Grace & Truth Church
Almost True - wk 5
      • Bible Trivia
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      • Matthew 22:1–14NLT

  • “You Don’t Have To Be Perfect”

    Throughout this series we have been looking at some of the “almost truths” taught by our culture and learning to replace them with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth taught by Jesus. We have seen how these “almost truths” almost work, but they just miss the mark. Today’s “almost truth” is no different. In fact, in many ways the “almost truth” we are focused on today weaves itself throughout the other’s by being the problem solver for everything that doesn’t quite work or that you don’t quite live up to. It’s intended to solve a very real problem and it almost works. You have probably heard this almost truth thousands of times in your life, and it is this…
    “Hey, nobody is perfect! Nobody expects you to be perfect. You don’t have to be perfect because, ultimately, nobody is perfect. We’re all just human and everybody makes mistakes.”
    Except there was this one person who was perfect, and he doesn’t just expect us to be perfect, He commands it. If you have your bibles, turn to chapter 5 in the Matthew’s Gospel. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said this in verse 48…
    Matthew 5:48 NIV
    48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
    Pray
    Now, if you are like most people, you probably have one of three different responses:
    You feel an oppressive weight being placed on your shoulders that you know, no matter how hard you try, you can never actually live up to.
    You find yourself thinking, “Well sure, I’m never going to be perfect, but at least I’m not as bad as those jokers over there...”
    With all of the confidence you can muster, you are thinking, “Y’all sit back and take notes, cause I’m about to show you what it looks like!”
    Whatever your response is, the truth that I think God wants us to see is this:

    Perfection is not a prize to achieve, but a promise to receive.

    How does that work? What does that even mean?
    The Expositor’s Bible Commentary says it this way, and I am paraphrasing… “Jesus isn’t teaching that perfection is already possible for His disciples. He teaches to acknowledge spiritual bankruptcy and the need for salvation. What all followers of Jesus pursue is the perfection of the Father.”
    So in short, perfection is not a something that we can achieve on our own, but something that we must rely on the Father to fulfill. In some ways, what Jesus says is both a promise and a command. What happens when Jesus speaks? Things change, right? His words are never empty.
    When Jesus speaks, His words are filled with the power to inform us about what is good and true, and they are filled with the power to transform us into more than we could ever be on our own. When Jesus speaks, something always happens.
    Author and pastor Darrell Johnson talks about how, when Jesus says, “Be clean,” the leper becomes clean. When He says, “Be still,” the wind and waves obey Him. When He says, “Be gone,” demons go running. And when He says, “Lazarus, come out,” a dead man starts walking.
    And, at the very beginning of it all, when He said, “Let there be light,” there was light. So, when Jesus says, “Be perfect,” we can trust that He is going to do what He has done before. This is why the command to be perfect is actually really good news. It is by His power that He will accomplish what He commands.
    When we place our faith in Jesus, He places us on the path to being made perfect. What does it mean to be made perfect? I think the way that is most faithful to God’s Word and most helpful for us is to simply look at Jesus. He was perfect in every way. He never sinned or fell short. He loved God with His whole life and loved others as Himself, even to the point of sacrificing Himself for our sake. So what does it mean to be made perfect?
    being made perfect: The process of becoming like Jesus so we can love God and love people the same way Jesus does.
    For me, one of the most meaningful and inspiring example that I’ve seen of God doing that was with my dad. When I was young I remember being afraid of my dad. Knowing that you messed up and your dad will be punishing you when he gets home is the worst. I don’t actually even really remember even getting belts from him, what I do remember is being in terror and hearing him pull off his belt and then snap it to make a loud pop.
    He could be on the other side of the house when I hear the pop sound, and I would immediately be yelling, “I’ll be good! It won’t happen again!” That was always a scary experience, but it wasn’t why I was afraid of my dad. When I was young, dad had a tendency to be very cranky. I remember thinking that he was a mean person. I would get in trouble for the smallest of things, and often times I would even get in trouble for things I didn’t do. Sometimes I would even think, “I will never be like him when I grow up.”
    Then dad got sick. My dad was not the kind of guy to shy away from a difficult task, but after getting sick he physically could not do as much. Even that isn’t saying much because even with heart trouble he did more than I have ever been able to do. But for him, it was debilitating. Now, if he was here to defend himself he may say differently, but I believe that this condition forced him to rely on God a lot more. Dad always cared about people, but I believe that through his health condition he spent more time with God in the process of becoming like Jesus so that he could love God and love people the same way Jesus does.
    By the time I graduated high school he was a completely different person. Instead of being afraid to turn into my father, when I moved away from mom and dad I sincerely hoped that one day I would be just like my dad. What God did in the life of my dad is exactly what He wants to do in you, if you will let Him. Without all of the tragedy and health problems, I hope.
    So how do we partner with God in His attempts to make us perfect? To answer that question we are going to flip ahead in Matthew’s Gospel to a passage of Scripture that lays out the process of being made perfect, but also reveals the character of Jesus and the heart behind His words. In 11:28, Jesus said…
    Matthew 11:28–30 NIV
    28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
    This is the one place in the Gospels where Jesus describes His heart and He describes His heart as gentle and humble. The same mouth that commands us to be perfect also invites us to come to Him and find rest. He is gentle and humble. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. So how do we partner with God in His plans to make us perfect? First…

    Remove your pride.

    Pride is a heavy burden that will wear us down until we are willing to lay it down. Pride is the thing that actually gets in the way of us coming to Jesus because it tries to convince us that we can handle things on our own!
    When I first became a Christian, it didn’t take long before my sincere desire to serve God and love others faithfully got twisted into a prideful pursuit of perfection. Like the Pharisees, I became hyper-legalistic, striving to do everything I could to do and be all God asked me to.
    As you can probably guess, that didn’t go so well. I mostly ended up pushing the people who weren’t in my inner circle away. I failed time and time again. I let down people I cared about. At a certain point I got tired off even trying. What’s the point? I am not the kind of guy to not play just because I’m not going to win, but if I feel like losing is beating me up and embarrassing me, then of course I’m not going to show up.
    That leads to complacency, overlooking sins, and ignoring character flaws that God wants to deal with. You try, you fail, so you eventually stop trying. Maybe some of you can relate.
    The mistake we often make isn’t trying to grow in our faith, it’s doing it from a place of pride. On our own and without God. Perfectionism believes, “I can and I will do it all.” When that doesn’t work, complacency sets in. “If I don’t want to, then I shouldn’t have to.”
    In both scenarios, the focus is on us. Not only that, but pride is the driver behind every “almost truth” we’ve talked about in this series. As a reminder, here are the “Almost Truths” we have looked at…
    ALMOST TRUE
    Week 1: “Live Your Truth”
    Week 2: “Love Yourself First”
    Week 3: “You Are Enough”
    Week 4: “Your Happiness Is All That Matters”
    Look at all the pride that goes into these cultural truths. If am living MY truth, I decide what is true! I can’t pour from an empty cup, so I need to love myself first. That is me saying that I deserve to be taken care of. If I say that I am enough, I am essentially showing God the “you are number one” sign with my middle finger and saying “I don’t need you, I am enough!” We have to acknowledge how much pride it takes to say, “Hey God, I know you’ve been around since the beginning of time, and us humans only really have hard record of being here for a few thousand years, furthermore, I will probably only be here for less than a century, but still. My happiness is what matters the most.”
    These “almost truths” are so tempting and dangerous because they take our focus off of God and put it on us. The enemy wants nothing more than for you to hold on to your pride for two reasons...
    Pride keeps you from coming to Jesus.
    Pride always leads to shame.
    At some point, you’ve probably experienced the weight of shame firsthand. How do we remove our pride and find freedom from shame? Our culture will lie to you with an almost truth. “Nobody expects perfection. Give yourself grace.” That’s not the answer, because then we are still the focus and the hero of the story! If the solution to my pride and shame is giving myself grace, then it’s still all about me, giving myself what I need! More pride will never solve the problem.
    Jesus already gave us the answer in verse 28. We remove our pride and find freedom from shame by coming to Jesus and finding rest in Him…
    Matthew 11:28 ESV
    28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
    If you are taking notes, we are going to say it this way. First we need to Remove our pride. Second…

    Receive His grace.

    The process of being made perfect starts with grace, it ends with grace, and every step of the way it is fueled by grace. In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Jesus told Paul…
    2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)
    9 ...“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”...
    His grace is all we need. It is more than enough for us, but until we remove our pride we will never actually choose to receive it because receiving grace is admitting weakness. It’s acknowledging that we have fallen short. That we are not perfect. That we need help. All of that demands humility, but that humility is the thing that opens us up to more and more of God’s grace. The grace that heals us and the grace that makes us whole. The grace that saves and sanctifies us.
    We are partnering with God in His process of us being made perfect. According to Jesus in Matthew 11:28 we first must remove our pride, then we have to receive His grace, and the last thing for our notes for today, we must respond to Jesus with obedience.

    Respond with obedience.

    Let’s look at Matthew 11 again and zoom in on verse 29…
    Matthew 11:28–29 (ESV)
    28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
    When we come to Jesus, He doesn’t just fix us up and send us on our way. He puts us to work. That’s what a yoke is. It’s an instrument for getting work done. The important part is that when we take His yoke upon our shoulders we are strapped in right next to Him. He shows us how to walk with Him and work with Him, step by step and side by side.
    This can mean choosing to surrender your truth and submit to God’s truth, like we talked about in the first week.
    It could mean that God is teaching you to sacrifice yourself and your desires in order to serve others, like we talked about in week two.
    For you it might mean embracing your limits and trusting that Jesus is more than enough. Without Him you could never be enough. We talked about that in week three.
    Last time we talked about the happiness gospel. Taking Jesus’ yoke upon you may mean prioritizing God’s holiness over our own happiness.
    Whatever it is, God wants all of us to remove our pride, receive His grace, and respond with obedience.
    In this series we’ve been asking ourselves some application questions. Here they are for this week, if you are taking notes…
    What pride do you need to remove?
    What grace to you need to receive?
    What step of obedience do you need to take?
    I’ll tell you what that looks like for me. For whatever reason, my schedule has felt packed lately. I know that you can probably all relate to this, especially if you are chasing kids around. For me, on top of the normal stuff, I’ve been trying to do things around the house, research things online, trying to jump-start healthy habits again, and so forth. Then some nights I come home I actually have time for the important things, but I just don’t do them. Complacency. “I can’t finish them anyway, may as well not even start.”
    God has been working on me to remove the pride of getting everything done perfectly. The pride of over researching, finding the best deal, making the right decision, finishing all the work, and whatever else. It’s time for me to remove the pride, come to Jesus and let Him give me rest. To receive His grace with the things I can’t accomplish on my own. To receive His grace that fuels the work that I am doing. Just as God told Elijah to rest and fuel up, and after that He told him to get back to work. To go and do what he was called to do. That would be the step of obedience for me. Remove the pride, rest in His grace, and go back to doing what I am called to do, which is loving God and loving others.
    Whenever shame rears its ugly head, or when perfectionism or complacency tries to take over, remember that Jesus is humble and gentle in heart. When you place your faith in Him, He places you on the path to perfection. This is why He can say…
    Matthew 11:30 ESV
    30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
    Because perfection is not a prize to achieve. It is a promise to receive when we believe in Jesus, and He always keeps His promises.
    Matthew 5:48 NIV
    48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
    Pray

      • Matthew 5:48NLT

      • Matthew 11:28–30NLT

      • Matthew 11:28NLT

      • Matthew 11:30NLT

      • Matthew 5:48NLT

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