The Most Frightening Words

Sermon by Derek Maxson

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey, thanks so much for joining us on the Sira Bible Church Sermon of the Week. We hope you enjoy this message.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hey, great to see you all. My name's Derek. Christy and I have been going to church here for like three decades. I had hair. It was awesome. Um well, maybe not, maybe not 30 years ago, but 35 years ago. Um yeah, so we've we've lived here for a little while and uh really love being a part of Search Bible Church and just things that are going on here. And so it's it's really nice to be able to come and share the word with you today um because it's a passage of scripture I'm passionate about. It's uh what God is doing in us, I think is important work. So I'm grateful to be here. Um happy Father's Day, dad. Um, I got three daughters. Um, they're like gonna be 27, 25, and 24 this year. Birthdays are all kind of second half of the year experiences in our family. So um, yeah, and they live in three states. So really all that we do is just go around to to chase our children. And the big, the big news in our family is that our youngest got her first after college, she graduated last month job in the major that she's not like, you know, flipping burgers. But she went to college and got a non-burger flipping job, which I thought was pretty amazing. Um, I've heard it's a hard job climate out there, so I'm very grateful for her on that. And um, yeah. Anyway, so just glad to be here. We should probably get into things, or else the countdown timer is going to tell me that I'm out of time, which would really just be an indication that I should start. Okay, just kidding. Hey, what are you what are you scared about? Um, you know, there's there's kind of fun things with that, and and then there's some real things that we're scared about too. So maybe with the person next to you, tell them kind of a you know, funny thing that you're scared of. You don't need to open up the deepest, darkest fears that you have with the person next to you. But, you know, is there something the you know, we all know that Indiana Jones hates snakes? What's your snakes? So just tell the person next to you. Maybe they already know you've been married to them for 50 years, they know what you're scared of. It's a good one, huh? All right. Hey, um, have you oh you know, so we start a new series. The series is called Narrow, and um it talks it from this passage in Matthew chapter seven, where it says this um enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it, but small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. So, I mean, clearly the the narrow road to life is the one that we want to be on. And so all this summer, this is our topic. This is what we're really about. And so I just want to invite you to into today's message. This is along this line. We're just a few verses down in the same chapter in Matthew 7 today. So if you got a Bible, you can pull Matthew chapter 7. By the way, I'm a huge fan of paper Bibles. Um, this is not that particular Bible. This is what I call my preaching Bible. And maybe I say that more southern. This is my preaching Bible. And the reason why is because in my original Bible, which I've had for 36 years or 38 years, I figured out earlier this morning, um, it it is not the exact same as what we use on the screen. So I want to make sure that what I have is what we use on the screen. But having that Bible for all those years and the paper Bible enables me when I open it to like recognize things on the page. App pages that all look the same. And I love apps, things. I even got the iPad sitting here, but I love that. So um, so we're gonna be kind of looking at this Matthew chapter seven today. But before we dive into that, I want to kind of set up this fear thing a little bit. Have you seen Home Alone? It, you know, it's an old movie. You we got some young people up front. They're like, I don't know what he's talking about. Actually, you've probably all seen it, huh? Yes. Okay, that's good. Thanks for affirming me. I'll be looking at you more during the day. Okay. I love this. Um, and Home Alone, I don't know. Has this ever happened to you? You plan this big family trip to Europe and you leave one of your kids at home and you're gone for a while. Has this ever happened to you? Okay, not to me either, but you know, there's some parents out there in the world who are bad and they happen to be in this movie. Um, but the best part about this, of course, is that the people come to steal all the stuff in the house, and um Kevin outwits them at every turn. So um it's fun. And since we're basically halfway to Christmas, I think it's okay to watch one Christmas movie when you get home today. And if this was the one you want to watch, we'll be okay with that. Also, acceptable answers would be Christmas story and It's a Wonderful Life. Uh, you can talk to me afterwards if you've got another suggestion. Hey, that that picture though comes from an actual painting by a Norwegian artist named Edvard Munk, which is just fun to say. And uh, this is called Scream, is the actual name of the painting. It was uh it was painted in 1893, and this is what he said about what his experience was that was his inspiration for painting this picture. I was walking along the road with two friends, and the sun was going down. Suddenly the sky turned blood red. I stopped, feeling exhausted, and I leaned up against the fence. There was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends walked on. I stopped, stood there trembling with anxiety, and I sensed an infinite scream. Something was going on with with Edvard that day. Um and it inspired this painting. Because, you know, there's there's a lot of things that we're fearful of for really legitimate reasons and and things, and some fears are are healthy for us. We need to have them. The the fear of of you know falling off a big cliff is an important fear to have. And there's other fears that that you know are harmful to us that we might go and and need to do some work with the Lord and maybe with a therapist to figure out kind of where that's at. And um, but today we're I want to bring us into a place of fear, and I want to encourage you to go there and be there with me this morning because it's an important fear that we need to have. It's the most frightening words Jesus ever spoke. And so we're just gonna unpack that this morning. Would you pray with me as we get started? Father, I ask you, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to be at work in us today. God, that none of us would leave this room without being transformed by you. That God, you would be at work in me, be at work in each of us, in such a way, God, that we're a little bit different. We're a little bit more aligned with you, or maybe completely changed today. God, do what you need to do in us in Jesus' name. Amen. So, spiders, how many of you spiders is a thing? Okay, good. Thank you. Honesty is good for the soul. Uh, scared of the dark, I got that one too. Um, heights is my real one. How many of you like ladders? Think ladders are fun? Freaks, all of you. Um and you know, these are these are some of the things um, you know, that that scare us. When my wife and I were first married, uh, I was at work and I worked really close to where we lived in an apartment in San Jose. And we'd been married, I don't know, three months or something like that. And she calls me during the day and says, there's this gigantic spider the size of a whale. I don't know what she, you know, here, you know, come and come and take care of it because I can't go in the bathroom. And uh so um so revisionist history says I went home and and killed the spider and saved my wife. But what she reminded me first service was that I had not gone home and and removed the spider. So whatever credibility I had with some of you just completely vanished, I think. But um, yeah, it is amazing that we survived the beginning of our marriage. Also, another fear is the fear of public speaking. Um, and so some of you may be thinking, I do not want to trade places with Derek today. Um, I get it. But really, those are nothing compared to these words here. Uh, these words from Jesus in Matthew 7, we'll read them all in total in a moment, but I never knew you depart from me. Those are words we never want to hear from God, right? Could you imagine that you go to a wedding? Our daughter got married last summer, our oldest up in Oregon. And so maybe you're from here, we invited you. You're like, okay, great, let's go. So you you get in the car and you head up there. Um, actually, in order to tell the story correct, I have to slightly change it. You heard we have a wedding. We didn't invite you, sorry. I kind of blew the story. Shoot. Okay, we're gonna be all right. I didn't invite you. But you go up to the wedding and you're all dressed up and you're ready to go. You're at the chapel, you found the right place, you got the hotel, you did all the travel, but you you kind of get to the door and they're like, Well, you're not on the guest list. You know, you can't come. We're, you know, this isn't your wedding. It's like, how embarrassing would that be? And like foolish feeling, right? It really would have been better if I'd set up the story correct. But this is the kind of thing that we have with Jesus. I'll set up this part of the story better. I don't know what your picture is of what arriving in heaven is going to be like. If there's gonna be gates, what it's gonna be like, if Jesus is gonna be there, if if Peter's gonna be, St. Peter's gonna be at the gates. I don't know what it is. And not only do I not know what your image is, I don't know what the actual thing is because the Bible doesn't describe that. But some point in time we'll get there and we'll stand there. And for some people, though, he's gonna say, I never knew you, depart from me. And I think that this surprise for some people is gonna be the worst things that could ever that they could ever hear. Because there's nothing like thinking that you're in and discovering you're out. Now, I want us to live in this fear and tension this morning a little bit, because if we don't, we aren't going to be able to take seriously what Jesus said. So would you would you find that passage then Matthew chapter 7, verse 21? And let me read this for us. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers. Jesus gives us this warning. It's a part of this three-chapter Sermon on the Mount. It's the it's one of the two long sections of Jesus' teaching we have in the Gospels, where it's like long-form teaching. Also, uh the passage we have been going through also at church in John like 13 to 17. So anyway, so this warning then is meant to have us take it really seriously. So no matter where you are today in your faith journey, would you would you go here with me? Would you dive into this fear? Would you dive into this uncertainty? No matter what your belief is about Jesus today, no matter what you are trusting in for being able to be welcomed into heaven someday, I want you to live in this tension with me. So I invite you there. First of all, um, let's look at this passage again here on the screen. I've highlighted part of the verses, and I highlighted the part that's the reasons why the people who are turned away gave for why they should be allowed in. Look at those reasons here. Did we not prophesy in your name? In your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles. These things sound spiritually good, right? Prophesy. If I did that this morning, and so I have some word and I say it and it comes true in the future, you guys would be like, Derek, you got anything else to say? And can you give me the lottery numbers? Um, if I performed miracles, then you'd be like, and I need one too. And so these are people then who before God had religious resume items that are impressive. They're they they look legitimate. They look like things that that we would say, well, these are the people who are in, clearly, right? And then we would look at other people and say, well, they don't have the miracles and the other things. So so I don't know what is going on with that. We're really um, in a lot of ways, we're people who are driven by scoreboards. I don't know, sports people, sports people here today. World Cup. Anyone watching the World Cup? The um I like games that have more than one goal scored. Just saying. But um, we're driven by scoreboards. Now, you may not be a sports person, non-sports people today, people who are saying I'm a sports widow. All right, that's my wife. Um how about American Idol? You know, American Idol, every week we want to know what happened. We want to know who got voted off the show, who's gonna advance the next round, who has the chance to become Susan Boyle. Game shows, all of these things that they tap into our desire to keep the score. And the first century, the typical first century follower of God was basically a scoreboard-driven person that they were trying to build their score before God on this, building a resume. How do you build a resume? You do some good stuff, you do stuff that impresses the employer. So a lot of people view their relationship with God like building a resume. I got to prove out what is uh what's gonna go on the resume, what's gonna be impressive to the boss, to God, and build that scoreboard. And but today, what Jesus is teaching us is that that scoreboard didn't seem to matter when it mattered most. And so I never want to be in this situation. I never want to go and stand up before God and have the scoreboard not matter, to have the resume be disregarded. And so let's I'll talk through that today. Because one of the things that's gonna happen is that some of the absences in heaven are gonna surprise us more than the presences. Some of the absences, those people who were denied by God to get into heaven, and that's a surprising thing to me, perhaps to you. Because the reason why that's surprising to us is that probably almost all of us have this shared thing. People have a natural desire to try to earn God's approval through religious effort. Have you ever felt far from God and felt like my life is a mess and I'm the one who's messing it up? And so I'm gonna kind of get my act together here and I'm gonna go to church on Sunday and I'm gonna stop cussing as much. And and and I'm gonna get myself okay. Have you felt like that? Have you been in that place? That's what that's really what it is. We have a natural desire, I think almost everybody has it, to try to earn God's approval through religious effort. Because religious systems are out there to they they want us to answer certain questions. Where did all this come from? What's the meaning of life? What's the meaning of this existence? How should we live? What's our moral uh you know framework for this? And then how can I overcome my failings? How can I deal with the wreckage of myself? And so um then we say, well, it's got to be through religious effort. But Jesus has a different path on that. And so we'll kind of unpack that because the question then comes about it's like, well, then who can be saved? If we can't, if these people with the great resume can't be saved, I got no hope. Who can be saved? Well, the Bible has more to say on this topic, so we'll be into that. In John chapter three, um, sorry, before I read that one, I want to look at first John chapter five, because first John chapter five tells us something that we will bring to help color in the picture of the Matthew 7 passage we started with today. Because the Apostle John, one of Jesus' 12 close people, uh later wrote at the end of his life, he said, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may, here's the key word, know that you have eternal life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. So, what would need to be true for you to be in this camp versus the camp of the people who said, But didn't we cast out demons and perform many miracles? What would be the case for that? What is it needs to be true? The first thing that we need to do is we need to throw out that religious resume. We need to stop relying on it. You know, the religious resume is really built on personal effort. It's really built on pride, and it's built on being able to ignore the things that I've done wrong. Because in order for me to really fill out the resume, I've got to like look past all my failings and say, well, my resume probably looks good. In fact, it probably looks better than you know somebody else's because I know what they've done. But that's not how Jesus looks at things. Let's go back to Matthew 7. If you're still looking there, would you look at the prior verse at verse 21? Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but here it is, only the one who does the will of my father. And so the question this begs of us is, what is the will of the father? Because we've already established that the will of the father is not building a resume, because the very next verse says your resume doesn't work. So then what is the will of the Father? Well, the will of the Father, I'll put out there for us, is believing. The will of the Father is believing in Christ. And so we're going to take a look at how that all works together and overcomes a spiritual, a religious resume. John chapter 3, verse 16, the most well-known verse, says this: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. So when we look at this and we say, Well, the will of the Father is belief, when I make that contention, the will of the Father was to send Jesus, his one and only Son, in order that we would believe. And so it is not at all a stretch for me to say that the will of the Father, the will of God is to believe in Christ, because here that's exactly what it says. Another verse by the Apostle Paul in the Book of Romans says this if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And so here what we see is a real disengagement of the concept of building a religious resume from what really matters to God. And what really matters to God then is that belief. Now, um, according to the clock up there, I have only two hours and 14 minutes left to speak. Um so we will only be able to cover some of the issues of belief that come about. And it's kind of beyond the scope of what we can talk about today to look at all the different issues around belief that you may have. The issues of like how can we know in the existence of God? Is the Bible that we have really reliable and true, and or has it been changed over all the years? Did any of the miracles really happen, or did just some people decide they wanted to write a bunch of things so that it would get people to follow their religion? All of these questions are great questions. And as you have them, I encourage you to explore them. Wesley Huff is a Christian apologist. Apologist means somebody basically who likes creates um, you know, logical points of view through these different issues. You can find them on YouTube and wherever Google may send you. Wesley Huff, though, is a person who's addressed many of these things. And so I really encourage you to go. Home today, and maybe instead of watching uh Home Alone, you know, dive into Wesley Huff, like deal with those things that are out there because belief is really important for us to go with. But right now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to um talk about the role of belief then in moving forward, because there's kind of a way in which we modernists view belief and we view it through the scientific method. And there's a lot of merit to the scientific method, and um, but it's hard for us when we talk about belief in Christ for a couple of different reasons. So let me just unpack modern belief for us. It really emphasizes the mind and science. It starts with that and says, I need to be able to empirically prove something. Um, and you know, and there's a lot of things that you and I don't possess the ability to prove. We can read that a scientist has under understood atoms, but like I haven't ever actually seen an atom. I mean, I do because apparently it makes up all of us and everything around us, but I can't myself prove um that atoms exist, but they do. I'm not a science denier, don't worry, everybody. But it starts with evidence. And and so um, but God is the creator of all the things, and so I'd like to contend that he stands above the the scientific method. And then the thing that we do is as either created by God beings or evolved beings, depending on your point of view, we put the burden of proof on God to become believable. And I'd like to suggest that that that that automatically is unscientific because we put the burden on God to show himself to imperfect creatures that we can prove him. It leads to a disconnect, ultimately, it leads to a disconnect between belief and actions, because if I can't fully believe, if I can't fully prove God, then I'm absolved from taking action and following him or not. Ancient belief is different. Ancient belief is really um has a lot of the heart wrapped into it, and so it doesn't get just separated from uh from the the equation by only looking at it with the mind. In ancient belief concepts, it emphasizes the heart and actions, and it starts with listening and learning, which is actually the scientific method. It's to start with zero rather than to start with a bias and say, what do I just need to learn and what do I need to observe in order to discover God in my life? And the burden of proof is on you and I, because the burden of proof then is here's Christ and what he claimed, will you and I follow? It leads then to being like Jesus because when our heart discovers that Jesus is real, it changes us. Something really different happens. So the at the bottom line then is um, is Jesus convincing enough versus do I trust him enough to follow? I listened to a podcast yesterday. I don't know if you listened to a podcast called Diary of a CEO. Is that familiar with anybody? Okay, it's a good one. I encourage you by the way, Wesley Huff is on that a few weeks ago. John Lennox was on maybe three weeks ago. He is a um uh Oxford University professor in mathematics and has written a book about AI. So if you're interested in AI stuff, this may all the his interview may also be interesting to you. But he talks about faith and talks about how for him to be able to prove the existence of God to another person could be really, really difficult because no matter what I say, it may not satisfy the specific thing for someone else. But he said, for me, um, the host asked him, you know, what do you think you could be wrong? And he answered him, he said, No, I don't think I can be wrong because I've seen the effect of God in my life. And uh, and that's an amazing thing. So I think that basically Lennox is saying, Do I trust him enough to follow? And I think that's where where he is. So then where do we kind of take this? Well, I'd like to suggest a couple of different paths. So if you're if you're a person who's you know has been in church, you consider yourself to be a Christ follower, you've accepted that Jesus Christ died for your sins, but you also sense in yourself that building of a religious resume. I want to talk with amongst us right now, okay? Because if you're like me, you you want to do things that honor God, you want to serve God and you feel good about that. But there's also a place in which that can be that can lead to some pride. Can you feel that? Can you feel how sometimes you you feel superior to other people because you follow Jesus because you do some good things? And we conveniently ignore some ways in which we don't, of course. We compare ourselves to others. This is a damaging thing. And so today I want to encourage those of us who have this issue, this this addiction, it might be, to that religious resume. I want to encourage you to repent of it, to confess that as a sin before God, that you're that the best thing that you can do for God is still not enough. The best that you have is insufficient. And so you, and so you and I we can't take pride in it. I came out of high school wanting to be a youth pastor and be in ministry, so I went to Bible college. I went to seminary, so I got two academic degrees and I'm working on a third. Maybe a disconnect between working on a third degree in Bible-y things and telling you that we don't need a religious resume, uh, right? Um, but I don't think I'm doing that to build a resume. But in as much as I as I may feel good about that, it's something that I need to do business with. I need to be able to just leave out that pride that I may have, that you may have, about I'm living a good life. I'm a good person. And I'm telling you, we're not good except for what Jesus did. Now, if you're here today, and maybe today is the first day you've ever been in church, or today's the first day you've been in church in a long time. And maybe the reason why you're here is because you're going, you know, my life is a wreck. And I just need God to fix it, or I need to get myself right with God because my life is a wreck because I'm not following God. And maybe if I start doing better resume things, that God will fix the stuff that's a mess in my life. And yeah, God is here, and Jesus is interested in fixing the stuff in your life, but not by you building a resume that includes getting into church today. In fact, none of that stuff matters. Because what Jesus did on the cross, and all the songs that we're singing today, are like the most beautiful example of this. That Jesus on that cross, he bled and died. When he gave his life on the cross, 2,000 years ago, he did it in mind that for you and I something could be completely changed. That our lives could could shift somehow from a place of of unforgiveness and lostness to a place of forgiveness from him. So if you're here today, and also if if the message is kind of new to you or the Holy Spirit's there, maybe your heart's beating just a little bit faster, it's because it's because Jesus came to seek and save the lost. And when the Holy Spirit's at work, that's kind of how it feels. So for you, then I want to I want to just give you the message then about how to start faith with Christ. Because when G because Jesus died in order to make that an open door for you and I. It's a step that I've taken, it's a step I'd love for you to take. Through just believing that Jesus is Lord, that you would put him in a place of firstness in your life, and that God raised him from the dead, and as much as what you can understand and trust today, that the Bible then teaches that Jesus transforms, that the that the new life, Second Corinthians Paul says this. He says, the old will be gone and the new is come. It's a great thing. And you know what is the greatest thing about it is that it is, as Paul said in Galatians chapter 6, verse 1, it is for freedom that Christ has set you free. And so we're, I'm not inviting you today to start building a resume, to start doing work, to try to get up your scoreboard to a sufficient level that God would pay attention to you on that day when you enter to the kingdom, but rather that you would trust in Jesus Christ because he did the work. It's freeing for us because trying to keep up the resume not only is it impossible, it's tiring. It's demoralizing. It prevents us from the great thing that we want in our lives, which is just to know God. If God is this loving and great being, it we just want to know him. And we and once we realize that Jesus did all of that so that we could just enter it, we can go from zero to a hundred, not start a stair step of works to get there. We can never reach the top. So I'm gonna um take us to prayer in just a second. But if today um you're somebody who's here and you hear that message about responding to Jesus and his gift, we call that accepting Christ. And so you can take this card out of the chair and you can just put your name and your email and your phone number on here and put a little checkbox next to accepting Christ. And we have a couple boxes by the doors, and you can put that in there, and it'll get to the church staff. And so maybe Pastor Ralph or Pastor Nate or Emily or one of our team will then reach out to you this week because we want to then help you grow, because there's a next step that we want you to take on here. The first step, then, if you're making that step to accept Jesus, is to start with Jesus. We want you to become a part of a local church because we think that's that helps, not because it gets you there, not because it builds the resume, but because it helps and to connect and grow and serve. And we got some ways in which we help people do that. So this is how to take a next step. Because if you just come today and hear all of this, it's um James, the brother of Jesus, says in the in the epistle named after him, if we look in the mirror and then forget what it looks like and walk away, that's not real helpful. So we want to help you to do great stuff with that. Okay, so would you pray with me? And I'm gonna have kind of two prayers in this. First prayer is for those of you who are like me who need to reject that resume building. The second part is for those of you who may want to receive him today. Father, um, I want to lead us toward repentance of that resume building, of that pride, of that thinking that I can make myself right before you, that my religious effort means something before you. That God, I never want to hear the words depart from me, I never knew you. That would be the most heartbreaking and awful thing. It would the fear of that, um, just thinking about it right now, I don't even know what to say. It would be so awful. And so, God, I want to release the pride of that. I want to release that false belief and just follow you, just love you. Not because I think I'm doing it for myself. God, would you forgive me of that sin of resume building? For those of you who are here today who may want to receive Christ for the first time, here's a prayer you can pray along in your heart with me. Jesus, I thank you that you died on the cross. That you, when you rose from the dead, arose victorious over sin, including my sin, that you came to do that to heal me, to uh deal with the brokenness of me and the terrible things that have happened in my life. We've all got the hurts, we've all got the things that have that have broken us. But Jesus died. Thank you, Jesus, for doing that. Thank you for dying for me. And I place you as Lord in my life, and I receive that the belief that God raised you from the dead, and I invite you into my heart. I want to live my life a new way of love in you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

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