Lord, Lord
Notes
Transcript
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. 14 How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.
15 “Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves.
Jesus then tells us how we will recognize false prophets, or false teachers. How do you think Jesus said we can recognize false teachers?
16 You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. 18 A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19 Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So you’ll recognize them by their fruit.
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
Notice, Jesus said not everyone who professes Jesus as their Lord, not even the people who profess to Jesus Himself that He is their Lord, is saved. Jesus said not everyone who professes Jesus as Lord will be saved, but only who? How would you finish Jesus’ teaching here? Notice when the Scriptures say that Jesus went from town to town preaching the gospel, the sermon on the mount is an actual written record of what Jesus taught people. What did He teach when He taught people how to be saved? Who did He say would enter the kingdom of heaven? Only the one who...
does the will of my Father in heaven. — Actions, vs. Knowledge. Actions, vs. Speech. — Is that how you would finish Jesus’ sentence when you talk with people? Have you ever told anyone, “Calling Jesus your Lord won’t get you into heaven if you don’t actually do God’s will.” — Notice what Jesus actually said… He said “not everyone” who calls Him Lord will enter heaven, but only the one who does God’s will. Don’t take that out of context. Saying that not everyone who calls Jesus Lord will enter heaven, means just that. OF THE PEOPLE WHO CALL HIM LORD, not everyone of those will enter God’s kingdom. So we are only talking about people who call Him Lord. We are not talking about people who don’t call Him Lord. — When Jesus said, ‘but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven,’ he is talking about only the ones who do God’s will within the group of those who call Him Lord. That’s important, because Jesus was not teaching that you could be saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you rejected Jesus, no amount of doing God’s will will allow you into heaven. You can not enter God’s kingdom based on your works, works being DOING God’s will. It is in fact only through your faith in Jesus that you can be forgiven and atoned for and enter the kingdom of God, which is why Jesus is only talking about people that call Him Lord. But He does not want you to be deceived, or to deceive yourself. You can call Him Lord, but if He is not your Lord, then calling Him your Lord doesn’t make it true. Jesus said this in Luke 13
3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.
5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.”
When Jesus went from town to town preaching he went preaching, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near, and He taught that unless you repent, you will perish. So according to Jesus, repentance is a non-negotiable. Let’s jump back to our passage.
22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ 23 Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!’
I never knew you, means that they were never really saved. Even though they believed they were, and even though many others may have believed they were, or others may have reassured them that they were saved because they called Jesus their Lord, they were never really saved, and the evidence of that was the fact that they were lawbreakers, meaning they never repented. They never turned from sin. Jesus makes a very clear point here, that it doesn’t matter how spiritual you are, you can prophesy in the name of Jesus, you can exorcise demons in the name of Jesus, and you can perform miracles in the name of Jesus, but if you don’t repent, then you don’t have the Holy Spirit and you are not saved.
24 “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
In other words, Jesus is clearly teaching here the exact same thing He just finished teaching us about the relationship between faith and works. That everyone who hears his teachings and actually obeys them will be like a wise man who builds his house on the rock.
25 The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
Here again, everyone who hears Jesus teachings and doesn’t obey them, regardless of what the say from their mouth, regardless of whether they tell people they are saved and if they tell people that Jesus is their Lord, if they don’t obey Jesus’ teachings, then they can’t truly say that Jesus is their Lord, because Lord means master, one you obey. And if you don’t actually act on His teachings, meaning if you don’t actually obey Him, then you are like a foolish person who built his house on the sand.
27 The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash.”
Why did it collapse, because it was not built on truth, it was a lie. You may have said Jesus is your Lord, but if he’s not actually your Lord, then that is a lie. Jesus said calling Him your Lord doesn’t make Him your Lord. Doing what He tells you, makes Him your Lord.
28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, 29 because he was teaching them like one who had authority, and not like their scribes.
So how is this possible? If we are saved by faith, and not by works, then how is it possible to profess Jesus as your Lord, and Him not be your Lord unless you obey Him, which is another way of saying that you have works. So Let me summarize that again.
If you are saved by faith and not by works, how is it possible that you can profess Jesus as your Lord, and not be saved unless you have works?
If you are saved by faith and not by works, how is it possible that you can profess Jesus as your Lord, and not be saved unless you have works?
Isn’t that a contradiction? I don’t believe it is. Let’s look at a couple passages of Scripture and then try to understand why it’s not.
16 and yet because we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus. This was so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.
Paul said that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. That is very clear. Obeying the law does not, and can not save anyone. Only by faith in Jesus can we be saved. But then James says:
24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
James says a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Is that a clear contradiction to Paul? No. Why not? Notice what James does say, and notice what James does not say. Alone!! James said you are not justified by faith that has no works. That’s what he meant when he said faith alone. We know that’s what he meant because he spent the whole passage explaining it and giving examples. James teaches that there is only one biblical description of a saved person.
A saved person is a person who is saved by their faith in Jesus Christ, who has works as the evidence of the Holy Spirit who has come to live within them and has made them into a new creation.
A saved person is a person who is saved by their faith in Jesus Christ, who has works as the evidence of the Holy Spirit who has come to live within them and has made them into a new creation.
If you are missing either of those two things, then you are not saved. If you don’t have faith in Jesus Christ, then you are not saved. And if you say you have faith, but you don’t have works to support that claim, then you are not saved. And James is very consistent with that teaching, and so is Paul. Let’s look at James first, and then Paul.
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him?
Can such FAITH save Him if he does not have works? No.
In the same way that Jesus taught that saying He is your Lord, doesn’t make Him your Lord, James teaches the same thing, that saying something doesn’t make it true. By the way, this is a biblical rebuke of the Word of Faith movement, that teaches that your words have power in them and the words you speak can make things come into reality. The idea that you can speak health, or wealth, or prosperity, or success, or peace, into existence by your words instead of your actions is not biblical. Only God can speak things into existence, and we are not to try to play God, or try to wield the power of God by speaking reality into existence because He has not made us into little gods. We are to come to Him humbly and ask for things in prayer and trust that He will give us what we need, and not necessarily what we want, as our Father, and we are to be content with what we have, the scripture teaches, we are not to be discontent with what we have. And we definitely are not to try and play God by speaking the things we want into existence as if we were God.
15 If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.
So here we see, James teaches that saying something is true, doesn’t make it true. Telling someone to be warm and be well fed, doesn’t make them warm and well fed if you don’t actually give them clothes and food. In the SAME WAY, James says, saying you have faith, doesn’t mean you have faith, if it is just talk and is not backed up by your actions. This is why you can say Jesus is your Lord, but unless you repent, then those are just empty words, saying it is so, doesn’t make it so.
But what about Paul? He seems to say the opposite doesn’t he? Let’s look at what he said again.
16 and yet because we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus. This was so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.
Just like we looked at what James did actually say, and what he didn’t say, let’s do the same with Paul. What does Paul actually say, and what does he not say? Paul said that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith. So Paul is teaching clearly that works and faith are two different things, and that you aren’t justified by works, but you are justified by faith. So Paul is saying that you are saved by faith, you are not saved by works. But remember that James also taught that you were saved by faith. Paul again says we believed in Jesus Christ so that we would be saved by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law because you can’t be saved by the works of the law. So Paul is clearly teaching the reverse scenario that James taught, even though they are teaching the same thing. What I mean is, James taught that you can’t be saved if you have faith and no works, and Paul is teaching that you can’t be saved if you have works and no faith. Paul is teaching that obedience to the mosaic law can not save you if you don’t have faith in Jesus Christ, because it’s not the works that saves you, it’s faith in Jesus that saves you. And James was teaching that you can’t be saved by faith if you don’t have works, because if you don’t have works, then you don’t really have faith, because real faith results in the receiving of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit ALWAYS produces works, with no exceptions. So they both taught you are saved by faith, not works, but James clarified that there is no such thing as saving faith that does not produce works. Neither taught you could be saved by works apart from faith.
Let’s pull up those two verses again.
Statement A -- A person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ… because by the works of the law no human being will be justified. — Statement B -- A person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
To say that one verse or passage of Scripture is TRUE, is not proof that another verse or passage of Scripture is NOT TRUE. So to say that statement A is True, does not prove that statement B is false. Why? Because God said them both, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, both to the New Testament church, after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, in order to teach us how to be saved. So one does not make the other false. They are both true, and they are both teaching us how to be saved, so to build an understanding in your mind of how people are to saved that treats one as true and the other as false, will absolutely cause you to build an INCORRECT understanding of how people are saved, which can have disastrous consequences, mainly of leading people to believe they are saved, when they are not.
So how is it that people can deceive themselves into believing that they have faith when they don’t? I believe the main reason is that they are presented a false gospel message.
When I decided to propose to my wife, I asked her to marry me and I offered her a ring as a sign of that relationship. Was she good to me leading up to that moment? Yes. So did her good actions towards me earn my proposal to her? No. No, in the sense that my proposal to her was in no way a type of payment that I was obligated to give her because of her good behavior towards me. If that were the case, then all you have to do is find someone you want to marry and be nice to them, and send them gifts, and they would be obligated to marry you because you earned it as a payment for your good actions towards them. That’s not how it works. Her actions towards me did not earn my proposal. I was not obligated to propose to her, I freely chose her. After I freely chose her and extended that ring to her, she then had to make a decision to accept my proposal or to reject my proposal. She was not obligated to accept my proposal because of my good actions towards her. And she did accept. So I freely chose her, and she freely chose me. My proposal to her, and her accepting of my proposal, neither was earned by the other because of the things we had done for the other. They were done, not as a payment owed, but as a free gift of love for one another. But our choices were real, and the consequences were real. She had the real choice to accept or reject the ring. If she said yes, she would put the ring on and it represented her commitment to be devoted to me and me alone in an intimate relationship. But if she chose to reject that ring, it would represent that she would not have been willing to devote herself to me and me alone in a lifelong intimate relationship.
So imagine what it would look like if she had accepted the ring, but refused to have a wedding ceremony, and refused to stop dating other guys, but at the same time went around and told everyone that we were married and that I was her husband. Would we actually be married? No. Even though I genuinely offered to marry her, and she said she would marry me in return, that by itself did not make us married, and so going around and telling people we are married would not make it true. Now let’s go back and fix the situation. Let’s say she accepted the ring, then actually married me. Would we be married then? Absolutely. In both cases, she said she accepted my proposal, and in both cases she put on the ring, but in one case she actually followed through with what the ring represented, her entering into an intimate relationship with me alone, and not just saying that she would accept my proposal, but she actually accepted my proposal. Now, by actually accepting my proposal, and actually following through with the wedding and with actually turning away from any other man, and remaining faithful to me, did she at that point, earn my proposal? No. My proposal was a gift. Her accepting that gift did not earn that gift. In order for my proposal to not have been a gift, but instead payment earned by her, she would have had to have done something to have earned it first before I proposed to her. The proposal was first and was not owed because of anything she had done, therefore it was a free gift. Her accepting the proposal after it was given freely can not therefore go back in time and make the proposal into something owed instead of freely given. This is how our relationship with Christ works, and how faith and repentance work together.
God freely proposed to us, inviting us into a covenant relationship with Him through faith. Just as I chose freely to ask Lindsay to enter into a covenant relationship with me, God chose freely to ask us to enter into a covenant relationship with Him. In the same way that my proposal to Lindsay to enter into that relationship with me was not owed to her because of anything she had done, God’s proposal to us to enter into that relationship with Him was not owed to us because of anything we had done. In the same way that she had to make a decision to accept or reject my proposal to her, we have to make a decision to accept or reject His proposal to us. In the same way that Lindsay said yes and put the ring on her finger, we can say yes to God’s invitation to us and we can get baptized in water. And in the same way that saying she would marry me and putting the ring on her finger was not the same as actually entering into that covenant relationship with me, saying Jesus is our Lord and Savior and getting baptized is not the same as actually entering into that covenant relationship with Him. We will live out the decision we truly make. If she said she would marry me but didn’t really mean it, then she won’t actually marry me, even if she tells people she has. And if we say Jesus is our Lord, but we don’t mean it, then we won’t actually live it out, we won’t obey Him, even if we tell people we do. Now, whereas there is a time gap between when Lindsay accepts my proposal to marry me, and when she actually follows through with marrying me, there is no time gap between when we actually accept God’s proposal to us, and when we enter into that covenant relationship with Him. So with marriage, you can accept one day and follow through with it later, not so with salvation. For the moment you truly accept His invitation to follow Him, you enter into that relationship with Him. So how does faith and repentance work together?
When someone asks you to marry them, you know what kind of relationship they are inviting you into. And because you know what kind of relationship you are being invited into, you know if you are really accepting that invitation or not. What kind of relationship is a marriage relationship? It is an exclusively sexual relationship. You say, it’s much more than that, and I would say you are exactly right. It is much more than that, but that is what makes it unique from all of your other relationships. You say, no, that’s not the only thing that makes it unique. You are also spending your life together. You live together everyday, you laugh together, you cry together, you share your deepest thoughts with each other, you make plans together, you chase dreams together. To which I would say, you are absolutely right, but she’s not the only woman I can do all those things with. If something awful were to happen to my parents and they lost everything they owned, and they had to move in with me and Lindsay, then my mother would be another woman in my house, that I would live together with everyday, that I would laugh with, cry with, share deep thoughts with, make plans with, pursue dreams with, and not only that, but she could help around the house, she could help raise the kids, and she could use her talents to make money and help pay the bills, all things that spouses do. But the one thing that distinguishes my relationship with my wife from my relationship with every other person is sexual intimacy. Sexual intimacy is unique to the marriage relationship that can not legitimately be found in any other relationship. And when someone asks you to marry them, you understand what kind of relationship you are being invited into and so you consider it very carefully, because of how monumental of a decision it is, and all it entails, and you make a decision by saying yes or no, and then actually following through with it. So when God offers an invitation for you to be saved from your sins by entering into a covenant relationship with Him, what kind of relationship are you being invited into? If you don’t know what kind of relationship you are being asked to enter into with God, how can you know if you are actually in a covenant relationship with Him or not?
Let’s imagine that Lindsay didn’t understand what the marriage relationship really was, and I got down on one knee and gave her a ring and asked her to marry me. Let’s say that she said she would have to think about it, and went and talked with one of her close friends, who also didn’t understand what marriage really is, and she told her this: Of course you should marry him. It’s so easy. All you have to do is put a ring on your finger and tell people that you’re married if anyone asks. You don’t actually have to live with him or talk to him or interact with him, unless you need something, and then you can go ask him to help you. And you can keep seeing other people and live just like you are now, but the best part is, forty years from now when he dies, you’ll get a big inheritance, because you are married. Now, if she believes her friend and then comes back to me and says, “Yes, I’ll marry you, and accepts the ring, but then goes on and does what her friend told her she could do, which was not actually marry me, and not live with me, and keeps seeing other people, and only calls me when she needs help, and expects to receive an inheritance from me in a few decades, are we actually married? No! Do you think she’s going to get an inheritance from me in a few decades? Not going to happen. But, in essence that’s exactly what tens of thousands, if not millions of people of people are doing with God right now. God has offered a covenant relationship to them, and they have been told that all they have to do is put on the ring, which means get water baptized and tell people that Jesus is their Lord, but they don’t actually have to live with Jesus. They don’t actually have to be faithful to Jesus by turning from sin. They don’t actually have to follow Him, but they can call on Him whenever they need help because, unlike us, He is always there waiting for us and ready to help. And then, when they get to the end of their life and die, they can expect to get a big inheritance, which is entrance into heaven. When God asks you to enter into a covenant relationship with Him and you say yes. If this is what you are saying yes to, then you are one of those people that Jesus talked about when He said, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” If that’s the relationship you are saying yes to, then you aren’t saying yes to the invitation He extended to you. So what kind of relationship did He offer? A relationship in which He is your Savior and Lord. One in which you must repent and believe. Faith and Repentance, Savior and Lord. Faith is trust, so you trust Him to save you, and you repent to submit to Him as your Lord. The Savior part requires trust, the Lord part requires repentance.
15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Repent and Believe
9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.
Do you have saving faith? Have you believed the good news about Jesus Christ, and have you repented of your sins?