SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, today I want to welcome you back to the quest that we were summoned to last week when we launched this series on mattering, the quest for meaning. And if that language needs a little more explanation, I encourage you to go back and watch the introductory message, what we called intro part one. Today is intro part two, but go back and watch intro part one. You can do that at northplacechurch.com forward slash mattering. Everything that you will need, all things mattering, are going to be parked at that website. Everything you might need to join a group, the conversation starters that I recorded for small groups, they are there on that site. Every Sunday's sermon will be uploaded for you to go back and re-watch or uh recommend to families and friends, NorthPlaceChurch.com forward slash mattering. And you've heard us say it. Attend the series, get a guide, join a group. All the stuff that's online is available in person at every one of our campuses out there today in the lobby of every campus, and you can physically connect, and we want you to do that. There are a lot in this life that you don't control, but you can control your own growth and development. And what we're inviting you on is a transformational journey. We call this a spiritual emphasis season where you can see God's grace transform your life. So commit to attend the series every week, get the guide, do the study, and join a group. If you weren't able to be with us last week, go back and watch the introductory message. We define mattering. We set all that up. Words of Jesus from Matthew 5, you are the light. That's your identity. That's who you are. That's your value now. He then two verses later he said, Now go let your light shine. You gotta know that you're valued first, and then you've got to give the value that you are away to other people in order to experience a life that feels like it matters. It takes both of those. Today, the focus is on the deep human need to be seen. Living a life that matters begins with knowing that you do. Okay, I I want to read that again, and I want to, I just want to let it sit in for a minute. Living a life that matters begins by knowing that you do. Every human heart carries a longing to be seen. Not just noticed from a distance, but fully known. Known beneath appearances, accomplishments, failures, reputations that we use to manage how people perceive us. Scripture doesn't dance around how thorough God's seeing is. It says in Hebrews 4, nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Uncovered, laid bare, not a partial view. He sees the whole thing. The gospel declares on the heels of that, that's kind of sobering. But the gospel declares something to us that's almost too good to be true. The gospel's promise is this God sees us completely and still loves us fully. He knows everything that we try to hide from everybody else because we're afraid if they knew all of that, they they knew the real us, they wouldn't befriend us or accept us or love us. But God sees the real us, all the parts that we try to hide, and he loves us anyway. We are truly seen, and yet we are still fully loved by him. But being seen is not the end of the story. Being seen by God is actually how your life is transformed. Here's the truth that I'm gonna say multiple different ways today that I want to get landed into your heart. Jesus sees through both our shame and our performance, and he loves the person hiding underneath. You're never gonna be able to truly see other people or be able to add value to other people's lives until you really understand what it means for you to be truly seen by Jesus. And that being seen by God is what frees us from a life of hiding and proving. It's how we start living from a place of grace instead of always striving for it. But here's the tension. And I would guess that every one of us has felt this at some point. Everybody wants to be known, but almost nobody wants to be fully known. We long for someone to see us, we want to be noticed, but then we spend enormous amounts of energy constructing ways to only reveal what we want them to see. We work hard at hiding parts of us we don't want other people to see. Some of us hide behind our shame, some of us hide behind what we're proud of. The question has never been about whether or not Jesus sees. Obviously, he does. The real question is whether we're gonna let him looking upon us, his gaze upon us, are we gonna let that look into our lives change us? Because grace does not expose us to humiliate us. Grace reveals who we are, where we are, so that it can restore us. He loves you exactly as you are, but he refuses to leave you in that condition. You can be seen by Jesus and walk away unchanged, or you can be seen by Jesus and let that seeing reorder your whole life. So today the invitation is simple come out of your hiding. Jesus had two interactions with two different men that illustrate this perfectly. Two different men that show you two different ways to hide from God and two different ways to respond to God. And we're we're I'm not gonna go in great detail with these two men because their stories are unpacked this week in your mattering guide. I'm only gonna touch on them here, but I want to frame the conversation with their story. In Luke 19, there's Zacchaeus, he's a wealthy tax collector, and he is publicly despised because of his job, because he is overtaxing his own people, the Jewish people, in order to fill the coffers of the Roman Empire. Then in Mark 10, there's this rich young ruler. He's also a wealthy man, but he's publicly admired. Zacchaeus was despised, the young ruler was admired because of the life and who he appears to be. One man is hiding in shame, the other is hiding in his performance. Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus, but not wanting to be seen himself. The rich young ruler doesn't hide behind anything. He walks right up to Jesus in broad daylight, but he's still hiding. He's hiding behind his moral record, he's hiding behind his religious knowledge, he's hiding behind his wealth and possessions. One man hides behind leaves, the other man hides behind a resume. But Jesus sees through both of them. He calls Zacchaeus by name and invites him to dinner in Zacchaeus' own home. And Jesus looks at the rich young ruler and he says, I love you, but then he puts his finger directly on the one thing that man refuses to surrender, his wealth and possessions. Same love of Jesus, same look of Jesus, but two very different responses. Zacchaeus comes out of his hiding and is deeply transformed. The rich young ruler can't handle truly being seen and exposed by Jesus, so he turns and walks away. I'm gonna come back to these guys in just a minute, but I want to introduce you to a lady that we don't talk about in the study guide. There's a woman named Hagar who encounters God in a wilderness in the lowest moment of her life. And her story might be the clearest picture in all of the Bible for what it actually feels like to be seen by God. One of the very first names that anybody ever gives to God in the Bible is a name that Hagar uses for God when she realizes in the lowest place of her life she has been seen by God. It all unfolds in Genesis chapter 16. Hagar is a servant. She's been used, mistreated, and driven out into the wilderness. She's pregnant, alone, and has absolutely no social power to change her situation. She is, by the very definition of the word, the word the world uses, she's invisible. Nobody's looking for her, nobody's coming for her, but God finds her there. And after that encounter with God, Hagar says something remarkable. Verse 13 of Genesis 16, she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. You are El Rai. The God, that in Hebrew, it literally means the God who sees me. For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me. You are the God who sees me. Hagar is not the only one throughout history to be seen by El Rai. There are many that have been seen by God in their lowest moments and darkest hours and in their distress. Israel was seen groaning in Egypt. He sees David when his own family overlooks him. He sees Hannah praying silently in her grief. He sees a widow slipping two small coins in an offering. He sees the woman at the well, even though she comes after everyone is gone, trying hard not to be seen. The psalmist says it this way in Psalm 139, I can never escape from your spirit. I can never get away from your presence. If I go up to heaven, you are there. If I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wing of the morning or dwell by the furthest oceans, even there, your hand will guide me and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night, but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. Hagar lived Psalm 139 before it was ever written down. God found her in the one place she was certain nobody could see her. And in that last part of verse 13, she says this, I have now seen the one who sees me. The original Hebrew of that phrase is more like a question. Have I really seen him here? The one who sees me? In other words, I didn't think God could see me here. That's the ache in every human heart. Not does God see me when I'm in church, not does God see me when I have it together, not does God see me when I'm presenting well, but does he see me here in the broken place, in the shameful and sinful place, in the in the wilderness place, in the lonely place, in the place I've never told anybody else about? Notice what God tells her to do. After he has this encounter, he doesn't pull her out of her circumstance. He tells her to return back to the hard situation that she fled from to go back and serve and add value in that situation. But now, when she goes back, she's going back as somebody that has been seen by God. And that changes everything about how you can walk back into a hard place and a hard situation when God doesn't choose to rescue you from it, but you have to endure through it. You can when you know you have been seen. You see, being seen in a biblical sense is not just visual awareness, like, oh, I noticed you. No. When Scripture says God sees someone, it means he knows their condition and moves toward them. He acts on their behalf. He isn't seeing you from a distance. This is intimate and personal and compassionate, and with it comes the possibility of redemption and rescue. That's why the longing to be seen runs so deep within every one of us. We were created by El Rai, the God who sees. So being known by Him is not some optional emotional bonus to life. It's foundational to understanding who you are as a human being at the core of your soul. But still, if we're honest, the idea of being fully seen can feel terrifying. Being noticed is pleasant, especially when we're the ones controlling what's visible. But being fully known means giving up control over an image that we've worked hard to present. We want God to see our pain, but not always our sin. We want him to see our potential, but not always our motives. We want him to affirm the person we present while quietly protecting the parts of us we're afraid he'll confront. But scripture makes it plain. God already sees the whole you. Nothing is hidden from him. And here's the grace. Both searching for something their wealth could never give them, both encounter Jesus face to faith, both loved or loved by him. That's expressed in both passages, and both are challenged at the exact same place in their life where their identity and their possessions intersected. But they both respond in completely opposite ways. Zacchaeus comes out of the hiding, comes down from the tree, the ruler walks away. Zacchaeus opens up his home, the ruler closes his fist. Zacchaeus gives his wealth away. The ruler lets his wealth carry him away from Jesus. And here's what's striking: Jesus never actually commanded Zacchaeus to give anything. He tells the rich young ruler to give everything. Go sell it all and give everything. The ruler is told to give and doesn't. Zacchaeus isn't told to give anything at all and gives it freely on his own. Why the difference? Because Zacchaeus lets himself be seen for who he actually is. The rich young ruler wants Jesus to validate the identity he spent years constructing. Zacchaeus lets Jesus replace the identity that had trapped him. And that's the whole difference right there. Listen to this, listen to this closely. You can't miss this. Grace can't transform the person you're pretending to be. It can only transform the person we bring honestly before Jesus. Zacchaeus no longer needed his wealth to defend his worth because Jesus had given him something money would never be able to buy. The dignity of being fully known and still welcomed at the same table with God Himself. His generosity wasn't an attempt to earn that acceptance. It was the evidence that the grace of acceptance had already changed his heart. Listen to what he says. Look, Lord, here and now I give half my possessions to the poor, and if I've cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount. Now that four times thing matters. That was the standard, not four times what you had taken. In Exodus 22, the four times thing comes about as a repayment. It was the harshest penalty in the law, and it was reserved for a thief that was caught red-handed with no intention of ever giving anything back. So Zacchaeus takes the harshest number in the whole law and volunteers it against himself. And then on top of that, he gives away half of everything else that he owns, which Jesus or no commandment had ever asked of him at all. So this extra part of giving half away isn't restitution, it was a pure gift. We say it a lot around here: returning what you owe is a good place to start, but real generosity begins where obligation ends. Zacchaeus lives out both halves of that statement in one breath. Why? Because he no longer needed money to tell him who he was. For years, his wealth had been his armor. It was the one thing that let a despised and rejected man feel some degree of security. But Jesus sees him in a tree, calls him by name, sits at his table, and Zacchaeus received something no amount of money has ever brought to him in his life. And once his worth was settled, his grip on money and possessions loosened. The hands that it spent a lifetime taking suddenly couldn't give fast enough. That's the foundational message of this whole series in one man's encounter with Jesus. We are seen, we are loved, we are transformed, and then we become people who see, who love, who add value to others. That's when we start feeling like we matter. There's a famous verse that's a part of the Zacchaeus story, but because it's quoted so often as a standalone verse, most people that recognize the verse don't even realize this is a part of the Zacchaeus story. At the end of the meal with Zacchaeus, Jesus makes a defining statement that tells us and Zacchaeus and anybody else wondering why somebody like Jesus would pursue a relationship with somebody like Zacchaeus. Jesus said, at Zacchaeus' table, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. In the case of the two men we're contrasting today, both of these men are lost. That's the part we miss. Zacchaeus is lost in obvious sin. The ruler is lost in respectable success. One knows the community rejects him, the other has built a life the community admires. And Jesus sees them both the same way. Lost. And so he seeks both of them out. And he's seeking you and I out the same way. But before we can ever begin our quest to live a life that matters, one with meaning and purpose, we have to understand that Jesus has already completed his quest. He's already fulfilled his mission. And we don't come out of hiding because we finally got brave enough to go looking for God. We come out of hiding because God has always been looking for us. And we finally let him see us, expose the real us, that is what transforms us. Now let me point you to some research here that consistently proven what we're seeing in the Bible here with these two men. What's happening in these stories? Like it's it's real. Watch this. A few years ago, researchers at Purdue University ran a simple experiment on a busy campus walkway. A research assistant walked toward total strangers and did one of three things when they approached. The researcher, number one, would either make eye contact, or number two, make eye contact and smile, or three, look straight through them. In the researcher's own words, we would look through them as if they were thin air. A moment later, a second researcher would come right behind the first and interview the people that had been passed on the walkway. And the findings were incredible. The people who had been looked at, just looked at by a total stranger, they would probably never see again, felt measurably less disconnected than the people who had been looked through. A single second of being seen by a total stranger moved the needle on human loneliness. The researcher's words for the third option was look through them as if they were heir. That's what Zacchaeus's hometown did to him. The world looked past him every single day. But Jesus intentionally gazes upon him. He looks upon him in a tree, makes eye contact with a one man everybody else refused to see. There's additional research that says newborn babies within days of being born, obviously before they can say a word or do anything to earn anybody's attention. It's been scientifically proven that those babies already prefer looking at a face that is looking directly at them over looking at a face that is turned away. It captures our hunger to be seen as one of the fundamental needs of what it means to be a human being. We are wired by the God who made us to come alive when we are truly looked at, gazed upon. Upon, seen, which is exactly why Mark writes this particular sentence in the story of Jesus' interaction with the rich young ruler. Mark includes a couple details you can overlook. It says in Mark 10:21, Jesus looked at him and loved him. Mark wants you to know that the love came through the look. This was not a neutral observation. The seeing by Jesus itself was the doorway to the love. Where the world looks through us like we're air, Jesus gazes upon us. He looks at us into the tree of our shame or the life of performance. He looks through all of that and he calls us by name. And then when we respond to that look, he asks us to now go turn our gaze onto other people and become those who look upon, not past the overlooked. So let me ask you two questions I've been asking of myself the last few weeks as I've prepared today's sermon. What are you hiding behind? Is it shame? Something you've done, something that's happened to you, something you're carrying that whispers, if this was known, I'd be rejected? Or are you hiding behind your performance? Because you've built a life that looks successful and spiritual and put together, but that life is whispering to you something else. If I keep managing this image, I'm gonna get everything I want. Your shame is lying to you, and your performance is lying to you. Here's a second question: what might change if I actually believe Jesus sees me here in my sin, in my brokenness, in the wilderness, in the lonely place? What might change if I actually believe Jesus sees me here and loves me anyway? You see, you can be seen by Jesus today and walk out of here just like you walked in, just like the rich young ruler. Or you can let this be the moment you come down out of the tree, or you lay down your resume and you open your hands and you open your heart. He done ask you to clean up first. Hagar didn't clean up before God in the wilderness, and Zacchaeus didn't clean up before Jesus invited him to dinner. You come just like you are. You are seen just like you are, and it's that grace that becomes the transformative thing in your life that will eventually change you. But you gotta respond to the gaze of Jesus. He's looking at you, not to expose and humiliate you, but for you to know who you really are and let you know you don't have to stay that way. And whether you've been in church all your life, he wants to make you into something more. Or whether you're a guest and you hadn't been to church ever, he wants to start a relationship with you and transform you into who God designed you to be. I want you to stand with me across the room today and across our campus family and prayer teams at all locations, if you would come and make yourself available to serve. Um, look, I I realize I want to make sure you have plenty of time to connect in the lobby. This is so important. What's happening in the lobby today? You get in a group, going on a discipleship journey, a spiritual formational journey, committing to your growth. What God can do is as supernatural as anything God can do in this room. And so I want to honor that and give space for that. But also, if you sense God looking upon you today, don't walk away from that. Respond to that. It's the loving grace of God pursuing you. Whether you've been in church your whole life and you're it's dead, your heart is stone cold, you feel nothing anymore, you're just going through the motions. He's looking on you. Respond to him. Whether you've never met Jesus as Lord and Savior, he's looking on you, inviting you into a relationship that will change your life. And if you don't have anybody to pray with you about that, you don't have anybody to talk to about that, that's what this team is here for. We'll pray for any need in your life. You need a miracle, we're here to pray. But especially those of you feeling looked upon by God and you need to respond in a special way today. There's something in the blessing that I pray over you every week that has this foundational truth in it, and I speak it over you today. Lord, will you bless them and keep them? Will you make your face shine down upon them? Will you turn your countenance their direction? Let them feel seen today, and only then can they experience your peace. I ask it for your people in Jesus' name. Amen and amen. These altars are open.