“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”
-MATTHEW 7:11
Jesus just called them evil! That‟s not a nice encouraging sermon to good Christian followers is it? Jesus would never call someone who has God‟s perfect righteousness evil. This shows he was speaking to the self-righteous, to those who had evil hearts of unbelief. Hebrews three refers to Israel not entering the Promised Land because of their evil heart of unbelief in God‟s ability to fulfill his promises. Their unbelief was evil. Jesus called his audience evil because of their unbelief in the
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gift of righteousness. These are the good things he‟s referring to that they should be asking for. He‟s saying that if Israel would just lay down their fleshy works of self-effort and ask the Father, he would give them the Spirit of the New Covenant and make them righteous. But you‟ll never ask unless you believe you have the need. That was the whole point of the Beatitudes, to show Israel their great need.
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”
-MATTHEW 7:12
You cannot be a hypocrite and fulfill this statement. It was given to expose their different standards by which they judged themselves and others.
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in there at: 14Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
-MATTHEW 7:13–14
I suppose this is where the saying, “I‟m on the straight and narrow.”
came from, referring to someone who has reformed their ways and try-ing to do good. But this isn‟t what Jesus was trytry-ing to say. He wasn‟t trying to get people to perform better but to give up their performance and surrender to his righteousness. He is the gate and he is the way and he is the life. So to be on the straight and narrow is to be in Christ. It‟s to have faith in him. To rely on your own efforts to be righteous is to be
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on the road to destruction. The meaning of the “gate that is wide” and the “way that is broad” is that it‟s easy to be self-righteous. The
“straight gate” and the “narrow way” is the way that is hard for Israel because they don‟t want to give up their self-righteousness.
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep‟s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
-MATTHEW 7:15
That is clearly referring to the Pharisees and Scribes and legalistic teachers. Outwardly they appear gentle and meek yet inwardly they are deadly. Their teaching appears harmless yet it viciously leads you to destruction. Beware of them Israel!
“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
-MATTHEW 7:16–20
You‟ll know these legalistic teachers by their fruit. Does what they say produce life in people or death? The law is the ministry of death but the Spirit of the New Covenant is a ministry of life. The law cannot pro-duce salvation only faith can. The law based life is an evil life that can never produce good fruit. It produces “evil fruit”, that is, actions that are
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based in unbelief. The faith based life is the life of the spirit that brings forth good fruit, that is, actions that proceed from faith.
“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils?
and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
-MATTHEW 7:21–23
This verse often gets quoted out of context. People use it to try to re-fer to Christians who have lost their salvation because they sinned and didn‟t make Jesus Lord of all. That is an “evil” interpretation of this scripture. The context is people who think they are saved because of their self-righteous works. They tried to impress God by their works.
Their faith was never in Christ but themselves. They may have gone to church and sang the songs and took part in ministry but Jesus “never knew them.” That means they were never saved. It doesn‟t say he once knew them but then they were lost as some people make it sound.
“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. 26And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built
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his house upon the sand: 27And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.”
-MATTHEW 7:24–27
People read these words and then mistakenly believe we have to therefore try and do everything that Jesus had just talked about. But this was the ultimate summing up of all that he was saying. Basically that if you could do everything that he had just told them, then they would be able to stand through the storms of God‟s judgments. But if they failed to perfectly do everything he had just told them, then it would be like building their house on the sand. In other words he was telling Israel, in his final flurry of hypocrisy-exposing punches, that all their self-righteous attempts to impress God was like building their house on the sand because they were not fulfilling his words. He was telling them that the storm of God‟s judgments is coming and will beat them down and great is their fall going to be!
“And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”
-MATTHEW 7:28–29
They were astonished at his doctrine because they had never heard anything like it. It was so contrary to anything they had heard. The scribes had told them that they could achieve the law and therefore they must keep trying. Jesus came and contradicted their teaching by
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ing them how impossible it was to keep God‟s perfect law perfectly. The scribes didn‟t have authority because God didn‟t back up their deceiving message. But Jesus had authority because God backed up his message.
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ONCLUSIONThe Beatitudes are not for the church but were for unbelieving Israel.
The church doesn‟t need the Sermon on the Mount. If you were to ask Jesus if he intended that sermon to be a standard that the church meas-ures itself against, he would either start rolling around on the floor screaming with laughter, or bow his head and weep. This is a pre-salvation message that is delivered to self-righteous people who think that they are doing well with righteousness because they can keep some of the law. Once this message has done its job it has served its purpose and we then move on to the way of the spirit.
See, in the New Covenant we have something far superior than the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. We have the substance it was all pointing to. We have the Spirit. We have a new nature. We have his righteousness. We don‟t have to try and get it. We just have to rest in it.
Our righteousness far exceeds that of the Pharisees. It‟s the very righ-teousness of God that came to us as a gift when we put our faith in Jesus and were born again.
The words of Jesus are always important but we must be so careful that we know how to apply them. People get into all kinds of trouble trying to fulfill every word of Jesus but not every word was intended for
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us! We just have to become good at discerning what is for us and what is not for us. This is not based on preference but on rightly dividing be-tween the covenants.