Sermon: Four Warnings (Part Three): I Never Knew You

Lawlessness
#1743B
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 13-Jan-24; 45 minutes 2024-01-13

listen:

playlist:
Go to the Four Warning (sermon series) playlist

download:

description: (hide)

If you will remember back when I spoke, I think it was in November, the first sermon in this series on Christ's four warnings at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, I described it as crucial cautions descending in a spiral that becomes more focused with every turn. So it starts out wide and it starts getting smaller like a funnel. I used the image of a raptor, an eagle or a hawk, circling first in very wide sweeps and then coming down closer, seeing prey down on the ground, and he zeros in on that prey that he has seen.

In these four warnings, we started with the preaching of the gospel being quite general. God sent His apostles out and they spoke to everyone. They tried to speak to all mankind, to all the world. But the calling that God has given is much more specific. God requires that those whom He calls, that is, His elect, enter through the narrow gate and they are to walk His constricting path to the Kingdom of God—not the broad way, not the wide gate, but a very narrow way.

His second warning (which comes in the paragraph after that), against false prophets, is more personal. It gets a bit more intense. It is coming into the church by a little bit. We are talking about sitting in services now and hearing teaching coming from a pulpit. And He gives us basically two things to think about in that paragraph. First of all, just as a general summary, He tells us that there will be false teachers and false teachings. And I think that was very apparent. You just go through the New Testament and find out how often Paul and the other apostles are warning people about false teachers and false teachings. And then you find Peter is doing the same thing and James is doing the same thing and Jude is doing the same thing and John is doing the same thing.

And so there must have been quite a bit of people coming in with strange ideas and they were given a fairly open forum in the church at the time. It was not as structured as we are today, at least that is how I look at it. If you go through I Corinthians 14 and Paul talking about how the church service is supposed to go: If anybody has a word, go ahead, go ahead and say it, and then they would get cross examined by the rest of them. That is the way it seems like it is. But it was a bit more open.

Now, the second thing that Jesus tells us there in that paragraph is that yes, there will be false teachers, but it is up to you to be on guard against them. You have to studiously evaluate them by studying, by looking into, by being very focused in your evaluation of not necessarily their teaching (you could probably see some in the teaching), but what the teaching produced, because a lot of times this teaching sounds great. It, you know, tickles us. It is something that we would like to be true. But when you look at it over the long haul and see what it produces in people, not just in the false teacher, but in the people who are listening to the false teacher, then we can see that there is something wrong with the teaching.

Today's subject, we are in the third of the four warnings that Christ gave at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, concerns another insidious and dangerous and ever-present stumbling block to God's elect, and that is what I have called profession without obedience. We have come pretty close now. We are not just talking about false teachers in the church, we are talking about something that strikes the very heart of every one of us. Are you one of these people who has professed or confessed Christ, but you really do not listen to Him? You do not do what He says? So how we respond to this warning that He gives at the end of chapter 7 will expose whether we are a pretender or a true child of God. Or another way to put it is, it will expose whether we are a hypocrite or a true believer.

So we will consider Matthew 7, verses 21 through 23, the second to the last—the penultimate—teaching passage in the Sermon on the Mount. It is just a very short section here of the sermon.

Matthew 7:21-23 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesized in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew; you depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'"

There is a lot crammed into three verses here and we are going to work our way through them as we normally do.

But first, when we approach this passage, we have to understand that what is happening here is that the scene Jesus is relating to us is an image of the last judgment. That is, He is sitting as Judge of all these people, these particular ones who say, 'Lord, Lord' to Him. It is a lot like the Parables of the Wedding Feast, of the Talents and the Minas, and the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats; all of which show Jesus sitting in judgment of mankind.

So in this place, that is, in Matthew 7:21-23, He reveals Himself to His disciples as the ultimate Judge of humanity. Really, it is an admission of His divinity. Do not ever let anybody tell you, any commentator or whatever, that Jesus never admits that He is divine. He does it all the time. It may not say just simply, "I am God." He does not necessarily say that. But when He says here that He is the Judge of all, again, He does not say it right out like that, but when He says it the way He has here, then you can only conclude that He is God. He is the God-Man. He is the only one suited to judge man from God's point of view.

Let us go to John 5 and see a little bit about Christ as Judge. We will start in verse 16, we will read all the way down to verse 30. I want to read the whole section, then I am going to go back. We cannot go through this all with much detail. There is just not enough time. We could spend hours here. But I want this to see how Jesus Himself explains His position as judge.

John 5:16-30 For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath. [He had healed.] But Jesus answered them, "My Father has been working until now, and I have been working." Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.

Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father.

He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.

Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me."

I know that was a long piece. I normally do not like to do long passages like that but I wanted you to hear the whole explanation or as much of the whole explanation of Jesus' perception of His role as Judge.

Just notice how Jesus explains the relationship between the Father and the Son. That is what this whole 15 verses has been about, His relationship with the Father. That is the basis for His role as Judge, His relationship with the Father. He says the Father works, so I work! The Son does what the Father does. He follows His example. Is that not how it is often, and especially more so in past days than today. But sons often take up their father's occupations. That is what they are used to. That is what they see their dad doing. So when the Son looks at the Father (I am talking divinely here, the divine Son and the divine Father), He sees a worker, someone who is a Creator, that is what He does. His job is creating and so the Son also takes as His job the role of Creator.

Now the Father is very interested in expanding His Family and so the Son is also very interested in expanding the Family. So They have gone from physically creating to spiritually creating. It is all in the job description, that is what They do. They are Gods, They are Creators. They are both committed, it says here, to bringing life and salvation, that is, the salvation that will bring life to humanity so that that Family can expand. Because that is the only way it works. The only way you can become part of the Family is to have salvation. To also have salvation, you have to, as we will see here, do as the Son does in terms of the Father, but we will leave that for now.

We are told here that the Father loves the Son and we know from many other places in Scripture that the Son also loves the Father, and They both love their creations and They want the best for those whom They have created because the best for them is that they be created in the Son's image and have salvation and eternal life in the Kingdom of God. That is what They want. He says here, the Father raises the dead and so does the Son, because when you raise the dead, you give them life. He wants them to have life—eternal life.

So what we see here is Jesus describing Himself as Judge by the fact that He has a very deep and intense relationship with His Father. He wants to do what the Father wants Him to do. He wants to judge with the same righteousness that the Father judges. He wants to give life to others through the resurrection like the Father wants to give life through the resurrection. They are perfectly aligned. You cannot find a paper's worth of difference between Them in terms of Their object objectives and Their character and many other things besides.

It is because of this oneness, that is, that Jesus is divine as well as the Father, and that They have the same holy righteous character, They have the same goal, it is because of this oneness and because the Son is different from the Father, because the Son took on humanity to complete only those things that the Son of God could complete, have as finished work for other people to come after Him and claim and do, that He is the perfect one to fulfill the role of Judge. He knows the Father's side because He has lived with Him for eternity and They agree perfectly. And He knows humanity's side and all the temptations and problems that flesh can bring. But He also knows that His creations can overcome those things and be saved. Remember, even though you think He had some advantages, He was able to do that, He was able to overcome every problem that human beings have and kept His Father's commands perfectly. Not one sin. So He knows both sides is what I am saying.

Now, this idea of the relationship leads Christ to speak about that judgment. Let us read verse 24 again.

John 5:24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life."

Here in verse 24 He assures us that we who hear and believe in the Father have life and we will not fall under judgment. Such people receive life as a gift.

Let us just go quickly to Romans 6, verse 23. You all know this probably by heart.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We can get a lot out of this verse but just to understand that sinners get death as a punishment, as a judgment. Whereas the elect, those who follow Jesus Christ, are given eternal life as a gift, and it only comes through Jesus Christ.

So He will execute judgment on people who fail in these requirements. They do not hear and believe, as He said in verse 24. So He again offers the choice, as He did in Deuteronomy 30:15-20, of life or death, blessing or curses. Which do you want? He has not changed at all. When He gave those things, that choice to ancient Israel, it is the same that He gives today in the church. Are you going to hear and believe? If you do, you are going to get life. But if you do not, if you sin, if you reject Christ, well, you will be judged and condemned. Very simple.

Now, notice that He says that those who have done good, in verse 29, to the resurrection of life. So this tells us that hear and believe in verse 24 means that these same people who are given life, they hear and believe, yes, but they practice God's Word and will. They practice it. That is what He means by they "have done good." They just do not know it. I mean, they do know it but it does not stop there. It goes into practice, it goes into behavior, and that is very important.

Finally, we have to emphasize verse 30, "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me."

Jesus explains here in this verse that His judgment is based in the Father's will. It is not His own. He agrees with the Father's will. But the ultimate authority for the things that He judges, the principles that He judges with, are the Father's. He says, "I am not doing this. It's not My particular set of rules. This comes from an even higher authority than Me." It is the Father's and He is a servant carrying out the Father's will. I mean, He says in John 14:28 that "the Father is greater than I." He always did everything because the Father was greater. He agreed with Him. He wanted to serve Him in the proper way. And so He appeals to higher authority here.

In addition, He also says in verse 30 His judgment is true and righteous. It is fair, it is equitable, it is just because He always submits His will to the Father's will and the Father is perfect. Be you therefore perfect like your Father who is in heaven. This also means, just as a corollary, that there is no court of appeals in God's system. Because the judge and the authority who makes all the principles and all the laws are perfect. They never get anything wrong. You cannot argue a judgment of God. It is always true.

Let us go back to Matthew 7 now. Now that we have set that straight about Jesus Christ being the Judge of all and what gives Him the authority to say what He says here at the end of Matthew 7. So

Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven."

Jesus here definitively asserts that mere professions of submission or claiming identity with Christ is not enough to enter the Kingdom. You can call Him Lord all you want, but if you do not do His will, you are not His. That is very plain. Calling Him 'Lord, Lord,' identifying with Christ, or professing our submission to Christ, is merely the first step. That gets us started. That gets the ball rolling down the road. Stopping at this point with just confession is tantamount to giving up or leaving a task unfinished. One's Christianity, if you will, is stillborn at that moment, it is dead. It will not produce anything because confession or profession is not enough. Not even thinking that Jesus is the great God who created us. That is not enough. It is not enough to say that He is the Savior. Anybody can say that. You need something more.

You know, Hebrews 6:1 says something similar. If you know Hebrews 6:1, that is the verse about going on to perfection. What does Paul (or whoever the author of Hebrews) say there? "Leaving these elementary things behind, let us go on to perfection." The profession, the confession, the identity with Christ, that is all foundational, these elementary things. That is the first step. What we find is these people in Matthew 7:21, those who call Him 'Lord, Lord' and do not do His will, that is where they are at and that is where they stay.

So those who merely profess Jesus as Lord and then do nothing else, without repentance, are unfinished projects that will be cast into the fire. They are a waste. I hate to put it that way. But that is what happens when you have a bunch of projects that you do and you do not finish them. They get thrown out. That is what Jesus says. And the reason is that those people who called Him 'Lord, Lord' and did not do the things that He said, they never sought to be like the new man—who is Christ. They never tried to put on the righteousness of Christ. They never went on to perfection.

Modern Protestants lean very heavily on Romans 10, verse 9.

Romans 10:9 If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

They also treat Acts 4:12 the very same way. "There is no other name under heaven by which you can be saved." And these are true statements. They are right in the Word of God, but they are incomplete. Peter in the one and Paul in the other were not preaching the full gospel when they said that. These are just proof texts that are taken out of context. And there is a lot more behind them. The apostles were speaking only in those occasions about one's calling and justification. They were not talking about the sanctification process. They had a specific topic and the specific topic was justification and how we become justified before God. But that was not the end of it all. There is a lot more to it. Paul tells us in Acts 20 that we need to take the whole counsel of God on these matters, not just one or two proof texts.

So yes, it is good that you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, but that is only one part of your conversion process and it is at the very beginning, it says very little about what happens after that. It gives you the foundation to go on to perfection. That is great, but it does not tell the whole story.

The modern interpretation of these verses like Romans 10:9 and Acts 4:12 is that all one must do is confess or profess Christ as one's personal Savior and salvation is blessedly assured. It is the doctrine of once saved, always saved, or eternal salvation. That salvation from that point cannot be taken from you. Yet, this is the very same practice that Jesus condemns in Matthew 7:21-23. Those who say, 'Lord, Lord' and do not do what I say. Is that not what we just talked about? So merely doing this, merely confessing and believing that Christ is one's personal Savior and nothing else beyond that, strangles God's work in a person at his birth. There is far more to salvation than merely profession of Jesus as Lord.

Now, Jesus puts it plainly in Luke's version of the Sermon.

Luke 6:46 [He says] "But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do the things which I say?"

Look, if we are going to call somebody our master, we had better be prepared to follow his orders. That is the most fundamental principle of a master/servant or a king/subject relationship. And it follows that if the servant or the subject disobeys his masters or his king's command, he is in rebellion, he is a traitor, he is a usurper in one way, and condemned to face the master or the king's judgment. In this case, if there is no repentance, no changing, then the judgment is condemnation—it is death.

Simply put, Christ's orders or the Father's orders, let us go with Christ in this because Christ is the Judge, Christ is the King here, we are the ones who have taken Christ as our master, so His orders, that is, His commandments, His teachings, and His example are the will of the Father in heaven. That is why it was important to go to John 5 to show that He is doing exactly what the Father wants Him to do. So the will of God is found in His instructions. The Hebrews knew this. The word "torah" means instruction. The gospel is the good news. That is, His instructions on how to be in the Kingdom of God. So God's will is following the instructions of Christ.

For all practical purposes, following God's will is the same as keeping His Word. Those who are not just hearers but doers of His Word are the ones who shall enter the Kingdom of heaven. You might want to jot down Romans 2:13 and James 1:22, where both Paul and James talk about being doers of the Word. As a matter of fact, Paul says it is the doers of the Word that will be justified.

Matthew 7:22 "Many will say to Me in that day [notice that many will say to Me in that day], 'Lord, Lord,' have we not prophesized in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'"

Yeah, a lot of people will have been deceived. Obviously, this passage centers on the phrase "in Your name." These people, these disobedient people, claim to have done works: preaching, exorcisms, even miracles under Christ's authority. Jesus' name is very powerful. It is very authoritative. Demons will leave if you rebuke them in His name, even if the exorcist is not a disciple. You can find that in Luke 9:49. Jesus says, leave them alone. We do not want to get in a fight with them about the truth at this point. And this verse, Matthew 7:22, suggests that wonders and miracles can happen the same way through the using the name of Jesus Christ. God allows that sort of thing to happen on occasion for His own purposes. We cannot bring Him into judgment for that. It is just the way it is.

But preaching and exorcism and miracles are not indications of holiness or even discipleship. Most likely these people use Christ's name as a kind of magic formula. It is like a spell rather than having true faith in what Christ is and what He can do.

And so in the judgment, such people will try to justify themselves before Christ saying they did all these works for Him. But Jesus will reject them. He will reject them as He will reject all who are false. They are false Christians because they do not do what He says.

These are not the works He is looking for. He is looking for different works. The works that He wants to see are repentance, growth, producing fruit, serving others, loving one's neighbor, loving God. That is the work He wants to see. That is following His instructions.

Let us go back to Deuteronomy 13. This also appears in the Old Testament.

Deuteronomy 13:1-5 "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods'—which you have not known—'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. [That is what He wants.] But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death [Matthew 7:23. We have not gotten to that yet.], because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk [practice]. So you shall put away the evil from your midst."

You can also write down Deuteronomy 18:19-20 where he says basically the same thing.

So God's instruction on this point has not changed. The proof of your discipleship, the proof of your salvation is always in the relationship you have with God. It is not in a wonder, it is not in a sign, it is not even in preaching. It is in whether you obey His commandments, whether you hear His voice, whether you serve Him loyally. That is how you can tell whether you are saved or not, not in profession.

I just mentioned Matthew 7:23. Let us go read that. He says to these people who try to justify themselves:

Matthew 7:23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'"

So what is Christ's judgment? His judgment is death. His judgment is the second death! He gets right to the point in explaining the why of their sentence of condemnation. I never knew you. I never knew you. John 17:3 says eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son, that is, having a special intimate, growing relationship with Them in which we learn more about Them through conversation, that is, prayer and study and experience. So this learning about Them is essentially living life with Them along the course of our lives so that we can get to know Them better and take on Their character and Their practices.

Matthew 12:46-50 While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak with Him. Then one said to Him, "Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You." But He answered and said to the one who told Him, "Who is My mother and who are My brothers?" And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, "Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother."

So if you are doing God's will, if you are doing what Christ says, if you have, as much as possible that lies within you, to have the same love for the Father that the Son has and you are following His will, then you are one of His disciples. You are His sister, His brother, His mother.

However, back in Matthew 7, verse 23 these condemned, professed but false disciples, Jesus says, never put any effort into getting to know the true God and His Son. Why would they when they thought they had blessed assurance of eternal life? Is not all they had to do was claim the name of Jesus? Is that not their ticket to heaven? So they did that and then they never did what Christ wanted to do, but they did what they wanted to do. But Christ, Jesus, the Judge says there never was any relationship, it never got off the ground.

So Jesus says, "Depart from Me." This is not a very mild "leave" or even a brusque "get out of My sight." It is very final. It is, we could say, parallel to the Old Testament phrase, "They shall be cut off from their people." If you want to go look at that, you can jot down Exodus 31:14, Leviticus 18:29 or 20, verses 3-6. The commentators tell us that this phrase "be cut off from their people" is at least banishment and in this context, death. It denotes eternal damnation and destruction. The ultimate of being cut off from His presence. You can write down II Thessalonians 1:9. Remember this was one of David's greatest fears. "Do not cast me out of Your presence in Psalm 51.

Now, finally, at the very end, back in Matthew 7:23, Jesus provides one more descriptor of these people for our benefit so we can identify them better and it summarizes their behavior so that we can easily spot it and avoid it. He says these are the people who practice lawlessness. John identifies sin as lawlessness in I John 3:4; and "practice" suggests habitual behavior not changed by repentance but living in sin as a lifestyle, as the way they live.

These people are what scholars call antinomian, that is, they are against law. They are those who despise law, God's law particularly, and so behave as if there is no law that binds them at all. There are no divine standards. These are the people who say the law was done away, that Christians do not have to follow God's moral instructions. And so they construct and follow their own conceptions of right and wrong and they justify themselves when they contradict God's Word. They find a way to work around it. Usually it is, "That's done away, it's no longer required," and then they will claim liberty. They believe that God has given them liberty from the law when they have been given liberty from the results of the law, that is, their condemnation. So they condemn God's law as a curse and a burden and stigmatize those who keep it. They are the true spiritual anarchists who will bow to no one, not even God Himself, the great Sovereign of the universe.

This passage, Matthew 7:21-23, is a woefully underutilized part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Most professing Christians today totally ignore it because it goes against what they have been taught out of the pulpits of their churches. Because most churches out there are antinomian, especially the Protestant ones. There are some nominal Christians who have realized that there is some sort of law keeping required. Here is a quote from George MacDonald. He was a Scottish author and a minister in the early 20th century who said,

No man is a believer, no matter what else he may do, except he give his will, his life, to the Master. No man is a believer who does not obey God.

So the ball is in your court. Will you profess Christ's name and do nothing? I do not recommend it. Or will you believe what He says and keep His commandments? Your salvation hangs in the balance.

RTR/aws/drm