The Narrow Gate
Notes
Transcript
Technically, national anthems are country music
We all know Albert Einstein was a genius, but his brother Frank was a monster
Here is where we have came from, Jesus has told us we need to give joyfully, but at the same time we are supposed to feel it. I just want you to think about that, he is basically saying we need to hurt happily, and that is something most of us do not put together. We normally do not think hurt and happy are the same thing. So he has already created this tension in the air with the people who are listening, heck, he has created tension with all of us listening today. Today he is going to move away from talking about money so you don’t have to worry too much about it, but he is not going to slow the tension in the air. In fact, I think he is going to create even more tenwsion and I think this is exactly what he wants to happen, but in the end it will all make sense even amongst all the tension.
So we start chapter 7 of the Book of Matthew this way, and the controversy will automatically start.
1 “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.
So, he starts off telling us not to be people that judge other people and that is a pretty big thing because in the state we are born into, we have a natural inclination to judge people. We tend to look at people and judge them based off the way they live; what they believe; if they don't say the right things; or if they don’t act the right way; we judge them. I think basically what he is saying is people deserve a second chance so we shouldn’t judge them from a distance without offering any help, but it is what exactly what we tend to do.
That’s just not us though, we tend to have a disposition to other people that says I don't like how they think, so I am going to judge them…. The saddest thing is we have gotten to this place in society where when we don’t like what a person says some people just start killing one another. Maybe it doesn’t go that far for everyone, but maybe instead of killing them we talk about them behind their back and we judge them and Jesus calls out the church and says what is wrong with you?
Listen, we read this and we get all up tight and start to think well wh is he taking about and some of you may even be aware of 1 Corinthians 5:12-13
12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?
13 But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.
And think this scripture is talking about exactly this, judging those inside the church and not outside, because when we read this verse we obviously tend to think about other people. But this isn’t about other people, its about you; Or me; or However you want to say it. We keep thinking about other peoplee, because that is our nature, and so obviously this verse is about everyone else, and Jesus is basically saying, “Come on, you have no self awareness to your own flaws, don’t judge others unless you want to be judge by the same measure, look at yourself first.”
This is exactly what we do with our own sin for the most part, we make excused for it, and give no grace to other people. And if you read Rom 2 what you will find is Paul telling us what leads people to repentance is kindness; not judgment.
The way we tend to live our lvies is we say, man I am so much better than that person, I live a much more holy life, I do everything for the church, I only skip when I really have to, and I am so much better in God’s eyes. Jesus looks at us when we say stuff those things, and he says, “come on, we should be following the one who was judged, and gave his life for all of us, Jesus so we we realize we don’t have to judge.”
Don’t you remember what Jesus said while he hung on the cross? While he was hanging, sinless, as people passed and cussed, spit at him, he looked to the crows nad said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
So he is there, the only sinless one, and he is asking the Father to forgive them for everything. What an amazing thing, and you and I have a hard time forgiving someone who cut us off in traffic.
Do you know what people are saying is the most popular verse in the Bible? The one that is googled the most and most read in all the various Bible apps? Its this one. Do not judge. This is for everyone, not just the Christians, and you know why, because people completely misunderstand it, and they use this verse to say we are suppose to love and accept everyone, and we should never have any conflict whatsoever with people because we are suppose to love and not judge. We are just supposed to accept everyones beliefs about everything, I had a professor at Asbury, I will never forget, he said, “Now I can say whatever I want, I have tenure, but I believe as long as you follow what you believe and what your faith says we will all end up in the same place. Everyone just has their own version of God and we all end up with the same one.” For one I couldn’t believe he was saying this at Asbury, but two, I found it very hard to not laugh and be rude.
But maybe you are here and that is kind of the way you think, maybe you think there are multiple ways to get there and we aren’t supposed to judge the way anyone else believes, my question to you would be, does Jesus agree with you?
The answer is yes and no, yes in a sense we are supposed to look at the world and not judge ourselves based off of them and think we are better than the people we are looking at. So, dont judge yourself based off them don’t go thinking you are good based off what you see, and basically that is what we are doing when we judge, we are making ourselves feel better.
Here’s the thing, when we look at Romans 5, Paul tells is it was while we were still sinners, you know while we were living like the people who we are judging, that Christ died for us. So when we see people who we are knowing are sinning outside the walls of the church, what should we do? Our posture in those situations should always be prayer.
2 “For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
4 “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye?
He says look, you can look at your spouse and know everything that is wrong with their life and everything they need to do to fix themselvs right? Probably in the worst of circumstances you tell them all the things they need to fix about themselves while you are angry, not in an attempt to build up, but in an attempt to tear down. And I want you to hear me, you can say the same thing with different hearts behind it and it be a totally different outcome; and not just for the hearer, but for you. Remember, this is exactly what Jesus has been telling us when he has been going through this sermon on the mount, he has been pushing us to look into the heart of what we are doing and why we are doing it.
So, he says you can look at your spouse or your coworker and you immediately know all the tweaks they need to make to make them a better person. You can see all of that, but how is it you don’t see what is wrong in your life? How are you missing what you need to do for yourself to make yourself more Christlike?
He says listen…
5 “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Let me give you an example of this from the old Testament. David is king and he has everything, and he has sent all of his men out to war, and he is doing the worst thing and he is staying home and hanging out not with his men. And this is a whole sermon we could talk about but we’re just doing background information, so we will skip to the cliff’s notes, David sees Bathsheba, brings her to the castle, has relations with her, gets her pregnant, has her husband killed to cover it all up and then he thinks everything is finally going to be okay, because he has in his own way covered all the wrongs. But God doesn’t like it, so he sends the prophet Nathan, a friend of David, to David, and here is what we find.
1 Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and said, “There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor.
2 “The rich man had a great many flocks and herds.
3 “But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb Which he bought and nourished; And it grew up together with him and his children. It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom, And was like a daughter to him.
4 “Now a traveler came to the rich man, And he was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd, To prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him; Rather he took the poor man’s ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
5 Then David’s anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die.
David can’t believe it. How could this possibly happen that man deserves to die for what he has done, he is appalled to even think of it.
7 Nathan then said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul.
You see this? David was completely distorted in who he was, he couldn’t even see the sin in his life, here he is a murderer and adulterer and he is just thinking about someone else, and while we think we should never judge, what we need is someone in our lives like Nathan; someone who will call you out on the junk in your life. Someone who will say, “Hey bro, that’s pretty messed up you need to get it fixed.”
And its not that we are never supposed to confront and call out, but its all about your heart and making sure you have examined your own life first and let me just stop some of you here, because what you hear me saying is you can’t confront someone until your life is perfect and thats not it either. Jesus is saying make sure its a work under process in your own life, know about it, be working on it too, because sometimes we put people off and we say, “I can’t listen to that idiot, he has the same problems as me,” but some of the time the reason they are able to tell you about it is because God is working on them, and while they don’t have it all figured out perfectly yet, they have been open to the process and they want to bring you along with them. They are trusting in God and they want you to reap the benefits as well.
Before you start to judge murderers and all those people from distance, and thats an extreme example, you have to realize, “but by the grace of God there go I,” and remember, Jesus just told us if we hate someone, we are already guilty of murder.
So back to that question, does Jesus agree with you to never judge in any circumstance, we said yes, because he isn’t wanting us to look and judge in order to build ourselves up, but we come up against the next verses and we are going to see he goes the other way a little bit.
6 “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
So, he says don’t judge, but we realize he means to build ourselves up, and here we see him saying, “Okay, you have totally judge.” So you think, what is the shift here, and what you have to realize is what we have been talking about verses 1-5 is not a carte blanche against critical thinking and saying we should never confront anyone on their sin; its about judging from a distance and condemning.
Here is the critical piece of that, judgment for us typically means verdict, and we have no right to give the final verdict on where someone stands with God, because God is the only judge, but here he is saying we should know what we are dealing with and confront; discern; critique, because all of those things can come from the right heart without putting ourselves in the place of God.
So all the non-christians, or people who are atheist, or people who are searching can’t agree on what the don’t judge means, but here is something everyone agrees on, when we can all see something is evil, or categorically wrong, most of us know that and we can know its an injustice and we push back against it. So we need to push back against those things all of those wrong things.
Sometimes there is sin and it needs to be addressed, so it has to be dealt with. Because look, here is what the world feels about the church. A few years ago I saw a study Barna did on the top 3 things people who consider themselves non-christians hate about the church, number 1 87% of the people polled said they feel like the church is too judgmental.
The church as a whole has been come to be known for the things we hate, because often we critique without building up, we critique without authority, and what I mean by that is we critique people who have given us no authority to speak into their lives, don’t know what I am talking about? Do you remember when you first had children and your in-laws tried to tell you how to raise them correctly; no authority.
This is what he is saying, he is saying there are real problems in the world, real things that need to be addressed and we have to deal with; theologically sometimes there are dogs and pigs, and we have to be aware of them. Its kind of like the job of the shepherd is to protect from wolves in sheep clothing.
Sometimes those wolves in sheep clothing are inside the church, and the job of the shepherds are to remove them, to take care of the problem, to protect the rest of the flock.
And people say the church is so judgmental, and I think we get this wrap because we handle things the wrong way and we go to people with the wrong heart, we want to correct without a loving heart, and then there are people who come to church and even though they come to church they have given no authority for the pastor or elders to speak into their lives; they are here to check something off the list. I don’t know if you realize that, but there are lots of people who come to church and they really don’t want anyone to tell them something is wrong in their lives and they need to get it straight, they just want to come in and feel good about themselves for being a good christian and being at church. So, this morning just as an aside ask yourself that question, have you given me, or any of the elders authority to speak in your life and say, “I love you, but you have got to get this in check,” or are you just here to hear the word and go home feeling good about your choices?
But sometimes we handle it wrong, the church does screw up, I get that, so Jesus actually told us how to deal with all of this.
15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
16 “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.
17 “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
He says, “Dont go tell everyone you drink coffee with; dont tell everyone you come into contact with. Go alone, ALONE and tell them you wronged me. If he listens then you gained him back, BUT if he refuses to listen, go get someone else, another elder, and then if he STILL refuses to listen, go and tell it to the church.” Now, this sounds very judgmental, in fact some people may sayI might sue you do that. But Jesus says if you have tried everything and he still refuses to listen tell the church, and then cut him off.
If you are living off the rails, it has to be dealt with.
So how do we learn how to deal with what seems to be two opposing ideas? At some point we have to stop talking to people about Jesus because their heart has been so hardened that they need to be freed up to hear it from someone else. This could be your kids, your spouse, your parents, your family members, coworkers, sometimes we aren’t goign to be the ones to reach them and we have to just move on.
Paul does this, he says I am going to stop preaching the gospel because you aren’t leaning in to it.
5 But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the word, solemnly testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.
6 But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
And thats a principle for life, when people press in and want more we have to spend more time with them, and when they don’t we have to cut our losses and move on.
So how do we know what to do in those situations?
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
8 “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
How do we figure out who the dogs and pigs are?
We have to ask and seek and knock and have discernment from the Lord.
Lets admit we dont truly believe this, because we asked before and knocked and knocked and no matter what something bad still happened and we don’t know why. Or sometimes we have asked and what we wanted to happen, didn’t.
We don’t have the true answer why, but ultimatelyeverything we do is under god’s sovereignty. And its great that we don’t always get what we want. Could you imagine if you got everything you asked for? We’d be messed up. God is not going to give us EVERYTHING we ask for because we aren’t wise enough. He’s saying of course pray, but he is speaking in an exaggerated way here, we won’t actually get EVERYTHING. Remember. a few verses earlier he was doing the same thing, and we were okay with it. A few verse earlier he said if you lust, pluck your eyeball out; He’s over exaggerating. He doesnt really want me to do it. Its in these same tones, and he is saying if you want to know how to discern out your life, when to judge and when not to ask seek and be humble…
9 “Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone?
10 “Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he?
11 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!
12 “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.
14 “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Here is where it all lands; its about more than prayer. Its about have you believed in Jesus the gate that puts you through the life or not? Or you are headed to destruction and what he is saying is the gate that leads to life is harder. And its kicking against everything we know; every decision we make today is leading toward one of those paths; toward him or away from him. He died, either we reject it which leads to destruction or we ask and seek and knock and he opens up eternal life to us.
