Apologizing before you start is one way to lower expectations, but it can also have the effect of making some people judge harshly before they listen. I am very fortunate that our congregation has members who do not do that. In fact, in the following weeks I was told by a few of them that this was the best sermon that they had heard from me.
That stopped me in my tracks. It made me feel ashamed of my apology. True, I was not happy with the work I had done, but the words I was working with were not my own. I was working with the Bible, The Word of God. And where The Word is concerned, human strength and weakness become irrelevant. As Paul tells us, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than [the wisdom of] men, and the weakness of God is stronger than [the strength of] men." (1 Cor 1:25)
And so now I submit my weak sermon, which God saw fit to make strong. Thus humbling me again. As I watch it now, a month after the recording was made, it is not as bad as I felt at the time. I can see that I am tired, that the struggle was real. But there is a good message there. If I were to spend another couple of hours on it, I could tighten it down to 20 minutes and bring some coherence that is lacking, but it really isn't bad. I need to trust my brothers and sisters more!
And one more thing: the video is 42 minutes long, but the sermon itself clocks in at just over 30 minutes. We just neglected to stop the video, so it includes the response to the sermon, the introduction to communion, invitation to pray, a song from the praise team, my benediction. Which is not standard, as it involves pizza and chicken. So there's that. Enjoy!
Golden (Rule, Narrow) Gate July 29th, 2018
12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.
14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
I am sure that you have heard of people wrestling with the scriptures. If you are a new Christian, you know what I’m talking about: the old you faced the truth about God, found in the scriptures. The old you and God did not agree. You looked at your life, looked at what God wanted for your life, and decided that you were wrong. You lost. And in losing that battle, the war was won. You surrendered to God, and admitted that your best will never be good enough to save you.
The scriptures won. God won. And when that war was over, your lifetime of battles began. If you are a Christian who prays, reads the Bible, and listens for the Holy Spirit to speak to you, you know what it is to wrestle with scripture. Our sinful nature means that we constantly veer away from God, and have to fight battles with ourselves again and again. And much of that sinful nature is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit through scripture.
If you don’t wrestle with scripture, something is wrong: you have been too complacent with yourself, or you have given up. It’s even possible you never got started at all. If any of that is true, please talk to someone after the sermon! But that’s not my focus today.
I’ve been wrestling with part of today’s scripture for the past month. Trying to decide what’s wrong with my thinking, praying about it, and trying to listen. As well as taking care of my family, working, enjoying the pleasant warmth of this Busan summer, settling into a new home, and sleeping a bit from time to time. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that the scripture has been rubbing my nose in the dirt. In fact, I don’t think it’s quite finished, and it might not be for some time.
In the end, just yesterday in fact, I decided on a very old strategy for dealing with it: divide and conquer. So today, I am bringing you two separate sermons. Don’t worry, they will both be short. And please accept my apologies if they seem incomplete. For my first sermon today, I am addressing verse 12 only:
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12
First off, did you notice that reference to the Law and the Prophets? We also heard it earlier in the Sermon on the Mount,
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Matthew 5:17
And we hear about the Law and the Prophets later in Matthew, too, when he answers the lawyer about what is the greatest commandment:
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40
Throughout his gospel, Matthew is calling our attention to the unity of scripture. Reminding us that the God of Genesis and Exodus is Jesus. The promises God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still being kept today. The invitation extended through Moses is still available to us. It is not about the rules you need to follow in order to avoid God's wrath, but a promise that we are forgiven, and a description of what a forgiven life looks like. All of this leads us to the Golden Rule:
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12
You may have learned it King James style: “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Or maybe “Treat others the way you want them to treat you.” Or “Do good things for other people.”
We find The Golden Rule used by people from many religions, as well as people who claim to have no religion. Just last week the boys soccer team in Thailand were rescued from a cave after being trapped for 18 days. One of the rescuers even died during the rescue. I have no idea what religion, if any, the rescuers subscribed to, but 95% of Thais claim Buddhism. Maybe the rescuer who died thought that he was earning a better life the next time around, maybe even Nirvana. Maybe they did it because they hoped that others would do the same for them.
The presence of The Golden Rule in many religions is often used to justify the idea that all religions are basically the same. I’m sure you’ve heard the argument that being a good Christian is pretty much the same as being a good Buddhist, or a good Muslim, or any other religion that boils down to “Be nice to other people.”
The next time someone tells you this, ask them why? Why should you treat other people the way you want to be treated? Is it because that is how you earn material rewards? Or a better afterlife? Or a better next life? The answer to this question is important, and the word “so” leads us to the answer. “So” means because of what came before. Let’s read Matthew 7:7-11 together as a reminder of what came before:
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matthew 7:7-11
If I could sum this up in one sentence, it would be this: “If we just ask, God does good things for us.” These good things are not hidden away where we need a treasure map to find them. They are all around, if you just seek, ask, knock. Because seeking God means acknowledging that you need God. Knocking means you need to be in God's presence. Asking means you need God's love.
And if I could sum up Matthew 7:12 , I would say it like this: We should do good things for other people.
When we put the two pieces together, we get this: “If we just ask, God does good things for us. So we should do good things for other people.”
Jesus is telling us that loving other people is the natural response to God loving us. More than that, it is inevitable! We are like cups being filled with God’s love, but when we are full God keeps pouring! This enables us to love those around us, even our enemies. Especially our enemies! Remember this?
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 5:43-45
So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. There’s the kingdom again, not far away, not in the future, but here and now. And loving your enemy, in other words treating them the way you want to be treated, is a sign of being a child of God! God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, so go and do likewise! God sends rain on the just and on the unjust, so should we!
The Good News is this: doing to others what you wish they would do to you is not something you have to come up with on your own. Just react to how God has treated you!
Sermon number one, done, son! Now the hard sermon.
Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7:13-14
If you read this the same way I did a month ago, your first reaction is something like this: “Wow. Does that mean most people are going to hell? Is Satan is winning, just going by numbers? That doesn’t sound right! What’s wrong?”
Like much we read in Matthew, this rings of Old Testament, the idea of making a choice. Let’s take a look back at one of Moses’ sermons in Deuteronomy:
See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.
Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Moses was reminding the young nation of Israel of the same choice that you and I face today: Life and good, or death and evil. Throughout the history of Israel, they chose poorly, yet God claimed them consistently. Time after time they turn to other gods, yet God takes them back when they repent. Then Jesus comes, the perfect version of Moses, and offers the same choice:
Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7:13-14
We shouldn’t be surprised to see this choice offered again. I shouldn’t be surprised. Israel is a model for you and me. We constantly turn away from God, yet God never turns away from us.
Still, I am struggling with this idea. Wrestling with it. My brain won’t let go. So I tackle the language, the metaphor.
Most of us today do not live in gated cities, so we have to rely on historical analysis to start to make sense of this scripture. A city in Biblical times, such as Jerusalem, had walls around it for protection. To enter and leave, there were gates. One thing to keep in mind is that the gates were of different sizes, and for different uses. Some were wide enough to march an army through, because sometimes your army would need to go out and come in. You could pull a bunch of carts in easily, or walk in with a crowd if the gate was open. One gate in the Jerusalem wall was for dumping out garbage. Imagine trying to get in that one! Other gates were narrow, with turns, and stairs. You could not run in through a gate like this, nor could you enter side by side with another person. This was to stop foreign armies from running in, side by side, and doing unpleasant things inside your city.
Now we have an idea of what wide and narrow gates look like. We can see that people move through some easily, and some with difficulty. We can start to paint a better mental picture of what Jesus was saying.
Next, let’s consider the passages that come after verses 13 and 14. In the next few weeks we will hear warnings about false prophets, pretend Christians, and faith with weak foundations. Our verse today is the beginning of a warning: wide, easy paths to destruction are abundant. Following the crowd could take you to the wrong city. The narrow, difficult way leads to life. In other words, if your faith seems easy, it is very likely wrong. If being a part of the kingdom of heaven is no harder than ordering at McDonald's, then you are following the wrong idea of heaven, and serving the wrong god!
So coming back to my first question: are most people going to hell? I am still wrestling with it. As a church, we are memorizing Philippians 2:1-11, and one of the last verses says,
...so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:10-11
Do those who are not saved first confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, then go to hell? I don’t know.
Honestly, I do not have all the answers. And I do not suggest that you trust anyone who says that they do. God has made it clear that we won’t understand what God is doing:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
The warnings are clear, but God’s mercy and love are also clear. Look again at verse 14:
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7:14
Those who what? Find it. They do what? Find it. Who finds things? People who seek! Seek and you shall find!
But don’t settle, that’s the wide, easy gate. It’s going to take some wrestling on your part. You are going to have to invite the Word of God into your life, and let it settle in. Let it take up space. Let God’s Word be the guest that overstays their welcome.
Sometimes the answers will be clear, and you will rejoice. Sometimes the answers will break you, and that is good too. We need to be broken so that we can accept God as the only way. And sometimes the answers don't come right away. That's fine, too. That's God working you over, letting the Word of God soak into you, and change you from your bones on out.
I don’t know the answers to all of the questions, but Jesus has given us some of the answers directly:
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40
And what does it look like to love your neighbor?
So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12
When in doubt, go back to the basics: Love God. Let God’s love flow into you so richly that you can’t help loving other people. That is what the entire Bible is about.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment