Sermon - "Do You Know Jesus?" Pr. David Hewitt, May 31-June 1, 2008

     Someone told me once that they heard that a man arrived at the pearly gates of heaven after his death, but St. Peter told him he couldn't come in. The man pleaded, so St. Peter said, "OK, did you do any good deeds that would qualify you to get into heaven."  "Yes," the man said. "One time I saw a group of Hell's Angels bikers beating up a woman, so I pulled my car over, got out and hit the biggest guy with a chain. Then I kicked another huge guy in the face. Then I threatened the rest of them with their lives if they didn't leave this woman be and go away right now."  "Wow," said St. Peter. "When did this happen?"  "About three minutes ago," said the man.

     Did you notice what Peter asked? -"Did you do any good deeds," said St. Peter, "that would qualify you to get into heaven?"  In other words - "Let me see your spiritual resume."  So, I ask you, what's YOUR spiritual resume? What have YOU done to get to heaven, to earn your way into eternal life?  I remember - I think it was about two years ago-I went out into the streets Carmel and, with my trusty cameraman, Bill Reilly, we videotaped responses to questions about heaven. One of my questions was, "How does a person get to heaven?" and everyone we talked to said something along the lines of, "Well, you know, you are a good person.  You do good things to get there."

     But Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of My Father 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 great deeds of power in Your name?' Then I," Jesus said, "will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers." (Matthew 7:21-23)

     Whoa. What are you talking about, Jesus?  We don't understand. Casting out demons - ‘healing people,' basically - which is something You, Jesus, did, over and over again - that's doing something BAD? And then Jesus adds this: "Everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them" - does them - "will be like a wise man who builds his house on rock." (see Matthew 7:24-29)  So we might say to Jesus, "Jesus, at first glance You make no sense!  First You say that only people who DO the will of Your Father will get to heaven, and then You call people who DO good things ‘evil-DO-ers,' and then You turn right around and tell us that if we listen to you and DO what You say - act on what You say - then we are blessed!" As someone once said to Me after reading this passage: "Pastor, I'm a bit confused." Aren't we all?

     Okay. When reading the Bible - especially passages that seem difficult, like this one - it's important to check our assumptions at the door, and proceed through the passage again, very carefully.  Do that, and the hefty reward of spiritual insight awaits you!  As we look at the "Lord! Lord!" section, note this: there are not one, but two groups of people that Jesus is talking about.  The first group is the people who are just SAY-ers, and not DO-ers - the kind of people that James complained about when he wrote, "Be doers of the Word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves" (Ja. 1:22) - He's telling us not to be people who hear and just pay lip-service to the Gospel for this one hour in worship, and then go out & ignore the commands of Jesus the other one hundred & eleven (111) waking hours of the week!

     Now the second group is much more concerned with doing great deeds for God. Remember, they said, "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?"  Now at least this group knows that Christians are not supposed to just sit around and do nothing!  But this group, as St. Paul would say, is animated by a misplaced zeal. They still are trying to earn their way into heaven. And what, we should say, is wrong with that? Doesn't God want good deeds to be done? Doesn't God want to defeat evil and reclaim the world He has made?

     Yes, is the reply - but God wants to be in charge of that effort, because HE knows the best way that good should be done. He knows the way to go FAR better than we do, for OUR ideas for improving the world are often tainted with selfish motives. As the old saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" - and that is because our intentions are often not made with God in mind, nor, sometimes, are they made with the best interests of the people we want to help in mind. For instance, our junior highers have been asking us to give money for the purchase of specially-made water purifier buckets to distribute to the poor people of Haiti, who have no clean water.  What if, instead, we realized we could purchase-with the same amount of money-many, many MORE plain old buckets for the Haitians to use to carry water in?  Those thousands of plain old buckets might look pretty good on our spiritual resume - might be something to brag about - but they will do the people of Haiti far LESS good - and more HARM - than the purifier buckets that God has led us to give them.  You know, it's like the old saying, "Giving the man a fish" is not as helpful as "helping the man to fish for himself" - though giving the man a fish feels better to US, to US givers. Why? Because it makes us feel more powerful. That man will still look to us for more fish; he remains dependent upon us. We remain in control. And we continue to build up our resume.

     But notice I said that we are giving special purifier buckets that GOD has led us to give. We never would have thought of helping the Haitians in this wonderful way. But God spoke through other Christians to us. This is the kind of idea that only comes from Jesus, from knowing Jesus well enough to listen to Him. And that's the key, brothers and sisters, for when Jesus rebukes the people who "did mighty deeds" in His name, He gave them a reason for His rebuke: "I never knew you." "I never knew you."  In other words, these people never allowed Jesus to come into their hearts.  These people would not listen to Him. They would not read His Bible, His Word, and listen. They would not pray to God every day, and listen.  They would not listen first, before they acted.  They never met Jesus. Have you?

     Lutheran Pastor Kelly Fryer has something to say about this:

"I am not exactly sure how to say this in a way that doesn't sound...harsh. But I wonder if we're not very good at evangelism because we're not exactly clear about the fact that we've been met by Jesus. I think it just might be a faith issue. There's something about being met by Jesus that changes your life, and makes you want to share that with everybody. So it begs the question: if we're not sharing that with everybody, have we been met by Jesus?    What happens when the Word [of God] has been proclaimed? Jesus comes. What happens when the sacrament of baptism is shared? Jesus comes. What happens when we receive communion? We receive Jesus. This is an evangelical event.  Have you met Jesus?  Well, did you hear the Word today? Did you hear that this bread, this wine is the Body and Blood of Jesus, given for you? Then you were met by Jesus!  It's not like we have to go racing around the world looking for Jesus - Jesus comes to us! There's that simple image -right? - of an arrow that comes down. God always comes down. God comes down in the bread and wine; God comes down in the water of baptism; God comes down in the Word that's spoken; God comes down in the community that we share as Christians; God came down in Jesus - God always comes down!  There's not anything that we can do to flip that arrow around and make our way up to God - it's a gift.  SO: have you met Jesus?  Have we been met by Jesus?  Yes."

     Have you met Jesus?  You know, He's an amazing person - by far the most amazing, incredible, loving, wonderful person I have ever met.  He's my Savior; He's my Master. He always knows what's best for me to think and do, though sometimes I forget that... Sometimes I don't listen to Him; sometimes I ignore Him.  There's a part of me that does that, and I become either the first kind of ‘Lord-Lord' person - the hearer and not the doer of His commands...or I become the second kind of ‘Lord-Lord' person - the one who does good for selfish reasons and wants full credit for it in others' eyes - in God's eyes. Either way it's the old sinner, the old Adam inside of me, rebelling against God. I still struggle with that person - and so probably, do you.  Jesus said there's a man who built his house on rock and another who built HIS house on sand, and they're BOTH inside of us - the new Adam or Eve on the rock, and the old Adam or Eve on the sand.

     You know, Friday night Diane and I were coming home from a night out together, the kids were alone at home.  At 10:30 p.m. we stepped out of the theater to hear some earsplitting tornado sirens in downtown Indy.  As we drove onto I-70, the wind and rain whipped against our van. It was hard to see.  We heard over the radio that some of the worst of the storm was up by our home. We thought of the kids. Diane contacted them by cell phone. They were all right.  But before we got a hold of them I was praying for them, which was good, but I was also thinking how stupid and horrible I would feel if a tornado got to them before we did.  You see, that old Adam inside here, the man who built his house on the sand, began to dominate my thoughts. He got up and began to say to me, "You lose those kids, and it's the end of Your trust in God - at least for a while. He's GOT to protect them - or the deal is off between you and Him!"  And then the good Adam inside me -the new person Christ is making - went over to the old Adam and said, "SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!"  And you know, He did!

     You see, Jesus knew that the real test of the genuineness of our faith - the test of why we do the good that we do - comes when difficulties like that emerge in our lives. That's when we find out about our faith: is our house built on rock or sand?  Have we met Jesus, and do we know and trust and believe in Him, so that we can place our lives in His hands?  That we can follow Him, and only do the good that HE wants us to do?  Jesus says that the man who built on rock, "hears these words of Mine and ACTS ON them"?  Well, what does Jesus say we should DO first?  One time the people asked Him, "What must we do to perform the works of God?" And Jesus replied, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom God has sent." (John 6:29)  What must we do, they asked? Believe in Me, He said, and all the rest will follow.  Jesus wants us to hear and believe that He has saved us, that He will always love and take care of us, and then He wants us to "act on" that faith by listening to Him and being willing to be led BY Him into the right "good deeds," building our house on solid rock...on the firm foundation of Jesus' love....building the house of our entire lives on the reality that we have surrendered to Him, allowing Him to accept us and know us through and through...so that He can never say to us ever again, "I never knew you."   Amen!