Matthew chapter 7. Now the Lord
here is continuing speaking about the wide way, the wide gate,
about His warning to beware of false prophets in sheep's clothing. And we pick up here in verse
21. Not everyone that saith unto
me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he
that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." Now, you
notice here, he says, not everyone that saith, but he that doeth. The difference in entering into
the kingdom of heaven and not entering into the Kingdom of
Heaven has to do with being a doer of the Word and not a hearer
only. But there's a difference between
what the naturally religious man hears in God's Word and what
the believer hears. And so there's a difference between
what the naturally religious man does and teaches others to
do, and what the believer does and teaches others to do. Now
in his next few words, the Lord bears that out, verse 22. Many
will say to me in that day, in the day of the Lord, the day
of judgment, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name?
And in Thy name have cast out devils? And in Thy name done
many wonderful works? Now, these are moral, religious,
church-going, professing Christians. They said, Lord, Lord. They're
convinced that they've not been hearers only. They're convinced
that they've been doers in the name of the Lord. They say to
the Lord that they've preached in His name. They say to the
Lord that in His name they cast out devils. They say to the Lord
that in His name they did many wonderful works. And then after
they profess to the Lord what they've done in His name, the
Lord says, and then will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from Me, ye that work
iniquity. Notice here the Lord says, ye
that work iniquity. not ye that have worked iniquity,
ye that right now in your present testimony to me are working the
very same iniquity you worked and taught others to work. And
it's right here in these three words. Have we not. The testimony never was Christ. And even standing before the
Lord, it's not Christ, but we. We. And here's why. The Lord said, I never knew you. They did all in His name. They
did everything in His name. But because Christ never knew
them, they preached we instead of Christ. They went in His name. Went about
preaching and doing in His name. But because Christ never sent
them, they went of their own might and taught we instead of
Christ. When they taught others to be
doers and not hearers only, every word and every work was in His
name. They used the Bible, the Scriptures,
they used the They used His name. They spoke of grace. They spoke
of faith. They spoke of salvation by God's
Word. They spoke of those things. But
they were not preaching Christ. Their entire tenor of their ministry
was, have we not? Verse 24. He says, Therefore,
whosoever And we need to include these words, cometh unto me.
That's how Luke records it. Therefore, whosoever cometh unto
me, heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, and I will
liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock. I want to talk to you first of
all about the will of my Father. The will of my Father. In verse
21 he says, It is not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord,
that shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth
the will of my Father which is in heaven. Now, turn over to
John chapter 6. John chapter 6. I'm not going to have a lot of
scriptures, but I do have some I want you to turn to this morning.
John chapter 6. Now the will of the Father is
for all His children to come to Christ, to see Christ. And the Father will make them
all come to Christ, and see Christ, and believe Him. Now watch this.
John 6 verse 36. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me. Look down at verse 44. No man
can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.
And I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the
Prophets. And they shall be all, all that
the Father hath given him shall be all taught of God Every man
therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the father cometh
unto me Now it's possible to hear with the natural ear. Don't
you place there in John 6? Let me say this. It's possible
to hear with the natural ear It's possible possible to make
a profession It's possible to preach and to do and still not
be doing the will of the father It's impossible, though, to hear
and to be taught of the Father and not come to Christ. Without
God the Father teaching, no man can. But when God teaches, no
man can resist. Now, back there in verse 37, And him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. Now, he's casting out these folks
who were he's talking to but he says him that cometh to me
I will in no wise cast out for I came down from heaven not to
do mine own will but the will of him that sent me and this
is the father's will which hath sent me that of all which he
hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again
at the last day and this is the will of him that sent me that
every one which seeth the Son, but it doesn't stop there. He's
talking to some people that He said, you've seen Me. And many
have seen Him. Many have seen the doctrines. They take delight in the doctrines.
Many have seen Him in the Scriptures. And delight in seeing Him in
the types and shadows and those things. But still don't believe
Him. Still don't believe Him. But he that seeth me, seeth the
Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life, and I
will raise him up at the last day." Now, back there in Matthew
7.21. Hold your place in John. We'll
come back there. Matthew 7.21. So, entering into the kingdom
of heaven is not saying, Lord, Lord, but it's doing the will
of the Father which is in heaven. They had never come to Christ.
They had never seen the Son. And they had never believed on
Him. Alright, here's the second thing. Verse 23. In the middle of that verse,
He says, I never knew you. When the Father draws you to
Christ, when He draws the sinner to Christ, then Christ makes
Himself known in that sinner. When He makes Himself known in
a sinner, He makes the sinner to know His oneness with Christ. This word knew is not knowledge. I never knew you. It's not knowledge.
He knew them. He knew they weren't His. He
knew their heart. This word means oneness. the same oneness that Paul compared
to a husband and a wife in Ephesians 5.30. He said, We are members
of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. He said, For this
cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined
unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. Now this is a great mystery,
but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Now, just back
there to John, and this time go to John 10. Just how one does
Christ reveal that you are with Him when He makes Himself known
in you? Just how one does He make Himself
known? John 10, verse 14. He said, I am the Good Shepherd
and know There's the word. I'm the good shepherd and know
my sheep. Or my own. And am known of mine. So this thing is just as He knows
us, we know Him. This thing is a oneness. How
one? How one is the believer with
Christ. In what manner are we one? Look
at the next verse. As the Father knoweth me, even
so I know the Father. That's how I want. Look down
at verse 30. What's he mean by that? I and
Father are one. One. Now, Romans 8. The infinite oneness. Get this
now. I want you to get this. The infinite
oneness. love and delight that God has
with His Son is the infinite oneness, love, and delight that
God has with those that He created in His Son before He founded
the world. In Romans 8 29, I showed you
Thursday night, the word is speaking of of the honor and privilege
of Christ the firstborn. He's the only firstborn son. The only one that ever opened
the womb. Opened the womb. He did it. He's the firstborn
son. And everywhere you find firstborn mentioned, you find
inheritance mentioned. And you can look this up on your
own, but when the Lord sent Moses to Pharaoh, when Egypt was in
bondage, He said, let Israel, my son, my firstborn, go, and
my people that they may serve me. He's talking about his people.
But Christ he calls my firstborn. Why? Because they're one in Christ. All the honor and blessing and
privileges that go to the firstborn. Christ the firstborn. go to the
sons and daughters of Christ because they're one in Him. They're
union with Him. They're partakers of the inheritance
with Him. And so Paul says here in verse
28, we know that all things work together for good to them that
love God. That's what happens when he makes
this oneness known in a synod. You love Him now. He's always
loved those that He put in Christ, but He makes you to see Makes
you to love Him. To them who are the called according
to His purpose. Called what? Called sons. Sons of God. Watch this. For
whom He did foreknow. Whom He did make one before in
this intimate oneness with Himself and His Son. Who He did foreknow. Them He did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of His Son, His firstborn Son, that
He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Now when God calls
a sinner in time, it's not in order to make you a son at that
time, but because the Father made you a son before time. One with the Father and His Son
when He puts you in Christ, the adoption, is to let you in on
it. To let you know you've been one
with Him since before the world was made. Because ye are sons,
God has set forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. Now you're one. Now you've been
brought into this union. And when Christ knows you, He
makes you know that from everlasting, you've been one with the Father
and the Son. He said, He that eateth My flesh
and drinketh My blood, that's what you're going to do if He
makes Himself known in you. You're going to believe Him.
And He says, He that believeth in Me dwelleth in Me, and I in
Him. Oneness. Beloved, what manner,
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we
should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth
us not. The world doesn't have oneness
with us because the world knew Him not. It didn't have this
oneness with Him because He didn't make Himself known in them. So when God teaches you to come
to Christ, back in our text now, Matthew 7, when God teaches you
draws you to come to Christ, God the Father. And when Christ
makes you to know that your oneness, He abides in you, you in Him,
one with God the Father, God the Son, then there's but one
thing that shall surely happen. One thing. One thing. You will
hear Christ and you will do His saying. That's why He said, I
didn't come down to do my own will, but the will of Him that
sent me. When He makes Himself known in
you, He's going to make you obey Him. And when He sends you, you're
going to teach His sayings and not have we not. You teach Him. Verse 24, Therefore, whosoever
cometh to me, and heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them,
I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon
a rock, and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not." Because
the house wasn't dependent on itself to make itself stand.
The house was founded upon a rock. What are these sayings of Christ? They're what He's been teaching
us through this whole book. And I made it a point over the
last three or four lessons to go through every one of those
points with you each time. And I'm going to do it again.
I'm going to do it again. It's not burdensome for me. It's
needful for you. Here's the first thing. Plant
your entire house on Christ the solid rock. plant everything
on Him. He said in the very beginning,
think not that I came to destroy the law and the prophets, I came
not to destroy but to fulfill. Christ Himself is the perfection
of everything He's taught us in this Sermon on the Mount.
He is the righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees. He is. That righteousness that
exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees that you've got to have to enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven is not a thing, it's a person. It's a person. And He's that
person. We broke and we continue to break
everything that's written here. Everything He's taught us here.
But by His death, He paid every sin that we've broken here for
His children. He paid every one of them. This
is the reason, because we've broken them and we know that
He's paid for them. This is why you have, as a believer,
don't strive to have them, don't grow to have them, but from the
first day He makes you to know Him and He knows you, from that
first day, you have to be attitudes. It makes you to mourn because
you've broken these laws. You've broken His Word, but He's
paid it for you. It makes you to mourn. It makes
you to be meek. Because you know what you are
now. You didn't know what you were before. You hadn't heard
His Word and trembled at His sayings. Now you know. I can't
do this. I have to have somebody else
do it for me. It makes you hunger and thirst after righteousness. You want to do what's right.
But even more than that, you want to know Him that's right,
that's righteous. It makes you merciful. You know
what you are and you know what everybody else is now. It makes
you pure in heart. You want to be honest with folks
now. You've got no reason to lie to them anymore. You're not
trying to hide anything yourself and make them do something so
you can feel good about what they did, what you made them
do. Now you can just tell them the truth. It makes you a peacemaker. And this is one of the reasons
that the believers persecuted. But if God's drawn you and you've
come to Christ and you've heard Him, and you're going to do and
teach others to do, everything He's taught you right here. He's
taught you not to turn your back on Him and go back to your doing
and start trusting in something you've done, but to trust Him
alone and to teach others to trust Him alone. That's what
doing and teaching others to do. That's what's keeping every
one of these commandments, not breaking the least of them, and
teaching others to keep them. That's what it is. You trust
Him who did them, and you teach others to trust Him. Loving the Lord thy God with
all your heart, and being made one with Christ, and trusting
Jesus Christ his Son, that's the same thing. That's the same
thing. And if you are, then you're a
wise man that's built his house on a rock. That's the first thing. Here's the second thing. Whatsoever
you would that men would do to you, do also to them. This is
the end of the law and the prophets. This is love that he gives in
the heart. If we love as we would have men to love us, then don't
do anything. This is the summation of what
the Lord has taught us in the Sermon on the Mount. If you really
love men, if you've got the love of God in your heart, here's
going to be the proof of that love. You're not going to do
anything that even has the appearance of evil that you think might
hinder your brethren from seeing Christ and looking to you instead. Nothing. Nothing. Let all men
see. Let all men see. Remember He
said, let your light so shine that they may see your good works.
There is a way that the natural man hears that, and so there
is a way he does it and teaches it. But there is a way the believer
hears it, and there is a way he does it and teaches it. Here
is the light. He talked about being reconciled
to Him that has all against you. Let the world No. Let every man
know that there is much more peace in being reconciled to
Christ. In coming to them and just saying,
Oh, I don't want to be at fault. I don't want to be wrong. Are
you right? Reconciled to Christ is much
more peace. How do I show them that? Just
be reconciled to them that have ought against you. Let all men
see that your flesh is crucified with Christ by not being a divider
because of the lust of your flesh. That's what he talked about when
he talked about looking on a woman and adultery and fornication
and separation. That's all the lust. That's the
end of the lust of the flesh. It's division. Division. Are
you crucified with Christ? Do you live with Him because
Christ lives in you? Do you live by the faith of the
Son of God who loved you and gave Himself for you? And you've
been crucified. This flesh is crucified. Live
no longer after the flesh. Walk after the Spirit. Be honest
with sinners. Plain, straightforward, in the
truth of the Gospel. Yeah, yeah. No, no. Yes, that's
right. No, that's not it. Be truthful. Let all men see that you trust
God and that He saved you, not by
the strength of hand, but by Spirit How am I going to do that? When men want to smite you, when
men want to take you to the law, when men want to compel you,
don't resist them. I don't have any weapons to fight
you with. All I've got is this word of
grace to tell you. Let all men see in your dealings
with men that the grace of God that was given to you had no
respect whatsoever of your person. How do I do that? Treat your
believer and your unbeliever the same way. Treat the male
and female the same way. The rich and the poor the same
way. Those that despise you and hate you and those that love
you, treat them the same way. Don't have respect to one over
the other. Do none of your devotions to
God and to your brethren to attract sinners to you. Pray for them. Provide for them. Make intercession for them. Separate yourself from sin. But
don't do any of it to try to compel them or attract them or
make them go. Last time I said this, I said
two things would happen. I don't think I gave you but
one of them. One is they'll follow you and not Christ. But the second
one is this. You'll start following you and
not Christ. Because you'll like it. You'll like it. What you've
got to do. In everything seek preeminently
the kingdom of God and His righteousness and trust God to provide. Nothing is more unbecoming to
a believer than to be hoarding up treasures on earth and saving
things for a rainy day as if you don't trust the God who controls
the rainy day. Turn not back to that critical,
self-righteous flesh, but ask God to keep you from self-righteousness. Do you know yourself? We were
talking about this in the back a little while ago. Do you know
yourself? how just quick you become critical and how quick
you begin to say in your mind that person
ought not or they ought not do this or do that or whatever.
That's what we've got to be safe from. That person may be doing
something awful and terrible, but you've got to be safe from
being that critical judge of, you've got one lawgiver, that's
God, he's able to make him stand. Ask Him to help you stand, to
save you out of that, and lift up your brethren. That's what
God teaches us. If we trust Him, let's trust
Him. And then here's the third thing. The first thing is trust
God. Love God. Trust His Son. Believe His Son.
Here's the second thing. Love your brethren as yourselves.
Do unto them as you'd have them do unto you. Here's the third
thing. Enter into Christ the straight gate and continue in
Him with others who call on the Lord out of a pure heart and
purge yourself from false prophets, from the broad way, from everybody
that's promoting, have we not? Paul quotes our Lord here as
he writes to Timothy. And Paul's writing in 2 Timothy
2. And he's writing concerning Hymenaeus and some of those fellows
who had turned against him. And Timothy's young. When you're young and strong,
sometimes you have to battle more with that lust of the flesh
that knows, I could fix him. I could fix him. Paul says two
things to him. He says this. He's quoting the
Lord. The Lord taught Paul. Listen to this. Nevertheless,
the foundation of God standeth sure. The rock solid. Having
this seal, the Lord knoweth Them that are His. And when He makes
Himself known, they know Him. And let everyone that nameth
the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Depart from iniquity. What is it? In a great house
there's not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood
and of earth, some to honor, some to dishonor. If a man therefore
purge himself from these sorts of men, The Lord is saying, beware
of false prophets. Purge yourself from them. Beware
of the leaven of the Pharisee. Beware. A little leaven will
have you being critical. It will have you doing all the
things the Lord here said not to do. Just a little leaven.
Just a little promoting of your flesh. And He said, and the man
that does that will be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meat
for the Master's use, prepared unto every good work. And He
says also something else. You know that lust you have to
divide and conquer? That lust you have to take matters
into your own hands? That lust you have to turn and
rend a man that acts like that? He says, flee also youthful lusts,
but follow righteousness, faith, love, peace. And he says, and
do it with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
The Lord is your strength, and He is going to strengthen you
through your brethren. That is what He is going to do. So back
there in our text, He says, Verse 24, Whosoever heareth these sayings
of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which
built his house upon a rock, and the rain descended, and the
floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and
it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be
likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
and beat upon that house, and it fell. And great was the fall
of it." In a minute, Eric is going to
come, and Brother Jaime is going to sing. I'm going to put them
on the spot. We'll sing, On Christ the solid
rock I stand, On Christ the solid rock I stand, All other ground
is sinking sand.