Matthew 7:13–23Scripture
So I'm going to read this together. Matthew 7, verses 13 through 23. It says this: "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. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears some good fruit, some bad fruit." I didn't say that. "So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit," in case you were wondering if I was reading too much into that in the previous verse, "nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." Wait a minute, Shawn. I thought we'd been learning over the last several years, especially in Romans, that we cannot save ourselves, and doing good things doesn't save us. That is correct. But here it says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." So which is it? Are we saved by works, or are we not saved by works? No, we're saved for good works, and it is only through salvation that we are empowered to be able to do that. Now notice, when we look in Exodus
Introduction
(And I have another verse, I understand that), but notice as we're traveling through Exodus, we see the Exodus now has happened. It has happened, it is happening, and it will continue to happen. There is still an exodus happening today: people exiting out of the slavery of sin and into the slavery of Christ. We see us on a journey to the promised land. We are all looking and hoping in anticipation for that one day. See, there are many people today in life that have achieved a lot, and all that they will achieve and all the greatness that they will achieve, that is the climax of their life.
But for believers, the good part hasn't even started yet.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 2:44
The good part hasn't even started yet.
One day we will stand before him face to face, and we will enter into his presence, and that's when the good begins. There's a lot of good things that happen in life, but everything that happens in your life is a trash can compared to what will happen one day. And that's what we hope for. And so it says, "On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me.'" What is this knowing? Doesn't he know everyone? "I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." It's people who profess Christ but are workers. They profess Christ, but they don't live like they're slaves to Christ. They proclaim, they acknowledge the gate, but they don't enter into the gate, and they definitely don't walk in the way, the narrow way. And honestly, this is a very sobering Scripture. All right? It's a very sobering Scripture. It is a concerning Scripture. And as a minister of the gospel, as a believer in Christ, I am afraid that we live in a generation, in a time, where we have created an environment for people inside the church where we're comfortable with people acknowledging the gate but never entering in. That if they can just profess it, that's good enough. But this Scripture speaks against that. So we preach people into a false sense of belief, of "easy." Many books will call it easy-believism. And we have created atmospheres for people. And so here's the crux of the problem: in an attempt, as we enter through Exodus, in an attempt that we would not turn back to hope to be justified by the law, we have swung the pendulum so far that now we have preached that we should unhitch ourselves from the law completely, and the law has no purpose and no point in our life today at all. Regarding justification, it does not matter. As a matter of fact, it says in the Bible, it just goes ahead and professes it, that no one will obey the law completely. Only Christ did that. That's why he's the gate. He's the only way to true salvation. Works won't get you there. Jesus got you there, because he's the only one who did the work perfectly. So we trust in him. At the point of belief and entering into the gate, we are filled with the Holy Spirit. This is something that, when we look back into Exodus, they didn't have. They weren't benefactors of that. The presence of God moved before them in a cloud by day and by night, and they saw the presence then fall on the Holy of Holies and rest between the two cherubim on the mercy seat. And they would see, and when this presence would lift, they would pack up camp and they would move with him. But today, for all who believe, it says that his Spirit then comes and dwells in us and empowers us to live the type of life that we're supposed to live. Now, even those in the old Testament, in Exodus, who didn't have the Holy Spirit indwelling them, listen to this, the way was still narrow. They weren't just wandering around the desert doing whatever they pleased. There was a direction. There was direction, and there was guidance, and God told them. When he lifted, they went, on the narrow way. There was only one way.
Point 1Jesus is both the narrow gate and the way
Listen, we want to do this. We want to say, "Oh, the gate is narrow. We believe in Jesus." But we want to deny the way. He's both. There is a way of Christ that the Holy Spirit empowers us to live, which we live. There is a different way. Amen? The church should look different. Amen? It should look different. It should operate differently. Why does it do that? Because there is the way of Christ that we're empowered to live through his Spirit. And that's the point of this thing. This Scripture here is trying to help the early church understand that the gate and the way are narrow. The gate and the way are narrow. Now, first of all, and I mentioned it already, the gate is Jesus. The gate is Jesus. But not the Jesus that you might conjure up in your mind. And we've talked about this quite often. We've created versions of Jesus that we like, and we've rejected versions of Jesus that we don't like. We've actually detached Jesus from the Old Testament and only thrust him in when he came as a child and grew up as a man. When we think of Sodom and Gomorrah, for instance, and God throwing down hellfire to destroy the city, we don't think Jesus is there. But God the Son and the Holy Spirit are one. And so this is the way I like to look at it: God held the hellfire, or held the tar, Jesus lit it, and the Holy Spirit slung it. They're all there. It isn't like God became nicer whenever he got into the New Testament and Jesus stepped in the way. They're one. So as we go through Exodus, it is important to understand that where we see God, we see Jesus and we see the Holy Spirit. They are there. They're one. You cannot separate them. They're one.
As God punishes the people for their disobedience, they're one. They're one. The gospel does not teach us to pray a prayer and then live the rest of our
Point 2The church should not look like the world
Life however we want, living just like the world. Actually, this was disturbing: Barna did a poll evaluating the morality of the church in America against the morality of those who claim to be lost in America. The poll found absolutely no difference between the church and the world. And honestly, I don't even know how...
So considering that there's no difference, that means that some people in the church would be lying on the poll. Disturbing, right? No difference between the morality in the church and the morality in the world. Why do you think that the media in our culture continues to put out filth?
Because the church supports it. If the church, those who claim to be Christians in America, rejected immorality pumping into their homes, I guarantee you they wouldn't have the funds to produce it, and they would change their syndication. But we fund it.
The church funds the filth.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 10:49
See, we roll into depravity when the church endorses it. Many of you, over this Christmas holiday, have pumped depravity into your home, and you've endorsed it. I remember when Fifty shades of Grey, Sixty Shades of Grey, Seventy Shades of Grey, and Eighty Shades of Grey came out, and then I heard whisperings of women in our fellowship watching it, going in groups to go watch the movie together. What in the world? Now, Shawn, this is very uncomfortable. It should be uncomfortable. It should be. Why are you sharing this? Just to smack our hands? No. I'm concerned. Now, as we enter into Exodus, what we don't want to do is, we don't want to see what the law can't accomplish for us and then reject the way of Christ in our lives, because that's not the goal of Exodus. Even in the New Testament (and I'm giving you a New Testament version), there is a role that the law plays. The role is not to justify, but it is still his perfect way. So what does God do to help us walk in his way? He comes to earth as a child. God, Jesus, comes to earth as a child, dies that we might be saved. He walks in this perfect way, and that we might be saved, might be filled with his Spirit, that we might continue in the way. All right?
Some of us want to follow Jesus, but we don't want to follow the way of Jesus.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 12:52
You can't separate those two. How can you be a follower of Jesus but be going the opposite way? It doesn't make any sense. So that's what Matthew is talking about. And honestly, we need to talk about this in the church. This is why, in 1 John and in many of the Epistles that are written to the church, one of the things it's doing is helping you to evaluate and discern whether you are a believer. Why is that important? Because if you're not, we want you to become one. If you believe a lie, then why believe truth? If you believe the lie is the truth... And we have a people today that, listen, we're on the struggle bus a little bit, because we are inundated with information and we are robbed of discernment today. We're robbed of it. We have so much information. Now that AI has come out, it's fascinating, because half the posts on Facebook are fake. It's not even true. Like, if vetting whether or not something was true was ever difficult before, it's even more difficult now. You know how many... Okay, just track with me here.
Let me just get secular for a second. You know how many posts I've seen lately of Mike Tyson, of a picture of Mike Tyson, saying that a billionaire offered him $7 billion, or 70 billion, or $700 million, to do a rematch against Jake Paul? Okay, that was true. There was a billionaire who offered $700 million if he beat Jake Paul in a rematch in the first three minutes. But what was not true is that it's officially on the books. So there are posts everywhere that it's on the books, it's official, they have a rematch and it's scheduled for this date. And then they have a picture, and it's an AI picture. And then you go on and you go, "Is this true? They really do have a rematch?" And I know it's like some of you guys don't even care. Like, "Who's Mike Tyson, and what's Jake Paul?" But I'm just saying, it is nearly impossible to vet whether something's true or not. This is the way it is. And then when you think about it, there are people... Half the church... The same amount of people in the church are secular as people outside the church in the secular world, that we live immoral lives inside the church. How did
Point 3Your fruit reveals what kind of tree you are
We produce those people? By the preaching. We produced them by the preaching. It's important that we evaluate whether our life lines up. What kind of fruit do you bear? You proclaim Jesus and bear a bunch of bad fruit? Matthew has something to say about that. It says you can't, because you're a diseased tree if you do. What do we do with that? I mean, that's just the facts. That's just what it says. There's no skirting around that subject.
Right? The Bible never teaches that a person could be a genuine Christian and live in continuous carnality and wickedness and sin all the days of their life. 1 John says, yeah, you're going to mess up. We see the Israelites messing up, making a golden calf. They don't make a lifestyle out of it. They repent, and they're punished, and they stop making golden calves. Shocker, right? So oopsy-daisies are one thing; practicing wickedness is another. It's another. The Bible teaches that genuine christianity... A genuine Christian has been given a new nature, not a semi-new nature. You know, there may be someone who does everything the world does and thinks it's okay, but it's not. It's not Christianity. They are not in danger of losing their reward; they're in danger of hell. And it's serious. And honestly, as a church, we should be deeply concerned. We should be concerned. We shouldn't just be concerned about all the pagans... We should be concerned out there, but we should be concerned about some of the pagans in here. We should be asking if we're one of them. By the way, this starts out with, you know, "I prophesied in your name. I did this in your name." "You don't know me? I've been in the church my whole life.
I'm a pastor. Many mighty things happened by my hands." And he goes, "You're a diseased tree." Did you know that good things can come out of you, and bad things can? Good things can come from your hands. But you know what messes it up? When in the shadows, the true you is producing.
There's a difference between stapling on a good fruit and producing one.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:26
Are you with me? There's a difference between that. And I'm afraid today in the church we have people stapling on good fruit, but it's not been produced by you. It just looks like it has. And that's the tragedy. And we can believe our own lies.
We can tell a lie so long we actually begin to believe it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:52
We can tell a story so long we actually believe we were there. You know, at Christmas it's always funny, because we get together with family, and I tell the story like I was there, and Mom's like, "you weren't there." I'm like, "But I know every little detail, and I remember it." And she goes, "Because I've told you that story. But you weren't there." That's fascinating, right? I'm afraid that we can lie to ourselves so long, or tell a story so long, we actually believe it. There is not only a narrow gate, who is Jesus, but there is a narrow way, which is Jesus' way. Both are Jesus. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." He's the gate. He's the way. What? "But, oh, so it's just him? He's the way, so I just look to him, and then he's the way?" No. There is a way of Christ. And you know how you know the way of Christ? Look at his life. Are you on that way? You know the famous question: what would you do if Jesus was in the room with you? Would you watch that movie?
Would you say that thing? Would you do that? Would you behave that way? Would your house be like that? Would it smell like that? Would it be like that?
What would you do if Jesus were in the room? In other words, if your way is different than his way, you may not be on the way. You may have acknowledged the gate, you may have acknowledged the way, but you have denied it with your life. And Barna says that 50% of the church does this, or at least the same percentage as the world, which is really scary, because that may be more than 50%. I mean, come on.
Are you with me today? Morality, it's concerning. Jesus indicates that one of the principal signs of being a genuine Christian is that you walk in the narrow way. You know what the sign of being a Christian in the American church is? You prayed a prayer one time. But the Scripture says to examine yourself, to test yourself in light of Scripture, to see if you are in the faith, because a Christian will be different than the world. That's what the Scripture says. Am I saying Christians don't sin? No, because in 1 John we learn that Christians do sin, and if any man does not acknowledge his sins, he knows not God and he's not walking in the light. If you're a genuine born-again Christian, if you're a genuine child of God, you will walk in the way of righteousness. And if you step off that path of righteousness, the Father will come to you, rebuke you, correct you, chastise you, and pull you back onto the path, the narrow way, the narrow path. He will discipline you. You will feel so uncomfortable you will not want to go back to that way. He'll put you back on the path.
Listen: you don't get yourself back on the path. He puts you on the path. Jonah. He gets you through a storm. He gets you through discipline. He gets you through rebuke. He corrects you. You don't want to go any other way, because your life will be hell if not on his way. That's how you know you're his. Think of the Exodus story, and as we go through it, watch how many times they misstep and he gets them back on the way. Immediately. But if you profess to have gone through the narrow gate and you live on the broad way, just like the world, just like all the other people at school, just like all the other people who are carnal and wicked, the Bible wants you to know that you should be terribly afraid. The reality is, the first part of my ministry, I spent so much of my time convincing people they are saved. This is horrible, and it is not biblical. It fills churches.
It is not our job to tell men they are saved. It is our job to tell men how to be saved.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 23:17
God tells them whether they're saved or not. Their lives tell them whether they are saved or not. Their fruit tells them whether they are saved or not. When you inspect your life, that's what you're inspecting.
True discipleship, listen, is not a majority religion; it's a minority religion.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 23:39
Listen to this. Here's a couple scriptures. 1 John... There's a lot from 1 John. 1 John 1:6–7 says this. 1 John 1:6–7: "If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin." What is it saying? "Well, we're cleansed from all sin when we walk in the way"? No: because we're cleansed from all sin, we walk in the way. See the difference? That's what it's saying.
Notice, it is the cleansing that causes the walking.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 24:25
And if the walking's wrong, we might have got the cleansing wrong. See, I want to say "might have," but see, John doesn't have that problem. And notice that he's the one that reclined on Jesus' chest and was all lovey and super kind and sweet. But, man, he's throwing down the gauntlet here. Okay? Because it's a serious business. And listen, we've turned loving into flattery. But John is the disciple Jesus loved, and he is full of love, and he says the hard thing, because that's what
True love does. True love says the hard thing.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 25:08
Listen, 1 John 2:3–5: "And by this we know that we have come to know him..." How do we know? How do we know that we're saved? "...If we keep his commandments." Shawn, I thought the whole point of Romans and Exodus was that you're not justified by law. Correct. But how do you know if you're saved? How do you know that you're justified? How do you know that you're truly saved? You keep his commandments. Well, we say, "No, Shawn, no. Wait a minute. No, wait a minute. We don't keep the commandments anymore. We don't keep those anymore. We unhitched ourselves from those, because in the New Testament it says, what are the greatest commandments? Love God and love your neighbor. So all we have to do is love God and love our neighbor." Why is that problematic today?
Because your version of love is not a biblical version of love. Oftentimes our version of love, evidently, according to Barna's poll, will love people to hell. Okay? Yeah, see, somebody said, "Okay." Okay, right. And the reality is that loving God and loving your neighbor is a summation of the Ten commandments. It's a summation of them. "And if he does not keep his commandments, he's a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected." So how is the love of God perfected? Keeping his commandments. Can you keep his commandments on your own? Absolutely not. How do we keep his commandments? By belief in him, by being covered by the blood, by being justified, but through repentance, and through belief in him, and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that we might be empowered to do what we could not be empowered to do in our own strength. 1 John 3:14–15: "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." You will abide in hate or you will abide in him, but you will not abide in both. Oh, that's tough. 1 John 2:15–16: "Do not love the world or the things in the world."
I'll say it again, slower: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Well, this is big. "For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world." And you cannot serve two masters. I threw that in there. James 1:22: "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." Okay? John 14:21: "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me." Whoever has my commandments and keeps them. Titus 2:11–12, verse 14 as well: "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us." Training us. The grace of God does what? It trains us.
The grace of God trains you. The grace of God doesn't just save you and let you float around and do whatever you please. It trains you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 28:52
It disciplines you. It corrects you. It guides you. The grace of God has the empowering work to not just save, but to continue to transform your life and cause you to walk in a trained and disciplined fashion. That's what grace does. "It trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age... Who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works." You will know them by their fruits. A tree and its fruits. It says, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits." Jesus was sitting, and he asked the people, "Have you ever seen a thornbush grow oranges?" The people responded, "Jesus, that's crazy," and they laughed. "Thornbushes can't bear oranges." Jesus looked at them and said, "well, then, those who call themselves my disciples and bear bad fruit, would it be fair to call them a liar too? To call them crazy, or out of their mind, to make such a statement as that?" There are so many people who claim Christ as their Savior, who claim to love God, but there is no evidence of life change, and there is certainly no evidence of fruit. Merely a profession with the lips and a declaration of who Jesus is. Let me put it this way. If I were to go out to Big Creek, which I go to often on Saturday, and I see Kirk there often, right?
Sometimes I catch him, sometimes I don't. He has a Saturday appointment with his father, and they eat in there. And sometimes I even notice that he's there, and sometimes I just don't. But I'm not ignoring him anyway. Confession time. And so, as I get to go to Big Creek, the train guards come down. Let's say my car pulls in, and the train guards didn't come down, and they didn't notice the train coming, and my car stalled right on the tracks. All right? As one pastor said, if that train came and hit me, and let's just say it was on a Sunday morning, it hit me, and the car exploded, and all the doors were locked, and a fire burst out, and it crumpled the car up into a million pieces, and it pushed me a quarter of a mile down the tracks... And I was going to breakfast, and I needed to be at church on Sunday morning. I don't even know if Big Creek's open; let's pretend like it is. And so then I came in a few minutes late, and I tell this story about how I was hit by a train, but I didn't have one scratch, not one burn mark, not one limp, not anything. If something of that power and that force had impacted me, and I came in late and I told you that story, would you call me a liar?
The reality is, God is a greater force than any train.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 32:52
And there are people every day in churches across America, and in fellowships and in small groups, in family conversations; they sit across the table and they talk about this impact they've had. They've been impacted by God in their life, but there is no evidence that they've been impacted by the greatest force of the universe, much more powerful than a train. Let's say that you rode an A-bomb, and it exploded, and you came into church that day and you said, "An A-bomb exploded, and a nuclear missile blew up right on top of my head," and there's no dent on your head, and not even one hair is singed off your head. Would we believe that? Yet God is a greater force than that nuclear bomb. We have people that sit in churches every day, and they declare they've made impact with God. They've connected with God. They've encountered him. But there's no change. This is problematic. This is what Jesus is saying. Listen, it's more than a profession. Guys, listen: professing Christians with false assurance. There are people in the church today who are professing Christians, and they have false assurance, and one day they will stand (that's what the Scripture says), one day they will stand, shocked that their whole life was committed to the church and they were never saved. This possibility is actually implied in Matthew 7:22: "On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?'" These folks believed that they were secure in their relationship with Christ. They called him Lord. They went to small groups. They preached at churches. They planted churches. They tapped into supernatural power in his name. And they were never saved. Perhaps they had even more assurance of salvation than many strugglers today who are genuinely saved, because supernatural power was flowing through their hands, it says. So when they read the promise, "I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you," they believed it was truly for them, but it wasn't. But it wasn't. He said to them, "I never knew you."
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, did we not do this in your name, and that in your name?' And then will I declare to them," and here's the troubling part, "'I never knew you; depart from me, you
Point 4A profession with the lips is not enough
Workers of lawlessness.'" Do you know what your profession of faith in Jesus Christ is worth? Do you know what your profession... This is going to seem troubling to you. Do you know what our profession of faith in Jesus Christ is worth today? Absolutely nothing.
Your profession with your lips is worth absolutely nothing.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 36:01
Track with me today. That's troubling, I understand it, but that's what the Scripture is saying, because you can profess a thing and it not be true. So let us not place value in what people profess. And then it tells us what to place value on: fruit, the narrow way. Not everyone who comes to the altar and professes the Lord will make it to heaven. There are many people who will profess the Lord as their Savior and not go to heaven.
Listen: are you one of them? In Hebrew literature, when it repeats something, it makes it emphatic. This is not someone who cries out to God on their deathbed. This is someone who emphatically declares that Jesus is their Lord. That person doesn't make it. That's what it's talking about. He goes to school talking about Jesus. He's up front during worship, raising his hands to the Lord. He cries out in prayer to the Lord. He sings praises to the Lord. He does works for the Lord. He goes to every small group. He teaches at small group. He does everything. Whenever the church doors are open, he is there. He is out ministering to people in the streets. He's praying with people in the streets. And he stands before the Lord, and God says, "I don't know you." This is someone who emphatically professes Christ, and God says, "Depart from me." You should be concerned today, if not for yourself, for people around you who might profess a thing and one day stand before him and be turned away. This should affect your prayer life. If you love him, that shapes your love for others. Don't stop praying for your kids because they profess something, because our profession is worth nothing. Keep praying for them. Jesus said to them, "Depart from me. I never knew you." Listen to this. Listen, listen to this. Billy Graham is paraphrased saying this (I'm not going to say it's a direct quote, because I think it's a paraphrase): "If even 5% of those who came to the altar at my revivals were truly saved, my heart would rejoice beyond measure. Yet I find myself burdened with the sobering thought that even this modest hope might be overly optimistic and painfully unrealistic." That's Billy Graham. And some of you value his words more than God's words, clearly, by how much you open his word, God's Word. Are you with me? So I thought I would throw that in there for a zinger, because he saw something. This is somebody who's evangelistic in nature.
He understood that what happened at the altar was not a true depiction of what happened in the hearts of men. Barna tells us that 70% of all americans believe they are saved, that they are born-again Christians. Borderline being excommunicated from the church, people... And I'm not making a judgment of someone's soul, but I'm making a judgment of fruit. And I'm just going to say this, and this is wildly dangerous, but just listen to me today. We need to begin to evaluate so that we know how to pray for those who are believers. But we would rather worship than pray. We'd rather worship men than pray for their souls. Okay? And we think what I'm going to say is unloving, but I think it's immensely loving, because hopefully it turns our hearts to pray for an individual rather than worship them. Well, let's talk about Mahomes for a second. "Shawn, you're just anti-football." No, i'm not. I'm not anti-football. But just track with me. Mahomes professes continuously to be a believer in Christ, but what is his fruit? Have you seen the documentary? What's his fruit? What's the fruit of his life? Does he look like a follower of Christ? Why? So will you try to make a judgment call about whether or not his profession is true? No, the Bible does that, in Matthew. How does that help you? So you can be judgy and look down your nose at other people and say you're better than them? Absolutely not. So that we can pray for their souls.
But some of us would rather cheer for them to win a Super Bowl ring that will turn to ash than pray for the souls of those who play the game.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:12
Does that mean we shouldn't cheer for football games? Absolutely not. I cheer for football games. But I'm troubled for the souls of people who profess God but deny him with their life. I'm troubled. What does that do? Does it make you more judgmental? No, it makes me pray. It makes me legitimately pray. I think it's pretty crazy that I pray as much as I do for Mahomes, when I'm aggravated that his platform teaches young people that you can deny Christ with your life but profess him with your lips. It's a problem. And listen, it don't matter how many successes you've had today; that won't help you in heaven. "Don't you know how many Super Bowl rings I've got, God?" And he might say... He might...
I don't know what his eternal destination is. I couldn't make that judgment. I can only evaluate his fruit, and it's confusing. Are you with me? But his Super bowl rings and his achievements won't get him in. You'd think, everybody knows Mahomes; why wouldn't God know Mahomes? Wouldn't he say, "I don't know you?
Don't you know what the man has accomplished?" Let's turn that into the church world, because that's what's going on. People are reading their résumé of things they've accomplished for God, and he says, "I don't even know you." "And I did that for you?" That's crazy. That's crazy. Saving faith and dying faith. And I
Point 5Saving faith produces works; dead faith does not
Will close with this. Listen to this: there is a difference between saving faith and dying faith. See, we only connect faith with saving faith, but did you know that there's a dying faith? Did you know there's a faith that brings death? So my question is this: if we can believe at least some of the promises of God, as these folks did, and still be lost, what makes believing the promises a truly saving belief? The Bible uses the word faith for all sorts of different states of mind, including deadness. This is where I got "dying faith": a dead faith. There is a saving faith and a dying faith. James 2:26 says, "As the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." So there exists a faith that operates apart from works, and that's dead too. Notice the statement it makes there. There is a dead faith that is not a living faith, and it is a faith that is separated from works. So it is concerning today that the church is trying to separate works from faith. And they almost got it right. We separate works from faith when we talk about justification. We're only justified by belief in him. But the evidence of true faith through belief in him is works.
So you're not justified by works, but works are evidence that your faith is true and it's living.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 44:43
How do we know if somebody's faith is not true and living? There's no works. There's a life that does not live on the narrow way; it lives on the wide way. There are people who make up the church that live just as pagan as the world, which is the same number, according to Barna, inside the church as outside the church. That's so concerning. Another way we can test our faith, and I'll end with this: it says in the Bible, build your house on the rock, because storms will come. We'll know whether or not you're saved by what you do with the storms that come your way. Whether or not, after the storm comes through, your life is built on the rock or if it's built on the shifting sand.
People come to Christ, they come to an altar call, they pray a prayer, they profess Christ, they join small groups, they do all of this stuff, and then a storm hits and they reject God. You know why? Because the profession doesn't line up with what their life was built on. They professed it was built on the rock, but it was actually built on the sand, and the storm revealed it. Your fruit reveals it. Obeying commands reveals it. Storms reveal it. How do we evaluate whether we're truly saved? That's how: your fruit, obedience, walking in the narrow path, and what you do when the storms have passed. What is left when the storms are gone? This will encourage some and stress out others. The goal is not to say "Merry Christmas" and "boogity boogity," but the point, the whole point of Christmas, is to understand that what happened by him coming is to produce a people who would walk in the narrow way. Not just recognize the gate, but actually enter in it and walk in the narrow way. That's the point of the gospel. It's that you'd be saved from your sins by entering into the gate, and empowered to live a life you could not live on your own by walking in the narrow way. It's both-and. It's both-and.
Grace is powerful enough to save you from an impossible situation, and it's also powerful enough to keep you in an impossible way.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 47:33
It's both-and.
That's the beauty of the gospel: it produces a people that the world cannot produce.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 47:48
55:08
49:20
54:12
51:05
39:27
1:02:21
1:05:55
1:08:37
1:14:26
56:32
48:06
1:00:59
50:25
59:35
40:20
49:20
45:24
47:29
40:57
47:59Now playing
32:41
38:34
40:34
36:34
28:51
40:09
53:10