Empty Words
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 6 May 2012
The purpose of The Sermon on The Mount then is identical to the purpose of the law of God in the Old Testament. When God gave the law on Sinai, the law was not given in order to show man how good he must be, the law was given to show man how bad he was.
And Paul summed it up in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Paul says in Galatians 3:24 that "The law was our tutor to bring us to Christ." And that is essentially what is going on in The Sermon on The Mount; Jesus is upholding the law of God.
Now that only two options, you either invent your own religion or you come God's way. You either come on your terms or His terms and that is precisely where the sermon climaxes in Matthew 7:13 -14. There our Lord says, "Enter in at the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be who go in that way; Because narrow is the gate, and hard is the way, which leads unto life, and few there be that find it."
Now after Christ invites us to enter at the narrow gate, the Lord then shows us how difficult that really is. If God paid such a high price that includes sacrificing His own Son then the cost for you is also high and that includes sacrificing yourself. First of all, it is difficult because you must recognize you are not able to save yourself and that means taking away your pride and that's indeed difficult.
It's as the Old Testament says in Deuteronomy 4:29, "you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.” Nobody just stumbles along and falls into the Kingdom of God inadvertently. It's a searching, because it isn't easily made visible. It's difficult because it's the opposite way that everybody else is going. It's difficult also because you have to come stripped of all your self, your sin, your baggage and self-righteousness. You come absolutely alone, and there must be penitence, confession, repentance and brokenness.
And we just learned that there is another reason why it's difficult to enter the narrow way, and that is because of false prophets verse 15. They stand in the way and they chase people onto the broad road. They're the ones trying to divert everybody for Satan's purposes. And there's one other reason why there is only a few that are saved.
Not only are they deceived by the false prophets, but people deceive themselves which prevents them from entering the narrow gate. And the Lord warns us about two categories of self-deception. Number one is by mere verbal profession, and number two is a mere intellectual knowledge.
Let us read Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
Verses 21-23 give us a verbal profession, verse 21, "Not everyone who says to me." verse 22, "Many will say to me." Now these are the people who say that they are Christians. And then in the next paragraph we see the ones who have only an intellectual knowledge, they hear.
Now notice at the end of verse 21 you have a key phrase there, "but he that does the will of my Father, who is in heaven." It is not the ones who only say it and it is not the ones who only hear, Jesus says it is the ones who do the will of the Father come in. In other words the Lord is saying, if you do not live a righteous life it does not matter what you say or what you hear, you are still deceived.
And this is a message that needs to be spoken today because I know that the Church of Jesus Christ is full of people who aren't Christians and don't know it. Jesus is saying that many of those who think they're in aren't in and only a few are. This is the ultimate delusion. And so Jesus says you better check yourself very carefully.
We have many deceived people who are in church, who are on the Jesus bandwagon, who think everything is well and for them judgment is going to be one big surprise. Frankly there's no better way to wake them up than by this particular sermon of our Lord.
Go back to Matthew 7. There's going to come a day when people are going to expect the door to heaven to be open but it's going to slam shut forever in their faces. "I don't know you." What a fearful thing. So many people think they're saved, think they're safe and judgment for them is going to be a shock.
What makes people believe that deception to really think that they're saved? Well let me give you several suggestions. First of all many times it's because they have a false doctrine of assurance. In other words let's assume that when you were led to Christ somebody said to you, now all you have to do to be a Christian is pray this prayer and say this little formula and you are saved. And so you have a false sense of assurance.
When Jesus told in Matthew 13 about the seed of the word falling on four soils, only one out of the four produced grain and was true. Don't think you can certify people's salvation, you only give them a false assurance. Let God give them assurance when they add to their faith virtue, patience, godliness and love, then their election will be sure, then shall they know they've been forgiven of their sin.
Another thing that lulls people into this deception is a failure of self-examination. They get into such a grace concept, that everything is grace and everything is forgiveness that they never really bother to face their sin. They hear somebody say, well you don't have to confess your sin because your sin is already forgiven.
Why does the Lord bring us to the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 over and over again? In order that men may examine himself again and again! 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, "You better examine yourself, whether you be in the faith." You need to look at your sin, you need to look at your motives, why do you do what you do.
Thirdly, another thing that causes people to be under the delusion that they're saved is a fixation on religious activity. In other words they go to church, they hear sermons, they sing songs, they read the Bible, they go to a Bible study, they take a class, and because they're all wrapped up in religious activity they think they are saved. But that maybe a great illusion. There are many people in the church that are not, they are tares among the wheat.
And then fourthly what lulls people into deception is what is called the fair exchange approach. And this is where whenever you see something wrong in your life instead of really dealing with it and examining whether you're really a true Christian, instead of dealing with what's wrong in your life you find something right with your life and you make a fair exchange.
Oh, my sin can't be that bad, I mean look what good deed I did over here, see? And you're always trading off the negatives and the positives and instead of really evaluating your life honestly with integrity and saying, am I a believer and if I am can I be doing this. You say, well I know I do that but oh look what good I did over here, and you make a fair exchange and you whitewash the deal.
But the bottom line is this, with all of your false assurance, with all your failure to self-examine, with all this fixation on religious activity and with the fair exchange principle in operation, the bottom line that you'd better examine is this, do you live in obedience to the Word of God?
And when you disobey it, is there a sense of conviction and remorse that draws you to confess it to God? And if that isn't there there's a fair question about whether you're even a Christian. Because the one who comes into the Kingdom, verse 21 says, is the one not who says, but the one who does.
And when these people that live blatantly against all that the bible teaches and say, we're Christians, my answer to that is, if you were you wouldn't do what you do and defend it. They say they're Christians, they say they believe, and yet if you get down to it they are unwilling to submit to the Lordship of Christ as revealed in His Word and it is a lack of obedience that reveals the illusion.
But apart from hypocrites there are two categories of the deceived in the church, the superficial and the involved. The superficial are the ones who call themselves Christians because when they were little they went to church or Sunday School or they made a decision for Christ, and you hear very often people when they get baptized say, well I received Christ when I was 12 but my life was a mess after that.
Then there's the involved who are deceived and they're a much more serious group, they're in the church up to their neck involved and they know the Gospel, they know the theology but they don't obey the Word of God. They live in a constant state of sinfulness.
If you want to spot someone who's deceived look first of all for someone who's always seeking feelings, blessings, experiences, healings, angels, miracles, why? Chances are they're more interested in the by-products of the faith than they are the faith itself. They're more interested in what they can get than the glory God can get, they're more interested in themselves than in the exaltation of Christ.
Secondly, if you're looking to see who might be deceived look for people who are more committed to the denomination, the church, the organization than to the Word of God. Their kind of Christianity is purely focused on the social side. I'm a Presbyterian, I've been a Baptist all my life, I'm a Lutheran, I belong to the Adventist Church. More committed to the organization than they are to the Lord and His Word.
Thirdly, look for deceived people who are involved in theology as an academic interest. And you'll find them all over the colleges and seminaries of our land. People who study theology, write books on theology, absolutely void of the righteousness of Christ. Theology for them is intellectual activity.
And one other thought. When you look for somebody who might be deceived look for someone who is overindulgent in the name of grace, who lacks penitence, who does not have a true contrite heart, so forth.
The Lord says in this passage that these people are the deceived. These people think they are on the right road but they are not. And first in verses 21 to 23 is the folly of empty words. Notice again in verse 21, "Not every one that says," in verse 22, "Many will say." The claims are amazing, the claims are beautiful. But they don't do what they claim.
Now look with me very briefly at their confession in verse 21, they say, "Lord, Lord," This is an interesting phrase, the first time they say Lord it could be their respect, the word means Master, Teacher, Sir, it's a term of dignity. When they say it the second time, "Lord, Lord," it means we know You're God, we know You're Jehovah.
And if they're saying this at the great white throne judgment, if this is the day of which He speaks when He says in that day, then it's very possible that those who come there have already spent centuries in a place of judgment and punishment, and that even adds to their fervency, "Lord, Lord," what have we been doing being where we've been. And so there is a fervency and a respectfulness.
And then in verse 22, they say three times, "in thy name, in thy name, in thy name." They said that “we did not do it for ourselves, we've been doing it for You, we've been preaching for You, and we've been casting out demons for You, and we've been doing miracles for You.” Now it's an amazing claim, it is respectful and it is zealous.
But in verse 21, "Not every one that says that is going to enter." Because not everybody who says that has been doing the will of the Father who is in heaven. And so the Lord will confess in verse 23, "I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity." You see the word ‘know’ means an intimate relationship. Jesus says, I never had any intimate relationship with you. Oh, you were around the fringes but we were never close.
And then He says, "depart from me," get out of My presence forever, why? Because the end of the verse 23, you do always continue to work lawlessness. Because instead of doing the will of My Father, instead of living by these righteous principles, you always continue to do lawlessness.
You know what it means to profess Christ? Absolutely nothing, if your life doesn't back it up. That's why Peter said what he said, if you can't add to your faith, virtue, then you're not going to know you're really redeemed. That's what James meant when he said, faith minus works equals zero. It's dead.
That's why 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And we give evidence of being the ones that are forgiven. In other words the ones being forgiven are the ones confessing. God does not say, here's the standard, if you ever fail you're out. No, He's saying here's the perfect standard, and part of the perfect standard is that when you fail you deal with it.
The only thing acceptable to God is a righteousness that is the product of repentant faith in Jesus Christ, and that produces good works. And if that's not there no matter what you say it doesn't matter. And so the Lord says in verse 23, not for one single moment have I known you intimately, you are expelled because you continue to work lawlessness.
On my recent trip to Indonesia the Lord clarified to me what good works really mean. Most churches teach their members to invite new people to come to church as the only evangelism strategy hoping that they will come back and eventually become believers. There is nothing wrong in doing that but actually that is more of what happened in the Old Testament.
The New Testament way of evangelism is actually the opposite. Instead of inviting people in Jesus is sending people out. The Great Commission tells us to go, to go outside the church to your neighbors, to people in your state and to the whole world. The church remains the place of worship, but the growth is happening because of the good works that happen outside.
The gospel has power and saves people, only through hearing the gospel and believing the gospel are you saved. What we have taught in bible study so far is to be obedient, but obedience does not stop at understanding only. Matthew 28:20 says, “Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” We need to witness to others about the death of Christ for our sins and then teach new believers to put into practise to tell others what they have just learned.
Jesus does not only look to you to teach what you know but also to teach new believers how to continue to teach others what they just learned. And that process occurs best out in the field on a daily basis rather than just at church. I just understood what growth multiplication really means by seeing others as examples in life and not being afraid to share the gospel and then teaching others to spread the gospel. And that is what I saw being practiced in Indonesia. Let’s pray that we too can put this in practise, Amen?