MESSAGE BEARER MEMO

By Ryan Shaw

These bi-weekly memos are to provide encouragement, exhortation, and spiritual nourishment in the lives of those who have signed the Message Bearer Creed as you prepare to serve the Lord globally, and are influencing your peers with this vision.

Sermon on the Mount – Part 5

Matthew 7

As we’ve learned, the purpose of the entire Sermon on the Mount is that we may grasp a deeper measure of discipleship according to Jesus and what it is to live in His Kingdom. Through it Jesus highlights the crux of kingdom living. Today, we continue to look at some specific teaching that Jesus gave and what it meant for those who were listening on that hill 2,000 years ago as well as what it means for us today.

Jesus’ View on Criticism

Matthew 7 begins with a section on judging others. The disciples were admonished by Jesus to be watchful of their sinful bent toward criticizing others without regard to receiving open criticism from others. It is so easy to begin to look at the faults in another and somehow think that we are free from areas that others could potentially criticize us. Jesus is calling us to humility in this section as much as anything else. A recognition that criticizing others is pointless because they can come back and do the same to you. If we embrace humility in realizing our own fallen state and propensity to sin, we are less likely to want to openly cut someone else down. We find here the principle of sowing and reaping manifested. In some mysterious way Jesus states here that if we cut others down we will also be more prone to have verbal criticism pointed at us. Jesus also insinuates that not only will we be open to criticism and judgments from other humans we also will enflame God’s judgment against us as well.

Guard the Gospel

In verse 6 Jesus tells a strange story that seems to have no apparent context with the other five verses of the section. The spiritual principle involved, however, focuses on the fact that holy and valuable items should only be given to ones who can and will appreciate them and not to the general public. The inference is that those who do not appreciate the things of God and who will not value them, should not be given them. As Message Bearers this is an important principle. We know from Ecclesiastes that there is a time for everything, to speak and to keep silent. It is our responsibility to submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit, inviting Him to lead us to people who will be open to hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. We should be careful to not expose God’s truth unnecessarily to those who would mock it or somehow abuse it. This is often a difficult line, however, which is why we need to keep our ears close to the heart of God. This seems to be the symbolism of the pearls being cast before the swine.

The Prayer That Is Answered

Next Jesus changes His focus to a call for His disciples to be persistent in prayer. Each of the forms of asking, seeking, and knocking are in the imperative form, meaning the suggestion was to continue asking, seeking, and knocking until you receive an answer. Very few of us today are used to this kind of persistence in prayer which is one reason I have to believe we are not receiving in answer to prayer all that Jesus intends to give us. The key here is not on a certain technique in prayer as the Pharisees were used to doing, but on whom it was that they were praying to. When we get to know the One to whom we are seeking, we are more apt to respond according to His prescribed manner of prayer, since we recognize His love and commitment to us. As we align ourselves with His ways and purposes and pray according to these we can be confident that He will answer us because we are praying back to Him what He wants to do in the first place. This is the mystery of prayer. God initiates, we respond, and He answers according to His plans that He initiated in our hearts.

Four Illustrations Depicting True and False Discipleship

 In verses 13-27 Jesus gives us four illustrations highlighting the difference between true and false discipleship and Kingdom living. This is the concluding section of the Sermon on the Mount and He is now showing clear examples of the division between those who are true and who are false followers.

The Two Gates

In verses 13-14 we see the most basic and dramatic division between those who are saved and those who are lost. The two gates lead to either destruction or life. Jesus concludes that true discipleship is taking the line of deliberately choosing to go against the stream of what the majority of people are doing. He is clear that this distinction is a matter of life and death.

Judge the Fruits

Next in verses 15-20 we find a more subtle division between those who are His professed followers. Jesus’ challenge is to take notice of false prophets whose desire is destructive as they present themselves as insiders when really they are not. The inference here is that not all prophecy is to be taken at face value, but to be tested. A prophets words should be tested by their fruit alone. The term fruit refers to behavior that is genuinely pleasing to the heart of God.

Does Jesus Know You?

In verses 21-23 we see this division go even deeper between alleged disciples of Jesus. These are those who are convinced that they are true followers simply because of the displays of power and other supernatural phenomena which they are doing. These disciples have been deceived into thinking that simply because they do certain activities, they are true disciples of the Lord. They have substituted certain actions for relationship with Jesus as the basis for their salvation. True discipleship is portrayed as whether Jesus knew them and not on their own profession of faith, or on particular activities. This puts Jesus solely in the extraordinary place of judge over all people based on His knowing (being intricately related with the depths of each ones heart response to Him as Lord) of each one.

The Wise and Foolish Men

The final division between true and false followers again refers to the basis of certain behavior. Both the wise man and the foolish man heard the words that Jesus gave but only the wise put them into practice. True followers of Jesus are those who love Him and thus put His words and commands into evident practice in their lives. This cuts once again at the tendency to be comfortable in our discipleship based upon what we profess as believers in Jesus and not enough on whether it is based on genuine heart to heart relationship with Him. 

Closing

As Message Bearers it is important to understand these divisions that Jesus makes between those who live true and false in Him. Sometimes it is very difficult to detect the true from the false and we do need to be careful not to try to go and figure out which person is in which camp, etc. What Jesus seems to be calling us to here is healthy self-evaluation of our own hearts to perceive if we have allowed any self-deception to seep into our outlook on ourselves. Then He also gives us some measuring mechanisms to use with others, namely observing their fruit in life and ministry. This should be the standard we use as we serve Jesus among the unreached around the world. Throughout the process of discipling new believers, it is the fruit which comes from a heart that has been transformed by the encountering of the living person of Jesus Christ, that should be our measure of validity of another’s salvation and not only professions of faith or ability to walk in certain manifestations of power.