It is because we are a people of such high intelligence, and perhaps the threat of product liability litigation, that the following warning labels were recently found on consumer products?
On a Duraflame fireplace log: "Caution - Risk of Fire."
On a children’s Batman costume: "Warning: Cape does not enable user to fly.
On a bottle of hair coloring: "Do not use as an ice cream topping."
On a cardboard sun shield for a car: "Do not drive with sun shield in place."
And, for the first time parent, this label was found on a portable stroller: "Caution:
Remove infant before folding for storage."1
I, for one, am for a new product safety law, one that puts a warning on every bottle of wine, every beer can, and all distilled spirits. It will read (in large print to help the bleary eyed!): “Excessive consumption may lead to bad Karaoke performances, the telling of truly tasteless jokes, bad pick-up lines, the revelation of secret prejudices, roadside encounters with the law, and bad mug shots.” Just ask Mel Gibson, a fellow Christian. Using your gifts to make great movies about the suffering of the Christ is no guarantee of exemplary behavior, is it? And if you see this as a shot at Mr. Gibson, you misread me. His is just the most recent and famous example of why we must not just admire Jesus but actually learn to do what he says, lest we embarrass him now and he embarrass us later.
As Christians, the humiliation of having our sins displayed in public is a severe form of God’s mercy. If we will not listen in private, then God may use stronger means to jar us awake: shame, ridicule, jail time, legal issues, loss of status, whatever it takes to get our attention and set us back on the narrow and hard way that leads to life.
God is not nearly as interested in our reputations and image management as we are. Holiness is the only way to happiness. Remember that God has two hands, one labeled gospel, the other labeled law, and if you don’t deal with the open, nail-scarred hand of the first, you may soon deal with the closed fist of the second. One is an invitation, the other a summons.
I am considering writing to publishers and asking that large, fluorescent colored stickers be placed on the cover of all Bibles. Buyers would be required to read the sticker aloud to a cashier before the purchase. It will read, “Warning! Reading this book with no intention of obeying it is hazardous to eternal life.” The medieval spiritual writer Thomas a Kempis put the same warning in the form of a prayer: “Let not thy Word, O Lord, become a judgement upon us, that we hear it and do it not, that we believe it and obey it not.”2 Oswald Chambers took the insight and formulated it as a challenge when he wrote, “Never try to explain God until you have obeyed Him. The only bit of God we understand is the bit we have obeyed.”3 Biblical knowledge without practical obedience is a form of illusion, as Jesus’ brother James reminds us, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”4
Obedience is therefore an epistemological issue, which is a fancy philosophical way of saying that knowing truth is reserved for those who are willing to do what Jesus says. Two verses from John 7 make this clear, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me; if any man’s will is to do his will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.”5 Notice that the knowing comes after the willing! It is not so much in reading the Bible alone but in risking to obey it that we find the truth of it. It is not we who say to God, “First show me the truth, and then I will obey it, if I agree ,” but God who says to us, “Obey it, and then I will show you the truth of it because I am faithful and reward those who have faith.” I was called up short by the words of Allen Emery:
“The utter obedience required in the military is accepted as necessary, even
when one's life may be the price of that obedience. Why does the Christian fail
to practice the same obedience in spiritual matters?”6
TURNING TO THE TEXT
There are five great blocks of teaching in Matthew’s Gospel.7 The first is on ethics, the second on missions and miracles, the third on kingdom parables, the fourth on church discipline, and the last on the end of the world. Moses had five books to his credit (the first five books of the Bible), and, as the new teacher, Jesus has five great discourses, the first of which is the Sermon on the Mount.8 Each ends with a strong warning. One of Matthew’s favorite moves is to lay out the teaching of Jesus on a topic and then take us to a scene of the Last Judgment to show why it matters. Heaven and hell, final blessing and final judgment are his favorite motivating themes. Matthew is clear: how we respond to Jesus and his teaching determines life now and destiny later. It’s more than just good advice.
If you remember, the Sermon on the Mount opens with a series of kingdom blessings called Beatitudes; it ends in the text before us this morning with a parallel series of warnings. The bookends of the Sermon on the Mount are blessing and cursing. In terms of this life we are told to enter by the narrow gate in verse 13 and to beware of false prophets who come dressed to kill as wolves in sheep’s clothing in verse 15.9 Not only is the gate narrow and the way hard, the entire path to life is lined with spiritual liars with impressive resumes. If you picture yourself climbing a narrow and steep path with people shouting at every turn to buy vacation tickets to Vegas, you will be close to the truth. Because they know precisely what appeals to wayfaring pilgrims, they lure many away. They know the struggles because they were once on the path themselves. John Bunyan’s allegory of the path to the heavenly city, Pilgrim’s Progress, is the classic treatment of this theme.
Beginning well enough at the narrow gate is no guarantee of a arrival at the heavenly kingdom. There will always be those beckoning you to leave the narrow for the broad way. They will tell you it is enough to have correct doctrine and ecstatic religious experiences; costly obedience is an optional extra for only the most advanced saints. They are lying, even if they do miracles and write theology books on Christ. Their messages are appealing and well-packaged! Health and wealth gospel, the gospel as good feelings and pop-psychology, six of the ten commandments (you choose which), Jesus and the American dream, discount discipleship, faith as a merely private thing, Satan as a medieval myth, the concept of sin as out of date, the poor as someone else’s responsibility, the church as the Christian educator of your children, that there is a carbon between the church membership book and the book of life, the preacher as the one you pay to be Christian while you watch from a safe distance: you know the lies that are most attractive in our day. Many of them you have believed. False prophets will always have an audience precisely because they appeal to the worst in us all.
It is then, after warnings about the narrow gate and the false prophets in verses 13 through 20, that Matthew transports us from the present to the end of time where we hear human testimony given and divine verdicts announced. The scene set before us is dizzying and disorienting. Everyone is there, and all angels in attendance. It is the cosmic courtroom.
At the front of the masses line before the bar of heaven is an impressive group with thick resumes in hand. How confident they appear. Further back in the crowds we hear people shouting out, “Hey, see that prophet at the front of the line, he told me what only God could know; he must be tight with Jesus. He hears from God.”
Another shouts out, “And that one just behind him, she cast demons out of me and healed my wife with a prayer. No wonder they are up near the front. I’m sure they’ll be received, and when they enter the gates let’s all clap. These are the cream of the crop.”
All of a sudden there is a hush; the crowd grows still and quiet, kind of like when a bailiff says, “Order in the court. Order in the court. All rise....” The heavenly proceedings begins in verse 21 with an announcement of divine intent, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven.” Mental assent to correct doctrine is not sufficient. It is immediately followed by a clarification that distinguishes between the not everyone and others who will be granted entrance, “Not everyone... but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.” The standards Jesus announced during his lifetime, preserved for us in Matthew, have now been repeated before saints and sinners, before demons and angels. They echo down the halls of heaven. It should surprise no one; it was already written down in the book.
In verses 22 and 23 we are given a preview scene of the final judgment in the form of a case study. The Savior is now the Judge, and the encounter is not an impersonal administrative matter but face-to-face, as indicated by the words of Jesus, “Not everyone who says to me... And on that day many will say to me.... And I will say to them....”
We each get an audience with the resurrected and glorified Jesus; we gaze on him and he on us. It is a conversation, but one in which he has he final say. And if you missed it in the Bible, it’s repeated near the end of the second article of the Apostle’s Creed, “And he shall come again to judge the living and the dead.” I will be judged. You will be judged. All will be judged. The living and the dead means everyone is evaluated. Some will be saved, others condemned. The oft-raised question about unbelievers and those who never heard is here not addressed. This scene is for the church, not for the world as we normally understand it. This is an internal family matter in which sheep and goats from the same flock are separated, wheat and weeds from the same field are assigned to separate bins; one house falls before the great deluge, another in the same village stands.
An appropriate text to place over this scene would be 1 Peter 4:17-18 which tell us where God always starts:
“For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? And, ‘if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?’”
Some supposedly Christian prophets who have a correct confession of Jesus as Lord and great intensity of faith, as demonstrated by the fact that they call him Lord, Lord, and who also have a resume of impressive signs and wonders, are banished. “I never knew you,” says Jesus, “Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” That shock of the verdict leaves those of us with less impressive resumes wondering, But what about me? which is just the point: What about you? How can you avoid an unpleasant surprise at the end of life? Thinking you were on the right way and finding too late you were on the wrong way? Oops!
Matthew’s answer to the question he raises is given in verses 24 through 27 in the story of the two houses, one of which stands and the other of which crumbles, which then leaves us facing a further question: If I was to face the flood of God’s testing today, would my life stand or fall? D. Elton Trueblood wrote, “The chief way you and I are disloyal to Christ is when we make small what he intended to make large.”10
For Jesus, the obedience that is built on a foundation of trust is everything. And if we sever the link between belief and behavior and between faith and the good works that flow from it, then we will be severed, just like these supposed prophets. The admiration of faith is a necessary and repeated beginning; participation in the gifts and powers of the Holy Spirit is an incredible bonus, but what Jesus is after is that we learn to do what he says, and what he expects is not hard to find. The Sermon on the Mount is peppered with commands. Love your neighbor as yourself, turn the other cheek, seek first the kingdom of God, give up judging, first take the log out of our own eye, lay up treasures in heaven, hunger and thirst for righteousness, become pure in heart and a peacemakers, be the salt and light he intended, seek reconciliation, avoid the lustful look, praying and fasting and giving for God alone, forgiving others as we wish to be forgiven, quit serving wealth or the hope of it, give up fruitless anxiety, trust God for your needs, learn wisdom, avoid false prophets and stay on the narrow way. You make your own list from the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of his teaching. Jesus Christ has the power and will change us into that kind of people if we do not resist him. Sanctification, becoming holy as he is holy, follows justification, having him bring us into initially into right relationship with himself. He does something for us and also something in us. We can be changed by love and into love, which is the point of it all. I am not raising the standard, only repeating it. A.W. Tozer wrote: “The Bible recognizes no faith that does not lead to obedience, nor does it recognize any obedience that does not spring from faith. The two are at opposite sides of the same coin.”11
2') vv.21-23 An Obedience Test For Prophets.
The earliest and most basic Christian confession has two words in Greek and three in English, “Jesus is Lord.” Paul says that you cannot make the statement in sincerity without the revelation and help of the Holy Spirit. Lord is the Old Testament word for God,12 and to apply that title to the man Jesus meant that his Jewish followers had come to see in him the revelation of the one God that pushed them in a radical new direction, towards what would finally become the doctrine of the Trinity, that the one God of the Jews is shown in Jesus to be not just a unit but a unity, a mysterious and loving eternal communion of three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To make the claim that Yahweh is Lord and that Jesus is Lord, and ultimately that the Holy Spirit is also Lord is the distinctive Christian confession.13 This is who God is revealed to be, and that truth is entrusted to the church by the Holy Spirit. And if you say it twice as in Lord, Lord and again in Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy, you add a dimension of intensity, even of ecstasy. The truth is confessed, and it is felt; head and heart are together and engaged.
Not a bad beginning, is it? A true confession coupled with deep feeling. Old time religion. But, according to Jesus, good Methodist doctrine and a warm Wesleyan heart are not enough. To head and heart the hands and feet must be added, “Not every one who says to me Lord, Lord... but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.”
To assent and piety must be added obedient action for faith to be completed. If God is going to save all of you, he must have all of you: mind, emotions, and will. The thinking part, the feeling part, and the choosing part. Not a fragmented piece or segmented slice but a whole self surrendered to Christ, brought into alignment, and pointed towards the kingdom of God. A convinced mind, a converted heart, and an engaged will are all necessary. Jesus will take what we give and begin where we allow him to work, but eventually the whole self in all its varied capacities must be brought under yoke of Jesus. Francis Bacon wrote:
“It is not what men eat, but what they digest that makes them strong; not what we gain, but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned; not what we preach or pray, but what we practice and believe that makes us Christians.”14
It was not that these Christian prophets were wrong in what they affirmed and experienced, only wrong in that they did not go far enough. They were false prophets because they propagated the lie that obeying Jesus and becoming an entirely new kind of person was optional. This is why Jesus pronounced them as workers of lawlessness he had never really known. They preferred the gifts to the giver and the busyness of ministry to knowing him and learning to care what he cares about, which is not about display.
I am not ashamed to say that I am working for the renewal of the United Methodist Church on several levels: locally here in Georgetown, nationally with several movements that take Christian doctrine seriously, and globally through the Mission Society. On top of that I want to be numbered among those in mainline denominations who embrace the charismatic dimension of the faith and are open to the intrusions of the Holy Spirit in all the colorful spectrum of spiritual gifts, from the most mundane to the most amazing. I am not ashamed to admit that I have given and received prophecies, that prayer in the Spirit is valuable, that prayer for healing sometimes yields surprising results, that God illumines Scripture through personal revelation, and that the ministry of deliverance is a valuable part of the larger work of loving and wise pastoral care.
With the false prophets who were condemned I can say Lord, Lord and trot out my resume, “Did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” To which the answer is Yes. I live in a world of orthodox Christian faith with a supernatural world view and lively spiritual walk in which I fully expect to see more and more of what I read in the Bible made real in experience. About half my life is a to-do list of duties; the other half consists of divine appointments and utter surprises. If you followed me around for a week you would be amazed at what happens, the best explanation for which is that Jesus is still alive and messin’ with Pastor Phil. I love it. I recommend it. I want more. When I confess the Nicene Creed it is with devotion and a sense of being surrounded by the communion of the saints. And not always, but sometimes when I pray I feel God near enough that it lights me on fire and fills me with holy resolve to offer myself as a living sacrifice. I regularly see things it takes God to explain. Some of them I don’t share in order to keep my job! But that, my friends, is not enough, because the false prophets had all this and were condemned to hell. It’s what the little phrase depart from me means. It is expanded later on in chapter 25 and made explicit, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels....”15 Jesus utterly repudiates these prophets and ignores their resumes! How can this be?
Phil, are you telling us that those who have correct doctrine and have done miracles in Jesus’ name are not guaranteed entry into the kingdom of God? That’s exactly what I’m saying because it is the verdict of Jesus. That the blessing and power of God may come through me to another says nearly nothing about me and everything about the mercy of God for the needy person. God wants to get people help and will use any who are willing to be used. I am, in this case of spiritual gifts, merely a pass through. You may not like it, but God regularly pours the water of life through dirty pipes. If someone sends you money in the mail, you don’t write a thank you note to the postman but to the benefactor.
Don’t make the mistake of confusing spiritual gifts and spiritual fruit. They are related but distinguished. Spirit gifts are the power of Jesus poured through us for the needs of others, whereas the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5 are the character of Christ being formed in us over time for our sanctification. Spiritual gifts come and go in a moment; fruit takes time. Ideally they go together: open to the power, and full of love and wisdom. But it is not always so. Which is why the prophets Jesus rejects did not list love and the other eight virtues on their resumes. How could they since they were full of self-confidence and pride? “Did we not... did we not... did we not?” Instead, the offered theology and miracles.
You see, great anointing of the Holy Spirit and holy character are not necessarily the same thing. The Pentecostals and Charismatics have numerous examples in their history of powerful ministries that utterly collapsed. That John Wesley had solid theology and rich experience and continued faithful to the end of his life is one of the reasons he is still worth listening to. I heard of one Christian leader who refuses to read the books of anyone who is still alive because he is convinced that only those who end well should be listened to!
One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a Christian leader is to have opportunities that go beyond maturity and spiritual anointing that is greater than their character. With success come notoriety, and with notoriety comes fame and money and prestige and the company of important people and more speaking engagements and book offers and then, if you are not careful and accountable, to the false belief you are so special to God that he will overlook certain indulgences and that personal holiness and obedience are no longer important issues. Steeple eagles can crash and burn. I read their stories on the church scandal sheets every week.
I don’t think for a minute that the false prophets Jesus rejects set out to be false. No, they knew the Lord and joined the Holy Spirit in kingdom ministry, just like Judas. But somewhere a lie crept in. “I am above the ordinary Christian; what applies to novices does not apply to us adepts and elites.”16 And with their guard down, a rotten seed took root in the fertile soil of inward pride. Outwardly they succeeded, but inwardly they no longer delighted in obeying Jesus in small things. And because their beliefs did not change and the Spirit’s power did not lift, they thought they were still O.K. Pillars of orthodoxy, anointed servants of God, all the while marching towards the dark side of judgment. In a book on the sayings of the desert monks of the fourth century, Owen Chadwick sounds a note of caution:
“Sometimes we excuse relatively minor flaws in people, especially if they have done something extraordinary for God. But God doesn't just want extraordinary good works from us, but obedience in small things as well. Agatho, a desert monk of fourth-century Egypt put it this way: ‘If an angry man raises the dead, God is still displeased with his anger.’"17
Suppose, for instance, you are given a counterfeit bill in change. Thinking it genuine, you use it to pay for gas. The station owner then uses it to pay an employee, who buys groceries for the family. After several more circulations and innocent transactions it goes to the bank where the cashier says, “This bill is counterfeit.” The fake note did lots of good while in circulation, but when it arrived at the bank, it was exposed and taken out of circulation. A counterfeit Christian may do many good works, but still be rejected at the
gates of judgment.”18 So with the false prophets of whom Jesus spoke so plainly. What counts most is knowing him and obeying him in a way that changes us and roots out of us all compromise with the spirit of lawlessness. We don’t get to set our own standards; he does! And Jesus says that knowing him trumps orthodoxy and miracles, valuable as these are as secondary level supports.
Does that mean that the verdict of I never knew you and Depart from me applies only to a group titled prophets? No. The section dealing with them begins with the words Not every one, while the next section in verses 24 through 27 begins with the words Everyone
then who hears these words of mine. The negative example of the prophets is about them but for all of us. They are an example we are not to follow, lest we meet their end.
1') vv.24-27 Parable Of The Two Houses And The Storm.
Eleven miles off the east coast of Scotland stands Bell Rock Lighthouse. Since 1811 it has endured the North Sea's most violent storms. It rests on less than an acre of solid rock that is covered by seawater twenty hours a day. Robert Stevenson and his band of 65 builders had four hours each day to chink away stone and gouge out a foundation. Because of their work, the 115-foot-tall lighthouse is still in use today.19
If you’ve seen newscasts of the war in Lebanon, you have an image of the geography of northern Israel. Rocky hillsides, while the valleys, where the rivers run, are sandy because of erosion coming down from higher ground. A village builder in Jesus’ day had two choices. They did not excavate foundations. You built a house in the valley on sandy soil or on a rocky hillside.20 One was easier than the other. Hillside builders planned for the worse; valley builders hoped for the best. And if the winter rains come in a rush, a dry creek bed or water quickly becomes a torrent that sweeps all away. Hard rain, strong winds, and flash floods: it blew and beat on both houses. They look alike, but when the storm passes only one remains. Same materials, different foundations. The imagery is not about the troubles of this life, though that might not be a bad secondary application; it is about the final judgment of God pictured as a sudden storm that tests everything all at once.
What survives is founded on hearing and obeying Jesus. To hear and not obey is fatal; like the house on sandy soil it will not pass the flood. Jewish rabbis told similar stories about those who studied and obeyed the Torah. The authority of Jesus and his special sense of place in the outworking of ultimate matters is indicated by his reference in verse 24 to these words of mine in which he places his teaching as the equivalent of and even superior to the Old Testament. The one who tells this story not only claims to know what the final standards are, he also claims to be the one who pronounces the judgment of God, “And I will declare to them....” Hidden here is a glimmer of Jesus’ self-understanding; he knows who he is.21
Jesus is here using analogy or parable. This, he says (the final judgment), is like that
(the builder’s choice). What you choose now matters later. The familiar gives a window into what has not yet happened. “Do you want your life to endure the coming catastrophe? Then you must both hear and put my words into practice. ‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who build his house upon the rock....” To hear and do is a firm foundation; to hear and not do is sandy soil. You decide. Is that rain I smell? Is that thunder I hear? Say Andrew, where is your house built?”
Everyone looked around; Jesus grinned and nodded. Responding to the destructiveness of tornado alley, a developer in Tulsa recently offered an optional safe room in new homes. Reinforced concrete, good for level 5 winds. It worked. Nine of the first ten paid the extra $2,500 for the room, which can also be used as a closet, bathroom, or vault when not needed for safety. The tenth couple, the developer said, were 75 years old and opted for a hot tub instead. Perhaps someone will have a video when the tub goes airborne with its aging cargo! “Look, Maude, the tub’s a-spinnin’!” 22
CONCLUSION
Thomas Linacre was king's physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII of England; a prominent scientist, he was founder of the Royal College of Physicians and friend of the great Renaissance thinkers Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Late in life he took Roman Catholic orders and was given a copy of the Gospels to read for the first time. The Bible, of course, was still the preserve of the clergy and not in the hands of ordinary lay people. It was the fortune of Linacre to live through some of the church's dark hours: the papacy of Alexander VI, the Borgia pope whose bribery, corruption, incest, and murder plumbed new depths in the annals of Christian shame. Reading the four Gospels for himself, Linacre was amazed and troubled. "Either these are not the Gospels," he said, "or we are not Christians."24
Hello? Anyone out there listening? “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them....” I’m not sure about all the contents, but I’m sure I’ve got the sermon labeled correctly: Obedience Really Matters.
1. PreachingToday.com search under Mt. 7:20-8:1.
2. Idem.
3. Idem.
4. James 1:22.
5. vv.16-17.
6. PreachingToday.com search under Mt. 7:20-8:1.
7. Chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, 25-26,
8. 7:13-8:1, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, 26:1.
9. 7:13-20. Go to www.duncanumc.com for a copy of the sermon on this text.
10. PreachingToday.com search under Mt. 7:21-8:1.
11. Idem.
12. 1 Corinthians 12:3.
13. On the textual basis for the Trinity in the New Testament, see Allen Churchill, “The New Testament and the Trinity,” in Andrew Stirling, editor, The Trinity (Nappanee, IND: Evangel Publishing House, 2002), Chapter 2, 31-100.
14. PreachingToday.com search under Mt. 7:21-8:1.
15. v.12.
16. Adapted from a quote by Eugene Peterson, “ The greatest errors in the spiritual life are not committed by the novices but by the adepts” (Leadership, Vol. 4, No. 2).
17. Idem.
18. Michael Green, editor, Illustrations for Biblical Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1990), 419.
19. PreachingToday.com search under Mt. 7:21-8:1.
20. David Dockery & David Garland, Seeking the Kingdom (Wheaton, ILL: Shaw, 1992), 119.
21. For a treatment of direct and indirect claims on Christology, see James R. Edwards, Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), Chapter 5, “Did Jesus Consider Himself God?” 67-97.
22. "Americans Are Facing More Disasters, USA Today (5-23-00).
23. Os Guinness, The Call (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1998), 109-110.