Mattering Week 5: Beyond | Pastor Bryan Jarrett | Northplace Church

Last week I talked to you about doors, how faithfulness in relationships build trust, how trust in relationships create permission, and how permission opens doors that we can never force open ourselves, especially in moments like having spiritual conversations with other people.

This week I want to show you the kind of life that actually builds that kind of trust.

And that kind of living has a name.

Jesus called it second mile living.

In a sense, it's a life that goes beyond the expectations.

Now, to fully understand what Jesus is actually asking from us, we're gonna have to understand something his original audience had a context for.

We're gonna look at one of his more famous statements, and the people that heard him make that statement originally knew exactly what he was talking about.

They had context.

We don't.

So we're gonna explain that.

It's in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5, verse 41.

Matthew 5:41

Jesus says, if anyone forces, and that's a key word here, forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.

Now Jesus' audience already had a context for what he was talking about.

He's actually referring to something that happened in their culture.

It needed no explanation for them.

They knew just by the reference the context, but we need explanation.

The word forces in Matthew 5.41 isn't a general word for pressure or persuasion.

It was originally written in Greek, and the word is angario.

And literally, it's it's a specific legal term.

It's a specific reference to a real law in the Roman Empire that was called the law of impressment, which basically meant soldiers had the legal authority to force civilians in occupied territories to carry their heavy packs and armor and equipment.

It was the law.

You could be conscripted at any moment to carry his stuff.

It was the law of the empire.

Any Roman soldier, any day on any road, could stop any one of the people that were listening to Jesus that day while he's teaching.

They could have stopped them anywhere and put their equipment and pack on this person's shoulder.

No negotiation, no appeal, no warning.

You just had to sit down whatever of yours you were carrying and pick up his equipment and walk because Roman law said so.

And here's a detail that brings even more clarity to what Jesus is saying here.

He references it one mile, two mile.

The word there is literally uh in the Greek is milion, which is a Roman measurement that was borrowed from the Latin.

In Matthew 5.41, it's the only place in the New Testament this word is ever used because the Hebrews measured distance in the stadia, but there was a Roman mile.

And what this is, this is the occupier's word for the occupier's road under the occupier's law.

The Roman mile was a thousand paces.

It was roughly 4,860 feet, and it wasn't just some conceptual measurement, it was actually marked on the road.

Roman roads had mile markers, they were stone markers placed into the ground every thousand paces, and they were often carved with the name of the emperor who built that road.

So Jesus isn't just making some abstract reference when he says, if they force you to go one mile, go two.

A man that was forced to carry a soldier's pack knew exactly where his obligation ended because there was a stone standing at a mile marker with Caesar's name on it, and his obligation was to carry it that one mile to get to the next marker.

Now imagine this for a minute.

You're walking with a pack on your shoulder that isn't yours.

It's an act meant to humiliate you and keep reminding you that you are subservient to Roman authority, that Rome is the occupier, and that your homeland is now occupied by a stronger, more dominant power.

But then you look up and you see the mile marker ahead of you.

Finally, relief.

You're almost there.

The law says that you are done when you reach that mark.

But then Jesus has the audacity to say, as you reach that mark, go the second mile.

The first mile is duty, it's law, it's obligation, it's expectation.

But the second mile is on you.

And here's why this distinction matters so much.

The first mile was never a choice.

Nobody had a say in it.

It could be demanded, forced, impressed.

The soldier didn't need your permission.

But the second mile, they couldn't demand that of you.

That wasn't the law.

It wasn't required.

When you reached that first stone marker, it released you, and anything that you did after that marker was pure, uncoerced, freely chosen service, offered selflessly, and in this case to the very person that had no right to ask for it in the first place.

There's something about Jesus' second mile principle calling us to live lives that go beyond that is worth us wrestling with today.

For the last several weeks, we've been talking about how to live a life that matters, how to find meaning and purpose.

And from scientists to sociologists to psychologists to verse after verse of what Jesus says, they all keep telling us the only way to truly experience mattering, to find a life of fulfillment and purpose and significance that you have to in some way give your life away.

That's the only way to experience this.

And here, Jesus, in his most famous sermon ever, the Sermon on the Mount, is actually telling us how to give our lives away.

Go the second mile.

Here's what we all know: expectation defines the minimum.

Every relationship has the minimum expectations.

Employees have a job description.

That's your minimum expectation at work.

Parents have responsibilities, friends have basic understood commitments.

And meeting the minimum is fine.

I mean, it's actually necessary.

But the moments people actually remember for the rest of their lives are never the moments where you simply met expectations and did what was required.

The impact, the memorable, is connected when somebody walks past the first mile marker.

Jesus doesn't just teach the concept.

And story after story in the Bible, he illustrates those concepts with parables and stories.

And one of those most famous stories is the one about the Good Samaritan, and you probably heard that one your whole life, but it's worth looking at again through these lenses in this context.

I want you to watch what this man, the Good Samaritan, actually does.

One verb at a time, his life models what it looks like to go beyond and walk the second mile.

It all unfolds in Luke chapter number two.

And you're familiar with the story.

There was a man on the Jericho Road that had been beaten and robbed and left for dead on the road.

And first a priest walks by but just keeps on going.

He just kind of acts like he doesn't see the man, and then a Levite walks by and just walks around, kind of keeps on going.

These are two men whose religious vocation should have made stopping to help this wounded man second nature.

But instead, they refused to be inconvenienced and they passed by.

They were hated from all angles of society, which is why Jesus picks this man.

He was a man who had every cultural reason to just keep walking, but he's the one who stops.

And Jesus says he is the one who came near the wounded man.

Notice this in verse 33.

He took pity on him.

That's an important phrase.

Because the phrase took pity is just one word in Greek, and it's this word, splek nizomahi.

And literally it's it's a word that is built in the Greek from your inward organs.

It's the different words that make up references to your inward organs, which means this feeling is not a polite, warm, fuzzy feeling.

It is a word that is ha for something that is happening deep within your guts.

And here's what's remarkable.

Luke only uses this word three times in his entire gospel, but every single time he uses the word, he's describing a level of compassion that is so deep that it motivates a person to act.

In Luke chapter 7, he uses this word when Jesus sees the widow of Nain burying her only son.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

And Jesus doesn't just feel for her, his compassion is so deep, it is so gut level, that he interrupts the funeral and raises her son from the dead.

It was a feeling so deep inside him it demanded action.

The other time this word is used is in Luke 15, in the parable of the prodigal son.

It's in reference to the father in the story, in that famous story, when it says that he looked and saw his son while he was a great way off.

He had compassion on him and he ran to him.

It's so deeply, he felt it in his guts that this Hebrew man in that culture, Hebrew men didn't run.

The older men didn't pull up their robes and run, but he broke with culture and tradition because he defied custom, because what he felt toward his son was so deep it demanded action.

And then here in Luke 10, the Samaritan doesn't just feel for the wounded man, he feels it so deeply in his insides, in his guts, that he inconveniences himself.

He gets involved.

He doesn't just ride by.

It was a feeling so deep it demanded action.

In Luke's gospel, the emotion of compassion and empathy is never the last part of the story.

It's always the part of the story that sets everything else in motion.

And the only other two people in Scripture that are described as feeling exactly what the Samaritan felt here are Jesus and the father in the prodigal son story, who is who is representing God in that story.

Do you know what that means?

It means that what the Samaritan is doing as he acts is exactly what God does.

Now, I want you to see the good Samaritan's actions verb by verb, because every single verb, every single act of compassion cost him more than the previous act, and they keep building.

So follow the progression of the verbs.

We're going to walk through this.

Luke 10, verse 33.

Luke 10:33

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, first verbs, came to where he was, which means he didn't just walk by and pretend he didn't see the guy, like the priest and Levite did.

Then it says he saw him, which means he didn't see an inconvenience.

He saw a human being with a deep, desperate need.

Then it says he took pity on him.

He was so possessed by a feeling so deep in him he had to take action.

Then he went to him, which means he took a risk that threatened his own safety.

Jericho, the road, was famous for being ambushed by robbers and thieves.

And one of the tactics was to bait you with a as a wounded man.

You go to tend somebody's needs, you were attacked.

He knew that was a possibility.

He still went to him.

Then he bandaged the wounds, which means it cost his own personal and valuable travel supplies.

Then it says he put him on his own donkey, which means it cost him his comfort.

Because now the Samaritan has to walk while the wounded man rides.

And then it says he brought him to an inn, which means it cost his schedule.

He was headed somewhere.

That now he has to stop overnight into an inn and help make sure this guy is cared for.

Then it says he took out two denarii, which was two full days' wages, which means it cost him financial resources.

And then Jesus uses one sentence that breaks the whole story wide open.

The Samaritan says to the innkeeper, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.

Now that's not paying a bill, that's opening an account.

He didn't cap the cost, he opened a tab.

He took on unlimited liability of unknown size on behalf of a stranger who may not even be conscious enough yet to give him his name.

He assumed a debt that he would have to come back and personally settle.

The bandage was charity.

This last act is what we around here call extravagant.

Now, before you leave today convinced that what Jesus is doing is trying to guilt trip us into letting our calendar and our lives be everybody else's property, I'm going to offer you a little pastoral wisdom.

A life, living a life that goes beyond, guided by the second mile principle, doesn't mean living a life with no boundaries.

No devoted Christian has the capacity to say yes to every single need in front of them.

The needs are infinite.

We are not.

We are not God.

This is not a call to try to live a life without limits.

That's not even, Jesus was God, and this is not even what he modeled.

In Mark 1, after he performs a wave of miracles in healings, the word spreads.

And there are new people lining up outside the door of the house where Jesus performed those miracles the night before, and they're waiting on him to start the second round.

Well, when he doesn't show, they run all over the place looking for him because they have needs.

They need miracles and they want him to do for them what he did for those people last night.

But listen to what he actually does in Mark 1:36.

Mark 1:36

Simon and his companions went looking for him, for Jesus, and when they found him, they exclaimed, Everybody's looking for you.

Jesus replied, Let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages so I can preach there.

That is why I have come.

Jesus left that city with unmet needs and unanswered prayers.

Not because he lacked compassion.

He is the most compassionate person who ever lived.

But yet he knew his assignment.

I have to preach the gospel of the kingdom all over this area and let's go to the next city.

Here's why this matters going beyond walking the second mile is not the same thing as living without any boundaries.

If it were, the second mile would just become another form of compulsion.

But now, instead of it being a Roman soldier, you're being compelled by guilt, which means you're not really acting out of love anymore.

People pleasing can dress itself up as generosity.

Fear of disappointing someone can dress itself up as sacrifice.

The inability to say no can dress itself up as servanthood.

We read many stories of Jesus inconveniencing himself for many, and yet he was free enough to leave this town full of people that were still waiting on him.

So here's the healthier definition.

The second mile isn't always do more.

It's be willing to do more when love and obedience actually require it.

Sometimes stewardship says you've genuinely reached your limit today.

The goal was never exhaustion.

The goal is availability with open eyes and open hearts to the nudges of the Holy Spirit.

Not everyone's expectations, but God's direction.

But here's what we have to get better at: expressing what God is doing in us.

I truly believe most of the people listening to me right now, you really love people.

I mean, you love your family, you love your friends, you love your neighbors, you love your coworkers.

There's real love inside your heart.

But here's the problem.

The people that it's aimed at often have no idea it exists, at least not to the level or the degree that it exists.

Listen to this definition of meaningful connection.

Connection is the successful, that's the key word, successful communication of love and value to another person.

What that means is love can be completely real and still fail to connect with somebody because caring is something that happens on the inside of you, and people don't have access to your insides.

Which leads to a question most of us have never asked ourselves.

Do they feel what I feel for them?

People don't know your intentions, they can't see your heart.

People don't feel what you feel, they feel what you do.

Scripture never once defines love as an internal state.

Watch what happens when the Bible actually wants to tell you what love is.

1 John 3:16.

1 John 3:16

This is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

That's the definition of love.

John doesn't say this is how we know God loves us.

This is how we know what love is.

This is what love actually means.

This is what it does.

The word is action.

Paul does the same thing when he's defining love in Romans 5.8.

He says, but God demonstrates.

He acts out, he displays his love for us in this.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That's the act.

Love is demonstrated, it is a showing word.

God didn't just announce his love to us, he displayed it at public and real cost.

This is exactly why the one mile life rarely reaches anybody.

Mile one isn't a failure of love, it's just a weaker transmission of love.

Sure, you genuinely helped them.

You really did the thing, but it rarely connects because going the first mile can be explained away by something other than love.

It was your job, it's the rules, it's the obligation, it was the expectation.

They can't read your heart off of an act that literally anyone in your position was expected to do anyway.

But listen, the second mile does not have a cultural explanation.

That's when they start quietly asking themselves, why would they do that for me?

That's the moment when they see something in you that isn't required, which means that's the moment they start getting curious about the Jesus that lives in you.

Now I want to take you back to the word we saw Jesus use in the Sermon on the Mount that really started this whole conversation.

If anyone forces you, Angario, which means forced or compelled, it only appears three times in the whole New Testament.

This is just fascinating to me, okay?

These things may not interest you, but they fascinate me.

Matthew 5.41 is one of the places that word is used.

But when Jesus uses this word teaching on the hillside in the Sermon on the Mount, it's hypothetical.

This is a teaching moment.

They all know the cultural context, it can happen, but nobody's carrying a pack at that moment.

He's teaching this to illustrate a scenario that the kind of love that makes a deep impact, it's hypothetical, it's a teaching moment.

The other two times in the New Testament, this word is used, it is not hypothetical.

Matthew 27, verse 32.

Matthew 27:32

As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross.

A Roman soldier steps out, grabs Simon, he's just walking by, minding his own business, and the soldier grabs him and invokes the law of impressment, and he conscripts Simon to carry a burden that was never his to carry.

He is forced to carry Jesus' cross.

The illustration that Jesus is using while he's teaching is a teaching moment.

But this word, this thing, just became real life in this moment in Simon's life.

But here's what I need you to see.

Two men carried that same cross on the same afternoon up the same hill, down the Via Dela Rosa, the way of suffering, up the hill to Galgotha, but each of them carried it for two completely different reasons.

Simon carried it because a soldier made him.

He got grabbed, no say, no choice, no way out.

He was forced.

But Jesus carried it because he chose to.

Jesus said this about laying his own life down on the cross, John 10, 18.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

Nobody made him, not Rome, not Pilate, not the crowd, not the soldiers.

He could have stopped all of this at any given moment, but he chose the cross on purpose.

It was the same road and the same cross, but two entirely different miles walked.

One of these two men, history remembers as the guy who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The other of them is the one we've gathered in this room today to worship.

And the big difference is one was forced to carry that cross, the other chose it.

And that's the greatest illustration of what it means to live a life that goes beyond.

What you're forced to do never really tells anybody how you feel about them.

It might genuinely help them.

It might even cost you something, but it doesn't deeply impact them because required is required.

And required doesn't reveal anything about your heart.

Simon carried the Son of God's cross, and history records it in Simon of Cyrene has been in our passion plays and our Easter programs since Jesus' day.

But the act tells us almost nothing about Simon because he didn't choose it.

He was doing what was required, which is exactly what happens every single time we give somebody the bare minimum.

We hand them something that feels like it was already owed.

It doesn't overwhelm them, it doesn't underwhelm them, it just whelms them.

And then we wonder why it didn't really seem to make a difference.

But Jesus didn't stop at that first mile marker.

He didn't do the required amount for you.

Paul says, the forgiveness you received from me, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us.

Ephesians 1.

That word lavished means poured out past the point of enough.

God has never once given you the reasonable amount.

You are not loved adequately.

You are loved extravagantly.

And the challenge today is not for all of us to leave here and go out and try harder to be nicer people.

That wouldn't hurt any of us.

But that's not what Jesus.

He's calling us to something far more significant than that.

So here's something a little more specific that we can do this week.

We need to do this in every relationship eventually.

But let me just say this for this week.

Pick one relationship over the next few days.

Just one.

Spend some time evaluating your life in that relationship and asking yourself, what is expected of me in this relationship?

And as you look at it, find the line, okay?

Where is the mile marker?

Where's the first mile marker?

Where is the line?

What are the basic expectations?

How far am I expected to go in this relationship?

Then, once you've established the line, you put the mile marker on the ground, deliberately, at real cost to you, go far enough past that line in that person's life that that person literally cannot explain away your actions that you're just doing your job or your duty or fulfilling your role.

And you don't have to have money to do this.

The widow Jesus saw giving, gave two small coins, which is a, I mean, just a minuscule amount.

But Jesus said, She out gave everybody because God measures the level of sacrifice, not the amount of the offering.

So maybe this week you you write a handwritten note where a text was expected, or you hang with somebody that needs you for 45 minutes when you told them you had a five-minute window, or you drive across town and personally connect with somebody when a phone call would have been sufficient.

You could go on and on.

Just find the line and go the second mile.

Here's a question, though, that we've been doing this every week.

What is my motivation?

What's my heart behind this?

Here's a question that will check our motives.

If nobody ever found out it was you, would you still do it?

Because an act of extravagant love is not really an act of extravagant love if it needs an audience.

It stops being love and starts becoming marketing.

Extravagance nobody sees is worship to God, a God that has called us to live a second mile life.

When you go the second mile in your life for somebody else, you won't be the first person to go the second mile in your life.

Somebody went past the line for you.

Maybe it was a parent who kept showing up and when they didn't have to.

We gave them every reason not to and they just kept showing up.

Or maybe it was a friend who choose who chose to stay loyal and we gave them every reason not to, but they just kept showing up.

I mean, we could it could be example after example.

They somebody crossed the line for you over and over again, but ultimately in your life there was a savior who crossed a distance, nothing required him to cross.

And like the Good Samaritan, he opened a tab and he picked up the tab on an account that did not belong to him.

And he said, Over your life, over my life, over all of us, he said to the Father, the sin debt they accumulate, charge that to me.

I'll settle that with my life.

I'll pay for their sin debt with my life's blood.

Just like the end of the parable, whatever they accumulate, charge it to my account.

And that's why he chose the cross.

That's where that account was settled.

He went the second mile for you.

And we're called Christians, which means followers of Christ.

He told us to do this, but when we chose him and said, I want to follow you, I want you to be my Lord.

What we're saying is, I want as much of my life as I can possibly surrender to you to image you in my thought life, my private life, my public life.

I want to represent your way of living to the world.

That means we're gonna walk out of here.

If we're gonna be Christian, start asking God, what is second mile living look like here and here and in that relationship?

Where's the line?

How can I cross it?

To love that person, bring honor and credibility to you because it's your love that is compelling me.

I want you to stand with me, if you would, across this place and at every location.

And I'm gonna ask if our prayer teams at every campus would come and make themselves available to serve you today.

Look, we do this every week at the end of the service to provide space to pray for miracles.

I I don't have time every week to list for you the answered prayers that are happening as we pray at the front of this room.

The testimonies are incredible.

Can I just say this to you today?

We open this up for believers to come and have their needs met for anybody really, but my heart always goes out in this moment to somebody that's a seeker in this room.

You've never stepped over the line of faith and given your heart to Jesus.

And can I just tell you, this is the gospel.

What I just said to you is the gospel.

There is an account with your name on it in eternity, and and and and every act you've ever committed that is a transgression to God is going to be used in heaven's court to convict you of why you're not worthy of heaven.

And yet Jesus is standing there as your advocate.

We have an advocate with the Father, John says.

And he is standing there looking at your record, and there's not a single one of us on our record that deserves entrance into eternity in the presence of God.

There is none righteous, no, not one.

And yet, our advocate, our defense counsel, stands before the Father and says, All of this, settle it to my account.

I'll pay for it with my life's blood.

And the minute you confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that long account is stamped paid in full in the blood of Christ.

My grandpa used to sing an old song.

The old account was settled long ago.

I can tell you the day it was for me.

Today can be your day.

Paid in full is stamped on your account.

You just say, Jesus, I surrender my life to you.

And you can do that where you stand, you can do that here.

I was reading over all of the testimonies from everybody getting baptized today.

I read over those testimonies.

Multiple people referred to a prayer they prayed at the end of a service at the prayer team with the prayer team at the front of the building, surrendering their lives to Jesus just a few weeks ago, and now they're going public with their faith.

That could be somebody today.

One prayer changes everything.

Just give him your life, charge it to his account, and let the cross settle it.

Father, I pray today you just strengthen our hearts to live in a way that is not average, that is not bare minimum, that doesn't just meet the expectations.

We're living for a cause that's greater than us.

We're not just trying to survive here.

It feels like that some days, but we have a call on our lives greater than that because we are representing you.

And you said, when they ask you to go one mile, go two.

And I pray that you will raise up a congregation of people that go beyond living second mile lives, earning credibility in corporate America and sports and entertainment and education and law and politics.

Everywhere we go, God, may we be second mile people.

Lord, would you bless them and keep them?

Would you make your face shine down upon them?

Would you be gracious to them?

Would you turn your countenance their direction today?

And would you grant them peace in Jesus' name?

Amen and amen.

These altars are open today.

God bless you.