Fruits and Foundations // Matt. 7:13-29

Table Question: What is the most popular trend that you either joined in on or refused to participate in?

I was reluctant to watch The Office. I had a friend in high school who told me all about it and how it was his favorite show. But I saw the first episode, thought it was stupid, and then refused to watch it or even consider giving it a second chance.

However, roughly 3 years later, I decided to give it a second chance… I have now, embarrassingly, seen the entire series 16 times start to finish.

With social trends and fads as monumental as The Office or the new thing with wearing baggy pants or using the word demure, it seems like everyone is in on “this thing” and they’re always talking about it, and you’re faced with the choice to join in or get left behind.

For some this may be a time closer to high school and others it could have been last week, but think of a time where you found yourself outside of a trend, or on the outside of an inside joke, or maybe just felt left out by people you wanted to be close to.

What kind of emotions come with being left out or feeling like an outsider?

In some way, we have all felt this, and it points to a problem I think we share:

FCF: We will work to fit in with people we want to approve of us.

Now this may get a little close to home, but the approval we’re chasing from other’s doesn’t always come from our friends… it can also be a for a role model, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even our parent’s.

And when we want someone else to approve of us, what do we do?

Change our behavior, change how we talk, change all sorts of things about ourselves in order to fit in...

When it comes to being a follower of Jesus, a Kingdom Citizen like we’ve said throughout the Sermon on the Mount, we read throughout the Bible that we are called to be different. Some phrases we read that describe Christians are exiles (1 Pet. 2:11), those chosen out of the world (John 15:19), and those not of the world (John 17:14).

In a very real sense, we should look and live differently.

As we work through our final passage here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is going to give us some insight as to what that difference should look like. We can summarize all of these in saying this:

Main Idea: While hard and unpopular, the Christian life reveals spiritual fruit and strength.

The way that Jesus is going to help us understand this is by painting 3 different pictures, and they will guide our time through the text together.

We can call these the...

3 Pictures of a Christ Centered Life

*With that now in mind, let’s read the text together, and I’ll pray for us as we look to the Word.*

*Read Matthew 7:13-29 and Pray*

1. A narrow gate and a hard road (v. 13-14)

Jesus first says that we should “Enter through the narrow gate.” (v. 13)

This is a common illustration that’s used in the Bible and even in a lot of more modern writing and poetry to describe decision making.

You may know the famous Robert Frost poem that starts, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both.”

As we come to the end of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, He is presenting us with a choice to make.

Will we follow the rest of the world?

Or

Will we follow the teachings and the Way of Jesus?

Let’s compare the two:

Verse 13 tells us the way of destruction has a wide opening and a broad path to walk down.

Danny Akin describes the wide path this way:

It is the popular road, the well-known road. Ideologically it is not narrow in its thinking; it is open-minded. Morally it is not restrictive in its behavior; it has few rules. Virtually anything goes. Spiritually it is inclusive. Those on this road argue that there is a wide highway to heaven… We are all headed to the same place, its signs tell us.

- Danny Akin, CCE: Sermon on the Mount, pg. 139.

When we look at the way most people we know live their lives, we’ll see that their on this kind of path. What feels like freedom now actually has them chained and enslaved to a master who is leading them directly to their death.

In verse 14, however, Jesus gives us the alternative:

Matthew 7:14 CSB

14 How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.

Consider why few people may actually find this road:

It has a small opening

There are not many people they know who are walking by it

(This may be the most convicting reason) No one is showing them how to find it.

Everyone they see is continuing along this wide path, and no one who knows about the narrow road has ever bothered to tell them about it.

Now of course, even if someone sees this narrow way, there’s a good chance they may decide not to take it, and that’s because it looks, and it is difficult.

I think this something we need to push back against as we share the gospel: Yes, a life with Jesus is hard… in fact it is the hardest thing we will ever do. But it’s certainly not as hard as life without Jesus.

Consider the hardships you have experienced, the battles that you have had to face in your life. If you had no hope of the gospel - the knowledge that even though what you’re experiencing is terrible, Jesus loves you, cares for you, hears your cries to Him, holds your tears in His hands - how would that have changed you? How would that shape how you view God, the world, and other people?

Every person you meet who doesn’t know Jesus and is on the wide path to destruction does not have that hope, and they are shaped by their hopelessness in Jesus and the hope that they are placing in other things.

*So, this path we take matters. And with it, who we follow also matters.

The second picture that Jesus will use to illustrate a life centered on Him is...

2. A good tree producing good fruit (v. 15-23)

The word here translated as “Be on your guard” in the CSB and “Beware” in the ESV at its root means “Pay attention,” or “look.”

What are we to look for? False prophets

Their motives are purely evil. Rather than seeking to care for others, they seek to steal for themselves (ravaging - Gr. robber, thief).

But how will we know who these false prophets are? What does Jesus tell us to look for? Their fruit

How do we evaluate this fruit?

Well first, see if the tree you’re looking at is even supposed to have any fruit on it! Look at Matt. 7:16

Matthew 7:16 CSB

16 You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles?

Just like we won’t see fruit on these plants, we will not see spiritual evidence of a Christian in the life of someone who is not a believer in Jesus.

Therefore, we shouldn’t commit ourselves to follow their example.

Second, look at the quality of the fruit.

Paul Tripp gives an illustration using an apple tree to paint this picture:

"...If a tree produces bad apples year after year, there is something drastically wrong with its system, down to its very roots. I won’t solve the problem by stapling new apples onto the branches. They also will rot because they are not attached to a life-giving root system. And next spring, I will have the same problem again. I will not see a new crop of healthy apples because my solution has not gone to the heart of the problem. If the tree’s roots remain unchanged, it will never produce good apples."

- Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands

So good fruit from a tree is evidence that it is rooted in the right place; where the tree is planted allows for fruit to grow.

So in all of this, we’re instructed how we should determine who we listen to, especially when it comes to our spiritual guidance, but there’s also challenge here to evaluate fruit that we bear in our own lives.

Many of us know what Jesus says about this is John 15:

John 15:4–5 CSB

4 Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.

If we want to see fruit that glorifies God in our lives or anyone else’s, we must be rooted in Jesus.

Look at how He explains what this means in v. 21-23:

Not everyone who claims Jesus’ name will enter the kingdom (v. 21)

Not everyone who prophecies will enter the kingdom (v. 22)

Not everyone who drives out a demon will enter the kingdom (v. 22)

Not everyone who preforms a miracle will enter the kingdom (v. 22)

This should tear down any idea of works based righteousness… relationship with Christ is paramount to bearing true fruit.

What is your relationship with Jesus like? Do you know Him, not just about Him? Has He changed you?

When He changes you, then you will bear fruit.

The clearest evidence that someone knows and has been changed by Jesus is found here in the last picture that Jesus offers:

3. A house built on a rock (v. 24-27)

The separator here, the evidence that is clear for all others to see that you have been changed by Jesus is that you are one “who hears these words of mine and acts on them” (v. 24).

Jesus also says in John 14:23-24

John 14:23–24 CSB

23 Jesus answered, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 The one who doesn’t love me will not keep my words. The word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.

And what picture does Jesus use to describe what this person is like in Matthew 7:24? A house built on a rock.

Why would you build your house on the rock instead of on the sand like Jesus says? It’s a strong foundation, steady, solid ground.

There’s an old saying that goes, “If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.”

We’re told everywhere in the New Testament that we will be easily deceived if we are not rooted in God’s Word:

Ephesians 4:14 “14 Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.”

1 Timothy 1:4,1 Timothy 1:6 “4 [instruct some not to teach false doctrine] or to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies. These promote empty speculations rather than God’s plan, which operates by faith… 6 Some have departed from these and turned aside to fruitless discussion.”

If we are not grounded, rooted, and building our lives upon Christ and His teachings, we will crumble.

Notice that both the house on the sand and the house on the rock undergo the same treatment, the same level of stress; but only the house on the rock is left standing.

Appl: A life lived for Christ does not exempt us from any hardship, but it offers us the hope and the promise that Jesus does not abandon us or allow us to be overcome by those hardships.

Close:

So as we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, we’ve heard all these teachings from Jesus, and we’re at a fork in the road. Which path will we take? The broad road, leading to destruction - or the narrow, leading to life?

As we close, we must also recognize how the crowd responded:

They were astonished, (or marveled).

They were awestruck, totally amazed. Why?

They recognized He spoke with authority.

The scribes spoke by the authority of those who had come before, but Jesus spoke with the authority of the One who has this truth woven into His very being.

When you hear, read, and study the teachings of Jesus, do you hear mere information, or are you compelled to obey His authority because He is the One who governs every area of your being?