False Disciples
Notes
Transcript
Saw a sign that said do not touch, and there was something weird about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I was going to give archery a shot, but there were too many drawbacks.
This morning we are going to finish summer on the mount and next week we are going to start a brand new series called, No Condemnation, where we will look at all the characteristics as God describes himself from the OT.
Here is how he is going to close the sermon on the mount and part of the point of this text is to disrupt you and make you think, and make you live your life differently If you are here and you don’t believe in Jesus, you will like this text, because it is about a bunch of people who think they are christians but they are not. Jesus is going to come after people who are lifelong christians; who know all the lingo and say all the correct things, but he will say they aren’t really his followers. This is different than last week, it isn’t about the leaders and the false prophets leading people astray. This week it is all about people who are keeping themselves from Jesus, I know that sounds kind of crazy, but its about the people who don’t really love and treasure Jesus, they are just playing a religious game to get people to think one thing.
What we will learn today, the most disturbing thing of the whole text we are going to find, is the question we will have to answer is, are you laying down your will in favor of God’s?
Let me give you an example, and I shared this with you guys before, but in case you weren’t here and you missed it, when we were applying for jobs when we landed here we had talked to the elders and really loved them. I hope you guys know how special this church is to have Ed, Ed, Joe, Ryan, and Neil. They are great men that love Jesus, love the church and love you, but we knew what would be involved and didn’t want to do it… Finish this story.
Matthew 7:21
21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.
Listen, this verse is deep and we could just stop here all morning and I am really good at taking a verse and looking at the historical context and applying it to todays world and teaching how we are supposed to live by it, but I don’t just want to camp out here. The thing is we are going to have some problems with this text when we really think about it.
The first problem we have in this verse is that these people have good theology. They call Jesus “Lord.” They get it. They know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jesus is Lord.
At the last supper, that was something even Judas wasn’t able to do if you go back to that meal as they went around the table, all the other guys call Jesus Lord, but Judas calls Him, “Rabbi.”
So the people Jesus is talking about, they know when they stand in front of Jesus that He is the Lord, so it is clear it is not their theology that is messed up. Which is going to be a problem for some of us, because for some we think the solution for not going to hell its to get our theology right.
It reminds me of the way the old Swiss Theologian, Karl Barth, talked about Jesus. He said not only do we need to know the word, meaning the Bible, but we need to know the word behind the word, and so many of us know the Word, we have memorized parts of it, but we don’t know the word behind it; Jesus and that is a problem.
And Jesus says they have their theology in order they are calling him Lord, but the second thing about these people is they are emotionally invested in Him. You see, they said, “LORD, LORD,” because they wanted to emphasize it, so they said it twice. So these people are emotionally invested in Jesus and who he is, and another way to say that is they are zealous.
What we tend to think is the solution to our problem with Jesus is for us to have more passion and zeal. Jesus says no that’s not it, because we can have all the head knowledge and be emotionally invested and still not get it. This is the kind of thing that should kind of scare us a little bit. That really isn’t my goal and it wasn’t Jesus’ goal either, and as we keep walking through this I want you to remember, today, its all about answering the question, have you given up your will to God’s?
So there is a third level to all of this with these people, they are serving people, they are active in ministry doing things.
22 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’
23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.
Now there is a whole group of theologians who will come and say the people speak to Jesus here are lying, they really didn’t do anything, but they are coming up to Jesus and telling him lies, as if he wouldn’t know the truth, but I don’t think that is what is going on here, but even if they are lying then we still can take a whole lot of application from it.
You and I lie to god all the time. You may want to get up in arms about that, but let me ask you a question, have you ever said, “Jesus, if you just get me out of this place, I will never do whatever again.” Even when deep down in our heart we know we will do it again, and want to do it again. Or maybe you sit through a sermon and God convicts your heart and you know there is some work you have to do when you leave and you promise God as soon as you leave you are going to make a call to a person and make amends, or ask forgiveness, or give forgiveness, or whatever, but you leave, go to lunch and never do it.
Look these people said, “Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name… and cast out demons,” and remember some people think they didn’t, but I think they did.
Let me tell you what can happen, we can begin to think the goal of active ministry is to have a productive faith and it causes us to fall into a trap where we think the goal of active ministry is active ministry. What I mean is we think having an active faith ONLY means doing active faith things. So what we often do is trade our activeness for actual faith and relationship. I just want to sit here for a second because thats a tough one to swallow, but what we see in these people, and the trap we can fall in for ourselves is we come and do and allow that to be it. We just do things, but we don't have an actual faith in the dark places and treasure him when no one is looking.
So we come before him and say, “I know I’m not really following you with my life, but I served you last week. That’s good right? I mean no one else showed up, it was only me and one other person there. You saw me, right?”
We tend to put forward our service and moral record and hope that is good enough, but the entire gospel is against that. Its crazy because we try to go back to the time of the temple and line our good deeds up against someone elses.
If the moment comes, when you stand before God and he asks why he should let you in to heaven don't say, “Well, because I did a bunch of good stuff for you, don’t you remember,” and then start listing off your good works. Instead, what we need to be saying to Him, “the only reason you should let me in is because of what you did for me, your work on the cross, that’s all I have.” And here is the crux of all of Christian faith, if we don’t realize how sinful and how needful we are of Jesus, we will never be able to get to this place where you can say the reason we are allowed in to Heaven is because of what Jesus did.
Our only way to know how good he is and how needful we are of him is to realize how messed up we are without him. But
Salvation isn’t based on what we do; its based on what Jesus does FOR us.
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.
25 “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.
26 “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
27 “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
This is why it is so hard, because he is telling us it isn’t easy to tell, you can’t just quickly see it and know, we have to look at the foundation, see what’s under the hood to know.
There was destruction for people that built their house on sand and you couldn’t tell what was built on just from looking at the outside. I know that’s a hard thing for us to understand, because we always assumed it was right out in the open for all to see, but what Jesus is telling us is the storm revealed what your house was built on and it wasn’t always obvious until the winds started to blow and the rain came. We know this when we really think about it, you can see who is in and who is out when their lives start to get a little rough, do they dig in deeper to Jesus, or do they run away?
The same comes when it is about our faith, we have to dig deep and ask ourselves the same questions, we have to ask ourselves, “Is my faith just about serving and doing things for others when I need to feel better about myself, or do I really know and trust Him?
There are a lot of people who have fooled themselves in this life because they think the value of their life with Jesus is just staying busy for him, and they are only looking at external things to decide if they are good with Jesus. See, this is the problem Jesus has talked about through the entirety of this series, its a heart thing, we have to look deeper than just the surface level into the heart of our actions. The problem is, for so long in the church we were taught, “Good Christians do these things, and don’t so those things,” and it was all actions and nothing heart based so we have this idea it all about actions. I guess i should stop and say that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing things for Jesus, because James tells us faith without works is dead, meaning our faith in Jesus should cause us to want to do things for the Kingdom, but our walk cannot stop at work without faith.
We have ourselves believing Jesus looks at our lives and is judging if we don’t do these certain things we are in, but Jesus looks and says, “Man, that’s not it, I don’t just look at the external, I look at what is underneath the hood.”
Remember, these people were active, had good theology, and he said, “I NEVER knew you.” Its not like we talk about people who were backslidden, its not they once knew him and then walked away. Jesus said he NEVER knew them. I think its very interesting when he is talking about these people he doesn’t actually call them by name, he just says YOU. Also, he didn’t say, “you didn’t know me,” it was, “I never knew YOU,” and there is this distinction in the Bible and the Goal is for us to be know as his followers by Him.
Look, I know some of you will think that is crazy, but look at what Paul said to the Galatians
9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?
Paul makes this distinction where we have to be known by God, we have to let God know us. Its not about us giving and doing right things; its did God really know us, and we won’t know that by doing external things, because it is not always obvious on the outside, you have to search for it deep down.
We are living in a world where we are being so desensitized to the sin around us. Things we once saw and knew as sinful are becoming common place in the world around us and we just are being told that our thoughts and our ideas are antiquated and we don’t understand the world anymore. If we aren’t careful there are people who will try to twist the words of the Bible to make this sin seem normal, like it should be acceptable and we are the people who need to be looked at as unloving and unfit to be around Jesus.
So, we have to sniff out the truth and we have to protect the young people in the world around us because they are being taught slowly to accept the things we know as sin in the name of love and we have to be able to push back and teach what is true and what is real, and listen this is the work of the elders as well, to protect the sheep from false teaching. But you and I have to look for ourselves and check what we are learning and hearing and see if it is rooted in any once of truth
The problem is when we look at things Jesus doesn’t call sin, we call it sin and don’t realize the things we are doing are far from the heart of God.
Listen, what we are talking about here is what one scholar says it is an unconscious hypocrisy. We don’t even realize we are doing it and the thing Jesus is talking about is not between christians and non christians; not people who give and don’t give; but people who give with wrong motives in their heart; it not between people who pray and don’t pray - but pray for the wrong reasons, with wrong motives in their heart. The real scary thing this morning is he is not contrasting christians and non christians he is contrasting real christians and the people who call themselves christians. The question is which group are you in?
And there are two issues in this parable, and this is what the house is all about
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Here is the distinction between the two, its the one who hears the words and acts upon them. Not everyone who says Lord Lord, but those who do the will of my father in Heaven. Do you see it? This is a Lordship issue and the first question when it comes to Lordship is have you submitted your life to the will of God? Have you made Jesus not just your treasure, but the lord over you will? Do you give him every aspect and area of your life, or do you say, “my sex life, my money, thats all mine, Jesus you stay away from all those things.” Listen, its about your will being submitted to his will.
We are either someone who submits to the will of God, or we don’t. We either allow him to call us or we resist - we repel and runaway.
The second problem with lordship is motive. We tend to applaud people that show any interest in Jesus at all, because we are happy and hope they are moving in a godly direction, but the second question Jesus asks us is why are we interested in him.
One day as Jesus and his disciples are headed toward Jerusalem, James and John are talking about who gets to sit on the right or left hand with the father. What you need to understand is in Jewish culture the right hand was thought of to be the hand of power, so what they are really discussing is who would be in control and the most powerful. Jesus basically tells them, “you have this proximity to me and your motive is all wrong because you want power.”
The truth is there are a lot of us just like James and John; we do a lot of things and try to get close to Jesus but our motive is all wrong. We want something in return. But if you read the gospels and Bible in its entirety, what you will see is if we do everything right, what we get as our reward is more of Jesus; and that should be more than enough, because Jesus is greater than anything this world has to offer.
Jesus basically says, if I am not enough, if communion with me, is not enough - depart from me. The people in the verses today are talking about the external things they could get applause for and Jesus says you should only be worried about me. About getting applause from me and following my will.
23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
Here is the greatest nightmare; that we wouldn’t get him in eternity. Even those of you who don’t love him right now, and may never come to know him as savior, what you will one day realize is all the common grace we all get was from him and you missed it and rejected it and it will all be taken away.
And this is the nightmare, there will come a day when you realize it is all from him and thats why we are to submit our will to his.
Listen, I know the Lord, and I know what he wanted, and if I hadn’t listened and went somewhere else would Jesus still love me, of course, but there is this chance I may not have been as happy and fulfilled as I am right now.
The same is true with all of us, if we don’t submit our wills to Jesus in the long run someone is going to be hurt, and it may not always be us, but it may be someone close to us. My question this morning is are you read? Are you ready to give him your will for his? If not, your house is probably built on the sand, and you have to be prepared because there will be a moment when it will all fall. Today is the day to submit to him. No matter how long you have been in the church, today is the day to give ti all away.
