Entering the Kingdom

2020  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  43:12
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Jesus is talking to a large crowd of Jews and Gentiles, and He is teaching them how to be saved.
Matthew 4:25–5:2 CSB
25 Large crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan. 1 When he saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to teach them, saying:
We have been working through the Sermon on the Mount that he taught, and now we have come to the end. Last week we talked about how Jesus had just taught that anyone who asks, seeks, or knocks, for the things of the kingdom of God that He will answer them and give them the Holy Spirit and allow them into the kingdom. And so that is what He just finished teaching, and this week we are going to look at what He says next. Keep in mind, he is teaching large crowds of people who have come to Him because He heals their sicknesses, and He is going to teach a large crowd, filled with mostly lost people, how to be saved. Ask yourself, if you had managed to gather a large crowd of mostly lost people because you were giving away a COVID vaccine and everyone wanted to be physically healed, and you decided that since you had their full attention, you were going to teach them how to be saved, what would you say? Would you say that it’s easy to get to heaven, or difficult to get to heaven…? Would you say that most people will go to hell, and it’s hard to get to heaven, and only a few will make it into heaven? Would you tell them that you’ll be able to tell if people are going to go to heaven or hell by the way they live. Well, I’m going to tell you, it really doesn’t matter what you, or I, or anyone else would tell them. The only thing that matters is what Jesus, when He was in that exact situation, told them. And whatever He told lost and dying people so that they could be saved, is exactly what we need to tell lost and dying people so that they can be saved. But we also need to tell them the way He told them.
Matthew 7:13–14 CSB
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. 14 How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.
Do you believe this is true? Do you believe that most people will go to hell, and in comparison only a few will go to heaven? Do you believe that it’s difficult to get to heaven? Do you believe that? If not, why? This is important to ask yourself as a follower of Christ, if you don’t believe that what He said is true, you need to ask yourself why you don’t believe Jesus was right. I don’t believe anyone of us in this room would say that we don’t believe Jesus was right, or that we don’t believe that what He said is true, I don’t think any of us would admit that, but it’s very very important that you are honest with yourself. If you don’t believe that what he said is true, then you need to ask yourself why you don’t believe it’s true, so that you can address it. Because your relationship with Jesus is not a very healthy relationship if you don’t believe Him. Let’s say you believe almost everything else He has said, but there are only a couple of things he said that you don’t believe, at the very least, that will cause you great angst and internal conflict, especially if the only couple things you don’t believe are His teachings about salvation. Telling people how to be saved is the most important message He has given us to share with others. If we don’t get this right, nothing else we do matters, nothing. All the money we give, all the acts of kindness we do for others, all the encouraging words we speak, none of it will matter if they never make it into the kingdom of God. Peace on earth won’t matter if everyone ends up in hell for eternity. So it’s really important that the words that we speak to others, when we are telling them how to enter the kingdom of God, matches the words Jesus spoke when he was telling people how to enter the kingdom of God. If we go around telling people it’s easy to get to heaven, when it’s not, then we set them up for failure. When we go around telling people it’s easy to get to heaven, when it’s not, we are giving them the exact opposite message that Jesus gave them. The road that leads to life is difficult, it’s not easy, and it is the very fact that the road is difficult that few will find the gate at the end of it. That is the very reason that people don’t make it to the gate, because the road to get there is difficult. Now, knowing that, what is the best way to help someone make it to the end of that road so that they can enter that gate? Is it by telling them that the road will be easy? Or by telling them the road will be difficult? If you have two separate lines of people ready to walk down a difficult road, and the guy at the beginning of one line tells everyone who is about to go down it, that this road will be easy, and the guy at the beginning of the other line tells everyone who is about to go down it that this road is going to be very difficult, but the reward at the end is worth the agony, which line of people are going to have a higher finish rate? That seems pretty obvious to me, the one that tells them the truth and gives them something to hope for and a reason to keep going. The guy who had the big sign that said easy above his head had a much longer line than the other guy, because everyone likes the sound of that better, but what percentage of those people will find the narrow gate at the end? Jesus had a large crowd following Him and listening to Him, and He told them the truth. He told them it’s not easy to get to heaven, and few actually will. That’s not what they wanted to hear.
Someone asked Jesus point blank if only a few people are going to be saved, and this is how he responded.
Luke 13:22–30 CSB
22 He went through one town and village after another, teaching and making his way to Jerusalem. 23 “Lord,” someone asked him, “are only a few people going to be saved?” He said to them, 24 “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because I tell you, many will try to enter and won’t be able 25 once the homeowner gets up and shuts the door. Then you will stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up for us!’ He will answer you, ‘I don’t know you or where you’re from.’ 26 Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 But he will say, ‘I tell you, I don’t know you or where you’re from. Get away from me, all you evildoers!’ 28 There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in that place, when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves thrown out. 29 They will come from east and west, from north and south, to share the banquet in the kingdom of God. 30 Note this: Some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last.”
Jesus didn’t tell people what they wanted to hear, he told them the truth, because only the truth can set us free. Let’s say I’m about to walk across a huge field and there is a narrow winding stone pathway that someone has laid down that stretches from one side to the other. If there are landmines all in that field, and someone has went through with a metal detector and laid a safe path to walk on, I want to know. I want to know that if I get off that path I may die, because unless someone tells me, how can I know. I don’t care what makes me feel good, I care about what is true. I want to know the truth, because the truth can save my life. Jesus spoke the truth, even when it wasn’t what people wanted to hear, because only the truth could save their lives. So let’s jump back to Matthew…
Matthew 7:13–14 CSB
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. 14 How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.
Matthew 7:15–23 CSB
15 “Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves. 16 You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. 18 A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19 Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So you’ll recognize them by their fruit. 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ 23 Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!
Notice what he said…Jesus is teaching the people how to be saved, and he said the way you know if someone is saved is by what? By their fruit, by wether they do God’s will, and by wether or not they live sinful lives. If you were teaching them how to be saved, what would you tell them? Would you tell them that the only people who will enter God’s kingdom are those who do His will? Do you believe Jesus is wrong? If I were to teach the same things, would you believe that I am wrong? Because if we believe that what Jesus did, by doing and saying the same thing is wrong, the problem lies with us, not Jesus. And there may be a lot of different reasons that we may come to that conclusion, that we should tell people that they are going to go to hell. But the reason that most people have come to that conclusion is not because it’s not biblical, it’s completely biblical, it’s because we have seen it done by so many who don’t actually love the people they are talking to and we have seen the consequences of that which is people driven away from the grace of God, because they only know of the wrath of God. I’ve seen it first hand, many times.
But Jesus was very clear in his teaching on salvation, and He taught that repentance is necessary for salvation. In other words, those who don’t repent are not saved, and those who have saving faith do repent. And even though you can’t see the spiritual reality of faith and repentance, you can see the effects of it.
FAITH & REPENTANCE
Paul vs. James vs. John — All would have tension with each other on their views of salvation until they actually talked to each other for five minutes and had time to ask each other questions and would quickly know that they all agree, that you are saved by FAITH not WORKS, but that if you claim to have faith but you don’t have works then you have deceived yourself and do not actually have faith. Repentance is the same as having works, not repenting is the same as not having works, therefore repentance is a necessary sign of genuine faith. Faith without repentance is faith without works, therefore faith without repentance is not saving faith. Repenting is the choice you make to follow Jesus as your Lord, not repenting is the choice you make to reject Jesus as your Lord. You can’t simultaneously claim to have faith in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, while rejecting Him as your Lord.
To say that one verse or passage of Scripture is TRUE, is not proof that another verse or passage of Scripture is NOT TRUE. So to say that statement A which says, “a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ… because by the works of the law no human being will be justified,” is True, does not prove that statement B which says, “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” is false. Why? Because God said them both, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, both to the New Testament church, after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, in order to teach us how to be saved. So one does not make the other false. They are both true, and they are both teaching us how to be saved, so to build an understanding in your mind of how people are to be saved that treats one as true and the other as false, runs the risk, and is very likely, to build an INCORRECT understanding of how people are saved, which can have disastrous consequences, mainly of leading people to believe they are saved, when they are not. So how can two people say seemingly completely opposite things, and both be true? The answer can be very simple… context. I can say the speed limit is 60 mph, and you can say the speed limit is 45 mph, and we can both be correct if we are standing beside different roads. Context is vitally important. — A better example would be of a man proposing to his fiancé. When I decided to propose to my wife, I asked her to marry me and offered her a ring as a symbol. Was she good to me leading up to that moment? Yes. So did her good actions towards me earn my proposal to her? No. No in the sense that my proposal to her was in no way a type of payment that I was obligated to give her because of her good behavior towards me. If that were the case, then all you have to do is find someone you want to marry and be nice to them, and send them gifts, and they would be obligated to marry you because you earned it as a payment for your good actions towards them. That’s not how it works. Her actions towards me did not earn my proposal. I was not obligated to propose to her, I freely chose her. After I freely chose her and extended that ring to her, she then had to make a decision to accept my proposal or to reject my proposal. She was not obligated to accept my proposal because of my good actions towards her. And she did accept. So I freely chose her, and she freely chose me. My proposal to her, and her accepting of my proposal, neither was earned by the other because of the things we had done for the other. They were done, not as a payment owed, but as a free gift of love for one another. But our choices were real, and the consequences were real. She had the real choice to accept or reject the ring. If she said yes, she would put the ring on and it represented her commitment to be devoted to me and me alone in an intimate relationship. But if she chose to reject that ring, it would represent that she would not have been willing to devote herself to me and me alone in a lifelong intimate relationship. So imagine what it would look like if she had accepted the ring, but refused to have a wedding ceremony, and refused to stop dating other guys, but at the same time went around and told everyone that me and her were married and that I was her husband. Would we actually be married? No. Even though I genuinely offered to marry her, and she said she would marry me in return, that by itself did not make us married, and so going around and telling people we are married would not make it true. Now let’s go back and fix the situation. Let’s say she accepted the ring, then actually married me, and remained faithful to me. Would we be married then? Absolutely. In both cases, she said she accepted my proposal, and in both cases she put on the ring, but in one case she actually followed through with what the ring represented, her entering into an intimate relationship with me alone, and not just saying that she would accept my proposal, but she actually accepted my proposal. Now, by actually accepting my proposal, and actually following through with the wedding and with actually turning away from any other man, and remaining faithful to me, did she at that point, earn my proposal? No. My proposal was a gift. Her accepting that gift did not earn that gift. In order for my proposal to not have been a gift, but instead payment earned by her, she would have had to have done something to have earned it first before I proposed to her. The proposal was first and was not owed because of anything she had done, therefore it was a free gift. Her accepting the proposal after it was given freely can not therefore go back in time and make the proposal into something owed instead of freely given. This is how our relationship with Christ works, and how faith and repentance work together. God freely proposed to us, inviting us into a covenant relationship with Him through faith. Just as I chose freely to ask Lindsay to enter into a covenant relationship with me, God chose freely to ask us to enter into a covenant relationship with Him. In the same way that my proposal to Lindsay to enter into that relationship with me was not owed to her because of anything she had done, God’s proposal to us to enter into that relationship with Him was not owed to us because of anything we had done. In the same way that she had to make a decision to accept or reject my proposal to her, we have to make a decision to accept or reject His proposal to us. In the same way that Lindsay said yes and put the ring on her finger, we can say yes to God’s invitation to us and we can get baptized in water. And in the same way that saying she would marry me and putting the ring on her finger was not the same as actually entering into that covenant relationship with me, saying Jesus is our Lord and Savior and getting baptized is not the same as actually entering into that covenant relationship with Him. We will live out the decision we truly make. If she said she would marry me but didn’t really mean it, then she won’t actually marry me, even if she tells people she has. And if we say Jesus is our Lord, but we don’t mean it, then we won’t actually obey Him, even if we tell people we do. Now, whereas there is a time gap between when Lindsay accepts my proposal to marry me, and when she actually follows through with marrying me, there is not time gap between when we actually accept God’s proposal to us, and when we enter into that covenant relationship with Him. So with marriage, you can accept one day and follow through with it later, not so with salvation. For the moment you truly accept His invitation to follow Him, you enter into that relationship with Him. So how does faith and repentance work together?
When someone asks you to marry them, you know what kind of relationship they are inviting you into. And because you know what kind of relationship you are being invited into, you know if you are really accepting that invitation or not. What kind of relationship is a marriage relationship? It is an exclusively sexual relationship. You say, it’s much more than that, and I would say you are exactly right. It is much more than that, but that is what makes it unique from all of your other relationships. You say, no, that’s not the only thing that makes it unique. You are also spending your life together. You live together everyday, you laugh together, you cry together, you share your deepest thoughts with each other, you make plans together, you chase dreams together. To which I would say, you are absolutely right, but she’s not the only woman I can do all those things with. If something were to happen to my parents, and they had to move in with me and Lindsay, then my mother would be another woman in my house, that I would live together with everyday, that I would laugh with, cry with, share deep thoughts with, make plans with, pursue dreams with, and not only that, but she could help around the house, she could help raise the kids, and she could use her talents to make money and help pay the bills, all things that you think spouses do. But the one thing that distinguishes my relationship with my wife from my relationship with every other person is sexual intimacy. Sexual intimacy is unique to the marriage relationship that can not legitimately be found in any other relationship. And when someone asks you to marry them, you understand what kind of relationship you are being invited into and so you consider it very carefully, because of how monumental of a decision it is, and all it entails, and you make a decision by saying yes or no, and then actually following through with it. So when God offers an invitation for you to be saved from your sins by entering into a covenant relationship with Him, what kind of relationship are you being invited into? If you don’t know what kind of relationship you are being asked to enter into with God, how can you know if you are actually in a covenant relationship with Him or not?
Let’s imagine that Lindsay didn’t understand what the marriage relationship really was, and I got down on one knee and gave her a ring and asked her to marry me. She might have gotten all excited and put the ring on and said yes, and then went and bragged to all of her friends that we were married because she don’t understand what marriage really was. But if her friends then came up to me and congratulated me for getting married I would tell them, that weren’t married. We hopefully would be soon, but weren’t married yet. We can do the same thing with God. God is inviting us into a covenant relationship with Him. If we grossly misunderstand what kind of relationship that is, we may say yes, walk an isle and get baptized, and tell everyone we are saved, which would be the same as saying yes and putting on a ring, and telling everyone we are married, but never actually go to the wedding. Walking an isle and getting water baptized is not the wedding. We might say we want that relationship with God, and tell everyone we said yes, but never begin that relationship with Him. How can we do this? By grossly misunderstanding what we are being invited into, and therefore never entering into it. Wanting Jesus to be your Savior, and saying yes by getting baptized in water doesn’t make Him your Savior anymore than wanting your fiancé to be your husband and saying yes by putting on a ring, makes him your husband.
Why? Because when you say yes, what are you saying yes to? Are you saying yes, I’ll put on this ring and tell everyone you are my husband as long as I don’t have to actually live with you, or be faithful to you, but I’ll promise to tell everyone you are my husband as long as you promise to give me everything you have as an inheritance when you die. If that is what you are saying yes to, then we aren’t married, and you won’t be getting an inheritance. Telling people you are married and wearing a ring doesn’t make you married, and you may be expecting an inheritance years down the road, but you won’t be getting one. But if you are saying yes to actually marrying me and living faithfully with me then we are married and you can expect to receive an inheritance.
So when you say yes to God’s invitation to enter a covenant relationship with Him and you go down and get baptized, what are you saying yes to? Are you saying yes, that you will put the symbolic ring on by getting baptized, as long as you don’t actually have to live with Him daily or be faithful to Him, and that you will tell everyone that Jesus is your Savior and Lord, and that you are in a relationship with Him, as long as He will give you an inheritance when you die? If that’s the relationship you are saying yes to, then you aren’t saying yes to the invitation He extended to you. So what kind of relationship is it? A relationship in which He is your Savior and Lord. One in which you must repent and believe. Faith and Repentance, Savior and Lord. Faith is trust, so you trust Him to save you, and you repent to submit to Him as your Lord. The Savior part requires trust, the Lord part requires repentance.
faith -- 1. That which evokes trust and faith 2. State of believing on the basis of the reliability of the one trusted, trust, confidence, faith
Do you have saving faith?
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