Jesus said some very tough things. He could be very demanding, very harsh. Jesus could also be funny. He didn’t draw back from using humor if it would make his point. He was tough! He was blunt! He minced no words! And so if your image of Jesus is Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ”, bland and passive; and if your song is, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild”, then think again. Think again. Because he could be tough. And he could be funny. He could probe and make you hurt and make you smile, all at the same time. That saying about a camel going through the eye of a needle, for example, is Jesus’ way of making you smile and still getting his point across.
Nowhere is he any tougher or more blunt than in the passage for today. Nowhere is he more uncompromising or more challenging than in this passage. Who can possibly read this without feeling anxious? How can we get hold of it? I’m going to try something different.
One of the hot names on the comedy circuit these days is Jeff Foxworthy. You might have seen him on cable TV or might have heard his recording. Jeff Foxworthy gets us laughing at the stereotypes of one particular group of people. The rednecks. The rednecks. Do you know that phrase? Of course you do! Now doesn’t that sound like a winner for Black History Month? Well, but Foxworthy also teaches us how to make a point with humor. He shows us how to learn as well as to laugh.
Jeff Foxworthy puts out all these tests to see if his listeners are what southern folk call rednecks. The formula is, “If you .. then you might be a redneck.”
Like, “if you’ve got a giant screen TV in your house but have to go outside to use the bathroom, you might be a redneck.”
Or, “If when you tell somebody how to reach your house, you mention ‘trailer park’, ‘piney woods’, or ‘turning left at the scrap yard’, you might be a redneck.”
Or, “if when your wife gives birth to a son, you have an irresistible urge to give name him ‘Billy Bob’, ‘Jimmy Lee’, or ‘Johnny Reb’, you might be a redneck.”
Or, “if you have two brothers named Bubba and Junior, you might be a redneck.”
Or, “if even your bicycle carries a gunrack, you might be a redneck.” Got the idea?
Or, “if your baby’s first words were, ‘Attention, K-Mart shoppers,’ you might be a redneck.”
Well, this morning, I want to take Jeff Foxworthy’s formula, and let it carry Jesus’ tough saying, “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. “ Let’s give it a whirl.
I
First, if you are real good at saying, “Lord, Lord”, but you don’t follow through, you might be misinformed. If you believe that saying the right words gets you right with God, you might be misinformed. If you believe that holding correct doctrinal positions saves you, you might be sadly misinformed.
Did you know that a lot of us think that religion is all up here, in the head, the intellect? Do you know that a whole host of people suppose that if their belief system is correct, they are on their way to salvation? But Jesus insists that even though you might know how to say, “Lord, Lord”, you might not enter the Kingdom of heaven. You might have all kinds of theological propositions running around loose in your head, but still you might be misinformed.
What does the Bible really say? Some are misinformed. Jeff Foxworthy might put it:
If you think that Sodom and Gomorra were two lovebirds who just didn’t get it together, you might be misinformed.
If you can’t figure out how Jonah could possibly have swallowed that whale, you might be misinformed.
If you think that the Bible tells you to praise the Lord with a funny plant called the pesal tree -- you know, praise Him with the harp and pesal tree -- you might be misinformed.
If you think that baseball was mentioned in the Bible, because it says right here, “in the big inning”, you might be misinformed.
If you went car shopping right after I told you about the largest automobile in the Bible .. you know, when I reported that the Lord added three thousand to the church, and they were all together in one Accord ... if you went car shopping after that, you might be misinformed.
If when you sing the hymn, “Gladly the Cross I’d Bear”, you believe you are singing about a big brown woodsy creature with poor eyesight, you might be misinformed.
But hey, let me tell you something more. If you are counting on some false theologies, you might be sadly misinformed. If you do not know what the Bible really teaches, you might be seriously misinformed. And if you think it is all just a matter of professing certain ideas and not following through, you might be dangerously misinformed.
If somebody told you once that all you have to do is walk down the aisle and take the preacher’s hand, then he’ll say kind things about you and you have made it into heaven, if that’s what you believe, you might be misinformed.
If you think, oh, but I got baptized; and you believe that baptism has saved you, you might be misinformed. If you like to point out that Rev. This or Dr. That did the baptism and that they put you all the way under, all you really know is that you got wet. As for the rest, you might be misinformed. If you thought some church could channel the gift of salvation through its rites and rituals, you might be misinformed.
In fact, even if you have learned the Bible backwards and forwards, if you are convinced that you know the Bible cover to cover and the covers too, if you have memorized the shorter and the longer catechism, the Ten Commandments, twelve apostles, sixty-six books, and the kings of Israel and Judah in chronological order, but it’s nothing but information to you, you might be informed, but you might also be very, very misinformed.
“Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven.” Some of us might just be misinformed. We think we have a good theology. But we have only of one. It’s only half in place.
II
Or, there’s another possibility. Some of us might be more than misinformed. Some of us might be masking. We might be masking ourselves. Wearing a mask is worse than being misinformed. Wearing a mask means knowing the truth but hiding behind a facade. Masking means pretending to be something we are not. It means putting on a disguise to cover up who we really are.
“... many will say .. ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’”
If we do what we think are the right things, but they weren’t God’s things, they weren’t God’s will, then we are masking. Pretending and hiding. If we do all the good stuff for all the wrong reasons, we might be masking.
If prayer bores us so much that we can’t manage five minutes without wandering off to the grocery list, we might be masking. If at church when we close our eyes to pray we sneak a little nap, we might be wearing that mask.
If we think that the number of stars in our heavenly crown is calculated according to the number of hours we have spent sitting in earthly pews, we might be wearing that mask. If we hope that what we are going to wear on the north ends when we get to glory is earned by where we put our south ends on Sunday, we might be wearing that mask. “But, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name?”
If we get in the groove every time the choir sings, but slam the folks doing the singing, we might be masking. If we say “Amen” every time the preacher shouts a little, but we eat roast preacher for dinner every Sunday, hey, we just might be hiding something. If I love going to worship when they are doing something entertaining and when they are serving something to eat, then I might be masking my true motivation. “Lord, did we not cast out demons in your name?”
If, when the offering plate goes by, you just stick your hand in and rustle around a bit instead of putting in something, you might be wearing a mask. If I started out, years ago, giving two big dollars a week to the Kingdom, and, by ginger, I am so faithful, thirty years later I still give two dollars a week, well, I might be masking something.
If we figure that wearing nice clothes and driving a good car and generally looking middle class fools everybody and will also fool God, we might be drowning in deep hypocrisy. “Didn’t we do many deeds of power in your name?”
If we know we are supposed to get excited about missions whenever they have a missionary speaker, but when it comes down to “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?”, our answer is “Somebody else”, we might be masking. If we are pleased that that somebody else is doing missions overseas, but we wouldn’t walk across the street to share the good news, could it be that we might be masking something?
If we breathe a sigh of relief that “they” have their own churches, “they” being Koreans and Spanish and Haitians and poor people and gay people and this group and that group, because we surely don’t want them in our church, we just might be masking something. If we smile and say, “Hello, Brother”, but we really mean, “Hello, Bother”, we are masking something
For “many will say .. ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Didn’t we do a lot of good stuff, Lord, in your name? Didn’t we live clean lives and didn’t we support the church and didn’t we serve on a committee and didn’t we, didn’t we, didn’t we? But if it was all to mask and cover up an angry, jealous, faithless, ruthless heart, well, we sure did wear a great big mask, didn’t we?
III
If you say, “Lord, Lord”, and are depending on correct theology, you might be misinformed.
If you count your many good deeds and depend on them crediting your account, you may be masking the truth.
In fact, then you might be more than misinformed and more than masked, you might be a lost person. You might be a lost person. If your heart turns toward self more than it turns toward Christ, then there is only one, short, crisp, clear word to use: lost. You might be lost, without God, without hope, and without an eternal future.
Because I can do nothing more than point to what our Lord says, “I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” As much as I want to speak good news, I am bound by the word of God to declare that “not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of the father.” You cannot just remain misinformed; if you do, you are lost. If we would rather indulge in behavior that damages and hurts others, we can no longer pretend that that doesn’t matter. It does. Whoever does the will of the father enters the Kingdom.
As much as I would want everything to be warmth and gladness, I am compelled to point to what I see, that many of us want to claim all the good stuff we’ve been into and credit that to our heavenly bank account, but if it was not within the will of God, if it was a mask, if it was all a self-serving facade, then he says, ‘I never knew you.’ If we do not love Him with heart and soul and mind and strength, we might be lost.
If I do not care for the things of the Kingdom above all else, loving Christ more than father or mother or sisters or brothers, more than life itself, then I might be lost.
If you do not know Him personally, if you have not trusted Him for everything, if being obedient is something you don’t really want to do it, then, let’s face it, you might be lost. “I never knew you.”
Oh, but, I do want to end on the good news. I do want to complete the picture. For, you see, the same one who says “I never knew you” also says “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
The same one who says, “Not everyone will enter the kingdom” does say, “Whosoever will might come”
The same Christ who stands in judgment over those of us who depended on misinformation and who defended ourselves on the basis of looking good .. that same Christ is the shepherd, whose arms are open wide; who is always ready to forgive, who will lead us into all truth, who goes out to seek and to save that which is lost.
You or you or you or you or you or I might be lost, yes. But that need not be the end of the story, just its beginning. If you will trust and obey, for there’s no other way, you might be saved and happy, complete, whole.
Jeff Foxworthy says, ”If your only necktie is also used as a rag your car’s gas cap, you might be a redneck.” I say, if you confess that all your righteousness is like filthy rags, you can receive the love of Christ. You can make Him Lord of your life, not just of your lips. If you can trust Him and obey Him, you might be, no, you will be saved.
