Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks at the passages on the narrow gate and false prophets in Matthew 7:12-20 and 3 ways we can be outward focused in a time where we have a tendency to be inward focused especially in the year 2020.

Message Notes & Study Guide

Message Transcript

Hey, welcome to Orchard Hill. It's great to be together online, in-person at Wexford, the Strip District, Butler County, the Chapel, wherever you are or really whenever you're participating. Hey, if you're in Butler County, I just want to say, I'm sorry that I wasn't able to be with you last weekend as you had your first look at the new building that we just closed on. And if you're not from Butler and are from one of our other campuses, we closed on a building that we'd been working towards throughout a good chunk of this year, and we should be starting to hold in-person worship services there sometime in early 2021. So, that's great news in the midst of the year that we've had! 

Also, I just want to say if you've paid attention, our state has issued some new guidance around COVID. And here at Orchard Hill, we've had some great success so far at our in-person gatherings. We've been holding in-person gatherings since the first weekend in June and to our knowledge have not had any transmissions. And that has happened with our socially distanced and mask encouraged pre-registration so that we don't get too many people in a room. And now with the state saying mask required, we certainly understand that and want to be respectful of that, and still have freedom for people to worship. And so, we're anticipating still having some different ways to worship. 

And I know that for some of you, you're going to respond and say, "Well, I'm going to continue to stay safe and home because of what's going on." And we certainly understand that, and support that. If you're somebody who says, "I'm just not wanting to put myself in any context where there's a lot of people." Then by all means we'll continue to do our best to provide good in-person worship experiences. 

But I do want you to know that with what we've practiced, we haven't had issues in the way that we've practiced it at Orchard Hill, which is really good news. And we don't anticipate there will never be an issue. Just the law of averages says that at some point there will be some issue. But what we know is that if you believe in this droplet idea, that socially distanced worship is not really inherently dangerous. 

In fact, I was talking with my wife about a family gathering with her family, and I was expressing some concern about the gathering because we'd have people from multiple states all in one place together. And as we were talking about it, she said, "Well, how can you say that's not great from a COVID standpoint, but you're okay going to church with a lot of people that you don't even know where they've been?" And I said, well, the difference for me is the social distancing, and the fact that many people are wearing the mask, as opposed to eating and all being together in that close space. So, if you're comfortable, we'll continue to have in-person worship. If you feel better being at home, our online options will continue to be put forward in every way that we can. 

We have a great opportunity coming up as we open our Worship Center on Thursday, December 3rd and Friday, December 4th. Register online if you want to be a part of that for our Wexford campus. And then the weekend of the 5th and 6th, will be our first weekend in that space. Again, we'll provide more social distancing than what we've even had, and it should be just a great thing. And then Christmas is coming! I know Christmas won't be the same, and we don't expect it to be the same. And again, we want you to do what's comfortable. But if it's important to you to be in some kind of a public worship setting, there are responsible ways that we can continue to do this, and you can be a part of that. 

So, let's pray together. Father, thank you for a chance to gather, and I pray that you would just take these moments and speak to all of us. Lord, would you let my words reflect your word in content, and in tone, and in emphasis? And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. 

So, as this year has unfolded, my guess is very few of us would say this year has gone the way that we expected it would have on January 1st. And one of the things that I've observed in my own life, and I think in some of my friends lives, and thus I'm assuming it's probably true not just for me and some of my friends, but for many of us, is that when the pandemic first hit, we all turned inward. Meaning into our own homes, into our own families, into our own lives, and said, "How do I take care of the people around me?" 

And that's natural and even good, especially in the midst of a pandemic. And I think many of us realized that in many ways, we had been running to things that were so beyond our home, beyond our family, that it became almost a way of saying there's some real health here that I'm rediscovering in terms of looking and prioritizing time with my family. But I also think that there can be a danger to that, and that is we can end up looking inward to such an extent that what we end up doing is we end up forgetting to look outward at all. And I believe that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, what we've been studying here for the last several months, really communicates this idea that a follower of Jesus, or really all people, are to live lives that are relentlessly outward facing. Not just inward facing. 

In other words, there's a time to look inward and looking inward can be good, but that isn't ultimately the call of Jesus to say, "Just take care of you and your family." But there's a call to say, "I want you to be relentlessly outward in how you live your lives." And certainly, in this year, that is upside down to how we might naturally think. But not just this year. When you look at the history of how people have lived, for people to be relentlessly outward facing is not common. And yet it's the call of Jesus. 

And so, I want to just today talk about three ways that you and I can be outward facing in our lives, especially in this season. And here's the first, I'm just going to use the word "extend". And this is in Jesus's statement in verse 12, which is also known as the golden rule that's so common. It says, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you." This sums up the law and the prophets. Jesus makes this very simple statement. He says, "Here's what I want you to do." This sums up the old Testament law, the prophets, everything, "If you would do to others, which you would have them do to you." 

Now, the reason I use the word "extend" is because so often when we hear this verse, what we think it means is be nice. In other words, what God wants us to do is he wants us to simply be nice to everybody and this is the be nice commandment. So just be nice and that's what God is saying. But I think there's more here because what Jesus is saying is, do unto others what you would have them do unto you. And the reason I use the word "extend" is because there's one thing that I believe is nearly universal that almost everybody wants from other people. And that is, we want respect. We want dignity. We want people to look at us and consider us in many ways to be people who deserve the benefit of the doubt. 

And the reason that I say that this is nearly universal is because what we all want is, we want people to say, "I will give you respect and dignity and the benefit of the doubt." So, to extend, is to extend goodwill to people. The goodwill to say, "I'm going to extend to you what I want you to extend to me." Now our tendency in any day and age, but especially right now, is to have what I call in-groups and out-groups. And what we do is we say, "I will extend goodwill to people who are in my in-group, but people who are in my out-group, they don't deserve, or won't get, the extension of my good will, but I'll do it to people who are in my in-groups." 

I saw this just the other day. There's a thing on a lot of social media platforms right now, where somebody who's transgender and identifies as transgender, instead of putting that they're a "he" or a "she," will put a "they" or a "them." And then what somebody will do who wants to identify as being transgender friendly is they'll come along and make sure that when they put their profile up, that they put it up with a "he" or "him" or a "she" or "her." And it's almost a way as if to say, "I'm not like people who aren't aware that transgender people need dignity and respect. I respect those people." But then what can quickly happen is it can become a, "Well I'm one of the people who extends goodwill to people who are transgender and those other people who don't get it, or aren't aware of it, aren't as aware and therefore don't extend goodwill." 

Now you may say that's a goofy example, but here's the reason I use that example. And that is sometimes even in our attempts to extend goodwill to people, we can create an outside group where we don't give the benefit of the doubt or don't give any kind of a desire to say, "I'm going to extend goodwill." And what Jesus does, I believe, in this statement is he's saying, "I want you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So, I want you to extend goodwill to people." And here's what you know is true because it's true for you, and that is you really don't care what view somebody has about any issue until you feel respect from them. And that's true for you to other people. In other words, if you want your views to carry any sway with people, the only way it will ever do so is if people feel you extend goodwill to them. 

And so, when I use the word "extend," I think of extending goodwill. And I just think of extending yourself. I have a neighbor who has lived across the street from me for well over a decade. And he is such a great help to me in times when I don't even realize that I'm asking or need help. Anytime he sees me doing a project, he'll generally show up and say, "Hey, I noticed you're hauling some stuff in, what are you doing?" And he'll take a look at it and he'll come with a tool. He'll offer a hand. And what I've come to realize is that I so appreciate that he is always saying, "how can I help you?" Just as a neighbor to make your life better, that I want to extend that back to him anytime I get a chance. And that may seem like just a goofy example and you probably have neighbors like that or people in your life like that. 

But here's what, again, I think Jesus is driving at. And that is if you want to be relentlessly outward facing, if you want to help the world be a better place, extend goodwill, extend yourself to people with no other agenda, and you will see good things come. 

Now that's the first thing. But I think it's significant that this verse comes in the context of some broader teaching. And here's what we see next. This is verse 13 and 14, and here I'm going to say to be relentlessly outward looking, we need to not just extend, but we need to "invite." Here's what we see, verse 13 and 14, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction and many enter through it. But small is the gate narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it." 

Now, there are some textual differences here. If you look at a bunch of translations, you'll see that some translations leave out the word gate in verse 14, that there may not be an actual gate that's referred to here. Some of the best manuscripts don't have it. And the idea is that there's really two paths. There's a broad path and a narrow path leading to two different gates ultimately. But here's what I think Jesus is really driving at and it's not as simple as you might think, because you might read this and say, "Well, this just means that the broad easy path is the one that leads to destruction in the narrow hard path is the one that leads to life. Therefore, if you want to follow Jesus, it will be really hard, really difficult, really demanding, and you better be willing to do it." 

But in other parts of the Bible, in the old Testament, specifically, there are some places where we're told that God leads us to a broad path. And so, the image here can't just simply be this idea of easy and hard. In fact, the words that are used to describe the narrow path are actually words that talk about tribulation. And here's why I point this out. And that is I'm not sure that the correct understanding of this is there's a broad, easy path that people follow and then there's this hard, difficult path, as much as it is this idea of saying the narrow path means that few people find it because it's actually the path that is hard to find because it runs so counter to how we think about things. In other words, what we tend to do is we tend to think about things by saying my way of getting right with God is by performing and doing and creating a sense in which God somehow owes me. 

And this isn't just a religious thing. You don't have to be a person of faith to have a sense in which you say, "Look, I live my life. I live my life well; I live it in a way that would please whatever version of God I think there is." And on the other hand, to have this sense of saying that my way of living is not pleasing to God. And what Christian teaching has always been is that the narrow path is actually in admitting our need. And so, when I say invite, what I'm talking about is inviting other people to understand that the broad road is saying, "I'm going to take my chances in my own morality. That's what is easy for me." And that the narrow path is saying, "I'm going to admit my shortcomings, my inability, my lack of capacity to actually do what God says, and in that I'm taking the narrow road, which is throwing all of my hope, all of my trust onto Jesus Christ." And that is the message of Christianity. 

And the reason that inviting here is so important is because it's so easy for us to instead say, "I don't want to get into anybody else's eternity." It used to be said that there are two great rules in conversation. Don't talk about politics or religion. Well, people completely talk about politics now, but they still generally want to say, "You know what? Your faith is your thing." But here, the idea of inviting is saying there really is a way, and there is a difference. And to never speak of it is a little bit like giving somebody a rocking chair when their house is burning down and saying, "Enjoy some nice tea as you sit there." Because there is something at stake in what we believe about Jesus and what we believe about our own sin. 

In fact, if you read down just a little further, I'm going to borrow a little bit from next week, but I can do that because next week you're going to get to hear from Josiah and Mike Chillicothe, Brady, Joel, so sorry all of you who are teaching. But in verse 21, 22, and 23, we see this, it says: "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 who's in heaven." And what Jesus is doing in these verses is he saying, look, there's a whole category of people who fit into this idea of saying, "I think I'm good. I think I'm okay with God, but I'm not actually okay." And I made a chart here. Really simple, but sometimes charts help me think. And this is the category that Jesus addresses. 

The people who say, "I think I'm okay, but I'm not okay." And if you go across to the next quadrant, you get people who will basically say, "I think I'm okay and I am okay." And then the next quadrant down is the people who say, "You know what? I don't think I'm okay and I'm not okay." And then people who don't think they're okay and are okay. But the category Jesus was most concerned about, according to verses 21, 22, and 23 is the people who say, "I'm good. I'm good." And they'll someday stand before God and God will say, "I never knew you. I didn't know you." And so to invite is to say I'm not going to simply engage with people in a way in which I extend goodwill and extend myself to them here and now, but I'm going to invite them to an eternity where they can know with certainty who God is and that their standing with God is right. 

I don't know if you saw this, but Alex Trebek died just a week or so ago. And Alex Trebek has been the long-time host of Jeopardy! A show I've hardly ever watched. So, I'm not a big Jeopardy fan! But Alex Trebek had a battle with cancer and said toward the end of his life that he never wanted to give up because, and I quote, "It would be a betrayal of my faith in God and the prayers of millions of people." And Alex Trebek grew up around church and had this faith that he would talk about. But in his autobiography, here's what he said. This is a quote. 

He says, "Am I a believer?" And he says, "Well, I believe we are all part of the great soul, what some call God. We are God, and God is us. We are one with our maker. How do I know this? It's not that I know it, it's that I feel it. But do I pray to a specific God? Do I anticipate a particular version of the afterlife? No, I do not." And then he says this, and this is when he was talking about death. He said, "I believe that it's a transition into whatever future you happen to believe in." 

And the reason I read this is because here's what Alex Trebek, and I don't know if he had another faith experience after this, I'm not pretending to understand Alex Trebek's faith journey, but based on his statement in his autobiography, if that's the end of his story, what he's saying is I believe in whatever future you believe in, that's what you get. And that is the kind of thinking that is on this broad road that says, "I get to think that everything exists and everything else." 

But here's the thing, whether you or I believe that the state of Ohio exists or not, doesn't make it so. In other words, I don't get to go, "Well, I don't really believe Ohio exists. Therefore, it doesn’t, or it does." It is apart from what I think. God and Jesus are apart from our conception of it. And the way that the Bible says that we come to faith in Jesus Christ and a right relationship with God is through faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the light. You cannot come to the father except through me." That's John 14:6. It's a narrow path. 

And one of the ways we are outward facing is by inviting others to be part of it. And then I would just add this, and this is the third word, and that is I'm just going to say, we "point" people. Point them to what is true and right. This is verses 15 through 20, says, "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn brush bushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but bad trees bear bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruits, you will recognize them." 

And what you have here is just, and the reason I say point, point people to what's true, there's a movement among some today to say, "Anything's good. Anything's okay." But Jesus, again, right here in talking about the narrow way and the broad way says, "You need to beware of false teachers because there will be people who will teach things, point you to things, that aren't true and will be destructive." And in Jesus's day, the two main categories were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees rejected the notion of divinity in the sense of saying that God had a right to tell them how to do things. In other words, this would be your liberal contingent that says there is no sense of absolute right or wrong. There is no morality. There's nothing in this world that should tell me anything. And then the Pharisees came along and said, "You know what? We keep it. And how we get right with God is by keeping it entirely." And those were the two extremes that when Jesus talked about false teachers, he probably had in mind. 

John Steinbeck, in his most famous novel, had a woman who was a moralist. And here's what he had one of his characters say about her. "With a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do, she existed." In other words, a moralist, according to Steinbeck, is somebody who had an excessive code of morals and pinned down and beat the brains out of everything that was pleasant. You see Jesus here is saying, "I want you to look at the fruit and be able to point people to what's true and right." In other words, there are times we should be suspicious of new revelation and of people's revisionist ideas because they don't represent the historic truth of Christianity. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about this idea of the narrow road and the false teachers in his book, the Cost of Discipleship. Here's what he said. It's about the people who are the genuine followers of Jesus. He said, "It's a little band of men." Today, he'd say men or women, "The followers of Christ are separated from the rest of the world. The disciples are few in number and will always be few. The saying of Jesus forestalls all exaggerated hopes of success. Never let a disciple of Jesus pin his hopes on large numbers. Few there be. The rest of the world are many and will always be many, but they are on the road to perdition. The only comfort the disciples have in the face of this prospect is the promise of life and the eternal fellowship with Jesus." 

Now he says this, the path of discipleship is narrow, and it is fatally easy to miss one's way and to stray from the path even after years of discipleship. And then he says, it's hard to find and then he talks about what this is. He says, "It's to confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus. And at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with an infinite love of Jesus Christ, is indeed a narrow way. To believe the promise of Jesus and his followers shall possess the earth and at the same time to face our enemies, unarmed and defenseless, preferring to incur justice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way. And then to see the weakness and wrong in others and at the same time to refrain from judging them, to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed the narrow way." 

And I quote that because I find that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's story of how he took what would truly be a narrow way as a pastor in Nazi Germany, resisting the oppression of Hitler, and going to his death for his belief, has something to say to me, to you, in this day about what it means to say that we want to be relentlessly outward focused. To say, "I'm going to extend goodwill in myself to people. I'm going to invite people to this narrow way. And I want to always point people to the ultimate truth." 

And when that's true, then we can live lives in which we are saying, "I'm outward focused. Relentlessly outward focused rather than inward focused." And the way that becomes true, for me, for you, isn't just by saying, "I'm going to do these things." But by seeing how much Jesus extended goodwill to you and to me, by coming to the cross when we were sinners and in need of salvation because we deserve judgment, by seeing how much Jesus invited us to this narrow path, and how Jesus has pointed us to all that's true and right. And when that becomes what we see, then we're able to say that is how I want to live. Even in a time when turning inward becomes so normal and easy to do. We're going to take a few minutes here to talk pointedly about some of the things that are going on at Orchard Hill. 

So, we're going to cut to each of our campuses, and you're going to hear from your campus pastor and I'm going to take a few minutes here to talk to people in Wexford and online.