Big Idea: Don’t settle for fake Christianity. Instead, follow Jesus. Your life depends on it.

When we were kids, our family lived in relative poverty. This meant that we didn’t have enough money for certain things. For instance, we didn’t have enough money to buy school gear. So my mother went and tried to make something that looked like the school clothes. It was a labor of love, but it didn’t quite work. My older brothers wore the clothes to school and were teased because of it.

Sometimes having the real thing matters. Don’t give me pressurized dairy topping; give me real whipped cream. Don’t give me white powder; give me cream in my coffee. Don’t give me table syrup; give me maple syrup. There’s a world of difference between something that tries to look like the real thing and something that is the real thing.

It’s the same with following Jesus. This summer we’ve been looking at Jesus’ teaching on the good life. And today we’ve reached the very end. In this passage Jesus is going to call for a verdict. He’s going to give us a stark choice.

It’s so easy to misunderstand what Jesus is saying, so let’s be clear. Jesus isn’t giving us a choice in this passage between following him and living a sinful life. That’s a different topic for a different day. Jesus isn’t talking about the atheists and agnostics in this passage. He’s talking to us. And he’s saying that there are two ways to live, and both are present right within the church. We need to choose.

Let’s look at what Jesus says in this passage. Jesus says three things, and here’s the first.

There Are Two Ways to Live

This is probably the most important point that Jesus makes in this whole passage. Read verses 13 and 14 with me:

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

This is pretty easy to understand. We would like to be given more choices, but Jesus says there are basically two. This is consistent with the teaching of the whole Bible, by the way. Deuteronomy 30 and Jeremiah 21 present us with a choice between death and life. In Psalm 1, we read about the way of the righteous and the way of sinners. We face a binary choice between a path that leads to destruction and a path that leads to life.

If you’re reading this, you may be thinking that Jesus is talking about the choice we have to make between living a sinful life and following him. But that’s not at all what Jesus is talking about here. If you look carefully at this sermon, Jesus was talking to religious people. Who listened to this sermon? Most likely it was religious people. We’re going to see this as we look at some of the details in this passage. Jesus isn’t warning against atheism or agnosticism or being irreligious in this passage; he’s warning against fake Christianity.

How do we know this? It’s actually what Jesus has been talking about for the whole sermon: the difference between fake external commitment to God and something that’s comes from within. It fits the overall message of the Sermon on the Mount, which is how to really live and flourish in contrast to outward religiosity.

It also fits what Jesus says in this section. He’s talking about two paths. Both look like good paths that lead to somewhere, but although they look the same, their destination is very different. He’s talking about two kinds of prophets, both teaching truths about God, but with very different results. He’s talking about two houses that look the same, but their foundations are different. And then he gives us a warning that keeps me up at night:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of…

Big Idea: How do we relate to the world? Don’t be judgmental. Don’t be undiscriminating. Don’t give up because of your confidence in God.

I don’t know about you, but I find it really tricky to know how to navigate the world sometimes.

We no longer live in a world in which Christianity is favored. That’s not all bad. Christianity often thrives when it’s in the minority position within culture. We have an opportunity. Because people don’t know much about Jesus anymore, we have the privilege of showing and telling the good news of Jesus. I love living in Liberty Village for this reason. You and I are perfectly situated to make a real difference in the world.

But it gets complicated.

How do we live as a minority in a culture where the issues keep getting more complicated?

How do we relate to people who believe very different things than us?

How do we relate to people who are hostile to us?

Maybe this is the hardest question of all: How do we relate to others who call themselves Christians and embarrass the name of Jesus?

In short, how do we relate to the wider world as Christians in a way that’s honoring to Jesus and also compelling to the world around us?

That’s what Jesus is going to help us with this week.

In this passage, Jesus tells us how to live as his followers in the world. This couldn’t be more relevant for us as a church in Liberty Village. How do we relate to the wider world? Jesus gives us three commands. How do we relate to the world? Don’t be judgmental. Don’t be undiscriminating. Don’t give up.

Don’t Be Judgmental

It was disturbing. People were sitting quietly on the subway. Some were reading newspapers. Some were lost in thought.

But all of that changed when a man and his children entered the subway car. It was chaos. The man sat down oblivious while his kids yelled, threw things, and even grabbed other people’s papers.

Obviously, people got irritated. One guy couldn’t believe that the guy would allow his children to run around like that and not even care. He turned to the guy and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?”

Here’s what happened:

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.” (The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People)

It’s a dangerous thing to judge without all the information. And that’s the point that Jesus makes in verses 1-5. In fact, verse 1 may be one of the most popular things that Jesus ever said. “Judge not, that you be not judged.”

What does Jesus mean here? He can’t mean that don’t make judgments about what’s right and wrong in this world, and he can’t mean that we don’t size up other people. How do we know this? Because of what Jesus is going to say in just a few verses. We have to evaluate people. We do this all the time. If you’re hiring a babysitter, you have to judge whether or not the person you’re hiring is a safe person. If you’re hiring an employee, you need to judge their suitability. If you’re looking for a spouse, you’d better make some judgments before you go too far! We should make judgments about injustice and oppression. These kinds of judgments are not what Jesus is talking about.

No, what Jesus means here isn’t about judging rightly. It’s about being judgmental, hyper-critical, and condemnatory. Don’t go around thinking that you’re better than everybody else! There are few things less appealing than a follower of Jesus who thinks that he or she is better than anyone else. It’s wrong, and Jesus forbids it here. Don’t be co…

Big Idea: What attitude should we have toward money? Don’t treasure it. Trust God for it.

Money is always on our minds.

I know. some people say that sex is always on people’s minds. They say that men think about sex every seven seconds — although how they would know that is beyond me.

But according to at least one report, money is always on our minds. One in four says that money is the thing that they think about most on a daily basis. And that’s pretty consistent across age groups and income levels, the only difference being younger people, who think more about their love lives, and seniors, who think more about their health.

We’re concerned about a lot of things:

making ends meet

sticking to a budget

planning for retirement

managing debt

handling investments (if you have them)

We in Toronto are not exempt from these concerns. When I tell people that I live and pastor in Liberty Village, people often say, “Oh, that rich area.” I always laugh. I explain to them that I don’t know a lot of rich people in Liberty Village. I know a lot of people who work hard and make a decent income, but face high rents, not to mention student loans and other money worries.

Richard Florida, a professor at U of T, said that he asked his business students one day how they could afford to live in Toronto, ranked one of the least affordable cities in the world. The answer: the bank of Mom and Dad. And those are business students, who will probably make more than most of us. In other words, it’s hard to live here without outside help, which not all of us have.

So we need to talk about money. It is always on our minds, and by virtue of the fact that you live here, it’s probably a hot issue in your life as well.

What may be surprising to you is that this is not a new issue. We are not the first generation to experience money problems! In the passage that we just read, Jesus addresses money. What amazes me about this passage is how current it is. They may have been dealing with a completely different economic system and currency, but there’s not much difference between them and us. They too faced the problem of how to deal with money, and not only that, how to deal with anxiety about money.

And that’s what we’re going to look at today. Two questions: how do we deal with money? And how do we deal with anxiety about money?

And in this passage, Jesus answers both of these questions with two very clear principles.

Don’t Treasure It (6:19-24)

Here’s the first principle: Don’t lay up treasures on earth.

Jesus is not against us having treasures. If you think Jesus is anti-treasure, you’re wrong. He’s just concerned about where our treasures are. And so in verses 19 to 24 he presents us with a series of stark choices. Decide between God and money. You have to make a choice.

In these verses, He gives us three pairs, and says that we have to choose one or the other:

Two treasures: treasures on earth or treasures in heaven

Two perspectives: a bad eye or a good eye

Two masters: serving money or serving God

It’s very interesting. I’d like to think that we could end up somewhere in the middle with each of these, but Jesus says it’s binary. We can have one or the other, but there’s no in-between.

Two Treasures

Take the first one: treasures on earth or treasures in heaven. Jesus says:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

We have to be clear what Jesus means here. He’s not forbidding having money. The Bible nowhere condemns saving or the responsible use of money. In fact, it commends it. W…

Big Idea: Pray privately and simply about all of life, and then tie your prayers to how you live.

There’s something strange about prayer.

We all do it. Prayer is natural and instinctive, even to atheists. A survey earlier this year in England found that 1 out of 5 non-religious people pray. Henry, a self-described agnostic, kneels beside his bed every night and prays, beginning with the Lord’s Prayer, before praying for his loved ones. He said he had no idea if God heard his prayers, and said the act of praying did not make him feel better. “I wonder why I don’t stop doing it. Sometimes I feel it’s a kind of hypocrisy.”

On the other hand, we all find prayer hard. I like the honesty of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life.  Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.”

In his book, The Praying Life, which I can’t recommend highly enough, Paul Miller lists some of the reasons why prayer is so hard:

The minute we pray, all kinds of other things crowd our minds.

We’re confused about what even makes a good prayer.

Prayer can quickly become dull. We make a list, but then get bored praying through it.

We’re used to being busy. Taking time to pray seems so hard when there are so many things to do.

Nothing seems to happen. If our prayers are answered, we wonder if it would have happened anyways. If they’re not answered, why did we pray?

When we pray, nobody responds. How do we even know that God is listening?

I don’t know anyone who can’t relate to these. That’s what’s funny about prayer. We can’t not pray. There’s something inside us that compels us to pray to God. But at the same time, we don’t know how to pray. Prayer is the hardest thing we do as Christians.

Jesus Teaches Us to Pray

That’s why it’s so important that we read what Jesus has to say about how to pray.

Jesus is teaching us how to flourish and live well. He wants us to live so that our inner worlds and outer worlds match, so that we don’t just pretend to love people, but really do; we don’t just pretend to love God by playing religious games, but we love God from the heart.

Jesus teaches us to avoid showing off in prayer. He doesn’t want us to pray to impress others — which is really foolish anyway, when you think about it. Imagine if I took Charlene out for a fancy dinner, and when she asked me what the special occasion is I said, “Oh, nothing. I just thought it would really impress all of my friends. I can’t wait for them to see what a great husband I am!” Why in the world would I sacrifice what matters most — intimacy with someone I care about — for the applause of the crowd? It’s ludicrous. Don’t play the game. When we try to impress others with our devotion to God, we lose the approval of the only one whose opinion really counts.

But Jesus doesn’t just tell us to avoid showing off in our prayers. Jesus helps us learn how to pray.

I want to be as practical as possible today. Jesus gives us clear, practical advice on how to pray. Let’s get started.

First: Pray in Private

Jesus says in verse 6: “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Okay, so let’s make this really clear and simple. Develop the habit of praying alone, with nobody knowing, for the rest of your life. Because you do this in secret, nobody will ever know that you do this.

But God will. The reward couldn’t be greater. “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Everything in you will fight against this. You won’t feel like doing this a lot of days. But this is a habit that’s worth pursuing, a habit that will pay off like you wouldn’t believe.

A year or so, I began to think about the people in my…

Big Idea: Pursue God for God, not to impress others.

It happens to me occasionally. I should know better. I go to Metro and find myself staring at a box that looks like it contains amazing food. I buy it, knowing it won’t taste quite as good as the box appears. I go home, open it, and realize I’ve been tricked again. Never be deceived by deceptive packaging. What’s inside matters much more.

As we turn to what Jesus said today, we discover that the same principle applies to people too. Never be deceived by deceptive packaging. What’s inside matters much more. That’s been the theme of his teaching so far in his most famous sermon, which we normally call The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is giving us instructions on how to live the good life, and he’s spent a lot of time telling us that our insides and outsides should match, especially in the area of relationships. Now he’s going to move to the most important relationship of all: our relationship with God.

Here’s the problem: we think that our biggest problem is our sin. We think that our biggest problem is that we’re not religious enough. What Jesus tells us in this passage is that our religiosity could be a greater danger than our wickedness.

John Gerstner said, “There is nothing that separates us from God more than our damnable good works.” The famous preacher George Whitefield said:

Before you can speak peace in your heart, you must not only be made sick of your original and actual sin, but you must be made sick of your righteousness, of all your duties and performances. There must be a deep conviction before you can be brought out of your self-righteousness; it is the last idol taken out of our heart.

For some of us, this could be the most important sermon we ever hear. Let’s look at the basic principle Jesus teaches, and then at the three case studies he gives to illustrate the principle.

The Principle

Here’s the basic principle:

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 6:1)

Jesus is not introducing a new topic here. He’s continuing to unpack what he said earlier: that we need a greater righteousness in order to enter the kingdom of heaven (5:17-20). He’s already applied this to other relationships. Now he applies this to our relationship with God.

Here’s the danger Jesus wants to address: Don’t try to impress others with your relationship with God. It’s always tempting to do the right thing for the wrong reason. We can do the right thing (serve and worship God) for exactly the wrong reason (to improve our status).

Jesus is not condemning all public acts of worship. We’re engaged in one right now. He’s saying that our relationship with him must be based not on a desire to impress others, but a desire to give God glory. Both motives have their reward. If we’re motivated by a desire to impress others, that’s all we’ll get. But if we’re motivated by God’s glory, we’ll get the greatest reward of all: God himself.

The lesson he’s teaching: Pursue God for God, not to impress others. It’s possible to engage in all the right behaviors in an attempt to know and love God, and completely miss the point. When the goal is the behaviors, we miss the point. When the goal is God, then the behaviors can be really helpful.

Let me point something out that may be helpful.

In the previous chapter, Jesus said: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Whoa! In the passage we read today, Jesus says not to practice our righteousness before others. What’s going on? How come Jesus says one thing and then another thing a few minutes later?

The answer is: it’s all abou…

Big Idea: Treat others as extravagantly as God has treated you.

C.S. Lewis is one of the towering intellects of the path century. He not only wrote fiction such as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as well as his science fiction trilogy, but he also wrote amazing nonfiction on faith as well as a number of other topics. He was also friends with J.R.R. Tolkien, and a big influence in writing The Lord of the Rings.

He was also a former atheist who became, as he put it, “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

In 1958, a scholar published an article called “A Critique of C. S. Lewis.” Among his criticisms in the article was the accusation that Lewis did not care much for the Sermon on the Mount.

Lewis responded:

As to “caring for” the Sermon on the Mount, if “caring for” here means “liking” or enjoying, I suppose no one “cares for” it. Who can like being knocked flat on his face by a sledge hammer? I can hardly imagine a more deadly spiritual condition than that of a man who can read that passage with tranquil pleasure.

I can relate, and maybe you can too.

You’re here today, and you’re about to get knocked flat by a sledgehammer. The Sermon on the Mount is all about how to flourish. It’s about how to live the good life.

But if you’ve been here over the past few weeks, we’ve seen that the good life is counterintuitive. Jesus has told us two things so far.

One: The good life isn’t what it appears to be. Do you want to live a good life? Don’t pursue happiness. Pursue God instead, and you will get the good life. This is radical and life-changing. This insight alone will completely change your life if you let it. If you want to be happy, don’t pursue happiness. Pursue God instead, and you’ll get happiness thrown in no matter how hard life gets.

Two: Obedience matters. We tend to see God’s commandments as downers. God gave his law not to take away our joy but to increase it. They’re a field guide to the good life. And so as we read God’s commands, we’re supposed to remind ourselves: this is what it takes to thrive. Jesus wants our insides and outsides to match. He wants us to not only obey, but to obey from the heart so that we not only act rightly but think and love rightly too.

And so last week we looked at three case studies. What does the good life look like?

It looks like loving people from the heart instead of being angry at them.

It looks like not treating others as sexual objects to gratify our lusts, but instead treating them as brothers and sisters in Christ.

It means married people taking their wedding vows seriously and refusing to casually discard marriages when it gets hard.

In short, it means loving God and others from the heart. Jesus gets very practical and gives us very specific details of what it looks like. The problem? We’re getting hit with the sledgehammer that C.S. Lewis talked about. Who here has succeeded in doing what Jesus commands?

But Jesus isn’t done yet. In the passage that we just read, he gives three more practical examples of what obedience looks like in our relationships using three topics: keeping our word, getting even, and dealing with enemies.

Example Four: Keeping Our Word

Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:33-37)

Once again, Jesus follows the same threefold pattern.

What they’ve heard: Don’t break any vow that yo…

Big Idea: Obey God in your relationships, not just by doing the right thing but by loving and obeying from the heart.

 

According to the Keirsey Temperament grid, there are four basic temperament types. And the thing that separates one set of two from the other set of two is simple:

Some people prefer the abstract. They would rather talk about ideas. That’s me, and maybe some of you as well.

Some people prefer the concrete. They would rather talk about reality. I’m sure there are a lot of you here today who fit in that category.

One of the takeaways from this insight is that, in order to communicate well, we need both kinds of communication. We need to communicate the idea to reach the abstract people. But then we also need to talk about what that idea looks like in reality for the concrete people.

We’re in the middle of a series based on Jesus’ most famous sermon. I’ve been arguing that the main theme of this sermon is human flourishing. Jesus is showing us what it looks like to really live well as humans. A couple of weeks ago, we looked at one of the major themes that’s going to run through a good chunk of Jesus’ sermon: Don’t toss the law out. Take the law in. Jesus said in Matthew 5:17-20:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-20)

Jesus tells us that he has an extremely high view of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. He fundamentally disagrees with the idea that the first part of our Bible is outdated or outmoded. Jesus endorses all of it. We’re called to property understand, teach and obey the commandments that God gave us in the Hebrew Scriptures.

That’s the abstract idea. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, we looked at this idea and some of what it means for us today. But you may have been frustrated. You get the idea, but what does it look like in real life?

Well, you’re in luck. Jesus doesn’t leave us to try to figure this out. Jesus gives six real-life examples of what it looks like in two sets of three. And so we’re going to look at three examples today, and another three in a couple of weeks.

What does real obedience look like? What does it look like to properly understand, teach, and obey the commandments that God has given us in the Hebrew Scriptures? Here’s what it looks like when it comes to three practical issues in our relationships: anger, lust, and divorce.

Example One: Anger

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. (Matthew 5:21-26)

Here’s the three-…