.” So if we read the Sermon on the Mount without recognizing the power and the place of the cross it’s just going to feel like a defeat. That’s impossible and I can never live up to that. But Jesus came to be the standard we can never live up to. That’s good news. Let me just end with this, Romans 8 and let me just read it over you. Romans 8:1-4 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Don’t play in the mud puddle when there is an ocean. Don’t just stand on the dirt hill when there is a mountain. Jesus is inviting you to something more. I hope you see it and Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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I hope you’re willing and ready to receive Him into your life. You can do that today. We’re going to take this thing called communion in a minute. We’re going to sing and worship. I just pray you would allow the Spirit of God to meet you right now wherever you may be. Father, we come to You right now and I thank You for the challenge of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s convicting but I pray that it would reveal some things to us where maybe we need to level up. So I pray we would come to recognize You are the standard. You accomplished that which we never could on our own. I pray the shackles would come off and we would find freedom in You. I pray that somebody here today would step from darkness into light and from death into life. We ask this now in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.





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