I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 7. We're looking today at verses 21 through 23, drawing near to the end of the Sermon on the Mount, which we've been studying these last few months. Matthew 7, looking at verses 21 through 23. Hear the word of God. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, 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, ye workers of lawlessness. Let us pray. Our Father, as we turn our attention to this passage, we pray, as we always do, Lord, that you would grant us your Spirit, because we need your Spirit. Father, we pray that you'd show us wonderful things in the Word of God, things that we need, Lord, need to feed our souls, need to be taught, need to know, need to respond to. Father, need to be rebuked by or encouraged by. And so Father, we pray that your word, that you, by your word, would do your work in our lives. Father, whether that work is bringing lost people to Christ and to salvation, whether that work is helping those who are in him to continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, give us a hunger for your word, Lord, that this would be to our souls as good food when we're really, really hungry and really want to eat. Father, we pray that you would clear away the cobwebs, give us sharp minds to think. Father, give us warm hearts to receive all that you have for us here in this passage. Father, we worship you in the preaching and in the hearing and in the study of it, we worship you. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. The words of our text this morning are some of the most somber words, not only that Jesus Himself spoke, but that you will find in all of the Scriptures. They speak of the unimaginable peril, danger of being confused. or misled about our spiritual state, about our standing before a holy God. Jesus is wrapping up His Sermon on the Mount, as we've said a few times here in these final sections. He's applying it. He's driving it home. He's been describing what it looks like to live in the Kingdom, but now He's raising the questions having to do with are you in the Kingdom? To begin with, And certainly this passage is there. He, as we saw, talked about the narrow gate and the need to enter by that narrow gate, which we said is actually Jesus himself, to enter by believing in him as your savior, and then walking the narrow way, which is that way of Christian discipleship, which of course is found in all of scripture, but in context, is particularly tied to what Jesus teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount as to what that narrow way looks like, and all the while avoiding the wide gate, the wide way that leads to destruction. And then he's warned us to be careful not to be led off in the wrong way and further along in the wrong way by false prophets, false teachers, and preachers who appear in sheep's clothing. That is, they look like sheep, And yet, actually, in reality, they are ravenous wolves. And Jesus taught us, you will know them, you will recognize them by their fruit. And then today's passage, these words we just read, who is Jesus talking about here? Well, I think in context, and we should always think in context, anytime you read anything in the Bible, the larger context. In context, it would seem that Jesus is first, is primarily speaking of those false prophets that he just warned against in the previous And as we look at this passage, I think the reasons for saying that will become clear, and not only just the proximity, one following the other, which that itself is important, but not only the false prophets, but those who may have been led astray by them. led astray by these false prophets. But we could say in general, Jesus is speaking of those who are deceived about their relationship to God. Jesus is speaking about those who are deceived. in their standing with God. And that actually is what makes this passage so frightening. That the people who experience Jesus' rejection seem genuinely surprised. They seem astounded that Jesus didn't receive them with open arms. And that surprise they experience may raise the question in your mind, am I deceived? about my standing with God. Will I be surprised when I stand before Jesus? Maybe so. but I certainly hope not. And here's the thing, Jesus taught this very thing. He said these very words so that you won't be or so that you need not be. We need not be deceived now and surprised later. And in fact, we can be sure about our spiritual wellbeing. And that's why Jesus taught this. so that we would be sure of our standing with God, and not deceived, sure, but actually sure. Well, how? How can we be sure about it? Well, three ways that Jesus speaks of here, three things that we need to know. First of all, in verse 21, by knowing the standard and understanding the standard for admission to the kingdom of heaven, into the people of God, into heaven itself. Notice verse 21. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Now, Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, which means that some of those who say to him, Lord, Lord, will in fact enter the kingdom of heaven, but who is it? Well, Jesus tells us, it's the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Just obey and you're good, right? My greatest fear in preaching the Sermon on the Mount, and it's easy for this to happen, especially with the Sermon on the Mount, that my greatest fear is that I preach a sermon from the Sermon on the Mount and you go away thinking, you know, if I just live this way, then God will be pleased with me and will receive me into heaven. If I just live according to the sermon, and in fact, sometimes that kind of thing's been taught. Well, we don't need all of Paul's doctrine, we just need to live by what Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount. And so someone might think, well, if I just live this way, then I'm good. But then, as I hope, as we've been going through this Sermon on the Mount, you come away with the thought, how can anyone possibly live according to the Sermon on the Mount? It's impossible. Well, that's exactly the point. There would be those who would say, well, you just believe in Jesus. And they may not say it, but think, well, then it really doesn't matter how you live. Well, how could you read the Sermon on the Mount and come away with that? Of course it matters how we live in Christ Jesus. So is it live by the Sermon on the Mount or is it just believe in Jesus? Well, it's both. They're both involved. How so? Well, the Sermon on the Mount, I hope, leads you to despair of your own righteousness. I hope it leads you to realize how little, how nothing we have to offer God. It drives us to Jesus. It is relentless in emphasizing the necessity of a righteousness that is so thorough going, it comes from the inside, it comes from the heart, outward. And so it should drive us to Jesus because not a one of us lives this way. At all. No one can live by the Sermon on the Mount. It convicts us. We're all guilty. We need a Savior, and we have one in the Lord Jesus Christ. does the will of my Father in heaven. Remember John 6, the crowd says to Jesus, what do we have to do to do the works of God? What do we have to do to do the will of God? You remember Jesus' answer? Jesus is very short to the point. He said, the work of God is this, to believe in the one whom he has sent. Give us something to do, Jesus. What does God want us to do? Jesus said, believe in me. Believe in the one he has sent. That's the work of God. And that's what God calls you to do and me to do, to repent of our sin, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as our savior for the first time. And then keep doing it every day. Repent of your sins. Trust and rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. And by trust in Christ, I don't mean agreeing with a few facts that you've heard. I mean to come to an end of yourself, realize you have no righteousness before God, nothing that will save you, nothing that will commend you to Him. and throw yourself on Jesus alone for salvation, so much so that the rest of your life is oriented around and directed toward Him. That's what it means to be a Christian. Not signing the card, walking and all, raising your hand. Those things can't save you. Now if they reflect a new heart, a new birth, then maybe they go along with it. But you have to be born again. and a Christian is oriented toward Christ. That's what Jesus is talking about when he says, the work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent, to believe in the Son, Jesus, whom the Father sent into the world. And unless that has changed you, you have not believed in the one the Father sent. Well, what then? Well, Then, having believed in the Lord Jesus, having been reconciled to God in him, having been made right with God, clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus, then we begin to do the will of Jesus' Father in heaven, and now in Christ, our Father, as revealed, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount. And it looks a lot like what Jesus has been teaching. We're poured spirit. Because we know our spiritual bankruptcy, that creates in us a kind of meekness or gentleness in our dealings with others, the very opposite of a proud and self-righteous spirit. It means we're peacemakers. It means we're pure in heart or want to be. by God's grace try to be. It means we love our enemies. It means we're concerned with pleasing our Father in heaven and not impressing people around us. It means that we have such a deep sense of our own sin that our sin looks like a log compared to the speck of sawdust of the sin of another. It means we're dealing with our own sins first before we even think of trying to correct or deal with the sin of somebody else. And all the other things that Jesus has been teaching in this Sermon on the Mount. The will of my Father in heaven. And notice it's not faith plus works, believe in Jesus plus do all of these things. It is faith in Jesus that itself produces this life. That new birth that will not be suppressed. because we are a changed person. We're justified by the grace of God through faith in Christ. And our faith is then justified, that is demonstrated by the new life, the fruit of the spirit, works of mercy and compassion. And as James teaches in his book, faith without works is dead. Real faith changes us, inevitably. You know, as it's been put, we're saved by faith alone. But the faith that saves is never alone. It's accompanied by the fruit of a changed life. Jesus is not teaching salvation by works in the Sermon on the Mount. Far from it. Jesus is correcting the Pharisees and others' superficial, thin, inadequate view of the law of God. He's showing us how high, how hopelessly, impossibly for us, high that standard of the law of God is. As he said in chapter five, verse 20, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. How does it exceed it? It exceeds it because it's real. It's within us and it works its way out. It's not just a costume we put on to impress others. Remember, Jesus later described the scribes and Pharisees as whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside and full of bones and rot and corruption on the inside. People can be that way. Sometimes people in churches can be that way. But Jesus is describing a new birth where we're purified on the inside and has a way of working itself to the outside. So that's what he's talking about here. Jesus' exposition of the law and the Sermon on the Mount drives us to Jesus because we despair of ourselves. And then, saved by Jesus, he points us back to the Sermon on the Mount and says, you begin to live this way. Begin to cultivate these things in your life. Jesus says, I will change. I will empower you. Will we live this perfectly? No. But if we're not living it at all, then we should be concerned. So first thing we need to know is the standard for acceptance into the kingdom of God. It's not trying to live by the Sermon on the Mount, it's not trying to keep the Ten Commandments, but rather it is faith in Christ the Savior who did keep the Ten Commandments perfectly, and then the evidence of that in a changed life. You must be born again by the grace of God. So that's the first thing Jesus wants us to know here, the standard. The second thing is he wants us to know the things that might be mistaken for that standard, for genuine salvation, but in fact are not. What are the things that could mislead us that we might be mistaken about? Well, notice verse 22. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? Notice the day Jesus has in mind, on that day. And that's, not really code, but it's kind of a formula for the day of judgment, you know, the day of Christ appearing, the day of reckoning, judgment day, when the Lord appears, called the day of the Lord in the Old Testament, the end. And notice also who is saying these things. Many will say to me on that day, many will say, Lord, Lord, who are these many? Look back at verse 13. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many. I think it's the same many. Same people on that road to destruction are the many who are here saying, Lord, Lord, they're the ones on the path to destruction, the ones without Christ, without God or without hope in the world. These are the false prophets. These are those who follow the false prophets and listen to what they say. The false prophets who never warned them of their danger. but affirm their sin and affirm them in their sin. Jeremiah 23, 17 put it, which we read last week, read it again, of the false prophets in Jeremiah's time. They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, it shall be well with you. And to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, no disaster will come upon you. Those who go their own way, those who sin against God, those who say what God says is good and bad or not good and bad, they flip them. And the false prophets say, no, you're fine. Oh, you're good. You know, standards change. It's 2022. You're okay. Now, in verse 22 itself, there's several misunderstandings about that standard, about what saves. First of all, notice professions and words do not equal the righteousness that saves. Professions and words. Notice verse 21. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord. Verse 22. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord. The word say, talk. Lord, Lord. Emphasis on saying. They're addressing Jesus as Lord. They confess him as Lord. Right? They're polite. They're respectful. And granted, in the New Testament, the term translated Lord can just mean sir, and often is rightly translated that way. But given the context, day of judgment, They're importing full meaning into that word, Lord. Remember as Paul said in Philippians 2, every knee will bow, every tongue confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So I think, yeah, we import the full meaning of Lord, even as that was the term by which they referred to God in the Old Testament. So they're polite and they refer to Him as Lord. They say to Him, Lord, Lord. Professions, words. People talk about Jesus. People profess to believe in Jesus. But is it just words? Is it just saying, Lord, Lord? So professions and words don't save. Though profession of faith in Christ certainly is important, you know, with our lips we confess and with our hearts we believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. A profession of faith is essential, but a mere profession, mere words, is not enough. Another thing that can be mistaken is orthodoxy or right theology, right thinking about God. These many are correct. Jesus is Lord. Lord in that full Old Testament sense. Jesus is God in the flesh. And right biblical thinking about Jesus is important. And they're right to call Him Lord. But they're still lost. Because orthodox thinking, right theology is not enough. It's invaluable. And we love good theology. We love our Westminster Confession, rightly so. We should value and pursue and study good, right, biblical teaching and theology and orthodoxy and understand it and embrace it and love it. But dear friends, it cannot in itself save you. It points to the one who can. But unless you follow that point, and just merely have the theology, that alone can't save you. Fervency, fervency does not equal the righteousness that saves. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, repeating his name implies feeling. We see other places in scripture where people are addressed by the name twice, Samuel, Samuel. Martha, Martha, Saul, Saul. There's feeling, there's emphasis there. Sense of urgency, sense of fervency. These may be people who feel great emotion over religious things. Very emotive and demonstrative maybe in worship. But that's not the same thing as being saved. We can be moved by music. May even occasionally be moved to tears by a sermon for one reason or another. But being moved emotionally, you know, Jesus, Jesus, is not the same thing as the righteousness that saves. Mighty works is not the same. Jesus, by the way, mentions as examples some pretty impressive works, right? Did we not prophesy in your name? Now, here's our link back to the false prophets. I mentioned this earlier. Say, he's thinking first of those false prophets, not only, but first, because remember, they're false prophets, right? And they say, did we not prophesy in your name. What does a prophet do? He prophesies. So did we not utter prophecy in your name? Now, prophecy, we sometimes think, you know, like telling the future, and sometimes the prophets did that, but their primary task in the Old Testament was not so much to tell the future, although they might speak of things God was going to do, but was to call the people back to faithfulness to God, to be agents of, or the term sometimes, prosecutors of the covenant. You're straying, you're disobeying, you're breaking the covenant. Now repent and return to God. That's the true function of the, prophet, and speaking the word of God, thus says the Lord. And I would argue that the equivalent of that today is preaching, where we don't say, thus says the Lord, with some new revelation, but we say, thus says the Lord, as he's recorded for us in scripture, declaring the word of the Lord, confronting people in sin, encouraging people in faithfulness and righteousness. And that's what they're saying. Did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not preach sermons? Did we not teach Bible studies? Now, the question of what they taught and how right it was, well, that's left unaddressed. Maybe it was right. Maybe it was orthodox, or maybe it was not. But the point is, they say, did we not prophesy in your name? And did we not cast out demons in your name? That's getting pretty dramatic, right? They would not cast out demons. Surely somebody's the real deal if they're casting out demons, right? Well, not so fast. Remember the Egyptian magicians counterfeited the miracles that Moses did one way or another by demonic power or by sleight of hand, however they did it. They replicated what Moses did. Remember too, that Judas Iscariot, who is declared by Jesus himself to be a son of judgment, a son of hell, not elect, doomed to perdition. Judas Iscariot himself, presumably was among those Jesus sent out to preach, who came back and reported, even the demons are subject to us. Impressive stuff, right? Yes. But at least in Judas Iscariot's case, not saving. So casting out demons is no sign of salvation. And do mighty works in your name. The word mighty works could also be miracles, miraculous works. As with casting out demons, that's impressive, but it's not saving. It could be done by the power of God, could be done by the power of Satan, but it's certainly not the same thing to do a miracle and to be right with God through faith in Christ. And the final one I would mention here is devotion. It's not the same thing. Could be mistaken about that. These people express great devotion to Christ Himself. Why do I say that? Well, in the original, as Matthew wrote it, the phrase, in your name, comes first. And I think it's switched in the ESV for English stylistic reasons, although the New American Standard Bible and the NIV in the second and third instances do put in your name first, but it actually occurs in all three. And it adds a certain emphasis. Let me read it to you that way and you'll hear it. They say, did we not in your name prophesy? Did we not in your name cast out demons? Did we not in your name do many mighty works? In other words, Jesus, it was for you. We were serving you. We were devoted to you. It was all for you. A devotion that is expressed here for Jesus. So devoted to Jesus. And yet, not saved. Many today are in the same boat as these. They fall into the same mistakes that we find described here. People who do lots of things in the church, do for Jesus. All kinds of things. I like the way John Stott puts it in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. He says, what better Christian profession could be given? Here are people who call Jesus Lord with courtesy, orthodoxy, enthusiasm and private devotion and public ministry. What can be wrong with this? In itself, nothing. And yet everything is wrong because it is talk without truth, profession without reality. It will not save them on the day of judgment. And it won't save us either. The standard of admission, faith in Christ, the reality of which is demonstrated by a changed life that cannot be faked, Thinking it's words, feelings, and actions, and doing for Jesus, rather than being in Jesus. The second thing. And then the third, and the last thing Jesus puts here, is knowing and fearing the grievous cost of being wrong. Verse 23, and then will I declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." They've done all kinds of things for Jesus. They claim to know Jesus. We know you, Jesus. Jesus says, I don't know you. I never knew you. Now, when Jesus says that, he doesn't mean he's not aware of them. He means he has no relationship with them. nor do they have any relationship with him. And so he says, in the face of all these things they claim, all that they've done, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. It's actually a quote. From Psalm 6 that Joe read earlier, David who is suffering from his enemies is vindicated by the Lord. And he tells his tormentors to his enemies to depart, which actually is very appropriate. I mean, Jesus quotes that. It's not just that line. Go back and read Psalm 6. We're in the face of his vindication from his enemies. He tells his enemies to depart. As with David, so with Jesus on a much grander scale. Jesus banishes to hell those who had no relationship with him, you workers of lawlessness. What does Jesus name as the reason he tells them to depart? Well, it's not their prophesying, it's not their casting out demons, it's not their mighty works. that he tells them to go away. He casts them out because they're filthy, because they have no regard for God's law. They are workers instead of lawlessness. Anomia, namus law, anomos, lawless. What has Jesus been talking about through the Sermon on the Mount? The law of God. what it looks like actually lived out from the heart. What does he call these people? Workers of lawlessness. Sermon on the Mount-less-ness. That's what he's talking about here. That's why he says this at the end of this exposition of the law that we know as the Sermon on the Mount. They had talk with no truth. As Stott said, profession of faith without the reality. Profession of Jesus without the reality. They didn't know Jesus. They had no faith in Jesus. They didn't have His righteousness on their record before the Father. It was all only their righteousness. They were still dead in their sins. And so Jesus says, in the face of their works, in the face of their zeal, in the face of their devotion, in the face of all their words, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. See, dear friends, those are the words you do not want to hear because they're final. That's it. You just received your verdict from the highest court there is, and there is no other. And there will be nothing to do at that point, but turn and head toward hell, where you will be forever. The good news is that day isn't here yet. Judgment day is not here yet. This is, as Paul says, the day of salvation. Judgment day is coming. That day when we will stand before Christ, we'll get here. But as Paul says, now is the time, today is the day of salvation, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to cast yourself, to fling yourself in total desperation upon Him, to cast your eternity upon Him in faith, to acknowledge you have nothing that will gain you any standing with God. But Jesus does. To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to identify with Him, take up your cross and follow Him. And in Him, go back and look at the Sermon on the Mount and examine your life and say, Lord, help me to begin to live like this. Help me not to be lawless, but to love your law from the heart, not a costume I put on to impress others and make my parents happy or get by in church, but because I love you. because I need you and because I want to live this way. Do you want to do that? I mean, why pretend? I mean, our culture certainly doesn't encourage that. Either go your way or follow Jesus with everything in your being. Why pretend? You don't have to do that. Not today. Be who you are. Either live out your lawlessness or believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. The good news is you don't need to, you don't have to hear these words of our Lord. So what would you hear? Well, later in this book, Matthew 25, actually just a little beyond the parable of the 10 virgins we read earlier, is the parable of the sheep and the goats. And Jesus reveals there the words that those who were in him, the words of those who were in Christ, we'll hear where he says, come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you. Dear friends, those are the words you want to hear. And by God's grace in Christ, we will. Let's pray. Father God, To hear Jesus say, I never knew you, depart from me. What a horrifying thought. And yet, Lord, there will be countless who will hear just that. Lord, may I, may we not be among them. Father, we thank you that we didn't wonder. Father, that we love your law, that we love your ways. Do we keep it perfectly? No, but Lord, we hate it when we don't and we repent and we turn back to Jesus. Father, may not a one of us in this room be deceived, but know where we stand with you and know what we will hear on that day. Father, we thank you for these words. May you bless them and use them in our hearts, in our lives this week, and we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.