So before you climb into the pulpit this week, where your spiritual-gift persona is on full display, or if you are reading this text as a teacher or simply for study, I would urge you to turn the text into a mirror to let it ask you a simple question: Am I the false prophet of this text? Am I the person who exercises gifts well, who does things as a leader that many admire, but who is also the person who in my private life, in my home, in the quiet hours of the day, is not following what Jesus has taught in this Sermon? If that is the case, then I would urge you to fall to your knees, confess your sins, wait on the Spirit of God to cleanse your heart, and ask God to quicken in you the way of Jesus—the way of doing what he calls us to do.
Works Tell the Truth
Sensitive theologians are sometimes nervous about the way Jesus talks, and sometimes we need to exercise a special caution, but we need to trust that Jesus said what he wanted. No one is saved by works, of course; but everyone is judged by works because works are the inevitable life of the one who surrenders to, trusts in, and follows Jesus. Thus, you can tell the true charismatically gifted leader from the false by their fruit (obedience to Jesus).
This leads to a fundamental question: What kind of good works? And then to a deeper question under that one: How many do we have to do? When we turn Jesus’ observations about fruit-as-works into quantitative counting, we are missing the point. Jesus’ Ethic from Above and Beyond points to a problem: disobedient charismatic leaders—that is, those who are not loving of others, who do not show mercy to those in need, who are not meek and kind, and who are abusive at home. In theological categories, this text is not about soteriology but about moral integrity and a method of detecting where we stand when it comes to genuine discipleship.
So let’s think of the sorts of fruit that Jesus would have had in mind and ask ourselves if they are visible in us. Do we show mercy to those who are in need? Do we care for the marginalized, unlike the rich man who did not concern himself with the poor man at his gate (Luke 16:19–31)? Do our neighbors think we are gracious and loving or obstinate and judgmental? Do we nurture love and patience in our own children? Do we serve our spouse as Christ serves the church? Is our charismatic gift so important that menial tasks have to be done by others? Or, put differently, do we expect our spouse to do all the dirty work around the home so we can carry on our holy business? Do we know the names of our congregants or are they “BIPs” (butts-in-pews)? Do those “under” us delight in working with us, or do they fear us?
No one is perfect, of course. But the charismatically gifted person is to be known for his or her fruit. And the fundamental fruit of the New Testament, especially for Jesus, is the Jesus Creed or the Golden Rule—and that is loving others and doing for others what we would want done for us. So, we ask, what have you done for others today? (Other than exercise your gift.)
But Works Are Not Infallible
Jesus’ method of inspection is not the only one. There are other tests for the false prophet, but this text is not primarily about how to detect a false prophet. Instead, it is designed to probe into the life of the charismatically gifted leader in order to get him or her to realize that gifts are not enough, that the fruit of love in life is what matters most. If we take this as its rhetorical intent, we need also to recognize that wide-ranging conclusions drawn from this fruit inspection may miss the mark.
Reduced now: works will tell us if the charismatic leader is living right. But works can be faked too, so that works alone are not entirely adequate. Luther opined in his discussions of this text about how the Catholic leaders could be seen as folks who did good things, but time would eventually manifest their character; Calvin did the same.10 Many have followed their lead to observe that while this test is more than adequate in making us examine ourselves and pointing out how some charismatic leaders don’t have the life to back up their claims, sometimes works are inadequate as a test. Turned inside out then: works sometimes indicate a distorted theology, sometimes the attempt to earn favor with God, sometimes a personality disorder, sometimes little more than the habits of a former commitment, and sometimes a burst of enthusiasm.
Thus, let us not overdo works to the point that all that really matters is works. That’s misusing what Jesus is saying here. One more time: the charismatic leader needs to ask if she or her exhibits behaviors expected for Jesus’ followers.
Simple Acts, Extraordinary Powers
Simple acts are more valuable than extraordinary powers or spiritual gifts. For Jesus there is a categorical difference between charismatic giftedness and the ordinary fruit of love, compassion, and mercy. Perhaps we need to learn to ask ourselves, particularly if we are gifted leaders, if we value our gifts more than love, if we value the performance of a gift for the good of others or the gift of love for the good of others. When Jesus used “fruit” over against mighty charismatic gifts, he was getting at what mattered most. Do you show love to your neighbors, to your enemies, and to all those who happen to be on your path? Jesus is saying here that if you don’t do the latter, he doesn’t particularly care about your charismatic giftedness.
What Jesus is getting at is this: leaders are first of all followers of Jesus before they are leaders. If they forget that, they will hear these words of Jesus as a searching judgment.
One of my favorite South Africans is pastor Trevor Hudson, who serves a church in Benoni near Johannesburg. Trevor is in some ways South Africa’s Dallas Willard or Richard Foster, focusing as he does on the inner work of the Spirit in spiritual formation. Trevor’s ministry to the homeless and suffering in South Africa is well-known, but he tells the story of someone who makes what Jesus wants from us—ordinary acts of love and not just glorious giftedness—come to life.11 It is the story of a West Indian woman in London who had just been told her husband had been tragically killed in a street accident; the woman suffered for days.
She sank into the corner of the sofa and sat there rigid and unhearing. For a long time her terrible trancelike look embarrassed her family, friends, and officials who came and went. Then the schoolteacher of one of her children, an Englishwoman, called and, seeing how things were, went and sat down beside her.
The teacher put an arm around the tight shoulders of the grieving wife. A white cheek touched the brown. Then as the unrelenting pain seeped through to her, the newcomer’s tears began to flow quietly, falling on their two hands linked in the woman’s lap. For a long time that was all that was happening. Then at last the West Indian woman began to sob. Still not a word was spoken. After a while the visitor got up and left, leaving her monetary contribution to help the family meet its immediate practical needs.
Trevor heard this story from John Taylor, who then with insight observes how such an experience needs to be interpreted. “This is the embrace of God, his kiss of life. That is the embrace of his mission, and of our intercession.” This is what Jesus wants from us: not our gifts but our life, not what brings us honor but what serves the neighbor.
At the judgment Jesus will not ask us about our gifts. He will ask if our cheeks have touched the cheeks of those who suffer, if our hands have held the hands of those who endure pain, and if our gifts are directed at those who most need them.
Notes
1. KNT: “Master, Master.”
2. Pressing hard a unified connection of 7:15–20 and 7:21–23 needs to be tempered by the observation that Luke has these two sections in different places in his gospel (cf. 6:43–45, 46, and 13:26–27). This may well explain why Matthew 7:15a has “false prophets” while 7:21–23 includes exorcists and miracle workers with the false prophets. In other words, Matthew may have brought together two originally distinct sections.
3. See 24:23–25; 1 John 4:1–3. For a technical study, G. N. Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth: A Magician and a False Prophet Who Deceived God’s People?” in Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ: Essays on the Historical Jesus and New Testament Christology (eds. J. B. Green and M. Turner; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 164–80.
> 4. A person can be called a heretic only if that teacher of doctrine has been brought before a council, explained his or her errors, comprehended the errors, and refuses to change. There are a number of good studies, including H. O. J. Brown, Heresies: The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy and Orthodoxy from the Apostles to the Present (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988); G. R. Evans, A Brief History of Heresy (Blackwell Brief Histories of Religion; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003); B. Quash and M. Ward, Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe (London: SPCK/Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007).
5. Allison, Sermon on the Mount, 165–66; Luz, Matthew 1–7, 376–77.
6. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 378; France, Matthew, 291.
7. Cf. Matt 25:11; Luke 8:24; 10:41; Acts 9:4, where the double use of a vocative occurs.
8. This is the meaning of “on that day”; cf. Matt 24:19, 22, 29, 36; 26:29. For the rabbis, this term often referred to “the age to come.” For references, see Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:714.
9. See comment in the discussion of 7:1–5.
10. Luther, Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, 268–80; Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, 1:239–41.
11. Trevor Hudson, Holy Spirit Here and Now (Cape Town: Struik Christian Books, 2012), 171–72.
Chapter 23
Matthew 7:24–27
LISTEN to the Story
24“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Listening to the text in the story: Genesis 6–7; Deuteronomy 28; 30:15–20; Psalm 1; Proverbs 10:25; Ezekiel 13:10–16; 33:30–32; Matthew 21:28–32; 25:1–13.
This is the third element of the invitation at the end of the Sermon (7:13–14, 7:15–23, 7:24–27). This part of Jesus’ invitation is a parable, a story that summons us to imagine a different world and, as a result of that imagining, to become different people called to work for a kingdom world now.1 Jesus wants us to imagine two kinds of builders as two sorts of responses to the Sermon. Contrasts are a favorite way to gain an audience’s attention in order to press the moral imperative, and this is even more the case when, with Israelites, one is delivering a word from God. That is, we have here again an Ethic from Above.
So we go back to Deuteronomy 28; 30:15–20 and to Psalm 1 for classic depictions, but the Sermon itself is filled with two-option thinking: Pharisees versus followers of Jesus (5:17–20), hypocrites versus followers of Jesus (6:1–18), good treasure versus bad treasure (6:19–21), good eyes versus bad eyes (6:22–23), God versus mammon (6:24), anxiety versus seeking the kingdom (6:33)—and this all swirls into a vortex of warnings in 7:13–27: broad way versus narrow way, good tree versus bad tree, doing versus not doing.
EXPLAIN the Story
There is no mystery in understanding this parable. First, we get a parable about the person who both hears and practices (does) what Jesus has said in the Sermon (7:24–25). Second, we get a parable about the person who hears but does not practice the Sermon’s teachings (7:26–27). The two parts are symmetrical:
Hearing and doing versus hearing and not doing
Wise versus foolish
House not collapsing versus house collapsing
The parable rhetorically warns listeners what will happen to them in the final judgment. This issue of hearing and not doing is embedded in Israel’s Story (cf. Ezek 33:30–32). There is nothing new here.
The Wise: Hearing and Doing
Instead of offering just a parable, Jesus begins each parabolic unit by telling his listeners exactly what sort of person he has in mind. The first person is described as one hearing and doing.2 That is, they are sitting around Jesus as he gives this teaching, and they are the ones who hear and do what he says. One thinks here of the parable of the two sons (21:28–32) and the wise and foolish virgins (25:1–13). As there, so here: one is approved and one is not approved.
The approved one is “wise” (7:24), a term used in other places for those who are finally approved by God (24:45). Wise men, when building homes, find a rock-solid foundation on which to build.3 I’m thinking of Nazareth, which is up in the hills but full of rock-solid material on which to build; of Sepphoris, where Jesus may have worked as a carpenter; and of Capernaum, where Jesus established his ministry and where the closer one got to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the more likely it was that one would find a sandier consistency.
At work in this image of Jesus is perhaps a village along a wadi that in a sudden rainstorm can flood the homes along its path. Or does Jesus have in mind the temple?4 It is difficult to know if Jesus has one specific place in mind, so we should perhaps focus on the general wisdom one gains from years of building: build on rock and the building will last; build on the sandier soil along the wadi and you will find your home in a heap. Storms are sometimes used as imagery for the trials of life (Ps 69:2), but here the storm is imagery for a person’s entire life in the presence of God’s final judgment (cf. Gen 6–7; Prov 10:25; Ezek 13:10–16; Nah 1:7–8).5
The Foolish: Hearing and Not Doing
The second person is the one, and again the language invites us to imagine this happening before our eyes, who hears the Sermon’s teachings and does not do them. Instead of being wise, this person is “foolish,” a term deep in Israel’s Wisdom tradition (like Proverbs) and at times found on the lips of Jesus (see Matt 5:22; 23:17; 25:2, 3, 8). Jesus compares such a person to one who builds a house on top of sand, and when storms come, again with their rains and rising streams and winds, it collapses into destruction.
There is little dispute what these two consequences are: the first one enters the kingdom of God (cf. 7:13–14, 21) while the second one is destroyed (7:13, 27), is cast into the fire (7:19), and is separated from Jesus (7:23). The word in 7:27 is ptōsis (where it is a “great crash”) while the word in 7:13 is apōleia, the more common word for “destruction.” These are words of final disapproval from God in the great judgment, and one would be wise to avoid thinking these terms define the nature of the final condition (annihilationism or eternal conscious punishment).
LIVE the Story
Few have the courage of my friend and colleague Klyne Snodgrass to say what seems obvious from this text: “Anyone who hears Jesus’ words and does not do them is a fool.”6 As Klyne has pointed out in a lengthy article, the word “hearing” often means “obeying.”7 I will pluck some courage here to urge us all to prevent our children from singing the song about this parable in way that creates fun and jollity. It may be fun for children to “all fall down,” but to play with destruction is to do just that. The parable is one of the severest in the entire Bible.
The Aim of the Sermon Is Doing
So we come to the end of this Sermon and the invitation, the summons, or the challenge of Jesus is not simply to accept him or to believe in him (as if rational acceptance was his fundamental mission). The fundamental aim of the Sermon is to present Jesus and his kingdom vision for his kingdom people, and the only acceptable response to this Sermon is to embrace him, to accept the challenge; that means to do what he says. The Sermon is a Messianic Ethic from Above and Beyond, and it is designed for obedience by the messianic community. Ten times in 7:13–27 the word “do” or “practice” appears: 7:17 (2x), 18 (2x), 19, 21, 22 (negatively), 23 (synonym), 24, 26. The aim of the Sermon rhetorically was for Jesus to tell his disciples what he expected of his own and to get them to do what he said. But this isn’t just Sermon stuff; I call our attention to other similar expressions in the gospel of Matthew, including 3:8, 10; 5:19, 7:12; 21:28–32, 43; 25:31–46.
“Doing” and “practicing” are
more ordinary terms for the more substantial term often found in Matthew: righteousness. And this term too is important for comprehending the Sermon: righteousness (dikaios, dikaiosynē), a term describing behaviors that conform to God’s will and, in particular for Jesus, behaviors that conform to the will of God as he teaches it for the kingdom. Thus, we think of 3:15; 5:6, 10, 20; 6:1, 33; 21:32. Jesus is calling his disciples into the way of righteousness.
Jesus is not alone; Matthew is not alone. Two other texts are worthy of our attention. The apostle Paul, when describing the ultimate aim of the Scriptures, says they are revealed to transform us:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:16–17)
To be sure, the apostle was not thinking particularly of the Sermon but instead the Scriptures of Israel. Yet what he says applies all the more to the New Testament: the aim of the Scriptures is to transform us into people who are ready to do every good work. I can think of no more appropriate words for the aim of this Sermon.
And Jesus’ brother James says much the same:
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. (Jas 1:22–25)
Sermon on the Mount Page 39