Series: Cornerstone Academy
Speaker: Mark Ritchie
Topic: The Authority of Scripture
Can We Trust the Bible?
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2 Pet 1:16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.
19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
The Bible that you hold in your hand is trustworthy and reliable because it was not produced by the will of man, it is the very word of God.
Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises.[1]
For the Biblical authors, there were myths on one side and truth on the other, and the Bible clearly belongs on the side of truth. No one had a more settled trust in the reliability of the Scriptures than Jesus and He requires no less from His followers. The Christian faith requires trust in the truthfulness and reliability of the Bible.
Many have tried to deny this and create a form of Christian religion that is very selective about what it will accept from the Bible. They don’t think we should take the Bible so seriously, but one thing the Bible can’t be is moderately important. It is either of no consequence whatsoever or it is the most important book in the history of humanity; I’m going with the latter.
Both the OT Jewish faith and the NT Christian faith are intricately tied to history. The events that took place and are recorded for us are events that took place in space and time and under the guise of eyewitnesses. The most important claims of Christianity are historical claims. Jesus was born of a virgin in a stable in Bethlehem. Thousands of people saw him, heard him and witnessed the countless miracles that he performed. He was crucified by Roman authorities in Jerusalem. Then three days later He was raised from the dead and was seen by more than 500 eye-witnesses.
These facts and thousands more make up the historical evidence that fueled the Biblical authors. They wrote what they saw, they wrote what they heard, they wrote what they experienced first-hand; but beneath all of the seeing, hearing and experience, the Holy Spirit was also present.
Question: Who wrote the Bible?
Answer: Holy men who were taught by the Holy Spirit.
Transition…
This morning we are going to look together at 2 Peter 1:16-21 and we are going to ask the question, can we trust the Bible? Is the Bible trustworthy and reliable? Is the message of Christ true?
Sermon Focus…
I. The Message of Christ is no Myth (16)
2 Pet 1:16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths (cleverly invented fables) when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
The problem that Peter is addressing in this letter is that a group of people in the church are dismissing the claims of the gospel as mere myth. They are denying certain aspects of Christian teaching, especially the second coming of Christ, as nothing more than a cleverly concocted story, and Peter is responding to their attack on the reliability of his teaching as well the reliability of all of Scriptures.
We face a very similar problem today. Many of you are familiar with the words of C.S. Lewis where he outlines the options available to us when trying to make sense of Jesus. Lewis writes,
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.
You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.[2]
Liar, Lunatic, or Lord; those are the options that Lewis presents us with. But in our day, we can add a new option to the list; legend.
Tim Keller in his book The Reason for God recounts his collegiate experience during the late 60’s where he was confronted with the prevailing wisdom of the time.
My professors taught that the New Testament Gospels originated as the oral traditions of various church communities around the Mediterranean. These stories about Jesus were shaped by those communities to address the questions and needs peculiar to each church. Leaders made certain that the Jesus in these stories supported the policies and beliefs of the community. The oral traditions were then passed down over the years, evolving through the addition of various legendary materials.[3]
This was taking place at Bucknell University, a private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. It was also taking place in Baptist seminaries during that time. In 1961, Ralph Elliott, who was a seminary professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote a commentary on the book of Genesis that was published by Broadman Press. Elliott’s method of interpreting the Bible was to look for the symbolic and spiritual meaning to the text, because in his view the Bible couldn’t be trusted as historically reliable.
In other words, their view is that the Bible is simply a collection of legends or myths made up by men in order to further their own religious cause. If this is true, then the Bible can’t be trusted as reliable and taken seriously. But these views simply are not true. Over the last 50+ years we have seen the evidence for these claims crumble. There is no serious scholarship to back up what these men and women have said.
The Biblical documents that we have are historically reliable. When you look at manuscript evidence, archaeological evidence, prophetic evidence and statistical evidence; the Bible is the most historically credible book ever written in human history.[4]
Norman Geisler writes,
“By comparison with the New Testament, most other books from the ancient world are not nearly so well authenticated. The well-known New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger estimated that the Mahabharata of Hinduism is copied with only about 90 percent accuracy and Homer’s Iliad with about 95 percent. By comparison, he estimated the New Testament is about 99.5 percent accurate. So the New Testament text can be reconstructed with over 99 percent accuracy. And, what is more, 100 percent of the message of the New Testament has been preserved in its manuscripts!”[5]
There was once a biblical skeptic named Sir William Ramsay, trained as an archaeologist, who set out to disprove the historical reliability of the books of Luke and Acts. He set out on an archaeological journey to prove his theory. However, after several trips through the Mediterranean, all the while comparing the archaeological evidence with the biblical record, he discovered that every fact that Luke, the author of Acts, recorded was spot on, and he became a Christian.[6]
Here is Ramsay’s conclusion to his work:
Luke’s history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness” … “Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”4[7]
You see, we aren’t the only generation of people to face these attacks on the reliability of Scripture. Even in Peter’s day, it is clear that a very early form of this same thing was taking place. There was a group of people in the church and they were rejecting the message of Christ as nothing more than mere mythology, legends created by men to gain credibility and influence. And Peter responds to their attacks by saying nothing could be further from the truth.
The NT gospels, Acts of the apostles and letters to the churches don’t fall into the category of myth or legend – they fall in the category of historical, verifiable fact. Kevin DeYoung writes,
The Greeks and Romans had lots of myths. They didn’t care whether the stories were literally true. No one was interested in the historical evidence for the claim that Hercules was the illegitimate son of Zeus. It was a myth, a fable, a tall tale, a story to entertain and make sense of the world. Paganism was built on the power of mythology, but Christianity…is intimately tied to history.
But how? How does the message of the NT tie itself to actual historical events? For starters, the authors were eyewitnesses.
II. The Trustworthiness of the Gospel is corroborated by eyewitness accounts (17-18)
V. 16 - but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.
In other words, Peter isn’t making anything up. There is not the slightest hint of mythology or legend in Peter’s mind. This actually happened, and Peter, James and John saw it with their own eyes. What did they see? The transfiguration of Jesus.
They were present on the mountain when Jesus was changed right in front of their eyes. All three of them saw the same thing, they heard the same voice, they were all together with Jesus when the majestic glory of Christ was revealed. The mountain where this took place exists. The event itself took place in space and time. All three of the Apostles were present. This wasn’t a vision in their souls or an experience within their hearts. If you and I had been on the mountain with them, we would have seen it too because it truly happened.
This is the posture of the entirety of Scripture. The events recorded actually took place and they were written down for our instruction and edification. The events were verified by those eyewitnesses but also by the countless number of people who were also present when the miracles of Jesus took place.
All four canonical gospels were written no more than 40-60 years after Jesus’ death and most of the epistles were written between 15 and 25 years after Jesus’ death. What this means is that the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ life were all in public circulation well within the lifetime of hundreds of people who were eyewitnesses to His amazing ministry. If legends were to creep into the New Testament accounts, they would have to be written much later so that no eyewitness could point out the errors.
This means that all of the supernatural events that occur in the gospels could easily be confirmed by living eyewitnesses and that is exactly what we find in the NT.
Luke 1:1-4, Luke claims that his written account of the life and ministry of Jesus was taken from eyewitnesses who were still alive when he wrote and began to circulate it.
Mark 15:21, Mark mentions specific names of people, and there is no other reason for him to do so except to give them the opportunity to confirm what he has written.
I Corinthians 15:1-6, Paul not only refers to an eyewitness but to more than five hundred who saw the resurrected Christ at the same time…almost to say, “Go ask them if you don’t believe me.”
On top of these, there is also the fact that the ministry of Jesus did not occur in a bubble, it was clearly visible to thousands of people in the first century world, especially important people. In Acts 26:26, Paul stood before King Agrippa and declared to him the gospel in Jerusalem, the very city where Christ had been arrested, tried, crucified and buried…but those present didn’t laugh off Paul’s words, they took them to heart and pondered them as an explanation for what they knew had already taken place.
What you find in the early days of the church is overwhelming continuity between the gospel writers, which is why we refer to them as the synoptics. The four gospels that we have in our Bible today were recognized from the start as authoritative eye witness accounts and this is evidenced by the fact that one of the church fathers, Irenaeus, declared in 160 AD that there were only four gospels.
It wasn’t until the late 2nd century (175 BC) that the first of the so-called Gnostic gospels was written and that volume contained the type of legendary material you would expect to find, which is why the orthodox church rejected them. They were rejected because by that time the 4 canonical gospels that we have in our bibles were trusted as reliable and true.
When the Apostle John wrote a letter to the church in Ephesus, he led out with…
1 John 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life…3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you.
Peter, James and John were eyewitnesses to the glory of Christ and their burden is to pass on to us what they saw and heard. Their eyewitness testimony is powerful evidence of the trustworthiness of the Scriptures but there is something even more convincing than eyewitness testimony.
III. The Reliability of the Prophetic Word rests on God (19-21)
19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,
More fully confirmed is an amazing statement that we simply cannot miss. Peter wants us to trust in his own first-hand account of Jesus transfiguration glory. He wants us to take his word for it as historically reliable truth. But Peter knows that there is something with even greater credibility, this Word came to us by the Holy Spirit.
It is not that Peter’s eyewitness account of the transfiguration is less reliable than the prophetic word; but that the prophetic word should be accompanied with the utmost certainty and reliability as it comes directly from God. The Word of God is as true as true can be. There is no firmer foundation upon which to rest your faith, your life and your eternity.
The Word of God is true, and the Scripture is the Word of God. Neoorthodoxy wants us to affirm that the Bible contains the word of God or that it becomes the word of God. But Peter’s point is that Scripture is the Word of God. The Greek term graphe means writing, or that which has been written down. The Bible is God’s speech, God’s communication to man, written down and preserved for us and this means that God’s authority resides with His Word.
That’s why the writer of Hebrews can say,
Heb 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
God’s Word is not just something that we read, it is something that reads us. It brings the power of God to bear on our hearts when it convicts us of sin, convinces us of the truth of the Gospel, and motivates us to obedience and faith.
Yes, the word of God was given to us through human instrumentality but that doesn’t make it any less true, authoritative or divine.
V. 20 no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
God chose to use the “intellect, skills and personality of fallible men to write down what was divine and infallible…but this in no way implies any fallibility in the Scriptures (DeYoung 37).”
B.B. Warfield writes,
The men who spoke from God are here declared to have been taken up by the Holy Spirit and brought by His power to the foal of His choosing. The things which they spoke under this operation of the Spirit were therefore His things, not theirs. And that is the reason which is assigned why “the prophetic word” is so sure.
The Bible that you hold in your hands was written down by the hands of men but every word, in the original autographs, was inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. And because God is the author of Scripture we must also say that Bible is without error. Scripture did not come from the will of man but from God and if it is God’s Word then it must all be true.
Ultimately, we believe the Bible to be inerrant because it comes from God Himself. It is unthinkable to contemplate that God might be capable of error. Therefore, His Word cannot possibly contain errors. This is our faith-we can trust the Bible because we can trust God (RC Sproul).[8]
Conclusion…
Some people falsely believe that they can have a relationship with God apart from His Word. They want to be able to pick and choose what to believe about Him. They like certain aspects of Scripture but not others, so they form their opinion of God based on their own likes and dislikes. In the end, what they have is not God but a deified version of themselves. They have constructed an idol that will never save them and probably doesn’t even need to.
But, this is not Christianity it is a delusion. A real relationship to God, the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture, is one where He changes us day by day from one degree of glory to another. “An infallible Bible is not an enemy to our relationship with God; it is the precondition for it.”[9]
You can completely immerse yourself in the Word of God and trust with certainty that it is true. Trust it, rely on it, and be shaped by it. When you read it you are hearing the voice of God and the words of eternal life. The Word of God is true. The good news of Jesus Christ is that He is the way, the truth and the life. He lived, died, rose again and appeared to more than 500 eyewitnesses. He calls us to repent and believe in Him so that we can be pardoned of sin and enjoy eternal life with God.
Preparation for the Lord’s Supper…
Invite helpers to come forward and ask the people to prepare themselves.
As we prepare to take the bread and the wine into our hands and then to taste them with our mouths, let us remember with our minds what these things represent. The sacrifice has already been made and accepted. Christ has been raised victorious over death and this bread is but a reminder, albeit a powerful one. This bread is a tangible reminder of the body of Christ that was broken for us. The wine is a tangible reminder of the blood of Christ that was poured out for our sin.
As we eat this bread and drink this cup we remember the Lord’s death and all that it accomplished for God’s people.
If you are a believer in Christ, meaning that you trust that Jesus is the Son of God who died to take away your sin and was raised to secure your salvation. If you are trusting in Christ alone as your Savior and Lord then we welcome you to join us in observing the Lord’s Supper this morning. As the plates pass you will see clear cups filled with grape juice and purple cups filled with wine.
If you are not a believer and have not come to trust in Christ then we ask that you simply let these plates pass by you. But I would urge you to think deeply about the state of your soul. I would urge you to consider your sin and its offense to God. I would urge you to look to Jesus as your only hope of rescue and to put your trust in Him alone for salvation.
[1] R. C. Sproul. Can I Trust the Bible? (Crucial Questions Series Book 2) (Kindle Locations 68-70). Kindle Edition.
[2] C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity pg. 52
[3] Keller, pg. 97
[4] Josh Wagner, Can We Trust the Bible (personal notes from Falls Creek Apologetics Forum)
[5] Norman L. Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 239–241.
[6] You can read his story in his own book, St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen by William M. Ramsay.
[7] Josh McDowell, Josh McDowell’s Handbook on Apologetics, electronic ed. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1997), Chapter 7.
[8] R. C. Sproul. Can I Trust the Bible? (Crucial Questions Series Book 2) (Kindle Locations 49-50). Kindle Edition.
[9] Ibid.
Cornerstone Academy: Biblical Theology
Series: Cornerstone Academy
Speaker: Mark Ritchie
Topic: The Authority of Scripture
Delighting in God's Word
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Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!
2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart,
3 who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!
4 You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
5 Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
6 Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
7 I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.
8 I will keep your statutes; do not utterly forsake me!
This morning we are kicking off a new summer sermon series on the Word of God: The Doctrine of Scripture. We will be exploring what we believe about the Bible or better yet, what the Bible teaches about itself.
Now, I am sure that as soon as you heard me say that you were thinking in your mind, “Wow, this is going to be incredible!” Does the thought of studying the Doctrine of Scripture excite you, comfort you, fill you with joy? Does it make you want to shout and praise God? Does it make you want to jump up and run to tell others, “We are studying the Doctrine of God’s Word?” Probably, not.
I’m being a bit silly, but I want to make a specific point and it is that when we come to this subject we know that it will engage our minds. This is a “thinking cap” topic, for sure; but as we read Psalm 119 we also see that this is a subject that should move our hearts.
Listen to how the Psalmist describes his feelings about God’s Word:
1. Delight (10 times)– v. 14 In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. V.174 I long for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight. (Duck Tales and Uncle Scrooge swimming in money…)
2. Sweet Like Honey – V. 103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (God’s Word is more satisfying than the best dessert in the world)
3. Love (18 times) – V.97 Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day; V.127 Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold. (He would rather read and obey the commands of God than to have fine gold in his hands)
4. Joy – V. 111 Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.
As he meditates on God’s Word the psalmist does more than think deep thoughts, he also feels deeply in his heart and out of his Spirit-inspired pen comes poetry. Psalm 119is a poem, the longest love poem in the Bible and the object of its love is the Word of the Living God. It is a poem of praise to the Word of God and it is masterfully constructed.
The first letter in each line in each section starts with a specific letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So that verses 1-8 all begin with Aleph and verses 9-16 all begin with the letter Beth, and so on through all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
How many of you have ever tried your hand at writing poetry? If you have then you know this is no small feat. The author of this poem took His time and worked extremely hard to write in such a way that this Psalm would instruct our mind, challenge our soul, and awaken our heart to the wonder of God’s Word.
He uses a handful of terms over and over: law, commandments, statues, rules, testimonies, promises or simply word. Out of 176 verses, 169 of them contain at least one of these terms and sometimes we find more than one. These words represent various shades of meaning but they are all pointing to one idea, this Psalm is about God’s verbal revelation that has been written down for us.As the Psalmist meditates on what God has said, His mind, soul and body are overwhelmed at the beauty, truth and power of God’s Word and that is what I want for myself, for you, for us.
Transition…
Now, I understand that some of you think the Bible is great and all, but it’s a bit odd for people to get too excited about it. After all, isn’t the Bible a combination of God’s Word mixed with human thinking? Didn’t these ancient authors simply put words in God’s mouth? The short answer is, no! In the weeks to come we are going to show you why that’s not true and why you can trust that the Bible is God’s Word and that you should delight in it like the Psalmist.
Some of you may have a different reaction. You may not have any particular problem with the Bible being God’s Word, but it just seems so old and dull. It’s hard to read at times and you would much rather watch a movie or play a video game. I hope that in the weeks to come you will begin to see that in the most serious possible way, your life and your eternity depends upon this Word.
This morning’s sermon is an introduction to our summer study and we are going to look at the first section of Psalm 119 where we learn the Importance of Scripture, the Imperativeof Scripture, the Impactof Scripture, and the Necessity of God’s grace.
Sermon Focus…
I. The Importance of Scripture for Everyone (Vv. 1-1-3)
Ps 119 Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!
2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart,
3 who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!
We have seen this word Blessed before and it means Happy or Fortunate. You could almost substitute the term happy each time you see the word blessed and if you did, it would read like this, “Happy are those whose way is blameless…Happy are those who walk in the law of the Lord…Happy are those who keep His testimonies…Happy are those who seek Him with their whole heart.” This sounds great because we all want to be happy.
Blaise Pascal wrote,
All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. [159] The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.[1]
Everyone wants to be happy and we have an incredible number of options available to us all promising to secure us that happiness. I did a search online and found over 1 billion search results for the phrase, “How to be happy.” Some of the options include: Happiness through better mental health, happiness through better physical health, happiness through better spiritual health, happiness through better sex, better food, better parties, better jobs, better friends, better lifestyle, better entertainment, a better house, better car, better spouse…
It’s interesting to me that the common idea is that happiness will be achieved by having more of what we already have. Or maybe just a bigger, better or newer one. The pursuit of happiness in our culture is being fueled by the consumerism and materialism of our culture. In other words, the marketers have won in that they have made us think that happiness is just a credit card swipe away.
But something even more interesting is the fact that the pursuit of happiness is universal. We all want to be happy and at present, most of us are convinced that true happiness is not something we have but something we must find. And yet, the Bible tells us that we are looking in the wrong places.
The Bible tells us that the happiness we are seeking is actually something deeper. It is the longing of our soul. Our hearts are seeking a happiness that goes beyond circumstances, beyond the simple feelings of the 5 senses.
A steak might make a man happy for a couple of hours, but it doesn’t bring joy to his soul. The epicureans tried that and they ended up morbidly obese, alcoholics with heart problems and type 2 diabetes. They didn’t end up with lasting joy.
The human longing for joy is something that rests beyond the flesh at the soul level of man, and therefore cannot be satisfied with the temporal things of this world. Money, success, pleasure, recognition and power are only the opiates that numbs our deep longing for joy that cries out from the soul of man.
In the Scriptures, God is going to tell us over and over that the deep satisfying happiness that we are seeking is not best understood in relation to things but in relation to Him.In Ecclesiastes, Solomon tells us that, ‘God has placed eternity into man’s heart…”A longing for God has been planted in our hearts and we seek to fill it with things that simply cannot satisfy.
(Illus.No one illustrates the vanity of this quest better than Solomon who sets out to find joy and pleasure by testing everything under the sun. In Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
He sought for joy in happiness and laughter…(v. 2)
He sought to find joy in wine…(v. 3)
He sought to find joy in achievement, building the temple of God, homes for himself and his wives…(v. 4)
He sought joy by being green and planting vineyards, national parks, forests, all kinds of fruit trees. (v. 5-6)
He sought joy in stuff/possessions hoarding gold and silver, horses farms and cattle ranches…(v. 7-8)
He sought joy in entertainment (v. 8)
He sought joy in women and sexual pleasure…(v. 8)
And just in case he left something out in verse 10 he says that whatever he saw he took it. If it looked like it could satisfy the longing of his soul he tried it. But at the end of his quest Solomon said, “I tried it all and it was good but it couldn’t satisfy my soul’s longing.” It was like chasing the wind. It was vanity. It left him empty and still longing to be filled.
That longing for happiness, that pursuit of joy in the human experience will always feel like chasing the wind if we try to satisfy it with the things of this world. But notice that the Psalmist doesn’t offer us happiness based on worldly things, He talks about happiness that comes to those who walk with God according to His Word.
God has given us His Word to show us that the way to happiness is actually the way to Him.True happiness, lasting joy comes when we are reunited with our creator to have relationship with Him. That is where the Word is guiding us. To walk in the way or in the law of the Lord is to have your heart and mind aligned with God. It is to believe, feel and live in relationship to God.
The phrase His Testimoniesis a reference to what God has said and revealed about Himself. To keep His testimonies is to believe and live affirming the truth about God that He has revealed to us in His Word.
Happy are those who seek Him with our whole heart, walking in His ways. One of the most comforting promises in Scripture is that those who seek Him will find Him. Those who cry out to Him, He will hear.
Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”We read in Romans 10:11“Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Why is the Word of God so important for everyone? Because in the Word, God has made it clear to us that the universal human longing for happiness, which we all feel, can only be satisfied by the One who gave us that longing in the first place.
II. The Imperative of Scripture (V. 4)
4 You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
Notice the shift from verses 1-3 that spoke of the blessings that God’s Word holds out for everyone and verse 4 where the Psalmist addresses God directly. “Youhave commanded…” God has brought the full weight of His authority into being by declaring what He requires of us. In His Word, God has made it clear that we are the creature and He is the Creator. He is the lawgiver and we are subject to His commands.
This poses a problem for us because we have all fallen short. We have all sinned and failed to keep His law diligently. That pursuit of happiness has taken us out of God’s will. Our sinful desires have caused us to transgress the law of God. Our rebellious nature has driven us to deny God’s authority and rule. You could say that this is the bad news and it is in the Scriptures that we come to understand that this bad news applies to us.
You see, that pursuit of happiness that marks the human experience is fueled by the fact that we are separated from God because of our sin. We know that something is wrong, and we are trying to make it right on our own. The deep longing in our soul is a constant reminder that things aren’t as they should be, that we aren’t as we should be. In order to help us understand what is wrong and what went wrong, God has chosen to tell us the story.
Our story began in the garden where God and man were at peace. Then rebellion entered the Garden. Through Adam and Eve that rebellion has spread throughout the world resulting in a separation between God and man. We can’t come into His presence anymore because the peace we once had with Him is gone. He cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden and barred the way back in. But that is not where the story ends.
As the story continues to unfold God tells us, in His Word, that He is the one who is going to make things right between us. He is going to send His Messiah who will take our sin away and bring us back to God. That’s where Jesus comes into the story.
Jesus came and lived the life we couldn’t live, He died the death we deserved to die, He paid the price to set us free and rose from death to show that His work was finished. Then, when He was on the road talking with two of His disciples He pointed out to them that all of the Scriptures, from Moses all the way through the prophets, were about Him.
One of the most beautiful and incredible things that you will learn as you read and study the Bible is that it is not a loose collection of religious stories and tales aimed to teach us how to be moral people. Instead, it is one massive story about the relationship between God and His creation. The Bible is one book written by 40 authors on three different continents over a period of 2000 years and it is all telling One Story of how God would redeem His people from their sin by the loving sacrifice of His only begotten Son.
God could have simply left us to our fate. He could have locked us out in the cold, but He chose to reach out to us. In His mercy He called out to us, He spoke so that we could hear, and in His Word His voice can still be heard. God has preserved His Word for us so that we can read it and be changed by it.
Let’s look next at the impact of the Scriptures…
III. The Impact of the Scriptures (V. 5-7)
5 Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
6 Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
7 I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.
Once again, the focus shifts. Verse 4 directly addressed God as the giver of commands but here in verse 5 the focus is on our individual response to God’s Word. “Oh, that myways be steadfast…then Ishall not be put to shame…my eyes are fixed…Iwill praise…Ilearn.”
It is not enough that we affirm the Bible to be the Word of God, we must read, study and apply it in our lives. The Bible is not a prop. It is not a decoration for the mantle. It is not a space-filler that fits on the bookcase just right. God has given us His Word so that it will impact our lives. He wants His Word to guide our way, to comfort us and keep us from shame, to teach us, to grow us, and to elicit praise from our heart.
There is such a thing as true piety. It comes when the law of God has done it’s work of showing us our need of God’s grace. It comes when the Word of God reveals that Christ alone can reconcile us to God and satisfy our souls longing for peace and happiness. It flows out of a life that sees the Scriptures as sweeter than honey and the joy of our hearts. Then we can walk with God in faithfulness, guided by His Spirit and His Word.
But notice verse 8,
8 I will keep your statutes; do not utterly forsake me!
One of the lessons that the Scriptures make very clear to us is that we are never beyond our need of God’s grace. “I will keep your statues, but don’t turn away from me, don’t stop guiding me, don’t stop loving me, don’t stop forgiving me, cleansing me and helping me.”
Conclusion…
Don’t you see that the Word of God reveals all of this to us. It reveals that the universal human pursuit of happiness is actually our soul’s longing to be made right with our Creator. It reveals that the reason we aren’t right with God is because we have sinned against Him. It reveals that in order to be made right we need to follow where the Scriptures lead us and that is to put our hope in Christ alone for salvation. It teaches that we will never outgrow our need of God’s sustaining grace.
So here is the million-dollar question, are you still seeking to fill the longing of your soul with the things of this world only to find yourself empty and still seeking?
Each of us has a longing in our soul which only Christ can fill and until we rest in him our souls will never find satisfaction. So my hope for us all this morning is the hope of Augustine which is this
Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless
till they find their rest in you;
so lead us by your Spirit
that in this life we may live to your glory
and in the life to come enjoy you for ever;
through Jesus Christ our Lord
[1]Pascal, Blaise. Pascal's Pensées (p. 97). Kindle Edition.
The Kingdom On The Rock
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Matt 7:24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
28 And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, 29 for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
Things aren’t always what they seem. There is often a significant difference between the external appearance and the internal reality. This was definitely true of Jesus, an unknown carpenter’s son from Nazareth, who turned the world upside-down. How could something so small wield such incredible power? This question/theme is at the heart of Jesus’ sermon and at the heart of the gospel as well.
When Jesus began to preach this Sermon on the Mount, it was to a crowd of people who hadn’t heard from God in 400 years. They were just beginning to get reestablished after being taken into exile. In their minds thekingdom of Godwas more of a past reality than a present one, but they had great hopes that it was going to be rebuilt and reestablished. They were looking for their Messianic hope.
John came, and he definitely didn’t fit the mold. He looked like a wild-man; He slept out in the wilderness, he ate bugs and when he came out to preach he didn’t sound like a revolutionary. He called the people to repentance, he confronted their sin, he even called out the man who called himself king (Herod). John was sent by God to prepare the people for the ministry of Jesus, the coming of the Kingdom that Jesus was ushering into existence.
But that is not what the people saw. They saw another spiritual leader who was likely to be overwhelmed by the political system. Ever since the days of Solomon, the Kingdom had been in decline. It was fragile and had even come to a complete end. But God had raised up the Kingdom out of the graveyard. He had made dry bones live.
But the kingdom was still fragile, like a house built on sand facing a storm. The people wanted God to restore the kingdom, but it needed to be stronger than the ones before it. It needed a solid foundation, a powerful king and the power of God. But Jesus didn’t seem to fit that mold at all.
Jesus didn’t ride in on a war chariot holding a battle standard. He didn’t come to them with a vision for how to re-establish the nation of Israel to its former glory, with himself at the head. He came to them from Nazareth, surrounded by a group of nobodies and when He spoke about the Kingdom it sounded odd.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are the mourners, the meek, hungry, merciful, peacemakers, who rejoice when they receive persecution.
This is enough to confuse anyone, especially this crowd of Jews. But underneath the confusion was longing and hope. They had heard stories about this man and what He had done in Galilee and Capernaum. He had healed people. His preaching was like nothing they had ever heard; it was very different from the Pharisees and Scribes.
He taught them that the law went deeper than the standard superficial obedience that was so common; and it did this because our sin lies deeper than our physical acts, all the way down to the heart. He taught them about what a true relationship to God looks like, how it shapes our identity, our theology and our activity. He taught them how the grace of God turns us into the people of God and helps us love our neighbors the way God loves us.
Transition…
In the end, Jesus is giving a picture of His Kingdom and He is inviting the crowd to join Him in that Kingdom. At the broadest level, this entire sermon is an invitation. He invites us to enter the Kingdom of God by the narrow gate, to walk the narrow road and to build our lives upon the rock of His word.
This is the final sermon in this series and it is the final invitation of Jesus message. We have spent 24 weeks studying the words of Jesus in this sermon and the question that God wants to press on our hearts today is, “Will you build your life on the Word and work of Jesus?”
Sermon Focus…
I. Two Houses
There is a connection between vv. 21-23 and our passage today. Last week, we saw that there are some similarities between true and false Christians in that they both affirm orthodox doctrine, they are emotionally involved, and they perform acts of service. These are the things that appear on the surface, but underneath was saw that the differences lay at the heart. True disciples love Jesus, they submit their will to His will and their confidence is not in their works but in His Alone.
Two followers but only one is true; things aren’t always what they seem. Here we learn that there are two houses built by two different people. On the outside the houses look the same, but what matters is what you don’t see, the foundation.
It may be that the two men who set out to build these homes were actually friends who decided to build their homes at the same time, so they could start their families together. They would build their homes using the same plans and they must have built them in the same location. Why do I think that? Because both homes are subject to the same conditions, the same storm and the same flood. They may have even been neighbors.
They both worked to build a house that would stand and provide a place for their families to enjoy life. Their kids would play together outside. Their wives would turn the house into a home and enjoy watching their kids grow up together. The men would share tools and help one another on projects. From the street view everything looked fine, normal, secure.
But the point of Jesus’ story is not to major on the similarities, but to show the fundamental and deadly differences. One man was a wise builder and the other was foolish. The foolish builder made a terrible decision, not at the end of construction, but at the very beginning. The foolish builder failed in the most critical decision. He failed to build his house on a proper foundation.
Now, obviously this story is a metaphor where Jesus is comparing short-term construction planning with long-term life planning. We are all builders and what we are building is the hope of our life. And the question is what foundation is your life is built upon? What are the faith commitments that you are resting your eternal hope in?
It doesn’t take much imagination to think of two families on your street. From the curb they look very similar; a house, a family, an SUV and a golden retriever. But beneath the outward appearance is a hidden foundation made up of faith commitments, beliefs about truth and eternity.Once again, Jesus is going to anger the universalists when he says that the only sure foundation that will weather the storms of life and judgmentis the foundation built upon Him.
Matt 7:24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
There are many options out there for us to consider. We could put our hope in ourselves as a materialist and seek to gain all the happiness that this life can afford. But what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul (Luke 9:25)?
We could put our hope in our moral performance and seek to obtain eternal life through good works. If this is your decision you have many different religious paths to choose from: Mormonism, Islam, Catholicism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hinduism, etc. But by the works of the flesh no human being will be justified in the eyes of God (Rom 3:20).
Or you could hear the words of Jesus and build your life upon them. Notice that the wise man is the one who hears the words of Jesus and does them. If you want to be wise and prepared for the storm that is coming, hear the words of Jesus and submit your life to them. Jesus puts Himself and His teaching at the very center of the decision that He wants us to make.
He wants us to abandon any hope but Himself.He wants us to abandon any teaching but His own. He wants us to pay attention to His word and let it become the sole foundation for our lives. He wants us to be teachable and eager to learn the Scriptures. He also wants us to be eager to obey, eager to grow in repentance and faith, eager to grow to be more like Him.
Jesus says that He and His Word is like rock (Petra), a massive formation of stone beneath the surface. Jesus is bedrock and everything else is sand.
Like Paul in Philippians 2, Jesus wants us to understand that any foundation that is not Christ Alone is doomed to crumble. Paul had lived an incredibly moral life. He had an impeccable religious heritage. He was a great student, a great leader, an up-and-coming star on the roster of the Pharisees.
If you compared him to another man you would quickly come to find that Paul was better in every regard. He was devoted to prayer and to religious practices. He would tithe and fast and study his Bible and sit around the table arguing fine points of theology and religious belief. He was faithful to attend the synagogue; he had the perfect attendance award for his participation in Saturday school. This guy was legit but there were cracks in his foundation.
Some of us are in the same boat. Comparatively we are better than our neighbors. We don’t do bad things, at least not where someone can see them; and we try more than others to do good things, especially when others can see them. We consider ourselves good and feel that if we put our bad deeds on one scale and our good deeds on another we will easily get by on the abundance of our good deeds.
But when Paul heard the good news of Jesus he recognized that this foundation was worthless.
Phil 3:7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…
(Appli. Now this is where we need to pause and understand what is at stake. All the things that Paul once banked his hope on where good things and some of them were commanded by God. The problem was that Paul believed they were able to bring him into right relationship to God.
God has given us two great gifts: One is His Word/Law. His word stands as a witness to the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, the goodness of God and the justice of God. We wouldn’t know God at all if He had not given us His Word. But His Word/His Law is not a checklist for how we make ourselves clean. The law is a gift from God and one of its purposes is to show us our need for another greater gift…a Savior.
The law is a mirror to reveal how much we need to be cleansed of sin, it is a tutor meant to lead us to understand our need for a savior, it was our babysitter to keep us safe until our Savior showed up. Jesus is the one who takes away our sin by giving his life in place of ours. Jesus is the one who washes us clean and gives us his righteous robe so that we are able to come into the wedding feast. Jesus is the gift of God who becomes the foundation that will bring us safely through the storm.
The law is a gift and it has its purpose, but that purpose is not to save us. It points us to our need for another gift, that of a savior. Paul came to understand that he was wrong about the law and he was able to see Christ was His only hope.
Paul heard the words of Christ and He obeyed them, He put all of his hope in Jesus.
But not everyone will make the same decision.
26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
This man/these people hear the words of Jesus, but they don’t obey them. They hear the gospel, but they decide to stick with their own foundation. Every ambition a man cherishes, every thought he conceives, every word he speaks, and every deed he performs is a building block in the structure of his life. But it can all fall to the ground if the foundation of your life is not solid enough to hold it.
Someone may say, “What does it matter what the foundation of my life is, so long as I live the right way, care for my family, pay my taxes, love my children, and try to leave the world a better place?” If we do the comparison game many of us would feel that we have everything under control. But the problem with that game is we are all laughably outmatched.
When we compare ourselves to other men we tend measure up pretty well. They may beat us in some categories, but we beat them in others, so it evens out. But when we compare ourselves to God…the game is over. We lose every time, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We can’t hope to match up to the glory of God, but everyone who hears Jesus and goes his own way is doing just that. They are trying to stand up to the scrutiny of God’s judgment on their own.
Why is it important for you to give serious consideration to the foundation of your life? Because the storm is coming.
II. One Storm
27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house,
I think in context the storm is a reference to the storm of Judgment, which Jesus already brought up in verse 22 (on that day). We looked at this last week and were reminded from all of Scripture that a day of judgment is coming. On that day, the holy wrath of God will be unleashed upon the world and every foundation of man will attempt to stand up to the might of our Heavenly Father. But they will all fail.
Jesus tells us that the only foundation that will stand up under the Father’s wrath is His own. The storm of God’s judgment will be so terrifying that men will seek to hide in caves and will even cry out for the stones to cover them. But those rocks won’t save them. The only rock that can save is Jesus and you must build your life upon Him before the storm arrives.
Some would have us consider that the storm that Jesus is referring to are the troubles of life here and now. Perhaps, we could compare this parable to Jesus’ parable of the soils where the cares of this world, the persecution of faith and the work of Satan are the storms we face. Either way, Jesus point is clear. Any foundation other than the word and work of Jesus are doomed to fall. But if you will build your life and your eternal hope on Jesus word and work, you will stand.
Conclusion…
Will you build your life, your hope, your eternity on the Word and work of Jesus? I know that many of us, in fact most of us, have come to see that Jesus is the only hope we have for enduring the judgment to come. We know our righteousness will never stack up and we know that our sinfulness is far too great for us to bear alone. We know the standard of God’s judgment is His own holiness and we have abandoned the common notion that we can save ourselves.
So, our eternal hope is not in ourselves but in Jesus, and it doesn’t stop there. We have also decided to follow Him and let His Word guide our lives. We want to be the first to seek forgiveness, the first to go to the Scriptures, the first to step up when there is a need. We want to show grace to those who don’t deserve it because in Christ God has shown us grace and we certainly didn’t deserve it.
We know that following Christ and seeking to live a godly life in Christ will bring challenges, enemies and persecution, but that’s okay. After all, where shall we go, “Jesus has the words of eternal life.”
2 Cor 4:8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
We can face the storms of this life and the storm to come, because we know the one who controls the storm.
(Illus…A man and his wife were in a boat crossing to the other side of a large lake when a great storm arose. The storm came on them unexpectedly and before long the woman began to fear that their boat would soon go under. But all the while her husband did nothing and this was odd because her husband was a warrior who had spent much of his life on the water.
When the situation seemed hopeless she began to cry out to her husband for help. She said, “Aren’t you afraid? Isn’t there something that you can do? Will you do nothing?”
In response, her husband drew his sword, held it up in front of her face and asked her, “Are you afraid?” In the midst of her fear she laughed saying, “Why would I be afraid of you? As long as the sword is in your hands I have nothing to fear because I know that you love me.”
He smiled and put the sword back in its sheath saying, “I also know that God loves me and this storm is in His hands. So whatever happens is going to be good. If we perish we will be with Him and if we survive it will be for His glory. Either way I will trust Him.”
Many of us here today have that kind of hope in Christ, but not all of us. Some of you have heard the word of Jesus, you have heard about the work of Jesus, but you haven’t put your hope in Him. Your life is resting on faith commitments that are doomed to fail and Jesus is calling you to come and follow Him.
In fact, in Matthew 11Jesus says,
Matt 11:28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Don’t you see that Jesus came to save sinners and give them the kind of life that God intended. He came to rescue us and give us rest, not just physically, but deep down in our soul. When we come to Him and hear His Words and Do what He tells us we will be setting our life upon Him, the foundation that cannot fail.
On That Day
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What image comes to mind when you think of a judge? Do you picture one of the judges on your favorite crime drama? Or one of those hard-to-take-seriously judges on daytime TV? Please tell me that you didn’t think of the judges on American Idol. I’m talking about actual judges who are responsible to uphold law and order.
Cartoon judges, syndicated TV judges, crime drama judges might look the part; but when the time comes we want true judges to be what they should be, not what a television audience might want them to be. We expect judges to be just, to be fair, to be people of integrity, to do what is right and to uphold the law…so long as we aren’t the ones on trial. When I’m on trial I want a judge that is merciful.
But what if there were a way for us to know ahead of time that we would soon stand trial? What if we knew it was coming and we knew who was going to judge us and why? What if we could be given a lifetime to prepare ourselves to stand before that judge? Would you be ready?
There is a theme that runs throughout the Bible and this theme sets before us the certainty of a day that is to come. It is a day, when all of mankind will be called to stand before God and give an account for the way we lived our life. The Bible refers to this day as, “The Great Day, The Day of the Lord, The Day of God, The Last Day, or even simply That Day.”It is the day of judgment when everyone who has ever lived will be called into the presence of the Judge of All the Earth and we will give an account of our lives to Him.
Our passage this morning is one of the most haunting texts in the NT. It is one of the most sobering lessons to come out of Jesus’ mouth. This passage echoes loudly in our minds and hearts, but in many ways, it is a gift to us. In this passage, Jesus is not simply trying to frighten us, but He is trying to warn us that this day of judgment is coming, and the question is will we be ready.
Transition…
As Jesus works to bring His Sermon on the Mount to a close, He looks forward to that day and He forces us to do the same. He gives us some idea of what it will be like on that day and He even tells us that on that day there will be those who will be surprised at how they are received.
Matt 7:21 “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.’
In our passage this morning Jesus wants us to know three truths about That Day: The Day is Coming, there will be True and False Disciples, and Jesus is both our Judge and our Savior.
Sermon Focus…
I. There is a Day of Judgment Coming
Judgment is part of our lives every day, but most of the time we think of it as something that affects, “those people.” We like it that way. Judgment is something that we would rather keep at arm’s length but the reality is that judgment is more a part of our lives than we care to admit.
We pass judgment on people all the time. We observe how people drive, how people eat, how people dress; and we mumble our judgments under our breath. We also receive the judgment of others on a regular basis. When a stranger rolls their eyes at us, or a random woman in a car honks at us and offers us an encouraging hand gesture, we are experiencing their judgment.
Why am I pointing this out? Because I want us to understand that Justice in an underlying and universal human reality.We have a natural longing for justice. When someone takes something that belongs to us we want justice, even small children give evidence of this. How many times as a parent or an observer of children have you heard the phrase, “that’s not fair!” That statement is about justice and it’s just in them.
God created us in His image and He has imparted to us some of His own sense of right and wrong. We get our sense of justice from Him.He has written His law on our hearts, which means that deep down we know that there is such a thing as good and evil, fairness and unfairness, justice and injustice. But He has also revealed to us in His Word that a day is coming when true justice will be poured out.
Our sense of justice comes from God and it is strong, but it is also corrupted by sin. God’s sense of justice is perfect because it is a reflection of His own holiness.The flood in Genesis 6 that resulted in the destruction of all life and the reshaping of the entire planet was an act of perfect divine justice. The sacrificial system in the OTwas about divine justice. The burning of Sodom and Gomorrah was about God’s justice and wrath. The Israelite wars against the pagannations were about divine justice.
Eccl 12:13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
God will judge every deed, every secret thing. This theme continues in the NT, in fact it becomes even more clear that the judgment of God is coming.
Rom 14:10 For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.
2 Cor 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
This is an interesting twist in the theme of judgment. Jesus himself has been appointed by God to be the actual judge that all men must answer to.
John 5:22 For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.
Jesus is the Divine Saviorsent into the world to rescue us from our sin and He is the Divinely appointed Judge who will judge even the secret thoughts of men with perfect justice.When Christ carries out the final judgment upon the world we can be certain that we will be held accountable for our deeds and the true justice that our hearts longs for will be carried out. History is moving toward a goal and that goal is the triumph of good over evil. Judgment means that evil will one day be disposed of authoritatively, decisively and finally.
There is a Day of Judgment Coming. But what does that mean for you and me?
II. On that Day, there will be True and False Disciples
Matt 7:21 “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?’
When that day of final judgment comes, among the crowd will be a group that we can call false converts. They have many similarities to true believers, but something is missing. Let’s look first at how these false converts are similar to true converts.
1. They are Orthodox in their profession– They call Jesus Lord. The Greek term kuriosmeans master in most cases and it is often used to describe the master, in a master slave relationship. But this term is also used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament and it is used to refer to God Himself. In Exodus 34when God descended in the cloud to stand before Moses and proclaimed His name to Moses we see this term used.
6 The Lordpassed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…
These people come before Jesus with orthodox doctrine and say to Him, “Lord, Lord.”
2. They are Emotionally Invested –If you want to emphasize a word in Greek you move it to the front of the sentence. So instead of saying, “I did all these things in your name, Lord,” you would write it this way, “Lord, look at what I’ve done in your name.” Putting Lord at the beginning of these statements emphasizesthat Jesus is Lord.
But if you want to stress emotion then you would repeat the word.“Lord, Lord,” stresses emotion and emphasis, which means that these people aren’t just orthodox in their profession, they are also emotionally invested. The speaker standing before Jesus wishes to draw attention to the strength and zeal of their emotion about His lordship.
3. They are Active in Service– What these people stress as they speak to Jesus on Judgment Day is that they have prophesied in His name, cast out demons in His name, and done many mighty works in His name. Notice, that Jesus doesn’t deny their claims. There should be no doubt that their claim is true, after all…
Matt 24:24 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
These unnamed people are making an emphatic, emotional, orthodox, and public profession. They even have evidence to back up their claims, but Jesus could not be more clear that their profession and evidence will do nothing to help them on Judgment Day.
V. 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Jesus says here that you can be orthodox in doctrine, emotionally invested and active in religious service, but still not know God.How does this happen? What is missing?
Jesus rejects them based on 3 things:They have a love problem, a relationship problem and a lordship problem.
1. False Converts have a love problem – Do you remember the first great commandment? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength (Matt 22:37). One of the things missing from the false convert’s profession, is a sincere love for the Lord. They know what to call Him, “Lord.” They know the church activities to engage in. But they have nothing to say with regard to their love of Jesus.
James 1:12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.
Being a Christian is about more than crossing your orthodox t’s and dotting your good works i’s; it’s about having and growing in your love for God.
What was the difference between Peter, who denied Jesus, and Judas, who betrayed Jesus? Both men professed Him to be Lord, both cast out demons in His name, both did might works in His name, and both failed miserably to be faithful to Jesus at crucial points in their lives. Why was Peter a true disciple and Judas a false one? It was Peter’s love for Jesus.
Judas loved himself, he loved the things of the world, he loved money and he loved all these things more than Jesus. Peter left everything to follow Jesus. He boldly declared that He would never leave Jesus’ side, which he failed to do out of fear. But in the end do you remember what Jesus stressed to Peter during that shoreside breakfast?
In John 21, Jesus came to the disciples in the morning and made them breakfast. When they finished eating, Jesus looked to Peter and asked him, “Peter, do you love?” He asked this three times and each time Peter said, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Peter was not a perfect disciple. He had to be rebuked by Jesus, corrected by Jesus, and forgiven by Jesus many times. He abandoned Jesus, He denied Jesus, but in the end it was undeniable that He loved Jesus.
True Christians aren’t perfect disciples, but one of the marks of true conversion is a love for Christ. The false disciple in Jesus story didn’t say, “Lord, Lord, I love you.” Hypocrites can fake many things to make others think they are legit. They can fake prayer, they can fake give, they can fake service, fake religion, and fake worship. But they cannot fake a love for Jesus.
As you evaluate your own heart, ask yourself, “Do I love Jesus?” Is He the pearl of great price to you? Is He your chief delight? Do you love Jesus and are you growing in your love for Jesus? If so, understand that you love Him because He first loved you. If you have love for Jesus in your heart it’s because God put it there when He caused you to be born again.False converts have a love problem.
2. False converts also have a Lordship Problem – These folks can say, “look at the things that I’ve done in your name.” but Jesus says to all of us, “the one who does the will of my Father…is the one who will enter the Kingdom.” Where is the breakdown?
Many people say, “I want all the things that Jesus promises…forgiveness, heaven, eternal happiness, etc. but I don’t want to give up my freedom. I don’t mind going to church, telling others that I am a Christian, I’ll even teach a Sunday school class from time to time; but I reserve the right to do what I want. I want to decide when I want to forgive others, I want to decide to sin when I want to, to sleep with whomever I want, I want to decide when I am going to tell the truth. I want to be in a position where I can make these decisions for myself.”
That is not Lordship, it’s a deluded mind.It is a person living under the delusion that he/she can have the benefits of following Jesus without the actual following part. Their profession of faith was verbal but not moral. They called Him Lord, but they didn’t submit to His Lordship.
Luke’s version of this saying is much stronger than Matthew’s,
Luke 6:46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?
Don’t call Jesus Lord with your mouth and then turn and treat His teaching like you can take it or leave it. To profess faith in Christ without practicing the commands of Christ is not a new sin, so don’t be deceived.One of the distinguishing marks of a true convert is a surrendering of your will to Jesus.
Tim Keller reminded me a great Biblical illustrationof this point from the life of King Saul. In 1 Samuel 15, God tells Saul to go into battle against the Amalekites and after the battle God told Saul to destroy all the livestock. This didn’t seem to make much sense, but a lot of the time obedience doesn’t seem to make sense. Saul decided to keep the livestock instead of obeying God’s command.
Then the prophet Samuel came and said to Saul, “Why do I hear the bleating of sheep? The Lord told you to destroy the livestock of the Amalekites, why haven’t you done this?” Saul said, “Well I thought we could offer it as sacrifices to the Lord.”Then Samuel said, “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice…you have rejected the word of the lord.”
Saul called Him Lord but didn’t obey Him as Lord. God didn’t want the sheep, He wanted Saul and Saul wouldn’t give up his will for the sake of God’s. It is not those who cry out, “Lord, Lord!” who enter the Kingdom, but those who do the will of the Father.”False converts have a Lordship problem.
As you evaluate your own heart ask yourself the question, “Am I submitting my will to His? Am I calling Him Lord anddoing what He commands?” Maybe you are holding on to some sin and you won’t let it go. Maybe you are refusing to forgive someone close to you. Don’t just call Him Lord, submit to His Lordship.
3. False Converts have a relationship problem – Jesus will tell them, “I never knew you, depart from me…” This phrase to knowcarries a pretty significant weight when talking about relationships. It is used of intimacy within a marriage and also of intimacy with God.Jesus uses this phrase throughout John 10to describe His own relationship with the Father as well as His relationship to His sheep.
Jesus explained that sheep follow their master because they recognize his voice and they recognize his voice because they know him(relationship). The sheep don’t follow strangers because they don’t recognize the strangers voice. But the crowd didn’t fully understand what Jesus was talking about and what it had to do with His Kingdom. So He clarified.
John 10:7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be savedand will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Jesus is the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep. True converts know that our relationship to God is not based on what we say about Jesus, nor is it based on what we do to try and earn a place in the Kingdom.True conversion is based on knowing Jesus Christ as Lord. A true disciple is not trusting in their doctrine to save them, nor their profession, nor their emotion, nor their service; they are trusting in Christ Alone.
Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace.
Foul, I to the fountain fly, wash me savior or I die;
Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.
Conclusion…
Jesus is our righteous judge, but He is also our sacrificial savior. We know that Judgment is coming because the Bible has made that clear. God is holy and we are not, and there is a reckoning due. Evil will be punished, sin will be punished and because we are sinners, this poses a problem for us. The day is coming when we will stand before Jesus as the judge of all the earth, but there was also a day when Jesus came to earth to be the savior of all those who believe.
The one who will judge with perfect judgment on the day to come, was once asked to bear the judgment that all of God’s people deserve. On the cross, Jesus died in our place.
Isa 53:5 he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Jesus is coming to judge and His judgment will be perfect, but the judgment that His people deserved has already been poured out.
You can get in on this today. Come to Jesus. Acknowledge your sin to God. Believe in Him and you will not perish but will have eternal life. Turn from your sin and bear the fruit of submitting your will to God. Come to Jesus and let His Lordship rule over your life, let His Word be the lamp for your feet, and His gospel be the light for your path.
Sheep and Wolves
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Matt 7:15 “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.
I want to remind you of something that Jesus said earlier in Matthew 7:11. He said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts…” We all like to think of ourselves as good people, which to some degree is true. But Jesus reminds us that we are good evil people, and yet we know how to do, say and give good things.
There are times when we good, but evil people say things that are true, believe things that are true and teach things that are true. But there are also times when we say, believe and teach in error. We make mistakes all the time. I make mistakes in what I think and say and teach. To err is human but being wrong doesn’t necessarily make someone a wolf, it just means they are wrong.
But there are wolves among the sheep and they have been around for a long time. There are false teachers in our past and they are within the church today. Here are some quotes from those false teachers.
“The Father alone was really God; the Son was essentially different from his Father. He did not possess by nature or right any of the divine qualities of immortality, sovereignty, perfect wisdom, goodness and purity. He did not exist before he was begotten by the Father. The Father produced him as a creature. Yet as the creator of the rest of creation, the Son existed ‘apart from time before all things’. Nevertheless, he did not share in the being of God the Father and did not know him perfectly (from Arius who denied the full divinity of Jesus and was excommunicated from the church at the council of Nicea. But his teachings live on today in cults like the Jehovah’s Witnesses).”
“You must realize that it is God’s will for you to prosper. This is available to you, and frankly, it would be stupid of you not to partake of it (Kenneth Copeland).
Do you believe that God wants you to live in the abundance and the overflow of His goodness, His Mercy, and His provision? God is not magnified when you are broke, busted, or disgusted (Paula White).
When you’re in difficult times, it’s good to remind God what you’ve done. ‘God, I kept my family in church. God, I’ve gone the extra mile to help others. I’ve given. I’ve served. I’ve been faithful.’ In your time of need you should call in all those seeds you’ve sown (Osteen).[1]
When we pray, believing that we have already received what we are praying, God has no choice but to make our prayers come to pass…It is a kay to getting results as a Christian. We must not allow religion or tradition to blind us to the truth of what prayer really is (Creflo Dollar).[2]
If you stay in your faith, you are going to get paid. I am now living in my reward (Joyce Meyer).[3]
Transition…
This is only a sample of the incredible amount of false teaching that the church faces today. These statements and hundreds more are being delivered from so-called Christian pulpits. Those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ are being fed this garbage on a regular basis. My friends and some of your friends, or even family members, have heard this stuff, read this stuff and tuned in to listen to this on TBN. Some of you have been influenced by this stuff as well and I want you to recognize it for what it is, the false teaching of wolves.
Some might say, “Pastor that is harsh criticism, shouldn’t you be more compassionate like Jesus?” Jesus’ ministry was one of compassion, gentleness and love; but when the false teaching Pharisees or Scribes came around, his will hardened. He did not hesitate to call them hypocrites and He worked to expose their hypocrisy. He knew they were wolves and He wanted His disciples to be aware of themand to know how to spot them.
Matt 7:15 “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.
Sermon Focus…
There are two things that Jesus wants us to learn in this passage: He wants us to Beware of False Prophets and He wants us to learn how to recognize them.
I. Beware of False Prophets (V. 15)
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
Jesus tells us to beware of false prophets because they exist. This is not a fake warning, like when someone puts a “beware of dog” sign on their fence when they don’t really have a dog. No, this is a legitimate warning that there are wolves among us who look like sheep and have very sharp teeth. False teachers, false prophets, lying spirits, false christs; this the language used to describe those who come among God’s people seeking to bring division, confusion, and destruction.
False teachers don’t announce themselves, they don’t advertise that they are liars; in fact, they hide in plain sight. They claim to be true sheep, they claim to teach the truth; but Jesus wants us to know that there is something beneath their appearance, there is something living beneath the wool and it isn’t friendly.
How many times has this happened to the church?Think about Judas, no one saw him coming, except Jesus. How many times has this happened in history?Antinomianism has been around since the gospel reached Rome. Valentinus and Marcion began teaching Gnosticism in Rome in the 2ndcentury ad. Arius denied the true divinity of Jesus in the 3rdCentury. Pelagius denied the doctrine of original sin in the 4thCentury. Each of these men were Christian scholars, leaders and teachers; but all of them denied the plain truth of Scripture and they led their followers astray.
When Jesus tells us to beware of them, He means that we need to be alert to their presence, on guard against their influence and we need to avoid them.In other words, stay away from them. He is not warning us about them so that we can go and play with them, so that we can try to tame them, or de-fang them. You don’t play with a ravenous wolf, that’s why Jesus tells us to avoid them and their influence.
Be alert to their presence…
These men, and women, are often difficult to spot because they are in disguise. They are wolves, but they look like sheep. They are false (Psuedo), which means they are lying about their identity.
2 Cor 11:13 Such men are falseapostles, deceitfulworkmen, disguisingthemselves as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
The first to pull off this devilish disguise was the devil himself. He came to Eve in the Garden disguised as a serpent, peddling lies, sewing rebellion and causing destruction. He looked like any other snake but his fangs were poisoned with something unique. His mouth was filled with lies and he passed it on to the false prophets in the OT.
Jer 14:14 And the Lord said to me: “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds.
Satan is the deceiver behind all false teaching and false teachers. His lying voice corrupts all of them at one level or another. But false teachers are not just a thing of the past. Jesus and the apostles, let us know that there will be even more of them during this gospel age and we need tobe on guard against their influence.
Speaking of the signs of the end of the age Jesus said,
Mark 13:22 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.23 But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand.
Their aim is to lead us astray. They want God’s people to abandon our faith in God’s Son. They want us to put our hope in something else or someone else and we must be on guard. They stand at the intersection of the Broad Way and the Narrow Way and they urge us to take the deadly road.
But how will they try to do this?
2 Peter 2:1 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”
The heretic is perhaps the most common and most dangerous of all of the false teachers. The heretic denies the essential truths of the Christian faith. He or she takes God’s Word and denies it, they take essential gospel truths and reject them or redefine them. The doctrine of the trinity, the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, Salvation by Grace Alone through Faith Alone, the full deity and humanity of Jesus; all of these and more have come under attack in recent years by heretics who deny the truth for their own gain.
The heretic is not necessarily the person who disagrees with your view of the end times. Someone is not a heretic because they believe in a different mode of baptism than we do. Heretics deny the clear teaching of Scripture. They deny the miracles of Jesus, they deny the divinity and humanity of Jesus, they deny the virgin birth of Jesus.
Jesus wants us to avoid their lies, not giving them an opportunity to tickle our ears.
2 Timothy 4:3-4 “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachersto suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”
False prophets are real and they disguise themselves as sheep. They corrupt the truth, deny the truth, twist the truth and seek to lead Christians away from the truth. We’ve got to be ready for them and Jesus tells us how to do that.
II. Learn to Recognize Them by their Fruits (V. 16-20)
V. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits.Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, 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.
It goes without saying that a wolf in sheep’s clothing is often difficult to spot. They look like everyone else and it would be easy for us to mistake them for sheep. But Jesus wants us to be able to recognize them, so he gives us a test to apply. It might be easy to mistake a wolf for a sheep but it’s hard to make the same mistake with a tree.
What is Jesus talking about here? The point is that a tree can’t hide its identity forever. For a season it will simply look like any other tree in the garden, but in the spring, it will begin to bud and before long you will see its fruit. The tree will betray itself by its own fruit, but it won’t happen overnight.
Generally speaking, there are three types of fruit that we are looking at: Conduct, Influence and Doctrine. The first one is Conduct.
J. Mac writes, “False prophets can disguise and hide their bad fruit for a while with church trappings, biblical knowledge and evangelical vocabulary. They can cover it by belonging to Christian organizations, associating with Christian leaders, and by talking about divine things…but sooner or later what is in the heart will emerge, and corrupt theology will result in a corrupt life.”[4]
When we see the term fruitin the NT, Conduct is the most common way it is used. When John the Baptist was ministering alongside the Jordan river he called on his listeners to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. The fruit he was calling for was a change in lifestyle, a change in conduct. So when Jesus tells us that we will know false teachers by their fruits, conduct should be one of the first things that pops into our minds.
True Christians pursue the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. They don’t embody them perfectly but grow in them over time. Counterfeit Christians are marked by arrogance, impatience, and greed. They abuse their authority and wound true sheep. They obtain a platform and do everything they can to maintain that platform even if that means running over other people. There is no consistent Christlike humility in them, but instead a desire to lord over others.
His/her bad fruit may show itself in sexual impurity; this has become one of the more common ways that wolves are exposed in our day. He may prey upon women or children to get what he wants. He is an abuser and the Bible warns us of him.
Jude 4 “For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
2 Tim 3:6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions.
Sadly, these men get entrenched in the church. They hide behind their gifts and the people around them often overlook their sin out of fear or misplaced loyalty. They will often create leadership structures and systems that insulate them from criticism and this gives them unchecked control.
In the end, they will abuse that authority and we have to learn to recognize the bad fruit of sinful conduct in their lives. We also have to create systems and structures that demand transparency and accountability. Their sins aren’t always glaring, so we need wisdom as God’s people to be able to spot the fruit of their conduct.
We also need to be able to spot the bad fruit of their Influence. False teaching doesn’t always show up in the form of a person, it may show up in books, blogs, or on TBN. This teaching isn’t what you normally hear but it just sounds good. It moves your heart. It smooths out the rough edges of Jesus’ teaching. They give the appearance of simplifying things, but in reality they are leaving out much of what the Bible says.
Often times, they don’t really want to focus on doctrine but would rather focus on the bigger themes of Scripture like love. Who can argue with love, right! So they focus on love and before long they have created their own definition of what love is and what is loving. If God is love, then we can’t talk about hell or the moral demands of the Christian life. If God is love then we shouldn’t talk about sin, or suffering, or pain; we should only talk about the good things because that is what God wants for you. They take general truths and arrive at unbiblical conclusions.
Or maybe they are taking the Scriptures and twisting them in the other direction in order to get your money. The most prominent false teaching in both our world and our culture today is the health, wealth and prosperity teaching that comes from charismatic leaders who frequent TBN (Trinity Broadcast Network).The staple of their teaching is that Jesus was poor, suffered pain and persecution, was killed on the cross so that you can be happy, wealthy, pain free, and successful by believing in Him. They teach that you can sow a seed of faith (money) into their ministry and that God will bless you 10-fold, 20-fold, 100-fold because God wants His people to be rich.
They claim that if you are sick, it’s because you don’t have enough faith. If you are poor, it’s because you don’t have enough faith. If you are suffering, it’s because you simply don’t trust God.
(Illus…read excerpt from the introduction to Health, Wealth, & Happiness
The influence of this type of false teaching has spread all over this country and it has begun to spread throughout the world. Let me name some names for you:Benny Hinn, Robert Tilton, Kenneth Copeland, T.D. Jakes, Creflo Dollar, Fred Price, Eddie Long, Kenneth Hagin, Joel Osteen, Paula White, Joyce Meyer and there are many others. Their influence is significant, but their false teaching makes the suffering of Christ a means to personal gain. Their teaching is idolatry and it is influential.
1 Timothy 6:3-5“If anyone teachers a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produceenvy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.”
We must learn to recognize the bad fruit of sinful influence that false teachers sew.
Third, we must learn to recognize the bad fruit of their false doctrine.
If you are unfamiliar with this teaching, or if you are surprised to hear one of those names listed as a false teacher, I want to encourage you to do one of two things. Pick up a book out of our library titledHealth, Wealth, & Prosperity by Jones and Woodbridge. Or, you could go online to www.desiringgod.organd search for prosperity gospel and listen to what John Piper has to say about it.
Here is some of what he has said about it,
“I don’t know what you feel about the prosperity gospel—the health, wealth and prosperity gospel—but I’ll tell you what I feel about it…Hatred.”
It is not the gospel, and it’s being exported from this country to Africa and Asia, selling a bill of goods to the poorest of the poor: “Believe this message, and your pigs won’t die and your wife won’t have miscarriages, and you’ll have rings on your fingers and coats on your back.” That’s coming out of America—the people that ought to be giving our money and our time and our lives, instead (they’re) selling them a bunch of crap called “gospel.”
Here’s the reason it is so horrible. When was the last time that any American said that Jesus is all-satisfying because you drove a BMW? Never! That’s idolatry, not the gospel. That’s elevating gifts above the giver.
Psalm 73:25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Oh, how I pray that America would be purged of the health, wealth and prosperity gospel.
False prophets and teachers spread lies and we must be able to spot those lies. In John 10Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Brothers and sisters we have to learn to recognize the voice of Jesus. Let me be more specific, we need to know God’s Word and be able to spot it when something is off. We need to know what Jesus says in His Word and be able to recognize when a teacher is off key.
Our hearts, minds and lives must remain tuned to Christ and that means we need His Word, His cross, and one another to help us stay on key. Otherwise, the false teacher will come and bring division. He will turn Christians against their leadership. He will turn Christians against Christian. He will turn Christians against their master.
Conclusion…
Not everyone who needs to grow in the fruits of the Spirit is a false teacher. Not everyone who has wielded influence in a negative way is a false teacher. Not everyone who has bad theology is a false teacher, but all of these are signs for us. We must learn to recognize these things.
Jesus wants us to know that there will be false teachers among us and we need to be on guard. We need to be alert to their presence, on guard against their influence and when we see them we need to avoid them. We need to be able to see the fruit of false teachers conduct, influence and doctrine.
[1]Osteen, Joel It’s Your Time (Pg52)
[2]Quotation taken from Jones and Woodbridge Health, Wealth & Happiness(pg. 97)
[3]Ibid pg 67
[4]JMac, New Testament commentary on Matthew (pg. 469)
Ask, Seek, Knock
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The thread that runs through Matthew chapter 7 is that of relationships. In chapter 5 Jesus introduced us to the upside-down kingdom of God; how to enter into it and how to live within it. In chapter 6, He taught us how our relationship to God as Father guides our religious devotion and every other aspect of our life in this world. But here in chapter 7 the theme shifts to help us understand how our faith in Christ affects the way we relate to the people we will encounter in this world.
Last week, Terry helped us to see how we should relate to our brothers in Christ. Our desire is to help them but we can’t go into that relationship blinded by our own faults. We must humble ourselves, take the log out of our own eye, and then we can care for our brothers and sisters.
The second relationship is to those Jesus categorizes as dogs and pigs, which is not just talking about un-believers, but those who have defiantly and decisively rejected the good news. Our Christian witness is to be done with patience, perseverance and wisdom. It takes great wisdom to know when it is time to shake the dust off of your feet and move on.
The third relationship is between us and our Heavenly Father and it flows right on the heels of verse 6. Here’s the connection; How are we to know when to be patient with an unbeliever and when to stop casting pearls before swine? To give someone over to their unbelief is a very serious step to take and it is not a decision to be made lightly. Our normal Christian duty is to pray for unbelievers, preach to unbelievers and to persevere in our love for unbelievers. But there comes a point when it’s time to move on.
How can we know when that time has come? Or better yet, how are we going to be able to live out, not just verse 6, but all of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount?
In this Sermon, Jesus has opened our eyes to the true character of His Kingdom. His Kingdom is kept for those who are poor in spirit, who mourn over sin, who are starving for righteousness. His kingdom is for the merciful, pure-hearted, peacemakers who suffer persecution for their new citizenship, but all the while rejoice because their name is written in Heaven.
As citizens of this kingdom, Christ calls us to let our light shine into this world. He calls us to pursue righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees and Scribes. He calls us to leave the altar of anger and pursue reconciliation. He calls us to tear out our right eye rather than to lust. He calls us to love our spouse to the end. He calls us to keep our word, to turn the other cheek, to love even our enemies, to practice our righteousness with sincerity, to pray, to fast, to give, to lay up treasures in Heaven, to trust God with everything, to humble ourselves and then help our brothers get the speck out of their eyes.
We don’t enter the Kingdom based on our good works, but once we enter in we are anything but idle. Our entry into the Kingdom is a gift of God’s grace, we enter by grace and through faith in all that Christ is and all that Christ has done; but our citizenship comes with responsibility.
There is much to learn, much to do and plenty of ways that we need to grow. With all of this in mind, Jesus wants us to know that we are going to need help and that God is ready to supply the help we need.
Transition…
In Matthew 7:7-11, Jesus is not giving us open-ended instruction to demand from God whatever we may want. He is telling us that the help we need to carry out all the imperatives of the Sermon must be pursued and will be supplied by our Heavenly Father.
Where are we going to obtain the wisdom needed to honor our new king? Where are we going to get the spiritual strength to faithfully follow Christ? How are we going to stand firm against the hostility of this sin-soaked world?
Matthew 7:7 “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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Sermon Focus…
There are two things that we are going to see this morning: 1. Our God will supply our needs 2. Our God is a good and loving Father.
I. Our God will supply our needs (V. 7-8)
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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
Ray Ortlund writes,
“When we depend on organization, we get what organization can do. When we depend on education, we get what education can do. But when we depend on God, we get what God can do. That is why we pray. We want to be involved in what only God can do for us...”[1]
In our everyday life we have grown accustomed to needs rising up all the time, but we already know how to meet many of those needs. We live in a culture of abundance. When a problem arises we often know exactly what to do, or at least we know who to call. We have learned to depend on our experience, our education, and our resources. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, after all God does want His people to be wise, hard-working and to make the best use of what we have been given.
But there are many needs that arise in the Christian life, which our everyday resources can’t meet. Jesus is encouraging us in this passage to let those needs drive us to God continually. Ask, seek, knock; all of these verbs are present imperatives, which means there is a continual action involved here. Ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking! When Paul tells us to pray without ceasing, this is what he is talking about.
Jesus wants us to let the needs of the Christian life cause us to continually lean into dependence upon God. And He use three verbs instead of one to help us see just how thorough our prayerful dependence should be.
He starts by telling us to ask and asking requires humility that not only recognizes a need but also recognizes that we are powerless to meet that need. Some of us have no problems asking others for help, but that is just not the case with everybody.
(Illus…I know that we all have cell phones now with interactive maps on them, but there was a time when you might get lost while driving and the only hope that you had was to pull over and ask for directions. If you are a guy, pulling over to ask for directions was the last thing you wanted to do, because it required you to admit that you had no idea where you were and where you were going.
Asking for help can be a very humbling thing. It takes humility to admit that we aren’t smart enough, patient enough, or strong enough. It is an act of humility to confess that we need help and that is what Jesus tells us to do. His invitation is, “Come to God and ask Him to intervene in your lives, ask Him to meet your needs, ask Him to give you wisdom.”
Sure, He already knows what we need, Jesus made that clear in 6:32, but God wants us to come to Him and ask. But too often we don’t.
James 4:2 You desire and do not have… You covet and cannot obtain… You do not have, because you do not ask.
Prayer is an admission that we don’t have what it takes. It is us saying, “God, I can’t; but I know you can.” We are putting ourselves in a vulnerable position by declaring our absolute dependence upon God. We need Him to do for us what we have no power to do for ourselves.
And here’s the crazy thing that Jesus wants us to learn about God; He loves to answer our prayers. Jesus says, “Everyone who asks receives…” I don’t think there is a more encouraging and motivating passage on prayer in all the Bible. Jesus says, “Ask and keep on asking… your Father will hear and respond.”
Now, this does not mean that God is like some genie in a bottle bound to grant us three wishes, no matter how absurd they may be.
Jesus point is not that God will give us whatever we ask for, but rather that because God loves us and is good, He will hear our prayers and give good gifts to His children. If you look at the parallel passage to this one in Luke 11 you will see that Jesus says, “The heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.” God is not a wish-granter, but He is a Spirit-granter. He will meet our spiritual needs by the supply of divine help.
So let’s come to God, ask and keep on asking.
Let’s also seek and keep on seeking. To seek for something means we look for it, we hunt it down, we put forth the effort needed to obtain the object of our desire. In this case, the object of our desire is our Father’s help and Jesus wants us to seek it out. When we pray for God to meet our needs we don’t just sit on our hands.
Each week, I pray that God will help me to understand His Word and help me to write a sermon that will be a powerful help to you, His people. I pray for insight, creativity, understanding; but that’s not all that I do. I also study the word. I read and think and meditate. I type and delete and type again. I ask but I also seek. Seeking is not the opposite of asking, these two things go hand in hand.
Have you prayed for God to give you an understanding of His Word? Did you follow that up by reading and studying His word? Have you prayed for God to give you peace about a decision? Did you follow that up by applying godly wisdom to the circumstance? Have you prayed that God would allow you to be salt and light to the world around you? Did you then go out and let the light of the gospel shine out of your life?
Sometimes God answers our prayers in the process of our faith taking action. When the answer comes we don’t say, “Oh, I guess I didn’t need God after all.” But rather, we begin to see that He works through normal means to meet the needs of His people.
We ask and keep on asking, we seek and keep on seeking, and then we knock and keep on knocking. Knocking is what we do when we are desperate, but the door is closed, so we knock until our knuckles get sore. I think the point of this is to pray with persistence, like the unprepared friend in Luke 11.
Jesus tells us a story about a guy, who goes to his friend in the middle of the night and begins to bang on his door asking for food. Now for you and I this might not be that big of a deal. If a friend comes over in the middle of the night some of us might not even be in bed. But in this day, there was no lighting and electricity and it was customary for people to get in bed just after the sun went down, which means that this guy and his family were well into their deep sleep (REM sleep). So, the timing of this friend is incredibly inconvenient.
The next thing Jesus tells us is that the request he makes is excessive and bordering on ridiculous. In those days a loaf of bread would feed an entire family for several days, but this guy asks for three loaves of bread. Imagine that you go to the grocery store and buy two weeks’ worth of groceries for yourself and your family and then as soon as you get all that food home with you, a friend walks up in a panic and demands that you give him all the stuff you just bought. That’s what is going on in Jesus’ story.
Then we find out that the guy was absolutely unprepared. We don’t know if the man was just lazy or if his houseguest arrived unannounced, but what we do know is that he is unprepared and powerless to meet his need. “I have nothing to set before him,” this means that he is in desperate need of someone outside of himself to supply his need.
This guy came over and woke up the whole family, his timing was incredibly inconvenient. His request was over the top. He was totally unprepared and unable to meet his own needs, but he doesn’t let any of this stand in his way. He knocks and keeps on knocking, until his friend gets out of bed to help him.
Here’s the point of Jesus’ story. Our God is not a sleeping friend. He is our good and gracious God who loves his children and who desires to give good gifts to them. No matter the time of day, no matter the expense of the need, no matter the inconvenience; God invites us to come to Him like needy children and to cry out for his help.
Jesus wants us to come to God with confidence, with humility, and with persistence; asking, seeking and knocking. But the best part is what Jesus tells us next. 1. Our God will supply our needs because 2. Our God is a good and loving Father.
II. Our God is a good and loving Father (V. 9-11)
9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Asking, seeking and knocking can be wonderful but can also be terrifying. It depends on who you are approaching. If the person on the other side of the request is a tyrant, then we are in trouble. But the person on the other side of the door that we are knocking on is good. That’s the point of this illustration. Jesus wants us to be motivated to pray by our knowledge of the goodness of the One we are praying to.
To make his point Jesus tells the story of a child coming to his father with a series of requests. Each time the father gives good things to his child. He doesn’t say that the little child always gets exactly what he/she wants, but the point of the story is to show that loving parents, even though they are evil, still know how to care for their children.
Now, I’m not sure about you but I think Jesus’ definition of evil is pretty interesting. Jesus has no problem saying that we do good things even though we are evil. Our worldly way of thinking makes us want to say that since we do good things we must be good and not evil. But Jesus says, “Oh you’re still evil, but even evil parents give good gifts to their children.” I think our definition of evil needs some work.
The force of this illustration lies in the contrast between evil human parents and our infinitely good Heavenly Father. If human parents (although evil) know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will our Heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him?
This is meant to transform our prayer life. When we realize that we are praying to our heavenly Father, when we grasp that we are praying to the One who loved us even in our sin, who gave us His Son to save us from that sin, and who has adopted us into His family allowing us to call Him Abba; is there any reason in the universe why we wouldn’t come to Him over and over to ask, seek and knock.
Romans 8:31 If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
God has no perverted self-interest. He is not stingy with His good things thinking that He might run out and have nothing left for Himself. He is not angry with us and trying to get revenge by withholding good things. He is not tired of us coming to Him with our needs. He is pure, holy, and loving. He is full of mercy, full of grace, abounding in steadfast love for His children and He loves to give good gifts to His children.
Our Heavenly Father is better than our earthly father, better than any earthly father.
But some of you are saying, “What about my unanswered prayers?” This is a good question and there are not always easy answers to this question. Let me give you a few reasons why God doesn’t always answer our prayers.
1. This promise is for believers. The right to come to God as a child to a Father is given to those who receive Jesus Christ as Lord and with that faith comes the benefits of sonship (John 1:12). The context of this promise is centered on those who have entered the kingdom through faith in Christ, apart from faith this promise isn’t yours.
2. The problem may be our motives. James 4:3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. If your asking, seeking and knocking is about your own personal comfort, or more money, or power over others, or self-promotion in some way; if your prayers are motivated by a warped and perverted view of the gospel, such as the health, wealth, and prosperity teaching that is so prevalent today; then you have no claim on this promise no matter how much you name it.
3. The problem may be our sin. James 1:6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. Faithless prayer is nothing more than a wish dream thrown up into the sky, what Jesus calls us to is humble dependence upon God.
4. The problem may be that we are not asking for the right thing. 1 John 5:14 This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. God gives gifts that are consistent with His will and often our requests aren’t’ consistent with His will.
5. The problem may remain a mystery. I am so thankful that the book of Job is in the Bible because it lets us know that there are some questions that may never be answered. Over and over again Job comes to God and asks, “Why?” He wants to know why he is suffering. He wants to know what God is doing. He feels attacked and abandoned by God.
His friends all told him that his suffering was the result of some past sin, or maybe even some present sin. They misapplied, misdiagnosed, and misrepresented God to their friend. Job’s friends had no category for innocent suffering and in many cases, neither do we. But it is true that much suffering in the life of a Christian cannot be connected to a particular sin in their life.
There is such a thing as innocent suffering and the relief from the suffering is found in God himself, not looking back or looking in, but looking up. Job never found out the answer to his “why” but he did find and answer to the question of “who.” Even in the darkness, Job found that God was enough. And here’s something we need to learn from him, Job never stopped asking, seeking and knocking.
In the end, Job’s life was restored to him and He learned that God is a good and loving Father who not only takes away but also gives. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
By the way, the truly innocent sufferer was Jesus. He suffered the scorn of this world, but this world was not worthy of him. He suffered the shame of the cross though he had committed no sin. His innocence made the cross a severe worldly injustice, but it is by His suffering that we who believe have been saved. His death secured our ransom.
Conclusion…
Tim Keller writes, “God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows.”
Sometimes God withholds something from us that we’ve prayed for because He knows more than us and He has a better gift in mind. I read a story this week about a pastor who preached on this text and then after the sermon he was approached by a woman.
She told him, “I walked through a season where my husband came down with cancer…we asked, we sought, and we knocked, and my husband passed away. We didn’t get what we were asking, seeking, and knocking for.”
But then she said, “On the other end of our asking, seeking, and knocking was a good, gracious, loving Father. Although I never would have chosen what he gave us, I trust that what he’s giving us is for our ultimate good.”
Nothing about that experience sounds easy, but she came through it with a greater love for and trust in God. She knew that on the other side of that door stood a loving, good, gracious, and generous God that she could trust. She didn’t have all the answers, but she had Him. We need our best theology in our darkest moments.
Do you believe that? Do you believe he loves you? Do you believe he has your best at heart? Do you trust His wisdom and care for you? The One who gave His Son to save rebels and make them into sons and daughters is the One we put our hope in, no matter what. He is the One that we lean on, depend on and come to in prayer.
“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need”
[1] http://ortlund.net/message/how-to-pray/
Judge Not!
Do Not be Anxious
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Matt 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Within this room there are 5 living generations, at least that’s how sociologists and market analysts would see it. We have a few representatives of the Silent Generation, those born between 1927 – 1945. This generation was the first to experience life in the suburbs. They had a front row seat to the invention of the television, rock ‘n roll, and the glory days of American cars. In grade school, the most significant teacher complaints about this generation were about passing notes and chewing gum.
We have a few more representatives of the Baby Boomer Generation, those born between 1946-1964. This generation started out trying to save the world in the 60-70’s but then ended up climbing the corporate ladder in the late 70-80’s. This is the cold war generation. They are always busy, optimistic and driven. They could do anything that they set their mind to do and they were the first to envision and use technology to accomplish their dreams.
We have a few Gen x’ers in here as well; those born between 1965 – 1980. These are the latch-key kids, the first generation to grow up with both parents likely to be working outside of the home. They aren’t so much interested in saving the world as they are in saving the neighborhood. This generation was introduced to computers in middle school. They tend to be more individualistic than corporate, in fact they have a tendency to question authority and prefer to try make it on their own.
The Millennial Generation is made up of those born between ‘81-2000 and they are the first generation to be raised by helicopter parenting. This is the video game console generation whose digital literacy is often far ahead of their social, historical or actual literary literacy. This generation has a more global perspective than previous ones and yet they learned early on that the world is not a safe place. They feel high academic pressure. They have been told over and over that they are special, and they expect the world to treat them that way.
Then there is Generation Z, born after 2001, and we are still trying to figure you guys out. This is the Google Generation that have grown up surrounded by digital screens. They are more likely to trust something they read on the internet than something they hear from their parents. This is the most market targeted generation in history. They spend more than $51 billion each year and another $170 billion is spent on them by parents and family.[1]
Every generation has its own unique identity and along with that they have their own unique issues to be stressed out about. One generation is worried about the stock market while another is worried more about the fashion trends. One generation remembers the political tension of the 80’s and worries about global war issues while another is more concerned about the environment and global warming. One generation is worried about how they are going to put their kids through college while another generation is worried about how many likes they will get when they post their next selfie. But there is at least one thing that connects all of these generations; they all worry.
Transition…
Worry and anxiety affects us all, even those who work really hard to lead a simple life. There is an entire movement dedicated to living a simple and minimalist life. The goal is to simplify the daily routine, minimize possessions, reduce the size of one’s living space, simplify clothing, food and everything. One of the reasons for this trend is the stress and worry that living a normal life can bring.
But, stress is not just a product of having a lot of things, it also affects those who don’t have a lot of things. Worry affects all of us and it doesn’t care if you are rich, poor, young, not so young, successful, or scraping by.
But one of the greatest things about Jesus is that he does not want his people to be filled with worry. The main point of today’s text is that Jesus doesn’t want us to be anxious about life, in fact, he commands us 3 times in these 9 verses not to worry. He wants us to not be anxious about the things of life, but rather He wants us to trust our Heavenly Father and seek His Kingdom. Doesn’t matter what generation you fall into, Jesus wants you to be free.
Thankfully, he doesn’t just tell us not to worry, he actually teaches us why we shouldn’t worry and how we should fill our lives. So there are three points to my sermon today: 1. Jesus doesn’t want His disciples to be anxious, 2. 7 reasons why we shouldn’t worry, and 3. Instead of worrying we should seek the Kingdom of God
Sermon Focus…
I. Jesus doesn’t want His Disciples to be Anxious… (V. 25, 31, & 34)
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life,
31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?
34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Now, there are two things that I want to point out from these three verses. First, I want you to notice the presence of the term therefore and second, I want us to look into the actual term that Jesus uses for anxiety/worry.
First, the presence of the word therefore lets us know that this command to not worry is tied to something that Jesus has already taught us. In other words, he calls us to think before he calls us to action. So, what is it that he has been talking about that is supposed to help us with our anxiety? Think back to what we have seen throughout Matthew 6. Jesus has been teaching us what it looks like for us to live in relationship to God as our Father.
The Fatherhood of God is foundational to Christianity. The whole goal of Christ’s mission is to reunite us with our heavenly Father. When a person comes to faith in Christ they are adopted into God’s family and made a child of God and an heir of the Father’s kingdom right alongside Jesus.
10 times in chapter 6 alone we see Jesus refer to our relationship to Our Father and that is the theme of this chapter, Life in relationship to the Father. Our relationship to God through Christ changes everything. It changes how we give, it changes how we pray, it changes how we eat, it changes how we spend and save our money. It changes how we deal with worry and anxiety.
If you are a believer in Christ, If you have been born again; If you have turned away from sin and are trusting in and following Christ as Lord, then Jesus wants you to have the deep peace and security that God is your Father. He wants your life to be defined by that relationship. Whether you are thinking about religious devotions like praying, fasting and giving, or you are engaging in the business of life in this world; the ground beneath you is the fact that the God who created all things is your Heavenly Father and He is in control.
He knows you, He loves you, He knows what is going on in your life and He is working all things together for good. He knows what you’re walking through, He knows how lonely you are, He knows how dark the horizon looks and he wants you to draw near to him for comfort, security and peace.
Our relationship to God is the theological foundation for Jesus’ command that we not give in to worry. But, if you are not a believer in Christ then you have every reason to be worried. The peace that comes from knowing God as Father is not extended to those who reject the Son. The peace that Jesus wants us to have comes only as a gift to those who trust in Him.
John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not let your hearts be distressed or lacking in courage.
Phil 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
The peace of God that combats our worry is something that defies explanation and understanding. It is a peace that comes from God, it is a divine and spiritual gift. Christians have this peace to ward off the worry and anxiety of this life; but this peace is not promised to those who reject the gospel.
So, the command to not be anxious is rooted in the knowledge that through faith in Jesus, we now have a relationship to God where He is our heavenly Father. But let’s get a little more specific about the type of anxiety that Jesus has in mind here.
The word is not all that complicated and the ESV does a good job with the translation, “Do not be anxious.” The real focus is on the things that bring about this anxiety.
V. 25…do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on…
He’s talking about the most basic needs that we have as human beings: food, drink and clothing. Spurgeon called these the world’s trinity of cares. If we are honest these things do cause us some anxiety, and Jesus understands the needs that we have. In fact, he has already taught us to pray for God to give us this day our daily bread. So, Jesus is not denying the basic needs that we have. He is commanding us to not allow our concern for those material things to become idolatrous.
Some of us really struggle with this. Worry can take over our life in such a way that we actually begin to think or live as though the thing we want, or need is the most pressing and most important thing in the world. Our anxiety about these things can absolutely take over our thoughts, our conversations, our noodling around on the internet, and even our way of life.
Most of us don’t worry about food in the same way that Jesus’ 1st Century audience worried about food. Their hope was to have 1 meal a day, but our worry for food has become something else entirely. Our anxiety over food has to do with whether or not we are eating clean, or how gourmet the meal is. Our anxiety over clothing is not about whether we have something to wear, but about whether or not we are keeping up with Insta-mom.
What happens is we elevate and inflate the value of things and when those things are threatened it shakes us to our very core. What we have done is to make an idol out of something and when one of our idols is threatened it intensifies our anxiety.
II. 7 Reasons why we shouldn’t worry
But Jesus gives us two categorical reasons not to worry about our basic needs being met. First, he offers us some common-sense reasons and then some theological reasons.
Reason 1: V. 25 life is more than food and the body is more than clothing – yes, food and clothing are important but they aren’t ultimate. These things aren’t the essence of life so don’t live as though they are. If you have come to understand that God is, then you understand that your life is about more than food and clothing. Your life is about bringing glory to God.
The greatest thing in life is to know Him and to enjoy Him. When we get anxious about food and clothing it’s because we have lost sight of the greatness of knowing and enjoying God.
Reason 2: V. 26 look at the birds of the air – No seriously, look at the birds. Jesus wants us to learn how to combat worry by looking at the birds. The birds don’t just sit up in the trees singing songs, no they work. They build their nests. They dig for worms. They hunt for bugs and other food. Birds wake up each day and they work till the sun goes down and then they nest up and go to sleep. They don’t worry, they don’t fly around with anxiety, they just do what they were made to do, and God continues to be God.
So, Jesus is not telling us to sit back and do nothing because we expect Him to meet all of our needs. As servants of God He expects us to take responsibility. To work as unto the Lord. To work and buy food to feed our families and then to be generous and share with others.
He is telling us to recognize what the birds already seem to know, that there is work to be done and the mercy that God shows us today is sufficient for today. Tomorrow will be a new day and there will be new work to do, but God will continue to be God and care for the birds. If God makes provision for them, how much more will He make a way for us. God sees you as His child, more valuable and precious than any bird, and He will care for you.
Reason 3: V. 27 Which of you can add an hour to your life? – How many of you, when you were kids, desperately wanted to be older? Did it work? Of course not. So, what is the point of this verse? Anxiety doesn’t get you anywhere. It doesn’t do you any good. It will not lessen your problem, it only makes you miserable so don’t do it.
Reason 4: V. 28 God not only takes care of things, but He makes them beautiful – look at the flowers in the field, they hardly last a week, but they are more beautiful than the robes of the king. God loves to make beautiful things. He doesn’t just make the grass, He fills it with flowers. We call them weeds, but He thinks they are more beautiful than kingly robes.
One of the lessons that we can learn from this is that we need to be more thankful for the things we already have. How often do we overlook or ignore the beauty of the fields? We take them for granted and when we do this we are ignoring the work of God in clothing creation in beauty.
We need to learn to be thankful for what God has already given us, for what we already have and stop worrying about whether or not our clothes are out of style.
Reason 5: V. 32 Anxiety reveals a lack of faith – When Jesus compares our anxiety to the Gentiles, he is saying that our worry puts us on the same level in the world with unbelievers. It shows that we aren’t thinking like sons of God but like sons of the world.
Reason 6: V. 32b God knows our needs – We are not alone in this world and we are not alone in the universe. Our needs haven’t taken God by surprise. He sees and He knows and He cares. Worrying implies that we don’t really know what God is like or that we don’t really trust Him.
Reason 7: V. 34 Today gives us enough to deal with – Worry is a waste of time. Don’t you have enough to deal with today? I know I do. We need to learn to live one day at a time. We plan for the future but we don’t worry about the future. This verse lets us know that being a Christian doesn’t mean that you will be free from trouble. But Christ calls us away from the folly of worrying about it and into the peace of having a God who works all things, even the troubles we face, into something good. Face the day with that confidence and don’t allow tomorrow’s troubles into today in the form of anxiety.
In all of this, we have seen that as Christians we are not promised freedom from work, nor freedom from responsibility, nor from trouble, but from worry. Worry is incompatible with our faith. Jesus doesn’t want us to be filled with anxiety, but to trust in the loving care of our Heavenly Father. To help us understand what that looks like He has given us at least 7 reasons not to worry. But now He tells us what we should be doing.
III. Instead of Worrying we should be Seeking the Kingdom of God (V. 33)
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Instead of worrying, seek the kingdom. Instead of wringing your hands over what you are going to do, seek the glory of God. Instead of losing sleep over some decision, trust the providence of God and seek to honor Him.
(Illus…Jesus is calling us to our own Moses moment. In Exodus 3 & 4, God came and spoke to Moses from the burning bush and when He did Moses was afraid. But as God began to explain to Moses that He was going to send him back to Egypt to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go; when Moses heard this he began to worry.
He told God, “But, who am I that Pharoah will listen to me?” and “Why would the Hebrews listen to me either?” Moses said to God, “Oh Lord God, I can’t even talk right, I am slow of speech…please send someone else.” One after another, Moses came up with all of these questions and excuses as to why God should choose someone else. The truth is that Moses was allowing fear and worry to control him. Rather than seeking to honor and serve God, he allowed his anxiety to take over his mind and heart.
Back in Matthew 6, Jesus is saying, “Don’t let fear and anxiety rule your life, instead let the Kingdom of God and the righteousness of God fuel your life.”
Conclusion…
God’s kingdom involves 3 things: God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule. This is what we are living for. As Christians, we are the people of God by faith in the work of Christ and we are awaiting the complete rule of Christ in a place that has yet to come. We live each day to make the Kingdom of God known and seen. The more we make the Kingdom our pursuit, the less anxiety we will have.
Jesus came, lived, died, and rose in order to reign over an anxiety free people. (Piper)
So come to Jesus and forsake the worry of this life. Come to Jesus and pledge your loyalty to His loving care. Come to Jesus and let His kingship rule over your life, let His Word be the lamp for your feet, and His gospel be the light for your path. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light and He is the only way to find true freedom from anxiety.
[1] Much of this information was taken from http://www.marketingteacher.com/the-six-living-generations-in-america/
The Resurrection Life
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Phil 3:8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Can we say along with the apostle Paul that of all the things that this world values, nothing matters so long as we have Christ? That is what Paul is saying in these verses. The things that our world considers to be of value are like nothing compared to knowing Jesus Christ as Lord. Paul’s religious heritage, his ethnic identity, his nationality, his tribal identity, his global identity, his education, his moral accomplishments, and all of his religious zeal are as nothing compared to knowing Christ Jesus as Lord.
For all of His life, Paul has placed his confidence in these things. He had placed his confidence in his flesh (v. 4) and what he meant by that was that his identity and worth was wrapped up in his own religious heritage and personal accomplishments. The core of his life, the dynamic that fueled his life, was the do-it-yourself, moral improvement of Pharisaism. The fuel of his life was the belief that he could earn God’s love through self-effort and moral behavior.
He was better at it than every one of his age but he came to see all of his accomplishments, all of his self-made religion as worthless; and He came to view Christ as the most valuable thing in the universe. He walked away from everything he once held dear and he was left with nothing but Jesus, and he found Jesus to be more than enough.
What happened? What changed him? The dynamic force of Paul’s life shifted from self to Christ, from religion to the gospel. When Paul came to God he brought his religion, his moral resume, his list of good works. But when God came to Paul he brought the resurrection of Jesus and this changed everything.
Everything changed for Paul when he saw Jesus for himself. He saw the risen, resurrected Jesus with his own eyes and on that day the earth-altering dynamic of the resurrection changed Paul’s life. The gospel and the resurrection of Jesus wrecked Paul’s normal, moral and religious life. Maybe you can identify with that. Maybe you need to identify with that. Maybe you need to have your life wrecked, turned upside-down by the power of God. I know I do.
Transition…
What difference does the resurrection make for our lives today? Sure, we have some idea of what it will mean for us in the life to come, but how does it affect our life today? How does the resurrection of Jesus affect our heart, our life, our relationship with God, and our thoughts about death? Here in Philippians 3, God is going to help us answer these questions
Sermon Focus…
I. The Resurrection of Christ affects our hearts (V. 8)
The word resurrection is not a common term in the OT, in fact, it’s not a very common term in the NT. When ancient religious people thought about life after death they didn’t think in terms of resurrection. Pagans believed in a spiritual existence after death but not a bodily resurrection. Many of the Jews, the Sadducees in particular, rejected the resurrection because they claimed Moses hadn’t said anything about a bodily existence after death. They were wrong, of course, and Jesus pointed that out to them in Mark 12:26-27.
Resurrection refers to something that happens to the body. Most religions identify that the soul will live on after death, but Christianity teaches that our bodies will be raised from the grave. The followers of Jesus might have lived long and happy lives if they had simply stated that Jesus lived on in the spirit after his crucifixion, but they didn’t. They taught that Jesus’ body was raised and brought back to life by the power of God.
They taught this because they saw it with their own eyes. They walked in the empty tomb just three days after they saw Christ die on the cross. They saw Jesus in the upper room, saw the scars in his hands and on His side. They touched those scars. They saw Jesus again on the shore in Galilee and they ate breakfast with him. They watched outside of Jerusalem as His body was taken up into Heaven right before their eyes.
When Jesus’ disciples preached the resurrection, they weren’t referring to Jesus’ soul being raised, or his spirit living on; they were claiming that His dead body had been raised to life. To the Romans this was nonsense and to the Jews this was a scandal, but the resurrection is at the heart of the gospel. Our salvation depends on the reality that Jesus not only died on the cross for our sins but also that He was raised from the dead three days later.
Paul had believed all of his life that in order for him to be loved by God all he needed to do was to try his best and have a good moral resume to show for it. Which is not all that different from what most of us believed. We have this innate sense that if we want God to love and accept us, then we are going to have to earn it. It’s in our heart. We naturally assume a debtor’s ethic and that is why legalism comes so easy to us.
But legalism is theologically ignorant because it assumes that the way to solve your problem is to have more of your problem. Legalism claims that we have a weakness in our flesh and it tries to remedy that by relying on that same week flesh to do enough good works to make us acceptable. But the gospel comes and tells us that our problem is not just a weakness of the flesh, but a deadness in our soul.
Eph 2:1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Our problem is not that we are weak, it’s that we are dead. Let me illustrate it this way, we don’t naturally seek God, we naturally believe that a little sin will be fun. We naturally think that a little sin will spice up our weekend. We don’t naturally think that a little righteousness will be fun. Our hearts are captive to sin in this way, but our hearts aren’t captive to God in this way.
What does this mean, it means we don’t just have a little problem with sin it means we are dead in our trespasses and sins. We don’t just need to straighten up a little bit, we need God to resurrect our hearts from the dead
Our hope lies outside of ourselves. Jesus didn’t come to show us a new way to God, He came to be the way to God. He died in our place to free us from our spiritual deadness. He lived the righteous life that we could never live. He died the death that we deserved and His resurrection from the dead is proof that God accepted His sacrifice on our behalf.
Here’s what that means for our hearts today. It means that we can and should say along with Paul,
7 Whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
The resurrection of Christ shows our hearts that we can abandon our self-salvation mission and put all of our hope in the one who lived, died and rose from the dead to save us from our sin.
But the resurrection of Christ does more than affect our hearts it also affects our lives.
II. The Resurrection of Christ affects our lives (V. 8, 10)
V. 8 For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
In verse 8, we read that Paul not only counted all things as loss, but he also suffered the loss of all things. The flesh that he once put all of his hope in, was now something that would endure persecution. Paul suffered for his faith in Christ and part of that was his choice. Not that he was longing to get beat up everywhere he went, but he believed it was worth it.
As a servant of Christ, he suffered imprisonment, countless beatings and was often near death. Here is an account of Paul’s suffering in 2 Corinthians 11.
24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
Now why did Paul endure all of this suffering? V. 8 – For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. This verse is one of the most shocking verses that Paul ever wrote. Paul’s suffering was for the sake of Christ and much of it was at the hands of the Jews. They persecuted Paul because he came to see his old way of life, his old way of life as rubbish or quite literally dung.
All his life, Paul had viewed his Pharisaism, his legalism, as something valuable to God. But now that he had come to know Christ he looked on his old religion as disgusting. It was less than worthless and who wants to carry around a handful of dung, much less to hold it up to God and say, “This is why you should love and accept me.” Paul came to see that compared to the gospel, his religion was wretched. So, he tossed it aside and began to serve Christ. This brought persecution.
But the gospel didn’t leave him empty-handed. He tossed away his man-centered religion and in its place, he gained everything. The gospel doesn’t call us to renounce everything and become empty, boring, dull people. The gospel says let go of what will rob you of greater joy, lasting joy and embrace the Truth that will set you free to truly live.
The resurrection made Paul see that he could give his life away and he wouldn’t lose a thing. He lived with unstoppable faith and fearless hope. His faith in Christ caused him to sacrifice everything on the altar of the gospel, and in the end, he got God.
Dear Christian, don’t live a timid, fearful life. God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and fearless faith. Let’s be willing to suffer the loss of all things for the sake of Him. Let’s be willing to give our lives away for His sake.
The Resurrection affects our heart, our life and our relationship with God.
III. The Resurrection of Christ affects our Relationship with God (V. 9)
At the end of verse 8 Paul writes, “…in order that I may gain Christ.” Now what does that mean? the answer comes in verse 9. Gaining Christ means…
V. 9 being found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
Gaining Christ means that I have obtained, through faith, the righteousness of God. Or you could say it this way, it means to have the righteousness of Christ credited/imputed to your account. Now, why is this better than obtaining righteousness on my own?
This verse compares two types of righteousness. The righteousness of my own that comes through my obedience to the law or the righteousness from God that comes through faith in Christ. Paul looks at both of these and says, “I’m walking to the gates of Heaven with the righteousness from God.” This is the confidence that the gospel gives us.
Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that you do 1 act of pure righteousness everyday of your life. 1 act per day done in obedience to the law of God that is not fueled by some selfish motive, or sinful ambition. 1 per day and I believe that is being crazy generous. I remember a stretch of years between high school and college that wouldn’t have produced anything to my credit. But let’s be generous and give ourselves credit for 1 good deed each day of our lives.
If we live to 80, that is just over 29,000 good deeds in a lifetime. But the math really doesn’t matter all that much, because for each good deed there is a counteractive bad deed.
We have to consider the other side of the scale. Can we assume 1 act of unrighteousness every day of your life? Can we assume 1 lie, or 1 act of deception, or 1 angry thought, or 1 lustful thought, or 1 hateful thought, or 1 act of greed, or 1 act of pride, or 1 act of impatience, or 1 act of gossip, or 1 thought of vanity? 1 unrighteous act per day, which again is being generous. If it’s 1:1 then it is a wash and we have nothing to show for the entirety of our life.
But this is just a thought experiment. The reality is that the numbers aren’t even close to being in our favor.
Gal 3:10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law and do them.”
Rom 3:20 For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight
The law cannot save us. Our imagined righteousness will never make us right with God. Imagine standing before God and having tallied up the balance of our good deeds and our sin, and then presenting that to Him as justification for why He should accept us. We have no chance of pleasing God in this way.
But now, I want you to imagine the righteousness of Jesus. I want you to imagine all of the righteous deeds that Jesus ever did on any given day. There is no need to subtract the unrighteous deeds of Jesus because there are none. He was tempted in every way as we are, but He was without sin (Heb 4:15). Now, which righteousness would you put your hope in?
Whose obedience are you trusting in? The resurrection of Jesus is evidence that when Jesus came before the Father, His obedience and His sacrifice was fully accepted. God raised Him from the dead because nothing remained. His righteousness paid the bill for all the sins of all who would believe. Our relationship to God rests not on our righteousness but on His.
IV. The Resurrection of Christ affects our Eternity (V. 11)
10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
When the resurrection takes hold of our hearts and our lives and our relationship to God; then death just doesn’t seem so bad anymore. I think that is what Paul is getting at in these verses. He is so overwhelmed by the security that the gospel brings that he doesn’t really care about anything but Jesus. He says, “I just want to know him and the power of his resurrection. I’m willing to share his sufferings and die a death like His. I don’t really care what happens to me in this life…I know that I will experience the resurrection from the dead, like Him. So, whatever comes, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
I think that is the spirit of what Paul is saying in this chapter. To be a Christian is to be made like Christ and to be made like Christ is to experience in some measure what He experienced. If we desire to live like Jesus we can expect the trials that He faced. The persecution that He faced.
1 Pet 4:12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
Do you want to be made like Christ? Do you want to follow Him in this life? His road is the Calvary road, His path is narrow and difficult, but it leads to life. What Paul wants us to understand is that no matter what the road ahead entails, the end result is that we will be there to share His glory. Death will not be the final page in our story. We will rise with Him and live with Him forever.
Conclusion…
There has been no more important event in human history than the resurrection of Jesus. Easter is not about the celebration of Jesus living on in the teaching of His followers; Easter is about the celebration of Jesus being raised from death to life.
One day everything was normal. The world was filled with pain, sorrow, hopelessness, and doubt. One day everything was just as it had been for thousands of years and the expectation was that it would always be that way. But the next day came and everything changed.
Jesus came and turned the world upside down. He made the world look different, sound different, feel different. He spoke of a Kingdom that was already here and yet still coming into the world. He spoke about spiritual re-birth like it was some supernatural change that took place inside of us. He told stories about the heart of God that no one had ever heard. He changed all of Judea in 3 years and His followers had hopes that He was going to change the world…but His enemies nailed Him to a cross.
He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him. He came as the light of the world shining into the darkness, but the world preferred the darkness over His light. He was put to death, crucified on a Friday, and all of the hope that came with him was taken away. The disciple's joy had been torn away from their hearts leaving them empty, shocked, and fearful. Everything went back to normal.
But on Sunday, the power of God was unleashed. The tomb was empty. Jesus was alive. All that He had ever said was true, truer than anything ever spoken. The world has truly been turned upside-down and you can get in on this today.
This is your moment to turn from your sin, to turn from yourself to God. Turn from your sin, turn from hoping in yourself, turn from this world and receive God’s gift of forgiveness. He will not leave you empty handed but will fill you with His grace, His mercy, His love and Himself. He will make you more alive than you have ever been and in Jesus, you will never die.
He will raise you up, He will raise us all and seat us with Him in Heaven. And in the ages to come, He will unfold for us the immeasurable riches of His kindness to us. That is God’s promise to us, to you, if you will receive Christ.
Fasting With Purpose
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Matthew 6:16 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
In Matthew 6:2, 3 we read where Jesus says, “When you give…” and we understand the implication. Giving to support those in need is not an optional add-on to the Christian life. Giving to support the church and the work of the gospel are understood as part of our responsibility as Christians.
In Matthew 6:5, 7, and 9 we read Jesus say, “When you pray…” and once again we understand that Jesus expectation is that His people will be a people of prayer. Giving and prayer are disciplines that faithful believers have engaged in for 2,000 years and I’m guessing that none of us would argue that Jesus no longer expects us to do these things.
There is an ongoing expectation that all who follow Christ will pray to God and give to support the spread of the gospel. This is made plain when Jesus says, “When” not “if.” Now, if we apply that same logic to verses 16-18, then we must conclude that Jesus expects fasting to have its place in our lives as well. Just in case you are not convinced, listen to what Jesus told the disciples of John when they asked about His position on fasting.
Matt 9:14 The disciples of John came to (Jesus), saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”
In both of these passages, Jesus is not teaching on whether or not we should fast. He is assuming that we will and teaching us how to do it and how not to do it. Jesus is clear that fasting is a normal and expected discipline of the Christian life; but for many of us we just don’t understand why?
Transition…
What is fasting? Why should we fast? What should we fast from? When should we fast? All of these questions and more surround this topic and this morning we are going to get a crash course on a spiritual practice of God’s people that we see taking place in the OT, the NT and throughout the history of the church right up to our own day.
There are four things I want to cover in this sermon and they are: I. Survey of Fasting throughout Scripture, II. The Hypocritical Fasting of the Pharisees, III. What Fasting is really about, and IV. The Gospel implications.
Sermon Focus…
I. Fasting throughout Scripture
The first instance of fasting comes in Judges 20 and it is in response to a battle between two of the tribes of Israel and the fast was a sign of mourning and grief. In 1 Samuel 7 all of Israel gathered to fast and pray for God’s forgiveness and for God to deliver them from the Philistines. In 2 Samuel 12, David wept and fasted seeking God’ grace to heal the child born to Bathsheba.
The prophet Ezra called for the people returning from exile to fast and ask God for safe journey back to Jerusalem. Esther asked all the Jews to fast on her behalf as she made plans to go before her husband, the king of Persia, to plead for the safety of her people. You can read about fasting in the Psalms, Proverbs, and the prophets. It was a common practice among the Pharisees, the disciples of John and was practice by the early church after Jesus’ ascension.
But what is it? What are all of these people doing? Fasting is the voluntary abstinence from food, or some other regularly enjoyed gift from God, for spiritual purposes. Now, why do I include things other than food in my definition? For two reasons, one that is practical and another that is Biblical. Practically speaking, it is not medically advisable for some people to fast from food. For those with diabetes it could be quite dangerous. Because of this, I encourage those who are medically unable to fast from food, to find some other regularly practice and to set it aside in order to focus in a specific spiritual need.
Second, when we read 1 Corinthians 7:5 we see Paul talking to married couples who have made an agreement to abstain from sex for an agreed upon time. He tells them to limit that time so as not to give Satan an opportunity to tempt them to sin. To be fair, this passage doesn’t mention fasting, but I find it reasonable to conclude that there are gifts from God other than food that we might voluntarily choose to forgo in order to focus on a specific spiritual need.
In scripture, we see about 9 different types of fasting.
1. A Normal Fast - Involved abstaining from all food, but not from water. In Matthew 4, we read that “After fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus was hungry.” The text doesn’t say anything about him being thirsty and since we know that the human body can’t function without water for more than 3 days we assume that He was drinking water during this time. To abstain from food while still drinking water is the most common way that Christians fast today.
2. A Partial Fast – Is a limitation in diet but not from all foods. Daniel and the other three Jewish men chose to eat only vegetables and water in Babylon (Dan 1:12).
3. An Absolute Fast – Is to abstain from both food and water. The fast that Ezra and Esther called for included abstaining from both food and drink. After Paul was converted on the road to Damascus the text tells us that he didn’t eat or drink for 3 days (Acts 9:9).
4. A Supernatural Fast – When Moses met with God on Mt. Sinai we read that he, “Stayed on the mountain forty days and nights, (he) ate no bread and drank no water (Deut 9:9).” Elijah did the same thing in 1 Kings 19 and oddly enough it happened on the same mountain. Both of these fasts are indications of God’s miraculous provision following a unique calling. IOW, don’t try this at home.
5. A Congregational Fast – in Joel 2:15 we read, “Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; 16 gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders…” We even see evidence of this in Acts 13 as the church in Antioch were gathered together, worshipping the Lord and fasting.
6. A National Fast – Involves leaders calling on the whole nation to seek the Lord’s blessing through fasting and praying together. In Nineveh the king called for the entire nation to fasting sackcloth and ashes and to repentance of their sin because the king had heard the preaching of Jonah that judgment from God was coming.
7. A Regular Fast – There was only one regularly prescribed fast for the Jews and it was on the day of Atonement. It was prescribed to help the Jews recognize and mourn over their sin while also thinking about God’s gift of forgiveness through sacrifice.
Today, many denominations follow a liturgical calendar that calls for fasting during the time of Lent, between Ash Wednesday and ends 3 days before Resurrection Sunday. Lent is forty days devoted to identifying with the temptation and suffering of Jesus Christ. This devotion focuses on self-denial, fasting and meditation on Jesus bearing the weight of sin on the cross.
8. An Occasional Fast – These occur when a specific need arises such as Esther’s need to come before the king. Jesus seems to be referring to this type of fast when he teaches that the day is coming when His disciples will fast after He leaves them and goes to be with the Father (Matt 9:15). The idea is that we fast to show our longing for Christ’s return.
9. A Private Fast – This is the type of fast that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 6:16-18 and these occur when someone chooses to fast over a private matter where they might be seeking to grow in some spiritual way or they may be seeking God’s guidance, God’s blessing, or God’s help over some deep need in their lives. It might be done to express grief or remorse over sin or some tragic life event. A Christian may choose to fast in preparation for an important decision or the beginning of some new phase of life/ministry. Or maybe there is a reason that I haven’t mentioned.
But in the end fasting always has a purpose and that purpose is to express one’s need for God, one’s hunger for God in a very focused way. There’s more to fasting than not eating food, just like there is more to prayer than just quoting what we learned as a child.
Without having a spiritual goal in mind our desire to fast will simply become a battle with our bellies. If you have ever tried to fast then you know it can be very challenging, but to fast without a purpose is a failure from the start. The goal of fasting is to replace one hunger for another, to abstain from one need in order to pray for a greater more pressing spiritual need.
Now, I know that this is a lot to take in, but I want us to have a fairly thorough picture in our minds of what the Bible has to say about the subject of fasting. Now, with that broader understanding, let’s turn our attention back to Matthew 6 and keep digging into this subject.
II. The Hypocritical Fasting of the Pharisees (V. 16)
Matthew 6:16 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
Jesus only talks about fasting on two occasions. He speaks about it here to warn us against making it some public spectacle aimed at getting attention. Then He spoke about it later saying that the time would come when it would be appropriate for His disciples to fast. But let’s talk about what is going on here in this text.
Once again Jesus is teaching us to avoid a hypocritical way of fasting that is aimed not at helping someone grow closer to God but aimed at putting on a show for the people. These folks are aiming to call attention to themselves by intentionally disfiguring their faces so they would stand out and be seen. The phrase is strange, but it is almost as if these folks are putting on make-up so that they will look like they are in pain, or sick. These folks are going out of their way to stand out and be seen.
John MacArthur points out that the Pharisees were known to fast twice a week, on Monday and Thursday.
“They claimed that these days were chosen because they were the days Moses made the two separate trips to receive the tablets of law from God on Mt. Sinai. But those two days also happened to be major Jewish market days, when cities and towns were crowded with farmers, merchants and shoppers.”
IOW, they fasted on the days when they would have the largest audience. They were trying to appear righteous but acting righteous is not the same as being righteous. So, Jesus tells us to beware! Beware of behaving like you are part of His Kingdom while your heart is fixed on the idolatry of self, because the treasure room of idolatry and hypocrisy is empty.
Can we be honest, hypocrisy is an exhausting game and there is no reward at the end. To go through all the effort to convince people of something that isn’t true is a terrible way to live. You have to ask, why? Why would someone work so hard to make people think they truly loved God when in reality they just love themselves and they want to be the star of their own show. Remember that the term hypocrite has its roots in the Greek Theater and basically means “actor.”
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Hollywood isn’t filled with happy and satisfied people. The glitz and glamour of that world gives the appearance that everyone is equal, happy, wealthy and truly fulfilled in life. But if we’ve learned anything about Hollywood over the last several months, it’s that the show doesn’t stop when the cameras stop rolling. The beauty and fame are nothing more than whitewash hiding a soul that is vicious, corrupt and wicked.
The problem with false religion is that at its core it is nothing more than pride. It is the idolatry of self and true fasting isn’t about exalting our idols, it’s about assassinating them. The hypocrite gets it all wrong and it still left empty and broken when it’s over.
III. What Fasting is really about (V. 17-18)
17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
This seems backwards but it’s not. Instead of hiding the fact that we aren’t faithful, like the hypocrite, Jesus wants us to downplay the fact that we are. He tells us that when we fast we need to clean ourselves up a bit. Wash your face, comb your hair. Why? Because your appearance has nothing to do with the real goal. Fasting is not about looking more spiritual, it’s about pursuing God in the heart.
Fasting isn’t really about food either, it’s about God. It’s not about getting less of something, it’s about getting more of Him. Fasting is not about showing how good you are at self-denial, it’s about recognizing how much the world, the flesh and the devil get in the way of our hunger for God.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Fasting is not about our performance, it is not about our self-denial, it is not about being seen; fasting is about replacing one hunger with another.
We don’t live in a world where a hunger for God is encouraged. Let’s face it, we don’t live in a world where hunger of any kind is encouraged. When we are hungry we eat. When we want something, we go and get it. When we are tired we take a day off. When we are stressed we buy something, or eat, or binge watch on Netflix. When we have a hunger for something, our culture is ready to serve up 10 things that say they can make it all go away. But they can’t.
The things of this world can’t satisfy us, they can’t make our pain go away, they can’t make our stress disappear. They can only mask our brokenness. But fasting for God is an expression of our deep need of Him, not stuff. It is an acknowledgment that we need God, that we want more of Him, more of His grace, more of His presence, more of His blessing. It is a physical exclamation point to the spiritual cry, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
John Piper writes,
The heart of fasting is longing. We are putting our stomach where our heart is to give added intensity and expressiveness to our ache for Jesus. We fast to express our longing or our ache for all the implications of Jesus’s power in the present moment that isn’t completely realized. We want to see people healed. We want to see people saved. We want to see marriages redeemed. We ache, and we long for this to happen; therefore, we ask Jesus to come by putting this exclamation point of longing at the end of our desires.
The problem with hypocritical fasting is two-fold. First, it seeks the wrong reward, namely the esteem of other people rather than the blessing of God. Second, it masks one love for attention under the pretense that they truly love God.
But the type of fasting that Jesus calls us to is to seek God. He calls us to go about our day as normally as any other so that our focus will not be on men, on food, or on ourselves; but will be fixed on God, whom we need more than anything. And Jesus’ promise is that the God we seek through our private fasting is the God who will reward us.
Ultimately the reward of fasting is that we get God. When we turn from the temporary satisfaction of food and we seek the full and overwhelming satisfaction of God, we will have our reward.
IV. Practical steps to your first fast and some Gospel implications.
1. Start small – start with one meal, or two meals.
2. Have a plan – what is the spiritual purpose that you are seeking? Time with God, prayer for others, a specific need…fasting without a purpose is just going hungry.
3. Consider how it will affect others – tell your spouse of your plans, or your parents if you still live at home. Talk it through with people you respect and trust.
4. Go through with it – pick a date, set things up and take the step. Consider joining the elders who fast and pray on the first Monday of each month. Fast that morning, that afternoon or that evening and join us in praying for the church, for our ministry, for the needs within the body, for God to grow us in unity, faithfulness and love.
Now let’s think of some gospel implications.
Why is it so tempting to wear our spiritual accomplishments on our sleeve? Because deep down each of us knows the sober truth that we aren’t’ what we should be. But we desperately want others to think we are. We think that putting on a mask will make things OK, but the problem is that our audience can’t fix us.
But the gospel drags our hearts into the light of Christ, where He not only exposes our sin, but puts us back together. The gospel teaches us that fasting is not about incentive-based performance; but about the posture of our hearts toward God. A posture that knows we can’t make it on our own, a posture that knows if we have Christ then we have all we need.
1 Pet 1:8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory…
Fasting is not ultimately about self-denial, it’s about much more than that. It’s about weaning ourselves off the counterfeit and temporary pleasures of the world to find true and lasting joy in our relationship to God through Jesus Christ.
Conclusion…
Does fasting have a place in our lives? Can we abstain from basic needs for the sake of our growth in Christ? Yes, but it will be a challenge especially in the suburbs. Self- denial has very little place in the suburbs. Have you scrolled through social media lately? How many posts have you seen where people are complaining about petty problems? How many people complain about the drive-through taking too long, or the barista messing up their order?
We are drenched in a culture of petty irritations and in this culture of imaginary problems the gospel seems foolish. For the cross, is the ultimate symbol of fasting. It is the ultimate symbol of giving up what feels good in order to gain something glorious. On the cross, Jesus said no to the hunger of His flesh in order to pay the price for our salvation.
On the cross, Jesus denied the allure of comfort. He rejected the empty promise that everything is OK. He refused the false hope of easy solutions. He endured the pain and shame of the cross for the reward that the Father set before Him. Because of what Christ has done you and I can have the forgiveness of sins, peace with God and eternal life in Christ.
Thankfulness
Praying to Our Father
Manuscript
Matt 6:5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
For some of us, the command of Christ to call God “Our Father” comes with some difficulty or personal baggage. For some of us, the Fatherhood of God is a bit challenging because you grew up without a father. Or maybe you grew up with an angry and abusive father who never showed grace, or perhaps a weak one who never stood up for you to protect you. Some of us were blessed with wonderful fathers, strong and safe, with big hearts and firm hands; I thank God for my father.
Others may struggle with the Fatherhood of God because they consider it sexist and would prefer to worship a goddess. But God hasn’t revealed Himself to us in that way. He is never called goddess, mother, or queen in the Scriptures but rather God, Father and King. Here in Matthew’s Gospel we see the Fatherhood of God referenced 44 times, second only to John’s gospel where God is called Father 109 times.
The Fatherhood of God is foundational to Christianity. The whole goal of Christ’s mission is to reunite us with our heavenly Father.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus is the way, the way to what, the way to the Father. When a person comes to faith in Christ they are adopted into God’s family and made a child of God and an heir of the Father’s kingdom right alongside Jesus.
Rom 8:15 You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.
Transition…
Through Jesus we have a relationship with God that is defined as a relationship of a father to his child. This is the theme of Matthew 6, the middle section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. 10 times in chapter 6 alone we see Jesus refer to our relationship to Our Father and that is the theme of this chapter, Life in relationship to the Father. Our relationship to God through Christ changes everything. It changes how we give, it changes how we pray, it changes how we eat, it changes how we spend and save our money. It changes how we deal with worry and anxiety.
Our relationship to God is amazing and this morning we are going to talk about what our prayers should look like now that we have a relationship with God as Our Heavenly Father? With God has our Father, how should we come before Him in prayer? That’s the question that Jesus is answering for us in this passage and He gives us 4 principles that should guide our prayers.
Sermon Focus…
I. We should pray with a sense/knowledge of God’s Gracious Presence (V. 6)
6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Jesus wants us to know that prayer is not an audition, it is an opportunity to draw near to God. It is not an opportunity to gain spiritual brownie points, it is an opportunity to lay our hearts bear before our Father. Prayer is a heart to heart, not a negotiation, and Jesus wants us to put ourselves in a position where we can pray with an undistracted sense of God’s gracious presence.
Why is it important to pray with a knowledge/sense of God’s gracious presence? Well for one, because our Father who sees even our secret prayers sees everything else that we do. Nothing is hidden from Him. He knows our needs and the deepest, darkest sinful part of our soul. He knows the sin struggle that we hide from everyone else. He knows us truly, fully, more clearly than we can imagine; and yet, He loves us and has made a way for us to come to Him like a child.
Ephesians 2 tells us that “We were dead in our trespasses and sins… were by nature children of wrath, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, (He) made us alive together with Christ – by grace have you been saved.
It is by grace that we have peace with God and a relationship where we can come to Him in prayer. We come empty handed, repenting of sin, and trusting in Jesus alone; but we can come. We can come to God in prayer because He is gracious. We don’t earn our way in. We don’t bribe our way in. We don’t have to build up a good reputation so that He will think we are worth His time. His grace has made the way.
And when we come, Jesus tells us to go into our room and shut the door and pray. Now, the word here for room can have two possible meanings. We can see it as just an interior room of the house that is tucked away from distractions or it could mean the storeroom where the family would keep all of their valuables. Think, quiet closet or hidden treasure room. One commentator says that we should have in mind the treasure room where God is ready to reward us with good things when we pray.
In one sense, the reward refers to when God answers our prayer. In those cases, the reward may be the salvation of a loved one, or the restored health of a friend. It may be that God opens that door for a new job or a long-hoped for relationship. But sometimes God says “no” to our request and that is a different form of reward. Sometimes the reward is growth in spiritual maturity where we realize that, “God will only give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything He knows (Keller).”
Sometimes the reward is that He refreshes our soul reminding us that we are no longer orphans, no longer prodigals, no longer lost; but His dearly loved sons and daughters. Either way, Jesus wants us to learn to pray with a sense of God’s gracious presence and His grace never runs dry. His grace is renewed for us each day so that when we make our way into that quiet place and cry out to our Father, we find fresh mercy for our need.
So, we pray with a sense/knowledge of God’s Gracious Presence…
II. We Should Pray with a knowledge of God’s Fatherly Generosity (v. 7-8)
V. 7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
First, Jesus wants us to pray with our hearts in the right place, which is the opposite of the hypocrites. Their hearts weren’t fixed on God, their hearts were focused on how prayer made them look to others. Here in verse 7, Jesus wants us to pray with our minds in the right place, which is the opposite of the Gentiles. Jesus tells us not to use empty phrases nor to use mindless repetition in our prayers, thinking that these will gain us God’s ear.
In 1st Kings, we read about the prophets of Baal who would spend hours crying out to their false god hoping to wake him up to their needs. Buddhists spin prayer wheels that contain written prayers and they believe that each turn of the wheel sends that prayer to god. The Greek and Roman Oracles at Delphi and Dodona practiced a form of mystical prayer known for mindless mutterings that were interpreted as the will of the gods. In many ways, the Catholic practice of praying the Rosary or lighting prayer candles falls into this category; because the idea is that God will hear and bless you based on how long the candle burns or how many turns of the Rosary you perform.
But Jesus forbids such prayer. He wants us to pray with our minds engaged in conversation with God. Who doesn’t need to be woken up with our many words. God doesn’t need to be appeased by our repetitive devotions. He already knows our needs and He wants our prayers to be guided by the knowledge of who He is, and how He cares for His needy children.
As a father, I am nowhere near omniscient, but I have a pretty good idea of what my children need. When they come to me with a need or a request my desire is to be generous even gracious. There are times when the answer is no, but because I love them I want to try to explain to them why the answer is no. I want there to be a wise reason for the no but saying “yes” is so much more fun.
Now, I am an imperfect father, but my desire is to be generous with my kids because I love them, and I want them to be happy. I want to give them good things, cool things, fun things. But my desire to be generous doesn’t even come close to God’s desire to be generous.
Who is God? He is the universes Creator and Sustainer. He is holy, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; and He is our Father. He knows everything, even our needs before we present them to Him. We don’t have to persuade Him or manipulate Him into caring for us, He loved us before we were born, and He will love us forever and He desires to give us the best gifts in the world.
In Romans 8, under the heading of God’s Everlasting Love we read this,
8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
Jesus wants us to pray with a knowledge of God’s gracious presence and with a knowledge of God’s Fatherly Generosity. But there is so much more. Let’s look at the Lord’s Prayer or what we might call the model prayer and we will see that Jesus wants us to pray with our mind both on Heaven and earth.
III. We Should Pray with an eye on the Kingdom of God (v. 9-10)
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
I don’t think there is any harm at all in memorizing and praying this back to God, so long as your heart attitude is right. But I do tend to think that this is meant to serve as more of a model prayer than a repetitive prayer. This prayer is like scaffolding or guardrails that help us as we form our own heartfelt prayers to God with one eye on Heaven and one on earth. There is something here about prayer that Jesus wants us to take hold of and it all starts with honoring the name of our Heavenly Father. “Hallowed be your name…”
This prayer is a plea for God to cause His name to be set apart, revered in the hearts and minds of everyone. We should want this, we should want our Father’s name to be praised. We should want our Heavenly Father to receive the respect and honor that He is due.
Also, don’t miss the fact that as a Christian you are praying to your Heavenly Father. Embracing God as Father is part of our discipleship as Christians. When we call on God as Our Father it reminds us that we are His children and He knows what is best for us. Our prayers are echoing in the throne room of Heaven. Our prayers are pinned up on Our Father’s refrigerator. God hears you and His heart is inclined to you because you are His child.
The Heidelberg Catechism asks the question, “Why Did Christ command us to call God “Our Father?” and the answer reads, “because Christ wants to kindle in us what is basic to our prayer – the childlike awe and trust that God through Christ has become our Father.” Childlike awe causes us to respect and revere the name of God. Childlike trust causes us to know that there is nothing greater than our Father’s will being done.
Praying for God’s will to be done is like praying for every hindrance to God’s plan to be removed. We are praying that God would overcome the blindness that plagues humanity when it comes to knowing and loving and worshiping God. We want God’s greatness to flood the earth in such a way that everything is changed by it. We are praying for Heaven to invade earth, for all the wrongs to be made right, for all injustice to cease and for true justice to be poured out. We are praying for all tears to be wiped away and for God to take His place on the throne in our midst.
Jesus wants us to pray with an eye on Heaven and a longing to see the reality of Heaven invade the reality of earth. But this doesn’t mean that we forget about what is taking place on the earth.
IV. We Should Pray with an eye on the kingdom of this world (v. 11-13)
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
I could be wrong, but it seems that Jesus wants us to pray for three things here: our body, our heart, and our soul
The first part of this prayer is for the needs of the body, the need we have for physical nourishment. Jesus wants us to know that God is concerned with even the most basic needs that we have. He also wants us to remember that the basic needs that sustain us in life are a gift from God’s hand. We take too much for granted. Jesus wants us to pray for God to meet every daily need that we have, and He wants us to thank Him for every daily need that is met.
The second part of this prayer focuses on the needs of our heart. We need forgiveness and we need God to soften our hearts so that we can forgive others. Jesus wants us to pray that God would forgive us our sins (missing the mark) and that we would forgive others when they miss the mark.
This is such an important part of our Christian discipleship. It is such a pressing need that Jesus expands on it in verse 14-15 showing us that our forgiveness of others is tied to our forgiveness from God. So there are a couple of things we need to talk about here.
When we were drawn to faith in Christ, when we first believed in Him and turned from our sin, the Bible says that we were saved. When we believed we were justified before God, which means that we were declared to be righteous in His sight. Our sins were forgiven, and Christ’s righteousness was credited to our account. All of this is true in a legal sense. But in a relational sense, we need to continually seek restoration and forgiveness.
This is the point of I John…
I John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Jesus wants us to come to God confessing our sin and seeking forgiveness. But He also wants us to forgive others when they sin against us. He wants us to cancel their debt, to overlook their offense and to pardon someone for the wrong they’ve done to us. Jesus even tells us that our refusal to forgive others will keep God from forgiving us. Does this mean unforgiving people lose their salvation? I think it means that a hard and unforgiving heart is evidence of someone who has never truly experienced God’s forgiveness; or they are so hardened by sin that they have forgotten.
In Matthew 18, Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant, a man who had been forgiven a huge debt but who wickedly punished those who owed him. Jesus called the man wicked. He pointed out, “I showed you mercy because you pleaded with me, but you refused to show mercy to those who pleaded with you” and He ordered the man to go to prison until he had paid off his original debt. The point is that an unforgiving heart reveals an unforgiven heart.
Finally, in verse 13 Jesus teaches us to pray for the needs of our soul. The world, flesh and the Devil are not at rest. Don’t let yourself succumb to spiritual overconfidence. We need God’s help to remain faithful in the daily battle against the temptation to sin. So, Jesus tells us to ask God for protection, for guidance and for deliverance. Let’s remember 1 Corinthians 10 which says,
1 Cor 10:12 Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Conclusion…
How should we pray, now that we have a relationship to our heavenly Father? We should pray with a sense of His gracious presence. We should pray with the knowledge of His Fatherly generosity. We should pray with our mind on the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this World.
He wants us to pray sincerely, humbly and confidently. He wants us to pray with His saving grace as fuel, in fact we can’t come to God unless we come through Jesus, through the fountain of flowing grace. But by faith in Christ we come and pray. He wants us to pray from the heart and from our head. He doesn’t want vain repetitive babbling. He doesn’t want pseudo-spiritual and hypocritical speeches. He wants honest prayer to flow from the hearts of His children to their One True Father in Heaven.
Maybe you are here, but you have never known God as your Father because you’ve never embraced Jesus as your Savior and Lord. That is the most fearful state in all the universe for you to be in. But you don’t have to stay there. See your sin for what it is, an insult to the God who made you. understand that Jesus is the ONLY way that you can come to the Father. Turn from your sin and come.
Don’t come to your God pretending to be something or someone you are not, He can see straight through that. But come as you are, open your heart to His saving grace in Christ. Repent and receive Jesus as savior and Lord, and when you bow before Him in prayer you will find all the love you will ever need. Come broken and find His compassion. Come needy and find His supply. Come confused and find His Wisdom.
The Heart of Prayer
Manuscript
Matt 6:5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
How many sermons have we heard on prayer? How many books have we read? How many seminars have we attended? How many prayer meetings, prayer services, prayer vigils have we attended? For all that, how many of us still struggle to make prayer a consistent and healthy part of our Christian life?
Why is this the case? Something is wrong. We were made to be in relationship with God, but sin now gets in the way and makes it hard for us to pray. Our biggest problem with prayer is a spiritual problem. But there are others…
Maybe you’ve prayed before for God to do something for you or for someone you love. But it never happened so you wonder if prayer even works. Maybe, you don’t think prayer makes much of a difference.
Maybe you’ve tried to pray many times, but you always get distracted. 30 seconds into prayer and you are already thinking about something you need to do, or someone you need to call, or that conversation you just had. Then you feel guilty for not being able to stay focused and before long you just give up.
Maybe you don’t think of prayer until the last minute as you are walking into a big meeting. you wanted to pray, you know you needed to pray; but the truth is that you were so busy that you never got around to it. But here you are filled with anxiety and insecurity. You whisper a quick short prayer asking God for help, but it just seems so selfish in the moment.
Maybe the problem is that you’re just so busy and what you really need is a vacation. you need to get away from all the work, the emails, the meetings, the responsibilities, the noise. So, you plan it out, pack it up and hit the road only to realize that you’ve taken all the noise with you and prayer eludes you once again.
Transition…
At the end of the day, many of us feel frustrated about prayer, confused, uncomfortable with the silence and the one-sided nature of something that is supposed to be conversation with God. We have more problems than patience, more questions than answers and so we simply don’t pray. Can you identify with any of this?
In the book, A Praying Life, Paul Miller asks us to imagine a trip to a prayer therapist who is going to help us with our prayer struggles. The therapist begins the session by asking us to describe what it means to be a child of God.
You reply that it means you have complete access to your heavenly Father through Jesus. You have true intimacy, based not on how good you are but on the goodness of Jesus. Not only that, but Jesus is your brother. You are a fellow heir with him.
The therapist smiles and says, “That is right. You’ve done a wonderful job of describing the doctrine of Sonship. Now tell me what it is like for you to be with your Father? What is it like to talk with him?”
You cautiously tell the therapist how difficult it is to be in your Father’s presence, even for a couple of minutes. Your mind wanders. You aren’t sure what to say. You wonder, does prayer make any difference? Is God even there? Then you feel guilty for your doubts and just give up.
Your therapist tells you what you already suspect. “Your relationship with your heavenly Father is dysfunctional. You talk as if you have an intimate relationship, but you don’t. Theoretically, it is close. Practically, it is distant. You need help.”[1]
Friends, I don’t know about you, but I do need help. So, before we go any further into God’s Word let’s pray and ask the Lord to come and help us to understand and love prayer.
Sermon Focus…
We are going to look at this passage over the next two weeks. Next week, we will go focus most of our attention on the Lord’s Prayer and we’ll go through it line by line. But this week, I want us to try to get to the bottom of our own struggles with prayer.
I. Prayers that Fail (Matt 6:5, 7)
Matt 6:5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.
This passage is Jesus’ second example of the difference between hypocritical religious devotion and genuine life and relationship with God. Jesus gives us a picture of two men at prayer. The first one, the hypocrite, loves to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corner. But the thing he loves is not communion with God, it’s the recognition he/she get from those who see and hear them praying.
These prayers are a failure because they are not actually prayers, they are skillfully disguised auditions. These prayers aren’t aimed at God at all, they are aimed at impressing the people who are present. These prayers look like piety, but they are nothing more than pride. Jesus says, “Don’t be like this.” God doesn’t reward these prayers.
Don’t be like the hypocrites who love everything about prayer but the God they are praying to. They love the posture of prayer, they love the respect that eloquent prayer gives them, they love the spiritual pride they feel when people say, “Amen” in agreement with their prayers. They love the fact that prayer makes them appear to be super godly and that people think they are varsity level in spirituality because of how they pray.
Jesus warns us not to be like these men. He warns us not to approach prayer the way they do, as actors on a stage. He wants us to approach prayer with sincerity and even secrecy. He wants us to find a private place where we can focus on God. Now, this does not mean that a prayer closet is the magic place where God hears us, that’s not the point. The point is that Jesus wants us to pray with a singular focus on the Father and not to be distracted by the side-glances that are concerned with what others might think.
Now, this may be a big problem for some of us. But, I see a big difference between our struggles with prayer and the hypocrites struggle with prayer. They love to pray because of the spiritual respect they gain from others but for us, I’m not sure that we love to pray. For many of us it’s not a matter of praying in the wrong ways, it’s a matter of not praying at all.
II. The Essence of Christian Prayer
The essence of Christian prayer is relational communion with our heavenly Father. Jesus wants us to approach God in prayer with love, as a son or daughter would approach their father. That’s why Jesus teaches us in verse 9 to begin our prayer with, “Our Father…” How does a child talk with their father? Loudly, boldly, unashamedly, desperately, with no regard for decorum. They will interrupt you in a second if they have a need, or a want, or even an idea. Big words never enter that conversation, but feeling, and emotion almost always do.
Most of us have a very clear picture in our minds of what a relationship between a young child and their father looks like, but our prayer life with God doesn’t look anything like that. If there is a maturity arc to prayer, I think some of us have entered into the adolescent phase because rather than talking to God, many of us are more eager to talk to everyone else, or even to listen to ourselves talk. Here’s what I mean…
When a new baby comes into a family everyone is filled with hope and anticipation…and exhaustion. But as a new parent you don’t want to miss anything, you want to see and remember all the milestones. The first time they smile. The first time they make a sound. The first time they recognize you.
I remember the first time I looked at my daughter’s face, she didn’t seem to recognize my face, but when I spoke to her she definitely recognized my voice. She knew that her daddy was talking, and, in that moment, I fell in love.
At about 3 months the milestones begin to come and go very fast. They coo and giggle, the blow raspberries, they baby talk, they crawl, they sit up, they start pulling up on things; but every parent is longing to hear that first word. In the case of my children, all three of them said “Dada.” I know that is common for babies because it is an easy sound but I’m going to claim it. But the word itself is not the most important thing, the most important thing is that now they are learning to talk.
They are learning to communicate. They are beginning to interact with their world and their family and that means relationship. Then for the next several years we teach them how to refine their words. We teach them new words, we teach them how to properly pronounce words, we teach them how to use their words rather than their emotions. Then we hit the sweet spot where they will not stop talking and we stay in that spot for a decade or so.
Then they reach the teen years. They’re still talking, but they prefer to talk with their friends over the parents. They prefer to listen to others rather than to listen to mom and dad. They even like to hear their own voice more than that of their father and in these years, communication breaks down. In those critical years just before adulthood the lines of communication are often strained.
I wonder if there is a parallel between this and our own spiritual life. When we are born again everything begins to happen so fast. We are learning, growing, stumbling and getting back up, and we are learning to talk to God. Our first prayers are a mess but I’m guessing that God still wants to hear them. We learn more about Him, more about ourselves, more about the gospel and that helps our prayers, our conversations with God, become more mature and more meaningful. But then we hit adolescence and prayer stops.
We talk to our friends more than God. We talk to the pastor more than God. We talk to ourselves more than God. The problem is not that we don’t know what prayer is, or that we don’t know how to pray. We know that God hears us, we know that He wants us to pray, we even know that we should pray; but something keeps getting in the way.
Maybe its busy-ness. Maybe it’s a series of painful experiences. Maybe it’s bad theology. Maybe it’s a misunderstanding of the gospel. Maybe its pride. Maybe its guilt. Maybe its hypocrisy or some combination of these things. But something continually gets in the way of our prayer to God and Jesus is teaching us what prayer should be like within His kingdom. Jesus is inviting us to begin praying to God like a child.
III. Getting Back to the heart of Prayer
Jesus is telling us here to go back to that child-like time. Go back to that place of shameless intimacy with God. After all, being a Christian means that we have been fully forgiven and adopted into God’s family. Being a Christian means that we came to the end of our ridiculous attempts to save ourselves and in our desperation, we saw that the only hope we had was Jesus…and Jesus welcomed us with open arms of love.
He brought us to His Father’s table and gave us a seat. We belong in God’s family because of Jesus and we have access to God because of Jesus. But we still struggle with prayer.
Much of the time, the most obvious hindrance to our communion with God is that we just don’t believe the gospel is true today. Oh, we believe the gospel and we put our hope in its truth, but it just hasn’t seeped down into our lives the way we need it to. We just don’t believe that He truly cares about us, that He truly wants us to bother Him with our prayers. We just don’t believe that we have earned the right to have God listen to us, much less to answer our prayers.
Many times, our problem is a gospel problem. In this world that we live in there was a glorious beginning when God created everything that is. God created us to be like Him, to walk with Him and talk with Him, to be His children…and we betrayed Him. It was a shocking betrayal where we stabbed Him in the back. But God, had already made a plan to love us and our betrayal didn’t change His mind one bit.
He redeemed us through Jesus. He purchased eternal life for us, which means that He will love us and be with us forever. Right now, if you are a believer in Christ, your heavenly Father is looking at you and He loves you like His own child. He has said to each of us, “Hey buddy, my door is always open anytime you want to talk.” We can approach His throne of grace with boldness, why? Because it’s a throne of grace and He is our Father.
It is not our righteousness that causes the Father to listen to our prayers, or to answer our prayers. It is Christ’s righteousness from start to finish. It is the righteousness of Christ that saves us and restores our relationship to God. It is the righteousness of Christ that brings us into the family and gives us the right to be called a child of God. It is Jesus and His beautiful cross that brings us close to the Father and introduces us as a newly adopted child.
God hears our prayers because of Jesus. That’s why we pray to God in Jesus name. Saying, “In Jesus name” at the end of our prayers is not just a formal conclusion to prayer, nor it is a magical formula ensuring that we will get what we want. To pray in Jesus name is to acknowledge our absolute dependence upon Jesus to make us fit to come to God with our needs.
We pray in Jesus name because we recognize that on our own we have no right to come before God in prayer. But, Jesus is our great High Priest who always lives to make intercession for us. He sits at the right hand of God and He whispers our prayers into His Father’s ear.
Friends, let’s not brood in an adolescent state. Let’s come to our Father and talk to Him. Let’s talk to Him about our struggles, our hopes, our fears, our failures. Let’s remember, not our strength, but His strength, His promises, His care and His protection. Let’s praise Him for His love and His power. Let’s tell Him how thankful we are that He is our Father. Let’s pray for His will to be done in our lives, in our families, in our homes, in our church, in our community group, in our relationships, in our hearts, in our world.
Paul Miller,
Being a child in prayer means to just come. Children are not tied up in all the details when they come to their parents. They just come.
Jesus invites those who are weary and heavy laden to come to him. He doesn’t call the organized and fixed up but the broken. Why do we forget that when it comes to prayer? The dirty, imperfect and broken you is the real you. Don’t try to put on the spiritual façade in prayer. You can talk to God about whatever is on your heart, so just come as you are. Be weak and open in prayer before God. In this way you are remembering and applying the gospel to your prayer life. We need to learn helplessness. That is what a child reflects.[2]
Conclusion…
What I want us to do now is to spend some time in prayer. I’d like us to spend the next 5-10 minutes in prayer and I want to give some direction on how to do that.
If you are here with your family I want to encourage mom and dad to huddle everyone up and lead the family in prayer. Put your arms around those close to you and pray for God to give you all a child-like love for Him. You may need to confess some things, you may just want to praise God for some things, you may even have some things that are pressing in on your family right now. Just jump in together and pray. Don’t’ worry about getting the formula right, just pray to your Father.
If you are here alone and you want to pray alone please feel free to do that. But if you want to gather up with one of your friends, or a family in the church that you are close to, then please feel free to join with someone else in a few minutes and pray with them.
If you are not a Christian and this whole thing just sounds awkward or silly, let me remind you that you came to a church full of Christians. We aren’t perfect, by any means, but we are God’s people and sometimes we simply need to be reminded what that looks like. So, we are going to pray, and I would even encourage you to join us. You must be here for a reason, maybe you’re just checking Christianity out. Maybe you have a lot of questions or maybe you just want to know if God is real. I think you should pray and ask God to give you a heart for Him. Ask God to open the eyes of your heart so that you can know and love Him.
In your bulletin you will find a piece of paper outlining five ways that we can pray to God. You can ask for something, you can praise him for something, you can thank him for something, you can confess something to him, or you can even cry out to the Lord about something that is going on in your life that you just don’t understand. Each of these has a scripture verse attached to it and what I want us to do is to choose one of those, turn to that verse, read the text and then go straight into our prayer.
I’m going to pray a brief prayer to kick this off, then I’m going to go and pray with my family. In about 10 minutes Cody is going to come up here and lead us in a closing song.
Five ways that we can pray to God
You can ask for something—this is the most basic meaning of prayer, and God delights for his children to ask him for help. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).
You can praise him or marvel at him or give expression to your adoration of him. “Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (Psalm 145:2–3).
You can thank him for his gifts and his acts (which is not the same as praising him for his nature). “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign” (Revelation 11:17).
You can confess your sins and tell the Lord that you are sorry. “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin” (Psalm 32:5).
And finally, you can cry out to the Lord about something. “With my voice I cry out to the Lord.… I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him” (Psalm 142:1–2).[3]
[1] Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 5). NavPress. Kindle Edition.
[2] https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/helping-your-people-discover-the-praying-life
[3] Piper, J. (2014). Sermons from John Piper (2000–2014). Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God.
Beware of Hypocrisy
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I’m going to need your help with something this morning. I need you to help me define a term that we are all familiar with. It is a term that is used quite a bit within the church and it is used by the world to describe the church. It is a term that always carries a negative association, no one wants to be called out by this term. But it is also a term that describes all of us at one point or another. The term is hypocrisy and there are several different ways that it is commonly used.
One way this term is used is when those outside the church use it to complain about Christians. We are called hypocrites when we fail to live up to the cultures standard of what a Christian is supposed to be like. A skeptic might claim…
“I have to doubt any religion that has so many fanatics and hypocrites…There are so many people who are not religious at all who are more kind and even more moral than many of the Christians I know.”[1]
In this case, hypocrisy is being defined by not living up to certain expectations or cultural standards and there is some truth to this.
Another way the term is used is when a high profile Christian leader is exposed in a scandal involving sin. When this happens, the first thing out of people’s mouth is, “Hypocrite!” They are calling this person a hypocrite because while they were leading people in Christian ministry they were also leading a double life. Their day job as a minister was hiding some secret sin and that sin has finally caught up with them. They are hypocrites indeed.
There’s another way this term is being used. Some Christians have begun to use this term as an assessment of their own personal relationship with Christ. Kevin DeYoung writes:
It’s common (today) to think of hypocrisy as the gap between your actions and your feelings. So, if I do something without having my “heart” in it then I’m a hypocrite. Evangelicals are especially sensitive to this charge because we believe (quite rightly) that Christianity is more than “just going through the motions.” We believe faith must be sincere (otherwise it is hypocritical).[2]
There is some truth here as well. In this case, hypocrisy is being defined as doing religious things without having appropriate religious feelings. We’ve all been in this position. We come to church and don’t feel like singing, or like giving; but we do it anyway and we pray that our hearts will catch up with our actions. I’m not so sure we should call this hypocrisy, maybe we should call it maturity. There are plenty of times in our lives as Christians when doing what is right doesn’t always feel good.
So, which one of these do we think is the right definition of hypocrisy? Is hypocrisy the failure to live up to cultural standards? Is it living a double life? Is hypocrisy simply going through the motions without engaging the heart? Or is there another definition that we need to consider? I think there is.
Transition…
Jesus used the term hypocrite more than any other person in Scripture and He used it as a way to confront a certain group and their approach to religion. He also used it to teach His followers how to live or better yet, He used it to teach us how not to live.
Matthew 6:1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
2 “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Jesus began this sermon by describing the essential elements of Christianity. The Christian faith is not simply the result of accepting certain theological truths, nor is it simply adhering to certain religious practices. At its core Christianity is religion in the heart. It begins when we are brought face to face with the reality of who God is and with the reality of who we are in contrast.
In Matthew 5, Jesus took us on a journey through a series of Biblical laws and each one of them was aimed to show that deep down the biggest problem we face is the problem of sin in our heart. He wanted to teach us that true religion must begin in the heart. Now moving into chapter 6, Jesus wants to teach us that true religious practice must also begin in the heart.
Sermon Focus…
I. Beware of Hypocrisy (V. 1)
Matthew 6:1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness…
In this verse, Jesus is warning us about something that is common and once again it is primarily an issue of the heart. He tells us to beware. He wants us to be in a state of focused awareness about how we live out our religious devotion. Jesus is not warning us against practicing religious behavior, in fact, all of chapter 6 is about the practice of religious behavior.
In this chapter, Jesus is going to teach us about giving, prayer and fasting. He is going to help us understand how to truly serve God and how to faithfully trust God while worry and anxiety are trying to take over. This chapter is about how we live our lives out of a sincere relationship to God. But the warning here in verse 1 is aimed to show us that there is a way that we can carry our religious behaviors and they be completely worthless.
It all comes down to our motive. It all comes down to the state of our heart.
Matthew 6:1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
So, this is what we need to know in order to define what it means to be a hypocrite. According to Jesus, a hypocrite is someone who carries our religious practices merely to be seen by others. They do the right thing but with the wrong motive. They are trying to appear deeply religious/pious but in reality, they are phony.
John MacArthur tells the story of a holy man from the middle east. Every day the man would come and sit in a prominent street corner in the city and he would cover himself in ashes as a sign of his humility and devotion to the practice of asceticism. Tourist would often come to the city and see this man and ask permission to take his photograph. The old man would reply, “Just a moment, let me rearrange my ashes.” He wanted to make sure that people would see just how humble and devoted he was to his religion, so he would quickly get into costume.
The kind of hypocrisy that Jesus is describing is nothing more than rearranging our ashes. It’s the art of getting into costume so that the people around us will think that we are serious about God, serious about our religious devotion, serious about spiritual things; but in the end, it’s all a game. Hypocrites are little more than actors in their own stage play and they are surrounded by an audience of men and women.
The Greek word for Hypocrite (v. 2) refers to a stage actor, someone who wears a mask and plays a role. An actor wears a costume and memorizes lines so that they can portray a character, but it’s all a show. The whole business is to act the part in order to be seen by the audience in a way that is believable and draws you into the story being portrayed. In other words, the religious actions of a hypocrite are nothing more than a performance designed to impress those who are watching.
But notice that Jesus doesn’t just warn us about those hypocrites, he warns us about being a hypocrite. Beware of your own empty religion. That is how Jesus opens the middle section of His Sermon on the Mount. Beware! Now why does Jesus need to tell us to beware of being or becoming a hypocrite? Because sometimes we just don’t see it coming.
Culturally speaking, there are these games that we play in the Bible Belt. Everybody here is a Christian, no matter what they believe or what they don’t believe. We are Christians down here because we are American, which is Biblically ridiculous but culturally normal. What this really means is that we have adopted a mask of Christianity and much of the religious practices that go along with that, but for many it’s all a show. As long as life is easy, and no problems arise, folks maintain their mask and keep going about their religious performance.
But the reality is that these people are just playing a game or playing a part. They have no intention of actually submitting to Jesus, they just want to make people believe that they are. They have no intention of trusting in God’s Word, or repenting from sin or adopting a Biblical worldview, they just want to be lifelong worship attenders. They are treating church as a hobby and Christianity as a game and if we aren’t careful we can be made to believe that the game is the real thing.
The Pharisees certainly didn’t see themselves as hypocrites or actors. They thought that their religion was pure. They thought of themselves as the guardians of true religion. They were the ones that took the law seriously. They were the ones who weren’t afraid to point out other people’s sins. They were the ones that God would reward in the end…or so they thought.
But Jesus came to show them that they were playing a game. He came to reveal that their religion was nothing more than an outward show and that God was concerned with the heart. God is concerned with humility, mercy, and sincerity that flows out of a heart that had been changed by the gospel of grace, but the Pharisees were whitewashed tombs. Pretty on the outside but full of dead men’s bones and they had no idea. They were blind to their own hypocrisy.
But Jesus has come to warn us against following their lead. He has come to show us what life with God is really like and to help us understand this life with God, Jesus gives us some real-world illustrations. Let’s look at the first one.
II. What Not to Do (V. 2)
V. 2 “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
This first example has to do with giving money to the poor. Now, this is not the same thing as giving your tithe on Sunday although the principle still applies. In Jesus day, it was common and considered essential to true piety for people to give food, money or clothing to the poor. In a time when there was no such thing as government assistance, the needs of many were met by the people of the community. This was not only the custom of the day but also the instruction God gave to Israel.
Deut 15:7 “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, 8 but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be…11 For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore, I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’
Once again, we see that Jesus is teaching an already established Biblical truth. He is not doing away with giving to the poor, but the emphasis that He wants to make focuses on the heart of the giver. He wants us to check our motives. He wants us to ask the question, “Why am I giving?” And to press this question into our hearts he gives us an absurd illustration.
He says, “When you give, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do, that they may be praised by others.” Now, it doesn’t appear that this was something that actually happened. There is no evidence to suggest that Jews were accustomed to blowing a trumpet when they gave to the poor. Jesus’ point is to show how ridiculous it would be to seek attention in this way for doing what was right. It reeks of the kind of self-centered sinful attitude that God rejects.
When we give money to others in order to be recognized and praised, our motive is not to help the poor it is to please ourselves. Our real desire is not to please others, but to make them think better of us which is ultimately about our own self-gratification. This is pride plain and simple. This is self-exaltation and God doesn’t reward sin.
Luke 18:14 everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The only reward that comes to the hypocrite is the fact that he/she impressed a couple of people, but God was not impressed. What pleases God is humility. What pleases God is a sincere concern for the needs of others. What pleases God is sacrificial giving because that is how He gives.
For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son…
God gives with grace and His giving is a sacrifice. He gives the best He can give, and He gives it to those who don’t deserve it. This is the essence of the gospel and it is the model for how God wants us to give as well.
Now, you will notice that we don’t have a trumpet set up here at Cornerstone for when you give; but that doesn’t mean we are immune to this type of selfish giving. There are many trumpets that people use today and there are other selfish motives propelling people to give.
I’ve served in a church where members would refuse to give because they didn’t like a decision the pastor made, and they wanted him fired. The pastor hadn’t committed sin it was just that this guy didn’t like him and wanted to put pressure on the deacons to get the pastor out. It’s like he saw himself as a shareholder and he wanted to use his money not for praise but for influence.
There is another reason why some people give, and it isn’t to influence the church nor to win the praise of men. Sometimes people give because they think they can influence God. They think that when they give money they are somehow going to earn spiritual favor from God. But salvation can’t be bought, no matter what the Pope tells you.
In Acts 8, we read about a man in Samaria who was a magician. When he saw the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the apostles he offered them money in the hopes that he could secure the same power for himself.
Acts 8:20 But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! 21 You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you.
Money can’t buy you love and it can’t buy you salvation either. All it can do is impress the world. But there is a type of giving that God rewards.
II. How to do what God Rewards (Vv. 3-4)
3 But when you give to the needy,
Now, I want to point out that Jesus doesn’t say if you give but when you give. There is a certain expectation that as the people of God we will use our money in ways that God commands. Throughout the Scriptures we learn that God doesn’t need our gifts because He is entirely self-sufficient. But our gifts are intended to meet the physical and spiritual needs of others.
The Bible teaches that giving is an act of worship and it is done when we gather to praise God. Giving is an act of joy because God loves a cheerful giver. Giving is an act of mercy aimed at meeting the needs of others. Giving is an act of ministry as it is used to support the work of the church and to fuel the spread of the gospel. Giving is a personal responsibility because God doesn’t want us to give under compulsion but as each man had decided in his heart. Giving is an act of faith because we are trusting that God will provide for us even when we give sacrificially.
Here in Matthew 6, Jesus also teaches us that giving is an act of secret devotion from the heart.
V. 3 do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
What does it mean to give with your right hand but not to let your left hand know about it? Jesus is using another metaphor here of one side of the body doing something while at the same time not announcing what it has done in order to gain recognition. IOW, he is telling us to give in a discreet way that avoids self-promotion. This doesn’t mean that you should be sneaky when you put your offering in the plate, it means that you give with the desire to glorify God, not to glorify yourself.
If your giving comes from a heart of humility and love for God. If your giving is done with a sincere desire to obey God’s calling to care for those in need, to spread the gospel, and to support the church; If your giving is done as an act of worship to God and not for the influence or praise it might bring us, this is what God rewards. This is the type of giving that pleases God.
The hypocrite craves the praise of men and thinks little of God, so he gives for his own gain. The Christian seeks the glory of God and thinks little of man’s praise, so he gives generously to help those in need.
John Calvin, commenting on this passage, writes, “By this expression (Jesus) means that we ought to be satisfied with having God for our only witness.” As Christians we don’t live for the clapping of men, nor do we live so that we can pat ourselves on the back; we live for God. We live for the one who rescued us from ourselves. We live for the one who gave His life for our freedom. We live for the One who knows the secrets of our hearts and still loves us.
Conclusion…
So, what are the big ideas that God wants us to understand from this passage?
1. Going through the motions of religion alone will get you nowhere with God. External religion alone will earn you nothing with God. Salvation by works is a complete lie. God wants our religious devotion to be fueled by integrity in the heart. He wants to have a relationship with us that changes us from the inside out. He wants our religious devotion to be fueled by love for Him and that results in love for others.
2. I love this quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “There is no reward from God for those who seek it from men.” If you are seeking the praise of men through your religious life, then the praise of men is all you can ever hope to gain. The root of man’s longing for the praise of others is pride and God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. If you do what you do for the admiration of the crowd, you have your reward.
3. The reward of sacrificial giving cannot be measured. The motivation for us to give sacrificially is surely tied to the fact that Christ gave sacrificially. He gave His life to meet our need. He drained the storehouse of his wealth to buy our freedom. God did not hold back His Own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things.
The hypocritical life is nothing but smoke and mirrors, attempting to earn a reputation that is undeserved. But deep down the hypocrite knows that it’s all an act that he/she uses to hide the shame and guilt in their heart. The only real escape is to be exposed by Jesus, and why not, He knows the truth already. He’s not fooled, and He never will be.
Jesus knows our hypocritical games too well and He is not only willing to call us out on them, but He also offers us freedom from the guilt and shame that we are so desperately trying to hide. He will give us a new identity in Him and will allow us to live without the mask.
Let’s repent of our hypocrisy. Let’s go to Jesus for forgiveness and cleansing. Let’s go to His Word and let it teach us, humble us, grow us and make us more like Him.
[1] Tim Keller The Reason For God (pg. 51)
[2] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/what-is-hypocrisy/
The History of Cornerstone
Series: Cornerstone Academy
Speaker: Justin Wheeler
Topic: The Church History
Love Your Enemies
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It is well known that love is at the heart of the message and vision of Christianity. There is perhaps no more popular New Testament verse in the world than John 3:16, where we come to understand that God loves the world and in His love He gave His Son to us so that all who believe in Him will not perish but will have eternal life. The Father’s love for unlovable sinners, like us, is at the very heart of the Christian message.
But that is not the end of Christianity’s vision of love. The love of Jesus is a huge part of that vision. Jesus told his friends that there is no greater love in this world than the love that would cause a man to give his own life in order to save his friends and that is exactly what Jesus did. He died in our place. He took our place and sheltered us from the judgment of God and He did this because of His love. Jesus’ love for undeserving sinners, like us, is at the very heart of the Christian message.
But still, this is not the end of Christianity’s vision of love. In the NT gospels, we see Jesus teaching all of His disciples that we too are to be people of love. We are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are even commanded to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Christians are commanded to love. We are to love others, even those whom we might naturally dislike and this too is at the very heart of the Christian message.
The Christian vision of love is incredible and it gives us the idea that God wants love to fill the earth and fuel all of our emotions and actions.
Transition…
As followers of Jesus we are called to love. We are called to love God in a way that resets our heart and enables us to love others in an extraordinary, unnatural and radical way. This morning we are going to learn three ways that Jesus wants us to understand the call to love: 1. Love your neighbors (V. 43), Love your enemies (Vv. 44-47) and Love like God (V. 48).
Matt 5:43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Sermon Focus…
I. Love your Neighbor (V. 43)
v. 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
This statement is difficult in a way that the previous ones are not. For the most part, the previous statements that Jesus has made in the Sermon on the Mount are easily found in the OT and Jesus’ point is to remind his audience of those OT laws and then to help them understand the deeper purpose of them. The law was given to teach God’s people how do what is right, but it was also given to show them the sin that dwells in their hearts.
The law does two things: it points out what we are supposed to do but it also shows us that our natural inclination is to do what we are not supposed to do. The law shows us how to live but it also shows us our sin.
Here in Matthew 5, Jesus wants to let the law do its thing with us, but in each case he has to address the fact that religious teachers had made a mess of how the people understood the law. In some cases, the religious leaders had softened the law, in other cases they had expanded it out to the point of absurdity. But here in verse 43 it appears that they have done two things: they took out a few words in order to limit their responsibility to their neighbors and then they completely added their own man-made law about how to treat their enemies.
The first part of the verse, “You shall love your neighbor…” is found in the book of Leviticus..
Lev 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
This verse comes at the end of a section that is meant to teach God’s people how to interact with one another. God gave them clear instructions that they ought to care for one another, not to steal from one another, not to lie to one another, but to be fair and just and sincere. Then as a summary statement God says, “just, love one another.” The point is that if you love your neighbor you will not be tempted to take advantage of them, or to cheat them, or to overlook their needs. This is how God commanded His people to treat their neighbors.
By quoting this, Jesus is reminding the Jews that their relationship with each other is to be defined by love. But notice that a critical part of Leviticus 19 has been left off; the part about loving your neighbor as yourself. They decided that they would just leave that part of the verse out. The Jews in that day had reduced the command of God from “love your neighbor as yourself” to simply, “Love your neighbor.”
It might seem like a small thing, but if you think about it those two words make a world of difference. Those two words define the quality of our love, they set a standard that is incredibly high. Do you love your neighbor? Do you love your neighbor the way you love yourself?
Not only had they chipped away at God’s command but they also added a second command when they taught the people to “hate their enemy.” Now where did this come from?
If you do a search for the term hate in the Bible you will find it show up quite a few times. Sometimes it refers to the hatred that personal enemies feel toward one another, sometimes it refers to how people feel about the wicked, the idolaters, or those who stand opposed to God.
You’ll find that God hates certain things. He hates divorce, He hates empty hypocritical religion, He hates evil, corruption and injustice. In Amos 5 God tells His people to hate evil, specifically the evil in their own hearts.
But, none of these statements command God’s people to hate their enemies. And yet, this feeling has become so engrained in the thinking of God’s people that they treat it like its a command. Some believe that this problem arose because of the Jews misunderstanding of the command to love their neighbor. Since their neighbors were fellow Jews they decided that the command only applied to the people of God. So, in their minds they were required to love their fellow-Jews, but they were free to hate non-Jews, especially those who were their political enemies.
To be honest, who could blame them? They had been oppressed for years. First by the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians and now the Romans. It may have been that hatred for enemies had become a mark of patriotism for Israel. Hating one’s enemies came to them naturally, but this is not what God had called them to do. The truth is that God had instructed them to care for their enemies.
Prov 25:21 If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink…(Paul quotes this in Romans 12, which we read last week)
So, this man-made command to hate your enemies had grown up like a rogue weed. It was a parasitic growth that had endured for years and was now widely accepted as the duty of faithful Jews and Jesus wants to confront this hatred in the hearts of His people, even in our hearts.
Our own world is filled with this type of hate. Jews still hate Palestinians. Muslim terrorists still hate the west and Americans most of all, and Americans hate them right back. Racism is alive in our country once again, or to be more honest it never truly left. Racism is a particularly ignorant form of hatred coupled with pride, which makes it doubly sinful. This is not true in all cases, but it is true in some that Republicans hate Democrats and vice versa.
We may think that as 21st century Americans we are beyond the type of petty hatred that Jesus is confronting in this passage, but I just don’t think so. You may think that I’m overstating things, but I think we’ve come to the point where hatred is growing in this country. What most disturbs me about this is that in some cases the church has fallen in lock step with the culture when it comes to this type of hatred.
In this passage, Jesus is confronting our tendency to embrace the natural hatred that flows out of our hearts toward people who are not like us and He is calling us to live radically different lives than the rest of the world. He is calling us to love our enemies.
II. Love your Enemies
v. 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
The context of what Jesus is saying here has to do with religious persecution and those who oppose us on the basis of our faith. IOW, what makes someone our enemy is the fact that they are persecuting us for our faith in Christ. The Jews had been teaching that love should be limited to people like us, who believe like us, but Jesus is calling His disciples to not just love other Christians, but to love even those with whom we strongly disagree about God. He is calling us to love our persecutors.
Jesus is commanding us, that when our enemies insult us to our face we should retaliate with love. When people mock us for our faith we should pray for them. When people want us dead and we should want them to be saved.
Now, before we begin to think that this might just be pie-in-the-sky religious idealism, let me point out a few of the examples of this type of love that we see in the NT starting with Jesus himself. Jesus on the cross in Luke 23…
Luke 23:33-34 And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34 And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Stephen in Acts 7:60…
Acts 7:58-60 Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him… 59 And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 60 And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
This is uncommon love. This is radical love fueled by a profound understanding of gospel realities. The gospel teaches that despite God’s goodness toward mankind, all of us have rejected Him in our hearts. We suppress the truth about Him and we seek to live as though we belong in God’s place. But despite our rebellion against God the gospel tells us that He loves us. Before the foundation of the world, He chose to love us and even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We don’t deserve His love, but that doesn’t stop Him from loving us and when this truth takes hold of our hearts, it will begin to change the way we view everyone, even our enemies.
Pray for those who abuse you…
When they make fun of us for our faith in Christ, we approach God and ask that He show them their need of Christ. I don’t know about you but I’ll just be honest and let you know that this is not my natural disposition toward those who make it their aim to persecute me. My natural response is to defend myself, retaliate and turn away from my enemy. But Jesus simply will not let us run away from our enemies, He calls us to love them.
This is not “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” This is not a self-serving ethic, this is not an appeal to proper social order, nor is this virtue for the sake of virtue. Jesus is calling us to love our enemies the way that He loves His enemies, with a divine and unconditional love that looks beyond the shame of this world and toward the glory to come.
Now, where are we going to get the resources that we need to love like this?
The power to love like Jesus flows in the veins of those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit to believe the truth of the gospel. Our very real human effort to love our enemies is the result of God’s grace in us, not the other way around.
Eph 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us,
The Spirit of God works within us to make us more like Jesus. The primary motivation for us to love our enemies, is going to come when we remember that we were once the enemies of God. But in Christ He loved us.
The resolve we need to love our enemies will be found at the foot of the cross; where God’s love put an end to our opposition to God. Our capacity to love our enemies will be directly linked to our understanding of the love of God.
A. The Love of God
v. 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Notice that God makes his sun to rise on the evil and the on the good. It’s His and that means that He can do with it what He pleases. He can make the sun shine on Israel while darkness falls on the rest of Egypt. But each day His sun rises to give life to all. We call this common grace but it is anything but common. This is a form of divine love and this is what Jesus is calling us to demonstrate to others.
Christian love, is not normal in any sense of the word, it is radical. He is calling us to view love for others as infinitely more valuable than our own comfort, our possessions, our reputation and our rights. He is not calling us to follow the whims of our emotions, but to consciously choose to serve rather than to demand.
He is calling us to a standard of love that is far more radical than anything that the world of religion, ethics or philosophy have ever developed. Jesus is calling us to love the way God loves. He is calling us to imitate the divine love of God, a love that is most clearly and profoundly seen in the gospel of our salvation.
The One who is here calling us to love radically is also the One who radically loves us.
How does Jesus’ love for us compare to the love found in the world?
B. The Love of the World
v. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
To love those who love you is the baseline of love that should undergird any society and before we can feel the force of Jesus’ teaching we have to come to grips with the fact that we start out failing even to love in common ways.
Husbands ought to love their wives and wives ought to love their husbands, this should not be exceptional. Families ought to love one another, siblings ought to love one another, and friends ought to share a mutual love and respect for one another. But instead we see the opposite in most cases.
We hear of spousal abuse and infidelity on a daily basis. Much of our energy at home is spent breaking up arguments between our children. Friends and neighbors go to war with one another and in the evening their story ends up on the nightly news. This is simply the world we live in.
The type of love that Jesus calls common is often viewed as exceptional in our day. But Jesus expects this to be common among His followers. We ought to love one another, but much of the time even this is a struggle.
So what must we do? Our only response is to repent before the lord, seek forgiveness from Him and those we’ve failed to love, and then to learn from Christ what true love looks like in our lives. To love those who love you is good, right and true and as believers in Christ we should set the example for the world in loving those who love us. This is what our lives, families and churches should look like every day. We should be filled with love to the point of overflowing.
Love based on the principle of, “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” is not an example of Christian love. Jesus wants us to give without strings attached. He wants us to love without selfish motives. He is calling us to pour our hearts out for others, for our enemies. This is amazing love.
Christ is calling us to love in a way that is out of place in this world, an alien love.
In a blogpost from 2014, Jared Wilson asks, “What if we looked at 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 from the reverse angle? Here is what we would read:
Impatience and unkindness is hatred.
Hate is envious and ego-centric.
Hate is arrogant and rude.
Hatred is insisting on one’s own way;
hatred is irritable or resentful;
it celebrates sin, and it mocks what is true.
Hate is whiny and thin-skinned,
thoroughly skeptical,
always pessimistic,
a born quitter.
But hatred ends . . .[1]
Now let’s turn things around and learn what it will look like for us to love like God.
1 Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient and kind; love is not envious or boastful; love is not selfish and rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not short-tempered or bitter; it does not celebrate sin, but celebrates the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
Our love is to imitate the perfect love of God, not the hatred of men.
III. Love like God
v. 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Some teachers will say that this verse is teaching that sinless perfection is the goal of the Christian life. But if that were true, it would put this verse at odds with the rest of Jesus’ sermon and the whole of the NT. The perfection that Jesus is calling for here relates to the perfect love of God that is merciful and gracious. The Love of God is selfless love. It is love characterized by 1 Corinthians 13. It is perfect love and this is the type of love that we are called to show.
At the end of the day Jesus is calling us to imitate the love of the Father in how we interact with everyone, from family and friends, to fellow believers, and even to strangers and enemies. He calls us to love, to do good, to lend with no strings attached. God is the standard of how we are to love others, and God’s love is perfect.
There is not a time when we are more like our Father than when we love our enemies unconditionally.
Conclusion…
If we stand up for what is right, if we take our stand upon the Word of God and upon the gospel especially; we will have enemies. Those enemies will want to silence us. They will work to marginalize us. They will be hostile toward us in every way imaginable and Jesus tells us to surprise them with love.
As human beings, we should love our families well. As reasonable people, we should love those who love us. As peace-loving people, we should love our neighbors. As forgiven sinners, we ought to love unbelievers. As beloved children of God we are called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Let’s do that now.
[1] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/jared-c-wilson/1-corinthians-13-reversed-reveals-much/
Church Leadership
Series: Cornerstone Academy
Speaker: Mark Ritchie
Topic: The Church
Retaliation and Grace of God
Manuscript
What I want to do this morning is to call us again to the foot of the mountain to hear from Jesus as He continues to preach the Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon, Jesus is teaching us what it takes to enter His Kingdom and what it looks like for us to live as citizens of His Kingdom. He wants us to know how to become His disciples and how to live as His disciples.
He kicked things off with a list of beatitudes, statements about happiness and how to find it. But each statement takes our natural sensibilities and turns them upside-down. Jesus tells us in verse 3 that happiness comes to those who are poor in spirit; happy are the spiritually bankrupt. Then He tells us that happiness comes to those who mourn. IOW, happy are the sad. Then happiness is ready and waiting for those who are meek and hungry for righteousness. Happy are those who are starving for righteousness.
What a paradox. What does this mean? These beatitudes are aimed at changing our behavior, they are aimed at changing our heart. What Jesus is showing us here is the heart attitude of those who enter into His Kingdom. Our Journey into following Christ starts with brokenness, a brokenness that occurs when we see God for who He truly is and by contrast we will see ourselves as truly bankrupt before Him. The opening portion of the Sermon on the Mount is not a code of ethics that we must follow in order to become the people of God, but rather it strips us bear to make us understand that if we are to have peace with God it won’t come from us.
No good work on our part can save us from our sin. A lifetime of works can’t save us from sin. We need forgiveness and that only comes as a gift of God’s grace. We don’t simply need to change our behavior, we need a new heart and He is the only One who can truly give us a new heart. This is where our journey in the gospel begins; it begins with true brokenness before God that reveals just how sinful we are and this will cause us to mourn over our sin, and to long for a Savior who will forgive us and lead us to God.
This is the first part of what Jesus wants to teach us in this sermon, how to enter into His Kingdom. The second part is what do we do once we are in? How are we to live as members of His Kingdom? So let’s read our text for today.
Matt 5:38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
Transition…
What Jesus is calling for in these verses (and the section that follows) is the pinnacle of Christian conduct. He is calling for us to respond to evil with humility, patience, mercy and grace. He is calling us to live in complete contradiction to our natural instincts, which means that we must be made new before we can hope to live like this. Jesus is not imposing this way of life on the lost kingdom of this world, but He is calling for His born-again people to live like this.
In order to live like Jesus, we are going to learn three things: Justice is Good, Mercy is Better, and Grace is Best.
Sermon Focus…
I. Justice is Good (V. 38)
V. 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
This verse comes straight out of the OT law of Moses and it is referred to as the law of retaliation or Lex Talionis. This law was even recorded in the Code of Hammurabi (Babylonian) as the foundation for justice in the case of person to person interaction. The point of this law was to regulate the human urge to retaliate by legally demanding that any punishment handed down must fit the crime.
Ex 21:22 “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Lev 24:19 If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him.
Justice is about balance and this law was given to ensure that the scales were even on both sides. The rule of lex talionis has the double effect of defining justice and also restraining revenge; it was designed to prevent severe retribution and vigilante justice. But from our own experience we know that laws alone are no match for our human desire for revenge.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Revenge is a dish best served cold?” The meaning of this devilish saying is that the most satisfying approach to exacting revenge is to take your time, to plan out your vengeance at a time when no one suspects you and then to savor the moment of revenge as you would a fine meal. I was in middle school when I first read a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, which captured this spirit of intentional vengeance in a very disturbing way.
The story begins like this,
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length, I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled— but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity (without the possibility of being punished for what I planned to do). A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.[1]
Montresor had received a wound from Fortunato, an insult that in his heart he believed demanded revenge, but not just any revenge would do. He would proceed quietly and would plan it out in such a way that he would not get caught. His revenge would be a private matter, beyond the reach of the law, but it would leave a final impression on Fortunato. What began as an insult ended with murder. Montresor’s vengeance was a secret hidden deep in the catacombs and walled in with brick and mortar.
This story is one of a countless number of revenge stories that have captivated audiences for ages. Each of these stories shows us in painstaking detail just how deep our desire for revenge goes. In our hearts we long for vengeance, not justice but vengeance. Our natural instinct is not just to hit back but to hit back even harder and this has been the natural instinct of humanity as far back as Lamech in Genesis 4 who boasted, “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.”
God gave this law as a way to restrain our natural sinful inclination toward revenge and retaliation and as such these laws are aimed at establishing justice in society. But Jesus wants us to understand that there is more to this law than the letter. Below the surface, at the heart-level Jesus wants us to see the root of the problem. The law was given to curb our behavior, but it was also given to reveal the corruption in our hearts and that is what Jesus wants us to see.
II. Mercy is Better (V. 39)
At the heart of adultery is the sin of lust. At the heart of murder is the sin of anger. At the heart retaliation is the sin of vengeance, to be the self-justified distributor of justice.
There is a righteousness greater and more beautiful than self-justice— letting God be the judge and righteousness maker, the one who puts the world to right. This is a consistent theme in the Old Testament regarding interpersonal relations— do not take your own vengeance but let God be the one who sets things to right.[2]
1 Sam 24:12 (David said to Saul) May the Lord judge between me and you, may the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you.
IOW, Revenge is a dish best not served, because vengeance belongs to the Lord. God has established the means by which justice is meted out and it doesn’t look like Batman or the Punisher. He has established the state, flawed though it is, as the societal institution where justice is handed down. Then beyond the state there is the promise that God Himself will judge all the earth and render to every human being what they deserve for their crimes and sins.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not rejecting the rule of law with regard to the state’s role to seek justice (retribution) but he is teaching us not to take vengeance into our own hands. In fact, he is telling us to fight against the heart impulse of vengeance by showing mercy to people who would seek to take advantage of us.
V. 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.
I actually think this verse is better understood to read, “Do not set yourself against the evildoer.” The idea is that we don’t take vengeance into our own hands, but in the next verse Jesus takes our understanding further. He says, “When someone insults you with a backhanded slap across the face, don’t lash out to get revenge but instead give that person a chance to double the insult.” This is the first of four illustrations that Jesus uses to teach us about personal restraint.
To turn the other cheek is to reject revenge, to be humble and gentle even when the other person doesn’t deserve it. To turn the other cheek is to show mercy and this is what Jesus calls His disciples to do in the face of an insult to our dignity.
He also tells us to be willing to give away our coat and the shirt off our back. In this case, the law could not demand that a person give away their coat and their shirt, but they could be willingly given. Jesus is calling for His disciples to go above and beyond what justice requires in order to show mercy to others.
In the third illustration, He tells us to go the extra mile. Roman law gave soldiers the right to force a civilian to carry his gear for one mile. This law was designed to give soldiers relief while on active duty. This seems like a fair trade-off for those risk their lives, but don’t forget that the Jews were occupied by Rome. This law forced the Jews to carry the weapons that their oppressors would use against them. But Jesus says, “When they take away your freedom and force you to serve for a mile, show them mercy and go an extra one.”
Finally, Jesus calls us to give to the one who asks and not to refuse the one in need. Now, wisdom would require us to think carefully before giving money to a fool, or a drunkard, or an addict. “If a man is not willing to work, let him not eat (2 Thess 3:10).” In each of these cases we don’t abandon wisdom. The command to turn the other cheek does not imply that we refuse to rescue someone who is being abused or attacked. The point here is that we deny the selfishness in our heart that would cause us to refuse to help someone in serious need.
Jesus wants us to understand that this law of retaliation can help to establish justice within society, but it also reveals that deep down we have a serious problem in our heart.
His teachings in these verses are a call to a way of being in the world that teaches us to look inward and become a different kind of people, (He is teaching) a vision of truly Christian virtue. A radical reorientation to our way of thinking that would have us see justice as good but mercy as better.[3] This is a vision of Christian values that rebukes our flesh and confounds the world. This is a vision for the Christian life that is more concerned with righteousness than personal justice.
By the way, Paul understood this teaching and he restated it for us in Romans 12.
Rom 12:17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Justice is good and right and it has been established by God. He has appointed the law to govern our behavior, He has appointed the state to govern our society and in the end, He will judge all men according to their actions. Justice if good, but mercy is better.
Mercy is better in that it teaches us to deny ourselves and to fight against the sinful impulse of selfishness. Jesus demands of us that we let mercy, not justice, be the motivating ethic in how we interact with others. Mercy means that we reject revenge, that we deny ourselves and that we seek the good of others, even when they wrong us.
Justice is good, mercy is better, but lastly, I want us to see that grace is best.
III. Grace is Best (1 Peter 2:21-24)
Jesus called His disciples with this invitation, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” As believers in Christ, His way is our way. His path is our path. His fate is our fate. His example is ours to follow.
The Apostle Peter heard Jesus invitation and He followed. He gave up everything to surrender his life to Jesus’ teaching and to follow Jesus example. Yes, Peter stumbled along the way just like we do, but in the end, Peter knew that following Jesus would lead us to Heaven.
Listen to Peter explaining how we too are to follow Christ.
1 Pet 2:21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
There is a principle at work here that we don’t come to naturally, and it’s that God values meekness and humility. He values self-sacrificial love and He not only calls His people to embrace it, He embraced it Himself. The greatest display of selfless love (Grace) that this universe has ever seen was when Christ gave His life in our place.
Brothers and sisters, what Jesus is calling us to do with regard to not resisting those who do evil is exactly what He did Himself. When they came to arrest Him on trumped up charges, He didn’t fight back. When they accused Him of blasphemy He didn’t answer their charges. When they struck Him in the face He didn’t fight back. When they mocked Him in the barracks He didn’t defend His dignity. When they crucified Him He didn’t work to free Himself even though He could have done so.
He could have called down angels to free Him and destroy His enemies, but He chose to stay on the cross because love is the only thing powerful enough to overcome our sin. Jesus knew the power of mercy and the beauty of grace so He told the angels to stand down as He took our place on that cross. He didn’t deserve it but He denied Himself and took up the cross.
In His flesh, Jesus bore the penalty for the sins of all His people, all those who would believe. He absorbed the wrath of God that we deserved so that we could go free. With infinite dignity, matchless self-control and amazing grace; Jesus refused to retaliate.
1 Pet 2:23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
Conclusion…
It’s not about what our flesh wants, it’s about what the soul needs.
Our calling is to follow Christ’s example. We do not follow His example in order to be saved, but because we are saved by grace and through faith we follow His example. Jesus is first our savior and then our example but it is our calling to follow in His steps.
(Illus... The word example is used of children who trace over the letters of the alphabet in order to learn how to write their letters correctly. When we follow Christ, our lives are tracing over the lines that He drew with His own hands and feet.
When the gospel takes root in our hearts it changes everything. When the love of Christ anchors itself into our heart the calling upon our lives is to walk so closely with Him that we put our feet in his footprints. When we open our mouths, His word is what we hear. When we are mistreated we respond with grace, love and truth. When injustice comes against us we entrust our souls to God.
When suffering comes through persecution or the mistreatment of unjust men and women we know that we are living in the same story as our Lord. We are walking where He walked. This is our calling to follow in His steps.
[1] Poe, Edgar Allen The Cask of Amantillado (https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Poe/Amontillado.pdf)
[2] Pennington, Jonathan T.. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary (p. 196). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[3] Ibid, pg. 197.