The Sermon on the Mount XVIII

Subtitle:  Conclusion-The Narrow Gate

Matthew 7:13-14.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 21, 2024.

We have reached the point where Jesus concludes his sermon.  It is a series of warnings to those who have heard the teaching of Jesus.  If the warnings are heeded, then they will enjoy the fruit of being a disciple of Jesus, but if they are not, then the words of Jesus will do them no good.  Thus, it is not enough to hear the words of Jesus.  One must put them into practice in the way that he intends.

Our emphasis today is on the metaphor of a narrow gate.  Jesus is a polarizing figure, not because he intends to be so, but because he is absolute truth in a fallen and sinful world.  Thus, the words of Jesus put the ball in our court.  What are we going to do?  Will we believe in Jesus and obey his commands, or will we not believe in him and reject his commands?  In fact, Scripture reveals Jesus as the very embodiment of what the Bible itself is pointing to (Revelation 19:10).  He is the Living Word of God (John 1:1f). 

Let’s look at our passage.

Enter the narrow gate (v. 13-14)

Jesus gives his listeners a command, “Enter by the narrow gate…”  This is the righteous, proper response to hearing the Messiah.  He is opening the door to the kingdom of heaven and they need to enter.

Hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a privilege and great blessing, but it also puts a big decision on your plate.  What will you do with Jesus?  This is the wonderful grace of God that He sends people with the Gospel to us.  He also forgives the sins of those who put their faith in Jesus.  On top of this, what if God only let us hear the Gospel once and then held us accountable for that first decision for eternity?  Yet, this is not how God deals with us.  He holds his hands out to us even in our stubbornness and resistance.  God’s grace allows us to repent of our past choices to reject the Gospel.

However, we should be careful not to take it for granted that we will have tomorrow, or our old age, to “get right with God.”  Now is the day of salvation.

The gate is an access point.  Jesus is the access point into the kingdom.  We need to go into it.  Yet, there is another gate, another door.  The other gate is described as a wide gate.  The narrow gate is not as easy to enter, but the wide gate is eay to enter.  There is plenty of room.  It is probably far more impressive because of its wideness too.  In fact, if we picture the narrow gate as that one degree that puts us on the right path, then we will see that the wide gate is the infinitude of other choices, and other voices, that we can hear and choose to follow.

The gate or door, as I said earlier, points to Jesus.  He alone has the words of the Father.  Jesus makes this clear in John 10:7-9.  “I am the door of the sheep.  All who ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.  I am the door.  If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out to find pasture.

There are two ways we can look at this gate.  In Matthew 7, Jesus pictures the gate as an access point onto a way that leads to a particular destination.  John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress from this Word to the Next uses this analogy.  Christian must turn away from living in the City of Destruction and go through the narrow Gate towards the Celestial City of the King. 

In John 10, Jesus is using the imagery of the flock of the LORD.  The good shepherd lets the sheep come into the pen, which represents the place of safety.  The sheep are cared for by the shepherd, who takes them in and out in order to obtain what they need.  It is a picture of life in the kingdom.  In that sense, we are not so much trying to go somewhere.  We are simply in relationship with the Good Shepherd.

If we put these two images together, then we recognize that Christ takes care of us as we grow in this life to image the Father.  This is all possible because we have a Good Shepherd.  When we physically die, we will only enter into that next good thing that the good shepherd has for us. 

We can also think of the narrow gate in the same way that Paul reveals it in Galatians  chapter one.  People can misrepresent Jesus and the Gospel into a different Gospel, a different Jesus.  In Galatians 1:7, Paul warns against those who pervert the Gospel of Christ.  Thus, the narrow path represents the Jesus who is revealed to us, once and for all, in the New Testament and, through typology, in the Old Testament.  We must pay close attention to Jesus and put our faith in him.

The two gates open up onto two very different paths, roads, or ways.  This is not a literal path.  It represents a person who is following the Way of the LORD.  It represents living a life that is informed, empowered, and directed by Jesus.

The way of Christ (the narrow gate) is described as difficult.  The word is connected to tribulation and has the sense of pressure that squeezes us.  Of course, this is in contrast to the way that the wide gates opens up to.

The wide gate leads to a broad way.  The word broad literally has the idea of spacious country.  This road is not just wide.  It is easy with plenty of room for everyone.  There is no squeezing and cramping of your style on this path.  Essentially the difference of the two gates, narrow and wide, extend to the two paths, difficult and easy.

Imagine looking through a small gate and seeing a way on the other side that is difficult and filled with tribulation.  Then, imagine looking through a wide gate and seeing a way on the other side that is easy and has no tribulation, at least not comparatively.  Note: I don’t want to give the impression that Jesus is saying that non-believers have a life that is completely easy.  However, their way is easy in all the respects that the difficult path is hard. 

Here are some verses worth meditating upon.

2 Timothy 3:12, “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”

1 Thessalonians 3:4, “We told you before when we were with you that we would suffer tribulation, just as it happened, and you know.”

Revelation 1:9, “I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island of Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

The way of Jesus is difficult because of several reasons.  First, our flesh doesn’t like what Jesus commands, at least not all of it.  The Bible says that our flesh is hostile to the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5-8). 

Second, the way of Jesus is difficult because the world is full of people who are going their own way, and many who have rejected Jesus.  They represent a flow of the stream in a different direction.  This is hard for us.  Also, Jesus tells us to love those who hate us and spitefully treat us, i.e., our enemies.  This too is very hard on our flesh.

Third, The way of Jesus is difficult because we have spiritual enemies, the devil, his angels, and the demons, who do not want us to follow Jesus.  They employ every temptation and scheme that they can to make it hard for us to follow Jesus.

I purposefully used the phrase “the way of the LORD” earlier.  We see this phrase throughout the Old Testament.  In Genesis 18:19, God recognizes that Abraham will command his children to keep the way of the LORD.  We should also make the connection back to Genesis three, where the way to the tree of life is blocked by the cherubim.  There was not going back into the garden as sinful people.  We had to trust God and go forward.  Israel had this same dynamic when they first refused to fight the giants.  When God told them that they would go into the desert for 40 years, they tried to go back and fight.  It was too late.  Their resistance and rebellion to the plan of God required going forward and learning the lessons of God’s faithfulness.  God’s way takes us forward through the scary things ahead of us, and brings us out the other side to the good thing that He has planned for us.  We can trust Him!

This is similar to how Psalm1 and Psalm 2 fit together.  The blessed man rejects the way of the wicked but meditates on God’s word.  It makes him fruitful tree.  In Psalm two, we see the Anointed One of God.  He is the perfect Israelite who sits at the right hand of the Father, even though the wicked fight against him.  It ends with saying that those who trust in Messiah are blessed, i.e., Messiah sums up the way of the LORD.  He is the ultimate tree of life to whom we can connect and become a righteous branch.  He is the waters of life to whom we can draw life and be fruitfulness.  He is the ultimate Blessed Man of Psalm 1 (Genesis 12) in whom all others are blessed.

Next, we are told that the two ways lead to two different destinations:  life and destruction.  Life here is the full life of God, eternal life, but not just in terms of length.  It is a quality of experience that can be described as a fullness of life without end.  The narrow gate with its difficult road leads to eternal life.  More than this, from other places, we know that the way itself has an experience of this life along the way (John 7:38).  

Yet, the wide gate with its easy way leads to destruction (death).  This is reminiscent of Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”  We need to be careful the gate we go in, and the path that we walk (even if it is difficult).  The best things in life are always at the end of a difficult journey, and even the difficult journey itself becomes a kind of life as we persevere, cry out to God, and see His help.

The word “seems” in the above quoted verse is important.  One path seems good and feels good.  Yet, it leads to destruction.  Of course, all scams are set up to use your flesh against you.  Here, Jesus is warning us against the ultimate scam of this world.  If we follow Jesus, we will encounter difficulty, but we will take hold of the very life of God too.  If we reject Jesus, we may encounter ease and comforts, but we will find our life full of destruction in the end.

The narrow gate with its difficult way is loathed by our flesh.  However, if we continue to stay connected to Jesus by faith, we will find his supply of life flowing into our hearts and mind, even though we are in these mortal bodies.  This is why Paul taunts death and the grave.  “O Death, where is your sting, O Grave, where is your victory?”  As the follower of Christ approaches death, they can be never more alive because of what is only moments away, union with our LORD!

This is the same decision that Moses spoke about in Deuteronomy 30:19.  He said to them, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live…”  It really is a choice between life and death, but not just in the natural.  It is a spiritual choice that impacts eternity, and that impact on eternity impacts our mortal life now.

We end with the shocker.  The shocker is that Jesus, speaking to Jews who had the word of God and His help, reveals that few will find the way to life, and most will follow the way to destruction.  This same point is made in a different context in Luke 13:23.  There a person simply asks Jesus if many people will be saved or few.  Jesus answers with this narrow gate imagery.  “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”  It is the difficulty of the road and the pampering of their own flesh that disables them.

In John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  Notice that the same components of the gate, way, destination are in this.  Jesus is not only the gate, but he is the path that we walk, the truth to which we hold on firmly.   Yet, relationship with the Father is the life that we will have, which is also relationship with Him.  Jesus is our everything.  Jesus is the fruitful tree of life and water of life that all who want to be fruitful in this life and the next will connect to.  When we do that, we will bring forth life in the here and now. 

Perhaps, you hear this and are discourage because you failed to follow him.  The apostle Peter also failed to follow Jesus, and yet God still loved him and offered him another chance.  Do you know that God still loves you too?  May God help us to choose life this morning and everyday hereafter so that we can be a conduit of God’s life into this world.

The Narrow Gate audio

The Sermon on the Mount XVII

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy IV

Matthew 7:7-12.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 14, 2024.

Jesus finishes up this section by looking at our relationship with God through prayer (or lack thereof).  How can prayer become an area that is fraught with hypocrisy?  It can be so in the same way that prayer has always been a challenge to the flesh of us humans.

Are you challenged by prayer and sustaining a relationship with God through it?  Prayer is not easy on us, at least when we approach it as Jesus taught back in chapter 6.  Secret prayer is acid to our ego and our flesh.

Let’s look at our passage and get into this topic.

Hypocrisy in our prayer life (v. 7-12)

In verse seven, Jesus uses the command form of “asking, seeking and knocking” in his description of prayer.  We could say that these verbs represent different ways of describing prayer, or ways of thinking about prayer.  The command is to be doing something in the present because something else will happen in the future.  We should note that Jesus does not tell us how long that will be.  In fact, from the experience of the saints, we know that this period of time (from praying to receiving an answer to prayer) varies from an immediate answer to an answer that may be answered after our death.

Though you could infer this from verse 7, the addition of verse 8 makes clear that there is an implication of continuity in our prayers, persistence, perseverance.  Thus, we are to be asking in the present until that day in the future becomes today.  We should not confuse this with the earlier warning not to pray as if we will be heard by our many words.  That is pointing us towards simple prayers.  Whereas continuing to ask each day is not the same thing.  It is in truth continuing to have faith that God will answer.

When we feel that tendency to complain like this: “I asked God for such and such, but it didn’t happen,” we need to understand that our faith is being tested.  We need to wait upon the Lord’s answer in faith and trust, while continuing to ask. 

Now, let’s look at the same statement that is made in three different views of prayer.

The first is the idea of asking.  We come to God with a request.  Jesus essentially says for us to be asking and it will be given to you.  We may be asking for something tangible, like bread, or we may be asking for something less so, like wisdom.  Regardless Jesus emphasizes that his followers should be asking God with the expectation that they will receive from Him.

Sometimes we ask for things, but we haven’t thought through what it might look like for God to give it to us.  Wisdom is rarely given instantly as seems to be the case with Solomon (though it could be argued that it was not as immediate as people may think).  It typically comes through interactions with life and God’s help in the moment.  We then grow in wisdom as God helps us.  It doesn’t work like the futuristic movies that picture a person hooking their brain to a computer and downloading the skills to fly a military helicopter.  When we ask for wisdom, we should not expect to wake up as Solomon the next day.  However, we can be fully assured that God will help us to receive it in a multitude of many ways.

We might even ask ourselves (after asking God for something) this question.  What would be the righteous way to answer this?  What would be the good way that a loving, heavenly Father would answer this?  Asking our heaven Father for something involves maturing in our understanding of that process.  I didn’t know all of the things that my earthly parents were thinking about, but their answers and their timing helped me to grow in understanding them.  How much greater is this with God who is a perfect Father?  It is much more.

The second picture is that of seeking something from God (or even seeking deeper relationship with God).  Seeking involves not knowing where something is and trying to get to it, find it.  We may even think of prayer as seeking God’s wisdom in how we ask and how He responds.  Prayer is not about coming up to a cosmic vending machine and pushing certain buttons and putting in a certain amount of currency in order to get what you want.  In prayer, we are seeking something and our heavenly Father is just the One to help us find it in the righteous and proper way.  Thus we are commanded to be seeking and then we will find.

The third view of prayer pictures us knocking on a door.  Doors are a picture of access.  They often have locks to keep unauthorized people out.  Jesus is the door to the Father.  Thus, we pray to the Father in the name of the Son (through him).  However, there is a sense when we are asking God for something that it is much like knocking until He answers.  Am I going to get tired of knocking and walk away?  Will I be persistent, or accuse Him of being stingy?

The interesting thing is that God is pictured as a Father who is approachable and gives answer to prayer.  We see this all through the sermon on the Mount.  The essential statement underlying all of Christ’s commands is this.  “God is your heavenly Father who cares for you.  You can completely trust Him!”  In chapter 6 when he teaches us how to pray, he says to address God as a Father who is approachable and desirous to help us.  Is that how you see God?

Verse 8 quickly adds the reason why what he has said is true.  It essentially is a no-brainer statement.  However, this is what makes it so powerful.  We can grow discouraged and stop asking, seeking and knocking.  Jesus tells us that it is asking people who receive, seeking people who find, and knocking people to whom the door is opened.  It essentially undermines our tendency to quit.  Why would I quit when an essential aspect to receiving is being a asking person?  The reason is that I have lost faith in God’s care and love for me.

This point is not a guarantee that you will get exactly what you pray for, like an order at a fast food joint.  Rather, he is pointing out the silliness of not continuing to prayer.  Only those who continue in prayer will see answers.

We should also note here that we are not talking about the general grace of God.  Everyday God gives a certain amount of grace to everyone.  We all have oxygen.  When it rains, we all receive it (in that area).  The sun shines on us all alike.  We live in a world that is fit for us to survive.  However, in prayer, we are talking about special grace that comes in the form of an answer to our requests.  God in His sovereignty has provided a certain level of care for all.  However, He leaves room for us to take the initiative in order to make requests of Him.

Perhaps you “tried” being an asking person and “felt” like it “didn’t work.”  I will come back to some of the words in that last sentence.  But, let me just say that God isn’t something that you try.

Prayer has a level of discovery to it.  We pray for things, but we also want God’s wisdom and will (remember the Lord’s prayer).  My prayer about a situation, or for a particular thing, may change over time as I wrestle with God over it in prayer.  However, even then, the same point made by Jesus applies.  Only those who keep looking will discover what God has for them to learn and receive.  Prayer takes faith, not in prayer itself (as a mechanism), but in the God to whom we pray.  He is the heavenly Father who loves us.  Think of the wonder of this.  God has carved out certain areas of His will that will not happen unless we have the gumption to ask for it, seek for it, and knock on His door for it.

It is interesting that all three of these pictures of prayer are referred to in different ways throughout the sermon on the mount.  In the area of asking, giving and receiving, Jesus has mentioned several things.

• Matthew 5:42, “Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.”  This is important to remember that, when you ask God for things, He has been watching your response to others who have asked you for things.
• Matthew 6:8, “Your Father knows what you have need of before you ask.”  This may cause some to question praying at all.  However, Jesus goes the opposite direction.  The fact that God knows what we need (i.e., He is intimately aware of your needs) is reason for continuing to pray, not to quit.  Thus our present praying is not informing God of the what of our request.  Rather, it is demonstrating the depth of our faith in Him and His purposes (or not).
• Matthew 6:11, “Give this day our daily bread.”  All of these together shows us that God wants us to ask Him for things, and He wants to give us things.  However, we need to ask in a right way.  How can I ask God to be a giver to me when I refuse to image His giving nature to others?

The area of seeking and finding is also mentioned.

• Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.”  This actually tells us what we should be seeking from God.  You cannot separate God from His Kingdom, so it is also a seeking for nearness to God.
• Matthew 7:14, “difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”  This one is in the next section.  Still, Jesus points to two different roads we can take in life.  The things you are seeking may take you down the wrong road.  If my life is all about the things of me and this life, and not about the things of God in this life, I will have difficulty finding the way which leads to life.

The area of knocking, opening (a door), is also mentioned.

• Matthew 5:2, “Jesus opened up his mouth and taught them.”  This may seem to be a stretch, but you cannot deny that Jesus is presented in the gospels as the door, the gate, the way for us.  So, when it says that he opened up his mouth and taught them, we can see the wisdom of God the “way of the Lord” being explained to the people so that they can know how to live, i.e., what way to go.
• Matthew 6:6, here we see that there is a door to the secret place that we can go through, shut, and be alone with God in prayer.  Yes, I will ask God for things, but the biggest thing that needs to happen is for me to be changed through relationship with God in the secret place.

In all of this, we should notice that parents wrestle with the requests of their kids and use their wisdom to determine whether it should be outright given, or if it should be mitigated in some way.  A kid may want ice cream for every meal.  No good parent would give such a request.  However, they will also see the desire of their kid and once and a while treat them to some ice cream.

Our asking, seeking and knocking needs to be informed by all of the wisdom of Jesus.  Prayer is learning to align my life with the Kingdom of God (His purpose and will).

Jesus then gives two examples of giving by human fathers and compares them to God the Father (verses 8-11).  These are simple illustrations that challenge our ability to give up on God in different ways, all of which lack trust in Him.  The first is a son asking for bread.  What father would give him a stone?  This rhetorical question would be understood by all in the crowd.  None of them would do that to their son.  Similarly, in the second question, the son asks for fish.  What father would give him a serpent?  This is parallel to the first question, but also intensive.  A stone is inanimate and is only unable to help the son.  Perhaps, we could see in it a mockery.  However, a serpent has an evil connotation to it that the stone doesn’t.  Still, the obvious answer is that none of them would think to give their kid a serpent when they were asking for fish, that is, food.

Notice that Jesus has begun to bring our prayers back to the concept of a heavenly Father who cares for us better than the best of parents.  This is the same as he did back in chapter 6 and the Lord’s Prayer.  Even the best of parents are fallen beings when compared to God.  They are not perfect and don’t always respond to the needs of their children like they should.  But, God is absolute righteousness and absolute love.

Parents will rightly listen to their kids, but not give them everything they ask for.  In these cases, it has nothing to do with trying to do them harm, or being mean to them.  Parents who love their kids take in mind the desire of the child and wisely formulate the best way to answer the child.  This is where we miss it with God.  As adults, we don’t like being in the child-position with God.  We give up on our heavenly Father far to easy.

God is way better at hearing the prayers of His children and determining what we need and when we need it.  He does care for you, and He is not holding out on you.

This isn’t the only dynamic at play.  Yes, I need to learn to trust God, but there is also a spiritual enemy that seeks to tempt me away from trust in God.  If you have seen a sumo wrestling match, then you know that the goal is to resist being pushed out of the ring.  Satan knows that he will win against us if he can push us out of the ring of faith in God.  Of course, he is not literally pushing us.  In this sense, our faith can over come all of his bullying and seducing that seeks to pull us away from faith in God.

Verse 11 emphasizes that God knows much better how to give good gifts to those who ask of Him than we do as people.  I don’t ask wisely in my prayers, but God is committed to giving good gifts to me.  In fact, the Lord’s prayer teaches us how to wisely pray.

Verse 12 generally looks like Jesus is jumping to a new topic.  This is the Golden Rule.  It actually serves to remind us of a principle that he has been brushing up against all throughout the Sermon on the Mount.  Whatever you want people to do to you, do also to them.  In fact, he says that this sums up the Law and the Prophets.  This is another way of saying that this is what it is trying to teach us.  Treat people the way that you would want to be treated.

Of course, our first response is this.  “What if they don’t treat me the same way that I did them?”  That is the test of following Jesus.  Jesus is not promising that people will treat you well if you treat them well.  In fact, they may crucify you if you love them with God’s love.

This command from Christ does not have an escape clause.  There is no mechanism for letting us quit doing them good because they haven’t reciprocated good to us.  We are simply to live our life only doing to others what we would want them to do to us. 

When we approach this as a law, we are looking for  the loopholes.  However, when we see Christ on the cross, we realize that this is all about imaging God, not getting what we want.  In my flesh, I feel that I have been nice enough, but what if God did that to us?

This brings us to ask the question.  What does this have to do with prayer?  The Golden Rule reminds us that prayer in the secret place with God is intimately connected to our life with others in the public place.  A relationship with God cannot be divorced from our relationship with others because God loves them too.  We see this throughout the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5:23-24 pictures a person offering a gift to God at the altar and then remembering that their brother has been offended by them.  He tells us to leave our gift at the altar, go make amends with our brother, and then come back and offer our gift to God. 

Matthew 5:44 tells us to pray for those who are spitefully using us, as well as learning to love our enemies.

Also, Matthew 6:14-15 we are reminded that God’s response to us takes into account our responses to others in the area of forgiveness.

How does this relate to hypocrisy?  The faith component in prayer tries and tests us.  Will I stay in relationship with God when things take longer, or don’t happen as I wanted them?  Will I blame God and walk away?  We too easily give up on God and lose faith in the difficult things of life.  When that happens, some will remain in the church and play the part of a Christian, but in their heart they no longer pray, nor believe that God is their loving, heavenly Father.  This is the very definition of a hypocrite.  In fact, the more responsibility you have in the church, the more vulnerable you are to hypocrisy because you may feel that you have too much to lose.  The religious leaders of the days of Jesus had become hypocrites, but held on to their positions of power.

Others may be disillusioned with God and “deconstruct their faith.”  They may walk away and join another religion or become an atheist.  At least they aren’t a hypocrite, right?  Maybe not.  Think about what is going on in their heart.  “I tried it, but it doesn’t work!  I don’t believe in God!”  Yet, this person is insisting that they did everything right and it was God who didn’t do the righteous thing.  They are accusing God of something that is not true and clinging to the fiction of their own righteousness.  You “tried” praying to God?  What did that look like?  And, “it didn’t work?”  What were you expecting it to do?  What do you exactly mean by “work?”  This argument that I was righteous and God failed doesn’t hold water.  This is the hypocrisy of accusation against God.

In the end, prayer is not about getting everything that I want.  Don’t go through the Bible looking for the Scriptures that promise you will get everything you pray for, nor looking for the Scriptures that show you will not get everything you pray for.  Pray is not a mechanism for getting things, though you will get things through it.  Prayer is a relationship of faith that enables us to become everything that we need to become by God’s help and grace.

Let’s not be a hypocrite, but instead, let’s turn back to God in prayer.  Let’s start believing in God and not giving up on Him because He hasn’t given up on us!

Pitfalls for Hypocrisy IV audio

The Sermon on the Mount XVI

Subtitle:  Revealing Areas that are Pitfalls for Hypocrisy III

Matthew 7:1-6.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 7, 2024.

We are going to look at the second area that is a pitfall for hypocrisy in our life today.  It is in the area of relationships with other people, particularly difficult people. 

Even when we hold people in higher esteem than things (see the last two sermons in this series), there are certain people that we have trouble loving, or even getting along with them.  This area of how we deal with difficult people in our life can set us up for becoming hypocritical.

Let’s look at our passage.

In our relationship with people (v. 1-6)

Most people in the world are very familiar with the first two words of Matthew 7:1.  They can quote these two words far quicker than John 3:16.  “Judge not!”  Or, a loose paraphrase, “Don’t be judging me!”  Of course, this is not the whole sentence, and the sentence separated from the context can be misleading.

Think about when you were a kid.  If you selectively picked words out of what your parents said, and pretended like that is what they said, would they be happy with that?  Parent:  “Son, under no circumstances are you to go to the party at Bobby’s house.  I know that his parents are gone for the weekend.”  Son thinks to himself.  “hmm.  Dad said “go to the party at Bobby’s house!”  No parent is going to accept that kind of selective hearing.  The son will be in trouble.  This is what many do with the Bible when they take those first two words as a shield for all manner of sins.  “Don’t judge me!”

However, this is not exactly what Jesus is getting at, and the rest of the verses make this abundantly clear.  Jesus gives us a maxim, or pithy saying, that is very general, but it gets you thinking.  Notice that the rest of the verse says, “Judge not…that you be not judged.”    There is a connection here between the first judgment and a second judgment that will come later.  The emphasis is not on a blanket statement of never making a judgment.  Rather, it is an emphasis your judgment being directly connected to a judgment that will come later.   It is better to see this as a strong warning that cannot be separated from the consequence of being judged yourself.  It calls for us to look down the road at how my current judgment of a person could affect my own judgment.

It's purpose is not to create a world where we never make judgments, but rather a world in which we are all very careful in the judgments that we do make.  It is sort of like a sign that says, “Road closed, bridge out ahead.”  Many people who take the time to read that sign will go a different route and save themselves a lot of time.  However, another person may read that sign and drive on by it, not because they ignored the sign, but because they considered it and recognized that their house is on this side of the bridge.  It is okay for them to drive by the sign.  Yet, notice that they will have taken the time to consider the sign and the warning it was giving.

Verse 2 drives home this point of a consequential judgment, which is what Jesus is really getting at.  Essentially, he tells us that we will receive back the kind of judgment and the measure of judgment that we give to others.  Thus, if you are tough in your judgments of others and you do it a lot, then expect a lot of tough judgments coming back your way.

This begs the question.  Just who is this future judge that Jesus has in mind?  We might imagine that he is simply saying that we should be judgmental to others so that they will not be judgmental towards us.  However, our life experience tells us that this is not how it generally works.  No matter how well you do something, there will be people who like it and people who don’t like it.   People’s judgments of you often have nothing to do with how you have judged them or others. 

Jesus is talking about God judging us, whether His temporal judgments during our life, or His eternal judgment at the end of our life.  Be careful how you judge people because you are going to receive from God the same kind of judgment, and in the same measures, that you gave to others.  Can you survive that?

This does not mean that we can cause God to judge that our sin is okay by not judging the sin of others in our life.  However, this ties to his statement, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”  He doesn’t mean from others, but from God.  Of course, cursed are the unmerciful for they shall not receive mercy.

So he is concerned with how we judge and our quickness to do so.  We are not being wise and are not carefully thinking through what God might think about this.

In verses 3 to 5, we see that Jesus does not intend for us never to judge the actions of a person.  He is rather concerned with our hypocritical tendency never to judge ourselves the way we judge others.

I have actually had a co-worker come up to me and ask me to get a wood chip out of their eye.  He was working with a chainsaw, and a chip landed between his eyelid and eyeball.  There was no damage, but the eye was extremely aggravated, and he had been trying to remove it by himself for a while.   It was large enough that I was able to sweep it out with my finger.  I still remember his sigh of relief when I got it out.

This illustration of specks and planks that Jesus gives are actually about sins and faults that we may see in one another.  They are not good (literally or metaphorically), and life is better when they are removed.  Yet, we can be guilty of having great mercy, and seeing the best motivations, in all that we do, and then having no mercy for others (at least for certain others that we don’t like).

You may be correct in your judgment that they have a fault, or a sin, in their eye.  However, you could be overlooking the fact that you have something much worse going on in  your own eye (life).  This does present a comical image of a guy who has a board sticking out of his eye and telling his brother that he has a speck in his eye.  “Hey, let me fix that speck for you!”

Jesus speaks about our motivation.  “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”  What is going on in your heart and life that you spend a lot of your time judging the condition of others, but you don’t even take a second to consider bigger issues in your own life?  If we took just one second to consider our own faults and sins, it might make us a different person.

He also touches on the audacity of it.  “Or how can  you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?”  Yeah, just how are you able to justify such hypocrisy?  Don’t you know that God sees your poor job of acting righteous?

Only a person who has cleared their own eye (or asked another to help them do it) can help another person clear theirs.  First of all, you can’t see clearly to fix someone’s speck when  you have a plank in your own eye.  Even if you genuinely wanted to help, you would only make things worse.  The power of having dealt with your own sin is that it helps you to be far more sensitive and careful towards others, instead of harsh and uncaring.

Jesus is not leading up to saying that we should never judge.  He is actually leading up to saying that we should spend time on fixing ourselves first, and then we will be able to rightly help our brother.  That will end up being a way that pleases God instead of bringing down His judgment upon us.

Verse 6 may look like it is unrelated, if you don’t look closely.  Even when you clear your own eye so that you can help your neighbor, you still need wisdom.  You may have a perfectly clear eye, have helped a thousand people clear their eyes.  You may even be a professional doctor of getting specks out of eyes.  But, the other person may not be interested in you removing their speck.  In fact, they may not agree that they have a speck.  Perhaps, they simply don’t like you and don’t want you poking and prodding in their eye.  We need the wisdom of God that is supplied by the Holy Spirit in our life.

Jesus uses the images of dogs and  swine.  Dogs represented people who had given themselves over to wickedness.  They are people who give no thought to God and His ways.  Instead, they love to do the opposite.  Swine were connected to Gentiles who were separated from God.  These are both pictures of the spiritual state of individuals who surely have many specks and planks in their eye.  Yes, they need them removed.  However, they won’t take kindly to it.  They will end up trampling you if you aren’t careful.  If a person is not ready to be helped, whether that is a lost person hearing the gospel, or a Christian brother who is offended and doesn’t want our help, then we should back off and pray for them.

Notice that he pictures it as throwing holy things to dogs.  The holy thing is helping a brother or sister remove moral specks or even character specks in their life.  Holy places require special caution.  When you are going to meddle in the spiritual life of a person, always remember that this is a place that God is working on them.  You represent a holy God who is wanting to help them become holy.  It is a holy work.  You may want to remove your shoes and tread lightly.  This is God’s work and you can help him only by being sensitive to that.

A follower of Christ should be able to help others because they have been working on themselves, and they are being careful to be led by God.

Let me close by dealing with Jesus referring to some people as dogs and swine.  We can be quick to be offended, but he is not saying that people are born dogs/swine, and will always be such.  Similar to the parable of the soils, the point is not that we are stuck in categories.  Rather, that people may be ready, they may not be ready.  They may be repentant, or they may be given over to sin at the moment.  There is a timing of God that all people who want to help others would do good to heed.  Wait for it.  Pray for it.  In fact, you may not be the one who God uses to help them remove the speck.  However, you have still helped them by being a person who prayed for them, and were careful not to injure them through insensitivity to your own sin and insensitivity to their readiness to receive help.

May God help us to judge carefully and have His heart of love for others.

Pitfalls for Hypocrisy audio

At the Crossroads with Jesus

Romans 3:19-26; Psalm 85:4-13.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on March 31, 2024, Resurrection Sunday.

How much does God love humans?  On top of that, how much does God love you?  On top of that, how much does God love other people?  You may respond to these differently.  Some think that God loves others, but He doesn’t love me because of something He hasn’t done for them.  Some may even think that God loves them, but He doesn’t love those other people over there.

Some people answer such important questions through an emotional response, sometimes even a visceral response.  Their experience of life, personal wounds, and the influence of culture can lead them to believe that God either doesn’t care or doesn’t exist.  They may reason this way.  “If God is loving, then H should want to help us.  Yet, He hasn’t helped us.”  “If God is moral, then He would not let things become this bad, especially if He really is all-powerful (omnipotent).”

In fact, even believers in Jesus can some times “feel” like God’s isn’t doing anything.  “God, where are you?”  At the cross, God gives us a caution and a revelation.  The caution is that we are most likely not as good as we would like to believe.  The revelation is that God loves us even while we are yet sinners.  He truly wants to save us.

Let’s look at our passage and see that God has done something for us.  He has paid the price for our sins and given us help at the very source of our problem, which is our own heart.

The message of The Law (v. 19-20)

Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome.  They are a mixture of Jewish people who know God’s true character, Romans who had a pagan background, and people from other nations who were just as confused about God as the Romans.

Paul is dealing with a question that was at the root of their walk with Christ.  What had God been doing over the last 16 centuries of working with Israel?  What was His purpose with the Law of Moses?  Both Jews and Gentiles tend to be confused about God’s motivation, or in some cases, the motivation of the “gods.”

Paul tell us that the giving of the Law to Israel says something to the world, but it says something even more important to Israel.  Israel represents people who know God, who know what He wants, and who are serving His purposes.  The classic problem of sin is that even those who have the truth, and say they are doing it, are part of the problem.

God’s problem was that even the people of Israel, who were supposed to be on His side, had come to think that they had the Law because they were so righteous and acceptable to Him.  Just like them, we tend to misread God’s intentions when things are going well, or going bad.  Yet, when we look at Jesus, we recognize that a perfect situation is not proof of rightness with God.  Going to the cross was not a “perfect situation” to us and judging with the eyes of flesh.  Yet, this didn’t catch God by surprise.

Paul doesn’t write out what exactly the Law of Moses says to those who are under it.  However, it is clear from the passage that it is telling the people of Israel that they are not righteous, but instead, that they are sinners and have need of forgiveness. 

Like a mirror, the Law shows us that we have a sin problem and are in need of God’s forgiveness.  Yet, that forgiveness can only come through sacrifice.  When you get out of bed in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, you see what sleeping on a pillow all night has done for your hair and your face.  In the same way, the word of God reveals what growing up and living in this world has done for our heart and mind.  However, in this case,  you can’t just splash some water on your face and comb your hair.  It is the good news of Jesus that can actually forgive our sins and change our hearts.

God had not been trying to teach Israel that they were better than the other nations because they had His Law.  It is better to have the truth, and God had blessed them amazingly.  Like a house of mirrors, the Law continually reminded Israel that they were not what they should be in response to the amazing love that God had shown them. 

Think of it this way.  Even as Moses was on the mountain receiving the Law that they had pledged to follow, the people had Aaron make a golden calf and were worshiping it.  This is a picture of our problem.  Perfect Law-keeping will never save us because we do not have the power within us to perfectly keep it.  However, the Law can help you to see just how badly you need God’s powerful help.

Paul says that God intends the presence of the Law, and the message it speaks to us, to stop our mouths.  It is not that God wants to tell us we are sinners and rub our nose in it.  The Law is speaking to those who are in the best place possible with God.  They are near to the work of God and have His Word.  They know God’s great purpose and intention towards them.  They represent the righteous people of God.  Just think about how the Pharisees and the scribes of Jesus day presented themselves.  They were proud of their position and place with God, not just over the Gentiles, but even over people within Israel who were not as blessed as they were.  They were proud of their righteousness because they weren’t actually hearing what the Law was trying to tell them.

God wants to help us with sin, but there are always too many of us touting our great righteousness compared to others.  To fix this, God first sends the Law, and then He sends us grace and truth in Jesus.  God is listening to children arguing about how good they are compared to their sibling.  Of course, the sibling is also arguing how good they are compared to the others.  Even if humanity could unite and make a singular argument, “surely we are now good enough, Lord,” the whole point is that we are not.

Sin is a real problem, and we are always trying to avoid the charge.  We want to change definitions of righteousness so that is points to us, and we want to change the definitions of sin so that they do not point to us.  Another way we try to avoid the charge is by placing the bar as low as possible so that it is easy for us to get over.

Yet, Paul makes it clear that we are all guilty before God.  Even the best of us is a sinner who falls short of the righteousness of God, who falls short of being what God created us to be.  Our guilt is that we choose sin and darkness rather than the light, the truth, of God.

If God can get you to a place where you quit fighting the truth with self-serving arguments, then you will see that you are in the same boat as “your enemy.”  No people, no race, are more loved by God than others.  No gender, no culture, is loved by God more than the others.  We are all guilty before God because of our sin.  If we are in the dark, it is because we have cast off the light that God has given us.  We need to quit doubling down on our righteousness and come to God for His solution.

There is a part of our nature that resists this.  It is not fair to lump me in with all of those others, God!  However, all of our judgments are self-serving.  If we will stop fighting long enough, we just might hear something that we need to hear.  And, if you understood God’s heart for you and for humanity, you would realize that this is not a bad place to be (guilty before God and in need of mercy).

Verse 20 shows us that the Law cannot justify us.  It can only give us the knowledge, or understanding, of sin.  It may seem cruel for God to try and get us all to accept that we are guilty of sin before Him, that we are the reason why this world is so messed up.  However, denial is always the saboteur of true change that brings life.

If we quit fighting God, if we can accept that we fall short of what is good and righteous, then we might be able to hear and see His answer, Jesus.  No amount of laws can make us a better people.  Even a thousand years of scientifically coming up with more and better laws will not make us a perfectly righteous people.  All of our science is impotent in the face of our penchant for sin.

The Righteousness of God versus the righteousness of me (21-26)

In verse 21, Paul points to a righteousness of God that does not come from Law-keeping.  For those who continue to make the case that they are righteousness enough, the idea that they must be “perfect” as God defines it seems outrageous.  “That’s impossible!  God can’t expect us to be perfect.”  Yet, Paul shows us that, in His love, God has made His righteousness available to us.  God won’t change the truth for us, but He will die on a cross to pay the price for your guilt and for mine.  It is true that we are all sinners, but there is a truth greater than our sin.  God still loves us and will save us with His righteousness, if we will believe upon the One He sent to die on our behalf.

This is why the devil works so hard to get people to quit trusting God.  He did this with Eve by saying that God was holding out on Eve, that He was keeping Eve from having something good.  Think of it.  The God who had done nothing but good to Eve, providing purpose and meaning, a perfect environment where all of her needs were taken care of, somehow was the problem.  He does the same with us today.

Remember this point.  For the same reason that we are bent toward sin, we are bent towards not trusting God’s heart of love for us.  When a parent refuses to let a child ignore their sins, it is supposed to be because they care about that child and what they are becoming.  However, God is a perfect heavenly Father.  How much more is His heart full of love towards us?

Yes, God expects you to be perfect.  However, He has also made it possible for you to be made perfect by giving you His righteousness.  Instead of continuing to make the case of how righteous you are, start making the case of how righteous God is and then you will be on the right track.

God’s plan never depended on your perfection or mine.  It always depended upon His own perfection, His own righteousness.  No one ever was saved by their righteousness, except for Jesus.  He alone was the perfect sinless one.  Of course, we can misread this too.  “Jesus fulfilled the Law so that I don’t have to do it!”  These kind of self-serving arguments for why it is okay for me to keep sinning are themselves sinful.  How can I look the grace of God in the face and pretend like He did that so that I can keep on sinning?

All throughout the Old Testament, the prophets pointed out that no one was saved through their Law-keeping.  This is why Paul states that the Law and the Prophets testified to this righteousness of God.  Jesus and the early Christians were not hijacking Judaism.  This idea was as old as the Bible itself.  Really?  Yes, really.

In Genesis 15:6, we are told that “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”  Notice that God accepted Abraham’s faith and treated it as if it were righteousness.  Of course, it is the righteousness of God that actually is applied to Abraham’s account.  Yes, Abraham showed his faith in obeying God.  However, Abraham was not without sin and falling short.  He was not saved by perfect obedience, but by faith.

In Psalm 51:16-17, David had failed miserably before God.  He had become an adulterer and a murderer.  David knew that he had no righteousness to save himself before God.  Yet, in that crisis, he recognizes that no amount of sacrificial animals could make him right before God.  If it could work, then he would do it.  David understood that the only act of righteousness that he could do was to be broken in his spirit over his sin, and to come to God with sincere remorse (contrition).  “These, O God, You will not despise.”  David too was saved by faith in God.

Habakkuk 2:4 says this, “Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him; but the just (righteous one) shall live by his faith.”  This is exactly what Paul is pointing out.  The religious leaders had become proud of their righteousness instead of hearing the true witness of the prophets. 

This testimony of the Law and the prophets tells us that none of us are righteous, no not one.  Each of us like sheep have gone astray.  “We have turned everyone to his own way.  And the LORD has laid upon him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6).”  If we are going to be right before God, it will be by putting our trust in Him and His grace alone like David did.

The righteousness of God has always been made available to those who put their trust in Him and His Word.  Abraham believed God.  David put His trust in God, rather than his ability to do an act of righteousness himself.  Habakkuk saw that a proud man is always pushing his own righteousness, even though he is not right inside. 

Jesus is the ultimate Word of God.  He is God’s solution for our lack of righteousness.  You and I simply need to put our trust in Jesus and follow him.  Trust, faith, believing, these are all different ways of saying the same thing.  You can put your trust in God’s love for you, for us!  And, when you do that, God will apply His righteousness to your account.  You will become right before Him, justified.

Verse 26 brings the point home that Jesus is the only Just One who justifies those who have faith in him.  Jesus is God’s answer for our predicament.  God is just and cannot allow sinners to continue to wreck His world.  I am a sinner and fall short of His righteousness.  Yet, God loves me and doesn’t want me (you) to perish.

Paul references several big concepts in verse 24.  Justification is being made right before God.  He says that it is given freely by His grace to those who believe.  He also mentions “redemption through Christ.”  Jesus makes it possible for us to get back our lost place with God, and our lost inheritance.  I can now truly image Him because of the work of Jesus.  I can now inherit eternal life.  I can walk in true righteousness as opposed to a false self-righteousness.

All of this is possible because of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.  He died in your place because he loves you.  He paid the punishment for our sins so that we could enter into the fruit of God’s love.  Jesus is the only just one who is able to justify those who come to him in faith.

At this point I want to finish by looking at an Old Testament picture of God’s character coming together in order to save us, and connect it to what Jesus did on the cross.

The character of God is displayed in the crucifixion of Jesus (Psalm 85:10-11)

In this passage, the psalmist is calling out for God’s help.  He knows from Israel’s past experience with God that He will save them.  He then states that he will wait for God’s answer (v. 8).

In verse 10, we are given a picture of God’s coming salvation.  It pictures the different aspects of God’s character coming together in order to save those who believe in Him.  This verse really is about what the character of God is doing at the cross.  The cross is not just a gory spectacle to get our attention.  It is the very love of God going to war for your soul, for your eternity.

The four virtues are given in pairs: Mercy and Truth, Righteousness and Peace.  I want us to picture them as opposing virtues that are at each end of the beams of the cross.

The Hebrew word behind “Mercy” is hard to translate.  It is a love that includes the concepts of generosity and enduring commitment.  Some versions translate it as unfailing love, steadfast love, and lovingkindness.  God is unfailing, generous love (che’ sed in Hebrew), and He has this heart for us.  Yet on the opposite side of the beam is the Truth of God (em’ meth in Hebrew).  This word does mean truth, but it has at its roots the idea of faithful and trustworthy, even real.  The truth can be depended upon, whereas a lie cannot.  Yes, God is truth, but the truth is that we are not.  How can the love of God be reconciled with the truth of our unfaithfulness?  Before we answer that, let’s look at the next pair.

Righteousness (tse’ deq) is the rightness of God.  Everything He does is absolutely upright, straight, perfect.  Of course, we are not upright and perfect.  Yet, God is Peace (sha lom’ in Hebrew), and therefore wants us to be at peace with Him.  How can God make peace with man, who is not righteous, and remain righteous Himself? 

The tension between these aspects of God’s character are pictured with two verbs that are parallel concepts.  God’s unfailing, generous Love and Truth have a meeting, or an encounter, and His Righteousness and His Peace kiss.  This is actually one meeting in which all of God’s character is unified in redeeming mankind, and it is happening at the cross.  God’s righteousness and truth are satisfied in one great act of love and peace in the man Jesus.  Jesus dying on the cross is the solution to preserving God’s character as perfect, and yet at the same time, making redemption available to mankind.

This is how much God loves us.  Jesus was without sin and absolutely righteous.  This is and was the truth about him at the time.  He became the perfect sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sin.  Yet, he also lives and invites us to enter into the eternal life that he has and shares with those who love him.

When you look at the world today, it is easy to think that everything is falling apart and that Jesus will never come back, or perhaps it was a fairy tale.  Yet, this is the wrong view.  God is patiently teaching humanity of His love and yet, the problems that come from rejecting Him.  Today, if you hear his voice, will you not believe on Jesus, the One who took your place under God’s wrath against your sin?

Let us worship the Lord Jesus!

Crossroads audio