March 9, 2009
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Foundations of Grace - John MacArthur
Foundations of Grace, Part 1: The Glory of God
Selected Scriptures
1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, including the most mundane thing, the most routine thing of eating and drinking.” I did understand that the sweeping purpose of everything was that God would be glorified, as I read in Ephesians 1, that everything is to the praise of His glory. I began to write down what that meant. How could I live my life to His glory? How could I teach others to live their lives to His glory? I just went through the Bible from the front to the back and found everything the Bible said about how we glorify God. I started with the word “glory” and the word “glorify” and I just chased them everywhere in Scripture. And I began to write down many things.
The reason for our existence is to know and glorify God. The reason for creation is that God may be glorified. The purpose of the universe is to create a theater in which God can redeem a humanity will be drawn into His presence to glorify Him forever and ever. Everything is about glorifying God. The heavens declare the glory of God. Isaiah 43:20, “The beast of the field gives Me glory.” The only rebel in the universe is man and the indictment on man is in Romans 1:21, “When they knew God they glorified Him not as God.” There are only two kinds of people in the world, the people who glorify God and the people who don’t. The people who glorify God end up in heaven. The people who do not glorify God end up in hell. Glorifying God is the purpose for everything.
It’s a tragic thing not to glorify God. I always think of Herod in Acts 12 who wanted glory for himself. So he declared Herod Day in the amphitheater, Caesarea, put on his royal robe, elevated himself on the throne, had all the people hail him as he gave a speech and the people responded by saying, “It’s the voice of a god, not a man.” Just what he wanted to hear. And this is how Herod Day ended. “And the Lord struck him and he was eaten by worms and died.” Not exactly the planned end of Herod Day. Why? Because he gave not God the glory.
And I remember that from the fourth chapter of Daniel where Nebuchadnezzar tried to take glory to himself and God turned him into a beast for years. Glorifying God is the heart of everything. Living a life to the glory of God is the reason that God has saved us, Christ has redeemed us.
How practically do I live my life to the glory of God? How can I be to the praise of His glory? It is to the praise of His glory, as we read in Ephesians 1, that He chose us. It is to the praise of His glory that He loved us, that He adopted us, that He instructed us, as He gave us truth. It is to the praise of His glory that He sealed us with the Spirit under an eternal hope and an unending inheritance. It is to the praise of His glory that He has done all these things. I cannot add to His innate glory. I cannot add to His attributes. But I can give Him honor that He is do. How do I do that? How do I adorn the doctrine of God with my life?
The first way that we glorify God is by confessing Jesus as Lord. In Philippians chapter 2 there is that great passage of the self-emptying humiliation of Jesus, the condescension of Jesus in which He exists in the morph of God but doesn’t regard that as something to be held on to or grasped, or emptied Himself, verse 7, takes the form of a slave, becomes made in the likeness of men, the appearance of a man He humbles Himself all the way down to the point of death on a cross. And in response for this reason, God highly exalted Him, bestowed on Him the name which is above every name which is the name Kurios, Lord, so that at the name of Jesus which is Lord, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord...and here’s the reason, to the glory of God the Father.
You cannot ever glorify God unless you start by confessing Jesus as Lord. You can never live a life that glorifies God apart from confessing Jesus as Lord. That is what Romans 10:9-10 says, “If you confess Jesus as Lord with your mouth while believing in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” This we know to be a divine miracle, 1 Corinthians 12:3, “No man can say Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit.” But this is the foundation of glorifying God. You confess Jesus as Lord, He is kurios, you are doulos. In fact, in Romans chapter 1 Paul said that we preach obedience to the faith for the sake of the name. And in 3 John, John writes that we should care for those who are worthy preachers of the gospel, for they do it for the sake of the name. Everything is for the sake of the name, for the glory of God.
In the words of Jesus which are unmistakable in John 5:23, He said, “So that all honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father.” You cannot glorify God unless you glorify Christ. You cannot honor the Father unless you give honor to the Son. You cannot affirm God unless you affirm the Son of God. He is Lord, He is the only Savior, the only Redeemer. There’s not one person in the history of the world who can glorify God at all apart from acknowledging Jesus as Lord. This is the beginning point to the glorying of God.
In John13:31, “Therefore when He had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in Him.’ If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself.” In other words, they’re inextricable. They are linked together. The glory of God is tied to the glory of His Son. I knew that at the very beginning if anyone was to glorify God, it would be through the acknowledging through the acknowledging of the Son of God as Lord. You remember at His baptism, the Father said, “This is My beloved Son in whom I’m well pleased.” On another occasion the Father said, “This is My beloved Son, listen to Him.” The greatest testimony ever given concerning Jesus, greater than the testimony of His words and His works was the testimony from heaven by His Father. And when you acknowledge that the testimony of the Father is true, you give glory to the Father. If you reject the Son, then you diminish the testimony of the Father. You dishonor the Father by denying the truth of His affirmation of the Son. This church has never wavered in its life, never wavered from an acknowledgment that we affirm that what the Father has declared to be true about Christ is in fact true. And we honor the Son and therefore we honor the Father.
Secondly, if you’re going to glorify God, you have to aim your life at that purpose. That seems kind of obvious but all I mean by that is you have to focus on glorifying God, not on you, or not on your circumstances, or not on some other inanimate objective, but your focus is on the glory of God. You aim your life at that purpose and that’s back to 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.” This is the all-consuming desire. This has been the relentless focus of my mind through all the years of ministry, what would glorify God? What would glorify God? How can I glorify God? By what means can I glorify God in this situation, in that situation?
You do it at any cost. In John 21 when Jesus was talking to Peter, He was telling Peter at the end of that chapter, which is the end of the gospel of John, that Peter had lived a fairly free and easy life when he was young. You have gone where you wanted to go and done what you’ve wanted to do. But He says to him, “The time will come when people are going to bind you and they’re going to take you where you don’t want to go and they’re going to do to you what you don’t want done.” And what He’s talking about, of course, is the future arrest and crucifixion of Peter. And then John comments on that in John 21:19 by saying, “This He said, signifying by what death Peter would glorify God.” This is denying yourself. If it costs you everything, that is worth the price. That’s why Peter could say before his life ended when he wrote 1 Peter chapter 4:14 to 16 that when you suffer for righteousness sake, the spirit of grace and glory rests on you and you glorify God when you suffer.
It also means that if you’re going to aim your life at that purpose, that there’s no price too high to pay for the glory of God. It also means that you suffer when God is dishonored. In Psalm 69 David says, and it’s also a messianic prophecy, “Zeal for Your house has eaten me up.” I’m so passionate about Your house, Your temple, You, Your honor, Your worship, Your adoration, Your praise that it eats me up. I’m consumed with Your glory. And then he says, “The reproaches that fall on You fall on me,” which means when You’re dishonored, I feel the pain. When You’re dishonored, I suffer.
Jesus in John 2 starts His ministry by going into the temple and He says, “You’ve turned this place into a cave of robbers.” And He makes a whip and He wipes out the place. Psalm 69:9, “Zeal for Your house is eating me up, the reproaches that have fallen on You have fallen on me.” And what it means is this, when you’re living your life to the glory of God, you will glorify God no matter what it costs. And secondly, you feel the pain when He is dishonored. I don’t have as great an honoring of God in my heart as I wish I had but I do suffer when the Lord is dishonored, when He’s misrepresented, when He’s mocked, scorned, mistreated. That’s why I have a very low tolerance of some kinds of preaching which manipulates and dishonors His Word, or living, or things that trivialize the sacred.
There’s a third element in this idea of aiming your life at that purpose that came to me when I wrote this down. You aim your life at that purpose which means you glorify God no matter what the cost, which means you feel the pain when He is dishonored, but thirdly, it means you’re content to be outdone by others as long as He is glorified. We are wired in our fallenness. We are wired in our pride for victory. We are wired for the ego fulfillment. It comes with that and so much of that fallen pride comes into the Kingdom and there can be jealousies and strife and envy. If your heart is right and all that matters to you is that God is being glorified, then you’re content if He’s glorified even if someone else is honored above you.
What led me tothe clearest understanding of this was Philippians 1. As Paul writes to the Philippians he is in prison, he has been put in a very difficult position. There are people who know that he’s a prisoner because the Lord is using him there for the advancement of the gospel. And by the way, during his imprisonment, the gospel did wonderfully advance as the end of Philippians says in verse 22 of chapter 4, “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.” So while he was a prisoner, he was leading those in Caesar’s household to the knowledge of Christ.
His imprisonment did work out for the advancement of the gospel. But there were others who jealous of Paul who had animosity toward Paul because he was everybody’s favorite, the most beloved and the most used, they wanted to spread the idea that he was in prison because he had failed somehow, perhaps a moral failure, perhaps some kind of carnal failure, perhaps he had reached a point of usefulness, whatever it was, the Lord had put him on a shelf and now everybody ought to turn away from Paul and turn to this new breed. They were disdainful of the Apostle Paul and condemning of his condition. It is to this that he speaks in verse 15. He says, “There are some preachers out there, some, to be sure, who are preaching Christ even from envy and strife.” He knew that. He knew there were people who were jealous of him, jealous of the way he had been used of God, jealous of his gifts and skills and opportunities and impact. There were also some, he says in verse 15, who preached from good will. They affirmed me, they love me, they support me. “The latter, those with good will, do it out of love.” He means for him. “Knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel.” That is they know that I am not unfaithful, that I am preaching and defending the gospel. And that’s why I’m in the condition I’m in.
“The former, however,” verse 17, “those who preach from envy and strife, proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives.” What an ugly thing that is. Of all places where selfish ambition, strife and envy should show up, it shouldn’t be in the ministry of the gospel. They want to hurt me more. They’re trying to cause me distress in my imprisonment, which means they’re trying to add wounds to my already wounded condition.
What’s his response to this? Eighteen...what then? My response, “Only that in every way whether in pretense or in truth Christ is proclaimed and in this I rejoice.” Emphatically yes, and I will rejoice. I will never let the human element become the issue. I will never let whoever gets the credit become the issue. Christ is preached and in that I will rejoice no matter what their attitude is toward me.
That’s what it means....you know, you live in your life to the glory of God when you would pay any price for His glory, when you feel the pain when He is dishonored, that’s the negative side. And on the other side, when you’re content to be outdone by people who do what you do with more blessing than you do it. You’re consumed then with the glory of God.
Thirdly, we glorify God by confessing sin. In the book of Joshua when the children of Israel were being brought into the land by the great power of God. Achan, who disobediently took the spoils, brought them back and buried them in his tent when the people of Israel had been commanded to take no spoil. And there is a remarkable and, I think, very formative moment there that we need to understand, it’s in the seventh chapter.
He is confronted by Joshua in verse 19. And this is what Joshua says to Achan. “My son, I implore you...and then this...give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel. Give praise to Him.” How do I do that? Here’s how, “Tell me now what you have done, do not hide it from me.” The third way you glorify God is by confessing sin. Give glory to the Lord God of Israel. Give praise to Him by telling what you have done. Do not hide it. “So Achan answered Joshua and said, ‘Truly I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel, and this is what I did.’” And he said what he did. And then verse 24 says, “Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan, the son of Zerah, the silver, the mantle, the bar of gold, his sons, his daughters, his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his tent, all that belonged to him, brought them up to the valley of Achor. Joshua said, ‘Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day and all Israel stoned them with stones and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.”
Wow! All the people, all the possessions, all the animals. But before the act of judgment fell, God was to be glorified by a confession of sin that showed that the judgment was a righteous judgment and therefore God was vindicated. You give glory to God when you confess your sin so that the chastening that comes into your life is seen as a just act by God. When you deny your sin, when you hide your sin, when you will not confess your sin and your sinfulness and things come into your life that are troublesome that are the chastening of God, you would tend to blame God and to think God unfair. But where there is a heart of true and pure and honest confession of sin, there is a readiness to accept the chastening of God as that which is deserved. Confess your sin.
Psalm 51, early in the ministry here, I preached a message on Psalm 51, “Against Thee only have I sinned...against Thee only have I sinned.” He had sinned against Uriah, he had sinned against Bathsheba, but in his mind it was really all against God. And all David ever asked for at that point was that the chastening have an end, for it was a just chastening, that it have an end and that he received back the restoration of the joy of his salvation. Confession is to admit your sin, to repent for your sin, and to give honor to God if God decides to chasten your sin.
This is such a pervasive attitude in life, it seems to me that a person who really understands the horror of sin could never complain about anything that came into their life in a negative way because all of it could be perceived legitimately as chastening from the Lord. Are we perfect? And if we’re sinful, and we are, and if we’re regularly sinful and we are, then who are we to think that we should pass through some long period of time in our lives without any trouble? It’s a wonderful thing to confess your sin and to be able to worship God in the midst of the most difficult issues and situations of life knowing that this is what you deserve and that God’s purpose in it is the purpose of a Father who wants to chasten a son so you can moved in the path of righteousness.
Fourthly, we glorify God by trusting Him.” Romans 4 is the great section on Abraham and says about Abraham in verse 19 that he was not weak in faith, even though he contemplated his own body. Now remember, God said you’re going to have a son, right? And he realizes that he’s a hundred years old and Sarah’s womb is dead. She’s in her nineties, never borne children. But he is not weak in faith. God says you’re going to have a son. He believes it even though humanly it is not possible. So verse 20 says, “With respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God.” God is glorified when you believe His promise.
You remember the great hero chapter of Hebrews 11? Trusting God is simply saying I believe that what God says, He will do. You know, if you say, “I’m a Christian, I believe in God, God is sovereign over my life, God provides everything I need,” and you’re a picture of fretting and worrying and anxiety and fear and reaction and over-reaction, that’s a terrible contradiction. Do you really believe? Do you really trust? Do you really believe that the Lord is going to sustain you? That my God will supply all your needs according to His riches and glory by Christ Jesus? Then act like it. Then let prayer be your response to difficulty. We need to learn as Christians to demonstrate the kind of trust that is exhibited in the direst of circumstances because we believe that God can be taken at His Word...like Abraham.
Fifthly, we glorify God by fruitfulness. In John 15 Jesus talks about the vine and the branches and that it’s the Father’s will that you bear much fruit that the Father may be glorified. What is fruitfulness? Well there are two kinds of fruit...attitude fruit, action fruit. We read about attitude fruit in Galatians 5:22-23...the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith meekness, self-control, that’s all attitudes, spiritual attitudes. Action fruit, what’s that? Philippians 1:11, the fruit of righteousness, the fruit of your lips, Hebrews 13:15, praise to God, the fruit of bringing someone to Christ. Paul says to the Romans, “I want to have some fruit among you.” That’s action fruit. Action fruit without attitude fruit is legalism. Action fruit as the result of attitude fruit is true spirituality.
God wants us to be fruitful by walking in the Spirit and living in the Spirit, we enjoy the fruit of the Spirit. And out of the fruit of the Spirit comes the behavior that is Spirit-driven, Spirit-empowered. The fruit of righteousness, the fruit of praise. Just thinking of Colossians 1:10, you’ll remember this, “So that you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all aspects, or all respects, bearing fruit in every good work.” That’s action fruit. God is glorified when you bear much fruit. You don’t want to be a little-fruit Christian. You can’t be a no-fruit Christian because if you’re a Christian at all, the life of God will manifest itself in you that’s why Jesus said, “By their fruit you shall know them.” But you don’t want to be just a few shriveled up grapes. You want to be an abundantly productive believer and God is glorified in your spiritual fruitfulness. It starts with attitudes and then action.
Sixth, we glorify God by praise. Psalm 50:23 says, “Whoever offers Me praise, glorifies Me.” Whoever offers Me praise, glorifies Me. You could almost make them one and the same. God is glorified when we praise Him. It reminds me of Luke 17 where the lepers that were cleansed went on their way and only one came back and gave glory to God by thanking Christ. What does it mean to praise? Just three things, really. One, reciting God’s attributes. Two, reciting His works. Three, giving thanks for both. Reciting His attributes, His character, His nature, what is true about Him and reciting His works, what He has done and giving thanks for both. That’s praise. Whoever offers praise, Psalm 50:23, glorifies Me.
Seventh, we glorify God through prayer. Do you remember John 14, Jesus said to the disciples in the Upper Room that whatever you ask in My name, I’ll do it that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Whatever you ask in My name, I’ll do it that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Why does God answer prayer? To put Himself on display, put His glory on display. When you pray it’s not as if you’re going to change God’s plans which have been established from before creation. When you pray, it’s not that you’re going to make some great massive paradigm shift take place in the Kingdom. The primary purpose of our praying is to let God put Himself on display in visible ways. Pray little and you will see little first hand of God’s great power and glory.
Eighth, we glorify God by using our spiritual gifts...by using our spiritual gifts which are Holy Spirit-enabled abilities that come to us from the Lord because He wants to minister through us to the church. In 1 Peter 4 it says each has received a gift, some are speaking gifts and some are serving gifts. And they’re given so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, 1 Peter 4:11. We have these gifts for the mutual edification of one another. And this is what builds up the body of Christ. You use your gift and God is glorified.
Here are some more. You glorify God by bringing others to Him. II Corinthians 4:15, Paul says, “All things are for your sake.” What does he mean by that? Everything I do is for your sake that the grace, saving grace, which is spreading to many may redound to the glory of God. Every time I bring the knowledge of the gospel to someone who believes, it adds one more voice to the hallelujah chorus. We glorify God in that.
We glorify God by proclaiming the Word. II Thessalonians 3:1, “Pray that the Word may go forth and be glorified.”
We glorify God by moral purity, virtue and holiness. “You’ve been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body,” 1 Corinthians 6:20.
We glorify God by unity. Romans 15:5, “May the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another, according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Accept one another as Christ accepted us to the glory of God.
We glorify God by contentment. Hard sometimes to be content even though we live in a culture that should overflow with contentment since we are so indulged. But I think that’s what Paul has in mind in Philippians 4 when he says, “I know how to be abased and I know how to abound. I know how to get along with humble means and I know how to live in prosperity. In any circumstance I have learned that the secret of being filled and going hungry, having an abundance and suffering need because my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” And then he says, “Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever amen.” I’m content with what He gives me and I give Him glory for it.
Foundations of Grace, Part 2: The Lordship of Christ
Matthew 7:13-27
I was raised in the church, my grandfather was a pastor and I remember listening to him as a very small boy, my father was a pastor, I listened to him throughout all my years until I finally came here. I grew up in the church. I experienced the church at the most intimate level. There was one prevailing thing that concerned me and that was there seemed to be so many people in the church who had had some moment of decision for Christ but who manifested no evidence. And there was the reality that I saw my whole life growing up that people came in the door of the church, walked an aisle, made quote/unquote some kind of decision for Christ and then disappeared.
I wasn’t sure how these people fit in. I had been taught growing up that if you pray a certain prayer, you’re a Christian. In fact, everything that had ever been brought to me as a means of evangelism involved giving people a simple gospel message, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and ask Him to forgive your sins and you’re a Christian. And the follow-up instruction was always this... “Once they prayed that prayer, assure them that they’re saved.” I struggled with that because so many of these people were so temporary. This was a deep concern to me.
I realized that there were then in the church the unconverted. I came across 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us because they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out from us that it might be made manifest they never were of us.” So I realized that no matter what appeared to be so, these people were never converted because if you were truly converted, there’s a transformation that is manifest and unchanging, though not perfect. There is a direction of life, if not perfection, that is unmistakably the evidence of true conversion.Among those things which are of most concern to me is the fact that I make sure that no one sitting under my ministry is going to be under the illusion and the self-deception of thinking they’re Christians when they’re not. So if there’s been any particularly relentless ringing tone through 40 years of ministry, it has been that we get the gospel right and we understand what real repentance is and what genuine saving faith is. And that’s, of course, why the New Testament says, “Judgment must begin at the house of God.”
The Apostle Paul spends a couple of years in Corinth and he’s discharged his soul there, not just on the Lord’s day there but everyday for nearly two years. They’ve had the best teacher ever, one who gets divine, direct revelation. And then, after that, they have the benefit of having others there, such as Titus. And then he writes them four letters, two of them in the New Testament, sixteen chapters of 1 Corinthians, 13 chapters in 2 Corinthians, 29 chapters and you can add a couple of more letters to that that came from his heart and were full of truth and pastoral instruction and admonition. And even after all of that, even after being written to by Paul, taught by Paul, ministered to by Paul, nurtured by Paul, at the last chapter of the last letter, the last word he has to say to them, 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourself whether you be in the faith.” He is still concerned that nobody be self-deceived.
And it all goes back to this passage, “Many, many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord.’” We’re not talking about Muslims here. We’re not talking about isolated religious people here, we’re not talking about Buddhists or Hindus or somebody in a false system of religion, we’re talking about people who say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” who are shut out of heaven. That to me without question became the first priority of pastoral ministry...to make sure that no one is existing in my watch, in my field, in my flock who could be self-deceived and end up in that line of people who say, “Lord, Lord,” and are denied entrance to heaven. This comes from the heart of the Lord, because this is His heart.Most people think the Sermon on the Mount is this wonderful ethical sermon. Certainly there are ethical things in it, but it is not a sermon on ethics, it is a sermon on the gospel, it is an evangelistic sermon. It is a sermon on salvation. That’s its theme. Our Lord says, “You want to enter the Kingdom of heaven? You want salvation? You want forgiveness from sin? You want eternal life? You want to go to heaven? Here’s what you need to know.” The first main point, chapter 5 verse 20, first main point. “If you will enter the Kingdom of heaven, if you will escape hell and go to heaven, I say to you, it’s not going to happen unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees”
Now, to say that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees would shock the listeners to their sandals because the scribes and the Pharisees were the most righteous people on the planet. First of all, there may have been other people in other religious environments who were endeavoring to do good and be moral, but it was the Jews only who had the Word of God. So they were endeavoring to adhere to the true and only revelation of God. They were fastidious about their observation of the ceremonies and the laws and even had added more and more and more laws ostensibly to increase their righteousness. They offered themselves to the Jewish nation as the models of what righteousness looks like. They fasted. They appeared in public in positions of humiliation, putting ashes on their heads. They prayed prayers interminably long, long prayers with very carefully crafted and repeated words. They gave...they arrived at the trumpet-shaped receptacles in the temple where alms and charitable giving was done and they dumped in their money. They obeyed the Ten Commandments. They did not commit adultery. They did not kill. They endeavored externally to observe all of the commandments. And Paul, being one of them, says that as compared to the Law, he was actually, outwardly blameless.
How in the world could anybody’s righteousness exceed this? They follow all the ceremonial observations. They follow all the moral observations. They follow all the religious observations, like fasting, and charity and prayer, and those things. And yet Jesus says if you expect to enter the Kingdom of heaven, you have to have a righteousness beyond that...which, of course, in the minds of the people would be inconceivable. What righteousness could be beyond that?
Pharisees were part of a kind of religion that I call the religion of human achievement. It is the idea that you gain heaven by what you do...religiously, spiritually, morally, that the path to heaven is the path of human righteousness. This, by the way, is Satan’s biggest lie. Every religion in the world, every false form of Christianity fits into the category of human achievement. All of them are works approaches.
In other words, there are only two ways possible to get to heaven, either by your works, or not by your works. So all religion falls into those two categories. There’s only one true religion and that is the gospel of grace which says salvation is by grace alone through faith alone not of works. Works plays no role. Every other form of religion is a false form, no matter what its name is.
Now just exactly how righteous do you have to be then? That’s the next great point in the sermon, chapter 5 verse 48. Now He says, “Therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Whoa...so that’s how righteous you have to be? As righteous as God? Exactly.By the way, in the sermon in between those main points, Jesus basically says to them your prayers are phony and you’re hypocrites and you do them to be heard by men and to be thought of as religious. And you’re full of pride and your hearts are corrupt. And he says your giving is for the same hypocritical, phony, proud reasons that you might be seen by men. And your long-winded, constant prayers of endless repetition are meaningless to Me and your morality is hypocritical and superficial because you commit adultery in your hearts and you murder in your heart, because if you look on a woman to lust after her, you’ve committed adultery. And if you hate someone, it’s as good as if you killed them. He just shreds their supposed morality.
Any thinking person is going to be cornered to say, “Huh, if the standard is to be as perfect as God is perfect, I am not as perfect as God is perfect and now Jesus has just told me that even what I assume to be righteous is actually corrupt, hypocritical self-righteousness that appalls God, that nauseates God that God rejects. How can I be perfect? How can I be as righteous as God is righteous?Not by anything you do. That’s why Jesus began the sermon. Go back to chapter 5, see how He began the sermon in verse 3. He starts with a stunning list of Beatitudes. Just look at the first few. “He opened His mouth,” in verse 2, in front of everybody, “and began to teach them, saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.’” That is a blow to their pride immediately. Poor in spirit means...the word “poor” is not having little, or having barely anything, it is the word for having nothing. The people who are going to be a part of My Kingdom are those who realize they’re spiritually destitute. That was contrary to what all the Jews thought. Luke 18:9 says that the Pharisees thought they were righteous.
The people who followed their religion thought they were righteous, too. But the people who enter the Kingdom know they’re not. They know that they cannot have a righteousness that satisfies God. They cannot be as perfect as God is perfect. So they are aware of their spiritual bankruptcy.
Secondly, because of their spiritual bankruptcy they mourn. They’re not proud about themselves. They’re not smug and self-satisfied about their condition. They mourn and they weep and those are the ones who will be comforted. In other words, they know their spiritual bankruptcy and they are horrified by it, they are heart broken over it, they are grieved over it. They sorrow profoundly in their desperation.
Then the next one says, “Blessed are the meek.” They’re humble, they’re not proud. They’re crushed under the weight of this wretchedness, this spiritual poverty. Then verse 6 says, “They hunger and thirst for righteousness.” They know they don’t have it. They’re starving for it. They have none of it. You know what it means to hunger and thirst for something? It means you don’t have it.
So Jesus is saying...Look, if you want to enter the Kingdom of heaven, you have to have a righteousness that surpasses the most righteous people on the planet. In fact, you have to have a righteousness that is equal to the righteousness of God. Since you know you can’t have that, you’ve got to come to a point of your awareness that you are spiritually destitute, bankrupt, broken weeping, humble, hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
This is contrary to everything those people ever, ever heard. It was all about pride. It was all about human achievement. So the Sermon on the Mount is designed, as any good evangelistic sermon has to be designed, to strip the self-righteous, to strip the self-deceived down to the bare bones.
Now Jesus brings the sermon to a conclusion, we come back now to verses 13 and 14. He wraps it up by saying, “Look, there are only two possibilities. Either you come by the way of human achievement or you come the way of divine accomplishment.”
Now what have we learned through the years, beloved, about how in the world can a sinner be as righteous as God is? How can that be? If I have to be as perfect as God is perfect in order to enter His Kingdom, in order to be reconciled to Him, in order to be received by Him, in order to escape hell and get to heaven, how am I ever going to be as perfect as God is perfect?
Not by anything I do but by the great New Testament truth of justification which is God justifying us, declaring us righteous, by imputing to us His own righteousness. This is the gospel. When you put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ genuinely, God takes His own righteousness and puts it on you. We’ve said this so many times, so many ways. On the cross God punishes Jesus for your sin and when you put your trust in Him, He takes Jesus’ righteousness and gives it to you. He gave Jesus your sin so He could give you His righteousness. That’s divine accomplishment. It’s a divine work of righteousness, not a human one. So you only have these two options. Either you get to heaven and you get into the Kingdom of God by something you do in cooperation with God. Or you recognize you can’t do anything, you’re spiritually bankrupt, you’re crushed, you’re broken, you’re mourning, you’re hungering and in desperation you come like the Publican in Luke 18, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” And Jesus said to that man...went home justified because he recognized his spiritual bankruptcy and he repented and he put his trust in God.Romans 10 says the problem with the Jews was that they were ignorant of the righteousness of God and they went about to establish their own righteousness. They didn’t know what righteousness of God was. They didn’t grasp its absolute perfection. And they didn’t grasp the fact that that is the same righteousness that God required of them. And so they went about to establish their own righteousness thinking that would satisfy God when it wouldn’t. Consequently they couldn’t understand the cross and they couldn’t understand Christ, and they couldn’t understand the great truth that Christ would take on our sin in order to give us His righteousness.
There are only two religions in the world. There is human achievement, which is works, flesh, self-righteousness. There’s divine accomplishment which is faith, Spirit, heavenly righteousness. They don’t mix. You put Law in grace and you have no more grace. You have works in faith and you have no more faith. And these two options are laid out in verse 13. “Enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction and there are many who enter through it, for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and there are few who find it.”
This is so simple. You can look at the world and think it’s a very complex religious place and there are so many very complicated religious ideas floating around. But that’s only one perspective, that’s the earthly perspective. The heavenly perspective, the biblical perspective is there are only two possibilities. False systems that say you do something to gain heaven and the truth that says it’s all done by Christ. Two gates, two ways, two destinies, two crowds...four contrasts. Let’s look at them in these two verses.
Two gates, narrow and wide. Both say heaven. Nobody is selling tickets to hell. You don’t see on the front of any false church, “Join us, we’re all on our way to hell. Go to hell with us.” No. You don’t hear that being sold. People don’t sell hell. Everybody sells heaven, but not everybody’s going there.There is, says our Lord, the necessity to enter the narrow gate. He says in verse 14, “It is small, once you enter the way that you’re now on inside the gate is narrow that leads to life. Thee are few who find it. Enter through the narrow gate. It’s an aorist imperative command, you must enter. Forget your self-righteousness, forget all your fasting and all your alms giving and all your formula prayers and all your supposed superficial external morality, you must enter...you must enter this narrow gate. We understand clearly what that narrow gate means. Another way to look at it would take...would be to borrow the words of Jesus in John 10 who said, “I am the door.” Or to borrow the words of Jesus in John 14 who said, “I am the way. No man comes to the Father but by Me. No Christ, no salvation. There’s no salvation in any other name,” Acts 4:12. You must enter this gate.
You must confess Jesus as Lord, Romans 10:9-10, “and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. There’s no salvation any other way.” I Corinthians 16:22 says, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be damned.” “Faith comes by hearing the truth about Christ,” Romans 10:17. You must enter this gate...the only way of salvation. There are not many ways, this is the only way.This is a narrow gate, groups don’t go through. You go through alone. The Kingdom of God, the true Kingdom of God advances one soul at a time...one soul at a time by personal faith in Jesus Christ and no other way. And the rest of that stuff has nothing to do with true Christianity, it is counterfeit. You come through this narrow gate alone. And Jesus even said, “I came to bring a sword. You may have to hate your father, hate your mother, your sister and your brother. Hate your own life. You come one at a time, not as a matter of race, not as a matter of family, not as a matter of community, not as a matter of ritual or rite. You come by individual and personal faith one soul at a time. You must enter this gate, you must enter this gate alone, you must enter this gate alone with difficulty. It’s not easy.” That’s why it says, “Few are there who find it.”
Why would He say that? People today would say it’s real easy to be a Christian, just pray this prayer. It’s real easy to be a false Christian. It’s real easy to be a self-deceived one. Real easy to get yourself in a situation where you’re going to say, “Lord, Lord,” and He’s going to say I don’t know you. But becoming a real Christian is difficult. And there’s a couple of reasons why it’s difficult. Number one, because of the false teachers described in verses 15 to 20. Because they’re hocking tickets to the broad road, the false prophets dressed up in prophets’ garb, prophets wore wool which is sheep’s clothing. But actually they’re tearing people to shreds like ravenous wolves and their lives are corrupt.
One of the reasons that so many people are deceived is because there are so many deceivers...so many false prophets, false preachers. And faithfulness to these great truths through the years, we’ve tried to warn you and warn you and warn you and warn you about false teachers. It’s not personal jealousy, it’s not personal attacks, it’s protection against their damning influence.
So, you’ve got false teachers everywhere and they’re throwing the name of Jesus around, aren’t they? As if they represented Him. And the second reason it’s so hard to find this and enter is because the demands are so high. The contemporary false teacher deal is, “Come to Jesus and He’ll make you rich and successful and happy and prosperous,” blah, blah, blah, the prosperity gospel. The gospel of the New Testament says, “Come to Jesus and give up everything. Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him. Hate your father, hate your mother, hate your own life, count the cost.” Remember the parallels in Matthew 13 where Jesus said there’s a treasure hidden in a field and a man sold everything to buy it? And there was a pearl of great price and a man sold everything to get the pearl. The pearl and the treasure is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the man sells everything because there is nothing in this world that can match the priceless value of salvation. It will cost you absolutely everything. It’s the scandal of the gospel. He is kurios and He asks you to be doulos. He’s calling you to give up everything and become a slave. Hate your own life, your personal ambition, dreams, goals, even your own family, those that are close to you...you may have to give them all up, you may lose your life to follow the crucified Christ.
This was what the Jews thought was a stumbling block and the Gentiles thought was foolishness. And Jesus even said, “Don’t come unless you’ve counted the cost. You’re not going to build a tower unless you know you have what it takes to finish it. You’re not going to go to war unless you know you have the power to win the battle. You’re not going to come to Christ unless you’re willing to pay the price.”
That’s why in Luke our Lord said in chapter 13 that one of the followers of the Lord came to Him and said, “Are there only a few who are being saved?” And Jesus said, “Well, there are many who are striving to enter in, but they can’t do it.” There are those people who are saying, “You know, I really would like to go to heaven, I really want to know God, I really want a reconciliation. I want to escape hell. But it’s not that easy because you’ve got to be able by the power of God, of course, to reject the false messages and to give up everything.”
You don’t sleep your way into the Kingdom. You don’t pray a little formula prayer and you’re introduced in to the Kingdom. It’s not for the half-hearted weaklings, the waverers, the compromisers. It’s not for the rich, young ruler who wants to be in the Kingdom but wants to hold on to everything in this world also. The Kingdom is for people like Daniel, Stephen, Paul, Peter.
So you must enter this gate. You must enter alone. You must enter with difficulty. And you must enter naked. In other words, you don’t bring anything with you. This is a turnstile and you don’t carry your baggage through a turnstile. You can barely squeeze yourself through. It’s the gate of self-denial. It’s the gate that strips you bare. It’s what Jesus says again in Luke 9:23-25, “If you lose everything, you’ll gain heaven.” You can’t get through with all your junk, all your baggage. That’s what the rich, young ruler tried to do. The song writer says it this way, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.” You come empty-handed.
And then you must enter this gate, you must enter alone, with difficulty, naked and penitent. From the start, Jesus and John the Baptist preached repent, repent, repent. It’s that hatred of sin, that desire to turn from the power and the penalty of sin that marks this.
This doesn’t happen without the work of God. I Corinthians 12:3 says, “No man can say Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit.” It is God who grants you repentance. It is God who does this work in your heart. But where this work has not been done in your heart, there is not true conversion. This is the narrow gate.
Then there is the wide gate in contrast. He says the gate is wide. It doesn’t require any sacrifice. You don’t have to give up anything. Bring all your garbage, all your baggage, all your sin, all your self-will, no self-denial, no repentance, no surrender, no submission. And it is that wide gospel, sad to say, that’s been preached in our country for many years.
Sure, you don’t even have to confess Jesus as Lord, just make sure you confess Him as Savior. That was the dominant idea being perpetrated in American Evangelicalism in the last 50 years. We’re not talking here about Islam or a false religion. We’re talking about a kind of Christianity that takes people to hell.
So there are two gates. And then there are two ways. Once you get through the gate, the wide gate, verse 13 says, you get a wide way to go with it. Easy, tolerant, no curbs, all the desires of the fallen heart are fine, self-will, self-gratification, self-indulgence. But on the other hand, if you come through the narrow gate, it says that the gate is small and the way is compressed, constricted, pressed together. It is constricted by the holy requirements of God. It’s a kind of slavery, we’ve learned, haven’t we?
Then there are two destinations. The broad one leads you to destruction, hell. The narrow leads you to life, eternal life.
There are two crowds. There are the few who come through the narrow, the little flock, mikron flock. And there are the many, many who come through the broad gate. And the many who come through the broad gate are the many who show up in verse 22. Many go in that way, the broad way. And then many show up at the end to say, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name? And in Your name cast out demons? And in Your name perform many miracles?”People always ask me, “Did they really do that?” Of course not because Jesus says, “I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you, I have no connection with you and therefore you have none of My power. Depart from Me.’” And they’re cast into hell. “Because you are practicing lawlessness.” The proof of conversion is not a past event, or a past prayer, or past experience. It’s a present righteousness. Ah, it’s not perfection, but it’s direction.
You got people running all over the place now prophesying, supposedly in Jesus’ name, supposedly in Jesus name, casting out demons supposedly in Jesus’ name, doing phony miracles. Are they really doing it in His name? Of course not, He doesn’t know them...He doesn’t know them. They’re on the broad road. And I’m just horrified to think of the fact that they’re going to be people who are in this line who hear “Depart from Me, I never knew you,” who spent their life in some kind of ministry, maybe a very wide ministry.
So you can go the way of race, faith, submission, repentance, the power of the Spirit. Or you can jump on the broad road with all the rest of the people in the religions of human achievement and end up in hell. The sad reality, of course, is that many of these people are going to say to Jesus, “Lord, Lord.” And they have no relationship to Him at all.
Our Lord closes His sermon, and I’ll close mine, when He says in verse 24, here’s the bottom line. “It’s what you do with My Word that gives evidence of your spiritual condition. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them.” These words of Mine, that means the teaching of Jesus recorded for us wonderfully in the pages of Scripture. “Anyone who hears these things and acts on them, obeys them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on a rock. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew, slammed against that house and it didn’t fall for it had been founded on the rock.”
What is the evidence of true conversion? What is the evidence of true repentance. It is a life of obedience, submission to the lordship of Christ. It’s not profession. It’s not empty words. It’s obedience. James 1:22, “Be not hearers of the Word only but doers.”
On the other hand, verse 26, “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and doesn’t act on them...” You see, we have been saved by grace, Ephesians 2, unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.” There’s no such thing as being totally transformed and genuinely converted without manifest righteousness. Not perfection but direction. Paul still said, “I’m not what I ought to be, I do what I ought not to do and what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I ought to do, but I still love the Law of God and long for righteousness.” Those are the longings of a transformed life.
But then there are those people who seem to have no interest in that, no obedience to that. They’re religious. They build their house but they build it on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew, slammed against that house and fell and great was its fall.I think what’s so interesting about that story that Jesus tells at the end here is this, these people build the same house...same house. I mean, they’re using the same materials, religious activities. They’re built in the same place. We know it’s the same place because the same flood gets both houses. So we would assume that they’re within Christendom, they’re within the church. They’re doing the same things that everybody is doing around them, it’s like the wheat and the tares, but they can’t be told apart because you can’t see the foundation. And, of course, remember the false prophets are the sand-land agents. They’re selling the sand. And when the judgment flood comes, the people whose lives are on the rock because their salvation is genuine, manifest in its obedience to the Word of God. They come through the judgment. But the people whose houses are built on sand, even though they look religious on the outside, are destroyed by the judgment because they heard the Word but they didn’t ever obey.
Beloved, it’s what you do with the sayings of the Lord that give evidence of your genuine conversion. If you love the truth and you love to obey the truth, even though you fall short, those are the evidences of true conversion.
Foundations of Grace, Part 3: The Design of the Spirit for the Church
Selected Scriptures
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