Sermon Transcript
From Matthew chapter 7: So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you. For this sums up the law and the prophets. Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Watch out for false prophets.
They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus by their fruit you will recognize them. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you.
Away from me, you evildoers.
Thanks, Maylynn. Good morning, everybody. We’re continuing our series here in the book of Matthew 5, 6, and 7, Sermon on the Mount. We’ve got one more week after this week. Like the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, I feel like I’ve learned a thing or two in my time here on the earth, and one of the things that I’ve discovered as I get older is that I I think that there are just basically 2 kinds of people in the world, and it all boils down to these 2 people.
One group are those who look at the 23-page menu at the Cheesecake Factory and think that that’s a reasonable size and amount of meals. They have over 250 meals. And then the other group are those like myself who are like, feels like a bit much. That, like, that’s basically all of life. Have you ever seen the Cheesecake Factory menu?
You ever been there? I’m not talking about the food. I can’t comment on that. I know the cheesecake is good. I don’t think we’ve ever— like, maybe like once we’ve had actual food there, but the rest of the time it’s just, you know, you’re going by and you get some cheesecake.
But it’s, it’s a novella. You could do a book report on the menu there. I think they’re making a movie about it. There’s like character development and foreshadowing and conflict. And symbolism and an epilogue and a prologue.
This thing is gigantic. And some people are looking for that amount of choices when you go out to eat. Some people are like, yeah, I’d like more than 250 options on the menu. Some of us are like, I don’t really know if that’s kind of my thing or not. But we have lots of choices in life, lots of choices and things that we need to decide, and sometimes not really quite as extreme as that.
But this Cheesecake Factory approach to life where, okay, I’ve got all of these options here, we’ve got all of these decisions— how do we approach some of like the big questions of life? Not just what I’m gonna eat, but how do I know if he or she is the right one? How do I know where I should go to college? What should I study? What should I major in?
What job or career should I go into? Should I change jobs? Should we move? Should we downsize? When is it time to retire?
All of those kinds of life choices. And when we have those hard choices, those fork-in-the-road kinds of decisions, again, that are much harder than the Cheesecake Factory trying to figure out what you’re gonna eat, and those kind of tough things, it’d be nice if we had somebody to kind of counsel us along the way. Because while we like having choices, sometimes having these tough choices can be a little daunting because it’s like, okay, yes, I’m excited I get to make a choice, but then there’s also this feeling of, but what if I make the wrong choice?
What if I am kind of exposed here through this choice that I’m making? And we, so like, we kind of worry about that. It’d be nice if we had somebody to kind of guide us through those things. It’d be nice if we had like the guy that, I don’t know if he still works at the Taco Bell by our house, but if you’ve ever been at the Taco Bell by our house, There’s a guy who works at the drive-through, or who worked there. My boys introduced me to him, and this guy is fantastic.
This guy makes it sound like everything that you’re ordering is the greatest thing in the world. Like, they told me about him. I’m like, okay, I’m a little bit dubious. And we go, and you order, and you’re like, okay, I guess I’ll have the 2-taco meal. And the guy on the other end’s like, that’s amazing!
Like, wow, um, like maybe like the nachos. Dude, I want to party with you. I’m not kidding. Like, that’s what this guy does. And I’m wondering, this, this guy’s like a therapist.
He’s kind of like coaching you through, and he’s like, okay, I’m getting some confidence. I want to order more stuff. Is this— I, I wonder if he’s ever told anybody, boy, boy, you’re gonna regret that, sir. You know, like you make a bad I wish we had that guy whenever we have the big decisions to make in life to just sort of coach us and to encourage us on.
But many of you have choices to make and we have choices to make and you may be making a decision today that’s a pretty significant thing or you may have a decision that’s kind of on your mind right now. But a lot of the decisions we make, while they’re big ones and they may have different options, they’re not overly daunting, or they may not have long-term ramifications, or they may have some long-term ramifications. But the things we’re gonna look at today that Mei-Lyn just read for us, Jesus is sort of circling the runway. He’s about to land the plane here in the Sermon on the Mount, and he gives us some choices. He faces us with some choices that have eternal implications.
And we’ve gotta choose. And so, there’s 2 things we need to know as Jesus is circling the runway here and getting ready to land. The first thing is this, with these choices, that at no time and in no way are these complex choices. You know, sometimes in life you make a decision and there’s some black and there’s some white and there’s some complexity mixed in. That’s not what this is.
We need to understand that the decisions that Jesus is putting before us, there’s a clear black and white. There’s a clear for or against. There’s no middle ground here. You need to make a choice. And that leads to the second thing we need to know about what we’re going to look at in the text today, is, is that Jesus is going to call each and every one of us to make a choice.
You have to choose. Like, you can’t just say, nope, I’m going to sit this one out. We have to choose about the things that Jesus is putting before us. So let’s start by thinking about what Jesus introduces to us in verses 13 through 14. One of the things that Jesus puts before us is that he says that everybody is on a road.
Everybody’s on a religious path heading towards a spiritual destination. And the road that you’re on, the road that I’m on, everybody here and everybody in the world, Our faith and our spiritual beliefs are definitely taking us somewhere. And there are some people who are like, I’m actually neutral. I actually don’t have any spiritual beliefs. But that is a spiritual belief.
Not caring about religion or not caring about these choices is making a choice. Saying, I’m neutral on these things. I’m Switzerland here. That’s a decision.
And the lack of making a decision, like you’re banking your eternal future on that. I’m banking my eternal future on our faith commitments. And so everybody has faith commitments. Everybody’s on a road. Everybody is on a religious path, so to speak, no matter who you are.
But Jesus only talks about 2 roads, the broad road and the narrow road. He doesn’t do what the world says where lots of roads, but they all end up in the same destination, and every religion is basically the same because we all want God and we all want salvation, and so it really doesn’t matter. That’s, that’s not what Jesus says. He says there are 2 roads and there are 2 destinations, and they’re heading in the opposite direction. So all spiritual approaches, all spiritual approaches basically break into 2 categories, 2 roads.
2 paths. There’s a broad road and there’s a narrow road. So the first thing that we need to figure out is, so what are the 2 roads? Like, we— okay, broad road, narrow road. What does that mean?
What do they look like? Who’s on these roads? Where do they end up? That’s the first thing I want to look at. And the most common answer that people give to, well, what are the 2 roads, basically boils down in people’s mind to, well, it’s probably being a good person versus being a bad person.
I’m assuming that that’s what that means, but is that really what Jesus is doing here? It really wouldn’t make any sense that that was what he is doing because he hasn’t been talking about good versus bad at any point in the Sermon on the Mount. And now that he’s concluding the Sermon on the Mount, it would be weird to just introduce a brand new topic and go off in another direction as he’s concluding the Sermon on the Mount. So what is he talking about here? It’s not being good versus as being bad.
What is he contrasting? And to remember that, we have to go back to Matthew 5, verse 20. I preached about this last fall in a series, a 2-part kind of mini thing called Rethinking Righteousness, where I put before you folks that Matthew 5:20, in my estimation, is the most important verse in all of the Sermon on the Mount because it, it makes sense of the whole thing. Jesus says, for I tell you that unless your righteousness Unless my righteousness, unless our righteousness, the righteousness that we seek to live out and we seek to hold on to, unless that exceeds or surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, Jesus says, you will not enter the kingdom of the heavens. And so you have the righteousness of the Pharisees and the Jewish teachers of the law contrasted with a righteousness that or surpasses that.
Those are the 2 roads. And Jesus, everything in the Sermon on the Mount is about those 2 roads. The righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law we talked about is external, where appearances are everything and the law is ultimate, and it’s all about this sort of external, well, I’m doing these things, but meanwhile, internally, our motives are all wrong. Yes, we may not actually physically murder somebody, and so we can check that box. Hey, didn’t murder somebody today.
But meanwhile, I harbor anger against somebody in my own heart. No, I’ve never physically committed adultery, but I’ve lusted against another person in my heart. It’s the righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, this external thing where appearances are everything, versus a righteousness that exceeds that. And one righteousness will not allow you to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The other righteousness will And so that’s what the 2 roads are.
Not good versus bad, but a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law versus the righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. What else do we know about these 2 roads? Well, if you have the English Standard Version, there’s the word easy that is describing the wide gate in this broad road that is included there. It’s easy. And that’s because it’s the way that we naturally drift.
There are cultural currents and social winds in the world that just cause us to drift. And at no point do these cultural currents or social winds cause you or help you to drift into the life that Jesus wants. At no point.
So it’s easy, this broad road is. It’s also quite popular. There’s a lot of folks on it. We should remember though that just because everybody is doing something or everybody believes something or agrees with something doesn’t make it right.
Everybody believes it or everybody is doing it, it’s not a value in the kingdom of God. There is a way the scriptures tell us that seems right to man but in the end it leads to death. So where are these roads leading, these 2 paths, these 2 roads? Jesus answers that for us as well. There is no joy for me in saying this.
I’m sure there is no joy in Jesus saying it. There’s no gloating. But the broad road that lots and lots and lots of folks are on— again, only 2 roads, not lots of them— but this broad road leads to only one place, and it’s to destruction. Leads to eternal loss and separation. Jesus could not be any more clear.
It leads to sorrow. It leads to regret because of failing to take the warning that Jesus gives us seriously, it leads to God’s divine wrath. And a person might think, I think I’m willing to try to stand up to God’s wrath. I think I can handle that. And that’s utter foolishness.
Nobody, nobody can stand before God’s judgment or wrath apart from God’s mercy. But by God’s utter grace and mercy, there is another path. There is another way. It’s the narrow road. It represents the righteousness that surpasses the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.
Not something you or I obtain to, but Jesus’ righteousness, putting your trust in His perfect righteousness and taking that in and then living out the kingdom of God in your life. Now, to be clear, the narrow road, as opposed to the broad road, the narrow road is hard. That’s the word that’s used in the English Standard Version there in verse 14. There is difficulty in following Jesus. There is difficulty in being on the narrow road.
About that a bit more here in just a moment. But while the narrow road is hard, where does it lead? Leads to life.
Zoe life. Eternal life. Abundant life. Fullness of life.
And there will be times on this narrow road, and you may be there right now, where you’re just feeling like, I feel like I’m doing this alone. I feel like I I’m just like alone in this journey here and nobody understands and nobody’s with me. And there will be times like that because the road is hard, the narrow road, and it’s much less populated. And there will be moments that you feel like you’re alone. And Jesus says things like deny yourself every day, take up your cross daily.
That’s hard, but it leads to life. So those are the 2 roads and I realize that Making distinctions about those kinds of things is politically incorrect. It’s intolerant and judgmental in our world to even suggest that there’s only 2 roads and one heads to one destination and one heads to another destination. I realize that, but Jesus is saying we absolutely have to be able to make these kinds of distinctions. There are only 2 roads.
One leads to destruction, the other leads to life. One is broad, well populated with people, It’s easy. We naturally drift that way. The other way is narrow, but it leads to life. And that leads to a second question.
What are the 2 roads? Yes, but if I take the narrow road, second question, what can I expect along the way? What am I going to experience? And the first thing we can expect, as I just mentioned, is it’s hard. I wish I— look, that’s not printed in the brochure that you get when you sign up for Christianity.
I totally get that, right? Nobody tells you it’s gonna be hard. There is a faux version of Christianity out there that tells you, if you just follow Jesus, everything will work out in your life. Sometimes that happens, but that’s not necessarily the case. The way is hard, and we will experience trials and trouble.
We will experience grief. Why? Because this place that we live in is broken, and there are moments when we will walk in that loneliness and grief, and we’re gonna have to deny ourselves. That’s what Jesus said. And as a result, many, I believe, start out walking the narrow road and find that it’s too hard, it’s too costly, and so they end up changing roads.
You stay on the narrow road, though, and it leads to life. So that’s one thing you can experience. It’s gonna be hard, but assuming you’re committed to sticking with it because it leads to life and you trust what Jesus is saying and you realize that your righteousness is needs to exceed that of the righteous, of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. And so you need Jesus’ righteousness. Assuming that you’re willing to walk the narrow road, what else can you expect?
One thing that you can expect along the way, Jesus says, is that you’re gonna have to choose who you listen to. There are gonna be many voices along the way, and Jesus warns us that there will be false voices, false teachers, false prophets who will try to disrupt your journey on the narrow road. False prophets are the ones who say, don’t listen to Jesus, or they’re the ones who say, listen to Jesus, but also listen to these people over here. They’ll say, actually, it really doesn’t matter what road you’re on. They all just kind of end up at the same place.
Really, life is a cafeteria. You take a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Whatever works for you is fine. That’s what false teachers tell us, right? That’s what false prophets tell us.
Don’t, like, don’t pick the hard way. Pick the easy way. That’s what everybody else is doing. Everybody agrees that that’s the way to go. False prophets and false teachers have been present at every time and present in every area of Christian— era of Christian history.
They were in the early Christian church. They were in the medieval church. They were in the Reformation church. They were in the Puritan church, and they’re in the church today. Now, in the Bible, we usually think about prophets as these people who make predictions about the future, and there is that.
But on a broader scale, when Jesus talks about false prophets and false teachers, what he’s really talking about is that the role of a prophet is somebody who claims divine inspiration from God. I’m speaking as God’s mouthpiece. And what Jesus is saying is, beware people who claim to speak for God. Not everybody who says that they speak for God actually speaks for God. Beware of those who spread, whether knowingly or even unknowingly, false teachings or messages while claiming to speak the Word of God.
Beware, Jesus is saying, of people who make predictions about the future that— who claim to speak for God, but those predictions don’t come true. If you say, God has told me this, and you make a prediction about something, and that prediction does not come true, beware. The Bible takes that so seriously. Beware, Jesus is saying, of people who say, Well, God told me this, or God said, when God did not actually say that. So Jesus is saying to you and to me, not everybody is qualified to give you advice.
Not everybody is qualified to counsel you and to speak into your life. But what we tend to do is we’ll tend to just go to about anybody who will tell us what we want to hear. Where does that come from? You look at the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve start taking advice from an unqualified person, a snake. So to be clear, false prophets are dangerous not only because what they teach is false, but also because they’re ferocious and they’re predatory, Jesus says, and they’re deceptive, appearing to be something that they’re not.
So Jesus is saying to us, don’t take advice from snakes or wolves. And we’re like, got it, Jesus. No snakes, no wolves. I’m not listening to any of them. Here’s the problem: false teachers and false prophets don’t always look like snakes or wolves.
I’ve never had somebody come up to my door and knock on the door and say, hi, I’m just in the area and I’m a false prophet, although you can probably tell that from my name tag here, it says false teacher, false prophet. Anyway, I’ve just come by to deceive you. Like, nobody’s ever done that. That doesn’t happen. Instead, They come looking like and sounding like Christians very often.
You ask them, are you a Christian? Yes. Do you believe in the Bible? Yes. Do you believe in Jesus?
Yes. Do you believe in the Jesus of the New Testament? Yes. Do you believe in salvation? Yes.
So at that point, you need to start like defining terms with somebody because it’s possible and even probable in many cases that they’re pouring into those particular kind of terms something that you and I are not looking at. And so we need to ask some questions. I’ll get to that in just a moment. But false prophets and false teachers, you can’t always just tell from the outside. They often go to the same universities as you or I might go to.
They often use orthodox lingo, talking about gospel and kingdom and the Trinity. And we’re like, okay, they seem to know the scripture, but the New Testament says so does the devil. The devil knows scripture too. They appear godly, but beware, Jesus says, they are ferocious wolves who hurt the flock. So Jesus says, if you walk along the narrow road, just know that you’re going to have to have some discernment about who you’re going to listen to.
But while false teachers are deceptive, verses 16, 17, and 18, Jesus says false teachers can be detected. You can detect them. Now, how can we know if they’re false or not? Well, Jesus says, look at the fruit. All good fruit comes from good trees.
All bad fruit comes from bad trees. Good fruit doesn’t come from bad trees. Bad fruit doesn’t come from good trees. Look at the fruit. And if some of you have ever been over to our house, and a number of you have, you know that we have some fruit trees and lemons and persimmons and oranges and all kinds of fun things.
Comequats come out and you all can come and pick them at any point. And many of you have, like you come by and you bring your bag and your ladder and you just go for it. Like, great. But if any of you are dubious about whether or not we have fruit at our house, just come look. I will show you the fruit that we have.
When it comes to prophets of God, the fruit in their lives is the evidence that whether or not they’re true or false. The fruit, Jesus says, look at the fruit. So what fruit should we be looking for? First, look at the fruit of doctrine. The fruit of doctrine, meaning is this person teaching in accordance with Scripture, the whole of Scripture, not just taking one verse or 2 verses or taking them out of context?
Are they teaching in line with Scripture? Are they teaching in line with the sound doctrine that has been handed down from the early Christian church to today and it’s been wrestled with over time, or is this person claiming to have found some— something new? A lot of times somebody’s like, okay, I found something new here that nobody else has discovered, and you’re like, beware, watch out. We can be sure that when somebody is claiming to tell us something that they found, a truth that nobody else has ever known about, you’re like, I don’t know. No, that’s not how that works.
So, the doctrine. What do they say about Jesus? Like, not just did he exist. What do they say about the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news, that a person is saved by grace through faith alone, not through your good works? Do they agree with that?
Do they believe that Jesus is fully God? I remember one time I had a conversation with somebody who was pointing out to me John chapter 1, where it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And we were talking about this. And in their scripture, they had that little letter A, where it’s like, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. And then they just kind of like, okay, timeout.
Beware of anybody who denies that Jesus is equal with God. Beware of anybody who downplays Jesus’ sacrificial death. Beware of anybody who rejects Jesus’ humanity. So the fruit of doctrine. Secondly, look for the fruit of character in this person?
Do they practice what they preach or strive to do so? Not are they perfect, but are they demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit in their lives? Love, joy, and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Do they pursue godliness? Do they strive to be humble?
Are they teachable? Are they accountable? Are they open to correction? So, the fruit of doctrine, the fruit of character, and then thirdly, one more test is the fruit of their teaching in the lives of their listeners or followers.
What happens in the lives of the followers of this person? Does their teaching promote godliness in others, or does it put this weight on people where it’s like, well, you have to do this and this and this, and it’s just like this legalism yoke that people wear upon themselves? Or is it just in the other direction where in the lives of the followers is just, it doesn’t matter, just do whatever. So Jesus says if you travel the narrow way, you will absolutely expect to encounter different voices along the way. Some are going to be true, others are going to be false, but you can recognize them.
You’re going to have to make a choice. You can recognize them by their fruit. You know what else we can expect along the way? Lots and lots of opportunities on the narrow road to devote ourselves to doing good for others. To loving others as we love ourselves.
Even though you’re on the narrow road and it’s going to feel like you’re alone at times, we can’t forget about people on the broad road or anybody else that happens to be on the narrow road. Verse 12 has become known as the Golden Rule. That’s what people have called it. And in it, Jesus brilliantly summarizes all of the Old Testament in one verse. Amazing.
In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you. For this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Did you know that Jesus was not the first person to ever say something like verse 12? He didn’t invent this ethic. Other teachers and rabbis had said similar things.
Rabbi Hillel in the Talmud had said, whatever is not helpful, don’t do that to other people. Or you have Confucius who said, Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. Or you have in Greek philosophy, Stoic philosophers said, whatever you want people to not do to you, don’t do that to anyone else. Like, you see the difference? All of those are negative.
All of those are about self-preservation and what I did not do. Hey, if you don’t want to get hurt, then don’t hurt other people. If you don’t enjoy being robbed, then don’t rob others. If you don’t like being cursed, don’t curse others. If you don’t enjoy being hated, don’t hate others.
If you don’t like being clubbed on the head, don’t club other people on the head. That way of thinking, however, of these things that I’m avoiding, is the righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. That’s the broad road. It’s the way of thinking that only thinks about sin in terms of avoidance, as in, hey God, here’s a list of things that I have not done, so technically I haven’t done anything wrong.
That’s a far, far cry from verse 12. It’s a far cry from, do to others what you would want them to do to you. Jesus’ message is never merely, don’t do certain things. Don’t murder, don’t lust. Jesus is always pushing past activity to our heart, to our motivation.
So the Golden Rule is a call to act. Rather than avoid. It is so much easier to not harm somebody. I’m just raising my hand. Listen, it’s easier for me to not harm somebody than it is to actually love them.
But if you enjoy being loved, and who doesn’t, then love others. If you like to receive things, then share, give. If you like being appreciated, appreciate others. That’s what verse 12 is saying. But You and I tend to usually focus a lot more on how we are being treated by others.
Somebody says, how was your day today? I’m usually thinking of it through the lens of how did others treat me. Verse 12 turns that around and asks, how did you treat people today? So what the Golden Rule, verse 12, does is it makes you an agent, not a victim. You can use it on people that you like.
You can use it on people that you don’t like. You can use it with people who are of different ages. You can use it with people with different personality types. You can use it while you’re driving. You can use it while you’re texting.
John Ortberg once said you can use it by not texting while you’re driving. You can use it when you’re sending an email. You can use it when you’re posting something on social media. In everything. Jesus is saying, do the Golden Rule.
I mean, how broad is that? The rule, verse 12, is also universal. Jesus did not say, only do these things unto people who you like and who you’re close to and who look like you and think like you and vote like you and all of those things. No, this is the Greek word for others. Do unto others.
The Greek word there means humanity, so it means all of humankind, meaning do it to everybody. So verse 12 is really about action and initiative. It’s not waiting until the other person does something good to me. It’s not dependent upon what others do. Again, this is a narrow road.
They may not do these things unto you, but we are to do them unto them. It is treating others the way that we would want to be treated. It puts everyone on the same level as me. They’re not beneath me. They have desires.
They have feelings. They have intentions. They have dreams, they have fears just like I do. And it causes me to think, I wonder what it’s like to be that person, to be in their shoes in that situation.
Now, a lot of people, we take up the golden rule going, okay, I’m gonna— if I do this for others, then people will do this for me.
Is that true? It’s usually an unspoken expectation, but I will do this as long as it works. And if that’s our motivation, this is gonna be a really, really short-term commitment, isn’t it? Because Jesus said just the opposite. When you do these things to others, expect to receive something negative very often.
You will be persecuted. Somebody will slap you on the cheek, so to speak. This is gonna be hard. People are gonna take advantage of you. So you’re gonna need a different motivation to do the Golden Rule.
So, what’s the right motivation? Look at the context of verse 12 and what comes immediately before it. You can find the words of verse 12, the Golden Rule, printed on greeting cards and plaques and secular places, universities, all those things, but it’s almost always misquoted. Did you know this? It’s usually quoted without the first word of the verse, so.
Some translations say, therefore. So, Or therefore, in everything, do these things. So that word so therefore implies that verse 12 is intimately connected back to verses 7 through 11 in chapter 7. Well, what’s in there? Pastor Dan talked about that last week.
That’s where Jesus describes God as a loving, attentive, present Father who is eager for us to ask him and to approach him and to trust him to provide what is necessary for us. And like any wise parent, God doesn’t always give us everything that we ask for. When your children ask you for something, you always give them whatever they ask for? Not if it’s going to harm them. Not if it’s bad for them.
But that doesn’t make God any less interested in us. That doesn’t make God any less loving or good. He knows what we need and He knows how to give us what He promises. And what He promises is to those who ask, those who seek, those who knock, is more of Himself. Tying this back to verse 12 is just as God is so kind and so loving and wants to answer the prayer of his children who depend upon him because he set the example and he is the model, therefore we are to model our lives after that.
God does it for you, so you’re to do it for others. Jesus is saying to us though that we cannot live out verse 12, the Golden Rule, doing this unto others— we cannot walk on the narrow road without experiencing the truth of verses 7 through 11, without knowing that you have a good Father who is with you on this hard way. You have a good Father who is with you and trusting in his character. So all of these verses are intimately connected together. So we’ve identified the 2 roads.
We’ve talked about what you can expect if you take the narrow road. The last and possibly the most important question is, how do I know what road I’m on? How do I determine what road I’m on? How do I know if I’m on the right road? Look again at verses 21 to 23.
Again, life can seem so complicated sometimes. That’s not what this is. Jesus could not be any more clear. There’s no complexity, no gray area. What does he say?
Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles. And then Jesus says, I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers. So this is a terrifying passage.
If you’re not terrified by this, I, I, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know how to help you. There are 3 phrases in these verses though that can help us better understand what Jesus is saying here. One, Lord, Lord, verse 21. Jesus is saying that our lives and our conduct need to match up with our verbal confession.
It doesn’t really matter what our title for Jesus is. It doesn’t matter what we call him if our life doesn’t match that. You can call him Lord or even Lord, Lord, but if our life doesn’t match it, if our obedience is not in line with that confession, there’s a point of concern. And what matters most, Jesus is saying, is not what you say, or what you call God, but rather in doing the will of the Father. What Jesus is describing, by the way, is not an issue for some other time.
It’s an issue for today. He’s talking in the present tense. Whoever does the will of my Father, the one who does the will of my Father right now, Jesus is speaking about this. In other words, you don’t have to wait until then when we stand before God at the end of our lives to make a decision. In fact, You shouldn’t wait.
Today is that day. Jesus doesn’t want anybody to be deceived. He doesn’t want to trick anybody or confuse them. This is a clear call that we’ve got to live in relationship with him with our heart oriented properly on who God is and what he asks. And what he asks and requires is obedience.
That’s God’s love language. He loves obedience. John 14:21, whoever has my commands and keeps them is really the one who loves me. That’s what Jesus said. So one way to determine if you’re on the narrow path is evaluating if your life matches up to what you profess to believe, your obedience.
Second phrase, on that day, verse 22. In verse 21, Jesus is talking about this day, today. Verse 22, Jesus is talking about that day in the future. And on that day, All of us will have to give an account for our lives before God. We can’t escape that.
And so Jesus is telling us right here that on that day, as great and important as doing good works in the world are in this day, it’s not going to be enough on that day.
Why isn’t doing good works or doing more good stuff than bad stuff going to be enough? Because it doesn’t address our deepest need. Our deepest need is not to do more good stuff. It’s not to be more moral. We need a Savior, and we need to put our trust in one who is more righteous than us, whose righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees.
That is, that’s Jesus.
Doing good works are wonderful, but it doesn’t address our real problem. What we need to do is is understand our need for a Savior. And so back to verse 22, what happens on that day, that moment when you and I stand before Jesus, is determined by what happens in these days. Our lives today impact what happens on that day and in that moment. Because if I stand before Jesus on that day, or you stand before Jesus on that day, and we try to justify ourselves on that day, that I like, look at all these good things I did, look Look, I called you Lord.
I’ve got a platform that is pointing to you, God, then I was not really ever trusting Jesus in this day.
God wants to justify us through Jesus today so that you and I can stand before him on that day. Third phrase, I never knew you, verse 23. Jesus is saying it’s possible, and this is terrifying again, it’s possible that we could serve him. It’s possible that we can speak for him. It’s possible that we can have a platform that points to him, and yet somehow still not know him.
Jesus doesn’t say that our profession of him is irrelevant. He’s not saying that that’s unimportant, but he says it’s possible to profess Jesus as Lord without actually knowing him and then have Jesus deem our profession as false or inauthentic, which according to verse 22 is going to catch a lot of people off guard. It’s gonna catch us totally by surprise. And so the question, it seems, is not so much, did you do these good things? It’s really more, does he know you?
Does he know me? Notice Jesus doesn’t say, I never knew about you. Of course he knows about us. The word Jesus uses for know, though, here means he’s saying, I never had a relationship with you. He doesn’t mean you’re Christians who’ve just backslidden.
He’s saying, I never knew you. I never had relationship with you. So who does Jesus know then? Verse 21, it is the one who does the will of the Father. As we’ve seen, it’s possible to be doctrinally correct, to be excited about God, to be active in service to God, but the issue is, have you and I surrendered our will to God?
A genuine Christian is not necessarily more moral than another person or have greater character than a non-Christian. But the mark of an authentic Christian, an authentic Christian is ultimately one who does the will of the Father. What is the will of the Father? That we know Jesus and continually trust Jesus and his righteousness, both in this life and for the next. So what Jesus is saying is that you and I need to make a choice.
We need to make a decision. 2 roads, and we will one day stand before God based upon what road that we’ve been on.
The broad road is, am I gonna stand on my own goodness, performance, my own merits? While the narrow road is, am I gonna stand on Jesus’ goodness and performance and merits on my behalf?
The choice is yours. The choice is mine. Let’s pray.
With your head bowed, your eyes closed, I would just want to invite anyone who is unsure of which road that you’re on. If you’ve never, or if you’re not sure that you’ve ever made a conscious commitment to follow Jesus and to surrender your will to him, would you just do that right now through prayer? You can pray something like, dear God, I I pray that you’d forgive me of my sins, that you would help me to not put trust in my own goodness and to recognize that we fall short of your goodness. So we need Jesus to come and to save. Would you come and save me?
Just tell God that. Ask God to rescue you, to forgive you of your sins. To make you right with him and to confirm that you are his child.
If you are sincere in that decision before God, he receives you by his grace.
You can have confidence today as you leave that you belong to him. Father, we ask that you would help us each day to evaluate what it costs to follow you, and I pray that we would follow you unswervingly. Thank you for the clarity that you bring through your word, the clarity of some choices that need to be made. I pray that we would follow you faithfully. Thank you that Jesus paid the debt that we could never pay.
By his death on the cross, his perfect life, rising again from the dead. Thank you, God. We put our trust and hope in him today. Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
