Session 9: Sermon the Mount

More notes from this Jen Wilkin study. The last session.

We must understand that apart from salvation, we are unable to obey before our hearts are transformed by God and the power of the gospel.  Which means, even the best moments for unbelievers are just right actions attached to wrong motives.  

Jesus' call to obedience is geared to believers whose hearts have been changed.  Now that we are on the other side of salvation, Jesus has given us power to overcome sin in our life.  When we come to salvation, we are now able to chose the right thing for the right reason.  A lost person cannot obey God.

We are being sanctified.  We don't earn God's favor.

He will now show us that the golden rule is a narrow path. He will give us pairs.  He began the sermon on the mount with a list of blessings - ways that the citizens of Heaven will experience and see what it means to feel the favor of God rest on them.  Interestingly, as He is closing His sermon down, He ends with warnings.

Matthew 7:13-14. Moral majority will never be.  Broad way and narrow way.  There is a gate of salvation through Christ (narrow) and why is it narrow?  Because its boundaries are defined by the law.  As members of the Kingdom of Heaven, we don't do whatever we want.

The Lord is changing what we want to match what He wants in the form of the law.

The Lord always cares more about the decision maker than He does about the decision.  Ask for wisdom - James 1:5.  He will give it to us.

The narrow path is about becoming a person who makes right decisions based on wisdom.

People get angry when we say there is only one way to God and the gate is narrow.  The world wants to say there are many ways to God.

One gate, the gate of salvation, in Christ alone.  One way - the path of sanctification.

We are in the "minor majority".  

We have two kinds of teachers:

Matthew 7:15. Jesus will give us the difference of a teacher who teaches truth and a teacher who teaches error.  There are times that we must judge, and here is another example.

Outside: sheep's clothing - looks harmless

Inside: ravenous wolf 

An external appearance of goodness but on the inside something dangerous.

Matthew 7:16-17. He switches here to an agricultural metaphor.

Matthew 7:18-20. Many people listening would understand this metaphor.  Gardeners, farmers, etc.  The pharisees even had rules for tithing from their spices.  They would be familiar with the cycles of harvesting.  What does a false prophet look like? 

 

1) Someone who distorts the gospel

2) Someone who relaxes the law - tries to broaden the narrow way.

It's a high calling and a difficult calling to walk the narrow path - 1 John 5:3

3) Someone who denies that the broad way leads to destruction (universalism).

Bad fruit will look very attractive.  We will never recognize false prophets at all if we don't have first-hand knowledge of scripture.

ALL scripture is profitable to us.

Now the third warning - two kinds of servants:

Matthew 7:21-23. "Lord, Lord".  They are implying intimacy with Him.  They had big outward signs of righteousness here.  Are these the things He has held in high regard according to what has come before?  We place so much stock in these things, but He places stock in the quiet obedience: controlling our tongue, our anger, our motives.  Heart issues.

Matthew 7:24-26. "Everyone then" or "everyone therefore".  What came before this? The entire sermon.  Verses 24 and 25 "these words of mine".  The words given in this sermon is what He is saying.  

 

A hearer and a doer:

He describes two houses that are identical.  The difference in these houses cannot be seen until the rain comes.  Until the storm comes, we don't know which house is built on the solid rock and which is built on shifting sands.  If we are a hearer and a doer we will stand.

Matthew 7:27. "And the fall of that house was great" - other versions.  The last word in the sermon on the mount is "great".  He's telling them "you think greatness looks like":

 

1. Overthrowing the Romans

2. External greatness

3. Power and authority

But to be great in the Kingdom, we will be last.

Final Matthew 7:28-29. Why are they astonished? Because what they are used to hearing is someone who says "this is the truth as far as I perceive it."  Jesus is saying "I am the truth. Follow me."