Sermon on the Mount - Part 20

Welcome to the beautiful land of Israel and I'm sitting here once again on Mount Arbel in Galilee as we're watching a beautiful sunrise but off in the distance north of here we can hear missile attacks and bombs being dropped in Lebanon. You may or may not be able to actually hear them on the videotape and so we're gonna be watching very closely and if we see a helicopter coming down at us we're gonna run for our lives but that's probably unlikely so we'll be able to continue with this broadcast just fine. We're here to continue our journey through the Sermon on the Mount and currently we're in chapter 7. We've come to another very very important verse, verse number 12.

So I want you to turn your Bible if you got your Bible. Matthew 7 verse 12 and this verse has caused people to be scratching their heads for some time wondering what in the world does that mean or maybe more so what is it doing there? It seems like it's in a place where you never find it. It's out of context, out of subject.

Did Matthew make a mistake and throw in something Jesus said there by accident that's really not supposed to be there? Well I was scratching my head for a long time about that because in verses 7 through 11 Jesus is talking about prayer and he's encouraging us to pray for the good things that God wants to give us and promising us that if we do he will answer those requests. Again as we talked about in our former program you gotta ask for things that God thinks are good. We elaborated on that in great detail but in any case after giving us encouragement to pray in Matthew 7 verses 7 through 11 then all of a sudden in verse 12 Jesus says therefore whatever you want others to do for you do so for them for this is the law and the prophets.

Now then, as I said previously when you see the word therefore stop and ask yourself what it's there for and the word therefore is always there for this reason. It means what I'm about to tell you is based upon what I just told you. Now you wonder what does that have to do with prayer? Therefore, he just talks about prayer, you know, ask and you will receive, seek and you shall find, therefore whatever you want others to do for you do so for them for this is the law and the prophets.

How does that connect? How does that, you know, summarize what he just said? It doesn't seem like it has any connection whatsoever. Well I was scratching my head about that for a long time until one day I finally saw it and I'm gonna tell you what I saw. At that point in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus was not summarizing what he had just said in the last five sentences.

Rather Jesus was summarizing what he had just said in practically everything so far in that sermon since Matthew 5 and verse number 17. And so there at that place in time, you know, if you can just imagine Jesus pausing long enough to help people realize that now we're making a transition and now I'm gonna make a summarizing statement not for what I just said but what I have been saying all along. He takes a long pause, you know, then he looks around everybody so they know okay here's a here's kind of a transition and then he says now therefore whatever you want others to do for you do so for them for this is the law of the prophets.

Now remember that back in Matthew 5 and verse number 17 Jesus had made another reference to the law of the prophets and there he said do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets I did not come to abolish but to fulfill or to fill to the full. And from that point onward essentially from verse 21 on of chapter 5 Jesus does exactly that. He's filling to the full the law and the prophets.

He's reinstating what the scribes and the Pharisees have watered down or cast away because of their false teaching and he is filling up his disciples understanding of the major message of the law and the prophets. And so now after specifically citing examples where the scribes and Pharisees were falling short and remember he had told his own disciples unless you do better unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees you won't enter heaven. After then elaborating on Matthew 5 verse 20 showing specifically where the scribes and Pharisees fell short.

Case after case after case everyone knew who he was talking about. He was contradicting the teaching and the example of the scribes and Pharisees and the rulers of the synagogues telling them how he wanted them to live filling up to the full the law and the prophets. He says now therefore to summarize everything that I've been telling you here it is in one sentence however you know you want others to treat you that's how you should treat them.

Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. If you'll do that basically you'll fulfill all the moral and ethical teaching of the law and the prophets. Isn't that beautiful? And so it's you know praise I'm so glad that praise God I'm so glad for that and I don't have to memorize hundreds of rules on a big long list if I evaluate every situation how would I want to be treated if my if our roles were reversed well that what I'll do is I'll love my neighbor as myself.

So I think to myself I see a fellow I see a little orphan in Burma who's at an orphanage and barely has enough food you know to keep her little mind attentive in school. I think to myself now if I was her and she was me there's this beautiful little seven-year-old orphan girl in a Christian orphanage if our roles were reversed and I was her and she was me how would I want if I was her how would I want to be treated by me the present David. Well I'd say to myself well he's got more money than he needs I want him to share some of his money so that I could have a good breakfast every day at least so when I go to school I can concentrate.

I'd want him to pay my school fees as well. Bingo! It's a no-brainer. So what do I do? I begin to be a good steward of that which God has entrusted to me and I have portioned some of my abundance to make sure that her needs are met and I use that example because that's a perfect example that you could apply in your own life.

We have a ministry one of the branches of our ministry is called Orphans Tear. We've got hundreds of orphans we're supporting in various countries around the world in Christian orphanages and for just $20 a month you know we can take care of their food their clothing their school fees Christian nurture you know and we've always got hundreds on the waiting list looking for people like you. Alright and so it's a no-brainer and so go to the website orphanstear.org and pick out one of those beautiful children and and start to do what Christ said and fulfill the commandments of Christ and the commandments of the law and the prophets love your neighbor as yourself treat them like you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes.

The reason God has given you an abundance is not so you can live high on the hog it's so you can have the blessing of a ministry of sharing your abundance with others.

Praise God forevermore and if you don't accept that you're not a Christian you're not a true disciple you'll spend eternity in hell because you haven't even gotten to square one yet of what it means to obey Jesus Christ loving your neighbor as yourself and I I've proven that repeatedly throughout this series looking at all the things that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount okay so what that means now is that Jesus has come to the end of the body of his sermon now he's going to move into what could be considered the conclusion and as we all learn in seminary in Bible school or in speech class when you give a speech it consists of three parts the introduction the body the conclusion you know in the introduction you tell them what you're going to tell them in the body you tell them in

more detail what you told them you were going to tell them and the conclusion you tell them once again what you told them in a summary and so Christ is a great communicator that's exactly what he does here now that he's told his disciples the truth now that he has undone the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees and exposed the hypocrisy of their lifestyles and their teaching now he's very concerned that somehow his disciples who have now learned the truth could be led away from the truth because if they're led away from the truth they could be led by the blind leaders of the blind straight into the pit and so Christ very seriously warns them against false spiritual leaders and if there is ever a portion of Christ's sermon that needs to be heeded by the true disciples of his today I

think this would be it because the church world as a whole is rampant with false teachers those who are teaching what clearly contradicts the most basic fundamental teaching of Christianity as it is revealed by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount and so Christ says to them the only way you can get in is through a narrow gate a narrow way and you've got to stay on that narrow way but there are people who want to get you off the narrow way onto the broad way those are the wolves in sheep's clothing listen to what he says enter by the narrow gate now this begins the conclusion so he's now summarizing what he said this has been a sermon about holiness a sermon about how you can know if you're gonna go to heaven on enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to

destruction and many are those who enter by it for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and few are those who find it Christ is talking here about hell and heaven life and destruction and death and the way to life he said is narrow there's a few the minority find this way and so realize it's a narrow way and what does the narrow way represent it can only represent the way of following Jesus in what he has just said throughout this entire sermon I mean come on read it in context the narrow way can be nothing other than the way of obedience you take that way many take the broad way that leads to destruction and to death and to hell and you don't want to be with the big crowd so don't feel bad if you're in the minority the minority is the ones that are going to have a

man if you're part of it you know if you're part of the big group you're probably not going to have a fine okay now keep thinking about that and we'll be right back after this short break see a minute I'm standing among the ancient ruins of the town of Capernaum where Jesus based his Galilean ministry this is the town from which Peter and Andrew and James and John hailed from this is the town where Matthew the tax collector lived and right behind me are the ruins of what is to what is believed to be a wall of the actual house of Peter there have been churches built and destroyed and rebuilt here you're seeing the foundations of a fifth century church there in the shape of an octagon and one of the inner walls in there is a wall that is supposed to be the wall of Peter's house because

Peter's name was scribbled there a long time ago above it is this Catholic Church that is suspended right above the center point of those original churches so it's quite interesting to think that maybe one time Peter lived right over there alrighty welcome back now we've made our way through the body of the sermon and now we're into the beginning of the conclusion the summarizing statements and Christ has essentially summarized what he said over and over again only the holy get to heaven there's only a certain category of people who are blessed as we read the Beatitudes you know if you allow hatred in your heart you could go to hell if you are consumed by lust which is a form of adultery you can go to hell you know all these things that Christ has already warned us against in earlier

chapters if you're a liar you can go to hell because all liars go to hell don't just be religious don't put on a veneer of religiosity you can fast pray and tithe and still go to hell because you're a hypocrite you're doing your you're doing your stuff only to be seen by people you better forgive your brothers you don't God won't forgive you and unforgiven people don't get to heaven if you're laying up treasures on this earth it proves you're full of darkness you're guilty of greed the greedy will not inherit eternal life repent see all these things so it's all about holiness and the correlation between holiness and heaven and so now he summarizes it in Matthew 7 verses 13 and 14 enter by the narrow gate see that's just saying the same thing over again one more time and he's not through

yet he's gonna say it a couple times more before this sermon is over in the conclusion you know so how do we miss a message here and how do we have people telling us so many people telling us well you know since it's all by grace then you can live your life anyway at all there's nothing you can do that can separate you from salvation why do we have so many people saying that today why have they divorced works from faith why are they taking works out of the equation of salvation only the Holy will see see God the writer of Hebrews said Paul said don't be deceived about this all right so there are people who are with the big crowd and they're the leaders of the big crowd they're the blind leaders of the blind leading them to destruction you recognize of course that Satan's the only thing

he's got in his arsenal are lies I know that some people think that the devil can stop their car from working you know this morning my car wouldn't start the devil got in there somehow I don't think the devil is into mechanics you know the devil did this the devil of that no no the devil the thing he does is he tells people lies and the only people he can deceive are those who don't believe the truth of God's Word and so that's why it's imperative it's so important to make sure you have the truth make sure you're not listening to someone who's lying to you well it's very simple to know who's of the truth and who's of the lie those who are obeying God or of the truth those who are not doing God's will who are not setting the example of being obedient to Christ's commandments those are the

false teachers they're the false prophets you don't want to follow them that's what Christ said beware of the false prophets he said who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are ravenous wolves now what does that say to us it says that you have to be discerning you need to judge you need to appraise every spiritual leader because they do have some semblance of being a sheep there they have characteristics you know you you if you weren't looking closely you might think that they are one of us because they're among us there with us they're teaching us they seem like you know they know what they're talking about right and so that's what it means to be a wolf in sheep's clothing and so you have to be discerning it's not it's not difficult but at the same time it's not automatic

well you wouldn't have to warn us about this he wouldn't tell us that there's a disguise going on here and what's different about them their motive is different you see the reason they're among the sheep is to benefit or to capitalize or to take advantage of the sheep wolves like to eat sheep they look at sheep and they see food they lick their chops well the wolves in sheep's clothing today when they look at the sheep they say aha and what they usually see is our dollar signs here are people whom I can exploit here's an amazing thing many of these most popular ones are making salaries that they have to report on government forms what's called the 990 form every ministry in America at least besides churches have to report every year on a 990 form all about their finances and they have to

report their salaries if they're in excess of a certain amount of money and so it's it becomes public knowledge which every person has the right to that public knowledge you can ask any ministry can I see your 990 form and they have to by law show it to you now many ministries have classified themselves as churches because churches don't have to file 990 forms and therefore they don't have to reveal their salaries and you have these major TV ministries that they say we're a church but of course they're not a church by anyone's definition except their own definition they have no congregation you know it's not a church as the IRS would define a church but they're pulling the wool over people's eyes because they have something to hide but some of them don't and so they play along and they

fill their 990 forms out every year you can go and look and you can see that there's a I'm thinking of one television minister who last year his personal salary was 1.2 million dollars and I would say that you know many many people but order to get that kind of money of course he sold lots of books and his tapes and he gets lots of donations so lots of people think he's a sheep well he could fool you because what he teaches a lot of it is very biblical and true yeah he looks like a sheep another one he makes an excess of four hundred thousand dollars a year and his wife is also on his TV program makes over three hundred thousand dollars a year and there again these people are not taking this money and giving it away they're they're building bigger barns they're living lavishly in

self-indulgence in huge mansions worth millions of dollars driving Rolls Royces these are wolves in sheep's clothing wake up they're not obedient to Christ's commandments because they're piling up treasures upon this earth you'll know them he said by their fruits the reason they pretend to be sheep is because they profit from the sheep and they probably deceive themselves and they say oh but yes but they get to the poor that's another deception they give away a small percentage of their ministries income in order to encourage you to give they show you these pictures of these starving people well part of your donation every month goes to feed starving children in Africa but what they don't show you is the mansion they're living in and so what they're doing is they're exploiting the poor in

order to further exploit the sheep in order to further enrich themselves these people are going to hell it's Jesus said they're full of darkness even though they think they're full of light they're going to hell they'll spend eternity forever there unless they repent it's clear because they're laying up treasures upon this earth immense treasures they're putting themselves in the top 1% of the of American population as far as their their standard of living they're putting themselves in the top one thousandth of a 1% of the world's standard of living by what they're raking in from the donations that trusting sheep sent to them yeah it needs to be said you know so I'm gonna say it Jesus said you'll know them by their fruit so we are to judge them we are to appraise them we are to look at

how they live their lives grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles are they even so every good tree bears good fruit but the rotten tree bears bad fruit a good tree cannot produce bad fruit nor can a rotten tree produce good fruit you see again you can't say well we don't we can't judge them we don't know what's in their hearts oh yes we do know what's in their hearts greed because the bad tree produces bad fruit now what's going to the end of those trees every tree this is verse 19 every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire that sounds like hell one more warning of hell one more statement of the correlation between holiness and obedience and getting into heaven ultimately and staying out of hell only the pure in heart will see

God only the holy will see God the Bible says and here it is once again only the holy only the obedient only those who bear good fruit will escape the fires of hell so that's why unholy people have to repent if they're gonna make it in that's why repentance is part and parcel of the gospel there's no salvation outside of repentance so then Christ reiterates in verse 20 so then you will know them by their fruits so he says it twice so we have no excuse none of us have any excuse to be deceived in this regard none of us will know them we can look at them we're commanded by Christ to do a spiritual appraisal of every spiritual leader then Christ goes on to show another one of their deceptions because many of them will say that he's Lord and some of them will even work miracles and so the

miracles the fruit of what you speaking is not and I say it emphatically it is not the fruit of miraculous power because Christ will go on to say here many will say to me on that day Lord Lord did we not prophesy on your name and cast out demons and work many miracles and he will say depart from me I never knew you you practice lawlessness and so don't be deceived by someone just because they're working miracles that the fruit that Christ says we should be examining is the fruit of their obedience to his commandments that's it don't even take miracles into the equation at all yes true true ministers and true leaders in the body of Christ you know God anoints them miraculously and some very miraculously but if they're truly followers of Christ if they're true men or women of God they their

lives are characterized by obedience to the commandments of Christ and so what I'm saying is true you can see that today within the church the church is rampantly filled it's just filled with false teachers who should not be followed as clearly revealed by the obvious and evident fruit of their greedy lives it shows their wolves in sheep's clothing please think about this very seriously we still got more to go in the Sermon on the Mount so join us next time until then keep following Jesus with all your heart and God bless you richly hey there's a whole lot more happening to the ministry of heaven's family than just this teaching broadcast heaven's family consists of three divisions the first of which is Shepherd serve and through the ministry of Shepherd serve we are literally equipping

thousands of hungry pastors around the world with a vital biblical truth every single year we do that in two ways first of all by pastors conferences they're happening almost every single month somewhere in the world and secondly through the translation and publication and distribution of a 500 page equipping manual called the disciple making minister pastors are just loving this book because it's full of information that helps equip them to be more fruitful for the Lord Jesus Christ that in a nutshell is the ministry of Shepherd serve the second division of heaven's family is known as orphans tier and through the ministry of orphans tier we are meeting the very pressing needs of over a thousand Christian orphans in over six different developing nations through a sponsorship program that

is absolutely wonderful for just $20 a month you can provide food clothing shelter school fees and Christian nurture for a little follower of Christ somewhere in the world hey why don't you check out orphans tier dot o-r-g there's probably someone waiting there just for you the third and the final division of heaven's family is known as I was hungry obviously taken from the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 25 where he warned about the future judgment of the sheep and of the goats through the ministry of I was hungry we are meeting the very pressing needs of Christ followers around this world in very poor nations we're helping widows orphans lepers refugees victims of disasters you can read all of our current projects at I was hungry dot o-r-g you can make a real difference if you'd like

to get involved in all three of the divisions of heaven's family you can invest in what is called the heavens family mutual fund it's a great idea you can read about it all three of our website thanks so much God bless you