As I indicated this morning, we will be
taking up again tonight one of those texts
that I have gathered together under the title
of Simple Signpost to the Celestial City.
Texts which highlight fundamental gospel truths.
Texts which point us to the way of
life and salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ.
And I also indicated this morning that our
signpost for tonight would be taken from a
section of Matthew's Gospel somewhere between Matthew 7,
13 and the end of the chapter.
And were it appropriate, and did we have
the time, it would be interesting to see
how many of you thought that the signpost
would be verses 13 and 14, or perhaps
verse 14, or perhaps others thought, well, the
signpost may be verse 19, following on from
the theme of last Lord's Day.
Others perhaps may have thought that the signpost
would be this analogy that Jesus gives between
the wise and the foolish man, the one
who hears and does the words of Christ,
thereby builds upon a rock, and the foolish
who merely hears but does not do them,
and is like one who builds upon the
sand.
But if in your mind you thought that
the signpost would be comprised of the words
of verse 21, you made the right guess.
For the simple signpost to the celestial city
to which I direct your attention tonight is
the word of our Lord Jesus in verse
21, not everyone that says unto me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven,
but he that doeth the will of my
Father who is in heaven.
Now, this particular signpost has peculiar relevance in
a place like this where there are many
of you who profess a saving attachment to
Jesus Christ.
For the words, Lord, Lord, are expressive of
that reality.
They are expressive of one claiming a saving
attachment to Jesus Christ in faith and in
love.
And as we draw near to consider what
this signpost teaches us, I want us to
note as we try to analyze its contents,
first, the sobering prophecy, and secondly, the simple
contrast.
First of all, on this signpost is the
sobering prophecy.
Jesus, towards the end of that which we
commonly call the Sermon on the Mount, makes
a very sobering prophetic utterance that constitutes the
first half of this signpost to the celestial
city.
And it says to everyone who passes by,
not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter the kingdom of heaven.
And if we are to understand what Jesus
is saying, we must understand that a profession
of attachment to Jesus Christ is a necessary
part of true and saving religion.
Listen to me say those words again.
A profession of attachment to Jesus Christ is
a necessary part of true and saving religion.
To say to Christ, Lord, Lord, is to
profess a true attachment to Him as the
scriptures require men to do if they are
to be saved.
As surely as the Bible teaches that the
ground of our salvation is to be found
in the work of Jesus Christ on behalf
of sinners and that work alone, it teaches
with equal clarity that when a sinner has
been brought to rest by faith in Christ
crucified, a part of true and saving religion
will be the profession of that attachment to
the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is made clear in such text as
Romans chapter 10 verses 9 and 10.
Because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth
Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy
heart that God hath raised Him from the
dead, thou shalt be saved.
For with the heart man believes unto righteousness,
and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation.
Now in a book where the work of
Christ is made foundational to the salvation of
the sinner, where Paul goes to great pains
to show that all men by nature are
under the condemning power of the law, are
sinfully and morally and legally dead in Adam,
here he tells us that in any true
and saving religion there will not only be
faith in the heart unto righteousness, that is,
confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ, and His
perfect life on behalf of sinners, and His
substitutionary death undergone on behalf of sinners, there
will not only be that faith in the
heart unto righteousness, but there will be the
confession of the mouth unto salvation.
Likewise in Matthew chapter 10, the words of
our Lord Jesus in this context are equally
clear that a profession of attachment to Jesus
Christ is a necessary part of true and
saving religion.
Verse 32, everyone therefore who shall confess Me
before men, him will I also confess before
My Father who is in heaven.
But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him
will I also deny before My Father who
is in heaven.
If we would have the Lord Jesus openly
confess us to be His own in the
day of judgment, we must be prepared to
confess our attachment to Him in faith and
love here in this life and in the
context, even in a hostile environment where men
may threaten us, even with death itself.
This is why on the day of Pentecost,
when those who were stabbed in the heart
cried out, men and brethren, what shall we
do?
Said to the apostles, brethren, what shall we
do?
Peter, without in any way becoming a sacramentalist,
inferring that there is some grace unto forgiveness
to be found in the water of baptism,
nonetheless says, repent ye and be baptized every
one of you in the name of Jesus
Christ unto the remission of your sins.
And though baptism is not the meritorious ground
of our forgiveness, it is an inevitable accompaniment,
unless providentially hindered, it is an inevitable accompaniment
of true repentance and faith which are spiritual
activities of the heart.
Open confession of Christ is a vital and
indispensable part of true and saving religion.
I quote without asking you to turn to
it as a final witness the words of
Jesus from Mark 8 38, whosoever shall be
ashamed of Me and of My words, of
him shall the Son of Man be ashamed
when He comes in His glory.
We will never understand the sobering prophecy etched
upon this simple signpost unless we understand that
principle.
When Jesus said, not everyone who says unto
Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of
heaven, He is assuming that we understand that
the open profession of attachment to Christ is
a necessary part of true and saving religion.
However, the sobering prophecy in this signpost informs
us that the mere profession of attachment to
Christ is no proof of true and saving
religion.
You follow?
We've established what is implicit in this sobering
prophecy of Jesus when He said, not everyone
who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter.
He's assuming that among true believers, saying, Lord,
Lord, is indeed a part of true and
saving religion.
And they shall enter the kingdom of heaven
in the last day.
But His sobering prophecy is informing us that
the mere profession of attachment to Christ is
no proof of true and saving religion.
For though some, though many who say with
deep and sincere religious enthusiasm, Lord, Lord, shall
enter, not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, not
everyone who zealously professes a saving attachment to
Jesus Christ will actually enter the kingdom of
heaven in the last day.
Many will say, Lord, Lord, and will enter.
But there will be many who will say,
Lord, Lord, our profession is that of attachment
to You in faith and love.
But they will not enter the kingdom of
heaven.
Jesus Christ Himself has prophesied, and He is
truth incarnate, and He is telling us, not
everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall
enter the kingdom of heaven.
In fact, if we look at the very
next two verses, He focuses upon a whole
class of people who will say those very
words right up until the day of judgment.
And yet they will not enter the kingdom
of heaven.
Look at the verses.
Many will say to me in that day
what they were saying while they were on
earth.
Lord, Lord, we are attached to You.
We trust You.
We love You.
We believe in You.
We are Your disciples.
They say it to Him.
They say it to others.
They say it before a group of elders.
They say it before the church, by their
associations, by their coming to the Lord's table.
Their language is the language in life of
Lord, Lord.
We are in attachment to You.
And even in the day of judgment, they
don't change their tune.
Many will say to me, in that day,
that final day, that day that we contemplated
last Lord's day, the great day of the
wrath of God and of the Lamb, the
day of judgment, the day when every secret
thought shall be made known, the day when
all hypocrisy will be unveiled for what it
is.
Many, many, not just a few, not one
here or there, but many will say to
me in that day, Lord, Lord, right in
the day of judgment, they are openly confessing
before the assembled multitudes, before the great white
throne of God, Lord, Lord.
They are still holding to their profession of
attachment to Jesus Christ in faith and love.
And this is what they say.
Did we not prophesy by Thy name?
You see, their attachment to His name was
such that they spoke in His name.
They spoke of Him.
They spoke on His behalf.
They spoke ostensibly in His authority.
Did we not prophesy by Thy name?
And by Thy name cast out demons, and
by Thy name do many mighty works.
You see, their profession of attachment to Jesus
Christ is openly and apparently persuasively protested even
in the day of judgment.
Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord.
Even though Jesus has already said, Not everyone
who says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter.
There will be many who ignore this signpost,
who will treat it as the stuff of
a preacher just trying to upset one's religious
apple cart.
And they will go riding straight on their
way to hell, claiming that their attachment to
Christ is real.
And they will even try to make it
stick in the presence of Christ the Judge
in the last day.
Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy
name?
And by Thy name cast out demons, and
by Thy name do many mighty works.
Then will I profess unto them, I never
knew you.
In life, you professed that you came to
know Me.
You professed that by a heart experience of
the work of God, you came to be
attached to Me in faith and love.
In life, you professed that I was yours
and you were Mine.
You said, Lord, Lord, and now in the
day of judgment, you still hold to your
claim and you say, Lord, Lord, did we
not do this in the promotion and in
association with your name and that in association
with your name?
And He does not dispute their claims in
life or there in the day of judgment.
He simply says, I never knew you.
It was all one way.
You professed to be joined to Me, but
I never professed to be joined to you.
I never knew you.
Depart from Me, you that work iniquity.
I say on this signpost, there is a
sobering prophecy that many who actually profess attachment
to Jesus Christ, some of whom have been
brought into a place of actively promoting His
name and His cause, will be rejected by
Jesus Christ in the day of judgment with
His claim, I never knew you.
Now, by way of application, let me say
that in no place upon the face of
the earth are people more in danger of
being a fulfillment of this sobering prophecy than
in this, our own country.
In this, our own part of the country,
in the context of Trinity Baptist Church, if
to profess Christ meant for you and for
me what it means for those who know
about our brother in Iran, that the moment
we would say by open confession, we have
believed upon Christ from the heart unto salvation,
we are now confessing Him with the mouth,
and we are going to embody that confession
in the ordinance of His institution, baptism.
If we knew that the moment we did,
there would be a price upon our head
that we could be thrown into prison, publicly
flogged, executed.
If we knew that the moment we did,
there would be far fewer people sitting in
this building tonight saying, Lord, Lord, far, far
fewer.
associations in which it actually makes you more
acceptable to claim attachment to Christ, where there
is on the part of some such real
and vital godliness that to openly declare oneself
ungodly is to pronounce a sentence of social
ostracization upon oneself.
There is even social pressure in our setting
to say, Lord, Lord.
Because we have grown up catechized and instructed
and preached to and taught at home, Sunday
school, church, Christian school, home schooling, we say,
what more is there to know without saying,
Lord, Lord, what more is there to be?
Family training and discipline have made you respectable
and upright and decent, and there is nothing
that would outwardly mark you as an Esau
and a profane person, and so the most
natural thing is to say, well, I believe
everything I've been taught and I've done everything
you're supposed to do, so might as well
say I'm His.
My friends, if any group of people needs
this text, Trinity Baptist Church needs it.
Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter
the kingdom of heaven.
Not all who profess and profess with some
degree of earnestness true and saving religion truly
possess it, and this will be revealed.
This will be revealed in the last day.
And if you fooled mom and dad, husband,
wife, father, mother, pastors, elders, my friend, what
good will it do when the judge says,
I never knew you?
Depart from me.
There never has been and there is not
now any saving attachment.
You have not come into the virtue of
my perfect life and my substitutionary death.
You are not under the canopy of my
promise.
I will take you to myself that where
I am, there you may be also.
So depart from me.
I never knew you.
That's a sobering.
And the one most likely to be part
of it is the one who treats it
lightly.
The person who is sobered by it is
the one who most likely will not be
part of its fulfillment.
But thank God the sobering prophecy is followed
by a simple contrast.
You Greek students, we have an Allah.
That word that demonstrates a contrasting statement of
significance is to follow, but he that is
doing the will of my father who is
in heaven, the words understood, shall enter the
kingdom of heaven.
You see how those words are understood.
Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, some of
those who say, Lord, Lord, shall enter.
But not all who simply say, Lord, Lord,
shall enter.
Well, who shall enter the kingdom of heaven?
Those who not only say, Lord, Lord, but
who live in reality as though I truly
were their Lord.
They are doing the will of my father
who is in heaven.
They shall enter the kingdom of heaven in
its consummate glory at the last day.
There is the simple contrast.
He that is doing, present tense, the will
of my father who is in heaven shall
enter the kingdom of heaven.
Now what is Jesus saying?
Is he asserting in this contrast that no
one will enter the kingdom of heaven in
the last day, but human beings, men and
women, boys and girls, who from the moment
of their conception, their development in their mother's
womb, from the moment of their first breath
to their last breath, perfectly did the will
of God in thought and word, desire and
motive and intent, action and reaction.
No, there was only one ever conceived in
a womb and brought forth on this earth
who fits that description.
And that is our Lord Jesus Christ conceived
in the womb of the Virgin Mary by
the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit.
Conceived without sin.
Passing through all the normal stages of prenatal
development without any stain of original sin.
Brought forth by Mary in Bethlehem's manger.
Bethlehem's stall inlaid in a manger.
And throughout the entirety of that life of
33 plus years, there never was from the
deepest springs where thought first originates, where motives
are first formed, where attitudes are first conceived.
There never was the slightest hair's breadth deviation
from the perfect will of the Father in
heaven to every motion of his little feet
as a toddler in that home in Nazareth,
to every articulation of his Aramaic as he
began to speak as a little boy and
say Abba to Joseph.
If he used that word to speak to
his earthly father in the sense that Joseph
was appointed as the guardian of Christ in
the role of a father in all of
the ways he addressed his parents and interacted
with his siblings.
Think of it in a household full of
little sinners for he was part of a
large family.
Never once was there even the first motion
of jealousy to favor shown to his siblings.
Never once a motion of sinful anger when
there was injustice shown by one of his
siblings.
Unfairness shown by Mary or Joseph in dealing
with a family squabble in all of his
interaction through every stage of his life.
And here I must restrain myself for the
sheer fascination of gazing upon a developing Christ
growing in wisdom and stature and in favor
with God and man into full-blown manhood.
And when it says he was holy, harmless,
undefiled, separate from sinners, he who knew no
sin.
That's what it's talking about.
In the totality of his humanity where motives
and emotions and attitudes and dispositions and deeds
and words all form the complex of what
we are and do.
He perfectly did the will of the father
in heaven.
And the Lord here is not saying that
the only one who's going to be in
heaven is his son.
He is not saying that.
What does he mean then when he says,
not everyone who says Lord, Lord shall enter
the kingdom of heaven, but he that is
doing the will of my father who is
in heaven.
Well, this is what he is saying.
Not that there is any one of us
who can earn heaven by a perfect performance
of the will of God, for we would
all be shut out.
Rather, he is saying this.
The ones who will enter the kingdom of
heaven are those whose professed saving attachment to
Christ has brought them into a lifestyle of
serious commitment to doing the will of God.
That's what he's saying.
Their professed attachment to Christ has brought them
into the orbit of a lifestyle marked not
by occasional serious yearnings and by fleeting serious
intentions, but by a serious volitional commitment to
do the will of the father who is
in heaven.
Now, what is the will of the father
in heaven?
Well, in this very context, it begins with
obeying the call to repentance and faith.
This section of the Sermon on the Mount
begins with the summons of chapter 7, verses
13 and 14, where the Lord Jesus speaks
in regal grace, but with the imperative of
that regal grace, enter in by the narrow
gate.
He commands us to get through the narrow
gate.
That's a command to be converted.
That's a command to repent of our sins
and to believe in the gospel.
What is here figuratively put under the language,
enter in by the narrow gate, is put
in plain blunt prose in Mark chapter 1,
when it says, Jesus came preaching, saying, the
kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent ye and believe in the gospel.
You and I do not begin to do
the will of the father in heaven at
any other place than at the narrow gate
of true conversion, with the flesh withering acknowledgement
of our utter sinfulness, our utter inability to
do or be anything acceptable to God in
ourselves, our deservingness of hell and damnation, turning
from our sins unto God with full purpose
of and endeavor after new obedience, throwing the
full weight of our sin-stained souls upon
Christ as He is offered in the gospel.
This is why the scripture tells us this
is His commandment, 1 John 3, 22, that
we believe in the name of His only
begotten Son.
And again, God commands all men everywhere to
repent.
You see, in our day we see precious
little true repentance and faith because this is
the day of self-worth and self-esteem
and self-fulfillment and self-stroking.
And how can there ever be the dispositions
described in the beginning of this sermon, the
character traits of all the sons and daughters
of the kingdom?
How can there be poverty of spirit?
How can there be mourning?
How can there be meekness?
How can there be hungering and thirsting for
righteousness?
When we've convinced ourselves I'm okay and you're
okay, recently someone handed me what people are
told to enroll in a certain weight loss
program.
And the use of the number 10 has
reference to that vile movie, I only know
because I read the reviews, I don't see
the movies, in which a man lusts after
a woman other than his wife whom he
numbers in her physical perfections and proportions as
a 10.
On a scale from 1 to 10, you
couldn't go any higher.
If she had a half inch more or
less here or there, anywhere from her ankles
to the top of her head, she'd be
a 9.5. Now listen what they are
taught to say.
I am a 10.
I am a person of worth, of value,
of dignity.
I am special and I have a special
destiny.
I am important.
I am interesting.
I am precious.
I am priceless.
I am the salt of the earth.
I am the light of the world.
I can do many things well.
I'm a good person.
Nothing is wrong with me and nothing ever
was wrong with me.
I am a 10.
I see myself a 10 and one of
the great joys is to have to help
the people around me see their own worth
and value as a 10.
My friends, Jesus said, no one gets into
the kingdom till he's a zero minus.
That's poverty of spirit.
A publican in the temple would not so
much as lift up his eyes, let alone
his head, and he beats upon his breast,
crying, God be merciful to me, the sinner.
I'm a zero minus.
Jesus said this man went down to his
house justified.
The Pharisee could take this language.
I am this.
I am that.
I am the other.
And I say in such a climate with
the religion of self-worth forced upon us
from every avenue that attacks the mind, I
beg of you to hear the words of
Christ.
Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, if your
attachment to Christ has not begun on the
base note reverberating through your breast that you
are a vile, filthy, helpless, hell-deserving, wretched
son or daughter of Adam, you know nothing
of true repentance and therefore of true and
saving faith.
For true and saving faith is not tipping
the hat to Jesus.
It is not nodding the head that he
did a few things that I couldn't do
to help me get to heaven, but I
was pretty much on my way, given what
I am in myself.
Saving faith is the desperate thrust of a
helpless soul upon the arms of an almighty
Savior.
It's clinging to Christ crucified in a death
grip, saying, save me, Lord, or I perish.
Who's going to heaven?
Jesus said in this simple contrast, not those
who simply say, Lord, Lord, who by one
means or another have claimed an attachment to
Jesus Christ in faith and love, but those
whose claim is expressed in doing the will
of the Father who is in heaven and
the beginning place of doing the will of
the Father.
Is coming as a helpless, hell-deserving, undone,
needy sinner who owns his sin, turns from
it, and throws himself into the arms of
a compassionate and an almighty Savior who alone
can do sinners good.
But my friends hear me as clearly as
the Bible says, that's how you begin to
do the will of the Father.
If that professed casting of yourself upon Christ
is real, it will never stop there.
It will expand into a heart response to
the Father's call given through the Lord Jesus
to a life of universal obedience to the
revealed will of God.
This is why Jesus can go right on
in this context after saying, not everyone who
says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom, but
he that doeth the will of my Father
who is in heaven.
Verse 24, everyone, therefore, that hears these words
of mine and doeth them.
For you see, it is in the words
of Jesus that the will of the Father
in heaven is made known unto us.
And Jesus made it abundantly clear in every
call to discipleship that if our attachment to
him is real, it will be expressed in
these simple words, following him.
If any man will come after me, let
him deny himself, take up his cross and
follow me.
He describes his sheep in John chapter 10.
And here I would ask you to turn
to the text with me in these very
clear words.
John chapter 10.
Who are those for whom the Savior shed
his blood, whom he joyfully owns as his
flock of sheep, with all of their ignorance
and vulnerability and stupidity and periodic waywardness, with
all of the nettles and the burrs of
their remaining sins stuck to the wool of
their existence?
Yet he owns them.
How does he describe them?
Look at John 10.27. My sheep are
hearing, present tense verb, they are hearing my
voice, and I know them, and they are
following me.
And I give unto them eternal life, and
they shall never perish, and no one shall
snatch them out of my hand.
Oh, what a place of safety is here
described for his sheep.
Known by him, preserved and protected by him.
But my friend, listen, there are two indispensable
marks of all his sheep, from the weakest
to the strongest, the youngest to the oldest,
the most inexperienced to the most seasoned of
them.
These are the two marks of all of
his sheep.
Look at them.
My sheep are hearing my voice.
That hearing does not mean that they simply
allow my voice to fall on the outer
vestibule of the ear.
It means they hear with a view to
receiving all that I say.
Because, he then goes on to say, and
they are following me.
My voice that called them when they were
still burdened and bowed down and bent over
with the load of unforgiving sin, and my
voice came to them in the gospel, come
unto me all you that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
My spirit that enabled them to respond to
that call has given them a new heart,
and my spirit now has put my fear
in their hearts, so that the prevailing fundamental
disposition of their hearts is to hear my
voice.
Not only when it calls to rest, and
when it sets forth consolations and comforts, but
when it calls to such things as these.
If thy right hand offend thee, cut it
off and cast it from thee, for it
is better for thee to enter into life
maimed than having two hands to go into
hell.
In this very sermon on the mount, when
he is speaking of the commitment of all
the sons and daughters of the kingdom to
obedience to the law of God in all
of its length and breadth and spirituality, touching
attitudes and dispositions of the heart.
If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither
will your father forgive you.
If you say in the spirit of hatred,
thou fool, you shall be in danger of
hell fire.
Whoso looks with a view to lust hath
committed adultery already.
These are the words of Jesus, and he
says, My sheep hear my voice.
Not only when it calls to rest, but
when it calls to mortification that has analogies
in the brutal self-mutilation of cutting off
one's own hand and with the other hand
casting it far away, with no thought of
ever rejoining it by a kind of demonic,
spiritual neurosurgery and gouging out offending eyes and
plucking them away.
Are you hearing his voice calling you, young
man, to cut off the right hand of
lust indulged in the chambers of your mind
with magazines and books that you've hid from
mom and dad and perhaps wife?
You women, mental fantasies nurtured by your television
set and your daytime soaps with their sordid,
tawdry vile and filthy, adulterous late-born.
Are you taking every step necessary to stop
feeding your lust?
Are you just occasionally have a little whimper
in the closet when your conscience gets so
active you can't live with it?
And you whimper and cry and ask God
for a little help and then you go
right back with your hand and your eyeball
firmly attached.
Oh yes, once in a while you take
a dull paring knife and scratch your hand
and occasionally you scratch around your eyeball, but
you haven't begun to cut off and pluck
out.
You better listen to the words of Jesus.
Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter,
but he that does the will of my
Father in heaven.
If ye by the Spirit do mortify the
deeds of the flesh, ye shall live.
If you live after the flesh, you'll die.
What about in this sermon, chapter 6, where
he talks about the believer's prayers and his
giving and his self-denial?
Are you doing the will of the Father
when Jesus talks about our relationship to food
and to drink and to things and to
goals?
Are you doing what Jesus, who speaks the
words of the Father, are you doing what
he says?
Seek first the kingdom of God.
Are you seeking big bucks, big name, big
house, big closet full of fancy clothes?
I'm not asking do you have these things.
I'm saying is that what your heart is
set upon?
Jesus said, Do not set your affection on
these things.
Are you taking that seriously?
Come on, get honest.
In the language of contemporary teenagers, get real.
Because if the day of judgment is anything,
folks, it's getting real.
It's getting real.
It won't do to say, well, God, you
know, I tried.
Can you tell God you tried?
How hard did you try when all your
spare time is reading the literature that feeds
avarice and greed and covetousness and ambition?
You tried when all your spare time is
spent reading pulp novels and watching game shows
instead of praying and reading some of the
good books that are in our own bookstore.
And if you can't buy them in our
library and listening to tapes, flooding your mind
with the Word of God, God will tell
you, my friend, you didn't try.
You had an occasional, wispy, ephemeral, filmy-like
wish.
That's all you had.
But my Bible says those who enter are
those who do the will of the Father.
I didn't say it.
Christ said it.
They don't have an occasional desire and whimpering
yearning to attempt, to begin, to try.
They do the will of the Father.
My sheep hear my voice and they follow
me.
If we say we know him and keep
not his commandments, we lie and we do
not the truth.
But you say, Pastor, surely you're not saying
we obey the will of God perfectly?
No, no.
Why would Jesus say, after this manner, pray
ye, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed
be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will
be done in earth as it is in
heaven.
That's our goal.
That as the angels and seraphim and cherubim
and all the other creatures of heaven do
the will of God with alacrity and joy
and perfectly and perpetually, we pray, may your
will be done in earth, starting with me,
even as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
We're creatures of earth and of time, and
we need sustenance if we're to do your
will here on earth.
And forgive us our debts as we forgive
our debtors.
Forgive us our trespasses.
Jesus assumes there won't be a day when
the true sons and daughters of the kingdom
don't need to pray for forgiveness.
He already covered that ground in chapter six.
So whatever he says in chapter seven, he's
not contradicting that.
He's not saying we do the will of
the Father in heaven perfectly.
It is not perfect obedience, but it is
conscious, purposeful, self-denying, universal obedience.
There's no area of life from the deepest
recesses of motive and desire and thought to
the most visible outward deeds observed by all
in which our heart's desire is not to
do the will of God.
I read recently in Rabbi Duncan.
I often hear people say, and this is
why it struck me so well, you know,
Pastor, nobody's perfect.
You know what Rabbi Duncan did with that
little statement, nobody's perfect.
This is what he said about it.
Nobody's perfect.
This is the hypocrite's couch.
This is the believers bed of thorn.
Nobody's perfect.
That's the hypocrite's couch.
He lies back.
No serious determination to do the will of
God who says nobody's perfect.
The true child of God.
No one is perfect.
It's my bed of thorns.
Wretched man that I am.
I find that when I would do good,
evil is present with me.
To will is present, but to perform I
know not.
That's the bed of thorns.
Is the imperfection of your obedience your couch
or your bed of thorns?
Now, my friend, it can't be both.
It's one or the other.
And I'm asking you, not knowing if I'll
ever stand in this pulpit again, you better
answer with as much honesty sitting where you
sit tonight as Christ will make you answer
in the day of judgment.
Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, oh, I
have an attachment to Christ.
Oh, yes, very good.
But not everyone who professes that shall enter
the kingdom.
Who will enter the kingdom?
He that is doing the will of my
father.
That will begins with obedience to the call
to repent and to believe the gospel.
But it expands into the call to universal
obedience.
And though it is not a perfect obedience,
it is conscious, purposeful and universal.
Furthermore, it is not a legal but an
evangelical obedience.
He that hath my commandments and keepeth them,
he it is that loveth me.
If a man love me, he will keep
my words.
What is the first requirement of the law?
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, mind, soul and strength.
It is not a perfect obedience.
No, it is not a legal obedience, but
it is evangelical.
It grows out of a disposition of gratitude
to God for his mercy to us in
Christ.
But, my friend, listen.
God never last soothed the heart of any
sinner and drew him to the foot of
the cross.
But what the cross last soothed the sinner
and bound him to Christ so that he
is constrained to a life of obedience.
When Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5.14,
For the love of Christ not restrains me,
it constrains me.
It envelops me.
It ensnares.
It holds.
It binds me.
So much so, Paul said that to some
people, they think I am out of my
tree.
When in my devotion to Christ I pour
myself out in his service, he says, whether
we are beside ourselves in the estimation of
some, it is unto God.
If you regard us sober, it is for
your sake.
But this I know.
The love of Christ constrains us because we
thus judge.
If one died for all, then therefore all
died.
If what we were was so wretched and
rotten that God could not patch it up,
but had to send his Son to representatively
put it to death in his cross, then
surely whatever comes off that cross and into
a tomb and out of that tomb into
newness of life better be radically different from
what went to that cross.
And that's exactly what he means when he
says that they, they one died for all,
therefore all died that they who live should
no longer henceforth live unto themselves, but unto
him who for their sake died and rose
again.
The cross does not give us a minor
shift or two with regard to a few
of our ethical and moral and religious values.
The cross radically disrupts the very center and
citadel of your life from self to Christ.
And if the cross has not done that,
you're not a Christian.
My friend, face it, young or old, you're
not a Christian until the cross has radically
disrupted the very center and citadel of your
life and brought you from a life of
commitment to serve self, whether it's religious self,
moral self, proud self, covetous self, lustful self,
prideful self, unforgiving self.
Lazy self.
It doesn't matter.
What are the focal points of the reign
of your self done?
If you've gone to the cross in union
with Christ, it's been shattered.
And you are now fundamentally purposely, though not
perfectly living unto him who died for you
and rose again.
Well, there's the signpost, folks.
And there are few things that make me
ever contemplate quitting the ministry.
When I go home tonight, if God takes
me safely home, I'll have those fleeting thoughts.
That's all they are.
Fleeting thoughts.
You know why?
Because I'll lie from my bed and say,
oh, God, I sought to be true to
the text.
I sought to be simple and clear.
I sought to open my whole mind and
heart and spirit and soul and body to
the truth and through myself upon the altar
of your service to spend and be spent
in declaring the truth.
And their people go home and you'll talk
about everything else you've talked about every other
Lord's Day night for donkey's years and you
will not have been scratched one millionth of
an inch.
I tell you, I think I understand what
the prophet meant when he said, I've spent
my strength.
They have come to the birth and brought
forth nothing but when dear young
people.
Some of you who've begun to name the
name of Christ, listen to me.
You better start doing the will of Christ
where it hurts or give up that profession.
You start being willing to be marked as
a Christian in that school, drive your stakes
with regard to who your friends are going
to be male or female.
And you've got no business establishing intimate friendships
with ungodly people, much less romantic friendships with
non-Christians.
No business whatsoever.
And you know it, but you're not willing
to do the will of the father and
cut off that right hand of a relationship
begun to feel so nice.
The terms of discipleship are not watered down
because you're a teenager.
When I hear of Trinity Church members
dropping their kids off to see PG-13
movies, the plot of which is a humorous
twist on a transvestite lifestyle.
Don't you see parents when you turn your
kids loose to see a movie that has
Robin Williams in it who has to dress
up like a woman to have visiting rights
to his kids because there's been a divorce?
You're laughing at divorce.
You're being softened to the horribleness of a
transvestite appearance.
God says it is an abomination for a
man to wear that which pertains to a
woman, even when it's in a comic plot
in a PG-13 movie.
In God's name, what's wrong with you in
this place?
Sitting under this ministry and exposing your kids?
I wonder what in the world kind of
movies you watch.
When I hear the Trinity Church members got
to have a good bit of booze flowing
on a New Year's night like the world
to have a good time, I say, oh
God, what in the world am I doing
in this place?
And you've got to suck at the world's
fountains for fulfillment.
Where in the world are you?
People, I'm not angry.
I want you in that day when you
stand with me before the judge of the
world to have him say, come, you're blessed.
Come, you're blessed.
I don't want to look at you standing
there saying, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, I named
you in earth.
I named you before the elders.
I named you before the church.
I named you in prayer meeting.
I named you in witness.
And Lord, now, Lord, Lord, did I not
this?
Did I not that?
I don't want to hear him say, depart
from me.
I never knew you.
You worker of iniquity.
You never were made a doer of the
will of God.
You learned enough and you learned what to
say properly enough to be accepted for what
you professed yourself to be on earth.
But now the day of judgment has come
and the truth is now to be known.
I'm not laboring to make respectable reformed Baptist
hypocrites who will be damned in the last
day.
That's not what I'm laboring for.
I'm laboring to see this man taken safely
to heaven and all of you with me.
Are you ready to look at that signpost
and take its words at face value?
Are you ready to look at it?
Not try to rub out some of the
letters, soften it up.
Not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he
that is doing the will of my father
who is in heaven.
If you go to hell, having looked at
that signpost, these hands are clean of your
blood.
Let us pray.
Father, we are sobered by the words of
our Lord Jesus.
They're so plain that we cannot get around
them, underneath them, over them.
And we don't want to.
We want to be found out now, rather
than to stumble deceived into hell.
God, take your word today.
And will you not make it effectual to
bring some to the place whereby your grace?
They begin to do the will of the
father in heaven, that this night they truly
in spirit wrought self-loathing and conviction of
sin, repent, turn from sin and self and
turn unto you through the Lord Jesus and
trust only in his virtue and the merits
of his life and death upon the cross.
Oh, Lord, may some begin to do the
will of the father as they repent and
believe the gospel for those our father who
have thought all was well, but whom you
have found out and who even now feel
great discomfort.
Lord, help them not to try to pull
out the arrows that you have sent into
their hearts for their good.
But may they find a place to get
alone and seek you out until indeed they
can say by the grace of my God,
I am a doer of the will of
the father.
Oh, Lord, bless your word.
Oh, bless it.
We pray and have mercy upon us as
a church.
Have mercy upon me, upon each one of
us, that with renewed zeal and determination, we
may set our faces like Flint to do
the will of our father in heaven, no
matter what the cost may be.
Bless your word, seal it to our hearts
for Jesus' sake and for our good.
Amen.