"Lord, Lord!" "I Never Knew You" Mt. 7:21-24

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Would you be pleased in your

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Bibles to Matthew chapter 7. Have you chapter 7 familiar words for our contemplation this evening.

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Matthew chapter 7. In verse 21 my thoughts were brought to this text.

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As most of you know part of my work is to engage in apologetics.

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So next month, Lord willing, I will be debating

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Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Awal. And Sheikh Awal is a student of Ahmed Didat.

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And so I have been reviewing some of his materials. Just got some

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DVDs in the mail today in fact. But he did a debate last year.

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It was painful to watch the debate unfortunately. Because there really wasn't any

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Christian response offered which was very very frustrating. But in the process

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Sheikh Awal went to this text. And it's a text we all know very well. Let's take a look at it and then

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I'll let you know what he had to say about it as well. In concluding the

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Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, Not everyone saying to me,

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Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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But the one doing the will of my Father who is in heaven. And I think we can properly render that will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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Many will say to me on that day, the day of judgment, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

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And in your name cast out demons. And in your name do many mighty works.

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And then I will, it's literally, I will confess. I will declare to them, I never knew you.

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Depart away from me, you who are working lawlessness.

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Now, this text, as I mentioned, very very well known to us. It preaches, shall we say.

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But what was interesting was the utilization that I had never heard before.

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So, Sheikha Wall looked at this and he said, Well, do

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Muslims call Jesus Lord? Do Jews call

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Jesus Lord? Now, who are the only people that would be saying, Lord, Lord? Christians.

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And Jesus says to them, depart from me, I never knew you. Well, I had never really thought of it quite in that way.

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And so I started thinking about it. And it's interesting, sometimes we hear texts and we just, we've grown up with them.

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And if you've been fortunate enough to be raised in a Christian church, then you've seen texts like this, and you've heard texts like this, and you're accustomed to a particular context.

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It's a little bit like another unusual perspective I've run into.

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When we run into unusual perspectives, sometimes our only response is to go, Well, that's weird. Which isn't much of a response in a debate situation, especially.

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But I just recently ran into the fact that one of my former debate opponents,

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Dr. Bart Ehrman, has a really unusual perspective.

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He talks about the Son of Man, and he believes the Son of Man is someone other than Jesus.

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That Jesus did not identify himself as the Son of Man, that he was talking about an eschatological figure who was going to be coming in the future, and the

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Son of Man was going to come. And you sort of go, I don't know, the trial of Jesus? They asked him, are you the

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Son of Man? And he says, I am, and you will see. And you just wonder how folks come to some of the conclusions that they do, but what that makes you do is think through, well, why is it that I believe that?

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And sometimes within the context of the Church, if we don't bump into some of these things, and I know that I provide you with a lot of bumps very regularly, you don't think those things through.

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Well, going back to this text. There is no question that Muslims and Jews do not say, kuri, kuri, kurias,

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Lord. And Christians do. But was that a proper application of the text?

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Well, of course it wasn't. But how would we respond to it? How would we understand this text?

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Well, notice it says, not everyone saying to me,

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Lord, Lord, Not everyone. It's a given that to enter into the

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Kingdom of Heaven, you need to acknowledge the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, and that is

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Jesus. And you need to acknowledge Him as Lord. The point of Jesus' words here is not that there is something wrong with addressing

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Jesus as kurias, but that there needs to be a consistency between the profession and the action.

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Notice two words. Saying to me.

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The word saying is a present participle. In fact, it's the one saying.

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So not every one saying, but you have the one saying to me. So there's going to be a group of people who say to Jesus, Lord, Lord.

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But that is not sufficient in and of itself. Then, after the word but, you have the one doing.

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And it's in direct parallel with the one saying. And so you have two groups here.

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One is a subset of the other. You have a larger group of those professing that Jesus is

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Lord. There's a lot of those folks. A lot of folks will say, yeah,

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Jesus is Lord. But there is a subset of those people.

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They also say Jesus is Lord. But they are also doing the will of my

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Father who is in heaven. They are the ones who enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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What's the difference between the two? Well, as I thought about this text, we have an illustration in the next two verses.

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But there's another section of scripture that just kept coming to my mind as I thought about these people who say one thing with their mouth, but there is no corresponding reality in their life.

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That was James chapter 2. This is the exact same emphasis that James makes in James chapter 2 when he talks about people who say they profess faith, but there's no corresponding reality in their life.

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And James asks the question, James 2 .14, can that faith, the spoken faith that when you ask what's your evidence of your existence, has no evidence to offer, can that kind of faith save you?

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Now we've gone over James chapter 2 many times before. And we know all the abuses of the text.

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There's all sorts of people running around out there that want to use James 2 to present works, righteousness, and everything else.

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We recognize that that's a problem, but sometimes we sort of allow it to sit on the shelf a little bit.

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Don't really want to listen to what it's saying because it's uncomfortable what it says. There needs to be a consistency between what is spoken from the mouth, of the one saying,

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Lord, Lord. Well, if Jesus is Lord, then there needs to be a resultant activity, doing the will of my

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Father who is in heaven. And notice the description is provided. Many will say to me in that day, the day of judgment.

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Why would they say it to him? Well, because he's the judge. He's the one that, because of his unique position of being the

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God -man, can be the perfect judge. Many will say to me on that day,

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Lord, Lord, did we not do these things? Did we not prophesy in your name?

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And that's not necessarily just the idea of some kind of, you know, I prophesy that the stock market is going to go up and down in the future.

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That's tough. Did we not speak forth in your name?

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Did we not cast out demons? Did we not engage in spiritual activities in your name?

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Did we not in your name do, do, that's the same root word there, the doing, do mighty works, works of power, miracles.

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Notice it. The Lord's response is not to say, no, you didn't. It's not to say, no, you, um, you're lying.

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He doesn't say that. Jesus' response is not to argue the facts of the case, because there's no evidence that these people are lying.

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They, they did things. So you see, we would be wrong to think that when

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Jesus talks about the difference between saying and doing, that just any old doing is what he has in mind.

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It's not the idea of doing activities and being religious and doing good works.

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Remember the doing was the doing of the will of the Father who is in heaven.

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Now, some might say, ah, and then we can leap out of Matthew 7 over to John chapter 6 and the people say, what should we do?

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The works of God, and Jesus says, this is the work of God that you believe in him and he has sent, and therefore we don't have to worry about activities and actions at all.

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Well, it's really uncomfortable when we do a lot of context hopping that way.

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Yes, in response to those who want to work the works of God, Jesus offered a corrective.

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You can't really work the works of God until you do the first thing he demands of you, and that is faith in the one whom he has sent.

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But keeping the right balance, the biblical balance, between profession and activity, absolutely vital, and the scriptures provide us with so many examples of it.

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We see it in James 2, we see it here, we see it in the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2, if we will just quote the whole text.

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I think most people in this room can probably quote by memory, Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 and 9, but verse 10 says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which

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God has before ordained that we should walk in them. That's the relationship.

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Salvation, all of grace, and that same sovereign

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God who saves predestines that we are to walk in, live in, the realm of good works, works that are marked by desire to glorify

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God, obedience to his revealed will. Coming back to Matthew 7, notice that Jesus' response is not to say, you didn't do those things, and then

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I will confess, I will declare, I will make a solemn statement,

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I will confess to them, I never knew you.

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I never knew you. I don't know that there could possibly be more frightening words in all scripture.

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Because you really, what this raises is the issue of self -deception. I wonder how many people are going to stand there and go, there is so much danger in giving people a false hope, in giving them only a part of the gospel.

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The I've got my ticket punched, I'm going to heaven mentality of so much of evangelicalism today.

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And so many people are going to hear these words. I did this,

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I did that. Activity in the name of Jesus, without the knowledge of Jesus, is empty, provides you with nothing.

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Remember how many times I've talked to you about my professor? You know everything there is to know about Jesus, but you have to know

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Jesus. Relationship. I never knew you.

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Depart from me, workers of lawlessness, workers of iniquity.

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They were saying, we worked this, we worked that, we did religious things. But outside of having the proper relationship with God, which can only be available through the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ, a knowledge of Him, union with Him, it's iniquity.

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That's what he says. I never knew you.

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Now contrast those words, for those of you who were here Sunday morning, with what we looked at in John chapter 10.

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And what Jesus says to His sheep, and about His sheep. What does He say? I know them and they know.

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Reciprocal relationship. Certainly puts a little bit of a stick in the spokes of those who say, you can once be truly a believer.

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Know Christ, He knows you. He could never say the words of Matthew chapter 7, verse 23, to someone who had once been one of His sheep.

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He knows His sheep. He says, I never knew you. So these were never His sheep. And so, do you see the balance?

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Do you see how if we allow all of the word of God to speak, there is this beautiful balance.

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On the one hand, work salvation, all those

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Gospels, those false Gospels that put everything in the hand of man, not possible.

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Can't be. We have to have a divine Savior. We need to have the sovereignty of God.

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We need to have faith coming from the hand of God. It has to be God's work. Very clear.

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On the other hand, those people that present a salvation, that is primarily just a tipping of the hat toward God, showing up to church once in a while,

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Lord, Lord, did I not do this? Lord, Lord, did I not do that? I have faith, but my faith cannot demonstrate its existence.

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The word says, never knew you. Apart from me, can that kind of faith save?

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The answer is no. What's the tendency of mankind?

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It's always to fall off the narrow path of truth, one side or the other.

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Become libertarians, get your ticket funds, try to go to heaven, doesn't matter how you live, on the one side. Or end up in work salvation under the anathema of the

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Apostle Paul in Galatians chapter 1 on the other side. The word provides us the perfect balance.

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Now, as you interact with people, they're always going to be tugging at you from one way or the other. That's one of the reasons why we emphasize being here.

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On a regular basis, you hear the word of God preached, you hear the balance, it's presented in so many texts, and it builds you up.

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It gives you balance. But it also never allows you to avoid the difficult passages.

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Because I doubt there's too many people sitting in front of me that look at this and go, yeah, this is one of my favorite texts.

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I just, I love contemplating those people standing before God and hearing, I never knew you.

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We don't enjoy that. Certainly we recognize the justice of God and all those other things, but there are certain texts that contain hard words.

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They contain words that if we're honest, they make us understand why the

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Apostle Paul says examine yourselves. See whether you're of the faith. Because you see, there's always this tendency in our hearts towards self -righteousness.

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Isn't it there? Can we not all confess?

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Sometimes we catch ourselves and we're going, yeah, but... I see that person over there, but that's not me.

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I do this. Hopefully we catch ourselves a bit more. Save me from self -righteousness.

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The only reason I stand before you is by your grace. So there's something right.

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It's not something we should be doing every single second of every single day, never experiencing the freedom and peace and rejoicing and all those other things, but there's everything right in always keeping in our mind, not everyone who says, but the one doing.

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What's the desire of my heart? The desire of my heart is to be the one doing the will of my

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Father, which is heaven. I want that to mark my every action.

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Is that my passion? What really excites my heart?

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Pleasing God or pleasing myself? It's not that the Word does not provide us with example after example after example of tests.

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Love that text in 1 John 5. These things we've read that you may know that you have eternal life. What's the these thing?

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It's the rest of the book of 1 John that talks about not loving the world and loving the brethren and not walking in the darkness but walking in the light.

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And so we ask ourselves a question. Am I one of those who just says?

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Am I one of those who does because it's my nature? I've told you this story before, but some of you were.

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Last time I told it, we were about that tall, so I can repeat it once again. I had a friend, he was an interesting friend.

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Kelly remembers him. His name was Wally Tope. Wally Tope. Wally Tope was an interesting fellow.

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Wally Tope gave one of our early cats a mental imbalance.

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I'm not sure how he did it, but he sort of ruined that cat for us. He only stayed with us for a few days.

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Unmarried fellow. Traveled around the nation in a beat up old car. It had like 298 ,000 miles on it or something.

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It was made by AMC. I don't know how it got past 10 ,000 miles, but if you remember what AMC is. But he was a missionary to the

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Mormons primarily. I learned a lot about how to pass out tracks and handle street witnessing situations from Wally Tope.

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Wally Tope was the last person to die in the Los Angeles riots. When the riots took place, he decided to go out and preach to the rioters.

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That was Wally. He was standing outside in like an A &P store or something like that.

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Trying to preach to the people that had smashed in the windows and were stealing all the TVs. They beat him into a coma.

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From which he never came out. I think about 18 months later he died. Never having recovered from the beating that he took coming out of that coma.

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But I learned from Wally an answer to that James 2 text when you're talking to the

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Mormons. And it's not anything new because really it's pretty much what's in the

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Westminster Catechism. I can't remember if it's a shorter or longer so I might remember which one it is.

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Maybe it's both. But in talking about the nature of saving faith, it talks about how saving faith is never alone.

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And so what Wally did with that is he said, You don't go baa baa to become a sheep.

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You go baa baa because you are a sheep. What he meant by that was,

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You can wrap yourself in wool and get down on all fours and crawl around going baa baa all you want.

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Doesn't make you a sheep. The reason a sheep goes baa baa is because it's his nature to go baa baa.

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That's why you do it. It's because you're a sheep. Christians do good works because it's their nature.

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They've been changed. It's a divine thing that God has done in saving us. He changes us from the inside.

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You can wrap yourself in all the good works you want. You can, in the name of Jesus, do all sorts of things.

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But unless this has happened. Unless he knows you. Unless there's regeneration. Then you're just a person down on all fours wrapped in wool going baa baa.

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It doesn't reflect the inner reality. It's that inner reality that the