Matthew 7:21-23
Welcome in Main Street Church, it’s good to be with you all this morning, my name is Jack, I am on staff here at main street. You might have noticed a few leftover jungle decorations, maybe there is a tired kid or youth student sitting next to you, we just had a great week of VBS here at main street, lots of people volunteering time out of their weeks to make sure the kids had a super fun week.
I wanted to start out with a question this morning for us to ponder, the question is: Have you ever been completely sure about something—only to find out later you were totally wrong? Here are some examples, you have a song lyric that you were positive was one way—until you saw the actual lyrics and realized you were wrong.
“Blank Space” by Taylor Swift is the first song that comes to mind, the lyric is “Got a long list of ex lovers” but “Got a long list of starbucks lovers” is what I am still convinced it says to this day. Another example, "Thinking Someone Was Waving at You, but they were waving at the person behind me.” or because I have to add a sports example: The Atlanta Falcons are going to win the super bowl, they are up 28-3 in the third quarter only for Tom Brady to orchestrate the greatest comeback in super bowl history.
These are funny and hopefully relatable examples but our passage today, as Ryan just read isn’t very funny and hopefully NOT relatable.
Most people consider our passage today, Matthew 7:21-23 in Jesus’ closing words on the sermon on the mount the scariest passage in the Bible because not only is it scary to think about going to hell, it is arguably more scary to think about finding out too late that you are going to hell when you thought you were going to be saved. AND “Many” will experience this… wow, if that doesn’t send chills down your spine or make you think about your walk with God, I don;t know what will.
But if we really know what it means to be a true Christian, we will not answer God by saying ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ Instead, we will just say Lord, I love you, that is all I can offer.
We won’t show him all the good things we did and say Lord is this enough to get me into heaven? No, we will rely on our personal relationship with Jesus, that we believe in our hearts that he died on the cross for our sins, our humble submission to his will and we will worship with him for eternity
As we are nearing the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is concluding his message here by again reminding us of the main theme throughout his sermon. That it is ONLY by the Grace and Mercy of God that we are saved, not by our words and not by our works.
We are going to unpack that statement and why that is actually what this passage is saying.
Not our Words
Let’s start with our words.
We have to look at the logic that Jesus uses here in verse 21
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
He is saying here that the people who are saved AND the people that are not saved will both say to him “Lord, Lord”
Which is the correct way of addressing Jesus, the Greek word for Lord is Kýrios which means he to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding; master, lord and the title given to God.
I love this quote
Calling him Lord proved their orthodoxy, they may have thought. They knew something every child of God knew to say. They did not approach him as a mere prophet or religious teacher; they addressed him as exalted majesty. They knew the Scriptures, the books to read, and which podcasts to follow. But calling on him as Lord did not open the kingdom of heaven to them. As the scene shows in full sobriety: knowing the right mantras, solas, verses, or doctrines is not sufficient for eternal life.
Greg Morse
If you were here last Sunday, you remember Rich was talking about Jesus’ warning against False prophets and how we will be able to tell them apart from the fruit that they produce.
This is the other side of the coin: warning against false followers. Jesus is warning those who hear Him not to fool themselves into thinking they are true believers, when in fact they are not.
Our words are important, we are supposed to confess our faith and share about it with others. But, words, saying “Lord Lord”, that is disconnected from a true faith is worthless and is not what gets us saved.
I think the natural question after this is “Well what about Romans 10:9”
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
What about the sinners' prayer that we were taught that in order to be saved we just need to say this prayer out loud and bang there it is.
Well if we take the first part of that verse If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord that is what Matthew 7:21 says,
not everyone that says Lord Lord will get into heaven. We see Matthew say that both saved and unsaved people will use the same words. The key part that Paul adds is and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
The belief that God rose Jesus from the dead shows that the confession that Jesus is Lord has substance. It’s not just moving lips with empty words coming out of your mouth! It’s connected to a heart that is beating for Jesus. It’s like a flower in a vase — pretty, maybe convincing for a while, but ultimately cut off from life. But with belief, it’s like a tree planted by streams of water — alive, growing, and bearing fruit.
People that are saved and not saved use the same words, although they will have different meanings and weight to them, we cannot simply say the right things and expect to receive our salvation.
Do we have Bible verses in our instagram bios or are we posting Bible verses on social media, telling people that we go to church but then act in a completely different way throughout the week?
It is not our words or the things we see that get us into heaven
Not our works
The other thing that Jesus has repeatedly told us in the sermon on the mount is that no amount of works can earn yourself salvation in heaven.
We just discussed that you can’t say the right things or just because you think you are saying the right things doesn’t have anything to do with your salvation and we see in verse 22 that many will do good works in God’s name and not be saved
On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
God I have done great things in your name therefore I am saved…
I was attending Boise State during COVID and it was just a really weird time to be in college, I tell people often that my college experience was literally just split in half, pre covid and post covid, two completely different experiences. I’m sure a lot of you experienced the same things in your jobs, schools, homelife.
And I only had one online course before COVID and it was my first semester, general studies kind of class but after the semester after COVID I think I had half of my classes online afterwards and as time went on more and more classes became in person but we had some that would give you the option to come into class or to stay online, I really don’t know how professors and teachers did that, we have a couple in this room, my mom is a teacher too, you guys are blessings big time.
I remember one of my professors saying that he really valued in person relationships, kind of an older guy, I know so old fashioned, who wants to have actual face to face conversations. But he said if you have a medical condition or something like that ya know contact me but I hope everyone tries to make it to class. So, end of the semester we had a group project with randomly assigned partners, those sucked by the way. And we got a pretty good grade and I ended with a 92.3% or something like that in the class and like every college student, I emailed the professor and asked if my grade could get bumped from an A- to an A, my professor said you’re participation in class and attendance was great and moved it up. However one of my group members, never came to class, didn’t participate in the online discussion, didn’t do his homework, he told me his request was denied.
This is very similar to our works for God. There will be many that do great things for God, hey had a résumé of miracles. They acknowledged him before the world. People heard them prophecy, watched them cast out demons, and do many other mighty works in his name and will say that it is enough to get into heaven. Yet, they will hear what everyone that hates God will hear, “Depart from me, I never knew you”
I think the best example of this in the Bible I can give you is from one of Jesus disciples… can you guess? Judas
In John 12 when Mary was anointing the feet of Jesus, it says
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.
We see in Matthew 10 that Jesus gave the disciples authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. He sent out all 12 disciples, including Judas, to proclaim ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.
Judas followed Jesus around for 3 years, saw the miracles that Jesus performed, performed some of these same miracles himself, yet still his love of money outweighed his love for Jesus.
Later in Matthew it says
The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born."
Judas is the greatest example of why our works alone are not an indication of our salvation. That God can use great and mighty works to glorify his name from people who do not fully trust and have a relationship with him.
So, What do we have to do then?
Our words are not enough, we have seen that those who are saved and those who are not saved address the Lord the same. Our works are not enough, you can do mighty works, crazy miracles, even walk side by side with Jesus and your works are not enough. So what do we do, how are we saved.
Verse 23 gives us the answer
And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
This is why this passage is the scariest in the Bible.
There will be many that believe they are saved, many that think they did the right things, were good enough people, went to church enough times that believe they will hear “well done good and faithful servant” but instead will hear I never knew you, depart from me.
I want to focus on that first part, Jesus says that he never knew them, so if we look at this like a chart, this is helpful to me, so I hope it is to you too.
Saved Not Saved
Lord, Lord Lord, Lord
Good works (Worship) Good works (Lawlessness)
Personal Relationship NO Personal Relationship
If you have a personal relationship with Jesus, if he knows you and you know him then your good works are out of WORSHIP!!
It’s not words, it's not works, it is WORSHIP!
Worship implies loving and desiring to be with God.
We see this most clearly in scripture with Jesus when he meets the woman at the well in John 4
And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The Father is not seeking people that do enough good things or know the right words to say, he is seeking people that worship him!
To truly accept the gift that Jesus gives us of eternal life, we MUST worship him in spirit and truth.
And how do we worship him in spirit and truth, well he just laid it out for us in the sermon on the mount!!
We are to be
poor in spirit
Mourn our sins
Be meek
Hunger and thirst for righteousness
merciful , pure in heart
Be peacemakers
Salt and Light
Love our enemies
Give to the needy
Pray and Fast the way he tells us to
Lay our treasures in heaven
Treat others the way we want to be treated
When we do these things we will be changed from the inside out by God’s grace and his grace alone.
Where does our body and where do we ourselves lack in these areas?
And now, instead of doing these good works to try and earn our salvation, we desire to WORSHIP God because we see how much he loves us!!!
We live our lives that is evidence of our worship through obedience.
You might be thinking “dang that is a fine line between obeying out of worship and obeying out of works or doing works to get into heaven”
That is true, most of you know, I don’t have kids but it’s a lot like how kids obey their parents. A child can do what their parents say because they want something in return—a reward, praise, or to avoid punishment. That’s obedience based on getting something. That might be how you parent when your kids are younger to try and get them to understand obedience.
This is kind of an embarrassing story, I debated not sharing but I will share it anyways, my mom will think it’s funny.
When I was getting potty trained, we were that house where my mom would set out candy as like decoration and especially during halloween, I loved the candy corn and candy pumpkins.
Well our rule was if we could go to the bathroom, on the toilet, we would get a candy corn if it was number one and a candy pumpkin if it was number 2
That was their way of trying to potty train us and that works for a little bit
But a different kind of obedience comes from love and trust. A child who knows they are already loved and accepted by their parents obeys not to get love, but because they’re loved. Which, don’t worry I love and trust my parents very much and didn’t end up needing candy corn or candy pumpkins to use the bathroom on my own.
But the same thing is true for us with God. We don’t obey to earn His love—we obey because we ALREADY have it. That’s the kind of worshipful obedience that flows out of relationship, not performance.
The kind of love that Jesus offers us is greater than any kind of love we will ever receive and greater than we will be able to comprehend.
God, who created the earth and everything in it, he created you, everything about you on purpose, with a purpose and knowing that we would fail him, knowing how often we would sin and turn our backs against him, still sent his son Jesus.
Who even though he lived a perfect life, betrayed by his followers and the people he came to save. Died the death that we deserved to die, took our sins upon himself on that cross so that we might be able to enter back into loving relationship with him.
What amazing, unfathomable love that is.
I can’t help but think of the song “How deep the fathers love for us” to best explain that.
We sang that song on Good Friday a couple of months ago and I was talking to Kiel Johnson afterwards because he sang that song, you can ask Megan as well because she was sitting next to me but I can’t help but get emotional every time I hear these lyrics
Behold the Man upon a cross
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
That is the kind of love that God offers us. Unconditional, eternal, merciful, faithful, gracious, and more than deserving of our worship
Now as we talked about earlier, we are going to constantly live in the tension of doing these works out of obedience versus doing them for our own benefits
How do we know which we are doing? I think there are two ways
We have to test ourselves
We have to abide in him
We have to honestly look at our actions and say “am I doing this to please God, or for my own good”
This is the process of sanctification that slowly, over time, God is helping us become more and more like him.
The words that we say and the works that we do, will not always be pure, we aren’t perfect but God is working in us!
This is why being in community, having others help hold you accountable and asking yourself honest questions is good!
And as important as those things are, most importantly, we need to abide in Christ
John 15:9-11
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
We abide in Christ and obey his commands so that we will receive his joy!!!
We are saved by God’s grace but God’s grace in our lives results in obedience!!
I love this quote from DA Carson
“It is true, of course, that no man enters the kingdom because of his obedience; but it is equally true that no man enters the kingdom who is not obedient. It is true that men are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ; but it is equally true that God’s grace in a man’s life inevitably results in obedience. Any other view of grace cheapens grace and turns it into something unrecognizable. Cheap grace preaches forgiveness without repentance, church membership without discipline, discipleship without obedience, blessing without persecution, joy without righteousness, results without obedience. In the entire history of the church, has there ever been another generation with so many nominal Christians and so few real ones? And where nominal Christianity is compounded by spectacular professions, it is especially likely to manufacture its own false assurance.” – D.A. Carson.
Those are kind of harsh words at the end but what he is saying is true. God’s Grace and obedience go hand in hand.
And the remaining question to ask ourselves as I close is:
Does Jesus know Me?
The haunting words of verse 23 “I never knew you, depart from me”
Does Jesus know you?
He did not know the Pharisees; it says in Matthew 23 their works were for their own gain.
Let’s live in such a manner that, when we stand before Him, He will joyfully acknowledge us as His brothers and sisters.
I love this situation set up here:
Are you the kind of person Jesus is going to meet as an old friend on the last day? I ask because there are actually going to be people like that. People whom Jesus is going to look at and say, “Hello, ___. It’s good to finally meet you face to face. I’ve always enjoyed our conversations, and I’ve never stopped interceding for you. I know you went through a lot for my sake. You weren’t ashamed of me—and I want you to know I’m not ashamed of you either. Welcome home, brother. I look forward to continuing our friendship throughout all eternity.”
We don’t have to live in terror of the final day. We can be preparing for it. Because for those known by Jesus, the final day won’t be some huge disruption. It’ll simply be a heightened continuation of the relationship we already enjoy with him now, by faith.
I cannot wait for that conversation.
I hope that we are reminded today that it is not our words or our works that save us. Nothing that we can say or do can earn our salvation
There is nothing besides faith and a personal relationship with Jesus that can bridge that gap.
He has shown us greater love than we could have ever imagined or received from anywhere else.
Back to that question from the beginning:
Have you ever been completely sure about something—only to find out later you were totally wrong?
The harsh reality is that this will be some people on judgment day. There will be some that think they have done enough to prove to God that they are worthy of salvation and eternal life with God when in reality they were doing it to please themselves the whole time.
True christians will realize that we are not enough, that we have sinned and will not live up to the standards that God has set for us and no amount of works will ever fix that.
Instead, true christians will humble themselves and accept the gift that God has given us and worship him in spirit and truth through our obedience!
And the father does not just save us and leave us. We are saved by Jesus’s blood on the cross, by grace through faith. We are changing everyday through his spirit to become more and more like him. And we are changed, adopted into his family as sons and daughters, never lost and never casted away.
As we move into a time of response
If you do not have a personal relationship with Jesus. Pray and ask God for forgiveness for your sins, believe in what he did for you on the cross and enter into a real relationship with him!
If you are already saved, this is good news! Give God the glory, praise him for what he has done for you in your life.
Maybe you need to look at yourself and ask yourself are you doing things in our life for his glory or your personal gain.
Or maybe you just need to sit with God this morning and thank him for the love that he has shown & given to you
Let me pray
