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Good morning, North Place. So good to be with you today. I want to also welcome in all of our campuses. Come on, Sats. Would you help me welcome Wiley Garland, our online family men and women in correctional facilities all over the world? Thank you for being here for week two of our mattering series. We had two introductory messages. We had an incredible first week last week's small group. So how many enjoying your small groups so far? Man, God's moving blessing your relationships. Today's week two. So four weeks into the eight-week journey together. And I really do believe from the bottom of my heart that lives are being changed. I know for me, God's been challenging me. I really do believe today, specifically, though, it's really a pivotal, we're at the halfway point, it's a pivotal moment in the journey where how we respond to the word of God today, I believe, is gonna really impact the trajectory of the next half of the series. So if you got your Bibles, you can go with me to Ruth chapter four. Ruth chapter four. And in this story, we're gonna see a little bit, we're gonna get a hint of the idea that we're addressing in this second week of mattering the quest for meaning. Ruth chapter four, starting in verse one, says, Boaz went to the town gate and took a seat there. Just then the family redeemer he had mentioned came by, so Boaz called out to him, Come over here and sit down, friend. I want to talk to you. So they sat down together. Then Boaz called ten leaders from the town and asked them to sit as witnesses. And Boaz said to the family redeemer, You know Naomi, who came back from Moab. She is selling the land that belonged to our relative Elimelech. I thought I should speak to you about it so that you can redeem it if you wish. If you want the land, then buy it here in the presence of these witnesses. But if you don't want it, let me know right away, because I am next in line to redeem it after you. The man replied, All right, I'll redeem it. Then Boaz told him, Of course, your purchase of the land from Naomi also requires that you marry Ruth the Moabite widow. That way she can have children who will carry on her husband's name and keep the land in the family. Well, then I can't redeem it, the family redeemer replied, because this might endanger my own estate. You redeem the land. I cannot do it. Well we're gonna see in this week what you can see in your guides if you haven't gotten one already. They're available in the lobby after this service. There's a concept embedded in every quest, something that we're gonna have to understand if we're going to live and experience the life that matters. I'm gonna speak to you about that concept. I'm gonna speak to you for the next few minutes on what it means to be the one who pays. The one who pays. Because when it comes to living a life that matters, the question you need to ask yourself is will you be the one who pays? Last week we discussed Jesus' definition of the significant life. And in Matthew 5, he gives us the prescription, and there's two parts. He says, You got to understand and know at your core that you are the light of the world because I have made you that. I have declared that over you and spoken that to you. But then as the light of the world, I want you to go and let your light shine before others. And this idea that Jesus presented thousands of years ago has resurfaced in a way, an idea that researchers and modern sociologists call the mattering equation. And the mattering equation is simply this it's knowing you are valued and adding value to others. If those things are happening, then mattering begins to occur in our hearts. And what I have found over the course of this series, and even just in study preparing for it, what I have found is that that equation sounds great theoretically. It makes sense intellectually, even saying it and like imagining that kind of life feels good emotionally until I come face to face with the genuine moment where I must add value to someone else and realize that there is a genuine cost to adding value. And if there's a cost to adding value, that means there's a cost to a significant life. And recently, strangely, it kind of reminds me of a memory that happened just a few weeks ago regarding one of my all-time favorite snacks. Are there any snackers in the room? You know what I'm talking? Like, like you don't even do meals. You know what I mean? Like it's just like it's just little bits of snacks throughout the day. I'm not much of a snacker. Specifically, I'm not much of a candy person, but I do think if there's something in the 21st century that gives us just a glimpse into the mana from heaven that Israel would have had in their 40 years of the wilderness, it's the blue nerds clusters. Any nerd's clusters, people, I mean, it's the closest thing to heaven you're gonna get. I mean, it's amazing. It's incredible. And and just it's one of my favorite snacks, and just the other day at my youngest sister's housewarming party, we were moving her and some of her roommates in, and a lot of our friends, and a lot of the staff was there, and two of our younger staff kids, they there were some nerds clusters, and uh, they're both right around two years old, Leah and Camila, and they were hanging out together, and they were they were kind of doing this test with them with the nerd's clusters. And so they took two nerds clusters and they put it under a paper towel in front of Leia, and then they put a paper towel with no nerd's clusters in front of Camila, and then they they pulled the paper towels to see what would happen. And if I was Leia, you already know what would happen. You're not getting any nerds clusters, right? And and and for a solid few-minute window, Leia just is in deep the most contemplation you can get from a two-year-old. I mean, just looking at the candy and then looking at her and looking back at the candy. It's just like she's she is torn, she is really struggling here, and then she does the most incredible thing. You saw a picture of the nerd's clusters. She takes the cluster and then she takes a single solitary nerd off of the cluster and she gives it to Camila and then takes the other two for herself. It was amazing, it was awesome. She got, she she did the thing she knew she needed to do with as little cost to her as possible. It's like her face knew. If I give some of what I have to someone else, it means at the end, there will be less for me. And we know, we've seen, we've studied that half of the mattering equation, half of the life that matters is adding value to others. It doesn't take us very long in life to realize that that probably will demand something of me. See, we all want a meaningful life, we just all aren't willing to pay the price for one. We all aren't willing to do what it's gonna take because we know it will cost us time and energy, effort, and resources. In 2013, four researchers from different universities that they found a similar result. They published a study in the Journal of Positive Psychology. They called the study Some Key Differences Between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life. They surveyed 400 adults over and over for a month, and they asked them two questions throughout that month. How happy is your life, and how meaningful is your life? Because we think those two things have to go hand in hand. But the research found that some of the very things making people's lives more meaningful were also the same things making them less happy. So listen to this quote from the study. It said, happiness was linked to being a taker rather than a giver. Whereas meaningfulness went with being a giver rather than a taker. Higher levels of worry, stress, and anxiety were linked to higher meaningfulness, a lower happiness. So worry and stress, anxiety all went up in the lives of the people that said they they were living more meaningful lives, but the happiness went down because happiness is what you feel when you get. Meaning is what you build in yourself when you give. This is why in Luke chapter 10, when a man walks up to Jesus and asks him the famous question, Who is my neighbor? Jesus doesn't answer the question. He answers with a parable about the Good Samaritan, a story of a man who at great cost to himself adds value to someone else. Why does he tell that story? Because the man who asks the neighbor question to Jesus, he's not trying to get more neighbors. He's trying to get less. He wants the smallest circle of people possible to add value to at the smallest cost possible to himself. And so Jesus doesn't answer. Instead of telling him who qualifies as his neighbor, he tells him this is what it's gonna cost for you to actually go and be one. And Jesus says the neighbor in the story is not the one who smiles at the hurting man, it's not the one who felt pity, it's not the one who was sorry for what the guy was going through. The person who matters in that story is the one who pays. It's the one who pays. The one who matters, who's more significant, is the one who absorbed the cost. Which is why James would say in James chapter 2, suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, Go in peace, keep warm and well fed. Modern day translation, I'm praying for you. I'm praying for you. If your brother or sister is in need, and you just say, Go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs. What good is it? Because those things we say, they're nice and they're maybe even true, but they cost us absolutely nothing. And mattering always comes with a cost. Mattering always comes with a price. So we gotta explore this today. If you want to live a life of meaning by adding value to others, there's three things you gotta see and understand about the price of this quest. The cost of this journey. First thing that you have to see, number one, is that the cost is just part of following Jesus. The cost is just part of what it means to be a Christ follower. One of Jesus' most famous declarations over his disciples is in Luke 9, where he says, Then he said to them all, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. The words therefore deny themselves is are Naomi, arnisastho. And it's the same verb that Luke uses later when Peter publicly denies Jesus by saying, I don't know him. So when he says, it's time for you to deny yourself, he's essentially saying to deny yourself is to say about you what Peter says about Jesus. I don't know him. When you and I are together, what he's asked, Jesus is asking of me, David? I don't know David. I know you. David, I don't see David. I see you. I don't really care about what David wants. I care about what you want. I want to add value to you. So this means denying yourself is not self-hatred. It's the call of Jesus to follow in his footsteps and renounce myself as the organizing center of my life. It means I stop being the point of it all. And then Jesus hits us with the whammy and he says, I want you to do that every day. I want you to do that all the time. Meaning, this isn't about the big one-time dramatic moments where you help somebody or the big heroic sacrifices. I heard it when I was studying this week, I heard someone put it this way, they said, Man, I'll take a bullet for you. Just please don't ask me to help you move. And they're saying this, man, I'll do the big thing when the moment comes, but Jesus is calling me to a recurring appointment of death to myself through daily, ordinary, small decisions of sacrifice for the good of other people. So if you're waiting for the verse where Jesus says he's fine with you loving people from a distance and it never costing you anything, you're gonna miss out on what it means to matter. This is why all throughout the New Testament we see cost language associated with helping other people. Luke 14 says, but when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be bet blessed. Why? Because they cannot repay you. Philippians 2, 3 through 4. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not look only to his own interest, but also to the interest of others. 2 Corinthians 12. I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls, Paul said. Because if I love you more, it does not mean that I'm loved any less. And then Romans 13, 8, let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves us fulfilled the law. Paul's saying here in Romans 13, when it comes to counting costs in your life, make sure you take care of all your debts. Make sure that you and others are paid fairly for what is owed, but the only cost I don't ever want you paid back for is whatever it costs you to love someone else. Have no debts among you except this one, whatever it takes to love people. And I know when we hear it stacked up like that. Deny yourself daily, spend and be spent, be the one who pays. It doesn't sound like mattering, it sounds like loss. It sounds like sacrifice where you just keep handing pieces of yourself away for God and for others. And to some extent, you're right. That's part of what it means to follow Jesus. That's part of what he asks of us. But that's also how everything valuable works. The meaningful things in your life are the things that you really value, took more effort, more money, and more time. The meaningful life is the more expensive one. But the Bible says that life is so worth it. That life and that sense of significance you get from mirroring God to the people around you through love and adding value to them, it is so worth living. Theologian, author, and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he explained that kind of life in that idea like this. He says, it is costly because it costs a man his life. And it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. Living like this, giving of yourself like this, it costs you and it gives you. So you gotta understand first, it's just part of following Jesus. It's the life he's invited us to enter. But second, and maybe a little more uniquely, you've got to see number two, that the value is found in the cost to the giver, to the one who gives it. God sees the value in what you're doing, not in necessarily in just the action, but in what that action costs you. The most ex classic example of this to maybe help you understand what I'm talking about can be found in one of the gospel's most famous stories, Mark chapter 12, where it says, And he, Jesus, sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich rich people put in large sums, and a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to them, to him, and said to them, Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. So she comes in and puts two coins while everyone else, if you want to talk about what was more valuable, what was more costly from the human standard and worldly perspective, they were miles beyond her. But Jesus says she put in more because he's giving us the way that heaven counts the cost of our sacrifice and our adding value to other people. Really, what God's trying to help us see, but Jesus, what we have to understand about the cost is according to God, the value in what you do is not measured by what left your hand, but what was left in your hand after. It's not, did I do more than the other person? It's did that cost me something? Was that sacrificial love on my behalf for the good of someone or something else? Which is why Paul would say in 2 Corinthians 8 12, for if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. He's not asking you to add value to someone else or to sacrifice for someone else in a way that you can't do, or in the way that you saw someone else do. He's asking you to look inward and to ask the question: what is it gonna cost me? What's in my heart to do? What does this sacrifice actually mean to me? Because there will be situations and people that will cost you different things at different times. Some will cost you time and some will cost you effort, some will cost you money, some brain power, some will cost you intentionality, and some will cost you a weekend. And if you're a parent, one kid can cost you all of those in 24 hours. Different people cost you different things. When those things come around, don't just ask, well, what what am I supposed to give? Ask what would be hardest for me to give? Which one of these would cost me the most? Which am I most hesitant to sacrifice? Maybe that's choosing to slow down and check on someone at work that has no opportunity to move you forward or move you higher, just for the good of that person. Maybe it's you're aligned at the grocery store to pay for the groceries of the singer mom, single mom who's behind you, who's got one kid in the cart, one kid on her hand, and her purse just fell down, and you just know I'm just gonna take care of this for her. Maybe for some of us, it's I need to open my home and keep the kids of my family, friends who their marriage is struggling, and they just need a night to work through things and start talking through things, and I'm just gonna I'm gonna keep the kids and I'm not gonna charge them per hour, and I'm just gonna I'm just gonna do that as a blessing. I don't know what it would be, but I need to pay attention to the areas where I'm slow to pay the cost because I can always find my idols and fears there. If I really hesitate to add value to my family and my friends with my words, maybe I have a fear of vulnerability, or maybe I value my image too much. If I have a fear, if I tense up every time someone shows up with a financial need, that might mean money is on the throne of my heart, or I have a deep fear of not having enough. God in his love, when it comes to paying the cost and teaching you a life that matters, God in his love will not let you circumvent and move around those areas. He's gonna keep bringing people into your life and people into those spaces to change and transform your heart. He calls us to pay the cost in the exact spot oftentimes that we are most reluctant to pay it. And the unexpected consequences, I begin to change. It helps them, it adds value to them, but also the value there is, it changes me and my heart. So don't wait until your heart is ready to add value to people and situations and circumstances. Don't wait until you feel it. Don't wait until God, my favorite is God, do you want me to help this person? What a silly prayer. Yes. Why? Because you are the light of the world and let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. So how? But then that that really kind of brings me to a how question. When I study this, when I work with this, I go, that sounds great. It kind of doesn't sound great, but I get it. I'm ready to follow Jesus. But what you're really saying is that he wants me to do this over and over. How can I be expected to just keep giving and giving and giving and adding and adding and adding? Because my question becomes, well, who's gonna add to me? Who's gonna that who's gonna take care of me? Who's gonna replenish my reserves? But the cost is part of following Jesus. The value in that cost is in what it costs you. But to do it sustainably, you have to understand number three, the cost is paid from an infinite supply. From an infinite supply. Jesus is asking you to give it all for others, but if you've put your faith in Jesus, you gotta know you have a never-ending inflow from the grace, strength, power, and love of Christ. It is the only way you can continually pay the cost. This is why Paul would say to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 9, and God is able. Did you forget he is able? God is able to bless you abundantly. Why? So that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. He said, when you live this way, when you live dead to self, crucified with Christ, so that he can move through you, he will bless you so that in all things at all times, giving you all that you need, you can abound in every good work to everyone, everywhere, all the time. And then there's two verses later in verse 10, he says, This is the God, he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way. Why? To be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. Leave the verse up there because notice it doesn't say he multiplies the results. He says he's gonna multiply the seed, and seed is for sowing. We spend our life consumed about the harvest, which is why we don't give to anybody. I don't add to others because I worked hard for this harvest. God's saying, I'll take care of the harvest, but I'm gonna multiply your seed so you can keep what? Adding to other people, sowing to other people, blessing generously to other people. That's how it works in the kingdom. We always assume that adding value to you means subtraction from me. But God says, When I pour out, he refills my cup. But God says, when I give, he's gonna return it back to me, not always with the same thing that I gave, but always with enough to meet my needs and help me keep pouring and help me keep giving and help me keep serving and adding. Which is why he reminds us in Philippians 4:19, my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus, not according to my strength or my reserve or my resources, but according to his riches. And you got to remember today that his riches are an infinite supply. That the God who is asking you to pour out owns a cattle on a thousand hills, that the God who asks you to pour out is literally right now walking streets of gold. The stuff we spend our life so concerned about hoarding and keeping to ourselves, it's the asphalt he walks on. So when he asks you to just pour out your life, he's got everything you need to take care of you. And he has ensured you have access to that infinite supply. How? In your guides this week, there's a section in week chapter two, COS, that talks about the idea of where we define and determine value in today's world in an economic sense. What it says is we determine the value of something by three things who made it, what it's made of, and what someone is willing to pay for it. Think about it logically. A painting's worth more when there's a certain signature on the back. A ring is worth more depending on the materials that it's made of. And at the end of the day, a thing is worth exactly what somebody is willing to put on the table for it. So when we talk about the internal value, knowing you are valued by God, the internal value you have as the place to overflow from as you add value to others, you got to understand the supply and the value intrinsic to you that you can pull from. Because who made you? Who made you? You are not a cosmic accident or an earthly mistake. You are formed from the very hands and mind of God by the greatest artist in the universe. What are you made of? You are made in that God's very image, which means you are endowed with destiny and with dignity. And if you're here today and you've given your life to Jesus, you are literally now the living, breathing temple of the Spirit of God. What are you made of? Something supernatural, something insanely powerful and precious to God. And what was someone willing to pay for you? 1 Peter chapter 1 says, for you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors. You were purchased with the precious blood of Christ. A lamb without blemish or defect, not with silver or gold, paid for with the precious blood of a spotless lamb, which means your value is not set by your performance, your value is not set by what you produce, your value is not set by your pedigree or your title or your bank account or the worst day of your life. Your value was set at Calvary by what the Son of God was willing to pay for you. And if that's true, if my value isn't dictated and swayed by the things of this life, my value has been set in stone, written in blood by Jesus and his sacrifice for me. I can always afford to add value to someone else. I can always afford to do it, to pay the cost, to be the one who pays. Which brings us right back to where we started. A simple meeting of two men, ten witnesses at a town gate. Two men who both had the legal rights to redeem Naomi's property, and two men who did the math. And the first man, when he sees what the land could give him, is all in until he hears that the land comes with the price, the Moabite widow. And he literally says, he says, I can't redeem it. Why? Because it might endanger my own estate. I can't pay that price because it's gonna cost me too much. Adding to her means subtraction from me. And then Boaz stands up and looking past the cost to what was on the other side of that decision, Boaz says, I'll be the one who pays. And that person in scripture who would redeem is what's called scripturally a kinsman redeemer. In Hebrew, it's the words Goel, and a Goel had to be three things. A Goel had to be a relative close enough to have the right to redeem, they had to be able to actually pay the cost, and they had to be willing to do it. Do you not see? How can I pay the cost? How can I give in this way? Look to the one who did it for me. Do we not see Jesus as the kinsman redeemer? Jesus paid the price once and for all. He had to be close enough. So he became, he left heaven, stripped off his royal garment, and became flesh and bone and bone. Why? To pay the price. He had to be close enough. He had to be able to pay. And no one else in the history of the world could pay the price for our sin and for our debt. And he had to be willing. And he wanted to. So the only question left is will you follow in his example? Will you be the one who pays? Will you pick up your cross and trust him to meet your every need? Will you empty yourself for others despite what it may mean and cost so that they can experience this great love? Will you follow in the example of our King? Of our Lord, of Jesus. And when Tim asked her why she was afraid, she said this to him. She said, If I was saved by my good works, then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty, and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace, notice what she says, at God's infinite cost, then there's nothing he cannot ask of me. If I've earned this, if I've done my part, God owes me a life that matters because I paid for it. But if it's free, if it's from his love and the bounties of his heart, infinite cost to him. And if he tells me to love people, I gotta love people. If he tells me to lay it all down, I lay it all down. If he tells me to go to the darkest corners of the world to spread the love of Jesus, I'll go to the darkest corners of the world. If he tells me to cross the street and serve my neighbor, I'll go across the street and serve my neighbor. If he, at infinite cost to himself, died for me, there's nothing off the table and adding value to you. Whatever I can do, wherever I can go, to follow in his footsteps, the one who calls me valuable and calls me deeper into a life of meaning. I'm gonna invite the prayer team forward, and I think some of us we just need to sit with the reality of what this message means, because this is not a message to understand here as much as it is to live when we leave. But if you're here today and you've never heard of the God who is willing to pay a cost and price for you so high to save and redeem you from your brokenness, he's worth giving your life to you, he's worth denying yourself and laying it and leaving it behind to follow after him. And if you're ready today to give your life to Jesus, there's nothing this team would love more than to pray that prayer with you and introduce you to the one who makes life worth living, who makes your life matter. But for the rest of us today, as we go, there are idols we need to lay down, fears we need to surrender, things that have been keeping us and holding us back from following the example of Jesus and serving and loving the world around us, even if they can never repay. And we need to ask the Holy Spirit to fill us with courage and with faith and with the reminder of the grace that's been bestowed to us to empower us to walk out of here as people who really matter, not by the world's standards, but by the life of laying down who we are so that all will know and all will see the goodness of our God. So, Jesus, would you help us today to deny ourselves, to leave it all behind, to follow you, to follow in your footsteps, Lord. Give us the faith and the strength, fill us with boldness to love deeper, to love uniquely, to see others we may not normally see, and to follow in your example. Lord, and as we go and live this, I ask that you would bless them and keep them, that you would make your face shine down upon them, that you would be gracious to them, turn your countenance their direction, and give them peace. In Jesus' name. Amen. These altars are open today. God bless you.