Intentional

Matthew 7:21-29

What is the kingdom of God? How would you respond? The easy answer would be to note that a kingdom is that territory over which a king reigns. Since we understand that God is the Creator of all things, the extent of His realm must be the whole world. Manifestly, then, the kingdom of God is wherever God reigns, and since He reigns everywhere, the kingdom of God is everywhere.

Story:

In 1990, I was invited into Eastern Europe to do a series of lectures in three countries, first in Czechoslovakia, then in Hungary, and finally in Romania. As we were leaving Hungary, we were warned that the border guards in Romania were quite hostile to Americans and that we should be prepared to be hassled and possibly even arrested at the border.

Sure enough, when our rickety train reached the border of Romania, two guards got on. They couldn’t speak English, but they pointed for our passports, then pointed to our luggage. They wanted us to bring our bags down from the luggage rack and open them up, and they were very brusque and rude. Then, suddenly, their boss appeared, a burly officer who spoke some broken English. He noticed that one of the women in our group had a paper bag in her lap, and there was something peeking out of it. The officer said: “What this? What in bag?” Then he opened the bag and pulled out a Bible. I thought, “Uh-oh, now we’re in trouble.” The officer began leafing through the Bible, looking over the pages very rapidly. Then he stopped and looked at me. I was holding my American passport, and he said, “You no American.” And he looked at Vesta and said, “You no American.” He said the same thing to the others in our group. But then he smiled and said, “I am not Romanian.”

By now we were quite confused, but he pointed at the text, gave it to me, and said, “Read what it says.” I looked at it and it said, “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20a). The guard was a Christian. He turned to his subordinates and said: “Let these people alone. They’re OK. They’re Christians.” As you can imagine, I said, “Thank you, Lord.” This man understood something about the kingdom of God—that our first place of citizenship is in the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is wherever God reigns, and since He reigns everywhere, the kingdom of God is everywhere.

Matthew 6:10 “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

John Calvin said it is the task of the church to make the invisible kingdom visible. We do that by living in such a way that we bear witness to the reality of the kingship of Christ in our jobs, our families, our schools, and even our checkbooks, because God in Christ is King over every one of these spheres of life. The only way the kingdom of God is going to be manifest in this world before Christ comes is if we manifest it by the way we live as citizens of heaven and subjects of the King.

Matthew 7:21–29 ““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes”

Intentional: done on purpose; deliberate.

Three things to help us better walk in the Kingdom of God (Heaven)

Dont be Nominal Christians

Matthew 7:21–23 ““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

Arthur W. Pink declared ““Never were there so many millions of nominal Christians on earth as there were today and never were there such a small percentage of real ones... We seriously doubt whether there has ever been a time in the history of this Christian era where there were such multitudes of deceived souls within the churches who verily believe that all is well with their souls when in fact the wrath of God abideth on them.” And then he added, “and we know of no single thing better calculated to undeceive them than a full and faithful exposition of those closing verses of our Lord's sermon on the mount”

Are you a Christian? That is the question. Is it real? the answer to that question does not depend upon your intellectual beliefs (Lord, Lord) or upon your good works (“Did we not prophesy in your name?) but upon your relationship to the Lord Jesus.

Ephesians 2:8–10 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

We are called to live in a right relationship with God and through that comes our works for Him.

Story:

In one of the great battles that took place between the Greeks and the Persians just prior to the Greek golden age, there was an incident that perfectly illustrates this principle. The Persian fleet itself from the Bosporus out along the Macedonian coast and then down the edge of Greece to Attica. It finally met the Greek ships in the Bay of Salamis just off Athens. The Greek ships were lighter and quicker; the Persian ships were cumbersome. So, in the battle that followed, the Greeks made short work of the Persians. in one particular encounter a Greek ship managed to sail close to a large Persian vessel and brushed by its side. Because they had done this quickly, the Persian oarsman did not have time to draw their oars in, although the Greeks did. The result was that the Greek ship broke off all the oars on the side of the Persian vessel. Few on the Persian ship realized what had happened because oarsman on the other side continued rowing, the ship swung around in a circle leaving a fresh set of oars visible to the Greek captain. The Greeks then reversed their ship, trimmed off the other side of oars and sank the enemy.

It must have been a humorous sight, the great ship going around in circles. But it is an illustration of what happens when there is faith without works or works without faith. We can generate a big storm with one oar. We can get attention. But we'll just be going around in circles spiritually. Real Christianity is a personal relationship to Jesus Christ through faith resulting in a new life that goes forward and that is increasingly productive of good works

2. Build your life on a Solid Foundation

Matthew 7:24–27 ““Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.””

What is your foundation? on what do you build?

You see, its possible to sit here and go to church all your life and not be saved. or you look at all these todos and think, “ these are great sayings. They are the key to morality. ill just go out and try a bit harder.”

But what Jesus is saying is he doesn’t want you to go out and “try” harder. to go out and try harder is like building a mansion on sand.

Isaiah 28:16 “therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.’”

Ephesians 2:20 “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,”

Acts 4:11 “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.”

1 Peter 2:6–7 “For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,””

What is our solid foundation: Jesus.

what I love about this passage is that both people are building something. We are all trying to accomplish something in life.

But for us today I think the danger is not so much that we are building something but we think that we don’t need a foundation, we will just drift.”

This is dangerous thinking. its saying that I don’t need Jesus I got me.

3. Because of Christ’s authority

How do we know we are following the right kingdom?

Matthew 7:29 “for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”

all of this is great and all but if we don’t believe that Jesus is Lord than everything falls apart.

Alexander B. Bruce says “The scribes spoke by authority, resting all they said on traditions of what had been said before. Jesus spoke with authority, out of his own soul, with direct intuition of truth; and, therefore, to the answering soul of his hearers.”

So what?

How do we be intentional? If we are to build on a solid foundation.

The people who heard the Lord Jesus Christ in Galilee on the occasion of his preaching of the sermon on the mount were “amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” And yet, it is not said that any who heard him that day believed in his doctrine or committed themselves to him. Unfortunately, it is possible to do the same thing in our far more heretic and perhaps more sophisticated century.

What is the most important message of this sermon? Certainly, it is the person of Jesus of Nazareth himself, the son of God, who spoke as no man has ever spoken before or since, who lived as he preached, and who then died and rose again that He might offer us a full and perfect salvation.

Do you believe that? Have you committed your life to his care? If you will make that commitment, he will then do for you all that he has promised. He will make you blessed in the sense given to the word in the beatitudes. He will make you the salt of the earth, a light in this Dark World. He will interpret the scriptures to you through the Holy Spirit. He will teach you to pray. He will carry you through all the cares and tumults of this life to an eternity of unbroken fellowship with him.

Do you believe that? Today he is speaking to you. He is saying, “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest’ Matthew 1128. “Believe on me” let your own heart answer, “no one ever spoke the way this man does” John 7:46. “Lord, I want you to be my savior period”