Matthew 7:15-29; A Secure Community

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We're going to conclude our series on the Sermon on the Mount this week.

We have been looking through this part of Scripture, the Sermon of Jesus, through the lens of what kind of community is Jesus creating in His church?

And I'll be honest with you, I was not thrilled when I saw that this was the passage that I was to preach this week.

I had a thought was can we just end it early and go find an easier passage to preach, or could I just leave this as a welcome back gift for Jason when he returned next week?

But we're not.

We're going to consider this passage this week and last week our call to confession was in Hebrews 4, and it talks about the Word of God is living and active and it exposes our hearts, it exposes who we are.

And in the middle of this service last week I was leading that part and part of what I was saying was that we know that we're reading the Word of God as we ought to when we let it contradict us, when we let the Word of God tell us that we were wrong.

And so I remember thinking do you really believe that when I was up here leading, you're preaching on a passage next week that, if you're honest, you wish weren't in the Bible.

And so the question to me was will I let God's Word contradict me?

Will I really let God's Word speak?

And so that's been my challenge this week, as I've prepared to preach, but reminded that these are the words of our Savior, these are the words of our King, and so we dare not think that we are wiser than he.

And he put these words in here for us.

And so let us, with humility and open hearts, see what it is that our Lord has to say to us this morning.

So God's word to us today, from Matthew 7, verses 15 to 29.

Matthew 7:15–29

Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

You will recognize them by their fruits.

Our grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles.

So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

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.

On that day, many will say to me Lord, lord, did we not prophesy in your name, did we not cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name?

And then I will declare to them I never knew you.

Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock, 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.

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, 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.

When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, not as their scribes.

Let's pray as we look at this word.

Lord, we come this morning and we believe that this is your word for us today.

Lord, we come this morning and we believe that this is your word for us today, your word that is given to us for reproof and for correction and to train us up in righteousness.

And so, lord, help us to hear it, help us to receive your word by faith today.

And, father, where we are fearful, we pray that you would bring courage when we are in rebellion.

Please bring repentance and new faith where we are drifting.

Lord, please reclaim our attention and our affection.

And so, lord, we pray that you would speak to us now, for your servants are listening.

We pray this in Christ's name Amen.

We all live in a world that longs for security, because so many things in our world are out of our control.

Things seem insecure around us.

Just take this week.

On Monday, our financial markets had the worst day in several years, and there is a threat of a recession on the horizon.

It seems like every day there is more threat of war around the world.

It seems like tensions are escalating throughout the world, and war seems on the horizon for us as well.

We hear that the collective future for us as a country, as the West, as a society in whole, hangs in the balance with November's elections, and many kids return to school this week, and you might feel the same thing anxiety and unease over going to a new place or a new class, or wondering who you will sit with at lunch, in a world that lacks anything that resembles security, ultimate security and safety.

Can followers of Jesus, can those who claim to follow Christ, have any security when it comes to their relationship with Him?

Admittedly, our passage this morning is not one that you will ever find listed on Bible passages that bring comfort to those who are struggling.

This is not where you're going to go when your faith is faltering.

This is not a passage you go to when you are trapped in sin.

I can remember as a teenager, as a college student, reading this passage and it shook me to my core.

I was filled with fear, deeply unsettling to me, because the question that I asked was am I the one that Jesus is talking to in this passage, the one that he will say on the final day depart from me?

I never knew you, and that may be your experience as well with this passage, but, to my surprise, as I studied this week, I found there's much more hope for us in this passage than I may have thought.

These are certainly hard words.

We can't deny that these are tough words from Jesus, but they are not meant to leave us in a precarious place of doubt Jesus' vision, what he wants from us in the Sermon on the Mount, is not to leave us feeling like sheep without a shepherd, but he's giving us a picture of the community that he is creating.

So I think, when after we look at this passage through the eyes of faith, after it shakes us, after it unsettles us, this passage offers great comfort to all who trust in Christ.

So we're going to look at it in two parts.

The first part will be verses 15 to 24.

We will look at two ways of living that will not give us security.

And then the last part we will see the only true source of security that we have.

When Bully preached a few weeks ago, he mentioned that in this part of the Sermon on the Mount, jesus is talking about things in pairs.

All of the different parts of the Sermon on the Mount, there's always two things that are compared, and that continues in our passage today.

In verses 15 to 20, there are two trees there's a healthy tree and there's a diseased tree.

And then after, in 21 to 24, there are two types of people.

There are those who will enter the kingdom of heaven and those who will depart from Jesus.

In verses 24 to 29,.

There are two foundations on which you can build your life on the rock or on the sand.

And with all of the pairs that are mentioned here, there's one thing that is consistent is that they all look similar.

The trees look similar, the people on the last day have an outward appearance, they look the same and the houses look the same.

And we can tend to read this passage and think that what Jesus is telling us is that it's going to be easy to tell the difference between these two.

And you see that in the first section, in verses 15 to 20, he uses a metaphor of a tree and a fruit to talk about how to spot a false prophet.

Two times he tells us in the passage.

You will recognize them by their fruit and it's easy to miss what he's saying.

We tend to read the passage and think it's going to be obvious for me to tell which is the healthy tree and which is a disease tree.

You may have in your yard a line of trees or a line of shrubs and there's one that died, and it's really obvious this time of year to tell which one's alive and which one's dead?

Because one and it's really obvious this time of year to tell which one's alive and which one's dead because one of them's brown and the rest are green.

And we think that's what Jesus is saying here, that you can look at the outward appearance.

But Jesus says you will not recognize them by their obvious outward appearance.

You will recognize them by their fruit.

To the untrained eye, these trees might look the same.

The outward appearance is the same.

They're both healthy.

Notice in this passage.

Both trees bear fruit.

The difference is the type of fruit that they bear.

There's good fruit and there's bad fruit.

The last few years in television have taught us anything.

It's that literally anything can be turned into a TV show if you want it to be.

A game that you played as a kid on your living room floor on a boring summer day is now the Floor is Lava and there's an entire show over that.

And more recently there was a show called Is it Cake that debuted on Netflix and all you need to know about the show is contained in the title.

It's really just a game, a show about people guessing if something is cake or not.

And these cake artists they make these hyper-realistic cakes and the judges go around and they determine is it cake or is it not cake?

Or is that a shoe or is that just a cake that looks like a shoe?

And there's a big reveal at the end where you try to slice it and you is it cake or is it not cake?

It's something if you want to watch it.

Jesus is saying to us the difference between good fruit and bad fruit isn't obvious.

You might have to slice into it if you're going to see what's really going on.

Dig beneath the surface.

Is it real?

Is the fruit good fruit or bad?

Jesus is saying we can't just look at outward appearances if we want to know what's going on in someone's heart.

And doesn't that echo the rest of what we've looked at in the Sermon on the Mount to this part?

You could really think of chapter 6 as just an extended metaphor for what he's saying here.

Do you remember when Jesus was talking about people praying?

The difference that he talked about in that was not people who prayed and people who didn't pray.

No, both people prayed.

But the reason the difference was why did they pray?

One person prayed to be seen by others.

One person prayed to be heard by their Father who is in heaven.

What about the people who were giving?

It wasn't one who gave and one who didn't give.

They both were givers.

One gave and blew the trumpet when he gave, and one gave so that his left hand didn't know what his right hand was giving.

Same with fasting Both people are fasting.

On the outside they look the same, but one does it to be seen by others and one does to be seen by his Father in heaven.

And Jesus uses the same principle, but in the negative, in chapter 5.

It's not simply have you murdered anyone, but have you been angry?

It's not just the outside, but what's going on inside.

Not have you committed adultery, but have you looked lustfully upon someone, another person?

Jesus says if you want to be able to recognize what's true in someone's heart, you have to look at the fruit that is being produced in their life.

And so I think it is an obvious, it's a fair question for us to ask today for Christians to examine what is the fruit that is growing in my life.

And as we ask that question, let's not fall back into the same trap in which we just got out of by merely equating fruit to external appearances, but what is beneath the behavior?

What is beneath our actions?

What's driving our actions?

Paul gives us a helpful list of this in Galatians 5 when he compares the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.

Does the fruit in your life look more like enmity and strife and jealousy and fits of anger and impurity and rivalries and dissensions and envy, or does it look like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?

How are the people around you?

How do they experience you?

What is it like to be around you?

What do they see?

What do they feel when they are around you?

What fruit is your life bearing?

The fruit reveals what is true about the tree and as hard as that might be for us to hear, let me assure you that it's going to get worse as we look further in this passage.

Verses 21 to 23 are some of the weightiest verses for us to consider.

They're some of the hardest verses in the Scripture.

They're hard because they frighten people in this room.

They're hard to read for people who are busy doing things for Jesus.

Jesus says in verses 21 to 23, on the last day there will be people who think they are going into the kingdom of God who are not.

And the obvious, soul-disturbing question that we naturally have is is this passage talking about me?

There are a few things that most every commentator picks up on.

What is being said in this passage to describe the type of person that Jesus is talking about.

In this passage, what type of person is he describing?

And it's rough when we read it.

The person being described in verses 21 to 23 has orthodox beliefs.

They address Jesus, lord, lord.

They are attributing divinity to Jesus.

This is the same word in the Old Testament that is translated Yahweh in the New Testament.

They have good theology.

They understand that Jesus is both human and divine.

They know their Bible.

They're orthodox in their beliefs, but that's not all.

They're not just orthodox, they're zealous for their beliefs.

Notice, they say Lord, lord twice.

It's meant to show intensity and fervor.

In this language, when you wanted to show intensity, you would repeat things.

It's like when Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, god Almighty.

He repeated it in order to show the intense emotion that he was feeling.

So this person is passionate about what they're doing.

But it gets worse.

The person that Jesus is describing is gifted, ministry-minded.

These are people who've seen results in their ministry.

They've seen people healed.

They prophesied, they did mighty works.

These are all stars in the church.

These are the kind of people you want in your church.

These are the cream of the crop.

But, perhaps most startling, these people sought to be Christ-centered in their ministry.

Notice the repetition of things when they say didn't we do X in your name?

Didn't we prophesy in your name?

Didn't we cast out demons in your name?

They were doing work in the name of Jesus.

They thought they were doing things for Him.

And just to top it off, jesus says to these theologically aware, ardent, gifted, christ-focused people he says depart from me.

I never knew you, not depart from me.

I once knew you, but you fell away and you, you ship direct your faith.

You walked away from the faith.

Now, I never knew you.

I didn't forget you.

I didn't lose you.

I never knew you.

There was never saving faith present.

Jesus says on the last day there will be people who have the right theology, who have emotional fervor, who have gifts for ministry and who have served in Jesus' name.

And he will say to them depart from Me, you, workers of lawlessness.

Quite sobering verses for us to consider.

And so we are left with the question can any of us have assurance on the last day that we will hear well done, good and faithful servant, and not hear depart from me?

I never knew you, you worker of lawlessness.

So is there any hope for assurance?

Certainly has gotten my attention thus far.

Is there any hope?

We're going to move to our second and final point.

We're going to look at the only hope for security that we have in verses 24 to 29.

And just to begin, I think there's more comfort for us in this passage than we might realize, better news than you might think.

But before we get into what that actually the substance of the hope that we have, I want to look a little closer at these people.

Maybe take a second look at the people that we've been talking about in this passage, because we have to say what gives?

Jesus is describing these people and they sound great.

Is there something else going on that we're missing when we look at the people described in the first part of this passage?

And there is more going on than first meets the eye.

Jesus says in verse 15 that false prophets are going to come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

These are people who have the outward appearance that they want to be in the sheepfold of God, but inwardly they are not looking to God as their shepherd.

They're actually ravenous wolves.

The word for ravenous is the same word that is used for a swindler or an extortioner.

These swindling wolves look like they are doing things to try to serve Jesus, but really they're just serving themselves.

They are charlatans.

They don't want Jesus.

They just want to use Jesus for what he can do for them.

And there's another hint, there's another thing that we need to examine.

As we look at these people In verse 22, you notice that this person that he's describing comes to Jesus and says, in summary, basically says Jesus, look at all these good things I've done for you.

Haven't I done this?

Haven't I healed people?

Haven't I cast out demons?

Look at all these people, look at how great I am, and you see in that moment that what was covered by good theology, what was hidden by successful ministry, is revealed.

In that moment we see evil fruit where we thought there was good fruit.

They were not doing this for jesus.

They were doing it for themselves.

They were not serving jesus out of love.

They were trying to extort jesus by their good works.

In a sense, they come to jesus at the end and they say Jesus, you owe me.

Jesus, look at all the things that I've done for you.

I deserve the kingdom of heaven.

I deserve this because look at what I've done.

Haven't I done these things for you?

And Jesus makes this clear to us in verse 21.

He says who is the one who will enter the kingdom of heaven?

So obviously the people who are entering the kingdom of heaven are not the people that he's describing.

And so what is the difference?

He says the one who will enter the kingdom of heaven is the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

And we can read that and think well, isn't the will of the Father for me to have good theology?

Isn't it to serve Jesus and to bear fruit?

What are they doing?

That's not the will of the Father.

We might want to know the same thing.

What is God's will for us?

What does he want?

And thankfully, jesus answers this for us in John 6 when he says this is the will of my Father.

Jesus says plainly to us this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life.

And I will raise Him up on the last day.

Jesus says the key to entering the kingdom of heaven is not all of these things that you are going to do.

The key to entering the kingdom of heaven is me.

If you look on me and you trust in me.

If you look on me and you trust in me on the last day, you will not hear depart from me.

I never knew you.

You will be raised up to eternal life.

And do you notice how casually Jesus in verses 21,.

It seems casual that Jesus just mentions on the day of judgment, that he's at the center of it all, that we're actually going to be answering to Jesus.

He doesn't say not everyone who says to God, lord, lord.

He says everyone who says to me depart from me, I never knew you.

Jesus is at the center of all of this and he's pushing us in the Sermon on the Mount to consider what is our relationship to Jesus.

Is Jesus Lord, is Jesus King, or are we just using Jesus in order to get what we want?

And so, if you and I, if we are ever to have security in our relationship with God, it must begin and end with Jesus, because apart from Him we have nothing.

Apart from Him we can do nothing.

But if we look to Jesus, if we believe in Him, we are promised in His Word that he will raise us up on the last day and he will take us to be with Him for eternity, and that, if we are connected to Jesus by faith, that the fruit of the Spirit will be born in our lives.

We have that promise from the Word that when we are planted in the soil of the good news of Christ, that the Spirit has promised to grow us, to prepare us for the good works that Christ has given to us, good works which we are to walk into, which we are to labor unto, good works which are a mark of the Spirit's work in our lives.

And so, lastly, the Sermon on the Mount ends with a dose of reality for us, a call for us to examine our lives.

Jesus asks us what are you building your life on?

And again he gives us two options Are you building your life on the rock or on the sand?

And I'm thankful that Brasfield and Gorey gave us a very nice example, a living example for us, as they began to dig up the site where our new building foundation will go.

One of the surprises that we had in planning this was that our you can't tell it from external appearances, but when you dig down a little bit.

We chose a site with really bad soil, and so we have the great privilege of digging out about 12 feet of soil, taking out the bad and putting good soil back in.

But we would be a foolish church to build our house of worship on 12 feet of unsuitable soil.

It might look okay when it's built, but over time we will see that it was foolish for us to do that on 12 feet of unsuitable soil.

It might look okay when it's built, but over time we will see that it was foolish for us to do that.

We need something that is more stable than the soil that we have out there right now, and the comparison that Jesus makes in this section is similar to the previous section.

Just like the two trees look alike, the two houses in this passage look similar.

It's interesting when you read.

The words are almost identical in how he describes the wise man and the foolish man.

The wise man builds his house on the rock.

The rains fall, the flood comes, the winds blow, and it did not fall.

The foolish man builds his house upon the sand.

The rains fall, the floods come, the wind blows and it falls.

The only difference is the foundation and the outcomes.

You could look at these houses and not tell any difference on what foundation they had, and perhaps even more interestingly is they experienced the same storm.

Building the house upon the rock did not exempt the wise builder from suffering in life.

The exact same rain and flood and winds came upon it, same as the foolish builder.

A life built upon the foundation of Jesus does not mean that we are exempt from suffering.

Life built upon the foundation of Jesus does not mean that we are exempt from suffering.

Jesus does not promise us protection from suffering, but only protection in suffering.

Building your house on the rock is not a shield against suffering, but rather it's a promise of support under suffering.

One commentator said this Jesus does not say that a house built on his words will magically glow in the dark or miraculously expand into a mansion or in some other way become more impressive.

The only impressive fact about a house on the rock is that it will be standing when the storm is over.

There is a way that we can read this passage, and the takeaway for us is well, we need to become better home builders.

The call in this passage is not for you to improve your home building skills, but rather to connect the home of your life to something that is much, much stronger than you are.

It is not a call for you to look inward, but rather for you to look outside of yourself, something external to you, for security, and this is what we all need in a world that is insecure, in lives that feel like we are in shifting Sam.

We need something that won't move when it feels like our faith is stumbling.

We need something that will not crack when it feels like we are falling apart.

We need something that will not break when it feels like the suffering of this world is going to break us.

We need something that will not slip when it feels like our feet are slipping.

And if we only look to our own obedience, if we are only looking to our own gifts, to our own zeal, to our own works for this security, we will never find the security we long for.

But when we look to Christ, when we believe upon Him, when we look to His obedience in our place, when we believe that His works are credited to us that it's not our love for God that motivates our obedience, but rather His love to us, because it is like we will sing in a moment.

It is His oath, it's His covenant and His love that supports us in the whelming flood.

It's not our oath to God, it's not our covenant to God, not our blood shed, it is His given for us.

The hymn continues when all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay On Christ, the solid rock I stand.

All other ground is sinking sand and there's good news that anyone and everyone can be connected to this security.

Everyone can find the security that they long for in the rock of Christ.

This is the will of the Father to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

Let's pray Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

Let's pray, lord, as we look at this passage, it's disturbing in so many ways, unsettling for us.

We pray that, by your mercy to us, that you would allow us to feel the comfort and love and security that Christ offers to us, that we would look on Christ, believe on Him and that, lord, that you would raise us up on the last day and take us to be with you for eternity.

Lord, thank you for this word that You've given to us.

Lord, help us to believe it by faith.

And, lord, thank you that you are with us and you promise to never leave us or forsake your children.

And Lord, thank you that you are with us and you promise to never leave us or forsake your children, and we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.