The Road That Shapes Us
Notes
Transcript
Me
Me
Most of us think we choose what we believe.
But most of the time, we just absorb it.
In my Moody Apologetics class, we read a book called ‘Hidden Worldviews”
Now just to be clear,
A worldview is a story or set of assumptions that tells you and I what is real, what is good, and how life is supposed to work.
For example
If I believe my happiness is the most important thing to protect,
That is a worldview
Or it could also be something like:
If I believe my group is usually right and the people outside my group are usually the problem
That is a worldview
What the book revealed was that many of these worldviews are not things we consciously choose.
They are things we absorb from the culture around us,
Often without realizing it
We pick it up from our families.
From our culture.
From our friends.
From our politics.
From the media we consume.
Even from the churches and Christian communities we are part of.
The book calls these “hidden worldviews”
Because they often operate underneath the surface of our lives.
We believe one thing while another story is actually shaping the way we live.
What made that hit home for me was realizing that things like consumerism and materialism had shaped me more than I wanted to admit.
I did not sit down one day and decide,
“My comfort matters most,”
or,
“More stuff will make life better.”
But those assumptions were still there,
(And are still things I have to guard against)
They were shaping what I wanted, what I valued, and what I thought a good life was supposed to look like.
One of the worldviews the book talks about is tribalism.
Tribalism, in simple terms, is when my group gets to be the primary shaper of what I think is true, what I think is good, who I think is good, and who I think the problem is.
And that matters spiritually because it can even shape the way I read Jesus.
Instead of asking,
“Does my group look like Jesus?”
I can start asking,
“How can I use Jesus to support my group?”
And then I am not really discerning anymore.
I am just using Jesus to confirm what my group already believes.
Which should sound familiar,
because just a few verses ago Jesus warned us about judging others while ignoring the log in our own eye.
In other words, even our discernment has to be discipled by Jesus.
We can be too quick to call someone “dangerous” simply because they are outside our group.
We can also be too slow to recognize bad fruit when it is growing inside our own group.
Jesus gets to call out what is wrong in them and what is wrong in us, because He is the standard, not our group.
We
We
And the problem is, all of us are being shaped by something.
We are shaped by our families.
By our friends.
By our politics.
By what we watch.
By what we admire.
By what our culture tells us a good life is supposed to look like.
Even by the versions of Christianity we have been surrounded by.
Some of those influences are good.
Some of them may even point us toward Jesus.
But some of them quietly teach us to want things Jesus never promised us.
They can teach us that the good life is the comfortable life.
That happiness is the most important thing to protect.
That people like us are probably right.
That if something costs too much, asks too much, or makes us uncomfortable, there must be something wrong with it.
Those ideas rarely announce themselves as competing worldviews.
They just feel normal.
They feel obvious.
Which creates a real problem for people who say they want to follow Jesus.
Because what happens when what feels normal to us is not the way Jesus is leading us?
What happens when a voice sounds Christian,
But it is actually pulling us away from Him?
What happens when someone says all the right things about Jesus,
Even does impressive things in His name, but Jesus says something is still missing?
And maybe the most difficult question:
What happens when that person is me?
Because it is possible to be surrounded by Christian language,
Christian teaching, Christian activity,
And assume that because Jesus is part of our lives, He must be the One shaping them.
But Jesus being included is not the same as Jesus being in charge.
So the question becomes:
How do we know whether the road we are walking is actually the road of Jesus?
God
God
And Jesus answers that question by putting a series of choices in front of us.
Two roads.
Two kinds of trees.
Two different kinds of people who call Him “Lord.”
And then, beginning in verse 24, two foundations.
In other words,
Jesus is showing us that not everything that looks close to Him is actually being shaped by Him.
There is a road that leads to life
And a road that leads to destruction.
There are voices that seem trustworthy
But would lead us away from the way of Jesus.
There are people who use His name and even do remarkable things in His name,
Yet Jesus says, “I never knew you.”
So throughout this whole section, Jesus is forcing us to ask:
What does a life actually shaped by Jesus look like?
The Road (v.13-14) (Which Way Are You Walking?)
The Road (v.13-14) (Which Way Are You Walking?)
Let’s read the first two verses that show the options of the roads we have the choice of walking upon
13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
It might seem obvious, but Jesus lays out that there are only two roads, which lead to two very different destinations
One gate is narrow, and the other gate is wide.
The narrow way is hard, but it leads to life, and those who find it are few.
The wide way is easy, but it leads to destruction, and many travel it.
And Jesus says that while many are traveling the easy road,
Comparatively few find the road that leads to life.
Jesus tells us that the broad road is crowded,
But He does not give us that information so we can stand on the narrow road gatekeeping it,
He gives it to us so that we will make sure we are actually walking the road that leads to life.
Jesus immediately gives us another contrast that helps us think about that road:
One way is easy, and the other way is hard
I can think of plenty of things in my own life that have been hard,
But incredibly worthwhile.
Marriage can be hard, but it is deeply good.
There are plenty of hard things that are worth doing.
But I think there can also be a subtle perversion of this idea:
If it is hard, then it must be the way of Jesus.
That is not true.
Just because we are following Jesus does not mean everything has to be hard.
And conversely,
Just because something is hard does not mean it is the way of Jesus.
The narrow and difficult road is good because
It is the road Jesus calls us to walk with Him.
Notice that Jesus does not simply ask us to agree that His road is better.
He says, “Enter.”
There is a response Jesus is calling for.
The question is not whether I admire the narrow road.
The question is whether I am actually walking it.
We do not have to guess what Jesus means by the narrow road.
He has just spent the entire Sermon on the Mount describing the kind of life He is calling us into.
It is a road where anger is not excused just because it never became murder.
Where people are not reduced to objects for our desires.
Where our integrity runs deep enough that our words do not need extra guarantees.
Where we love our enemies even while refusing to call evil good.
Where we give, pray, and fast to please the Father rather than to impress people.
Where we seek His Kingdom today instead of letting tomorrow’s worry rule us.
Where we examine the log in our own eye,
Before reaching for the speck in someone else’s.
Where we treat others the way we ourselves would want to be treated.
That is the narrow road Jesus has been describing.
And when you look at that road, it makes sense that Jesus calls it hard.
Because the road of Jesus keeps confronting the other stories we have absorbed about what the good life is supposed to look like.
The narrow road is hard because following Jesus repeatedly dethrones rival definitions of the good.
Our culture may tell us that the good life is the life where nothing asks too much of me.
Consumerism may tell us that the good life is getting what I want, when I want it, because my desires are what matter most.
Tribalism may tell us that the good life is the life where my side is right and their side is wrong.
But Jesus keeps stepping into those definitions and saying,
“No. Let Me show you what the good life actually is.”
Because following Jesus means giving Him back the right to tell us what the good life actually is,
Even when His definition confronts what feels normal to us.
Since we live in a world shaped by rival kingdoms,
Following Jesus will often put us against the grain.
But just being against the grain is not the goal.
Jesus is.
Which is really the point of the narrow road.
Jesus is not calling us to choose a harder lifestyle just so we can prove how serious we are.
He is calling us to walk with Him.
And the thing about a road is that you do not choose it once and then you are done.
It becomes the path you keep walking over a lifetime.
Following Jesus is more than being able to look back at one moment in my life to say,
“I chose Jesus!”
That is a great thing we should all want to have.
For me, that was March 13, 1994, when I first gave my life to Jesus.
The question is also:
“Is Jesus actually the One shaping the direction of my life?”
This is an equally important question.
There have been times in my life when I realized He was not.
I was still calling myself a follower of Jesus,
But I wasn’t doing a whole lot of following
The most important realization of that happened in July of 2004, when i was 14 at a youth conference in Salt Lake City.
It was the time that God challenged my hardened heart,
And I realized I needed to turn back,
It was also the same week God initially called me to ministry.
I think that is a big part of what it means to keep walking the narrow road.
We can drift
We can allow our culture, our desires, our politics,
Or even our version of Christianity to shape us more than He does.
But when Jesus exposes that drift, a disciple responds.
We repent back to him
We return to walk with him
To come back under His shaping authority.
A relationship with Jesus produces a lifelong response to Jesus.
Not perfectly, but persistently.
And if following Jesus is a road we keep walking,
Then it matters who we listen to along the way.
Which is exactly why Jesus immediately warns us about voices that can pull us away from Him.
The Voices (v.15-20) (Who is Shaping You?)
The Voices (v.15-20) (Who is Shaping You?)
Jesus continues in v. 15
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.
18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.
19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.
Jesus has just told us to walk the narrow road.
Then immediately He says:
“Beware.”
Because apparently one of the dangers of walking the road of Jesus is that there will be people
Who claim to know the way, look like they belong on the way, may even sound like they belong on the way
Yet will actually pull people away from Jesus.
Jesus calls them false prophets.
And the most dangerous thing about them?
They are usually not openly proclaiming on their linked-in profile,
“I am here to deceive you!”
Jesus says they come in sheep’s clothing.
They look safe.
They look familiar.
They look like they belong among God’s people.
This is why discernment matters.
Jesus does not tell us to discern them by charisma, popularity, or whether they fit comfortably inside our group.
He gives us a different test:
“You will recognize them by their fruits.”
Which actually takes us to what Jesus told us earlier in this chapter about judgment.
Jesus did not tell us to stop discerning.
He told us to take the log out of our own eye so that we could see clearly.
And now He expects us to see clearly enough to recognize fruit.
So when we are trying to discern whether a teacher is trustworthy,
The question cannot simply be:
“Do they agree with me and my kind of Christianity?”
Or,
“Do they challenge people enough?”
False teaching can come from many different directions.
False teaching does not always sound like a rejection of Jesus.
Sometimes it can sound Christian while slowly training us to think, value, and live in ways that are no longer shaped by Jesus.
For instance, someone can reinterpret biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality and then something like polygamy is treated as consistent with God’s design.
That argument can come from someone who is culturally progressive, politically conservative, or any other combination you can think of.
The issue is not the tribe they belong to.
The issue is whether Scripture is being faithfully handled.
False teaching can also add requirements Jesus never gave.
Someone can tell you that only one Bible translation is trustworthy.
Or that unless you pronounce Jesus’ name a particular Hebrew way,
You are somehow following a false religion.
Those teachings can sound very holy.
They can even sound deeply biblical.
But sounding holy is not the same thing as faithfulness.
False teachers can widen the road Jesus made narrow,
or narrow the road where Jesus has given freedom.
A false teacher can be demanding and still lead people away from Jesus.
They can talk about sacrifice, obedience, holiness, suffering, discipline,
and still be building people around themselves, around fear, around pride, around a system, instead of forming people around Jesus.
So that is why the question cannot merely be:
“Does this person sound Christian?”
The question must be:
“What kind of fruit is growing from what they are teaching?”
What kind of people are being formed?
Are they becoming more humble, repentant, loving, and dependent on Jesus?
Or are they becoming more prideful, controlling, divisive, and convinced that their group is always right?
In other words, what is this teaching shaping people to become?
Jesus says, “You will recognize them by their fruits.”
But fruit is something we have to observe.
That raises the natural, and important question:
How quickly should we decide what kind of fruit we are seeing?
Jesus has just warned us about judgmentalism and told us to take the log out of our own eye so that we can see clearly.
So I do not think Jesus is asking us to treat one failure, one bad season, or one ugly moment as the full picture of the tree.
In fact, our Abide passage, John 15, helps us here.
Jesus says that even branches that are bearing fruit still need to be pruned.
There can be things in a living disciple that the Father needs to cut away.
Sin that needs to be confronted.
Habits that need to change.
Parts of our character that still need to be formed.
The presence of something unhealthy does not necessarily mean there is no life in the branch.
Sometimes it means the Father is still at work pruning us so that more fruit can grow.
So discernment is more than hunting for imperfections in someone’s life.
Because of course we are going to find them!
We are looking for the pattern of fruit that keeps emerging.
When Jesus exposes something unhealthy, is there repentance?
Is there a willingness to be corrected by Jesus and His Word?
Is the Father’s pruning producing healthier fruit over time?
Or does the same destructive fruit continue while correction is resisted, excused, or justified?
Jesus gives a very serious warning:
“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
That imagery should also sound familiar to us from John 15:6,
Where Jesus says that the branch that does not remain in Him is thrown away, withers, and is gathered and burned.
There Jesus told us to abide in Him because branches do not manufacture life for themselves.
In both passages, the absence of fruit is connected with separation from life and judgment.
Which helps us clarify something very important:
Fruit is not how we earn life with Jesus.
Fruit is evidence that His life is actually shaping ours.
A diseased tree is not simply a Christian who sinned.
If that were the test, none of us would survive it.
What matters is the kind of fruit that keeps growing from their life and teaching over time.
Which means a faithful teacher is not merely someone who has all the right answers.
Their life and teaching should be rooted in Jesus and helping others remain rooted in Jesus.
Because a relationship with Jesus produces a lifelong response to Jesus.
Not perfectly, but persistently.
The Profession (v.21-23) (Is Jesus Truly Lord?)
The Profession (v.21-23) (Is Jesus Truly Lord?)
Jesus has been warning us about false teachers,
About voices that can sound Christian while pulling people away from Him.
But now the warning gets even closer.
Because the danger is not only that someone else might falsely claim to speak for Jesus.
We can also say the right things about Jesus ourselves,
and still not actually be living in response to Him.
So Jesus turns from the voices around us to the profession coming from our own mouths.
“What if I say the right things about Jesus, but my life is not actually being shaped by Him?”
And that is where Jesus goes next.
21 “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.
22 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?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
These are some of the most sobering words in the Sermon on the Mount.
And because they are so sobering,
It is easy to hear them as if Jesus is trying to make every faithful Christian constantly question whether they are really saved.
That is not what He is doing here.
Notice who Jesus is describing.
These are people who say the right things.
They call Him “Lord.”
They prophesy.
They cast out demons.
They do mighty, miraculous works.
And all of it done under the name of Jesus!
If we were judging only by spiritual activity,
These people would look incredibly impressive!
And then to those people, Jesus says:
“I never knew you.”
Their problem is not a lack of spiritual activity.
Their problem is that they were doing things in Jesus’ name,
Without actually living in relationship with Jesus.
That is both incredibly sobering and incredibly freeing.
Sobering, because no amount of spiritual activity can substitute for relationship with Jesus.
Yet freeing, because our standing with Jesus is not built on how impressive our spiritual performance is.
So when Jesus says, “I never knew you,” He is talking about relationship.
They knew His name.
They used His name.
They did ministry in His name.
But they did not actually know Him in a relationship that was shaping the way they lived.
That is the heart of the warning.
It is possible to do a lot of things around Jesus, for Jesus,
In the name of Jesus, without actually knowing Jesus.
Part of the difficulty for us is that in the modern Western world,
We often think of “knowing” as mainly having the right information.
I know facts.
I understand the doctrine.
I can explain the theology.
But biblically, knowing is much more relational than that.
To know Jesus is not merely to know things about Him.
Biblical knowing does not stay in the head.
It moves into trust, allegiance, and response.
Which is why Jesus can put “Lord, Lord” right next to “the one who does the will of my Father.”
That is incredibly important for us as we speak about abiding this year
Because abiding is not inactivity.
But activity is not abiding.
We can serve, teach, lead, pray, go to church,
We can do all kinds of good Christian things.
But none of those things can substitute for knowing Jesus.
So now the three warnings Jesus has given us begin to come together.
The narrow road is about continuing to walk with Jesus.
The warning about false teachers is about refusing voices that would shape us away from Jesus.
And now Jesus warns us that even our own Christian language and activity cannot replace actually knowing Jesus.
Through all three, the issue keeps coming back to the same thing:
Is Jesus actually the One shaping our lives?
Do you see how Jesus connects knowing Him with response?
He says,
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but the one who does the will of my Father.”
The issue is not that obedience earns the relationship.
Jesus is showing us what relationship with Him produces: a life that responds.
Not a life that never fails.
But a life that can be corrected.
A life that returns to Jesus when it drifts.
A life that keeps coming back under His shaping authority.
Which brings us back to the underlying Idea we’ve been getting at:
A relationship with Jesus produces a lifelong response to Jesus.
Not perfectly, but persistently.
So the contrast Jesus is making is not between people who accomplished enough and people who did not.
It is between profession without relationship and a relationship that actually produces response.
They said, “Lord, Lord.”
But Jesus points us toward a life that actually does the will of the Father.
And that brings us to where Jesus has been heading throughout this entire section.
If we can be deceived about which road we are actually walking,
If trustworthy-sounding voices can still lead us away from Jesus,
If saying “Lord, Lord” and doing remarkable things in His name can still exist without truly knowing Him,
Then what does a life actually shaped by Jesus look like?
Jesus answers that in the very next verse, and it is verse 24 that serves as our application today
You (V.24)
You (V.24)
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
This is where everything Jesus has been saying comes together.
Jesus says:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them”
This is what a life shaped by Jesus looks like.
It hears Him.
It responds to Him.
And it builds its life on what He says,
Over the course of a lifetime.
Hearing Jesus is meant to produce a response to Jesus.
Which is really what we have been talking about all year with Abide.
A relationship with Jesus produces a lifelong response to Jesus.
Not perfectly, but persistently.
It is interesting that Jesus uses the image of building a house.
Because whether we realize it or not, all of us are building a life on something.
We might choose that foundation intentionally.
Or we might absorb one without even realizing it.
But once we begin looking at what our lives are actually built on, changing that foundation will be hard work.
Before anything impressive gets built above ground, there is a lot of work that has to happen underneath it.
Things have to be dug up.
Ground has to be prepared.
Things have to be leveled and made solid.
But everything that comes later depends on it.
And I think that is a helpful picture of what Jesus has been doing throughout the Sermon on the Mount.
Building our lives on Jesus means allowing Him to do work underneath the visible parts of our lives.
To challenge what we have assumed is true.
To dig up things we absorbed without realizing it.
To expose where another voice has become more authoritative than His.
To reclaim His right to tell us what the good life actually is.
That work can be difficult.
But that is part of what it means to hear His words and actually build on them.
That is part of what makes the narrow path, a difficult path
Which takes us all the way back to where we began.
Every one of us has stories and assumptions that are shaping how we think life is supposed to work.
The issue is not whether something is shaping us.
Something always is.
The issue is whether Jesus is actually becoming the foundation underneath the life we are building.
Jesus does not call us to treat Him as one influence among many.
He calls us to heed His words, trust them, and build our lives on them.
So the most important thing for us to do with this passage is not to leave here trying to figure out who is on the broad road,
Which teacher we can label a wolf, or whether we have done enough Christian things.
No, Jesus turns the attention back toward us.
What/Who has actually been shaping the life I am building?
Where have I absorbed something that Jesus needs to confront?
Where am I hearing Jesus, but resisting what He is asking me to do?
Where have I allowed another voice to have more authority than His?
Then, when Jesus exposes something that needs to change, our response is not to defend it.
It is to respond to Him.
Not because responding earns His love or gets you Christian brownie points with Jesus
But because this is what it looks like to walk through life with Jesus.
We hear Him.
We respond.
And when we drift, we allow Him to correct us, we repent and return.
A relationship with Jesus produces a lifelong response to Jesus.
Not perfectly, but persistently.
So this week,
I am not asking you to identify every place in your life that needs rebuilding.
I want you to identify one place where you might already know what Jesus has said, but you have not started to build on it yet.
Or if that sounds totally foreign to you,
Maybe ask yourself:
Where do I get most defensive when Jesus challenges me?
What belief or habit do I keep explaining away instead of submitting to Him?
What voice has more practical authority in my life than Jesus does?
Where do I already know what obedience looks like, but keep delaying the response?
You do not need to fix everything this week,
We have a lifetime for that!
But you can respond to Jesus in one place this week.
Find just one place.
Hear Him.
And respond.
Make His words the foundation for the way you actually live.
Because the foundation of a life shaped by Jesus is not simply hearing His words.
It is hearing His words, trusting Him, and responding with our lives.
And when we drift (because we will)
We return.
Not perfectly.
But persistently
Until the day Jesus returns,
Or calls us home to glory with Him.
