Tuesday, February 21, 2012

John Stott's Sermon on the Mount Study Ch. 12 - Making the Choice of a Lifetime

The Danger of a Merely Verbal Profession (Matt 7:21-23)

How do the people Jesus is referencing here address Him?

The doubling of the address - "Lord, Lord" - is an OT Hebraism meaning an address of intimacy!

These people are addressing Jesus in the final day of judgement thinking that they are true believers and have an intimate relationship with Him!

In the opinion of R.C. Sproul, these are some of the scariest verses in all of Scripture (Luke 13:24-28 are same); I happen to agree with him!

Here's the dilemma: according to Paul (Rom 10:9-10), we must have a verbal confession and the verbal confession Jesus describes here appears to admirable.

Stott says, "What these people stress as they speak to Christ on judgement day is the name in which they have ministered....And yet everything is wrong because it is talk without much truth, profession without reality."

Again, we come back to a heart issue. This is not about judging others - we saw that "good" trees bear "good" fruit. We don't need to worry about others. Their true natures will be revealed in time; as we said last week, fruit takes time to ripen and it takes time to become rotten.

What Jesus wants us to look at is our own hearts; so, what is it in these verses that these people claim to have done?

They have ministered by: 1) casting out demons, 2) prophesied, and 3) done many wonders

- We can be vigilant servants (In the community)
- We could be faithful servants in the church (standing up here teaching)
- We could be always visiting widows and tending to orphans

All of these things without a regenerated heart is rubbish!

I Corinthians 13:1 - "Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal."

Jesus tells us that these people who come to him will be "many;" this may very well mean that some of the people we know today in churches all across this city could be among this group

Even worse, these people think they have an intimate relationship with Christ and yet Jesus says He will tell them "I never knew you."

This is all the more reason to guard our hearts and humble ourselves in reliance on Christ and not on our works

Foundations and the Storms that Will Come (Matt 7:24-28)

What is the challenge Christ gives us as He wraps-up the SOM?
- Be Hearers - how do we do this?
Be in worship hearing the word; read and study the Word; be engaged in fellowship - hearing Christ at all times
- Be Doers - how do we do this?
Be humbled by the Word, by Christ's love for us, and Do what He has asked us to to; and what is that? - exactly what we talked about earlier: be servants in the community, be servants in the church, and love and help others.

So what's the difference - we do these things not to get credit, to be seen, or to gain favor among men; but out of love for what Christ has already done for us

We want to complain about our blessings, judge others when they receive Christ's blessings, instead of just being satisfied with the grace we have been given - He has already done all of the work for us - we cannot earn anything; our works should be the outpouring of our gracious heart, not to earn anything

Lastly, we are given the perfect contrast between those who are actual doers of what Jesus has taught in SOM and those who are not

We know that storms will come - we know this from what Scripture tells us, and...we know this from our experiences, don't we?

Jesus is telling us the storms will come, so how do we combat the storms?

He is the foundation; Scripture tells us in Ephesians 2:19-21 - "Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, 20 and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, 21 in whom every building having been fitly framed together, grows into a holy sanctuary in the Lord"

If our lives are built upon Christ, His truth, His grace we can and will weather any storm that comes!

We see at the end of verse 27, that the fall of the house of those without Christ is total and final
What a great promise we have in God's grace and what peace we ought to have that He is the foundation of all things and the calm during the storm

Conclusion

As we wrap up this wonderful study, we are reminded in the last 2 verses that the people were amazed at the teachings of Christ and at His authority

Do we lose that amazement from time-to-time? We ought not to and that's probably why the storms come - to remind us of our dependence on Him and His grace which is nothing short of amazing

Dietrich Bonhoffer - "For all my loneliness, I was quite pleased with myself.  Then the Bible, and in particular the Sermon on the Mount, freed me from that.  Since then everything has changed.  I have felt this plainly, and so have other people about me.  It was a great liberation.  It became clear to me that the life of a servant of Jesus Christ must belong to the Church, and step by step it became plainer to me how far that must go."

The SOM is life changing and if we are indeed hearers and doers we will exhibit a Christian counter-culture. We have to live our lives in complete reliance on Christ and He will put us in the places, ministries, and touching the lives of the people He choses us to serve.

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