Kings Thanking the King: Sermon for Thanksgiving/Christ the King Sunday

“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1). That's how Psalm 137 opens. It's just nine verses long, but Psalm 137 is notoriously one of the harshest psalms in the entire Bible. Psalm 137 records the thoughts and feelings of the people of Jerusalem as they were taken far from their demolished homes by the Babylonians – dragged into captivity, exile, in a foreign and pagan land. It's a song of the oppressed, of the lowly and beaten down. The psalm has no real happiness. The people wonder how they can ever sing to God in a foreign and pagan land like this.

They feel caught in the crossfire between worldly powers, to whom they appear as grasshoppers in their eyes. It's like – did any of you ever see the classic Godzilla movies? King Kong vs. Godzilla, Mothra vs. Godzilla, and so on? The giant monsters struggle over Tokyo or some island village, but wherever it is, the people are like insignificant ants – they've got no hope to resist or even really be noticed in the chaos. That's how the exiles feel in Psalm 137. It's a dirge of sorrow and rage at the Babylonians' mistreatment of them. “O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be repaid, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!” (Psalm 137:8).

That's why it's remarkable to me how the Psalter is arranged. We know that, sometime years later, the book had to be edited by someone – all these psalms, or collections of psalms, brought together and organized in a meaningful and inspired way, grouped into five books mirroring the Five Books of Moses. But it's remarkable to me that, when the editor made the call what to put after Psalm 137, he didn't follow it by more laments. He didn't tack on a series of extra protest anthems, songs to march to with angry signs. He certainly could have. He could have made an extended sequence exploring the people's sadness, their grief, their disillusionment, their thirst for vengeance. But he didn't. Instead, he followed Psalm 137 with, you guessed it, Psalm 138 – and Psalm 138 is a song of thanksgiving.

Psalm 138 is a song that turns things around. It focuses in on the phrase, “the kings of the earth” (Psalm 138:4). And it asks some very good questions – some questions that are perfect for looking back on Babylon with some healthy perspective. You can look around at the world and see that it's run by exemplars of popularity and prosperity. When you turn on the TV, you see successful rich people – the elites – who flaunt their power or play-act any other role to move the story forward. We live in a world of superstar celebrities, of politicians, of larger-than-life princes, of mega- this and mega- that – bigger is always better. These are the idols of our culture, and of the globe. Even in the church, we're prone to turn superstar preachers into celebrities. And in our own neighborhoods, we measure ourselves against the ones who seem to have it all together – the highest models of the lifestyle we claim to value. 

That's the sort of world we live in – of superstars global, national, and local. And this psalm asks: “Now wait, who's the real royalty here?” In a desert of strongmen like Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Nero, and all the petty tyrants and corrupt politicoes who litter the landscape of the modern age, are these the “kings of the earth” for real – the winners of the human race we're running?

The truth is, all of us go through times when we feel a lot like Psalm 137, when we can identify with those feelings, as chilling as they might be. The people around us seem successful, happy, prosperous, and powerful. And you feel anything but. You measure yourself beside your neighbor's happiness and success, and you feel hard-pressed on every side. Maybe you're lagging behind their upward mobility. Maybe you're watching everyone else at work get promoted, and there you are, left behind. Maybe your neighbors can afford shiny new cars, flat-screen TVs, vacations, and all you can do is enviously mutter, “Must be nice...,” while straining your brain to figure out how to pay the bills that just keep piling up. 

 Maybe your health is poor, and you wonder why you can't be like everyone else, happy and healthy. Maybe you've suffered a tragic loss – a spouse, a parent, a child – and you wonder how you could ever sing the songs of Zion again, because this new reality seems like a dark and foreign land, far from the Jerusalem you used to know. Whatever the reason, you feel hard-pressed on every side. And you look around, and all you can see is how low or insignificant you feel next to these so-called “kings of the earth.”

Several centuries ago, in the tiny English village of Scrooby along the River Ryton in Nottinghamshire – a village no bigger than our own White Horse – there lived a little cluster of people who knew how that felt. In the religious and political world of their day – the two couldn't be separated, nor can they now – the Puritans wanted to reform the Church of England. But some, like a little band of believers in Scrooby, thought the Puritans didn't go far enough. They were Separatists. They illegally established churches of their own, apart from the Anglican establishment. Against church and society, they gathered in the local postmaster's house, knowing that if they were discovered, they would be punished – but they had to do what they thought was right.

Sure enough, many of their number were soon under surveillance by the authorities; others were sent to prison; still others, fearful of the courts, went into hiding. It was no way to live. So they made the decision to leave England for the Low Countries, the Netherlands. They'd heard that it was a tolerant place, a land with freedom of religion, and several groups of English Separatists had already gathered there, away from the prying eyes and iron grasp of King James. It took a while to sneak passage on the ships – the Scrooby churchgoers were betrayed frequently. But they made it to Amsterdam and then to Leiden. Separatists from all over England joined them over the years that followed.

But in the Netherlands, it was hard to be English, and it was hard to earn a living. They were poor, not prosperous, in their self-imposed exile. And they thought about the future – they worried about their children losing touch with their heritage, their language, or worst of all, their faith and values – because the city was a difficult place to raise their children, with so many bad examples all around. Temptation was too much, too strong. Persecution, they'd escaped; but they knew that the cares of the world and the comforts of the culture were no less dangerous.

Through plenty of prayer, the majority of their church decided to cross the ocean in hopes of finding somewhere better. Negotiating with agents of the Virginia Company, promising to obey King James as far as God's word allowed, they received permission. Yet again, they ran afoul of money-grubbing merchant like Thomas Weston who made them a bad deal – all their houses in the New World would be company property, and they'd work six days a week for the company, and they had to take some less savory characters with them on the trip. And when the Speedwell, the boat they purchased, was sabotaged by its own captain, they had to cram onto the one that Weston chartered for them: the Mayflower.

The sabotage delayed their departure until the end of summer – September 6, 1620. Over a hundred people spent nearly two months in an area barely bigger than a school bus. But only two died, one a servant and the other a sailor, by the time they spotted land. Landing parties searched for weeks to find a place to settle, and they were gravely disappointed by a climate colder than they expected. One of the landing parties found a tall hill near a shallow harbor, and the land near it was suspiciously clear for planting – because it had been a Patuxet village wiped out a few years earlier by an epidemic.

On December 23, those able to work waded a mile through the harbor to reach shore, and soon found out what a nasty thing pneumonia is. In just weeks, over half the passengers were dead; all but four families lost at least one member; and of the eighteen married couples on board, only three remained intact. By spring, provisions were running out, their nets were too weak to catch the local fish, the birds migrated away, they'd brought the wrong seeds – everything was falling apart. 

All that saved them was the discovery of dried corn stored underground by the natives – and the arrival of Tisquantum, a former villager there who'd been kidnapped by the English, sold into slavery in Spain, escaped, and returned to his former village only to find his village wiped off the map. He taught these newcomers how to catch eels and how to best fertilize the cornfields, and he interpreted on their behalf with the nearby Wampanoag.

And the rest of the story, we know – or at least think we do. The truth is a lot messier than we learned in school – Squanto was less trustworthy, there was plenty of hostility on both sides, the famous meal wasn't really a thanksgiving celebration, we probably wouldn't have liked the menu, we would have missed utensils and tables, over half the settlers left by then were teenagers or kids, and the natives had a habit of showing up uninvited. 

 But one thing does hold true: the settlers kept faith. They refused to believe the world's estimation of them. They refused to accept that King James and his archbishops, or Thomas Weston and his financial backers, were ultimately the “kings of the earth.” No, the settlers – although they admitted they were pilgrims in this world – believed in Psalm 138. “For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar” (Psalm 138:6).

What the Pilgrim Fathers knew, for all their virtues and all their vices, was that the true “kings of the earth” aren't the successful, the happy, the prosperous, or the powerful. That's not what it means. The real royalty are those who belong to Christ the King, and who follow him as pilgrims in the land. The real royalty live for Jesus, whether in the triumph of life or the fellowship of his sufferings. The real royalty can sing his praise right in the face of any of Babylon's gods or devils: “I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise” (Psalm 138:1). In the face of life and death, wealth and poverty, health and sickness, victory or defeat, the real royalty sings the Lord's praise and gives him thanks with a whole heart.

The real royalty turns their focus again and again toward Christ's holy temple. “I bow down toward your holy temple,” says the psalmist, “and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness” (Psalm 138:2a). And Christ's holy temple is the church – found manifest in every and all local gatherings of disciples who come together to give thanks to his name. The real royalty focuses there, attends there, so as to take part in what Christ's holy temple is all about: worship and witness.

The real royalty value the scriptures, the living record of what God says to his people: “For you have exalted above all things your name and your word” (Psalm 138:2b). And the real royalty are people who navigate life, not by might or by power, but by prayer: “On the day I called, you answered me; my strength of soul you increased” (Psalm 138:3). That's the outer shape of their faithfulness to the King – to King Jesus, the high and lofty LORD who identifies with the lowly, whose love endures forever and whose glory is beyond compare (Psalm 138:5-8).

The truth is that Christ is King – and not just King, but “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Revelation 19:16). That's what we've come together to celebrate today. Today is Christ the King Sunday. But the kingship of Christ doesn't end there. By being the bride of Christ, the church shares in what he is. The bride of a priest is made priestly; the bride of a king is made royal. And so the members of the church, the faithful disciples, become “a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:10). That means us. It means each one of you, if you belong to Jesus. And we say to him: “All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks, O LORD, for they have heard the words of your mouth, and they shall sing of the ways of the LORD, for great is the glory of the LORD” (Psalm 138:4-5).

So whether your time in Babylon is pleasant or painful, whether the winter is cruel or the harvest is bountiful, focus on that blessing. It's the one blessing that no circumstance of life can ever take from you. No matter what cancer fills your body, no matter what surgery you need, no matter what chronic pain you suffer, no matter what you career, no matter the size of your bank account or your house, no matter how much is on the Thanksgiving table, no matter who lives in the White House or who gets their own show or who makes the headlines or who marches in the streets, no matter what trouble you walk in the midst of or what enemies have wrath against you, nothing can separate you from the love of the King (cf. Psalm 138:7).

And nothing can separate you from who you are in him. This side of your redemption, you are the real royalty. You are the heirs of his promises: “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me” (Psalm 138:8), is something all of us can say with perfect assurance. Nothing can stop that. Nothing can take that away. Everything else is window-dressing. Everything else is a bonus. Give thanks to the Lord with a whole and grateful heart. “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Amen.

Back to the Mount; or, Commissioned Church: Sermon on Matthew 28:16-20

Sometimes, you have to go back where you started. For the last fifteen weeks, we've studied the Greatest Sermon Ever Preached, the Sermon on the Mount – Jesus' key instructions for the crowd and disciples to know what his plan for a new people of God looked like. It wasn't what the Pharisees offered, it wasn't what the Zealots longed for. It was radical, and it invited everyone, even villagers in Galilee. 

 And when the sermon ended, the disciples who followed Jesus probably thought they were done with the mount. It was behind them; they moved on. But it stuck with them. For three years, they followed Jesus. They heard him use stories to illustrate his message about God's kingdom. They watched Jesus as he lived out every detail he'd spoken. They saw miracles that boggled their minds again and again; they watched the powers of darkness overthrown. And they wondered, “Is this what the Sermon on the Mount makes possible?”

But then Jesus started talking more darkly. He told stories that ended with injustice, bloodshed, murder. He talked about us marching toward death, carrying heavy crosses to be put down like criminals. And he began looking in the direction of Jerusalem. You couldn't distract him. He seemed determined to be there. Maybe, they thought, a different look passed over his face. Peter tried to talk him out of it, tried to get him to stop all this talk. He got shot down pretty quick, though. But through it all, Jesus never wavered from what he'd said in that sermon.

And then it happened. A meal after dark. A march into an olive grove for a private retreat. It's getting late; everyone's falling asleep – but not Jesus. And then the sound of footsteps. The flickering shine of torches through the trees. Soldiers come. Jesus surrenders. Everyone runs. The next hours are a blur. And his disciples can only watch in terror and heartbreak, most from a safe distance, as the nails go through his shredded flesh, as the cross is hoisted high under the brutal noonday sun, as the crowd mocks him for hours while he gasps for breath – and finally stops. The Teacher is dead, dying while hanging on a tree, which the Law of Moses called the curse of God (Deuteronomy 21:23; cf. Galatians 3:13).

After the crucifixion, the disciples were disheartened. The disciples were disillusioned. Put yourself in their heads; eavesdrop on that inner monologue. They've invested the last three years in this teacher. But now he's dead. And they're still thinking a dead messiah is no messiah. If he wasn't real, if he wasn't legit, what good is his teaching? How can someone who dies under God's curse tell us anything about what kind of life God blesses? What good is the Sermon on the Mount? That's not practical. It's not useful. Because Jesus lived that way, and living that way is what got Jesus killed – for nothing. Or so they might be tempted to think.

Afraid for their lives, they hunker down in Jerusalem's nooks and crannies. But then they hear strange news from that hysterical Mary Magdalene – never the most stable person, they must think in retrospect – after all, she used to host not one but seven demons, and who knows what that did to her brain? But still, they sneak over to the tomb, and that little limestone shelf carved into the rock is topped by linen wrappings – and no body. What a confusing turn of events. And in all her babbling, Mary makes one thing clear: if you want to unravel this mystery, if you want to somehow see Jesus again, you need to go back to Galilee. And not just anywhere. He set a rendezvous point: back to the mount (Matthew 28:16).

So that's where they go, this little band of eleven beleaguered disciples. This is the only resurrection appearance in Matthew's Gospel; that's how he chooses to narrate it. So there they go, a band of disciples no more numerous than we here this morning. Up the mountain they go. Was he already visibly standing there, I wonder? Did they spy him from a distance and race up the mountain? Or did they wander back to that spot and wait, feeling profoundly silly as they just stood around? But in either case, the mystery unfolded. Because back on the mount, they saw Jesus, risen again from death, towering above them on the mountain, probably from a distance.

And seeing that, how could they not worship him? How could they not be filled with awe and amazement, and just bow down and surrender? But Matthew records a weird little detail: “When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted” (Matthew 28:17). Some doubted? He's telling the resurrection story, and he includes doubt? But that's what happened: some were doubting.  Some wondered if that figure could really be him, if their eyes weren't playing tricks on them. Some wondered if Jesus could really be alive. They wondered if he could really be everything he says he is – the Promised One, the Son of God, the Lord in person. 

They doubted. Does Jesus really open his Father's family to us? Does Jesus really interpret the Law with authority? Does he really give the blessed life? Can the Father be as near as Jesus says? And is Jesus' kingdom really worth going through the narrow gate and walking that hard road that leads through the cross? Some in this little crowd have their doubts – and maybe we've had a share of our own, too.

And so Jesus approaches them. He reveals himself by coming near to them, collapsing the distance. They see him up close, they handle him, his identity isn't in doubt. He makes clear to them: the answer to all the above is yes. And what does he say? “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). 

Is that not amazing? Is that not awesome? If Jesus has received all authority in heaven and on earth, the kingdom has to be on its way! And this kingdom covers everything! If Jesus has all authority in heaven, then Jesus and Jesus alone sets the terms of the blessed life – he decides, he decrees what's good. He is the only way; he is the boss, he's in charge, he's heaven's Lord. He gives the true Law, he breathes the true Spirit.

And if all authority on earth is his, that means we can't stuff Jesus in a little box we call 'church' or 'religion' or 'Sunday morning.' It means that in everything we do, we are answerable to Jesus. In everything that anybody does, they're answerable to Jesus! Nothing is exempt. His throne is over all worldly powers. His throne is over all politicians, all campaigns, all governments – they all answer to him. Jesus raises up and casts down at his pleasure and in his timing; he is “the Most High [who] rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will” (Daniel 4:32).

We sit here this morning, and we're in the midst of one of the stranger transitions of power most of us have ever seen – it's been a bizarre year and a bizarre election. And with the results unveiled this week, some of our neighbors are gleeful and celebrating; some of our neighbors are cautious and uncertain; some of our neighbors are apathetic or resigned; and some of our neighbors are disgruntled or upset or angry or even frightened at what might come next. I've got family members, all decent and upstanding Americans, at both extremes. Some of our neighbors have reason to celebrate; some have reason to be cautious; and some, like the wonderful neighbors I met when I visited a local mosque two days ago, feel fair reason to be concerned. 

Some of us may fall into one or more of those camps: gleeful, cautious, resigned, upset, fearful. We in this sanctuary may run that same range. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep; live in harmony with one another” (Romans 12:15-16). But never forget: Jesus has authority to raise up and cast down. And this same Jesus will lead us through the next four years. But he asks us to walk in faith (and not fear), to hold on to hope (and not despair), and to reach out to all our neighbors in love (and not judgment). Because all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so back on the mount, two thousand years ago, Jesus authorizes his disciples, his little fledgling church, to help wield that authority in heaven and on earth. It's true: he shares that authority with them, with us. That's why he brought us together in the first place. It's why he called us back to the mount. He wanted to give them, give us, a commission. A charge to keep we have. There are veterans among us this morning, those who served in this nation's armed forces – and veterans know, maybe better than anyone else in the world, what it means to be commissioned, to be given marching orders from a commanding officer who has the authority to give them. That's what we have here this morning: our final marching orders for our whole earthly deployment.

So what are Jesus' marching orders? First, they involve going. He takes almost for granted that we will go out into the world. We won't stay cloistered in our homes. We won't build a compound to keep the world at bay. We won't create a bubble of Christian subculture to insulate ourselves. (...Uh, oops.) No, no, we'll go out into society. We'll mingle with and build relationships with people who aren't like us, whether we go near or whether we go far. And while we do that, Commander Jesus' orders are to reach and train all nations, all groups of people.

That's what he says: “Disciple all nations” (Matthew 28:19a). Train America. Train Russia. Train Japan and Saudi Arabia, train Nigeria and Syria, train all nations, and don't leave any out. Go out and train Jews and pagan Gentiles. Go out and train Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims and atheists and, yes, longtime churchgoers, too. Train veterans and civilians and draft-dodgers, train old and young, train rich and poor, train white collar and blue collar, train men and women, train country bumpkins and city slickers and small-town folk and suburban soccer moms, train Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians and independents – train all of them, because we all need discipleship, and we all need each other in Christ Jesus. Politicians may focus on courting this or that special interest group, this or that identity bloc, to the exclusion of others. But not Jesus. He wants everyone, and his message is the same for everyone. None are exempt from Jesus' authority. None are beneath the good news, and none are above the good news.

And how does Jesus want us to do it? How do we do it? Jesus tells us, first of all, we do it by “baptizing them” (Matthew 28:19b). The disciples knew by now what baptism meant. It means that we show people that Jesus is the Gate, and we show them that you enter by faith, and we take them by the hand and lead them through the Gate. It means we introduce them to his death and resurrection – because that's what baptism is. Baptism requires repentance, decisively turning your back on your old life, your old identity; it means dying to self. Baptism is following Jesus through death, being buried with him, and emerging clean into life again. So we do that, we lead people through Jesus' death and resurrection by faith, which cleans them of their sins and opens wide forgiveness.

And we do it “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19c). One name of “God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.” Because we baptize by authority of, and into the life of, the whole God. And really, what does the doctrine of the Trinity tell us? It tells us that God's inner life is like a community – it's a fellowship of love, shown by the Father to the Son, by the Son to the Spirit, by the Spirit back to Father and Son, from and to all eternity. To be baptized into Christ is to be brought into that eternal fellowship of love. And on earth, that fellowship, that community, is called the church. That's just what the church is: the earthly extension of the loving oneness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There's no such thing as being saved alone, apart from the church and the one faith she confesses. We're baptized by one name into one body, and we travel as one. In the early church, being an 'unchurched Christian' wasn't considered an equally good choice; Paul referred to exclusion from the church's worship and fellowship together as “being handed over to Satan” (1 Corinthians 5:5; cf. 1 Timothy 1:20). It's sad when our brothers and sisters opt by choice to embrace a life the apostles imposed as the worst punishment; that's not how it's meant to be. We are designed and meant to live as one body, not just in theory but in practice. So when we baptize people, we introduce them to the church's fellowship. We're stronger together.

And then, as they share in the faith and the fellowship, we carry out our commission by “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20a). And the word 'observe' here means to 'keep intact,' to safeguard, to practice as one entire lifestyle. And what does Jesus mean by what he's commanded us? Well, where did he ask the disciples to meet him? Back on the mount! Everything we've covered in the last fifteen weeks, everything we unpacked from the Sermon on the Mount – that is the cornerstone of what Jesus tells us to teach people.

We lead people to faith. We help them become new like little children. We welcome them into the Father's big family. And we show them how the family lives. Our customs, our family tradition, is the sermon's message. The Sermon on the Mount just is how God's family lives – how we live when we're behaving like his children. It's the lifestyle, not by which, but for which we're born again. This is what we're training all nations, all kinds of people, to do. At least, that's what our marching orders tell us.

It can be intimidating to live that way. I mean, Jesus modeled it for us, and he got whipped, beaten, spat on, and nailed to a cross. That fear, or plenty of other fears, or plenty of other desires, can lead us astray to alternative lifestyles – anything that doesn't match what the Sermon said. But Jesus doesn't want us to surrender to those fears or those desires. So he closes our marching orders with one last promise: “And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b).

What a promise! Jesus is always with us – he always has been, he always will be. As long as this age lasts, as long as we're in a world where the Sermon on the Mount isn't how everybody always acts, Jesus is with us. He is with us in times of war and in times of peace. He is with us in times of sickness and times of health. He is with us in times of sorrow and times of rejoicing. He's with us no matter where we go, whether he sends us somewhere safe and comfy or somewhere dangerous and harsh. He's with us no matter who sits on any court, no matter who lives in any palace, no matter who writes the laws. He's with us no matter what happens or what comes our way. Because he has commissioned us with our marching orders, and he's in it with us. Always and forever, he's with us – are we with him?

Throughout our history, the church has adopted so many pet projects. There are so many little commissions that we've given each other or given ourselves:

• We've commissioned ourselves with church growth, just getting people in the door. 
• We've commissioned ourselves with institutional maintenance and fiscal responsibilities. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to be traditional or contemporary, to sing hymns or have a rock band, to waft incense or fire up the fog machine. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to be seeker-sensitive or follow all the latest trends – or the oldest trends, just like granddad used to do it. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to be powerful and influential, to be a respected keystone of the community, to speak loud and proud. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to affirm and include indiscriminately or to reject and exclude zealously.
• We've commissioned ourselves to have power and prestige. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to pursue personal happiness. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to quest after wealth, success, popularity, and security. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to climb the ladder. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to enjoy 'religion' as part of a balanced diet of life, or as a fine hobby for those who like that kind of thing. 
• We've commissioned ourselves to advance some political party's agenda, some social program, or some electoral candidate's defense.

And in all these little self-made commissions, we've run the risk of being sidetracked, becoming entangled with what Paul called “civilian affairs.” But that's not what soldiers do. Good soldiers aim to please the one who enlisted them (2 Timothy 2:4). They obey their CO. They follow their orders. They carry out their charge, their commission. And we are the commissioned officers of the Resurrection and the Life. 

So what he actually said, his last words on the mount – that's the commission that really matters. It's the one Jesus really gave us. It's our calling, the one that completes everything he said on the mount before. The church Jesus died and rose to make must live as a commissioned church. We carry the good news – the best news ever – and we need to share this road and the life it brings. So come on, church: let's make our commission great again, to the Father's glory. Amen.

Complete Church: Sermon on Matthew 7:24-29

And here we are – at the close of the Greatest Sermon Ever Preached – and if we've been receiving it and putting it into practice, our lives and our life as a church can never, never, never be the same.

• Jesus has been throwing his arms open wide to the outcasts, the broken, the poor, the meek, the humble, the unsatisfied and hurting, to become children of his Father and citizens of his kingdom – a new Israel, hearing a new Moses give a new word on a new mountain, becoming a kingdom-ready church. This is the blessed life (Matthew 5:1-12).
• Jesus has been shaping us as a salty church, a shiny church – as children of God the Father, with hearts washed clean and with his Spirit in us, we flavor and brighten the world with Jesus' unique savor and Jesus' special glow (Matthew 5:13-16).
• As the greater Moses, Jesus has been opening up the Law – not canceling it out, but showing us how the Spirit leads us deeper into God's heart and leads us to love and life faster and more surely than the Law ever did – and only that Spirit gives righteousness enough for the kingdom (Matthew 5:17-20).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a conciliatory church – not only don't we commit murder or do harm to others, but we let the Spirit cure us of unrighteous anger, and we live in radical peace instead, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 5:21-26).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a chaste church – not only don't we commit adultery, but we let the Spirit cure us of lust, and we live in radical purity instead, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 5:27-30).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a contented church – instead of divorce, we do all we can to live by our commitments in marriage or in pure singleness, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 5:31-32).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a candid church – we have no need to make oaths or promises, but we let the Spirit cure us of deceit and manipulation, and we live in radical honesty instead, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 5:33-37).
• Jesus has been calling us to be what some would call a crazy church – instead of retaliation, we let the Spirit give us God's heart, and we live by radical forgiveness and radical love for our nearest neighbor and our furthest enemy, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 5:38-48).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a covert church – instead of hypocritically seeking human praise, we avoid temptations to spiritual pride and let the Spirit turn our focus to heavenly praise from God; we live in humility and anonymous good works, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 6:1-18).
• Jesus has been training us in prayer, to learn how to talk with our Father about what really matters, to his glory (Matthew 6:9-13).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a celestial church – instead of focusing on or relying on earthly treasures or wealth or property, which is so easily lost or destroyed, we let the Spirit free us from the idol of security and prompt us to invest in heavenly treasures that last eternally, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 6:19-24).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a carefree church – instead of living by anxiety over the necessities of this earthly life, we let the Spirit free us from the idol of security and lead us to seek the kingdom first, trusting the Father to supply our needs, to his glory (Matthew 6:25-34).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a clear-eyed church – instead of hypocritically setting ourselves up as judges, we let the Spirit draw our attention to our own sins, to deal with them and then to help others as equals so far as they'll let us, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 7:1-6).
• Jesus has been calling us to be a craving church – instead of contenting ourselves with a mediocre life and mediocre pleasures, we let the Spirit fill us with true hunger and thirst for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and we cry out ceaselessly and confidently in prayer, to the glory of God our Father (Matthew 7:7-11).
• Jesus has been showing us that the only hope for life is to fulfill the Law through love – loving God with all we have, and loving our neighbors and enemies like we love our own selves, even to the point of treating them as we see ourselves treated in God's kingdom (Matthew 7:12; cf. 22:37-40).
• Jesus has been calling us, finally, to be a critical church – instead of following just any teacher, we let the Spirit train us to examine teachings and inspect fruit, so that we stay on the hard and narrow road that leads to life, not the easy and broad road that leads elsewhere.

Because Jesus, in all his teaching, has invited us, commanded us, to be this kind of church; he came to create no other. And there are really only two options – the narrow gate versus the wide gate; the hard road versus the easy road; heeding true prophets like Christ, his apostles, and his faithful undershepherds, versus false prophets like so many teachers and leaders today; being Christ's sheep versus Satan's goats and wolves; basing our plea on faith and fruit, versus anchoring our credentials on our gifts and achievements (Matthew 7:13-23).

And now Jesus tells us this is foundational – literally! He invites the crowd to picture a scene – and it's not hard for them, because they've all done it. “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:24-27).

For a villager in Galilee, it was hardly unheard-of to build their own house. They wanted to build as close as they could, usually, to the riverbed, so that when rain did come, it would supply them and their crops with water – that only makes sense. But the rain came with peril, as Jesus points out. So it matters how you build. Houses tended to be built during the summer, and the trouble was, at first glance, it might not be easy to tell what was firm rock and what was just hardened clay.

To get down to the rock during summer, you had to dig. You will get there – there's always rock under the soil, maybe an inch down on the hilltop, maybe ten feet down in the valley – but you have to dig. And the clay is very hard. The builder spends days, weeks, toiling under the hot sun if he wants to get to the rock. It's backbreaking work – you know what that's like. Galilee had no backhoes. This is manual labor, and it's exhausting, sweaty, perilous work. You almost can't blame the foolish builder for wanting to stop digging – for rationalizing that the clay is sturdy enough. Just build it, already! Or so he thinks, if he's foolish. So he thinks, if he lets the sweat and the sun anchor his mind too much in the here-and-now, and not enough in the more important there-and-then.

It won't always be summer. Winter is coming. For Galilee, that's the rainy season. Not a good time to build, but a very good time to have built – if what's built is built to last. As summer draws to a close, you may not be able to see a difference between the wise man's house and the foolish man's house. They both look fine. Both builders are quite satisfied. But not for long. The rainy season begins. A hard storm comes. It gushes through the river bed. The water level rises and soaks through the ground. 

The rock stays firm – that's what rocks do. But the rest of the ground gets soft – that's what clay does. Beneath the foolish man's house, the clay softens and shifts. And given that the walls are made from uncut stones, with mud for mortar, some start popping out of the shifting walls. And the wind beats on the house, and the holes widen, and the foolish man's house collapses – and he either dies in it, or gets swept away in the flood. The wise man may get a bit wet, but his house is on the rock. His foundation doesn't shift. His walls stay firm. He keeps a roof over his head. He lives to see another sunrise.

When the storm is raging, even the foolish man wishes he'd dug deeper in the summer, even under the hot sun, no matter how hard it had been. In the storm, it's obvious. But wisdom is planning ahead for a storm you may not yet see. Wisdom is planning now for the storm by following Jesus and his words. And Jesus isn't saying his words are easy to follow. They may be backbreaking labor for us. But we all have to build a home somewhere, and it's wiser to do it on him and his teaching with difficulty than anywhere else with ease – because what's built on him is built to survive the storm.

One thing that jumps out to me is how audacious this is to say. When Jesus says “these words of mine,” he puts the emphasis squarely on 'mine.' There's no distance between Jesus and this message. You cannot accept the teaching without accepting the Teacher, and you cannot respect the Teacher without accepting and following the teaching. 

Throughout history, many have tried to do just that. Some people have tried to say that they like the Sermon on the Mount, they think it's the high point of ethics, it's a wonderful code of living – but they don't see how it centers on Jesus. This message is wisdom for disciples. The Sermon on the Mount would be nonsense if Jesus were not who he says he is. It makes sense only because Jesus is the Son of God sent to die on the cross and rise again to open the gates of God's kingdom and invite sinners to repent, believe, and join the Father's family.

The Sermon on the Mount is explicitly Christian truth. And it depends entirely on who Jesus is. That's what makes it so audacious. This parable – there was another parable a lot like it, told by a rabbi born a generation or so later named Elisha ben Abuyah. And Rabbi Elisha told a story a lot like this. He said that a person who studies God's word, the Law, and then does the good works in it, is like a person who builds with stone first and then bricks, so that even when a flood comes, it stays standing. But a person who studies God's word, the Law, and doesn't do the good works found there, is like a person who builds with clay bricks first and then stones on top: “even when a little water gathers,” he said, “it overthrows them immediately” (Avot de Rabbi Nathan 24A). What Rabbi Elisha said about God's word, Jesus insists applies equally to his own words in this Sermon – he's putting them on par with anything Israel ever heard from God.

This is not a pretty message from a nice teacher. This is not a list of helpful suggestions. This is a message from a man who ranked his words equal with God's – and the only way that isn't lunacy or blasphemy is if Jesus really is the Son of God, the Word made flesh. 

He is inseparable from his teaching, no matter how often we try to divorce Jesus as Savior and Redeemer from Jesus as Lord and Teacher. You can't drive a wedge between him and what he says – you can't really practice his teaching without receiving his saving grace, and you can't look to him as Savior without committing yourself to his teaching. His identity, his teaching – it's all him, and he is the Rock. He is the foundation stone the Father laid for us in Zion, and whoever believes and builds on him will not be shaken in the storm (Isaiah 28:16).

We cannot claim to be building on the Rock when we divorce his person and his teaching, whichever one it is we claim to be clinging to. Jesus is who he says he is. And the difference between wisdom and foolishness, between survival and destruction, between life and death, comes down to this Man and these words of his. We cannot afford to build on any other ground. Nothing else is safe. Christ alone, when all else is sinking – that is solid ground. 

We dare not put our trust in princes – in politicians of any party, of celebrities of any fame – or in our might or power. Salvation's found in none of them (Psalm 146:3; Zechariah 4:6). We dare not follow any guru, we dare not subscribe to any philosophy, we dare not join any faction – only build upon Christ the Solid Rock. A new covenant with God through Christ is the only hope, and anything else is a “covenant with death” (Isaiah 28:15, 18). All other ground is sinking sand.

Sometimes, we're tempted to be half-Christian. We want to believe in Jesus, but we don't want to believe Jesus. Or we like what he says on one thing, but we don't like what he says on another. 

Maybe we find it easy to obey what he says about adultery and divorce, but we think we're exempt from what he says about not storing up treasure on earth, or about not judging others, or about loving those who hate us. 

Maybe we can handle loving our enemies, but we think examining teachings or inspecting fruit is just beyond our reach. 

Maybe we practice what he says on prayer, but when he tells us to let our yes be yes and our no be no, we see no problem with a cherry-picking the facts. 

Or maybe it's prayer we don't want to do, or maybe we want to cling to our lust, our anger, our resentment, our manipulation, our judgmentalism, our wealth, our property, our security blanket, our so-called 'rights,' our lifestyle, our idols. 

Or maybe we do try to follow what he says, until he tells us to gather together in his name – because it's just so early, we say. 

In so many ways, we're tempted to be half-Christian. We want to build some parts of our life on the rock, but other parts of our life on the sandy ground around it. We like to split the difference.

In a Jerusalem suburb twenty-five years ago – August 28 was the date – there was an apartment building that suddenly tilted to the west, without even a little warning. Twenty-eight families had to be evacuated from their homes. And when geotechnical consultants investigated the cause of failure for this fine model of modern engineering, do you know what the report said? The southeastern corner was built on the rock – on limestone – but the rest of the building was built on clay and gravel. So when the sewage pipes started leaking, the clay grew soft, the load shifted, the foundation columns “failed catastrophically” – and then, worst of all, lawyers had to get involved!

The serious point, though, is that the whole problem was caused by building only partly on the rock, and resting partly on mere clay. A corner of the building was well-founded, but it was only a corner; and, sooner or later, the unequal parts couldn't stay standing tall together. Ask yourself: Is your life like that? Is a part of it on the rock, but not all of it? If so, you need to shift to one foundation, just one, just the Rock, just Jesus and what he's done and what he's said.

It isn't enough to look at the rock. It isn't enough to appreciate the qualities of the rock. It isn't enough to understand the rock's mineral composition. It isn't even enough to stand on or over the rock. Jesus is talking about building on the rock – founding your home there, deep down. You need to rely on the rock in practice. It isn't enough to read about Jesus. It isn't enough to like Jesus. It isn't enough to study theology and be able to somehow explain things about Jesus. It isn't enough to visit Jesus in times of need, or to hear him on Sunday and do our own thing on Monday. It isn't enough to call him “Lord, Lord,” without knowing and loving him and bearing his fruit. A construction project has to begin.

See, this crowd that day in Galilee, gathered on the mountain slope beneath where Jesus was sitting – they had two real options how to respond to this sermon. They could do what we often do. They could go up and shake Jesus' hand and say, “Good sermon,” and then go back to life as usual – not really think about it, not listen to it, not let it up-end their nice village lives. I've been there; I've heard plenty of sermons and reacted just that way, same as any of us. Jesus is warning us that doing that now, with this power and truth, is not going deep enough, not getting to the steady rock. 

We cannot afford to passively hear and not actively respond. We cannot afford to let the message fly in one ear and out the other. We cannot even afford to take notes, stick 'em in a binder, and move on. We must build on it. We must take practical action to put it into practice, all of it, through the Spirit Jesus breathes into us here.

And maybe you'll ask, “But why? Why is it so important to be built on the rock?” You probably aren't asking that, actually – at least, I hope you already know the answer. But some of your neighbors might not. Some of your neighbors, and yes, maybe some of us, act as though it doesn't matter what the foundation looks like, as long as the rest of the architecture is pretty. When the skies are sunny and the air is calm, all those practical questions don't seem important to us. 

The problem is, the skies ain't always sunny. The air ain't always calm. There are storms in this life. If this year has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that. This building, the one we're in right now, had to weather a very literal storm in February, and our lives have been rocked by turmoil ever since. There are storms in this life, and if our foundation is shallow, all the shelter we build is at risk of being swept down river.

But even if the skies of this life were nothing but sunshine, even if no cloud ever entered our view, we'd have a problem. Because Jesus is making us ready for another storm – the storm that will be all around when we stand before God's throne and listen to that final verdict. And Hurricane Matthew, with all its devastation, has nothing on that. And the storm of God's presence will make one thing, and one thing above all else, perfectly clear. It will expose every foundation. Everything built on this Rock will survive. Everything else will be swept away. You do not want to be swept away to destruction. You want to live on the Rock to see God's new day, you and all your house.

There is only one reaction to Jesus and his sermon that makes sense. There is only one reaction that is wise – he said it, not me. And that reaction is to build on his solid rock, and not the shifting sand of our shallow heart or the muddled clay of our addled minds, not the pretenses of politicians or the satisfaction of human desires. But build securely on Christ the Solid Rock. Build entirely there, trusting in sunshine and storm. 

For three chapters now, Jesus has been spelling out the blueprints. We may have to dig through plenty of layers of our own sin and baggage to reach bedrock, but there's no other way – no other way than to “trust and obey.” That goes for our own lives, and it goes for our life together as a church. We have to put the whole sermon into practice together – and be a complete church. May the Lord fill us with relentless determination to do nothing less, so that after all storms are past, we can celebrate together in the eternal sunrise of a new creation. Amen.

Critical Church: Sermon on Matthew 7:13-23

Back to the Sermon – the Greatest Sermon. Jesus has been teaching us from the mountain for the past thirteen weeks now. He's inviting us to the kingdom. He's inviting us to be the sort of people ready for the kingdom. He wants to make us a church filled with the Spirit – a people who get to the Law's goal of love and life because we submit to the Spirit's work in our hearts before the rules can even direct us with all their do's and all their don't's. 

He wants to make us a church that craves the kingdom of God and his righteousness above all else, and are willing to topple idols like popularity, wealth, and security in order to live for him. He wants us to clear our eyes of anything that gets in the way of seeing clearly how to worship God and serve those around us. He wants to teach us how to depend on God, how to live by faith, how to see with his hope and burn with his love. We need a righteousness, a way of living, that sums up everything in the Law and the Prophets. And that means loving God with all we are and loving our neighbor like we love ourselves – and that means to treat our neighbors, even our enemies, the way we'd be treated in a better world (Matthew 7:12).

And now Jesus is wrapping up his great sermon. He's the New Moses. God used the Old Moses to lay out his will in the Law, and then give the people choices. There are two ways they can go: either live the way he said, or live some other way – and which other way doesn't really matter, because that's a broad road. There's the narrow way, the first way: “If you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth … if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or the left, to go after other gods to serve them” (Deuteronomy 28:1, 14).

That's the narrow way. But then there's the broader, easier way: “If you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you” (Deuteronomy 28:15) – in other words, this broad road leads to destruction. 

And then Moses said, “See, I have set before you today life and good, or death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you will live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. … I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life or death, blessing or curse; therefore, choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:15-19). But they had to choose.

And so must we. So it's no surprise when Jesus, the New and Greater Moses, wraps up his New Torah, his new instruction for a new kingdom-ready people, in sort of the same way. Jesus also tells us to choose between two roads. “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. But the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14).

Two roads. One is a thoroughfare – wide, pleasant, scenic. There are lots of fun stops along the way. Plenty of tourist attractions. Looks like the perfect place for a road trip. And there are more lanes than you can count, and there's tons of room at the on-ramp. But the destination isn't good. It's even worse than New Jersey. It's destruction. Death. Hell. And Jesus tells the crowd on the mountainside, “Most of your neighbors are on that road.” That's a shocking thing to say. But it was the truth. The easy road with the wide gate is popular; it's trendy; it's got something for everyone.

Not so with the other road. It winds its way up over the mountain and down through the valley. It's a one-laner. The view isn't always pretty. It's long, it's slow, it's difficult, and you will probably suffer if you take it. The on-ramp isn't easy to squeeze through; it's very narrow. And once you're on, you'll find yourself tempted time and time again by the exit ramps, with plenty of signs advertising the many delightful attractions along the broader road. 

But there's one thing to be said in the hard road's favor, and it should be decisive: it's the only road that gets to the only destination worth the trip. It's better than the beach, better than Disneyworld, better than the Poconos or Cancun or Hawaii or the Bahamas. It's life. It's the kingdom of heaven. The very presence of God, with blessings and treasures galore. There's only one way there, and there's only one gate leading onto the road: and Jesus Christ and his offer of costly grace are that gate onto the challenging road of discipleship. It may not be an easy road. But if you don't want to end up burning in the bottomless ditch, it's the road you want to take.

This is vital! This is important! And Jesus wants to warn us that not everybody is going to lead us safely down the narrow road. You can't listen to just anyone and everyone. Some will steer you wrong. Yes, even in the church, there are counterfeits, impostors. At first glance, they may look great. They may look like perfect examples; they may look like ideal models; they may have all the trappings of religion, or they might entice with what the world finds valuable. Paul had to deal with some like that. He sarcastically called them “super-apostles” – the celebrity preachers of his day, who came to town and wowed the people with their razzle-dazzle (2 Corinthians 11:5; 12:11).

Jesus just calls them “false prophets,” and he wants us to be on the lookout. Not paranoid. Vigilant. We shouldn't see every sheep as a wolf, but we shouldn't be content with the outward trappings of a wool costume, either. Jesus says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). On the outside, they pretend to be teachers of the truth, faithful to God or to Christ, friendly and supportive of all real seekers. And they may look so cuddly, so fluffy. But as bad as a sheep bite can be, it's got nothing on the sharp fangs and fierce jaws of a hungry wolf, slipping in unnoticed to tear the sheep apart and drag them away.

The Old Testament has a lot to say about false prophets. They pretended to speak for God, but they really didn't. They tried to give the people an easier message to swallow – or they tried to discourage the people when they needed to hear joy. They tried to divert the people from the road God had set before them. The New Testament has plenty to say about false prophets, too. It says there will be a lot of them (Matthew 24:11; 1 John 4:1). It says many will be popular (Luke 6:26). Some will dazzle us with lots of flash and power (Matthew 24:24). Revelation portrays a false prophet assisting the beast – John probably means the corrupt religious establishment in Jerusalem and elsewhere, endorsing the worst pretenses of Roman power.

Moses already gave us key ways to recognize false prophets. Someone who tries to lead us to any god other than God as he's revealed himself – that person is a false prophet, no matter what other credentials he's got. “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. … You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him” (Deuteronomy 13:1-4).

The same goes for anyone who points to the right God but misuses and abuses his name to bolster what they're saying that just ain't so. Like God said through Moses, “The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?' – when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously” (Deuteronomy 18:20-22).

Any prophet, any teacher, any leader, anybody at all who spreads a fraudulent angle on God, is false. Any prophet, any teacher, any leader, anybody at all who brings a different gospel, is false. Anyone who twists the faith into something unrecognizable – that's false right there. And it's everywhere. For her entire life, the church has been plagued by heresies – false ways of thinking that were so dangerous, they led people astray. They offered a phony God, a phony Christ, a phony Bible, a phony gospel, or they got just plain kooky.

The ancient Docetists said that Jesus wasn't really human, wasn't really flesh and blood; he just looked like it, like a hologram, because bodies are icky and bad. The ancient adoptionists said that Jesus hadn't always been the Son of God; he was a man God adopted, just like the rest of us. Marcion said that the God of the Old Testament was a bad guy, and his scriptures were false, so we should get rid of them, and Jesus had come to teach us about a different god. The Cainite Gnostics went further and said that, if the Old Testament God is the bad guy, then his enemies like Cain must've been the heroes, and we should be more like them.

The Patripassians said that Jesus was the same person as the Father, and that when he prayed, he was just talking to himself, and the whole thing was a great game of charades. Arius taught that Jesus was a second god, the Father's first creation before the world; and some of his followers admitted that meant that even Jesus didn't really understand God's essence. Nestorius taught that Jesus was really two people, one being the divine Word and the other being the man Jesus; and so for anything we see Jesus do, we have to decide if it's the God or the man doing it. Eutychus taught the opposite: that in Jesus, deity and humanity became fused and mixed together into one new nature.

And throughout the ages, plenty of systems have kept twisting around Jesus and the Bible. You've got Islam, which some Christians originally viewed as just another heresy – one that reduces Jesus to just a great prophet, denies he's the Son of God or God at all, says he never died for our sins, and tells us to listen to Muhammad and his message instead. 

You've got Jehovah's Witnesses, who think Arius got it basically right about Jesus being the first creation and not God at all; and they deny Christ's physical resurrection, and say that the Second Coming happened invisibly in 1914, and that most of what the New Testament says is only for 144,000 special followers, and that the only way to escape the coming end is to obey their Governing Body of leaders.

You've got Mormonism, where the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three Gods among possibly infinite Gods out there, and we're just the embryo form of the same kind of exalted being, and the plan is for us to become Gods just like them, but only by going through special rituals in their temples and listening to what their prophets and apostles say, now that Joseph Smith brought the true gospel and priestly authority back to earth in these latter days – whew! 

And you've got plenty of churches these days that fall into other heresies, like thinking that Jesus is only one way to God among many, or teaching that we can pick and choose what we like and what we don't like in the Bible, or telling people that what matters is living according to their own desires – and that is all far more common than we'd like to think. Even some in the professing evangelical world have fallen into it, and make no mistake: it is heresy, and it is spread by false prophets.

And any prophet, any teacher, any leader, anybody at all who abuses God's name, is false. And sadly, you find this a lot. Maybe you remember a couple years ago, there was a radio broadcaster out in California named Harold Camping. He liked to fiddle around with numbers in the Bible and try to tell his listeners when the end was going to come. One time, he predicted Judgment Day would be September 6, 1994. Apparently, that didn't happen. Then, he said there would be a rapture on May 21, 2011, and five months later the end would come. Well, first May and then October came and went. Only afterwards did he repent and admit that his attempts to prophesy were sinful. He was a false prophet in the most obvious sense of the word – and it's no surprise that he taught that all churches had fallen away from God and that it was best to just study your Bible at home and listen to his radio broadcasts instead. That's how false prophets work – and Camping was far from alone.

How many times have you heard someone try to manipulate you – maybe they're barely aware they're doing it – by prefacing what they're saying with, “God told me...,” or, “I think what God is saying...,” or something like that? In some circles, it's dreadfully common. And I'm not telling you that everything that starts with those phrases is automatically false. But before you buy it, test it. Because there is a very real danger that it's a lie meant to manipulate, that it's a word God never really spoke, and it matters whether the voice we're hearing is God or somebody else.

So when Jesus starts talking about false prophets here, he's building on what the Law already said. But he isn't leaving it there. He's expanding it. He's folding those truths into what he's saying, but he's amping up the challenge and giving us newer and deeper ways to test. “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). When Jesus says 'fruits,' he's including teaching and truthfulness, but he's adding to it, because in the way Jesus talks, a fruitful life is about more than what we think and what we say; it's about what we do, and who we are, and why we do what we do and are who we are.

And there's a difference between real fruit, good fruit, healthy fruit, on the one hand, and fake fruit, bad fruit, diseased and rotten fruit, on the other. Some fruit is good for eating, and some isn't. Grapes I like; little berries on thorn-bushes, not so much. “Are grapes gathered from thorn-bushes, or figs from thistles? So every good tree bears good fruit, and every bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree can't bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:16-18). “Thus you will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20). 

In other words, we can recognize a false prophet because, even if they point to the right God and say all the right things, they don't live this way. Their fruit doesn't bear it out. Their lives look nothing like the Sermon on the Mount. And that, too, makes them false prophets; it makes them unreliable guides; it makes them dangerous to follow, because if we lean on them and eat the fruit they give us, we'll get sick and fall off the hard and narrow road, or miss the gate entirely. We have to inspect the fruit.

That's what Martin Luther did. Today is Reformation Sunday. Four hundred ninety-nine years ago as of tomorrow, Professor Luther took a hammer, and he took a nail, and (as the story goes) he went up to the church door that doubled as the town bulletin board, and he posted a list of ideas he wanted to discuss. Because as he took a gander at the way the church around him was looking, and the way it was perverting the gospel and pretending you could buy pardon for money, he thought to himself, “This is awfully stinky fruit.” He never meant to start a revolution, not at first. He just wanted to start a conversation and help clean up a mess he at first thought was local.

And it really was a mess. The religious establishment of the time was corrupt – more than corrupt, notoriously corrupt. And Luther did not want to risk people being led down the broad and narrow road that leads to destruction – which is exactly where he saw the indulgence-sellers sending people, with dire delusions about the destination. To Luther's surprise, the corruption went to the top, and they weren't keen on the challenge. They told Luther to quit inspecting their fruit and start toeing the party line. He declined, even after they excommunicated him, even after they threatened him. In spite of his foibles and failures, he persevered to the close of his earthly pilgrimage. And his revolution of reformation didn't stop there.

To this day, that Reformation continues. Because to this day, that Reformation isn't done. We need to be reformed; we need to be pruned; we need to inspect our own fruit, just as much as the fruit of those we'd like to guide us. We can't afford to be complacent. We can't afford to lean on a false hope. And you can't rest your confidence in the things you do, no matter how impressive. No gift can ever substitute for fruit, and neither can any work that grows out of a faithless soul, which is just the wrong sort of plant in the scorched soil of sin. 

And yet the day will come, Jesus says, when people will be surprised they went down the wrong road. They thought they had all they needed! They'll say, “But Lord, but Lord, didn't we do this, and this, and this – and all in your name?” Picture it:

• “But Lord, Lord, I was a Sunday School teacher; I was a trustee; I was a steward; I was a pastor.”
• “But Lord, Lord, I went to church every Sunday; I put my two cents in the offering plate.”
• “But Lord, Lord, I may not have gone to church, but I prayed at home and watched those preachers on the TV and even read the Bible sometimes!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I liked to hunt, I liked to fish, I felt close to God in the great outdoors, and I was a really decent person, and if anybody asked me if you were who you said you were, I would've said yes!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I believed all the right things; I always agreed with whatever you said!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I respected you, I called you a great teacher!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I gave money to the homeless, and I donated to all the good causes!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I stood up to the evil in society, and I was against racism and sexism and every other nasty -ism or sick -phobia, and I spoke out against oppression and fought for justice in your name!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I told them to put God back in the schools, and I voted the way I thought you wanted, and I said the Pledge of Allegiance, I supported our troops, I defended the Constitution, I was so good!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I always shared Bible verses on my Facebook page and typed 'amen' whenever the cute picture told me to!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I told everybody about you, and I always gave you credit for my success!”
• “But Lord, Lord, people got healed when I prayed, and in everything I did, it looked like you were blessing me!”
• “But Lord, Lord, I was a Methodist, I was a Baptist, I was a Presbyterian, I was Greek Orthodox, I was Lutheran, I was Reformed, I was Catholic, I was Mennonite, I was Amish, I was Evangelical – isn't that enough, Lord... Lord?” (cf. Matthew 7:22).

And none of it will matter. Some of those things are good, even necessary; others, maybe not so necessary, maybe not even so great or so good. There will be people who stand before the Judgment Throne of God, and say all those things to Jesus. But if it doesn't come from faith, if it doesn't match truth, and if it doesn't bloom in love and look like the fruit Jesus has been describing, it isn't what he's looking for. All those defenses will be heard. And still they will hear those frightful words: “I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23). “Every tree that doesn't bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 7:19). 

Because not everyone who just says, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, no matter their gifts or worldly achievements or even miracles and exorcisms and prophecies; but it's only those who do the Heavenly Father's will as the Son has made it so wonderfully known – trust, follow, be fruitful (Matthew 7:21). The only right answer on that day will be, “Lord, Lord, I trust you; your grace is my only credit; and you can see the fruit that your grace worked in my life, because I trusted you and followed you.”

It's not that we're saved by works, or that we become Christians by bearing fruit. Far from it! Like Luther pointed out, “The tree is known by its fruits, but is not made by its fruits.” The fruit is the inevitable outcome of what the tree actually is. Do we really trust in Jesus as Savior? Are we really devoted to him as Lord? Those are two sides of the same coin; you can't have one without the other. If we have faith, then it will bear good fruit. If we have faith – which is an active relationship with Jesus, and with his Father through him – then that can't help but become the defining feature of our lives. If we have faith in the Jesus who gave the Sermon on the Mount, then we will long to live by it; we will learn to seek the kingdom first; we will do what we can to follow his footsteps. 

Like Luther said, fruits or works make us publicly what genuine faith in Christ has made us already in the sight of God. “Work here, work there, only cut out of it all confidence and trust, and don't put your trust in works as a god, but let them only serve your neighbor … Your confidence for your salvation must rest alone in Christ, for which you dare not trust in your works a hair's breadth.” But from that salvation, we together bear fruit that makes our salvation public and puts God's gifts to good use in patience, in mercy, in teaching, in charity and all kindness.

And if we stay true, through the narrow gate that is Christ himself and Christ alone, walking on the hard road that too is Christ himself and Christ alone – it's all Christ, the whole Christian journey from beginning to end – then we will find ourselves in his kingdom. That's the only way. Don't let anyone lead you to another destination. Don't let anyone suggest to you a shortcut. Don't let anyone shift your eyes away from Jesus and onto himself, herself, yourself. Don't settle for a counterfeit God, a counterfeit Jesus, a counterfeit gospel, a counterfeit teacher, or a counterfeit road. Don't settle for less than what the real Jesus has been teaching you, by his own lips and by the writings of his prophets and apostles in Scripture, and by the gentle nudge of his Spirit and the witness of his Church so long as that stays faithful to what he's already said.

Don't lie down with wolves; don't be duped by thorns and thistles; don't be infected. Instead, let's be a critical church – not in the sense of seeking to tear down what's good, but in the sense of putting everything to the test, inspecting fruit, looking past the outer wool, and navigating our road wisely. “Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the [one and only] founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Amen.