The Narrow Gate and the Wide Road

Uh we're in a series called the Sermon on the Mount.

I think my count is accurate.

I think it's been 10 messages in the series so far.

This will be the 11th, which makes sense.

It's a three chapters.

It's Matthew 5 through 7.

So if you have your Bible, you can turn there.

Actually, Matthew 7 is where we're going to be now.

We have a few weeks left.

We're kind of coming down the home stretch, but we're not done yet.

I want to take a moment before I get into today's reading, and I want to backtrack a little bit.

And what I try to do with these messages is do the best I can to really try to understand what point is being made, what's being communicated by the biblical authors.

I'm going to say something that at first might feel a little weird to hear, but it's not wrong to think.

Okay, like the Bible is a piece of literature, or it's actually a library of several pieces of literature.

And when I say that, sometimes it freaks people out because, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, man, it's God's word.

And it's like, yeah, absolutely.

Both are true.

It is God's word.

It's God speaking through human beings, but you have authors that follow different literary styles.

It's written over like 1500 years of different authors.

And so they they write in different ways.

And so for us to make sure that we're not just like pulling or isolating a verse, but we're really getting the spirit of what they meant.

Of course, we can't interview Matthew and ask him, you know, to give more commentary on what he said, but the more that we can understand those literary styles, the more that we really make sure that we're catching the weight of what's being said and where he's putting the weight in the scriptures.

And so that's what we've been doing with the Sermon on the Mount.

We're going to kind of do that again today.

So let me give you a couple things.

We're because we're near the end, we're coming to toward the summation.

Uh, we're looking kind of at some of the literary elements of kind of the bookends or the front, like the starting point and the finish line, and looking at those two areas because there's a huge point being made.

All right, so let's let's do this.

Let's back up just a hair.

Matthew chapter 4, verse 23.

Matthew 4:23

So this is right before the Sermon on the Mount.

Um it says Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, verse 23, teaching in the synagogue and announcing, look at this, this is what he was talking about.

Everywhere he went, through the whole region, he was talking about and announcing the good news about the kingdom.

Okay, in the gospels, you're gonna see a lot about the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, depending on which author that is.

In the month of October, just to give you a little uh forecast, in October, I'm gonna take four weeks and we're gonna talk exclusively about the kingdom of God uh through both Jesus and then in the writings beyond the gospels.

So that's what we're gonna do for four weeks.

I'm I'm pumped to share it with you.

Um, but this is what Jesus is doing.

So the reason I bring this up today is because this is what Matthew says right before Jesus starts teaching the Sermon on the Mount.

And the reason that's uh important and that that's noteworthy is that what he's showing you is, okay, with our question of what is the kingdom of God and who is it for, and then also like what are the what's the culture of the kingdom of God?

What are the values?

How how does the kingdom of God operate?

Okay, that's what the Sermon on the Mount is designed to deliver to us how citizens in the kingdom of God are spar are supposed to think.

Okay, after the Beatitudes, when you first start reading the Sermon on the Mount, you have the Beatitudes, which are blessed are the, blessed are the, blessed are the.

And of course, we looked at that week one, how Jesus takes um the Beatitudes, like blessing, their idea of blessing, and turns it upside down.

He flips it.

So he's like, Blessed are you when you mourn.

Blessed are you when you pour in spirit, blessed are you when you hunger and thirst for righteousness.

In other words, you want to see justice happen, and it's not, it's normally frustrating, aggravating, uh, it's it's upsetting.

He goes, but you're actually blessed at the same time.

So he does that.

And then he comes to verse 17.

Okay, so Matthew 5, 17, he says, Don't misunderstand why I have come.

I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets.

No, I came to accomplish their purpose or to fulfill, right?

And so he's giving them a warning.

He's basically saying, look, everything I'm about to say is going to feel disrespectful.

It's going to feel, for some of you, when you hear it, it's going to be so different from what you've thought and what you've been taught that you're going to think I'm abolishing the Old Testament or that I'm abolishing the law and the prophets.

He's like, but I'm not.

Even though these things might be counterintuitive, I'm not coming up with something new and throwing out the old thing.

What I'm doing is showing you how God always intended for the law and the prophets to be interpreted here and lived out in practice.

So he's like, it's going to feel new to you.

It's not new.

It's new to you, but it's not new.

It's what God's intention was in the beginning.

And then he teaches a whole bunch of counterintuitive stuff.

And then now we get to the end.

Okay, we're in Matthew 7, 12, which, by the way, just for fun, just to let you know this, the the hey, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

That's 17 verses in.

And 17 verses before the end, okay, so the 17 verses before the end is Matthew 7, 12.

So again, it's lit, it's put in there in a literary sense to complete.

What do you mean, Jesus?

You came to fulfill the law.

Get specific, so he does for those three chapters, and then at the end he says in Matthew 12, do to others what you would like them to do to you.

This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.

This is what it means to fulfill.

Do to others what you would have them do to you.

Um, this is the golden rule, right?

We've we've talked about it before.

One of the interesting things about the golden rule is that this isn't, this wasn't originated from Jesus.

Like most of us, we would um we this we we we heard it in Sunday school, or you heard it maybe wherever, right?

Matthew 7, 12, the golden rule.

Um, but the idea of doing to others what you would have them do unto you was is not unique even to Christianity.

Like most world religions have some version of that statement, uh, because regardless of what you believe about Jesus or what you believe about God or whatever, it's embedded in the human understanding.

It's frankly just logical that that's how this whole thing works with all these eight billion people.

The only way that this thing's gonna work is that we treat others the way that we'd like to be treated.

What's interesting is that in Jewish culture that there was a similar phrase, but it was it was posed slightly different.

It was actually taken from the a negative.

So it was saying essentially, don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you.

So whatever's evil, don't do evil to people, and people won't do evil to you.

That was that was how they phrased it.

And so people were very familiar with that.

So to the listener, to Matthew's listener, when they hear Jesus say, do to others what you would have them do to you, he brings now into proactive.

And and it seems like just a little turn of the phrase, but it's really not.

It's actually opening up a whole new set of possibilities and questions that we need to ask because what he's saying is it's not enough to just not do evil to people.

We need to think about what we are gonna do.

The first thought is don't hurt people, but the second thought is what am I going to do for hurting people?

Think about the Good Samaritan, right?

When Jesus talks about that and he's talking about, you know, a guy was beaten up and he's wounded and he's hurting, and and two people, actually like pious, holy people, uh, saw him.

And what did they do?

They walked on the other side.

Essentially, they thought the law was just don't hurt somebody.

They're like, you know, it's it's a shame somebody broke the law.

And so they walked past him and they took solace and confidence in the fact that they didn't beat that guy up.

And then the good Samaritan, of course, Jesus is telling a super provocative story because this is the person they would have wanted to be the villain, and he makes the hero, and it says the good Samaritan walked and said, I didn't beat the guy up, but I'm not gonna just not do to people what I don't want people to do to me.

I'm gonna do to others.

What would I want if I was laying in a ditch, beat up?

Would I want people walking by going, you know, it's a shame somebody did that?

Or would I want somebody to actually go ahead and be interrupted and to help me, even if I wasn't like technically in their tribe or their friend, I would help that person.

So Jesus is adding dimension when he says this.

Um okay, let's keep reading.

So Matthew 7, 13.

I'm reading in the NLT here.

Some of you read in different translations, it'll read a little differently.

It says, You can enter God's kingdom, God's kingdom, only through the narrow gate.

The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for many who choose that way.

But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.

Okay, what's going on here?

Um depending on your translation, I read in the NLT it says the highway to hell is broad, and it says the gateway to life is narrow.

Uh, some of you in if you have the NIV, it says that the uh the the road to destruction, it says, and then the gateway to life.

So what what are the words and what's happening?

When we read it on the surface, it uh if you were to just pull this out, um this text and just read it, it would sound like a life after death type passage, but it's not a life after death passage, it's a life before death passage.

It's about a life here and now.

Um, and again, especially when we look at it in its context, Jesus has been talking, he, in fact, he literally just said in Matthew 7 12 about the whole point of the law and the prophets is how we treat one another, how our connection vertically to God shows up horizontally in our relationships.

And so now what he's doing is he's talking about uh a narrow road that leads to life.

The word he uses for life there is interesting.

He uses the word zoe, which means a qualitative life, versus the word bios, where we would get like biology, which would talk about a quantitative life.

How long do you live?

And he's like, No, the the volume or the size or the magnitude of your life.

He's talking about a life-giving life, right?

Like you have a friend who's a life-giving friend, and you're like, man, when I'm around you, you just bring you just bring life.

Okay, you're not saying that they're making people.

What you're saying is that they are bringing fullness, okay?

They're bringing joy, they're making the world a better place, they're making your life better.

You bring life, you're bringing Zoe.

And then the word that he uses for um that we would read hell in the NLT, that you'd see destruction, it's it's really a better translation is is destruction.

It it's the word um apoleia, apopleia in the Greek, which simply means again, bad destruction.

And so when you think of this, again, in its literary positioning, that it's near the summation of the Sermon on the Mount, what is Jesus saying here?

What he's saying is everything I just told you about the kingdom of God that's tremendously counterintuitive, you're not going to get there on accident.

You're gonna get there by aiming there.

So when he says it's a narrow gate, in other words, you gotta be looking for it, you gotta be trying for it.

You this way of thinking, like love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, that's not instinctive.

You don't just do that.

That doesn't just happen.

The thing that he talks about when he talks about worry, and he's like, hey, um, don't store up your treasures here on earth where moth and rust can destroy and thieves can break in and steal.

He said, if you're going to live a life free of worry, you have to store up your treasures in heaven.

Because moth and rust and economy and thieves and liars and better business people than you could come in and steal your business.

They can take what you worked hard to earn.

But it so if you want to live free of worry, it's not necessarily make your business better, it's actually reposition the treasure of your heart, what you value, in something no one can take away.

Because think about this.

If you put your confidence in something or someone, you will worry.

You know, this, let's let's take marriage, for example.

Let's say you really desire to find your person and to commit to that person, right?

And you're single and you're not getting any younger, and you're trying to find, and you look around, and all your friends are finding people.

They keep finding their people and they look so happy, and you just want, it's like I don't I don't want them to not find somebody, but I want to find somebody.

And I'm worried, I'm stressed, I'm worried that I'm not gonna be able to find anybody I'm gonna be alone forever.

So you're worried, and then you find somebody and you get married, and when you get married, it's a whole new set of worries.

Worried they're gonna break your heart, you're worried that they could die in an accident, worried that somebody could take them out of your life, or that they could walk out of your life, or they could break your heart.

So I was worried before because I didn't have someone, and now I have someone, and I'm worried I'm gonna lose them.

Some of you started businesses, and when you started the business, you were worried.

You were worried it wasn't gonna be financially sustainable, and you were worried it wasn't gonna be successful, and so you were worried, and and because of that worry you worked hard, and you were worried you were never gonna have what you could see in your mind's eye, then you got it, and you were worried you were gonna lose it.

I'm worried somebody's gonna take it.

I'm worried we're not gonna be able to stay on top.

So, what Jesus is saying is, look, okay, that is normal.

And and when you do that and you put your confidence in someone or something other than God, what happens is you live in worry, and when you live in worry, your eye and your heart get bad, and you start seeing everybody as a competitor, and you don't trust anybody, and you start isolating yourself and pushing people away because everybody's a threat, and every headline is just one more reminder of how evil people are.

So you start to get this bad eye, he says, that creates darkness in your entire being.

That's normal.

That's normal.

That's where if you just let life happen, that's where it will end up taking you.

It takes a tremendous amount of consistent intentionality to store up your treasure in heaven.

You don't store up your treasure in heaven once you're uh, you know, in the middle of losing everything.

You store up your treasure in heaven at the beginning of the business, at the beginning of the marriage, in the middle, and at the end.

And what happens is over time is I aim and I keep aiming at everything Jesus talks about with the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.

Ultimately, that becomes who I am.

And he's like, you know, unfortunately, it's pretty rare.

Most people they let life, they let their fears and their worries control them completely.

Oh, I saw I read a thing recently of a lady who she was talking about her daughter, young girl, young daughter, comes home from school, super upset.

She's weeping, crying.

What happened?

Well, somebody on the in the playground said she was dumb, called her dumb, and she was you know upset.

And so they start talking about it, and and she said, Here's how I handled it.

She said, I didn't like get emotional with her, like I didn't go, oh, how dare they?

Where do they live?

You know, I didn't go you know come in hot at the school, I didn't go challenge her mom to a fight, I didn't go do all this, all right.

And she said, you know, I did.

She said, I said, okay.

She goes, I kept my emotions down.

I said, What happened?

Tell me the whole story.

So she's telling her the story.

Oh, this thing happened on the playground, whatever.

She goes, Okay, and then and then she said she called you dumb.

She's like, Yeah.

She said, What do you think she meant by that?

Like, because dumb means that you're not smart.

Like, do you think she was saying you weren't smart?

Or based on all the circumstances, it seemed like she might have meant something else.

She's like, Yeah, actually, no, I don't think she was saying I wasn't smart.

I think she was just trying to be mean.

Okay, cool.

So we know she was trying to be mean, which means that we're not gonna let dumb stick to us because I had nothing to do with dumb, and even if she did mean that, she doesn't, she's not the one that gets to decide.

But whatever.

She wasn't even trying to actually say something about your intelligence, she was upset.

Now let's think what could she have been upset about?

Was it hot out?

Yeah, it was actually kind of hot.

That's cool.

Was it before or after lunch?

Oh, actually, we do recess before.

Oh, so she was hot and hungry, okay?

So guess what?

Not only did it not have anything to do with you being dumb, it didn't have anything to do with you.

So now, instead of going eye for eye, tooth for tooth, she said by the end of the conversation, her daughter's like, you know, I think I'm gonna go give her a hug tomorrow.

You know, I think we probably need to talk.

She's going through some stuff, okay.

What happens?

You messed around and loved your enemy, is what you ended up doing, instead of escalating.

Look, you don't just get there rolling out of bed.

You gotta aim at this stuff.

And you gotta really think it out, and you gotta pray it out, and you you gotta do it day in and day out, and eventually you'll find this very narrow gate that very few find.

Most people get baited into something and it escalates.

That's how it goes.

Um let's keep reading.

It says in verse 15.

It says, beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep, but they're really vicious wolves.

You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.

Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?

A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit.

A good tree can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't produce good fruit.

So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire.

Verse 20.

And here's the summary of what he's saying.

Yes, you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

I'm gonna give you a real quick academic term.

Like if we were like uh, you know, studying the Bible in college or something like that, we would be introduced to this.

I think I've mentioned this before, but it's worth coming back to.

Is uh the first word is the word uh uh orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy, you've probably heard that before, it simply means correct or right thinking.

Or right.

Even more precise of a definition would be right opinion.

So you think about like orthopedic surgery is it's making right something that's wrong.

Okay, I broke my leg and we're gonna straighten it back out, or tore this thing and we're gonna do uh you know, fix it.

So orthodoxy is right opinion, right thinking.

The next word would be orthopraxy.

Okay, orthopraxy, which you guessed it, it means right practice or right behavior.

Right?

Correct application.

And so right thinking, right behavior.

Jesus talks here about, he starts opens up a conversation about false teachers or false prophets.

And notice the proximity between this idea of false prophets and the narrow gate and the broad road.

So what he's saying is he's doing it in relationship to all of our journey, and he's going in the kingdom of God as defined in the ethos and the culture and the behaviors and the mindset of the Sermon on the Mount, everything Jesus taught, it's gonna be tough to aim there.

After that, so what he's saying is hey, make sure you beware, be careful, be highly intentional about who you listen to and who you allow to influence you, because it's gonna be really hard to go to the narrow gate.

In fact, at times you're gonna feel like the only one.

At times you're gonna feel like the only one.

You might be attacked, ostracized, it might feel quite lonely.

And he says, so the the road to destruction of doing the opposite of everything I just talked about, he said, that's gonna be, that's really gonna be kind of what natural will be natural for you to do.

And so he says, watch out for false prophets.

And he says, those false prophets are essentially goes, they show up, their their motive is selfish, they look like harmless sheep, but they're actually vicious wolves.

And he says, and how can I identify them?

He says, you can identify them by what they do, by their practice, which is quite interesting, because most of us would say, okay, if if we weren't talking about this and we weren't reading this text, we would go, how would you identify a false prophet or a false teacher or a false leader?

We would say, Well, they're speaking lies.

And of course, if someone's speaking lies, yeah, that is that is a false prophet.

That is somebody who's saying something that's heretical or they're saying something that's just flat out wrong.

But he said, It's not enough because there are people that will understand that the sound bites of the truth will strike a chord in you and they'll use it to manipulate you.

Actually, their whole motive the whole time is self-serving, self-seeking.

Jesus talks about this in other places where he talks about how the thieves jump over the wall, spook the sheep, and drive the sheep, and he said, But my sheep know my voice.

I don't have to drive them with fear.

He said, I call out and they follow me because they they know my voice.

So what he's doing is he's saying somebody might actually be saying the right thing.

They might actually be speaking truth, and that's the hook.

But they don't actually care about the truth, and they don't care about embodying and living the truth.

They just trying to get you all to agree.

I want I'm trying to get a group of people to follow me for my purposes, what I can get out of it.

I I have a vested interest in getting everybody aligned around this thing, but but their whole point is the opposite of what Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount, where he says, Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are those who work for peace.

By the way, one of the fruit of the spirit, love, joy.

So he says, people that get in the middle and they start driving wedges in people.

In fact, if you go to Galatians 5, and I got too many verses to read today, but so I'm not gonna go there, but go on your own.

Galatians 5.

Before he talks about the fruit of the spirit, he mentions a bunch of sins, like some stuff like orgies and witchcraft and all this stuff, we're like, yeah, that's bad.

And then he goes into people who create division.

And he puts it in the same doggone list.

So when he's talking about identifying a false prophet, it's not just gonna be in their content, it is gonna be in their character and how they embody actually being like Christ.

Um, all right, I'm gonna keep I got one for you.

This is this is so good.

This is Matthew 21.

So same book, chapter 21, verse 33, or uh 23.

It says, Jesus returned to the temple.

By the way, this is right after the triumphal entry, shortly before he goes to the cross.

He's coming up on the cross here.

It says, Jesus returned to the temple and began teaching, and the leading priests and elders, okay, so these this would have been the religious hierarchy, they demanded, by what authority are you doing these things?

Who gave you the right?

Verse 24, Jesus said, I'll tell you by what authority I do these things if you answer one question.

Did John's authority to baptize come from heaven or was it merely human?

They talked it over among themselves.

If we say it's from heaven, then he's gonna ask us why we didn't believe in John and we'll lose.

In verse 26, he said, But if we say it's merely human, we'll get mobbed.

The people are gonna eat us alive because the people actually believe John was a prophet.

Verse 27.

So they finally replied, We don't know.

And Jesus responded, Well, then I won't tell you by what authority I do these things.

Which is, I mean, that was pretty smooth, right?

I mean, that was pretty dope move on Jesus' part, but I I want to say this look look look here at the motive of these people who were probably the most learned and probably had the best orthodoxy.

Was their motive and their attention?

It wasn't about I want to find truth and lead people into truth.

It's like if I answer this wrong, I won't be able to manipulate people anymore.

And so so now Jesus keeps going.

Verse 28.

He said, But what do you think about this?

A man with two sons told the older boy, son, go out and work every day in the vineyard.

And the son answered, No, I won't go.

But later he changed his mind and he went anyway.

When the father told the other son, You go, he said, Yes, sir, absolutely, I will.

But he didn't go.

So which of the two boys obeyed his father?

And they replied, The first.

In other words, there was one son who said the wrong thing but did the right thing.

And then there was another son who said the right thing but did the wrong thing.

Which one of them obeyed the father?

And they said, Well, the one who said the wrong thing but did the right thing.

And Jesus then he explained the meaning.

He said, I tell you the truth, corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you do.

Oh my God.

I don't even need to say how offensive that is to these people, right?

They're sitting there, I mean, they've got a PhD in theology.

They are the smartest Torah people.

And for Jesus to say, hey, when you go in the kingdom and there's a big huge line, you're gonna it's gonna look like that Chick-fil-A line that wraps around the thing like three times.

You're gonna be in the back of that line, and you're gonna look up at the front of that line, and it's gonna be prostitutes and not just tax collectors, corrupt ones.

Because they said the wrong thing, but they end up doing the right thing, and y'all had the right answer, but the wrong behavior.

He said, for John the Baptist came and showed you the right way to live, but you didn't believe him.

Well, tax collectors and prostitutes did, and when you saw this happening, you refused to believe him and repent of your sins.

Just to drive this home a little bit further, two chapters later, Matthew 23, 1 through 4, okay, it says Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples.

So imagine this.

He's speaking to a crowd of people, sincere people who are following him, and his disciples who are doing life on life with him.

And it said, and he says this, verse 2 the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses.

So look at this.

Practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don't follow their example.

Listen to what they say because they're interpreting the law of Moses.

But when you look at their life, don't live like they're living.

He said, for they don't practice what they teach.

They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

Look at what offended Jesus.

Look at what bothered Jesus.

It wasn't that they were interpreting incorrectly, it was that they were heaping the weight on people without a heart to help them in their weakness.

For six chapters in the book of John, Jesus calls himself water.

This is orthodoxy, this is truth.

And Jesus uses uh an illustration of water to illustrate himself.

The woman at the well, he goes, he's like, I know you've got this inner drive, there's something off inside of you, and that's why you keep going relationship to relationship.

You're tremendously insecure, you're living in anxiety, and you can't figure out what you can't get quenched.

And he says, if you drink what I'm about to give you, you'll never be thirsty again.

If you go to the text, she goes to orthodoxy.

She said, Well, your people worship, you know, in Jerusalem, and my people worship in the mountains, and she starts getting into orthodoxy, and he says, It doesn't matter.

He said, That doesn't that doesn't even matter.

He said, The day is coming and is now here, where those who worship him will worship in spirit and in truth.

In other words, if we go to Jerusalem and you go to the mountain, we're both gonna miss it.

So so he goes beyond that, and eventually he sees her for who she is, and and and somehow she she goes back and she's like, I met somebody who who told me everything I ever did.

But he didn't just call me out, he saw me.

You keep going, you get later, Jesus shows up at the festival of shelters, the feast of tabernacles.

He shows up and he says, Guys, I'm like water.

I'm like the living water.

And he says, if you drink what I give you, he said springs and of living water will go up within you, and now your whole motivation won't be about worry, it won't be about fear, it won't even be about winning.

It will come from a quenching of your thirst, it'll come from hydration into what I've called you to do.

It's rivers of living water.

So he refers to himself as water.

We're gonna call water Jesus.

Our job, right?

God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

We are the body of Jesus.

And so what we're trying to do with the world around us is to bring water.

And I think for many people, they know they need it.

You ever go mow the lawn, you go, it's a hot day, it's soupy outside, you go, you do something outside, you come in, like you're looking for it.

You know you need it.

You haven't had water, you're dehydrating, somebody offers you this, you're like, oh, thank you.

This is how Jesus describes himself.

I think often our issue is not orthodoxy, it's orthopraxy because instead of bringing this, we bring this.

It's like, what is that?

Take the safety off.

That's the same water as in here, came from the same source.

Same orthodoxy.

But instead of offering, let your light so shine before men that you would they would see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

I we could turn this into a baptism service right now.

I I I kid you not, I thought about when I was considering this, I thought about just walking up and down the aisles.

She's leaving, she's like, I'm out of here, dude.

She said, I work too hard on this outfit.

All right.

I thought about walking up and down the aisles and just lighting y'all up.

Well, how do you like it?

Right?

I thought about doing that.

But I changed my mind.

And I'll tell you why.

The reason I changed my mind, frankly, Matthew 7, 12, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And to be totally honest, I wouldn't want to show up at church and I came here today, and I didn't ask for you to light me up, but you come up and start spraying me, dude.

I would be upset.

I mean, I would be classy about it, but I get in my car and I talk about you, and I probably wouldn't come back.

That's that's true.

You didn't come today, you trusted me today.

You trusted me today, and nobody came here to have me light you up with this thing.

But I gotta be honest, man, a lot of times people weaponize water.

We think they're rejecting Jesus.

I'm gonna challenge your orthodoxy for a second.

I'm gonna challenge some commonly held things I hear.

I hear people say, Yeah, the world hates Jesus.

I don't know.

I'm I don't I'm not sure.

Let's at least consider the alternative because Jesus said in his kingdom, apparently there's people that thought they were totally rejected, corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes that he he gave up, he let up, he gave them a fast pass, apparently, brought them to the front of the line.

I think probably more often than people just hating Jesus is they hate when people pray in Jesus' name and then act like Pharisees.

I think, I mean, we go, Jesus is being pushed out of everything.

No, you are.

Or the Jesus you presented is getting pushed out of everything.

I'm not totally sure that that's true.

Let's just, before we just too quickly go, it might be that we're just lighting people up like this instead of holding out a cup of cold water in Jesus' name, letting our light shine, doing these, you know.

I I I've been in some places, I'm just gonna tell you, and I'm not trying to be holier than thou.

I'm just using one little case study.

I I I've gone to some places that technically prayer has been forced out of, that you're not allowed to, and and so a lot of times we go, well, it's forced out of you know the schools or it's forced out of the good these government buildings or it's forced out of these places.

And a lot of times we're like, yes, see, they're rejecting Jesus, but often they're not rejecting the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus.

They're not they're not rejecting the kingdom of heaven, Jesus.

I've been in some of those places when we were in there, everybody kept the game face on, and then I've had people follow me out to my car and ask me to pray for them.

Because they were thirsty, and they sensed in some way, even though I didn't even break down chapter and verse, there was something there that they didn't feel like I was like ready to light them up.

And I think a lot, I think our world knows it's thirsty, and I think what Jesus is trying to teach us in the on the Sermon on the Mount is that to fulfill the law and the prophets is actually to look deeper and to not just don't do what you don't want people not to do to you, but to do to be proactive.

What do I put in the world?

What do I put in my community?

What do I put in my family?

What do I put on my job site?

What do I put in my relationship?

What do I put out there that ultimately is me not weaponizing, but ultimately letting my light shine?

And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I think people know they're thirsty.

I think they know they're anxious.

You don't have to tell them they're having a hard time sleeping at night.

You don't have to tell them that they're distressed.

They're full of worry and anxiety.

And so they're gonna look for people who have brought that to the Lord and are walking with clear eyes and clear hearts.

And so Jesus says, Hey, look, be careful, right?

Because it's a narrow gate.

You're gonna have to really aim for it.

And he said, by the way, you're gonna have some false prophets or false teachers that will very easily they'll appeal to something in you, likely your fear and worry.

Just like the false shepherds who drove people with fear, scattered sheep, yelled at them because how do you get them to move?

They don't recognize that their voice is a shepherd, but they recognize fear, and so they scatter the sheep.

I believe that God has called us to bring people together.

Here's what I want, I'm gonna ask you to take a moment here.

I'm gonna end with prayer, but I'm gonna ask you to wrestle with this and start wrestling with it now, asking these two questions, and then pray about it after we leave.

The first is in the spirit of uh looking in our own eye before we look at everyone else's, why don't you go to the Lord here and ask, God, is there anywhere in your mind that actually you're you've weaponized Jesus in a way that really it maybe even getting down to your motive, it really gets down to in some way it's self-serving, it's it's exclusive, it's it's driving a wedge.

And maybe in some way, I know this is embarrassing to say, and it's okay because nobody can see in your head but you and God, so you guys have a total safe conversation.

But it could be that you've even gotten to the place where you're kind of just hoping God will zap everybody who's bad with justice, and you'd be glad to see them burn.

You'd be glad to see them get what's coming to them instead of um a desire for grace and for God to quench the thirsting of their soul and ultimately for them to be redeemed.

So evaluate your own heart.

The second would be then to evaluate the voices you're listening to.

So be careful who is leading you and who you're following and who you're filling your head and your ear with.

Are they inflaming your fear?

Are they inflaming your anxiety?

Are they driving a further wedge?

Are they leading you in a path ultimately what Jesus will call that would be destruction?

Or are they leading to zoe life, a more full life, a higher qualitative life?

So evaluate your heart.

Where are you at now?

How am I gonna keep this in front of me and stay calibrated?

And then evaluate the voices and the people, the teachers, and the people you're listening to.

Let's pray.