2008-05-09
Good Morning Dear Ones,
I am led to continue discussing support passages for MT 7: 1-6 the part of Christ's Sermon on the Mount regarding judgment. You'll remember that (1-2) is "Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and He will apply to you the same rules you apply to others." Verses 3-5 are Christ's use of hyperbole to indicate this, a description of the fact that before you try to remove a speck from another's eye, you had better remove the log from your own. This cuts into the heart of hypocritical judgments people often make. And (6) introduces the need for discernment. "Do not give what is holy to dogs-they will only turn and attack you. Do not throw your pearls in front of pigs-they will only trample them underfoot." Today, we will by look at MT 7: 21-23, a section in which Christ outlines the ultimate consequence of consistently rejecting Christ and His teaching.
MT 7: 21-23, "Not everyone who calls Me, ‘Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what My Father in heaven wants them to do. When the judgment Day comes, many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord! In Your name we spoke God's message, by Your name we drove out many demons and performed many miracles!' Than I will say to them, ‘I never knew you. Get away from Me, you wicked people!'" These statements are directed at people who falsely profess to acknowledge Christ as their Savior, but have never really converted. These are the hypocrites who approach their behavior, thinking, "how can I do this to maximize what's in it for me?" Only those who do God's will are going to go to heaven, and the very first step of this is to believe in Jesus Christ. JN 6: 29 makes this clear. "Jesus answered [referring to Himself] ‘What God wants you to do is to believe in the One He sent.'"
We have to go to REV 20: 11-15 for a clear picture of what will happen in the face of habitual hypocrisy. "Then I saw a great white throne and the One Who sits on it. Earth and heaven fled from His presence and were seen no more. And I [John] saw the dead, great and small alike standing before the throne. Books were opened, and then another book was opened, the book of the living. The dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. Then the sea gave up its dead. Death and the world of the dead also gave up the dead they held. And all were judged according to what they had done. Then death and the world of the dead were thrown into the lake of fire. (This lake of fire is the second death). Whoever did not have his name written in the book of the living was thrown into the lake of fire." Second death is conscious torment for eternity with no avenue of escape. On Judgment Day, many people will try to remind the Lord that they prophesied, or cast out demons, or performed many wonders in His name. But their protests will be in vain, because the Lord Jesus, our omniscient Deity surely knows the content of every person's heart. Thus, to these hypocrites, He will declare, "I never knew you. You were never My own." We see that not all miracles are of divine origin. That would explain why the magicians in Pharaoh's palace were able to turn Aaron's walking stick into snakes and back again [EX 7: 10-11].
When we go back to the issue of "casting pearls before swine," we must realize that discernment in such a situation isn't always straight forward and easy. "Wolves in sheep's clothing" [MT 7: 15] can be very clever indeed about making it tough for the average person to recognize their true motives. One such "evangelist" whom I have seen on TV has a tremendous following. This man claims to be a healer and to be able to singlehandedly heal such catastrophic diseases as various kinds of cancer, auto-immune diseases, and the like. And yet, his words sound to me as, "Quack, quack!" Others have the right to choose to follow this man, just as I have not to. But I feel quite motivated to pray for them, that no one is hurt or loses his life because of this so-called healing prophet's words and actions. And yes, I can hardly consider myself an expert in discernment; after all, one need only look at the mistakes of my past to see that. But God is an expert, which is why I'm so motivated to spend daily time in His word, so that my heart remains open to the Holy Spirit's direction in these and all matters. We must remember PS 1:1, "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night." Sadly as the time for the end times approaches, the prophecy that there will be more evil in this world than ever before is coming true. I can see this even in the relatively short span of my own lifetime. At the same time, there will be more people coming into Christ's light than ever before. But the Scriptures makes it clear that more will be lost than will be saved. We can't take for granted the blessings our faith in Jesus Christ gives us. Nor should we ever discount the enormity of the sacrifice that our Father made for us of His only Son on the cross, so that we might come to faith in Him and have not only salvation, but the chance to gain eternal life from obeying the teaching of the Holy Spirit [JN 3: 16; RO 3: 14-15; RO 8: 14-16]. Each of us needs to be born again, adopted by the Father to be His children for eternity. Without this, spiritual death is a certainly, an unthinkable certainty.
PRAYER: O Lord, we are Your sheep, the sheep of Your pasture [PS 100: 3]. In comparison to You, we are easily deceived, even the brightest of us, by Satan's stealthy agents, those "wolves in sheep's clothing" who would like us to think that their way of ideation is the best way. Their claims make them appear as like You, in the same way that Satan himself claimed to be like You just before You commanded the good angels in heaven to cast him down to earth. IS 14: 11, 13b-15, "You used to be honored with the music of harps, but now here you are in the world of the dead. You lie on a bed of maggots and are covered with a blanket of worms…You thought you would sit like a king on that mountain in the north where the gods assemble. You said you would climb to the tops of the clouds and be like the Almighty. But instead, you have been brought down to the deepest part of the world of the dead." Satan is one of your greatest disappointments ever. As Lucifer in heaven, he was handsome and had a voice which sounded like music. You honored him as Your main angel in charge of worship, and You surrounded him with gems. But all of this went to his head, and he began to do evil, encouraging others to follow him. He began buying and selling, and this led people to violence and sin [EZK 28: 14-16a]. EZK 28: 16b, "So I forced you [Satan] to leave my holy mountain, and the angels who guarded you drove you away from the sparkling gems." Still and all, the original sin occurred [GN 3; 1-6], something which built sin into natural mankind's being. You were more disappointed than ever before, but because of Your good and loving heart, You sent Your Son to be the Passover Lamb [1 COR 5: 6-8] to be crucified on the cross for the sake of those who would believe in Him. Not a single drop of His blood shed should ever be wasted! Dearest Father, we accept Your wisdom and ask You to direct us to discernment, to give us the self-discipline to study your word daily, to pray often with a thankful heart [PHIL 4:6-7] and to live righteously in accordance to Your teaching. We praise and thank You every day for the blessings of grace and salvation You give us. In Christ's holy name, we pray. Amen.
Next week, the Holy Spirit leads me to write about MT 7: 24-27, "The Two House Builders," as we continue to examine support for MT 7: 1-6. Except for people who are mentally challenged, God has equipped each of us to make good judgments in the areas He allows. It will never be our right to judge who should live and who should die, but we are faced with the need to assess the people's judgment who we encounter (as it applies to us). We also need to know if what we are deciding is right or not with God. Often first impressions are not accurate. The same can be said of rushing to judgment on matters of controversy. Each of us can come up with examples where we have changed our opinion about one thing or another. Needless to say, there are also some non-salvation based issues on which good and devout believers can disagree, e.g. which theory of the events of the end times in which we believe. But all of us need to agree on some basics-things like FAITH + NOTHING = SALVATION, for example. We can't earn our way into heaven; it is solely a gift of the Father's grace extended to us. I can say this with confidence because of EPH 2: 8-10, "For it is by God's grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God's gift, so that no one can boast about it. God has made us what we are, and in our union with Christ Jesus He has created us for a life of good deeds, which He has already prepared for us to do." Our God loves us enough to give us an opportunity to learn to make good, wise judgments and to know where it is His right alone to judge. That's because of the unparalleled love that He has for each of us. Praise be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn