“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven” (7:21).  That hurts.  Does that mean that you can believe you’re being a faithful follower all your life, only to find, at the judgment, that you’ve been miserably misguided, with no one to blame but yourself, your own hellbent, inherent inclination to pursue, cherish, and promote falsehood?  But Christ came to make the way open.  Yes, it is a narrow way.  Yes, it is a challenging way in this world of wide ways.  And the way is open.  Christ came to make the way open, and he holds it open for us, for everyone and anyone who will take it, who will take his way, the Jesus Way.

The Spirit comes to cause the change that needs to happen before anyone can even think of wanting the narrow way of Christ Jesus.  The Spirit causes us to see our sin, know our sin, hate our sin, and to want to do something about our sin.  There is one who can; there is one who has.  The Spirit causes us to ask God to be our Lord and Master, rather than the many little idols and big ideologies here below, demanding our slavish service.

The one who says “Lord, Lord,” yet does not live “Lord, Lord” will not enter the kingdom.  The kingdom, Jesus tells us, is for “the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (7:21).  Not my will but Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Thy kingdom come!  Ah, but what is the will of our Father in heaven, that we may do it?

Those who will be turned away, staggered, stunned, will say, in their defense: “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?” (7:22).  We prophesied in your name!  We told others all about the way God wants them to live, and all about God’s will, and it was amazing and wonderful how God’s will was so similar to our own will!  We told anyone who would listen—and many listened—that this was the way Jesus taught, the way Jesus loved.  We drove out demons in your name!  We just knew they were demons, even when they insisted they were speaking God’s own truth, but we just knew in our heart that God’s own truth could never sound like that or say such things or associate with such people.  Our God would never!

Oh, beloved, not all power is power from above.  To do something in the name of Jesus is to do something in his character, to make his character visible to others, to demonstrate who Jesus is, and the life into which he is calling us, calling for you and for me.  Jesus says he is truth; God is truth.  We can’t know the character of Jesus if we do not know Jesus, and we never can know Jesus if we aren’t getting better acquainted with God’s Word, all God’s Word—the icky as well as the pretty: a full exposition of both the human heart and the heart of God—the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

When a person truly knows Jesus, he or she will do things truly in his name, in his character.  No, not perfectly, not in this life, but more often, a little better.  When you truly know Jesus, you will truly be living, choosing, speaking, for his sake, not for the sake of what beckons from the wayside or the darker places within.  Jesus makes this plain in how he will respond to those who try to defend their godless service of God: “I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.  Away from me, you evildoers!’” (7:23).  Gentle Jesus?  Tender Jesus?  Would our dear Jesus talk like that?  If Jesus were only tender, or just gentle, beloved, no he wouldn’t.  Neither would he be Jesus.  He would be Gentle Jesus; he would be Tender Jesus: a version, a preference, an idol.  Jesus is right: we will not know him if we will not know him complete, in all his human fullness, in all his righteousness, in all his holy divinity.  More about Jesus would I know!

But how can we?  By choosing anew, each day, praying each day, to know him better, listen to him more attentively, walk with him more closely; that he would continually be shaping our living, our thinking, our choosing.  A prayer from a long-suffering English bishop who lived some eight hundred years ago goes like this: “Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me.  O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, day by day.  Amen.”  Our Lord, our friend and brother, will never ignore that prayer.

Pastor, professor, and biblical scholar William Barclay writes, “[i]t is not difficult to recite a creed, but it is difficult to live the Christian life.  Faith without practice is a contradiction in terms, and love without obedience is an impossibility.”[1]  We love the love part, but that obedience part?  Not so much.  Barclay did not write “it is difficult to live a Christian life”; he wrote “it is difficult to live the Christian life.”  The life.  When Jesus says there shall be those whom he turns away, those who would come to him even perhaps sincerely convinced that they had been loyal and devoted followers, it all comes back to this distinction between a way and the way.  You and I are familiar with the innate inclination to be the ones who get to say what a Christian life looks like.  The Bible, God’s Word, delineates what the Christian life looks like.  I’m not really happy with the reflection I see in the mirror of God’s Word.  I’m always praying that God would continue to amend me.  A life is what people make apart from the governing power of God’s Word.  The life is what God’s governing power promises to do for us, in us, through the Spirit of Christ, who is the way, and the truth, and the life.

This is why Jesus goes on immediately to say,

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise                            man who built his house on the rock.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds                              blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.                            But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a                                  foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds                      blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.  (7:24-27)

On Christ the solid rock I stand.  How firm a foundation.  Christ is made the sure foundation.  Our cornerstone—from which the rest of the building proceeds, without which the building cannot be built, who keeps the building true and right.  Christ is the Rock.  Christ is God’s Word.  God’s Word speaks to us from every page and line and word of this book.  We don’t like all of it.  We don’t love all of it.  There is much in here that confuses us.  There are things in here that can even revolt us.  Scripture shows us all the human heart: it’s not a pretty picture.  “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jeremiah wrote (Jer 17:9).  I’m almost persuaded that he might just be on to something.

Scripture also shows us God’s heart: warm with love, mercy, grace, and with indignation and ire over our many failures, my many failures to live up to God’s best, the failures, the ignored opportunities to make God’s character better known among our fellow human beings, to live and serve in the name of Jesus.  He calls His people to be something for Him, not merely to take the blessings with barely a cordial thanks and then complain about our lot in life and complain about one another.  We’re not that good at Christian service.  It doesn’t come to us naturally.  God can help us.  He’s always been offering to do just that.  How have you and I been so hard of hearing?

I love to tell a story about Dr. Oz.  He isn’t just a TV personality and failed senate candidate—I mean, look at who he was up against, after all.  Oz is a distinguished heart surgeon who taught at Columbia University Medical School, in New York.  He has saved lives.  What got him into television was his encountering a former patient, a man who had needed a complicated, lengthy, costly heart surgery.  The surgery was successful, the patient’s recovery went well, and Dr. Oz had the satisfaction of knowing he had done something to help save the life of his fellow man.  A few months later, Oz encountered this man in a restaurant.  The man was enjoying a big, juicy bacon cheeseburger: that heart attack on a plate that we’ll spend $15 or even more to have: $15 to undo what it took more than $50,000 to accomplish on the operating table.

Tell me how surprised you are by what I’m about to tell you.  A woman went to see her doctor, a good doctor.  The woman was concerned but didn’t want to be too concerned.  I guess she mainly wanted the doctor to say it was nothing serious, would clear up by itself, that she really didn’t need to do anything except enjoy herself and pretty much do what she wanted more or less the way she wanted when she wanted.  Well, her doctor didn’t tell her that.  Her doctor was concerned, gave her a prescription, told her to do some moderate exercises a few times a week and to make some changes in what she was putting into herself.  The doctor said to come back again for a follow up.

Well, that wasn’t what she was expecting!  She was a little upset . . . with the doctor.  Oh, she filled the prescription and took it according to directions, for a few days, then not exactly according to directions; then she sort of stopped taking it.  She didn’t like it: it made her feel odd.  She grumbled about exercise but did make herself go for a walk a couple mornings, but that wasn’t her best time of day, and evening was so hot and buggy.  Her husband suggested a treadmill, said they could both use it, and they let the idea sit there, to think about it.  And as for making some changes into what she put into herself?  You know, she never did follow up with that doctor, either, even when the office called to confirm the appointment.

               [1] William Barclay.  Gospel of Matthew.  Vol. 1.  Daily Study Bible.  1956.  Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1975.  290.