What Will They Find
GNLCC 3/25/2007 Psalm 15:1-5 Matthew 7:13-27
Have you ever had a crush on someone and you thought this person was just so beautiful or so handsome and you were ready to fall in love with the person. But the closer you got to the person and the better you got to know him or her, you discovered he or she was not at all what you thought he or she might be. The person was nowhere as near as loving, sensitive, or kind as you first thought he or she would be.
It’s possible for good looks to initially hide bad qualities. But with time, things begin to reveal themselves. Without recognizing it, you were going through the process of being a fruit inspector. You were discovering what this person truly was like. After evaluating the fruit, you chose to let it pass by.
The interesting thing about fruit, is that it tells your about it’s source. If you have an apple, you know it came from an apple tree. If you have an orange, you know it came from an orange tree. If you have a pear, it came from a pear tree. Do you know how much money I could raise for the New Life Center, if I had an apple tree that produced oranges? Absolutely nothing, because if it produced oranges it would be an orange tree.
Jesus even said, you don’t get grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles do you? No you get grapes from the vine and figs from the fig tree. Jesus goes a step further when he says, a good tree is not going to produce diseased or bad fruit. Nor will a sick or diseased tree produce good fruit. If you go to a good tree, then you ought to find good healthy fruit. If you got to a sick or diseased tree, then you ought to fight sick and diseased fruit.
By looking at the fruit, you can tell something about its source. Jesus in warning us against false prophets or people pretending to be one thing, but in actuality or some thing else, he said, “Beware” and “recognize that you would know them by the fruits.” What does Jesus mean by telling us to look at the fruit of a person? When a person in Jesus’ day heard the word fruit, he or she would immediately think of conduct and character. By telling us to examine a person’s conduct and character, we can determine what a person’s motive truly is.
Has anyone tried to be extra kind and nice to you, and you wondered what on earth does he or she have up his or her sleeve. If someone offered to take a million dollar life insurance policy on your life, with him or her as the paid beneficiary and you allowed him to do it, would you be eager to go on a mountain climbing trip with him.
Have you ever done something, that you hope nobody ever finds out. I have and I am not about to tell you what it is. Isn’t it something that God knows about it, and God still loves you and loves me and want to have a relationship with you and with me. God still believes you can be somebody wonderful. I do not fully understand how the Lord can be so accepting of us when others if they knew, would alienate themselves from us.
Apart from those things that we never want anyone to know about, if a person started to examine you, to look for evidence of who you really are, what would they find? Did you know that you are being examined everyday, by someone? Did you know you’ve been examined since you entered the church today. We have all displayed elements of our character, and our conduct has been seen and it has affected others. What have others find out about us so far this morning? One of the great tragedies that has come up on our society is that you can somehow separate your character from you conduct. We are in a world in which if your conduct can produce the right results for us, we could care less about your character.
This thing has crept into the church. It comes in the form of thinking that you can accept Jesus Christ as your Savior without changing your life. I’ve got some bad news from Jesus. Jesus says, just because you call me “Lord, does not mean you will enter the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, you can come forward at the end of service, repeat the sinner’s prayer, cry a few tears and still go to hell. Pastor Rick, are you saying I could lose my salvation. No I’m saying you probably have not gotten your salvation in the first place.
Look suppose I told you I have converted and become a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Suppose the next time when Pittsburgh came to town, each time Cleveland scored a touchdown I jumped up and down cheering them on. Each time Pittsburgh scored I booed or stayed silent. Each time a call went in Cleveland’s favor I yelled with approval. When I pulled off my coat, you saw that I was wearing a special Cleveland Brown shirt saying “Go Browns, beat Pittsburgh.” How many of you would think I had actually converted to being a Pittsburgh fan? When you really look closely at me, what do you find? You find a person professing one thing, but still having an allegiance to another.
There are people who think they can profess to have faith in Christ while having an allegiance to something else. But Jesus is saying, do not look at the mouth of what’s being said, but look at the actions of what is being done. Jesus says plainly, “not everybody who calls me Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father.” What is the will of the Father. It is the will of the Father, for each one of us to “Rise Up and Choose Christ” in each situation we face, 24/7 whether we are at church, or at home, or at school, or on the job.
What did that look like for you last week. This past week when you got angry, or you were hurt, or you got upset. What attitude did you going take. Which one should you have taken. What will it look like this week. It means there is a temptation for you to get something that does not belong to you. It could be a person, it could me money, it could be anything. RU-ACC is going to mean walking away from it with your integrity and honesty in tact.
You see someone is in need of something. It could be a friend, it could be money, it could be encouragement, it could be forgiveness. You have the ability to make a difference. RU-ACC means you take that chance to make a difference. What are you doing. You’re doing the will of the Father because it is the right thing for you to do.
Why do so many people think, they will have a special go free card from God which exempts them from living for God 24/7. There is this false idea that somehow we can get God to owe us one by doing certain things. How can God ever owe us one, when if it were not for God, we would not be here in the first place. Jesus says, that on the day when he fails to recognize people, they will try to refresh his memories by the activities that they do, which suggests He owes them one.
He said, they will say, “Don’t you remember me. I was the one who gave prophecies in your name. I was the one who had the miracle crusades in which many people were healed in your name. I was the one who cast out demons and set people free in Your Name.”
Some of us will try things such as “I grew up in Glenville New Life Community Church. I was an usher for you. I was a choir member for you. I gave each Sunday. I came to church somewhat regularly. I was a dancer. I was an elder or a deacon. I was a teacher.” Let me say, all of these things are good that you are involved with, but these things do nothing in terms of pleasing Christ if you are not saved. God has the right to use you, me, and any other part of His creation in anyway that God chooses, but that does not mean God is pleased with our lives.
Before we choose to live for Christ, we are dead in our sin. It means in God’s eyes, there is nothing we can do to improve our condition. We do not impress him in any form or fashion with any of our behavior. We can make sacrifices, but they are not for his honor and glory. They are for our own. The only thing we can do to make heaven take notice is to genuinely give our lives to Christ. There is great rejoicing in heaven when a person truly turns and gives his or her life to Christ. The only ones who can do something for Christ that will last is the one who is living for Jesus Christ at the time of the action.
Do not think that our performance or your service is what causes Jesus to recognize us. All of us have a certain amount of giftedness that we can use to help spread the kingdom of God. But our giftedness is different from our character or our conduct. Hitler was an inspiring leader, but his character was severely lacking when we look at his fruit.
We are known by our fruit which is an indication of our character and our conduct. You will hear people say, so and so was such a good man. God has never called a person good, who was not in a relationship with Him at the time. He has never looked down from heaven, and said “she is such a good person, I want her saved.” We are way too worried about what others will find when they do a close examination of our lives, that we forget about the one opinion that really matters, and that is what will God find when He looks.
Well God has done an examination of our conduct and character and this is what God declares in Romans based on His standards of what it is to be good. In Romans 3:10-12 Romans 3:10-12 (NIV) 10 As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."
Before you remind me of how you are an exception to the rule, let me remind you of your answer when I asked the question, have you ever done something you hope nobody finds out about. Well God knows all our secrets both actions and thoughts. Therefore none of us can try to pretend to be something we are not.
Let’s suppose each one of us was assigned to one of us that we did know, and our assignment was to see what we could find about this person and report back to church next week. We could walk invisibly behind this person. How long would they travel with us, before they find out that we intentionally live a different life outside the church. At church we know how to say all the right responses to the questions, but all they are are responses, and not the manner in which we guide our lives.
Perhaps we need a little more honesty with each other. Please do not ask me to sing, because when others who know me see me on the broadcast, it will discredit the church and Christ. Please, excuse me from dancing, because I’ve chosen to live a different kind of a life at school. Please let me step down, because I know I’m not doing what I should be doing at home. But do not stop there. Go to the point of repentance so that you can be restored back to the position in a right relationship to God.
God knew that some of us would see Christianity as a game to be played on Sundays, and not as way of life to be lived all week long. We are told in 2 Corinthians 13:5 (NIV) 5 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test? What do you find when you look at yourself.
I’m afraid that if we do not do more self-examination of ourselves now, we will hear the most dreaded words that one could ever hear from Jesus and those words are. Depart from be, I never knew you, you evildoers. An evil doer is not some mass murderer or some other horrendous criminal. An evil doer is a person insisting on being good enough to not need God. God you’re a liar in what you have said about me.
An evildoer is one who has told God, I’m not listening to your word.” I’m going to do what I want to do.” Jesus says there is no place in his kingdom for such a person who owes allegiance only to himself or herself. Jesus wants nothing to do with such a person. He paid too great of a price to have it thrown away. That is why Jesus says, “Just leave me alone and go to the place prepared for you and all those like you.” There is no appeal from Jesus decision. There is no second chance. There is no, but that’s not fair.
The one thing a person who is living a double life will not be able to say “is that I did not know what I was doing.” Jesus went on to give us a story about what it’s like to live a life of obedience and what’s it like to live one of disobedience. He lets us know that from a distance, both lives can appear to be pretty much the same at times.
It’s as though two men were building houses. One took the time to dig deep in order to lay his foundation for the house. The other one took the short cut and laid his foundation right on the dirt. Everything was fine until the storm came. The water washed away the foundation and the house collapsed.
What separates us from those who know Christ, and those who talk about it, is circumstances. When the storms come, we are going to demonstrate our true character. If there is an inconsistency between the character at church and the character at home, school or work, guess which one is probably our true character.
Following Jesus Christ is never a decision that should be made lightly. It cannot be an almost decision or a sometimes decision. Jesus gave His all for us in dying to pay for the wrong we have done. We get to decide what we intend to do about it. We can accept it and change or we can neglect it and go our way, but the worse option of all is to claim to accept it, and still go on our way for we are guilty of making a mockery of the love that God has offered to us.
One day you will appear in heaven, and you will take with you your character and your conduct. What is Jesus going to find when he takes a real close look at you? Are you going to be pleased with his findings. Is he going to be pleased? These are far more important questions than what your friends think about you. Where you’re going to live or how much money you make on your job. We’re talking about what your real life is going to be spent.
Do you really want good fruit. The only way to produce good fruit is to be part of a good tree or vine. Jesus says, I am the vine you are the branches. A branch cannot bear fruit unless it is a part of the vine. The only way any of us can become a part of the vine, is to choose rise up and choose Christ. When you examine your life this morning, what do you find? God wants you to be real.
