“I Don’t Believe We’ve Ever Met”

Matthew 7:21-29

Matthew 7:21, 24a, 26 (The Message): Knowing the correct password – saying “Master, Master,” for instance – isn’t going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience – doing what my Father wills… These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on… But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.

Clair M. Crissy: [Matthew’s] good news about Jesus [still] calls, instructs, and inspires those who are willing to hear and follow him. [Emphasis mine]

Robert Obach and Albert Kirk: We are often tempted to build on the inviting sands of the world’s truth and values, but the only adequate site on which to build our lives is that of loving and faithful obedience to Jesus and his teaching.

[prayer]

Today’s text contains the final words of the Sermon on the Mount. Their message is that faithfully following Jesus involves an intentional, day-by-day, effort to live as faithful citizens of God’s Kingdom. Jesus is making it very clear in these final words of his sermon that knowing his words is not enough. Knowing what Jesus taught is one thing. Doing what he taught is something else altogether, especially in most modern cultures. To live a life guided by the teachings of Jesus is to live a life that the world considers foolish and naïve.

Humility, gentleness, self-denial; non-competitiveness, patience, being content with a simple lifestyle; forgiveness, a willingness to honestly apologize and make restitution, a spirit of non-retaliation; faithfulness in the face of persecution: these attributes of the Gospel taught by Jesus are not the attributes of what the world considers to be a go-getter. In a culture that celebrates serial monogamy, trophy wives, and girls gone wild, a culture that tolerates pornography, human trafficking, and all kinds of other sexual and economic exploitation, the Kingdom-required attributes of self-control and fidelity are not taken seriously. Our modern American mantra is, if it feels good and is profitable, just do it. In such an atmosphere the practice of Christ like love and servanthood is greatly discounted and extremely rare.

Nobody knew this better than Jesus. His life and teachings were discounted by many, tolerated by few, and not understood by most of his contemporaries, especially those who held positions of religious and political power. These leaders were threatened by what Jesus lived and taught. It should come as no surprise that his counter-cultural message was deemed so dangerous that his earthly ministry ended in an arrest on trumped up charges, humiliation, ridicule, torture, and ultimately crucifixion.

The Good News is that God raised him up from the dead. On a universal and eternal scale Jesus and his teachings were triumphant. He lived. He ascended back to heaven with promises of a sure return. He empowered his followers with the Holy Spirit. His Church was born, a Church against which hell itself cannot prevail.

The Church grew as his followers faithfully lived out their God-given role of light and salt in a dark and corrupt world. Those earliest Christians lived, taught, and shared the Good News of the Gospel. They built their lives and the Church on the solid rock of Jesus Christ and his teachings, lives and words that were faithful to what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount; lives and words that demonstrated an allegiance to God’s Kingdom and obedience of God’s will.

The early church was counter-cultural. Those first Christians did not go along in order to get along. Solidly planted in the world, they were still able to avoid being of it. And as is always the case when God’s people live moral, ethical, and spiritual lives that conflict with the religious, political, and financial powers-that-be, they encountered hostility and persecution.

Over the centuries, whenever the Church has allowed itself to be usurped by the culture, be it the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the various colonial empires of the 1700’s and their successors, Hitler’s Third Reich, or Stalin’s repressive socialist regime, there has been one sort of reformation or another as faithful Christians risked their social status, ecclesiastical standing, political offices, property, and lives to align the Church with the Kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of this world.

Up to this point the sermon has mostly been a brief Bible study and even briefer lesson in church history. I’ve done a lot of saying. You’ve indulged me by doing a lot of listening. The hearing portion of discipleship emphasized in today’s text has been, at least partially, taken care of. Now comes the hard part: grappling with the task of doing what Jesus taught, the task of being God’s faithful people in the world without becoming too much of it, the task of loyal allegiance to the principles of God’s Kingdom even when, maybe especially when, such allegiance brings us into conflict with our culture.

This is a difficult task for a modern American. Although our culture has in many ways distanced itself from the Church – this whole separation of Church and state thing – in many ways the modern American Church is still in captivity to the culture. Before I go any further let me make it clear that I am a willing captive to our culture. I like it, not the obviously sinful parts like the blatant commerce in pornography and the big business of abortion on demand, but the more subtly sinful parts of it.

I enjoy the privilege of being a middle class American. I like driving my not-too-used Civic, living in a nice apartment, owning a retirement home in West Virginia, having running water and electricity, and being able to buy everything I need and most of what I want. While gas and food are becoming more and more expensive I can still afford to fill up my tank and stock up my pantry. Health care, while costly, is available to me because I have good medical insurance.

Compared to many Americans and the majority of people around the world I am a privileged person who can afford to waste gas, eat too much, throw away leftovers, buy new clothes, and give my old ones to charity. Unlike most of the world’s populace I have the freedom to travel around my country as I choose, the liberty to vote for those who will govern this nation, and the economic opportunities to make a better life for myself and my family.

I’m not complaining, for I am truly blessed. But do I use my blessings as a means of sharing the Gospel far and wide? Do my blessings make it easier or harder for me to follow Jesus? Do my votes help elect people of humility and integrity, who will do what is best for our nation as a whole instead of selling their souls to special interests or placing getting re-elected above serving the people who elected them?

Does maintaining my comfortable lifestyle, in one way or another, ultimately lead to others in the world having to do without what they need? Does it lead to the further degradation of the environment? Does it, in one way or another, help maintain a cultural status-quo that is at odds with God’s will for all of creation?

Just because I oppose abortion am I being truly pro-life as long as I refuse to do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said in order to prevent the deaths of thousands of children, born and unborn, because I’m afraid to be proactive in opposing the economic and political systems around the world and within our nation that are implicit in the deaths of thousands by starvation, disease, political oppression, and war? Can I honestly say that I practice biblical hospitality while getting all bent out of shape over illegal immigration? Just how far am I willing to go in order to intentionally live out the demands of the Sermon on the Mount, to be not just a passive hearer of Jesus teachings but become an active doer of those teachings?

Tough questions, the answers to which might be hard to swallow. Scary questions that remind me that I may one day have to give up some or all my privileges and possessions in order to faithfully follow Jesus. Even scarier questions that raise the possibility that come Judgment Day I’ll hear Jesus say to me, “I don’t believe we’ve ever met.” Still they are questions that must be asked and answered, and not just by me. They apply to everyone in this room today. Questions that are part and parcel of the self-examination required before we come to the Lord’s Table. Amen.