Today we're going to have the wonderful and yet somewhat sorrowful privilege of finishing The Sermon on The Mount. Wonderful because we see it come to a climax and sorrowful because in a sense I fear that we have not anywhere near plumbed the depths of all that could be said, but as the Lord would have us we move along.
Turn with me in your Bible to Matthew chapter 7, our text for today, that is this morning and again tonight will be in verses 21 to 29. Matthew 7:21 to 29. Let me read this to you as the setting for our day and ask that the Spirit of God would speak to us in these tremendous truths. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out demons? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work in‑' iquity. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, who built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine; For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."
Now all through The Sermon on the Mount, in chapter 5, 6, and 7 the Lord has been setting forth the divine standards of His Kingdom. As the anointed Messiah, the Christ, the King, He has certain principles which He has demanded of those who desire to enter the Kingdom. Now those principles occupy the thrust of this sermon, but they can all be summed up in one word. The requirement for entering the Kingdom is that you be righteous, righteous, and therefore the whole sermon is summed up in chapter 5 verse 20, "For I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." The Kingdom of heaven is God's world, God's dominion, salvation, eternal life. And entrance into that Kingdom is dependent upon righteousness.
Now how righteous are we to be? Well, we're to be more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. How righteous were they? Well they were as righteous as a man could get, on his own terms. They had come to the epitome of human achievement in religion. They were obsessed with religious function. As far as the people around them knew they were exceedingly righteous. They seemed to do all the right things like praying and giving alms and fasting. They seemed to have all the right standards like not murdering and not committing adultery and making sure they maintained every minute element of the law. It seemed as though they were the ones who were exceedingly righteous and yet the righteousness that Christ demands far exceeds theirs. In fact our Lord is requiring a righteousness that is beyond man's capacity, a divine righteousness that comes from God, a standard that man himself is utterly unable to attain.
In fact if you want to know how righteous all you have to do is look at chapter 5 verse 48, and here our Lord says, "Be ye, therefore, perfect," how perfect? "even as your Father, who is in heaven, is perfect." We are to be righteous, how righteous? More righteous than the most righteous. We are to be perfect, how perfect? As perfect as God is.
Now if you really hear that message you're going to face a fact and that is that you can't live this standard. You cannot be more righteous than the most righteous people, on your own. Because the most righteous people are as righteous as people can be on their own, you can't be more righteous than that. And you cannot be as perfect as God is perfect because you're a human being. And so all through the sermon Jesus is endeavoring to show men the inadequacy of their own human resources, to deal with God's Kingdom. They can't make it. Therefore the whole idea of the sermon is to bring them to the very point at which our Lord started, "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn; blessed are the meek; and Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness." In other words the Lord said at the very beginning that the people who enter My Kingdom are the people who know their own righteousness doesn't make it, that the standard of perfection is way beyond their capacity, and so they are beggars in their spirit, they can't earn it they have to beg for it, they mourn because of the total sinfulness that they see in themselves, they are meek and humble because they know they fall so short of the standard of God, and they hunger and thirst for a righteousness they know they can't attain.
The purpose of The Sermon on The Mount then is identical to the purpose of the law of God in the Old Testament. When God gave the law on Sinai, the law was not given in order to show man how good he must be, the law was given to show man how good he couldn't be, how bad he was, how short he came. And Paul summed it up when he said, "For all have sinned and come (what?) short of the glory of God." And Paul says that "The law was our schoolmaster to drive us to Christ." The law was what whipped us. And that is essentially what is going on in The Sermon on The Mount, Jesus is upholding the law of God. In fact He says at the early part of the sermon, "Not one jot or tittle shall in any wise pass from the law. I didn't come to remove the law, or to destroy the law, but to fulfill the law." And Jesus is reiterating the law of God and saying the standard hasn't changed and you must see how short you come, and therefore beg in your spirit as a mourner, meek before God hungering and thirsting for His righteousness.
Now that leaves men with two options, you either live your life, you either invent your religion or you come God's way. You either come on your terms or His terms and that is precisely where the sermon climaxes in chapter 7 verses 13 and 14. And there our Lord says, "Enter in at the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be who go in that way; Because narrow is the gate, and hard is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Jesus says, there are only those two ways, there is the broad gate, leads to the broad way, ends up in destruction. It is the way of easy religion, it is the way of human righteousness, it is the way of the scribes and the Pharisees and those who think they're good enough on their own. On the other hand there's the narrow gate and the narrow way that leads to life and that is the way of those who come with a broken heart, with a contrite spirit, those who come and know they can't make it, they can't keep God's law, they can't meet His standard, they can't live up to His righteousness, they can't be as perfect as God is, and they cast themselves on the mercy of Jesus Christ who imputes to them His own righteousness. There's only those two ways and that is the climax of the sermon.
Now having stated that great invitation to enter at the narrow gate, and we've covered it in detail, the Lord then shows how difficult that really is. It is not easy. Don't believe anyone who says it's easy to become a Christian, it cost God everything including His own Son and it'll cost you the same thing including yourself. It's not easy. And those who would offer us an easy believism, a cheap grace do us no favor at all, they delude us. It is difficult to come to God on God's terms. First of all, it is difficult because you must recognize your own total inability and that means the death of pride and that's difficult, because we are constantly told that we're the most important thing to ourselves.
Now the Lord points out the difficulty of entering in the narrow gate right in verses 13 and 14. First of all it says in verse 14, "Few there be that find it." And the word find is important, it's difficult to enter the narrow gate because you have to find it. Which implies a searching, and a looking, and an examining and an effort. It's as the Old Testament says, "If you seek me with all your heart, you will find me." Nobody just stumbles along and falls into the Kingdom of God inadvertently. It's a searching, and the idea is that it isn't easily made visible.
Secondly, it's difficult not only because you have to find it, and that means a hard and diligent search, it's difficult because it means it's the opposite way that everybody else is going, many go in the broad gate, few go in the narrow way. It's what James said when he said, "Friendship with the world is enmity against God." It's what John said when he said, "If you love the world the love of the Father's not in you." In other words you have to come apart from the system to enter the narrow gate. It's difficult because the crowd is going the other way.
It's difficult also because it is a narrow gate and that means you come through naked, stripped of all your self, your sin, your self‑righteousness. You come through absolutely alone, you don't come through with a group, you don't come through with a family, you come through alone. And it is a constricted way and you know it's going to be a narrow life and you must count the cost. And Jesus said further it's not only difficult because it's hard to find, it's away from the crowd, it's a narrow gate, but because you must agonize to enter it, He said in the Gospel of Luke. In other words there must be penitence and confession and repentance and soul searching and brokenness.
And then in our last study, we saw that there is another reason why it's difficult to enter the narrow way, another reason why it's difficult to admit that you don't make it, you can't live up to God's standard, you're not as perfect as you have to be, and that is because of false prophets verse 15. And in 15 to 20 the Lord says, false prophets add to the difficulty because they stand in the way and they chase people onto the broad road. They're the ones trying to divert everybody for Satan's purposes and Satan's ends. Telling people they can go through the wide gate with all their sin and selfishness and they can flop from side to side and wander all over a great big wide road and there's little price to pay. And so the Lord offers a choice and a verdict, a decision. But He says the right decision is to enter the narrow gate and it won't be easy, and He says, "Few there be that find it." Mark that people, few, not many but few.
And there's one other reason why the few is only a few. Not only the deception of the false prophets, but listen to this, self‑deception, self‑deception keeps people from entering the narrow gate. J.C. Ryle, Bishop Ryle wrote, "The Lord Jesus winds up The Sermon on The Mount by a passage of heart piercing application. He turns from false prophets to false professors, from unsound teachers to unsound hearers." And Tasker the commentator adds, "It is not only false teachers who make the narrow way difficult to find, it is a man may also be grievously self‑deceived that adds to the difficulty." In other words not just the false prophets but we can deceive our own selves into believing we're Christians when the fact is we're not.
Now that precisely is the issue the Lord takes up in verses 21 to 27, self‑deception. And what a fitting climax it is to the sermon, having stated all the principles and having warned about the false prophets the Lord says, now let Me warn you one other thing, make sure you're not kidding yourself, are you really a true member of the Kingdom of heaven? And the Lord warns us about two categories of self‑deception. Number one is a mere verbal profession, and number two is a mere intellectual knowledge. In verses 21 to 23 it is a verbal profession, verse 21, "Not everyone that saith," verse 22, "Many will say to me," now these are the people who make the verbal profession, they say they're Christians. And then in the second paragraph it is the ones who have only an intellectual knowledge, they hear. Verse 26, "Everyone that hears these things." Now listen, then in verses 21 to 23 you have the people who say and don't do, and in verses 24 to 27 the people who hear and don't do. That's the issue and they're deceived. On the one hand it's a verbal profession on the other it's an intellectual knowledge, and I call it empty words and empty hearts, and that's what we want to speak to in our study today. These deal with the matter of self‑deception, mere verbal profession, mere intellectual knowledge is as John Stott puts it, "A camouflage for disobedience."
Now you will notice that at the end of verse 21 you have a key word there, "but he that doeth the will of my Father, who is in heaven." It is not the ones who say and it is not the ones who hear it is the ones who what? Who do. In other words the Lord is saying, if you do not live a righteous life I don't care what you say or what you hear, You're deceived.
Now this is a very, very strong word, and I want you to listen as the Spirit of God speaks. Both of these closing paragraphs, verses 21 to 23 and 24 to 27 contrast a right and a wrong response to the invitation of Christ, and they show that our eternal destiny is determined by the choice we make. One as I said deals with what you say over against what you do and the other what you hear over against what you do.
Now keep this in mind, the Lord is not speaking to irreligious people, He is speaking to people who were literally obsessed with religious activity, they're not apostates, they're not heretics, they're not anti‑God, they not atheists or agnostics, they are utterly religious people but they're damned because they're on the wrong road and they are self‑deluded. Now maybe their self‑delusion is a result of sitting under a false prophet or maybe they've actually sat under the truth but have deluded themselves. They are not a lot unlike Israel of whom Paul said, "They had a form of godliness but denied the reality of it."