2024-11-03 Do You Know Him?

Alright, we are continuing our series on being / / Kingdom Ambassadors, but really, we’re in the last couple weeks here of rapping up the teaching of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. We will actually finish this up next week.

But, this week, we are finishing up the second to last teaching that Jesus gives in Matthew 7. In this series, Kingdom Ambassadors, we’ve been going through Matthew 7:12-29, and in the last four weeks we’ve seen these three signs on the highway of life that N.T. Wright says are warning signs as we are attempting to follow the way of Jesus - what it looks like to live in the Kingdom of Heaven.

If you remember a few weeks ago I read from Wright’s commentary on this scripture and I won’t read the whole thing, but in talking about specifically Matthew 7:13-23, he says, / / “This passage has three warnings, coming in quick successions like road-signs on a motorway… These are sharp and worrying. We need to take them seriously.”

So, we started this series with the Golden Rule, which isn’t included in these three roadsigns, but let’s just add it as the sign that tells us the value and importance of treating other people right. If the Sermon on the Mount is telling us anything, it’s telling us how we are supposed to relate to both God and people, right? If you think about it, the Sermon on the Mount, all of these teachings, are Jesus saying, “This is how you fulfill the greatest commandment to Love the Lord your God with all your Heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Or as he will boil that down later on in John 13:34-35, / / “Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

And that looks like something, it looks like the, / / The Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. it looks like the beattitudes. You’re going to need to know how to pray, you’re going to need to understand the law and Jesus interprets it, not how the Pharisees did, how to handle and use money well… All the things Jesus is laying out in the Sermon on the Mount are going to be a part of the life of learning to love God and love people.

So the golden rule was a good place to start this series, and then we get to these three road signs:

/ / 1. The Narrow Gate

The road to true life is hard, and the gate to enter it is narrow, and you’ll have to give up your own way, your baggage, the things you’re carrying with you, forsaking everything else to go the way of Jesus through this gate.

/ / 2. Beware False Prophets

Be aware that everyone is not trustworthy. I know, it’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? But if it wasn’t the teaching of Jesus, I wouldn’t preach it. But it is. Jesus says very specifically, / / “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

And we spent some good time looking at the fact that the word Jesus uses is / / pseudoprophetes, which means a pretended foreteller, meaning, they are saying they are speaking directly for God, or on behalf of God, this is “word from the Lord”, but it just simply is not from God. Whether for their own gain, or nefarious purposes, or out of sheer ignorance, they are misleading God’s people by saying they are speaking for Him, when he has not said to them what they are saying, or using what He has said in the Scriptures in the wrong way.

And the second was / / religious imposter, and man, does that open the doors, doesn’t it? This then becomes more than just those who say, “God told me…” or “Thus sayeth the Lord…”. This becomes about those who say they are Christian, they follow Jesus, they believe in God, but their lives, and their message, and what they say does not line up with that. An impostor is a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others, especially for fraudulent gain. A lot of times the first person deceived is the impostor themselves. I have met so many people that, although well meaning, are just getting it wrong. And a lot of time these are not the ravenous wolves, they barely even know, if at all, they are doing it. They just simply do not understand what the gospel, what Jesus has called them to and they are living in a way that distorts the truth, either intentionally or not.

Here’s an interesting thought from the early church, but all the way up to today, and I think we’ve lost some of the grace in today’s Christianity to process things. But in the time of the early church. I mean, really early, so, let’s say from the time Jesus ascends to heaven, let’s say around AD 29-33, somewhere in there, up to the early 300s, the age of Constantine, who made the whole Roman empire become Christians, by force.

There were many scholars, teachers, theologians who were working out what it meant to be a Christian. They were reading scriptures and seeing how the Old Testament related to the New Testament. They would study scripture and teach what they thought it meant. But there was also the greater church counsel. Early on that’s the apostles of Jesus, then to those who were discipled directly by them, and so on. And in this whole mix of teaching, the counsel of apostles are deciding what should and should not be taught, what lines up with the gospel, and what does not. The best description of this is from Scripture itself in Acts 15, And it’s called / / The Jerusalem Council. I told you last week that one of the issues Paul was dealing with was these Jewish believers coming in behind him trying to get everybody to convert to Judaism, following the law, being circumsized, because that’s what they said they needed to do to be a follower of Jesus. They were getting it wrong. Acts 15:6-7, says, / / The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them…” That part of the conversation isn’t important for today, but they keep talking it out and Paul and Barnabas, who had come in from a city called Antioch, get up and talk through their viewpoints, and then James, the brother of Jesus, who we understand was leading the early church in Jerusalem, stands up, in Acts 15:19 and says, / / “Therefore my judgment is…”

They wrote it down in a letter, and sent it off to the churches.

Here’s the problem, sometimes people would start preaching something and get labeled as a heretic, because what they were preaching didn’t line up with what the early church was establishing as the doctrines of the church. But here’s the really important part, and this is why I say we need some help in this area these days. First, they were not labeled a heretic unless they were unwilling to change their belief and they stayed unrepentant for teaching falsehood. If they did not repent and did not stop teaching it, they were ruled a heretic and excommunicated from the church. You have to take false teaching seriously. This is a season of learning, of establishing and of figuring things out. But even today, we need the ability to talk things out. To say, “Hey, I read this, and I was thinking this, does this make sense?” And we can say together, “no, that doesn’t line up with scripture, let me show you how…” or “Ya, you can say that, for sure.” There needs to be a process of conversation and working things out without just labeling people false teachers or turning their mic off. What I mean by that is we don’t need to be afraid of conversation, we need to be well learned so we know when to say, “This doesn’t line up!” 1 Peter 4:8 says, / / Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.

I wonder what life lessons taught that one to Peter?

So, for our own lives, and our own process, there need to be those we are accountable to, so that we don’t just run away with any ol’ thought or teaching, and second, we need space for conversation, room for maybe getting it wrong and working things out. James says that few people should really desire to be teachers, because teachers are held to a higher standard.

So, these unrepentant, false prophets, religious imposters, Jesus says, “beware of them, they are like wolves in sheep’s clothing…”

And then the third sign that Jesus gives is what we’ll look at today, from Matthew 7:21-23, and the warning comes in the form of a question:

/ / The 3rd road sign: Do You Know Him?

Or, I guess hearing it from Jesus words, “Do you know Me?”

Let’s read 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 might works in your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

No wonder Wright says of these warnings that they are “…sharp & worrying.” and “We need to take them seriously.”

I don’t know about you, but when I read that last warning, something in me goes, how on earth are we supposed to get it right? It sounds like all of that stuff is exactly what we’ve been told to do, or at least what has been exemplified in much of the charismatic, pentecostal, evangelical church of the western world. Prophecy, miracles, signs and wonders, demons getting cast out of people. There’s a lot of people that would think that’s the perfect church service!

So, is it about the gifts, is it not about the gifts? What’s the deal here. What’s Jesus saying? Let’s break it down.

/ / 1. Lord, Lord…

Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord…’ On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord…”

Ok, this is just a matter of what is being said here.

But it’s important to note that Jesus says this twice, back to back. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…

That’s the first time. And that’s all he gives. Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord’.. So, what’s that mean?

The word is / / kyrios and means supreme in authority, Master (as a respectful title).

This is the word to talk of the Lord God. In the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and it was written in the 3rd century BC. This is what the writers of the New Testament read, it’s what the early church read, it’s most likely this is the version of scripture that Jesus read and quoted.

So you understand, the time period that this Greek translation was written, from roughly the 320s BC to right before the birth of Christ is known as / / the hellenistic period. Basically Rome was taking over the known world, but they had adopted Greek language and greek culture as their own, so this was permeating every space across the Roman Empire.

So, this bible, translated during that time, which had been commissioned by a Roman Emperor, and carried out by 70 or 72 Jewish scholars and rabbis, was what was being used in the time of Jesus and the early church.

Why say all of that? Because when Jesus says, “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord’”, that word is the same word in the Septuagint used forJehovah and Adonai, or Yahweh, the most reverent names of God in the Old Testament. Now, Jesus didn’t often say, “Hey guys, I’m God. The God you worship. I’m him, in the flesh”. He didn’t go around saying that. And this word, kyrios, can also be used for an earthly master, it could have been used for rabbi, or teacher as well. But, he’s connecting it to the Kingdom of Heaven. So Jesus, in a bit of a veiled way, is saying, “I’m God…”

And he’s also saying, “Not everyone who says, ‘You are Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven”? What is he really saying here? The Life Application commentary on this verse says, of course, / / “It is not wrong to call Jesus “Lord” - Jesus was distinguishing between lip service and real discipleship. It is much easier to profess Christianity than to possess it.”

If you remember last week that’s what I said I really feel like God is doing in the church right now. Calling us back to a place of what it means to be a true disciple, a true follower of Jesus. There’s some working out that needs to happen! And if we look at this in the greater context of what Jesus just said, that we looked at over the last two weeks. “Beware those who come professing that they speak on my behalf, the pseudoprophetes, the false prophets, the religious imposters. Why? Because even those, who say they follow me. Who say I am their God. That doesn’t mean they actually do follow me, and that doesn’t mean they are actually going to inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

That’s a very heavy statement, isn’t it? So, he doesn’t leave us hanging for too long, he gets right to the real point.

/ / 2. But Those Who Do the Will of my Father

If those who give him lip service won’t enter the kingdom of heaven, then who will? Those who do the will of my Father.

So this begs the very serious question, / / What is the will of the Father?

Let’s look at a few key scriptures. There’s more, but we don’t have all day, right?

In every instance the word used for ‘will’ is the same greek word thelēma.

Romans 12:1-2, / / …I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice - the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

What does that mean? I think it’s as straightforward as it sounds.

/ / The will of God is good, meaning God will not ask you to do something bad and whatever the end goal of His will is in the moment, the result is for good. Now, you have to take that with the understanding of what God has asked others to do in the same way. Jesus, who followed the will of God, was beaten near to death and then murdered on a cross, so that doesn’t sound good, doesn’t feel good, but we all know, it is the most good.

/ / The will of God is pleasing, or the ESV says “acceptable”. I would suggest that’s acceptable to God, not acceptable to us. Jesus says we have to give up our own way, Paul says we have to crucify the flesh… it’s not always going to feel acceptable to us, but it is pleasing, it is acceptable, to God. Paul says in vs 1 that giving our body as a living and holy sacrifice to God is the worship that he finds acceptable.

/ / The will of God is perfect, this word also means complete. The will of God is perfect and complete. Lacking nothing. James 1:4 says,/ / …when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, / / All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

So, the will of God is good, it is pleasing or acceptable, it is perfect and complete, and as we follow Him that is what he is working out in and through us.

1 Peter 2:15, / / It is God’s will that your honorable lives should silence those ignorant people who make foolish accusations against you.

This one is pretty straight forward. / / The will of God is that your life defends itself because you live honorably. It’s like no one can say anything bad about you because you are just so committed to following the way of Jesus.

There’s a new Phil Wickham song playing on K-Love, have you heard it? It’s wild and awesome

/ / If you curse me, then I will bless you

If you hurt me, I will forgive

And if you hate me, then I will love you

I choose the Jesus way!

1 Thessalonians 4:3, / / God’s will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin.

Obviously there’s more to it than that, for sake of time I’m not reading the whole thing, but you can read verses 1-12 of chapter 4 for full context but here’s a quick rundown.

/ / (1) we urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God…

(4) each of you [should] control his own body and live in holiness and honor

(5) not in lustful passion like the pagans who do not know God and his ways

(7) God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives.

So, let’s just cap that first verse we read after the first little statement. / / God’s will is for you to be holy… full stop.

Next about God’s will:

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

This is of course from Jesus teaching on prayer, what we call the Lord’s Prayer, we looked at it extensively in our series on this topic a couple months ago. But the briefest of recaps - Saying to God, “Your kingdom come, your will be done…” is really saying, / / “I want to live under your authority. I submit myself, my life, my actions to your authority. What you say to do I will do. What you command, I will follow. Where you go, I am there with you.”

And the last verse we’ll look at here on the will of God is Matthew 26:42, Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, he is about to be arrested, brought before the religious leaders, and then the government officials, beaten, crucified on a cross and die. And He knows all of this. He knows exactly what is going to happen. He’s told his disciples what is going to happen, whether they understood it or not. And he is praying in the garden, he is in absolute agony, and Matthew says he prays this prayer three times, / / “My Father! If this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.”

/ / To do the will of God is to completely abandon our own will when it calls for it.

I don’t personally think that every moment of everyday God is saying, “ok, now do this, now do this, now do this…. yup…oh wait, you missed it, go back…” He’s not like a back seat driver telling you where to turn or which parking spot to take…

Much of following the will of God is knowing that Scripture has given us the will of God and through discernment and relationship we learn to follow it. By the word of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit, we are meant to discern, as Romans 12 says, what is / / The good, perfect and acceptable will of God.

And the implication here, what Jesus is saying in Matthew 7 is that the will of the Father leads to the kingdom of heaven.

/ / 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.

/ / 3. Do You Know Him?

In this part of the passage Jesus gives the secret to the rest of it all working out. How are we supposed to know the will of God? And so for a second time now Jesus says, this statement “Lord, Lord.”

/ / “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 might works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

Now, look at this in comparison to what he tells the disciples to go do. In Matthew 10 when he sends out the 12 disciples to minister on their own - / / preach the kingdom of heaven is at hand, cast out demons, heal the sick, cleanse the leper, raise the dead.

That’s the instructions…So, what’s the difference? why is he telling others to depart from him and calling them workers of lawlessness?

Two things in there:

What does that mean ‘worker of lawlessness’ when they are simply doing what he tells his disciples to do?

And what does it mean to “know” him? And is there a connection in some way to doing the will of God?

So, looking at this statement, / / ‘workers of lawlessness’ first.

Lawlessness means unrighteous, to violate the law. And this is important because it shows what Jesus is truly saying. Simply doing the right thing does not equate to righteousness.

In Matthew 5:20 Jesus says, / / “I warn you - unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!”

I think there’s two things at work here. Yes, I think Jesus is talking about heaven. When he says in Matthew 7:22, / / “On that day many will say to me…” I believe he’s talking about what we call the Day of Judgment. It’s written about in the Old Testament, it’s called a few different things, The Great and Awesome day of the Lord, the Terrible day of the Lord, the Day of Judgment, but speaking of a day when all of humanity will stand before God’s throne. N.T. Wright says, / / “‘On that day’ in verse 22 is the first use, but by no means the last in Matthew, of a regular phrase which Jesus has transferred from the Old Testament warnings about coming divine judgment into his own warnings about what would happen when God finally acted.”

But I also think we need to read this in context to the Sermon on the Mount which has ultimately been about living for and what it means to live under the authority of the Kingdom of God right now on this earth. Being ambassadors of a kingdom that is yet to come, representing the King, representing the kingdom here and now saying to the world, “Come back to God!”

So the first thing here, in saying “you workers of lawlessness” is that I think Jesus is making a comparison between the righteousness of man (trying to work hard enough and be good enough) and the righteousness of God found in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Paul talks about freedom from the curse of the law, or the fight of personal righteousness. Try your best, you’ll fail, and you have to bring a sacrifice every year to atone for your own sins because you’ll never be perfect. That’s what we are freed from, the system, the demand, the pressure of atoning for our own sin through sacrifice. Hebrews 10:5-7 says, / / That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer. You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin. Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God - as is written about me in the Scriptures.’”

And vs 10 says, / / For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.

God isn’t looking for righteousness by works. He’s looking to free us from the sin in our lives so we can live righteously unto him.

So, Jesus says, / / “depart from me, you workers of lawlessness…”

Whether that is living for your own personal gain by being a false prophet or religious imposter, or whether it is working hard to be perfect and be righteous in your own strength without ever recognizing Jesus as the one who makes us righteous, the result is the same, we miss it. We miss the invitation to be made righteous through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and we cannot, will not, receive all these ways of the kingdom of Heaven that Jesus has been talking about. 3 chapters of “live like this to live in the kingdom of heaven…” but it starts with his righteousness, not ours.

And the second part, or, the first part of the sentence is / / “I never knew you…”

Now, I’ve preached from this passage of scripture many times, and I think every time I have read that verse as, / / “You have to know Jesus.” Do you know Jesus? Do you spend time getting to know and developing relationship with Jesus? Like he’s a friend. Like he’s someone we can actually get to know.

Here’s the thing. I think there’s nothing wrong there. Developing a personal relationship with Jesus is part of the invitation. To get to know Him. To get to know his voice, to get to know his character, his ways. But it’s not like me getting to know you. I don’t know about you, but I don’t go and hang out and have coffee or dinner or something with Jesus. I wish I could, “Hey hun, just going out for coffee with Jesus, be back in…6 days, we have a lot to talk about.”

But, Jesus says in John 15:15-17 that he no longer calls us slaves, he calls us friends, and why is that? Because he’s now finished telling them everything his Father wanted him to. He is completing the will of the Father. Then he says, and this is in direct connection, / / “You didn’t choose me, I chose you, and I chose you to go produce lasting fruit. And I’m giving you this command, Love each other.”

The invitation of Jesus was constantly to follow him, to abide in him, to learn from him, and to do what he says we should do. John 14:15, 23, / / “If you love me, obey my commandments… All who love me will do what I say.” And John picks that up in 1 John 5:3, / / Loving God means keeping his commandments…

So, I had read this verse as learning to love God, and we know that in keeping His commandments we truly do get to know him more. Through prayer, through the word of God, through abiding in Him through following him.

But, this time reading Matthew 7:23, / / “But I will reply, ‘I never knew you…’” I saw it in a completely different light.

I never knew you…there’s a difference between knowing someone and them knowing you. We are good at hiding parts of ourselves in relationships we don’t feel comfortable in. Or maybe we give a certain level of ourselves to certain people, but reserve parts of ourselves for others. That’s a natural thing, right? But Jesus is saying here, “I never knew you.” And who is that on? If someone doesn’t know you, one of two things has happened. It was their problem, they didn’t try to get to know you, or, it was your problem, and you never let them truly get to know you.

In the case of Jesus, which do you think might be the problem?

We love because he first loved us.

He leave the 99 to chase after the one.

It is the kindness of God that leads US to repentance.

He said, “My sheep know my voice and they follow me…”

So, Jesus does all he can to be known by us. He has laid his life bare for all to see. But have we turned to him and said, “Jesus, I want you to know ME! Look on the inside of me! I make MYSELF bare before YOU!”

We sing these songs…

/ / I want to know you… I want to see your face

I want to feel your embrace

I want to experience your presence

I want, I want, I want….

What about, / / I give… And not in service, but of myself.

King David is actually a good person to look at for this. He wrote in Psalm 139:1, / / O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.

In 1 Samuel 16, the prophet Samuel is sent to the house of a man named Jesse. Saul, who was the first king of Israel, is not doing a good job and God has told Samuel that one of Jesse’s sons will be anointed as the next king to replace Saul. So he goes and tells Jesse to bring his sons, and he does, 7 out of 8 of them. Leaving David, the youngest in the field to watch the sheep and goats - doesn’t even mentioned him.

And of course he brings his oldest son first. Eliab, and Samuel takes one look at him and thinks, “Wow, this was the easiest job God has ever given me. Clearly this guy is the next king, look at him…” But God says this to the prophet, / / “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

6 more sons get brought before Samuel and to each one God says, “no”…

Finally Jesse brings David in from the field and 1 Samuel 16:12 says, / / And the Lord said, “This is the one; anoint him.” So as David stood there among his brothers, Samuel took the flask of olive oil he had brought and anointed David with the oil. And the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David from that day on.

I think the key is in Psalm 139. We already read vs 1 - / / O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.

That’s step one, we know that God knows all things, and that he already knows all things, BUT, the real key is in vs 23-24. / / Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Look at the order. He starts in vs 1 with, You already know my heart. You’ve already examined me. You already know everything about me….. So he says… Do it again. Search me again, Test me again, point out in me what blocks me from you. Point out in me what makes me less like you.

This is what scripture means when it says that David was a man after God’s own heart. The Prophet said it to King Saul in 1 Samuel 13, that God had chosen someone to replace him as king, and that he was a man after God’s own heart. And then the book of Acts says that this was said of David, Acts 13:22, / / “But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.’”

Obviously David loves God, and God loves David, but do you think that might have something to do with David giving God access to his heart?

1 Corinthians 8:2-3 (ESV) says, / / If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

I would suggest, in the same fashion that David did, there is an invitation there, if you love God, to make yourself available to be known by Him.

And this is interesting. In 1 Samuel 16:7 God says to Samuel, twice, the Lord..this is what the Lord, or Yhwh, Jehovah God, looks for… the proper name of the one true God. Remember that I said in Matthew 7 when Jesus says, not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord’, and the word used there would have been what the greek version of the Old Testament translates as Yahweh, Jehovah…

/ / Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord…’ (enter all the things we did for god that we thought were good…)

/ / The Lord sees not as man sees… The Lord looks on the heart…

We read David saying this, and at least for me, I picture him sitting in the field as a shepherd, worshipping God and he’s just the sweat little boy out there. But what does that look like for us? To say to God, “examine my heart”… “Yes, I want to know you, but, I want you to know me, completely…” And if we do, what’s he going to say?

There’s a story in Matthew that really illustrates this whole thought quite well in maybe a more current way. In Matthew 19:16-30, a man comes to Jesus to ask him about eternal life. Scripture doesn’t say where he came from or why he’s asking. Doesn’t seem he was put up to it by the Pharisees or anything. Maybe he’s heard about Jesus. Maybe he was there when Jesus preached this part, or maybe he has just heard about him but hasn’t heard him preach, or is just being introduced to his teaching. I’m not sure, but he asks this question in verse 16, / / “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”

And Jesus responds to him in the weirdest of ways at first. He first asks him why he’s asking him about what is good, “There’s only One who is good.” He then tells him to keep the commandments. The man replies, “Which ones?” and Jesus lists 6 of them. But the six he lists are the ones about how we treat other people. And the guy says, “I’ve kept all those, what else?”

Jesus says to him, / / “…go sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21)

And it says he went away sad because he had a lot of possessions.

This guy is looking for a pass. What good deeds do I have to do to be considered righteous, to enter the kingdom of heaven, to receive eternal life? I’ve been pretty good, so I think I’ll probably get a “Well done, you’re good, go about your way.” But Jesus looks past the good deeds, looks past the good works, looks past the outward appearance, into the heart and says, “You don’t really want me to get to know you, do you?”

Proverbs 17:3 says, / / Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but the Lord tests the heart… and sometimes that burns. That last part isn’t scripture, but it’s true nonetheless. Giving up our own way to follow the way of Christ isn’t always easy. Saying to anyone, let alone God Almighty, Jesus Christ, “Search my heart and point out anything that is contrary to what you want, so that we can work together to remove it from my life so I can better serve you, follow you, love you, and love the world around me.”

It’s the heart that matters.

It’s not as simple as just doing the stuff. It’s not as simple as just following the rules. The heart matters.

And it might feel weird to say, but it’s not just about getting to know Him. God wants to get to know YOU! Jesus said, “I never knew YOU!”

Yes, God wants you to get to know him, absolutely, God showed his great love for us, by puting it all on the cross. He gave everything. There is no intention of God withheld. He gave absolutely everything. And if we love because he first loved us then that love is to look back at him and say, “Here is my whole heart. If you gave all, I give all. The whole thing. I don’t want anything hidden. I don’t want anything stopping your righteousness and your sacrifice.”

1 John 1:8-9 says that we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ, / / If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

Confess means to acknowledge, to declare openly, make bare, to open up, to invite to see all.

Search me and know MY heart. Yes, we want to know Jesus. But I think we get stopped up because this is somewhat of a scary thing to say for a lot of people, “Jesus, I want to be known by you.” As David said in Psalm 26:2, / / Put me on trial, Lord, and cross-examine me. Test my motives and my heart.

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