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Hey, you're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the north side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. I'm Anna Mitchell.

And I'm Dan Breitwieser. Each week, one of us will sit down with the person who gave Sunday's sermon to discuss their message. Cut for Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday.

Thanks for listening. Welcome back to Cut for Time. Hey, thanks, Anna.

Good to join you. Yeah. Thanks for being here.

I feel like this is one of the harder of the hard sayings. What makes this one a hard saying? Yeah, well, we just remind the folks what the hard saying is. It really comes near the end of the Sermon on the Mount.

And Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. And then at the end of the text, it says, after explaining concerns about it, it says, He says, I never knew you, instead of saying, enter in. So two things stand out to me.

It's a hard saying because it emphasizes the reality of judgment, that not everyone enters God's presence, and that's threatening. Does that mean I'm not included? Does that mean people I love and care about, my own family, might not be included? And in fact, Jesus says in earlier connected passage, only a few find it. So it's not just not everyone, but it seems like the majority are included and not everyone.

And then I think a second reason it's hard to understand because, or it's a hard saying is because it may be difficult to understand. But you could jump to a false conclusion too quickly that Jesus and Paul are not on the same page, that Jesus is talking about doing God's will, and that's the reason you're not entering, and Paul is saying, no, salvation is by God's grace. But as we follow the text through, and I hope I made that clear at the end, that they're not in disagreement.

It's in knowing Jesus, not in doing for Jesus, but in knowing Jesus, that coming to him in faith, salvation comes. But when it does come, Jesus is very clear that obedience will follow. And if there's no evidence of that, then that's very concerning that maybe the relationship with him is not there.

So those who really know Jesus and coming to know him in a personal relationship, growing in him, they're going to delight in doing God's will, not as a cause, but as an effect. Yeah. In your sermon, you mentioned universalism, which is sort of the opposite of the whole judgment idea where everyone gets saved.

What's tempting about that, and how do we address that question with truth and with hope? Yeah, it is so tempting, and it's growing in popularity. I mean, it's always been popular, I suppose, but I think it's kind of on an upswing right now. We love to be unaccountable.

I don't want to be accountable to you for what I do. I just want to do what I want to do. And with God, it's like, well, God is love.

If I believe in God at all, I think he's love, and I define him as I want to define him. So as one person said, after all, it's God's job to forgive me. Okay, what are you giving God his jobs? Or isn't God's love unconditional? That's very popular.

We like to see everyone saved. God himself says that his will is that all are saved, but also God's got a justice, and it's clear here and throughout the Bible that in the end, not everyone enters God's presence. So speaking of God's unconditional love as if it can ignore sin and injustice, no, that's not accurate.

Flipping it to focus on the hope side of it, God has given us a way through. And so if you're in great danger and there's only one path out of the danger, be glad for that one path and take it. He's provided a way of salvation through Christ, and so that's the good news for anybody that's wrestling with this.

Yeah, good news, the way, the truth, the life, but it's the one way. Yeah. I heard a sermon on that.

Oh yeah, I preached it. Go back and listen. This passage is within the context of the servant of the mount, right? Why is it important to pay attention to the surrounding text? Yeah, well, that's one of the great rules of interpreting any text, biblical or otherwise, what is the context? And if you get too small a piece, you're going to miss that context.

In this case, the sermon on the mount is one sermon. It's three chapters in Matthew, but it's one sermon given at one time is my understanding. When I preached the series on the sermon on the mount, I preached 33 sermons.

And I didn't know a guy who did 66, a lot of sermons, but it's unpacking it and trying to understand it in the context of all the scripture. But the sermon on the mount flows from a description of kingdom of God life and kingdom ethics, what it means to walk with God in prayer and spiritual disciplines. The Lord's prayer is in the middle of the sermon on the mount.

It's just amazing and helpful as a model for prayer. Jesus emphasizes kingdom values in terms of trusting him for all of life. You know, he cares for the birds of the air.

He cares for you too, Anna. And I have to trust that he cares for me, the worry worth that I am. And then as Jesus brings it to a close, he invites us to enter in to the kingdom, letting us know that it's not an easy, broad path.

It's a narrow path, but it's the way of life. And there's so much in this sermon. Again, I did it in 33 sermons.

I've done it three or four times over my preaching years. And so you always need context. And so it comes to the end, like an invitation at the end after he's done the teaching gives you an invitation to enter into what he's been talking about.

Yeah. And you mentioned three other sort of comparisons, which I suppose are also invitations, the two gates. Yeah, it ends with four binary statements about in this invitation section in which Jesus described those who enter into salvation through one of two gates.

Only one gate leads to salvation, or an analogy of two trees, one that bears good fruit, one that bears bad fruit, reflecting the two categories, and then two houses, a house that's built on the rock, a house built on the sand, great children's song comes out of that. And the house that stands firm on the rock, and the house that crashes with the storm comes. So Jesus is using all of these binaries, addressing essentially the same issue, just with word pictures to help us understand it better, entering into the kingdom.

And ultimately, Jesus saying yes to Jesus as the way, or no to Jesus, and going your own way, sadly to destruction. Yeah. Yeah, that's a hard saying.

It is. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And as we're wrestling with it, some people are truly saved, some people aren't, but still have the confidence. You said they can be religious, they can affirm sound doctrine, and be active in ministry, but still not be saved.

Why is this important to consider? How should we interact with these people? What are some action steps? Yeah, let me, if I can just read that section quickly. On that day, Jesus says, 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? And I'll declare to them, I never knew you. Most people, it seems like, if you ask them a question about their hope for eternity, they will say, I'm a good person, I'm a nice person, I treat people well.

Not everybody does, but we all have a pretty good self-justifying image of ourselves and how good we are, and everybody seems to think they're better than at least 50% of the people. Well, math doesn't quite work out. But if we're thinking we're good, then we're deceiving ourselves when Jesus points out, and the rest of Scripture points out, that at the core of our being, we're self-focused and worship ourselves and other things and not God.

And yet, if you're really focused on a lot of activity and being nice to people and doing a lot of good works, then you think you can earn your own way. And Scripture comes back to the fact that no, we're all sinners, we all need God's grace, none of us measure up, and we're not as good as we think we are, and we need God's saving grace to help us through that, to take us through that, not just to help us. I guess another piece of that, if I see a loved one, or anybody, it has to be somebody special if I see anyone heading toward destruction, I have an obligation.

I mean, just like the weather report, if a tornado is coming, the weatherman is kind enough to say, there's a tornado a mile from your house, you better go into the basement and get covered by something. And if that's important when a tornado is coming, then when divine judgment is coming, it's even more important to lovingly warn people and show them the way to be saved from that danger. Yeah, sort of warning signs, pieces of evidence.

Yeah, yeah. What differentiates the evidence from the cause when it comes to salvation? Yeah, well, that kind of goes back to the last statement of Jesus when He says, I never knew you. He talked earlier about doing the will, not everyone who says, but everyone who does, and that can lead you into thinking, oh, it's what I do.

But when He comes back to say, I never knew you, what does that mean? Well, the word know has a wide range of meaning, from general awareness, yeah, I've heard of you, I saw you somewhere, to I know you really well, and a deep intimate knowledge of the other person. So when Jesus says, I never knew you, He's not saying that He knows about you, He knows everything about you. But He's the omniscient God, but He's saying, I don't have a relationship with you.

You didn't enter the narrow gate, you never put your faith in me, trusting me. And that's evident by your ignoring me and not obeying me. So the cause and effect thing is, Paul explains it this way, not of works, for by grace are you saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

And if you see your good deeds meriting God's favor, then you underestimate the reality of your own sin and you take pride in being good enough, but no one's good enough. And yet knowing that by grace you've been saved through faith, or as John Newton in the great old hymn, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, you realize, oh, I really need help here. But he goes on to say, saved not as a result of works, but the next thing in Paul's statement is works as a result of God's grace, not works to save you, but works coming out of your salvation.

And so he says, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So Paul is fully agreeing with Jesus here that the problem is not knowing Jesus, not having a personal relationship with Jesus. Paul uses the language of grace in that context.

Coming out of that will be the evidence of that relationship, which is the good works that Jesus insists on, and that Paul says inevitably come out of salvation. So that's the cause-effect confusion that we sometimes have. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense.

Thanks for going through that. With the different ways of knowing, how can we tell in our own walks with Jesus that we know him and have a relationship with him versus we just know about him? You told me all that stuff, and now I know it. I know all about Paul's verses and everything, but how do I know I'm in relationship with Jesus? Yeah, I think there's a number of things we could mention here.

And I mentioned Sunday that one of the most common questions I've had from people over my years as a pastor is, how can I be sure? And I think it's two problems. One is if we kind of fall back on, well, yeah, I love Jesus, and I've trusted him. I know he died for me, and I accept him as my Savior, but I still got these sins in my life.

And even if I've stopped doing some of them, I still think badly, and so they really worry about that. And yeah, we should be concerned about the direction of our thoughts and our actions. At the same time, we have to realize God's grace is totally God's grace that saves us, so we have to focus on that.

But then the evidences are not just so you can see it in my life or I can see it in your life, but so I can see it in myself. Am I drawing close to God in Scripture, in prayer, in corporate worship? We all have weaknesses there, so we're not going to get it perfect. Or am I aware of my sin, and when I become aware of it, am I troubled by it? Do I confess it? Not so I can get saved all over again, but just to acknowledge it to God in the health of the relationship, not hiding it.

I think the more spiritually mature you become, the more aware of your sinfulness you become. You become more sensitive to the nuances and background and the heart issues of sin that you didn't worry about before. It wasn't any big deal.

Are we growing in spiritual fruit? The analogy of the two trees in the earlier verses. Paul picks that up in Galatians with the fruit of the Spirit. Are we producing the fruit of the Spirit or the deeds of the flesh? And so, those will all be encouraging evidences as we see ourselves growing, even as we get frustrated that I'm sure not growing fast enough.

But Jesus says He doesn't waste anything in your life. All your struggles as part of Him seem very gradual and very slow, but transforming you more and more and more into the likeness of Jesus. One big caution here is the temptation, if I compare myself to you, you seem much more spiritual than I am.

I compare myself to you, I just get so defeated. Oh, it's hopeless for me. And no, don't compare yourself with anybody else or take pride in the opposite.

Oh, I'm better than you. What's the matter with you? That's not helpful either. So, we just have to be really careful with that.

And yet, God's Spirit encourages and charms us. 1 John, I was looking for my notes and suddenly I couldn't find them here. But 1 John 5 says, how do we know we're in Him? We know.

In fact, I'm going to look it up real quick. Yeah, go for it. It's always good to have the word out.

It's such a significant passage. 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, if you start looking introspectively all the time and saying, well, I'm just not good enough, just not good enough.

No, this is the confidence that we believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. These other things are evidences, but the reality is, have you entered into a relationship with Jesus? And not even always having great feelings about it. Some people are very assured in their feelings, some aren't.

But just back to that core thing is my hope in Jesus. And that's my ultimate assurance. Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing. This is a lot of different pieces, different viewpoints, denomination-wise. How did you prepare for this sermon? I know you said you appreciate it a bunch of other times, but.

Yeah, well, I try to limit my use of outside resources. And in some ways, you know, how long does it prepare a sermon? It's one of the things I've thought over the years is, I don't know, because I've never finished one yet. They're always a work in process.

And then another way is to say, well, I spent about 50 years working on this sermon, because that's how long I've really been investing myself in this. So hopefully it grows over time. When I preached the Sermon on the Mount the first time, I read many, many commentaries.

I was a very young pastor, and it was really preaching the Sermon on the Mount, probably in 1978 or 1979, that my sense of call kind of caught on fire in a way in which is like one of the prophets said, I can't not do this because this is God's truth. I read all 66 sermons by Martin Lloyd-Jones, a famous English preacher from the 50s. He was the same church in London from 1939 to 1968, I think it was.

So he was still alive when I was, I guess, in high school. But I read every one of the things he had to say, and he just compared everything with Scripture all over the Bible. I have a very small volume by D.A. Carson.

Actually, it was sermons he preached to a college group in 1975. He put it a couple of years later into a little book just on the Sermon on the Mount. And I did reread it again and found it very, very helpful.

He's kind of one of my heroes, if that's okay to have heroes. So, yeah, but I didn't go back and read in depth lots of other comments. I like to read two or three commentaries each time I prepare a sermon, just look for, you know, did I really miss something here? And just to look for dangers that others might pick up in terms of how we look at a passage.

But mainly, the main thing about preparing a sermon is going over that text, over and over again, context and the text itself. And getting it so deeply within you that it becomes a bit more natural. And I've never accomplished that yet, but I try hard.

Yeah, trying to get it written on the heart. Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for breaking down this really hard saying.

Anything else you want to add that we didn't cover? Uh, no, I don't think so. I mean, you could have always gone deeper into any passage and Old Testament backgrounds and all kinds of things. But I guess there wasn't any major thing that I left out that I didn't have time for.

I think we got to the heart of it. And I hope it was helpful in kind of building our biblical knowledge and living that out in our experience. Yeah, truly.

Thanks again. Yep, thank you, Anna. Yes, have a great day.

Yeah, you too. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following Sunday's sermon, you can email them to podcast at faithchurchindy.com or text them in to our Faith Church texting number, and we'll do our best to cover them in next week's episode.

If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. We'll be back again next week.

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