Mattew 7:7 – 29 – God of the Impossible
This is a whole chunk of Matthew’s Gospel and forms the end of the Sermon-on-the-Mount, which started back at the beginning of chapter 5. We normally study these sections individually and could preach a whole sermon on each of them, but today we are going to take an overview and consider what they mean in the context of the whole of the sermon Jesus is preaching.
It’s a big, set-piece sermon, that He probably taught many times, in various different ways, in many different places, giving more emphasis to one or more points as the setting and situation demanded. So whenever Jesus stops in a town to preach, the Sermon-on-the-Mount is probably the core of what he’s teaching.
Matthew chapter 7 is the conclusion of the sermon, that started gently enough in chapter 5, with ‘The blessings’. However, there is nothing gentle about the ending of His sermon. As the Sermon-on-the-Mount progresses Jesus makes more and more demands on His listeners. He has not come to abolish the Law-of-Moses, He tells His listeners, quite the contrary: He holds his followers to a much higher standard than the Law-of-Moses, higher even, than the meticulous rule-keeping of the Pharisees. Jesus demands total purity, of heart, mind, and spirit – an impossible standard for anyone to reach.
We might conclude Jesus is exaggerating, in order to show how important these commands of His are. But I can assure you He is not. He is absolutely serious about the levels of perfection He demands from his followers – from us.
As the end of the sermon approaches, Jesus forces us to reconsider what he has already said, from different angles, and with ever-increasing degrees of urgency and seriousness. We are continually cycled back to the beginning of the sermon, to reconsider what we have already heard.
Jesus tells us to Ask, Seek, and Knock. The illustration, about fish, snakes, and bread, he gives us after this command, makes it absolutely clear that God loves to answer, loves to reveal Himself, and loves to open the gates of heaven. But we need to be both earnest and persistent.
What do we ask for, what do we seek? We seek to be like those who He has already said are blessed. We seek to be comforted, to be filled, to be shown mercy. On what door to we knock? We knock on the door to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus says the whole Law and The Prophets (in other words, the whole of the Old Testament) are summed up by the phrase – “Treat others the way you would like them to treat you.” This is often called the Golden Rule. However, Jesus makes it clear that this is not the end point, but the starting point. The golden rule only sums up the Law and The Prophets.
Jesus has already demanded that we do better. That we be more pure, holy, and righteous than the Law and The Prophets, if we wish to gain access to the Kingdom of Heaven. So this cannot be the whole story, there must be more.
Then Jesus tells us to enter through the narrow gate, which is small and difficult to find, instead of the wide gate, which is broad and easy to find, but does not leads to the Kingdom-of-God.
How then, despite being good people, are we to find this gate, if it is so small and difficult? Again we are thrown back to the beginning of the sermon. We know what we must do to find the narrow way, we must be like the people who are blessed. The difficulty, is how do we become people like that?
The clues start to add up as the sermon comes to a conclusion. Jesus goes on to let us figure out for ourselves, what good teachers and good disciples look like, by first telling us what bad ones look like:
You can tell a bad prophet or teacher of the word, by looking at the fruits of their work and their lives. What does bad fruit look like? Well Jesus has just preached a whole sermon on what goods fruit looks like, so turn back to the start of chapter 5 and work your way through, substituting all the good stuff for its opposite:
A bad prophet or teacher of the word is someone who is,
• Self-satisfied and full of themselves,
• Self-sufficient, self-reliant, full of self-confidence, with no need of God
• Forceful, arrogant and seeks only their own ends
• Who hungers for fame, fortune, power, and celebrity status
That is just the first four of the Beatitudes turned into opposites, but I’m sure you get the idea. So here is your homework, when you get home, work your way through the whole sermon on the mount, turning all the positives into negatives.
How much does this sound like us? How much does this scare us?
Suddenly the prospect of finding that narrow gate is looking very far away. I think we might need God to help us.
Jesus has worse to say. Because he goes on to declare, that even those who do wonderful things in His name: driving out demons, prophesying, preaching, even performing miracles, may not be able to enter via the narrow gate.
Then Jesus drops the most terrifying words in the whole bible. Even though you did all those wonderful things in my name, “I. Never. Knew You.”
These, I think, are the most important words in the whole of the Sermon-on-the-Mount: “I never knew you.”
This is the whole point of the sermon, the whole point of the blessings. The whole point of His mission. The reason Jesus is here. So we can get to know Him. Those who are blessed, are known by Jesus.
This then, is how the impossible levels of purity of heart, body, mind, and spirit that Jesus demands from His followers, can be met. Through knowing Jesus; and being known by Jesus.
As Jesus tells his followers later in the gospel, when they point out the impossibility of a rich person ever entering heaven, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible [Matthew 19: 25 – 26].”
Finding the narrow gate, is not about keeping the Ten Commandments, or the Beatitudes, or the 622 rules of the Pharisees. In fact, it’s not about ticking boxes at all. To enter the narrow gate into the Kingdom of Heaven, we need to know, and be known, by Jesus.
To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we just have to do the will of God, and that involves knowing His son, Jesus.
The theologian John Stott, imagined the narrow gate as having a gate-keeper. Those who do not recognise the gate-keeper, walk blindly on past, through the wide gate, and on to destruction; those who recognise the gate-keeper as their Lord and saviour, Jesus, greet Him as an old friend and are led personally through the narrow gate.
In John chapter 10, (look it up when you get home), Jesus says “I am the gate: whoever enters through me will be saved [John 10:9]…I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full [John 10:10].
Jesus goes on to say, “I am the good shepherd… who lays down his life for the sheep [John 10:11]… I know my sheep and my sheep know me [John 10:14].
What we need, in order to enter the narrow gate to the kingdom of Heaven, is a guide.
Fun fact about the Kingdom of Heaven: it is not just somewhere we can enter when we die; it is also a place in which we can live now. Jesus is the gate, so surrendering our lives to Him now, brings us into the Kingdom of God right now. On earth this kingdom is only part realised, but in heaven it will be complete.
Some people criticize Christianity as a ‘Death cult,’ obsessed with death and life after death. There is some truth to that, because we do spend a lot of time talking about death. But what we are really interested in, is life - full, free, abundant, everlasting, life.
What is the worst thing that can happen to a human? Dying. So God chose to prove He is the God of the impossible, by allowing His son, Jesus, to die, and then bring Him back to life again.
And He did this, to not only show that we can have life everlasting, through Him, but also, that He can free us from the things that bind us in this world, and stop us from living full, free, and abundant lives – the ‘living death’, that is sin. Think of the parable of the paralysed man: in order to prove he has the power to forgive sin, Jesus tells the man to ‘pick up his mat and walk’ [Matthew 9: 1 – 8]. Likewise, in order to prove He has the power to forgive the sin of everybody in the world and throughout history, God does the impossible & raises Jesus to life, life everlasting.
We are not left to our own devices, to face a set of rules, with impossibly high standards. No, Jesus is our guide. He walks with us. He walks alongside us. He has given us the spirit of God, the ‘spirit of truth’ [John 15: 26] to live in our hearts, reminding us always of God’s presence.
When God punished the Israelites and sent them into exile in Babyon, He didn’t just abandon them, he walked beside them, giving hope to those who had faith. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future…You will seek me, and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you.” [Jeremiah 29 11 – 14]
Not only does God walk with us, and Jesus guide us, but he equipes us too, with the power of His spirit.
Finally Jesus tells the story of the two guys who built houses on rock and on sand. The guy who built on sand had no foundation: he did not ask, he did not seek, he did not knock, he missed the narrow gate, and produced bad fruit. Why? Because he did not hear the words of Jesus and put them into practice [Matthew 7: 24]. In short, he did not submit himself to the will of God.
The Guy who built on rock, did so on a sure foundation: the words of Jesus – in fact, Jesus Himself is the rock. The guy heard those words and put them into practice: he asked, he sought, he knocked and he submitted himself to Jesus. He asked God to work in his life and:
• To turn his Pride and Self-sufficiency, into dependence, because he realised he is poor in spirit.
• To turn his Arrogant and self-seeking ways into mourning for God’s ways.
• To turn his hunger for fame, fortune, and power, into a thirst for God’s righteousness.
Jesus brings us full circle, once again, right back to the beginning of the Sermon-on-the-mount. No, these are not gentle blessings. The beatitudes are actually a demand for us to submit each part of ourselves, our will, our mind, our hearts, our personalities, to God, through Jesus.
More homework: lay your two versions of the Sermon-on-the-Mount beside each other - the one where you turned everything into negatives, and the original.
Now compare them. This is how submitting to Jesus - hearing His words and putting them into practice - can change us.
We cannot achieve this level of spiritual perfection in our own strength – it is impossible. We must submit every aspect of ourselves to God, so that He can miraculously bring about these changes in us. And guess what? God loves to perform the impossible, because only the impossible gives glory to Him.
God doesn't do achievable goals. God does the impossible.
So what is the purpose of the Sermon-on-the-Mount and how do we apply it to our lives today.
I think the purpose is three-fold:
Firstly, Jesus spells out what a truly great, fulfilled, and blessed, Godly life looks like and how wise his followers are if they try to follow His example. Because, let’s be honest, only Jesus could possibly attain this level of personal, and ethical, sinless perfection. But that is no reason for us not to try, even though we know we will repeatedly fail. Because thankfully, God has infinite patience, mercy, and forgiveness for those who honestly try.
Secondly, it highlights our utter reliance on God for… Well, for anything. The only way we stand any chance, of getting anywhere near the behaviour Jesus demands of his followers, is to surrender every single thought, action, intention, and motivation, to the risen Jesus. And to keep doing it for our entire lives. As we do, God will slowly work a miracle in our lives, peeling back the layers of our sin like an onion. And we will, one surrender at a time, progressively move closer, to becoming more like Jesus Himself.
Thirdly, the sermon highlights the importance of knowing and being known by Jesus. Faith is not a tick-box exercise: it is not about rule keeping, or ritual, or tradition, it's about a personal relationship with God – which is only possible, through our salvation from sin that is offered by Jesus on the cross.
How do we apply this?
The Greek words for ask, seek, and knock do not imply single events. They imply continuous and ongoing, asking, seeking, and knocking. This is a lifelong exercise.
We must not stop asking, seeking, and knocking, we must never be content that ‘we have arrived’. We must not stop surrendering ourselves to Christ, who is the living Jesus. We must not stop walking the narrow way, which Jesus walks with us.
Most importantly: We must hear the words of Jesus and Put Then Into Practice.
