Matthew 7
McGeeCHAPTER 7THEME: The relationship of the child of the King with other children of the King maintained by prayer; and final warnings about the two ways, false prophets, false profession, and the two foundations
Matthew 7:1
JUDGMENT OF OTHERS FORBIDDENThese verses have really been misunderstood. To judge can mean “to decide, to distinguish, to condemn, to avenge,” and it actually can mean “to damn.” These verses do not mean that a child of God is forbidden to judge others, but it does mean that we are not to judge the inward motives of others in the sense of condemning them. We do not know or understand why a brother in Christ does a certain thing. We see only outward acts. God doesn’t forbid our judging wrong and evil actions, as we will see. The point is that if you are harsh in your judgments of others, you will be known as the type of person who is severe in his considerations of others.
I know this type of person, and I am sure you do, also. Perhaps somebody has said to you, “Don’t pay any attention to what he says; he never has a good word to say.” You see, he is being judged by the way he judges. This is what our Lord is saying in these verses.
Matthew 7:3
He is comparing a little piece of sawdust in your brother’s eye to the great big redwood log in your own eye. The “log” is the spirit of criticism and prejudice. With that blocking your vision, you are in no position to judge the little sin of another.
Matthew 7:4
This matter of harsh judgment is certainly something about which we need to be very careful. Although Jesus makes it clear that we are not to sit in harsh judgment upon another, He also said that by their fruits we would know them. The late Dr. James McGinley put it in his rather unique fashion, “I am no judge, but I am a fruit inspector.” And we can really tell whether or not a Christian is producing fruit.
Matthew 7:6
JUDGMENT OF OTHERS ENJOINEDNow He really puts us on the horns of a dilemma. We have to determine who the dogs are and who the pigs are, don’t we? These are not four-legged animals He is talking about. We are not to give that which is holy unto dogs or cast our pearls before swine; therefore, there is a judgment that we need to make. There are certain times and places where it is not worthwhile to say a word. This is a judgment you need to make. I remember a Tennessee legislator friend of mine who was a heavy drinker. He was wonderfully converted and is a choice servant of God today. The other members of the legislature knew how he drank. Then they heard he “got religion,” as they called it.
One day this fellow took his seat in the legislature, and his fellow-members looked him over. Finally, someone rose, addressed the chairman of the meeting, and said, “I make a motion that we hear a sermon from Deacon So-and-So.” Everyone laughed. But my friend was equal to the occasion. He got to his feet and said, “I’m sorry, I do not have anything to say. My Lord told me not to cast my pearls before swine.” He sat down, and they never ridiculed him anymore. A police inspector in the city of New York told me about certain apartments which were filled with no one but homosexuals. He told me, “They know I’m a Christian, and when they are brought into the station, they say to me ‘Preach us a sermon!’ But I never cast my pearls before swine.” He looked at me and said, “I guess you think I’m a little hard-boiled, but I was a flatfoot in that area, and I know those folk. I worked with them for years.” May I say to you, there are swine and there are dogs in our society. What are we to do? Jesus tells us that we are not to judge, and then He tells us we are to judge. Well, He tells us in the next verse what we are to do.
Matthew 7:7
PRAYER, THE WAY OUT OF THE DILEMMAHow to meet the people of this world is the greatest problem facing a child of God. Every day we rub shoulders with princes and paupers, gentlemen and scoundrels, true and false professors. Some folk need our friendship and help, and we need them, and we ought to pull them to our hearts. Others are rascals and will destroy us, and we need to push them from us. How are we to know? To ask, seek, and knock definitely refers to this problem. These verses can be used for other situations also, but it is this situation that they have primary reference to. While I was a pastor in downtown Los Angeles for twenty-one years, I met people from all walks of life. It took me thirty minutes to drive from my home to the church, and during that time I would tell the Lord I was going to meet some new people during the day and would ask Him to please tell me how I should act with each one. Some people would need my help, but others might try to put a knife in my back. You would be surprised how many times I have been fooled by people. Isn’t it interesting that Peter, in the early church, knew Ananias and Sapphira were lying (Act_5:1-11)? I can never tell when someone is lying.
I do not have the spiritual discernment that they had in the early church. I believe it is a gift that only some people have today, and it is important to make discernment a matter of prayer. When you meet new friends, do you ever ask God to make it clear to you how to treat them? I have found out that it is a good idea to do this. The next verses go on to say that God wants to help you in these matters.
Matthew 7:9
Now the so-called Golden Rule comes right in here
Matthew 7:12
All right, when you meet somebody new, how are you going to treat him? You don’t knowyou are not to judgebut if he is a dog or a swine, you had better know. You have to beware of phonies today. So what do you do? Make it a matter of prayer. “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” This is the principle on which you should operate. “Therefore” is the most important word in the Golden Rule. It relates the Golden Rule to that which precedes it. That is, it postulates it on prayer. It all comes together in one package. Don’t lift out the Golden Rule and say that you live by it. Understand what the Lord is talking about. Only as we “ask, seek, and knock” are we able to live in the light of the Golden Rule.
Matthew 7:13
THE TWO WAYSThe picture which is given here is not that of a choice between a broad white way with lots of fun and a narrow, dark, uninviting alley. Actually, He is giving a picture of a funnel. If you enter the funnel at the broad end, it keeps narrowing down until you come to death, destruction, and hell. But you can enter the funnel at the narrow part. That’s where Christ isHe is the way, the truth, and the life. He says, “…I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (Joh_10:10).
And the longer you walk with Him, the wider it gets. Remember that in Ezekiel’s prophecy (ch. 47) there was a river flowing out from the throne of God which began as a little stream and widened out until it became a great river. That pictures the life of a child of Godit gets better every day. This is what our Lord was talking about.
Matthew 7:15
Israel was warned against false prophets, and the church is warned against false teachers, but both classes come in sheep’s clothing. “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2Pe_2:1). We are to recognize them by their fruits. That is what we are to watch for in their lives.
Matthew 7:21
You can run around and mouth about living by the Golden Rule, but the point is: Are you doing the will of the Father in heaven? If you are doing His will, you’ll come to Christ, recognizing that you need a Savior.
Matthew 7:22
Obviously these verses do not refer to believers today. Every believer, living or dead, will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. None will hear the Lord say, “depart from me.” This passage has particular reference to the Great Tribulation period and the Millennium. This is the place to suggest that the Sermon on the Mount will have a particular meaning for the remnant during the Great Tribulation. Also, there is a needed warning here for professing church membersin fact, for all believers. Folk talk enthusiastically about certain so-called miracle workers today, and they say to me, “You can tell God is with them.” In light of these verses, can we be sure of that? The name of Christ is on the lips of many people who are leaders of cults and “isms.” Just to use the name of Christ and the Bible is not proof that a system is genuine. It is not the outward profession but the inward relationship to a crucified but living Savior that is all-important.
Matthew 7:24
THE TWO FOUNDATIONSIf you have come to Christ, He is the foundation"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1Co_3:11). When you are resting on Christ, you can build on that foundation. By yielding to the Holy Spirit, you can build a life which the Bible likens to gold, silver, and precious stones. But there is another kind of building
Matthew 7:26
What is that sand? It is human goodness and human effort. It is the old weakness of the flesh. My friend, I say to you that you need something better than the flesh has to offer. Matthew concludes this section by saying
Matthew 7:28
Our Lord Jesus was that kind of teacherHe taught with authority; He wasn’t just repeating something He had read. And you and I need to recognize that we have nothing worthwhile to say unless it is with the authority of the Word of God and unless we believe it is the Word of God. I don’t want to hear a man who gives me a string of theories, theories which he himself has never tried and actually knows nothing about. Today we have a gospel to give, a message of salvation. We know it works because it has worked in our case. And we have seen it work in the lives of others who have come to Christ. My friend, the Sermon on the Mount is a glorious passage of Scripture. Don’t bypass it. If you read it aright, it will bring you to the person of Jesus Christ. It will show you how you fail to measure up to its precepts. It will show you that you are weak and guilty. It will make you cry for mercy and will bring you to the person of Christ for salvation. When you accept Christ as Savior, He will give you the Holy Spirit who will enable you to live on this high standard. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT IN PERSPECTIVENow that we have concluded the Sermon on the Mount, I feel that we need to back off and get a perspective of it because many of my comments may have been new and strange to some folk. A great many people feel that the Sermon on the Mount states the way believers are to live in our contemporary society, that it is given to the church. However, if we step back and look at the Word of God as a whole, we will see that God has given three great systems by which He is to govern and rule mankind. The first one is the Mosaic system, the Law. As you know, early in Genesis (ch. 7) is the record that God had to destroy the entire human race (with the exception of one man and his family) because of their violence and because “…every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen_6:5). The human family had departed from God, and He had to judge it. Out of the earth He could save only one man and his family, and from these God began a movement toward drawing out of this new population a man who would become the father of a people who would be a witness for Him. Actually, He was going to give them a land, and He was going to make them a great nationnumberlessand He was going to make them a blessing to the world. God, through them, was to reach the world.
He gave them through Moses the Mosaic system, and it was a great sacrificial system. The Book of Exodus gives us the details of it and reveals that the very heart of it was the burnt altar where sacrifices were offered. That altar speaks of the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, and God never forgave a sin apart from a sacrifice that was made, because, you see, the Law did not save man. It only revealed to man that he was a sinner. It became a system of condemnation, not a system of salvation. Therefore, throughout the Old Testament the burnt offerings pointed to the coming of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus came and offered Himself as the King in order to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. But His nation rejected Him. The Gospel of Matthew presents Him as King. It is my personal conviction that everything in this Gospel is to be understood in the light of the fact that He is the King. In the Gospel of Matthew, as we have indicated, He was born a King, He lived a King, He died a King, He rose again from the dead as a King, and He is coming again to this earth as a King. One of the things that He did while He was here on earth was to enunciate a law that was different from the Mosaic Law. It was the so-called Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 5-7. Excerpts of it are found in the other Gospels, but in Matthew it is given in its fullest extent. As I have mentioned, I am confident that it is an abridged edition, and the evidence of this is that He took two of the Mosaic commandments and lifted them to a higher degree of interpretation than they ever had been held in the Old Testament. For example, He said that if you are angry with your brother, you are guilty of murder. There is nothing about that in the Old Testament.
Also, He said that if you so much as look upon a woman to commit adultery in your heart, that you are guilty of it. Believe me, friend, that involves half the human race today. There are very few men who are not guilty of breaking that commandment. Sometime ago a very fine looking woman, a wonderful Christian, and an excellent Bible teacher, told about meeting a certain man, and he happened to be a preacher. She said, “When he looked at me, I could tell what he was doing. He was undressing me, and I think he would have tried to rape me.” The man never moved an eyelash, he was just sitting watching the woman approach him.
According to the Sermon on the Mount, he was guilty of adultery. The Sermon on the Mount lifts the Law to the nth degree. Somebody asks, “Isn’t that what we are to live by today?” No, it is for the Kingdom which is coming on the earth. At that time we will probably have the unabridged edition of the Sermon on the Mount. It will be the law of the Kingdom, which Christ will set up in the future. There are great principles in it for us, but we have been given a different system. You and I are living in what is called the age of grace or the age of the Holy Spirit.
It is a time when God saves by grace, not by keeping a law, not by following a law. We are not saved by anything that we do. Frankly, friend, you are not a Christian until you believe something, and that something is “…that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1Co_15:3-4). That is the gospel; that is what saves you. After you have been saved, God has a way for you to live, and that way is not the Mosaic Law, not the Ten Commandments. Oh, I know what all the great denominations teach. I was brought up and educated in one of them. My Shorter Catechism, when it comes to the subject of sanctification and how to live for God, drags in the Ten Commandments. Suppose you did keep all ten of the commandments (which you don’t), that wouldn’t save you, because that which saves you is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, the Law cannot save you. Neither is the Law a way of life; it is not the Christian way of life. Immediately someone asks, “Does that mean you can break it?” Of course it does not give you freedom to break it. It merely means that we have a way of life which is much higher than the Ten Commandments. “But,” you may argue, “you have just said that the Sermon on the Mount lifts the Law to the nth degree, so that must be our way of life.” No, that’s not it. Have you ever stopped to consider if you could keep the Sermon on the Mount? Are you ready for some startling statements? The Sermon on the Mount has made more hypocrites in the church than anything else. I told you the story of a man who was a church member and an officer but who could cuss like a proverbial sailor, and he thought he was a Christian. When I turned on the light of the Sermon on the Mount, I found that all he did was vote for it; he just approved of it. He didn’t keep it. He could not live by it. No one can live by it. You see, it provides a veneer of religion which a great many people assume when their heart is not changed. The heart of man has to be changed. As a result, liberalism is not only found in politics, but liberalism in theology has played a great part. They talk about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Well, the Lord Jesus contradicted that theory when He said even to the religious rulers of His day, “Ye are of your father the devil …” (Joh_8:44). Evidently, there were some folk in that day who couldn’t call God their Father. The universal fatherhood of God did not apply then, and it does not apply today. Since World War II, the United States has attempted to deal with the world in a spirit of brotherly love.
We are hated by many of the nations of the world today and are envied by the rest of them. We have spent literally billions of dollars to buy peace, and we do not have peace in the world today. Why? Because, friend, you cannot run the world by the Sermon on the Mount. We have had politicians who have tried to put these principles to work. Well, aren’t the principles good?
Of course they are good, but there is something wrong. What is wrong? It is the heart of man that is wrong. Man is the problem. A listener to our radio program wrote, saying, “Dr. McGee, I don’t have problems; I am the problem!” That is the difficulty in the world. There is nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments. They have come from God. They reveal His mind, His will. The Sermon on the Mount reveals the mind and will of God as well. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with either of those. But there is something radically wrong with mankind. Listen to the words of the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew; He will tell you where the problem is. He says, “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man” (Mat_15:18-20). You can have a religion that requires the washing of hands and body, and you can go through any kind of ritual or liturgy, but the heart is the problem. Man has a desperate case of heart trouble today, and jogging won’t help him. He needs Jesus, not jogging. The Lord Jesus Christ alone can change the heart by a miracle known as regeneration. He told even a nice, respectable Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus that he must be born again. Although the phrase born again is being misused and abused in our day, it is a marvelous, miraculous truth. My friend, I say to you that you and I have to be regenerated because we’ve got this old nature. When the Lord Jesus talked about what comes out of the heart, He was not talking about the heart of Joe Doaks, although his is included; He was talking about my heart and your heart. You see, the heart is the problem. The apostle Paul enlarged upon this fact. He said, “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like …” (Gal_5:19-21). Now we live in a day of situation ethics. We live in a day of gross immorality. People have thrown overboard the so-called Judeo-Christian ethic, and they do as they please. I heard a college professor being interviewed on television. He was asked the question: What is right in our day? His answer was: Anything is right if it makes you feel good. According to that, if it makes you feel good to kill your father and mother, it is perfectly all right. God gave the Ten Commandments to control the old nature. But they didn’t control the old nature because the nation to whom God gave them departed from Him. They went far from God. Nevertheless, man was not able to measure up to itPaul repeatedly states this in his epistles. Now how is man to live? He is not to live by his own effort because he can’t make it. The Word says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance [self-control]: against such there is no law” (Gal_5:22-23). There is no law which can produce these things. It is not naturally in you or me to loveI am not referring to sexual love but to a real concern for others and a real love for God. That kind of love does not come naturally.
There used to be a popular song entitled “Doing What Comes Naturally.” Well, when man does what comes naturally, he produces our contemporary civilization which is as lawless and as violent as it can be. There is a question in the minds of many serious men in high places concerning whether or not our nation can survive. We cannot, my friend, apart from a restoration of control upon the old nature of man. How can you produce these wonderful fruits of love, gentleness, meekness, etc.? Well, you cannot produce them by your own effort. Go back to the Sermon on the Mount where it says, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth” (Mat_5:5). Talk to the Communists about that. Are they inheriting the world by being meek? Ask the people of Afghanistan if the Russian invaders came with meekness.
And I received a letter from a missionary in Ethiopia which reveals that the meek are not inheriting the earth. Well, the meek are going to inherit the earthbut not until the King comes, the One who was the meekest Man who ever walked this earth. He is going to come in great power and glory, and He is going to put down unrighteousness upon this earth and establish His Kingdom. When He does that, the Sermon on the Mount will be the law of the Kingdom. But today, how are we to live? By the power of the Spirit; He is the One who produces these wonderful fruits in our lives: love, joy, peace.
How about peace in your own heart? Do you have peace with God? Only the Spirit of God can give that to you. And joymy friend, do you know what it is to have that real joy of the Lord? Then how about this business of meekness? You and I cannot be meek.
We have a proud heart. I’ve got oneI enjoy having folk pat me on the back. Now don’t tell me that you don’t like it, because you like it too. We are proud. That is the old nature manifesting itself. But the fruit of the Spirit is meekness.
All through my ministry I have asked God to make me a meek man"Oh, God, make me a meek man. Give me humility. Make me the kind of Christian that I ought to be!" I can’t do it for myself. God wants to do it for us by the Holy Spirit. My friend, this is a new way of living. This is not the Mosaic system, this is not the Sermon on the Mount, this is new! God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenliesit is spiritual blessings that He has given to us. And now we are to walk through this world in meekness, lowliness of mind and heart, by the power of the Spirit of God. And today we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit which will enable us to live for God. It will produce fruit in our lives. It will enable us to serve God. This is the high plane to which we are called. It is my hope that you now see the Sermon on the Mount in its true perspective. Now we are ready to come down from the mount where He enunciated the ethic, and we will see that He also has the dynamic to enforce this law when He comes to rule upon this earth.