Powerful Sermon: Fruit & Final Judgement

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So as we're opening up to the scriptures, please ask God to prepare your heart to receive this word from him today.

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We're still in our kingdom of God series going through the gospel according to Matthew and this particular section of scripture right here has serious implications for us as Christians in the way that we live in response to what

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Christ has said about what we are. So open your heart to receive

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God's word today, and I look forward to going through this with you guys. So let's start with the reading of the scriptures.

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Here now the words of the living and true God. Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.

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For the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil?

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For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

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I tell you on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak.

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For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.

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Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, bless you

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Lord God for your word. Let it be like honey. Let it be sweet to us

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Lord God as we seek to take it into ourselves. Father, I thank you that Lord you would give a sinner like me,

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God, an opportunity to speak to your people. And so I ask today that Father you remove me from the equation.

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God you speak through me. Lord, may you be the abundance in our hearts today.

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I pray that you teach your people from your word. We give you praise

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Lord God for Jesus. We give you praise for the salvation that is in him by faith alone, apart from any work of law.

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We give you praise God that he is the vine and we are the branches and apart from him we can do nothing.

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We give you praise and we bless your name. Oh God, that you are the one who judges justly on the last day

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God. Lord, I pray that this word today would be the seed that finds its place in the heart of your people to cause the root of eternal life to spring forth so that your people can bear much fruit for you.

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God, let us be good trees actually, not outwardly Lord. We love you and it's in your name that we pray and ask these things according to Jesus.

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Amen. So we've been going through the gospel according to Matthew and last week

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Claudy did a masterful job of setting the stage for us and summarizing really everything up to this point that Matthew has recorded in his gospel about Jesus.

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So I don't want to spend too much time rehashing that but we do need to set the stage once again in order to see the remainder of this encounter that Jesus has with the

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Pharisees in Matthew chapter 12. We see as we go through the gospel according to Matthew, the genealogy of Jesus, that he himself has the crown rights.

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He is the one the Messiah that has come and Matthew records the genealogy of Jesus in order to demonstrate it to his audience.

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We see the birth of Jesus Christ as a baby boy in the lowliest and most humble of circumstances.

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We see that is the spirit of the living God that conceived him of the virgin.

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We see the baptism of Jesus conferring on him his priesthood and we see that same spirit,

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God, anointing him in his baptism and the father saying, this is the son of my love and whom

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I am well pleased. We see that same spirit of God lead

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Jesus into the wilderness to be tested by Satan. To be what

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Israel failed to be in the desert as they wandered and did not rely on the

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Word of God where they failed, Jesus becomes the true and the perfect Israel, answering the enemy with the

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Word of God under the power of the Holy Spirit. We see

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Jesus presenting the greatest sermon in history, the Sermon on the Mount, by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. We see him cleansing lepers. We see him healing the sick, the paralyzed, the blind, the mute.

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We see him calming the storms, expressing his lordship over the elements, and we see him casting out demons, exercising his victory over the spiritual forces of darkness in the heavenly places.

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He commissions his disciples to do the same, to take the gospel of the kingdom to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and proclaim this good news.

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We see him denouncing cities for their unbelief based on the works that he is doing.

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We see the message of the good news of the kingdom fall on the ears of some, and they accept it.

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And we see that same message fall on the ears of others, and they reject it.

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And as Claudi demonstrated last week in the account where Jesus heals the man oppressed by the demon, we see the collision course that Matthew is taking now in the middle of the book to talk about the rejection of the religious leaders of Jesus' day, of his kingship, that he is in fact the

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Messiah. He's the promised one that was prophesied about in the Old Testament. He proclaims himself as the substance of the

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Sabbath. He proclaims himself as the substance of the temple, and everything in the

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Old Testament he embodies and is the fullness of and has showed up on the scene to be.

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There's a clash with the Pharisees. He tells them, if I cast out demons by the

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Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has indeed come upon you. What is their response to this?

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Except to attribute what he does to the works of Satan, to attribute what the

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Spirit of God does in casting out a demon from a man as the activity of Satan.

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And we see last week as Claudi presented that wonderful message, Jesus answering the fool according to his folly, saying, no kingdom divided against itself can stand.

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Will Satan begin to cast out his own members? Jesus answering the fool according to his folly, the ultimate presuppositionalist.

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We see just shortly after that, Jesus calling his audience in attendance to make a decision for him.

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The time has come to decide. You are either with me or you are against me.

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If you do not gather with me, then you scatter those who are. There is no middle ground.

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There is no neutrality with Jesus. And Jesus clashes with the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees, and particularly the Pharisees. And in order to get into this passage today, we have to do a little bit of foundation building.

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We know that the Pharisees are often painted in the modern evangelical church as the bad guys, ultimately.

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However, we see through the life of the Apostle Paul and the revelation of Scripture just how rigorous their commitment was to the law of God.

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However, their focus was on the external obedience of the rituals and the customs, and thus the basis of the clash between them and the

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Messiah is such that their focus on external observance to the law of God will not save them.

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The outward appearance of good does not justify them or any of us before a holy

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God that has come to examine our fruit to determine whether or not we have been made new.

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And so I want to read to you just a short section to set the stage regarding the Pharisees based on a commentary, the message of Matthew.

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Many of us have a wrong understanding of Phariseeism. The Pharisees were covenantal namus.

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That is to say they were passionate about details of behavior because they wanted to keep their sight of the covenant that God had made with his people.

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They were prepared to die for the law of God, trusting him, that's

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God, to bring them to resurrection. The Pharisees demonstrated a rigorous commitment to the law of God.

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They could quote it. They knew it by heart. But the question ultimately, as they come into contact with the

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Son of the Living God, is do they know him? Do they recognize that the substance of the law, the champion of God's law, is now staring them directly in the eye, demanding no neutrality, condemning them in their words, saying that their words have found them out in the presence of God about what's actually in their hearts.

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And so, further on the Pharisees, something about Phariseeism.

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They can be legalistic about Scripture. As Matthew chapter 12 verses 1 through 8 tell us,

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Matthew gives us several examples there of what happens when Jesus and his followers are going through the cornfields, plucking corn on the

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Sabbath, and the outrage that the Pharisees get into, why are you doing this? Why are you going through the cornfields plucking?

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You don't do any of this kind of a thing on the Sabbath. On the Sabbath, you prepared your food the day before and many other things.

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You didn't do these kinds of things on the Sabbath. Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath. Electing to do good rather than to do nothing.

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You see, what Phariseeism and the Pharisees didn't understand about the Sabbath, ultimately, is that it wasn't a time for misery.

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It was a time for rest and worship, and the Son of God came to demonstrate that it is doubly good and that works of good should, in fact, be done on the

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Sabbath. So he quotes from Hosea chapter 6 verse 6, saying, go and learn what this means.

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I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God over burnt offerings.

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Phariseeism can be desperately conservative about religious customs, as we see in verses 9 through 14.

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Phariseeism can attribute to Satan what is God given, which brings us ultimately to the head of this collision, where Jesus heals a demon -oppressed man, and the people in attendance are saying, this, in fact, has to be the son of David, whom was talked about.

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He's here now. And the Pharisees say, no, it's by the prince of demons,

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Beelzebub, that he cast this demon out. And so that ultimately brings us to the head of this collision, where we start our expositional study in verse 33 of what

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Jesus says next. So verse 33, either make the tree good, and its fruit good, or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit.

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Jesus has already demonstrated there is, in fact, no neutrality when it comes to him.

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In the day and age that we live in today, especially in doing ministry like that outside of an abortion clinic, you see outside on the sidewalk, people will say things like,

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Zach, it just can't be as black and white as you're making it out to be. Life just doesn't work that way.

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There's ultimately a lot of gray area that you don't understand. It just can't be as black and white.

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The truth cannot be as black and white as you make it out to be. But you see, my friends, one of God's attributes is his simplicity.

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He is the one who is clear about his standards, about what he has said.

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We are the ones with shades of gray. We are the ones who are uncertain and filled with doubt.

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We are the ones who fall short of observing his ultimate standards.

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The confusion lies with us. The confusion does not lie with God who speaks clearly from his word.

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Jesus gives the picture of a tree in verse 33, and we know that the revelation of the scriptures tell us trees as a symbol represent both salvation and judgment.

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We see the tree of life in the Garden of Eden that again shows up in the book of Revelation. We see trees being symbols of judgment, as is constantly attributed to the fig tree that Jesus uses in the

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New Testament many, many times. So Jesus comes to his adversaries, to his opposition, after they've just remarked and attributed what he's done to the activity of Satan.

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And he says this, make the tree good, and its fruit good. The idiom that he's using could be better expressed this way, suppose a tree is good, its fruit will follow that it is good.

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But suppose a tree is evil, and it has evil fruit. Now we've seen this in the testimony of Matthew's revelation already in Matthew chapter 3.

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John the Baptist giving his baptism for repentance, and the Pharisees and the

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Sadducees show up on the scene and what does he say? You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

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Just dripping with sarcasm. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, we have

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Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able to raise these stones up as children for Abraham.

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Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

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In Matthew chapter 7, right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is talking about false prophets.

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Says, so every tree, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

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A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

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Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

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Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. What is this good fruit that we see in the picture of Jesus?

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This good fruit is that which is morally pure, that which is beautiful in God's sight, that which is good at its core, not just aesthetically looking good, pleasing to the eye.

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But that which actually has the seed of goodness within it. What is the bad fruit?

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Rotten, diseased, polluted, worthless, useless, literally good for nothing.

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So the point that Jesus is making is quite necessarily if the tree is good, there won't be anything wrong with the fruit.

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If the tree is bad, not only will the tree be overthrown, but even the root will be uprooted.

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The source of the tree's nourishment will be uprooted. It's the same thing that John the

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Baptist alludes to when he's talking to the Pharisees. The axe is already laid at what? The root of the tree.

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And every tree that does not bear good fruit will be exposed, will be uprooted, and will be thrown into the fire.

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Those truly in Christ are attached to the life -giving resource of the tree, which is the root.

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Jesus says in John chapter 15 verses 5 through 6, where he's speaking to his disciples,

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I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

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For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me or remain in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

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The message of Jesus to his contemporaries, to his people, is that some of you are in danger of being destroyed if you fail to produce fruit.

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And brothers and sisters, my concern in reading scriptures like this is that there are some within the church, there may even be some in here within this room that are in danger of being thrown out into the fire.

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Because God tells us what the problem is, the sinfulness in our hearts, where that actually comes from, and he tells us by giving us the picture of a tree.

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If you're bearing fruit, that means you have the right root and thus the right seed.

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But if you're bearing bad fruit, that is an indication that something is systemically wrong. So are you bearing fruit,

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Christian? Are you bearing fruit? And if so, what kind of fruit is it?

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Is it morally pure? Is it beautiful in God's sight, or is it worthless? Does it demonstrate the heart that has indeed been unchanged?

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Mark chapter 11, verses 12 through 14. On the following day when they came from Bethany, he was hungry,

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Jesus, and seeing in the distance a fig tree and leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it.

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When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.

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And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it.

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We see shortly after this account in Mark, what does Jesus do? He goes into the temple and drives out the hucksters and the money changers.

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Because they were turning God's house of prayer into a den of thieves and robbers. The judgment of God coming perfectly in accordance with what

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Matthew has told us. How the Old Testament ends, what does it say, brothers and sisters?

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The forerunner will come, followed by the Messiah, and he will bring judgment and salvation.

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Judgment on the covenant breakers, salvation on the true people of God. And who are the true people of God?

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Are they those that are ethnically connected to Israel?

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Are they the ones that claim and express to be the children of Abraham by his heritage?

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The ones that express they have the law, they externally devote themselves to all the customs and rituals.

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Or is it the ones who are pure and hard, the ones who verify that they're poor in spirit, that they have nothing to offer

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God, as Jesus tells us earlier in the Sermon on the Mount. The tree that Jesus approached had the appearance of fruit.

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It was in leaf. It looked good from a distance. But when the

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Son of God approached it to crave and satisfy his hunger, for his glory, no fruit was to be found.

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And so he curses the tree and says, no fruit will ever come from you again. That parallel is similar to the way that this collision is taking place between the

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Pharisees and Jesus in this passage. If I cast out demons by the

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Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. It's come upon you suddenly. You weren't expecting it.

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It looks different than what you thought. But rest assured, I am the fulfillment of the revelation of Scripture.

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The Son of God is standing in front of them. A tree is known or found out by its fruit.

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The Greek word for known, ginosko. Same thing we see in passages like Romans chapter 1.

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When it says that they knew God, but they did not give him the honor that belongs to him.

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We see it again in Luke chapter 16 verse 15. And he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.

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For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. Verse 34.

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You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil?

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For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Jesus makes it very clear, my friends, that the problem with humanity is not what our current culture and society tells us that it is.

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We're told today that the problems of humanity are all outside of us. They're all external in nature.

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They all have to do with our environment. They have to do with our upbringing. They have to do with the circumstances that befell us, that caused us to be the way that we are.

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Jesus points right to the root of the problem. He points at the heart and he says that the problem is in there.

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The heart in Scripture, as we very well know, is the substance of our being.

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The desires, our mind, our will, our emotions, the center of who we actually are.

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Jesus points to that and says the fundamental problem is there within your heart. It's not something external.

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He calls the Pharisees a brood of vipers. Now, why would he use this terminology?

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That's awful harsh. You brood of vipers. What the text literally means is you generation of vipers.

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You offspring of serpents. You offspring of snakes. Children of the serpent is what you are.

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There goes Jesus being gray area again instead of black and white. He uses this terminology that's described of venomous snakes.

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In the words of the Pharisees, they tried to pollute what Jesus did in the casting out of that demon.

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Pollute the ears of the people that were there who recognized what was going on and they said no, this is the activity of Satan.

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The poison of asps is under their lips. Romans 3 13

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They were a generation of vipers, my friends, and it's important to note why

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Jesus calls them that. We've already seen earlier on in the gospel according to Matthew, John the

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Baptist used the same thing and then he says something shortly after.

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And do not think that just because you have Abraham as your father that you're safe.

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You're not. You're a generation of vipers.

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Proverbs chapter 10 verse 11. The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.

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Isaiah 32 6. For the fool speaks folly and his heart is busy with iniquity.

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To practice ungodliness, to utter error concerning the Lord, to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink, which is what's going on in this passage.

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Jesus, the wellspring of eternal life, whose words are eternal life to those who hear him.

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We see that those in attendance who sought to attribute to him the works of Satan, poisoning the well of his audience, trying actively to keep people out of the kingdom.

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He says, how can you speak good when you are evil?

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How can you speak good when you are evil? How can you?

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The question implies with the word, the phrase there is the same word that describes what happens when the

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Holy Spirit comes upon the Apostles in the book of Acts. What does Jesus say?

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You will receive what? Power. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

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He says, how can you? You do not have the dynamis, the power to speak good.

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You don't have the ability. It's not something within you. You're not capable of speaking good because you're corrupted.

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And the content of your words attribute evil to me. Jesus was condemning them for the same thing that we see in the book of Isaiah chapter 5 verses 20 and 24.

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Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

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Therefore as the tongue of fire devours the stubble and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness and the blossom go up like dust.

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For they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts and have despised the word of the

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Holy One of Israel. This is what's happening in the passage. And you may be thinking to yourselves, wait a minute.

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I thought the Pharisees loved the law of God. How can you say this?

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How can you use a scripture like this to support that claim? My friends, you can observe the law of the

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Lord without loving the Lord of that law. And the

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Pharisees demonstrated that when they had God and flesh standing in front of them, interpreting the law, giving them its true application, restoring it to its proper place, not based on their traditions, not based on their abuses of it, not based on their improper misapplications of it.

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The reason that we can say that with confidence is because we see it in the passage.

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People committed to external observance of the law, people who appear to be good outwardly, but on the inside are no more saved than the next person.

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Lost. Gone. And the Bible tells us, Jesus tells us, the direct words of Christ is that if you do not bear fruit, you are at risk of being cut down and thrown into the fire.

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He's echoing Psalm chapter 1, right? You guys know the passage, right? Blessed is the man.

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He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season. But the wicked are not so.

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Like chaff, they are driven away by the wind. The word for wind in the Hebrew there is ruach. The breath of God is what drives them away.

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It's what extinguishes them, what uproots them. But the tree planted by streams of water is the one that yields its fruit in season.

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The Pharisees appealed to their ethnic heritage, noting that they were the seed of Abraham.

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The praise God, the revelation of the scripture, is that now, because of Jesus, Jew and Gentile alike are united in him by faith.

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God, as it says in Ephesians chapter 2, has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile and made one new man out of two.

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That's the good news of the gospel is that there is no claim to ethnic heritage.

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There is no claim to these things, because those who are the children of Abraham are the children of Abraham by faith.

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As the book of Romans tells us, not the ones who are circumcised in the flesh, but the ones who are circumcised in the heart.

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They are the children of Abraham. And the revelation of God from the beginning, we see all the way back in the book of Genesis, tells us you're either of the seed of the serpent or you're of the seed of the woman.

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God promised in Genesis chapter 3, you remember guys, what was the promise? That the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

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Jesus, the embodiment of that promise. John chapter 8, verses 43 through 44.

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Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

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You are of your father, the devil. Your will is to do your father's desires. He goes on to say, you can't hear me because you're not born of God.

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You can't even hear my words. Jesus says in John chapter 3, unless a man be born again, he cannot even see the kingdom of God.

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It's not even a possibility. You must be born again. You must have the living and abiding word of truth within you, the seed of eternal life.

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1st Peter chapter 1, 23 through 25, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.

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For all flesh is like grass. And all its glory like the flower of grass.

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The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

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We talked about the heart, brothers and sisters, being the center of who we are.

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And if the heart remains unchanged, we can never expect to bear any good fruit.

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Jesus says out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The abundance, the fullness, the excess, the surplus, what your heart is full of is what will be manifested in the words that you speak.

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What your heart is full of, literally there's so much pressure there that you cannot help to overflow with what's inside of you.

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And Jesus is saying that these words that the Pharisees are speaking and the words that we speak, brothers and sisters, are evidence of what's in our heart.

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What is in our heart in abundance? It's very important to understand, my friends, that we never speak out of character.

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That's why when I misuse my words and don't speak to my wife in the way that I should,

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I shouldn't say things like I'm sorry. That's not me to say that.

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I didn't mean that. You know me. I should say, no, forgive me.

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Because that's what was exactly in my heart to say. I meant it.

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So forgive me. As Christians, we want

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Jesus to be the abundance that's in our hearts. Amen? We want Jesus to be the fullness that's within our hearts.

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Let me ask you something, brothers and sisters. I want to give you a picture.

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Paul David Tripp gives the illustration of a bottle of water. Right? The bottle of water is full and then he flicks it with his hand and water spills out onto the ground.

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And he asked the question, why did the water come out? Was it because of a reaction based on what made contact with it?

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No, water came out because that's what was in the container. That's what was in the bottle.

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So let me ask you, Christian, when the things of this life, when circumstances make contact with you, when the unforeseen things come upon you, when you're caught off -guard and not having your best mask on, your best praise

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God mask, what comes out of your heart? When the things of this world make contact with your life unexpectedly and you're caught off -guard like the

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Pharisees were, does Jesus come out of the abundance of your heart? Or do his words come out or does bad fruit?

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The next verse, the good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

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And we're talking here again about the good man not on the surface, but at the center. A sermon by Paul Washer, he says, the most harmful thing that you could do is put on a face of presentable religion and have no love at all whatsoever in your heart for Christ.

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Jesus, talking about the treasure of our hearts, this word either refers to what we find valuable or where we keep our valuables.

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We see it earlier on in the gospel according to Matthew. Jesus says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

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For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. I was thinking this week, actually today, about a picture that would bring this into fruition.

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We do ministry outside of abortion clinics here in town, and just this last week on Wednesday, Planned Parenthood supporters called the police on us.

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The police show up, and we're reasoning with them on what's actually taking place behind those doors less than a couple hundred feet away from us.

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Babies dying, babies being torn apart, destroyed, and the police officers are finding out exactly according to their statutes where we're allowed to stand, trying to limit what we can do, how loud we can be, and calling out to the women.

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And I remember we were there, and a woman was wearing University of Arizona t -shirt, and the police officer there, we're trying to speak with him, we're trying to, you know, tell him why we're there, we're asking about our rights as citizens to be on the sidewalk where we were, and he looks to the woman and says, okay,

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I can take the signs that you guys are holding, I can take that,

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I'm okay with you guys holding the signs of dismembered children, but that University of Arizona t -shirt,

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I just can't handle. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

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We found his treasure, found what was valuable to him. So you see my friends, the picture that I'm painting here, or trying to faithfully present from the scriptures in this verse is this, that officer although it's not wrong to like sports, or watch sports, or have a favorite sports team, in the moment where priorities come up and you have image bearers of God being slaughtered less than a couple hundred feet away, what is the important thing to be offended by?

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Where is your treasure? What do you value? Do you value the things of God more than you value the things of this world?

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Do you value the applause of man over the praise of God? This is something

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I have to ask myself every time we go out to minister at the abortion clinic, or any time that we do ministry and a camera is on.

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I have to be honest with myself, why am I doing this? What's in my heart?

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Is it to be seen by man? Is it to have some kind of reward?

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Is it to have some kind of pat on the back? Or is it for the audience of one?

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Is it for Jesus Christ, whom we're all living out our lives in front of? Nothing is hidden.

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He sees all, as we'll find out as we continue studying. God wants your mouth to be set apart.

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He wants what you say to be set apart, but that means that your heart has to be set apart.

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And in order for your heart to be set apart, Christ and His word have to be set apart in it.

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1 Peter 3 15, we all know it. Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being prepared to give a defense, an apologia, for the reason of hope that lies within you.

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Set Christ apart in your heart as Yahweh, as Lord.

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Recognize Him as God. Set Him apart as the greatest treasure, as the abundance in your heart.

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Don't make Him common. Set Him apart, for He is holy and worthy to be set apart.

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Matthew chapter 15, 18 through 20. But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.

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And this defiles a person, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

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These are what defile a person. It's not about what you take in that defiles you.

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It's what comes out of you. It's what's in your heart that makes you common. Which is what it means to profane something, by the way.

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To use it as common. You remember the Lord's prayer? When we pray, God, holy your name in all the earth, hallowed be your name.

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God, set your name apart as holy. Why? Because we don't want

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His name to be common. We want it to be set apart, to be honored as holy.

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Jesus says those things in that passage are what defile a person. They're what make us common.

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They're what make us like everybody else. They're what demonstrate that in our hearts, we don't have

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Christ and His word set apart. And brothers and sisters, we can commit all of these sins in the body, whether speaking, whether with our actual bodies, or in front of a keyboard.

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Yes, I went there with the keyboard. You can do these things. You can be guilty in front of your smartphone of the things which defile you and make you common.

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That don't demonstrate that Christ is the one set apart in your heart. What does it look like when

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God, out of the overflow of His heart and His abundance, pours forth

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His treasure? It looks like Jesus, eternally proceeding from the bosom of the

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Father. That's what it looks like. The Pharisees were enemies of Christ, and their mouths brought that to the surface.

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How about your mouth?

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Does it evidence that you're an enemy of God? That you don't actually know

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Him? Verse 36,

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I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every careless word that they speak.

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There will be a day of judgment. Hebrews chapter 9, 27 and 28.

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And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.

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Why not to deal with sin? Because He dealt with it at the cross. What do we know about the day of judgment?

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Well, we know that scripture tells us it'll be executed by the Son. 2

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Corinthians 5, verse 10, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

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We know that the day of judgment will be carried out in accordance with the law of God. John 8, 15 through 18.

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And you don't have to go to these brothers and sisters if you don't want, I'm just reading. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true,

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Jesus talking. For it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your law, it is written that the testimony of two people is true.

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I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.

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In the law of God, no charge will be established except on the testimony, two to three lines of independent testimony.

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We live our lives in the presence of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John 12, 48.

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The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge. The word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.

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Acts 17, 30 through 31. The times of ignorance God overlooked. Paul in the

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Areopagus. But he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

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And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. We will render an account, brothers and sisters, all of us will, believers and unbelievers.

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What Jesus is saying, essentially what the text says in rendering an account, is that we're going to provide an itemized sheet of every word that we've spoken to Jesus.

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We will provide that for him. Every word spoken, the word in the text is rhema, every word spoken, we will give a logos for, a word for, an account.

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Every word spoken in the name of God, in the name of our profession, will be judged in the light of the divine logos and what he has said.

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The revelation of scripture will be our standard by which we're judged. Every careless word.

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The word literally means the not working word. It's idle, it's lazy, it's careless, it's fruitless, it has no purpose, it has no basis.

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The accusation of the Pharisees was such toward Jesus. It was a baseless assertion, it was careless.

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They didn't give care to their words. Psalm 139 verses three through four, even before a word is on my tongue, oh

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Lord, you know it all together. How are your words, Christian?

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Are they unemployed? Are they not put to work?

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Are they useless? Are they fruitless? Do they return void unlike God's?

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God's word that never returns void. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth.

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It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which

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I sent it. Verse 37, for by your words you will be judged.

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You will be justified. And by your words you will be condemned. And yes, this passage in its use of the term justification is talking about justification in the sense that Paul does.

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Does that mean that it'll only be our words on the day of judgment by which we'll be judged by?

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Of course not. What does the book of James tell us? Faith without works is what?

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It's dead. It's a lifeless faith. It's not actually alive. It's dead.

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And the actions that we do to vindicate ourselves before men based on the change that's taken place in our lives by a transformed life through Christ, our actions that bear the true fruit of repentance will follow.

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Jesus is saying, essentially, what you are in your heart is what matters.

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And the careless words that we speak are what reveal our true nature. Gives people an indication of what we actually are.

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In his commentary on this, Matthew Henry says,

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I'm sorry, Matthew Pool. Our Savior is here arguing from the less to the greater, convincing the

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Pharisees what a dreadful account they had to give for their blasphemous and reproachful words, when all must give an account even for those words which they speak to no good purpose, but vainly, without respect either to the glory of God or to the good of others or their own necessary and lawful occasions.

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Hence the apostle doth not only forbid filthiness, foolish talking and jesting, as we see in Ephesians chapter five, but in the same verse commandeth that Christian speech should be to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers.

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Let your speech be always great with grace, seasoned with salt. Nor will this seem too strict to those who consider that anything is abused when it is not used to the right end and use.

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God hath not given unto man his faculty of speech to fill the world with idle tattle and impertinent discourse, but that by it, we might bless

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God by prayers and praises, talking of his words and wondrous works, that we might communicate our minds to men in their or our own concerns and so be mutually helpful to one another.

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For by your words, you shall be justified. What justified here signifies appears by the word condemned to which it is opposed.

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God will pronounce sentence for or against men in the last day, not only according to their other actions, but accordingly as they have used their tongues.

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If there were no other text in the Bible to prove that we have need of another righteousness, than any of our own, wherein to stand before God, this text alone would be enough.

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For if a man offend not in word, the same as a perfect man. It's in James chapter three, talking about the nature of the tongue, how it sets the world ablaze, how it can't be tamed.

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You see, my friends, the evidence or the basis that you and I can't be made right, we can't tame our tongues, we can't give ourselves clean and pure hearts of our own accord, is the basis and the reason for why we need

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Jesus. We are all dead and lost sinners apart from him.

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We're dead in our transgressions. We're the seed of the serpent apart from him, which is why the message of the gospel is so crucial.

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The message of the gospel, repentance and faith in Jesus, not in my own righteousness, not in my own words, but a foreign righteousness that's given to me as a gift through faith, apart from any work of law.

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The gospel, God becoming a man in the person of Jesus, living righteously, living obediently from the heart to the law of God, not just by external observance to ritual and custom, but actually loving the

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Lord God from his whole heart as you and I have failed to do. We've all fallen short of that standard.

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And Jesus lived that righteous standard. He went to the cross, tried unjustly as a criminal, though he had committed no wrong, done no wrong, no deceit was found in his mouth.

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He was the one with the truly pure heart. He died on that cross for rebels like you and rebels like me.

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The good news. And he rose again from the dead and he commands men, women, and children everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

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Turn from your sin. Turn from your fruitlessness. Turn from your evil fruit.

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Come to Jesus Christ, the living God in the flesh, who will give you the pure heart so that you can actually love the law of the

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Lord from your heart and complete it and carry it out in what it was intended to be.

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Come to Jesus Christ and live the most dangerous thing that you and I could ever do is go through our lives living with the appearance of religion, the appearance of having fruit.

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And then when the son of God comes on judgment day and we render that account before him, there's no fruit to gather.

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Everything will be found out on that day. Every word you've spoken, every thought you've had, every action you've committed in this body, this earth suit will be found out.

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There will be nowhere to hide. There will be nowhere to run. There will be no apology given, no defense given on that day.

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Many will say to him, Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name? Did we not do all these things?

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And he will say, what? Depart from me. I don't know you.

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You act like you know me, but then you act like I never gave you a law to obey. James chapter three, verse nine through 12, talking about the tongue.

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With it, we bless our Lord and father. And with it, we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. How many times have we done this, brothers and sisters?

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We profess that we love God and then we turn around and curse an image bearer of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

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My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and salt water?

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Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs?

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Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. There's no neutrality, brothers and sisters.

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You are either with Christ or you are against him. You either gather with him or you are a scatterer of the sheep.

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You either have a pure heart given to you by God that you didn't deserve or you have an evil heart that you're dead in your sins with.

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So come to Christ, get pure hearts, and then you will have pure words and pure lives.

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I come to you today not bringing this word as someone who has carried this out completely.

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We've all fallen short of the glory of God, but let us consider how we should stir one another to good works.

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Are you bearing fruit? Can you look at your life and say, and point to the fruit and say, yes, my life is bearing fruit for Christ.

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Are you really rooted in Christ? Is the tree that you're bearing, is the fruit that you're bearing, bad?

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If so, then your root is bad and it will be exposed and uprooted.

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And if your root is bad, then ultimately that's because you haven't been born again.

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You don't have the right seed. One of the worst things we can do is take on a presentable religion that gives us just enough morality to gain a reputation, but have no love for Christ in our hearts.