Latest / Redeemer Students Podcast / Matthew 7:1-29 | Build Your House on the Rock | October 4th, 2026

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Matthew 7:1-29 | Build Your House on the Rock | October 4th, 2026 · Redeemer Students Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is Matthew 7.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone then who hears the words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like the foolish man who built his house on the sand.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teachings, for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, God by all sets.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, dear Lord, um, thank you for waking us up this morning, God, and bringing us here this evening.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that as Keel comes up here to speak, Lord, that you would uh just give us eyes to see and ears to hear what you have in store for us tonight.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, hey guys.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Glad y'all are here.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Nice and cozy.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Who else is really tired from the rain?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Me?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Same.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but we're here, right?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Appropriate verse for us tonight with the storms.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um so tonight, as you can see, we are finishing the Sermon on the Mount.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've been here, then you'll know.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: If not, maybe I can fill you in.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Sermon on the Mount is it's Matthew chapter 5 through Matthew chapter 7.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus' first sermon at the very beginning of his public ministry.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of where he is laying out the groundwork of what does it mean to be a Christian, right?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to follow Jesus?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to know him?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's listed all of these different ways on how we can know him, the rules of life, and following him.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's pointed out ways that we naturally live against his law, what his law's for.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so now he's kind of landing the plane.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: He gives a few more examples and he lands the plane with the verses that AC just read for us.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And where I want to start tonight is by admitting and acknowledging that all of us, that we are not very committed people, right?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Commitment is not something that comes naturally to us.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Our culture is not a commitment-based culture, really.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: We have so many options.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're going back and forth all the way.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I know I'm speaking broadly, but I think overall it's true.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because in a world of seemingly endless options, like think about any type of options you have.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's very easy to hold a loose understanding of what it means to really commit to something, to really buy into something, to give your life even to something.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And now, commitment is different than being certain.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I know many of you have very certain beliefs, you hold your opinions very strongly, and that's good, but commitment is different.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Commitment is actually the action, the deliberate choice to follow through on something, even despite uncertainty, despite doubts sometimes.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Committing, really committing and dedicating it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: You all have heard of um of FOMO, right?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Who?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, FOMO, right?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Familiar with it?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: FOMO is the fear of missing out, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And some people experience it more strongly than others.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure some of you do, some of you don't.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the pull of FOMO, what it does is it leads you to do things maybe irrationally or against your best interest, or really to do things you don't want to do because you don't want to be the person left out or the person left behind.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: This can be for plans, plans with friends, it could be trends that people are doing or not doing experiences that you want to do or even don't want to do, but feel pulled in because of the orbit of everybody around you doing it.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to miss out, fear of missing out.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's come to my attention in recent years of another experience that resonates much deeper for me, and it's phobo.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not FOMO, but FOBO, which is the fear of better option.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's different.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's different.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what this looks like for me is a hesitancy to commit to plans, to purchases, to people, even.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the back of my mind, maybe there's a better way to spend my time, my money, my energy, fear of a better option that that kind of paralyzes you from doing anything, from committing to anything, from choosing anything.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I I love watching movies.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: I talk about them often.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard for me to have a sermon without talking about a movie.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And when I get the chance to set aside a couple hours of my day or a couple hours of my week to watch a movie, it's like a religious experience.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: I get so excited, right?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Get so excited that I finally get to do it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't just throw on a movie with no intention of finishing it.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't just throw it on to put it on the background and half pay attention.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's a big deal for me.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's movie time, right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so my zeal for movie watching has actually become a hurdle in me actually watching a lot of movies because I care about what I watch.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so deciding what to watch becomes a very important decision.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure a lot of you can relate to this, but there are times that I end up spending so much time calculating what I actually want to watch that my time window for watching something has passed and I can't watch anything at all.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: The endless scroll of going through it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I have this app that I can look at all the things on my watch list, and I sometimes will spend 30 minutes deciding exactly which one I want to watch.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, okay, this person recommended that one, or actually that one is higher rated, or this one's newer, all these things.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're not like, well, windows passed.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Not watching anything.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it and it's it's pretty pathetic, honestly, but I bet that you relate in some way, right?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: In your in your daily life, there's a level of phoba.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's what restaurant you go to, picking out what outfit to wear in the morning, pick you know, picking out your newly clothes.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's one thing that I have witnessed.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Is picking out your newly clothes can be a big fear of better option, right?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or even picking a partner to date, or even picking a partner to marry, right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: The commitments of choosing can be hard.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sign that we are a people, we are a culture that has a hard time committing.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: In his book, Dedicated, it's a great book, not written by a Christian, um, and I think that's even more impressive in some ways.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: In his book dedicated, author Pete Davis, he diagnoses this thing.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he says this I've come to believe that this is the defining characteristic of my generation, keeping our options open.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we do.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Have a hard time committing.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's what people have referred to as living life in browsing mode.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Browsing around life, all of these small decisions or really big decisions.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Floating around due to uncertainty or fear that a better option will be presented later on.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus here in his Sermon on the Mounts, at the end of it, through all of it, but especially at the end of it, he's calling us to commit deeply to a life of discipleship of following him.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a commitment he's calling us to.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: If Jesus really is God, if everything he says actually is true, then it should have radical implications on your life and how you live it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's not just saying these things to say them.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: There is a natural overflow to the realities he's talking about.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is that we are children of God.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And God has come and dwelt among us and showed us how to follow him and live him.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: There are implications of that into our daily lives as we live in the world.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: What Jesus is saying is that life following him, life following Jesus is holistic.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Every part of you, all of you.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just compartmentalized off to the side, right?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or you have your work and your school and your sports, and then you have your faith.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's in all of it.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Encapsulating all of these things.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: The common denominator, everything you do, life following Jesus is holistic.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And over and over again in this sermon, Jesus is confronting the ways that we're tempted to focus on what we're doing and what we're not doing and how we're living in all these different ways.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not the point of following him.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: He's after your heart.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's after everything you are, not just what you do or don't do, not just how you appear to others about your hearts.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's so easy to compartmentalize our faith in the different corners of our lives, but Jesus is in all of it, and he is over all of it.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So as we follow him by faith, we surrender all of our life to him, everything we are over him.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's the only way we'll find true contentment, the only way we'll find true flourishing.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's what his sermon is about.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: So to close this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus He fleshes out four to five practical applications for us, but because we don't have the time to go into every one with extended focus, it's helpful to kind of look at them into two big buckets.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: First, commitment to loving our neighbor, and second, commitment, commitment to loving our God.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to start with the first one, commitment to loving our neighbor.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: See, Jesus has been getting at this for a few chapters, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, he's talked about anger, lust, divorce, oaths, revenge.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's talked about giving to the needy, praying, fasting, anxiety, we looked at a few weeks ago, worry, provision.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: He's talking about all these very on-the-ground real life issues of being a person in the world, and how do we follow Jesus in the middle of it?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And now in chapter 7, he gives us another example.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Let me read it for us, verses 1 through 6.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Judge not that you not be judged.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that's in your own eye?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or how can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your own eye when there is even a log in yours?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: You hypocrite.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do not give dogs what is holy, do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And calling us to commit to love our neighbor, even before we love our enemies.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: To love our neighbor, Jesus condemns a very common form of hypocritical judgment of others.
• 9:47
  unknown: Right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we we've heard this term hypocrite before, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you remember from a few weeks ago, when we looked at the first half of Matthew 6, Jesus used this word to describe who?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can say it out loud if you do.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: He used it to describe the Pharisees who were using religious things, religious things in order to be noticed by others.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: This word hypocrite, we saw it, comes from the Greek word hypocrite.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what it looks like in Greek.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And originally, we talked about this last time.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was originally used to describe an actor or a stage player.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: We called these Pharisees religious actors because they were doing the things, but they were doing them for a selfish reason.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: They were acting these things outwardly instead of from the heart.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he uses that same word here in verse 5 to describe a very familiar form of judgment.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: You hypocrite, you actor.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brothers.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: What this kind of judgment does is it looks at people around you and it it nitpicks the ways that they are not perfect, while at the same time, his main point, you are completely oblivious or even in denial about your own imperfections and brokenness.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Pointing out imperfections and others, nitpicking others' lives while you yourself are guilty.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he's saying that judgment you use to others, you're raising the bar for yourself.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like the religious actors.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: See, this judgment in a way is doing a good thing, right?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: The religious actors in chapter six were actually doing good moral things.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Fasting, giving to the poor, praying to God.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: They were doing these good things, but it was with a twisted motivation to exalt themselves over their neighbor.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: In the same way, this judgment, this hypocritical judgment is nitpicking others in order to exalt yourself over them.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it'd be really easy to take these verses really simply, too simply even, and just say, you know what, you do you, and I won't judge.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: But if we do that, we miss Jesus' points.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you notice, the command is to not judge unfairly or hypocritically.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's not to not judge at all.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 2 and 3.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, with the measure you use, it will be measured against you.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Don't judge unfairly.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye but not notice the log in yours?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hypocritical.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's the judgment he's condemning here.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hypocritical judgments.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: But the commands, it's not to not judge or to not care at all.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a very popular uh self-help theory called the let them theory.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Are y'all familiar with this from a book?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest, like, I haven't done a ton of work.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not like dismissing this or bashing this all.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: But that to be said, this this theory, broadly speaking, it's a popular mindset tool created by a motivational speaker her name's Mel Robbins that teaches you to stop trying to control other people and focus entirely on yourself.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Say, I can only control myself, I'm not gonna worry about you, I'll let them do what they want to do.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, what this looks like on the grounds is when someone acts in a way that annoys you or upsets you or disappoints you, you just simply say, let them, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's the mantra, let them, aiming to be completely unbothered.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying to totally dismiss this theory, I do think there are some good things in it, but I haven't read the full book, read a little bit about it.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that the only part of Matthew 7 that we like, that that we often hear is verse 1 in the first two words that say, judge not.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we stop there.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if we follow this let them theory with the rest of this, we will stop at these first two words and say, Judge not, you do you, it doesn't affect me.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's missing actually the real point of what Jesus is getting at.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: When we get to verse five, we see that there's a way to hypocritically judge, yes.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: But there is also a way to love your neighbor, to love your brother and sister in the midst of imperfection.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: He judges you, hypocrite, verse five.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: But then the positive command: take the log out of your own eye, and then you actually be able to see clearly to what?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Take the speck out of your brother's eye.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a bad thing, he's condemning, but we can't do it hypocritically.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: See the beauty of being made in the image of God after God's likeness, unlike any other creature, and living in community with other people, other sinful, other broken, other broken, other suffering people, living with your neighbor, is that we can love one another in the midst of our brokenness.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is what human relationship is.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's loving another sinner.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is how Pastor John Stott puts it.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: It says, the command not to judge is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus does not tell us to stop being human, right?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: By He's saying suspending our critical powers, which help us distinguish from being animals.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Animals can't hold each other accountable.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: He's not telling us to stop being human and to stop caring, but to renounce the ambition to be God by setting ourselves up as the judge.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see that?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a requirement to be blind, but a plea to be generous.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Loving your neighbor, loving your brother and sister in Christ is not ignoring their sin and sweeping it under the rug, but it's also not acting as a critical fault finder who's looking to condemn them.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: But Jesus knows that this tension is hard.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And in our heart, there's a whole mix of motivations, and he knows that our natural tendency is probably not going to be sacrificial love.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: He knows that we would rather detach ourselves from the messiness of the world or to judge and condemn the world harshly, yet he's calling us into a loving commitment to love our neighbor, right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's someone that comes to mind where you know that person's hard to love.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: So how do we do this?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: What's Jesus' advice?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is what he says in verses 7 through 11.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Ask and it will be given to you.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Seek and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, the one who knocks it will be opened.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or which one of or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, we'll give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: His advice, how do we love our neighbor?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: How do we do the things he's calling us to do?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Pray to God to grant you a love that seeks the well-being of others.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Pray to God to give you a heart in his spirits that has come alive to the things of Jesus, that is not natural in its sin and brokenness.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: See, we don't have this love on our own.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Our hearts are self-interested.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the call is to ask that the Lord would supply us for his love.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Seek him and seek his kingdom that loves the unlovable.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Knock on his heavenly door and rely on the Spirit of God to love through you.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's not calling you to do it on your own.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's not calling you to muster up perfection in your heart.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Ask and you will receive.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone who asks receives.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Those who seek find.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: See, I've always had a hard time with the command to love your neighbor because it always felt so impossible.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you felt that way.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: But see, this is the key.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: We are not called to love with our own corrupted love, but we're called to love with the love of God that has invaded our being and loves on our behalf.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I once heard the advice from a pastor.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: He says, to love your neighbor in faith.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just think about that phrase.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Love your neighbor in faith.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, what he does when he knows he needs to love his neighbor, when he wants to judge, when he feels himself being hypocritical, he says, Don't wait to move into the action of loving your neighbor until the feeling stirs up or you know your motivations are perfect, but actually approach your neighbor in faith that the Spirit of God will love them through you.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: What that looks like is going up to someone saying, I'm gonna have a hard time loving that person.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And as you're walking up to them, praying to God, knocking on the door of heaven and saying, Help me love this person.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Help me love my neighbor, give me a love that's not my own.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, in the context of Jesus' command here, with these two things together, what this might look like, I kind of want to walk through it.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a friend or a brother or sister in faith, and you notice that something seems off or out of step, and you have a hard time loving them, you know that you maybe need to take a speck out of their own eye.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Here's kind of the steps that Jesus is asking us to do.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: First, stop and ask the Spirit to examine your hearts and expose any hypocritical judgments, any corrupted motivation that may be there.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Ask the Spirit to remove the log from your eye.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Second, to, if you see that, repent of your sin and seek God, go to God and His love and grace to you.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Know that you're forgiven.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Ask Him to remove it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, pray that the Spirit of God will love your brother or sister through you as you lovingly approach them in faith.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Take the speck out of your brother's eye.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's the command.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Help your brother and sister, love your brother and sister, but do it after first going to God and then praying on their behalf.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And do you do you see how in all of this Jesus is calling us to engage in the life of our neighbors and all in all of the mess of our life, all of the mess of our friends' lives, instead of just denying it or judging it or withdrawing from it?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see that?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: See, commitment to loving our neighbor, it overlaps.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: It actually overflows from our commitment to loving and being loved by God.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's what he's getting at.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: So commitment to love your neighbor, and secondly, commitment to loving our God.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So for the rest of the sermon in verses 13 through 29, Jesus lays out kind of four sets of options for our lives.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: We can't go through them all, but it's you have the wide the wide way and the narrow way, you have the false teacher, the true teacher, the unknown disciples, the known disciples, the sand foundation and the rock foundation, all of these choices, option A, option B.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: These options laid before us.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's interesting because if you remember the diagnosis earlier, it's that we're often uncertain, uncommitted, fearing and a better option, being hesitant to commit, and yet Jesus is saying, There's a choice before you.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: The call of Jesus in all these examples is to place our faith in him, to commit to a life of surrender and faith, to stand firm on his promises, not our own works.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: He sets it up clearly.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: There are two ways to live your life.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: The first example he starts, I think, is the best one and then kind of sets up the argument for us.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have the wide gate and the narrow gate.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Walk through the wide gate, the path of least resistance, or the narrow gate that leads to life.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Look at verses 13 and 14.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Enter by the narrow gate.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: For the gate is wide, and the way is easy that leads to destruction.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Those who enter by it are many.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: For the gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: What he's saying here is that in our sin, in our brokenness, we we won't just stumble upon a life of following Jesus.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't come naturally to us.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're born like everybody else.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're born walking the easy and wide path, ignorant of God, rebellious, blind to him.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: The wide path is the default.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: The wide path is what we are naturally bent to follow.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Choosing the wide path, the easy path takes no decision on our own.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's what we will do naturally.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: But when Jesus, in his grace and his love for you, makes your heart alive through his spirit.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're given a new heart, you're given a new life.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when that choice is laid before you, the question is, are you going to keep walking in the old way?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or now that you see the new way, are you going to walk that way instead?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's what Paul talks about in Ephesians 4, where he says, putting off your old self, which belongs to the former, the old, the sinful, the natural manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and instead to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, put on the new self, created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Our old self is broken, deceitful, uncommitted, unable to commit to God.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: But our new self, we have a choice.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Are we going to keep walking in the old way?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Are we going to step into the life that has been fought for us?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: He goes on and teaches about false teachers, showing how false teachers are going to teach a false gospel, denying the sufficiency of Jesus, denying the enoughness of Jesus.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: These false teachers, they're going to tell you to do the opposite of Jesus.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Rely on yourself.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Pull up your bootstraps, do better, work harder.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: God will favor you more.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: The false disciples, they live a false gospel, placing their faith in their works to save them.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: The call is to commit to loving and being loved by your God, to knowing that He's enough for you.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: When you walk in this new reality, you're not living based on what you do or don't do.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus, our Lord.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So when we land, where Jesus lands with what AC read for us in verse 24, we have a better understanding of what he's talking about when he talks about the firm foundation of the gospel.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Let's read together.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone then who hears these words of mine, right?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: The disciples then, the people there, us today, and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because it had been founded on the rock.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like the foolish man who builds his house in the sand.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew, and beat against that house, and it fell, and the f and great was the fall of it.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: The final choice, what are you building your life on?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's the question I want to leave you with.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: What foundation are you building your life on?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna ponder it in small group, hopefully, as well.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Are you placing faith in yourself?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: When you think about what flourishing looks like, what thriving looks like, what life looks like, what joy is, does it come from yourself?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Does it come from the right circumstances, the right friend group, enough status, enough success?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe being morally superior than others.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: See, the thing about this choice, the thing about a sandy foundation, is that it actually works until until the storm comes.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: A house built on sand will will stand as long as the weather's good, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you live your life finding security and temporary, worldly, self-centered things, it it may work.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it has been working.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: It might even work for a really long time, but there will be a day in this life or when you meet Jesus face to face that the foundation of worldly sand will collapse.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you notice when Jesus is talking, these two houses they experience the same things.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: The same winds, the same floods that beat on the house.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the house that stands is the one that is built on a firm foundation, not one that rises and falls with the circumstances around it.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: The rock of Jesus will never fail.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: The foundation we build our life on is that we are secure in the love of Jesus.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: We do everything, loving our neighbor, following his commandments.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: We do everything out of that security.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're not looking for what we do to give us security, but we live out of what security we already have been given.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: The rock of Jesus will never fail.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: No storm can shake it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: They will come.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Storms will come, but we have security in the rock of Jesus.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the call as we go into a time of worship again is to just collapse in the grace of Jesus.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: We say that all the time.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Take inventory of the ways that maybe you haven't been taking your faith seriously.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe take inventory of the way that you've been building your foundation on other things, looking for other things to give you happiness, to give you security, to give you peace.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Turn from the wide way that's so natural to us, to myself, and commit yourself to a life of loving your God and letting your God love you collapse into that grace.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus, you are our foundation, the rock of ages.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: You have proved your faithfulness to us over and over again.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And Lord, I pray for the person who maybe hasn't experienced a storm, Lord, who maybe has not had the sandy foundation exposed.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray now that you would open our eyes to see the places in our lives that we are placing faith in other things besides you.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Even good things, Father, that we're making them idols, we are worshiping them instead of the Creator who gives it.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: And Lord, we can look, we can look to heaven and know that we will not falter because our faith is in you, not ourselves, not this world, not around us.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, we commit to you, we take you seriously, we take our lives seriously, our faith seriously.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, we love you.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: We love our neighbor, Lord.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Help us give us a love to love others around us.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, you say the world will know us by our love.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: I pray that be true for us in the room.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Pray for good conversation tonight.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I pray now as we come to you, we come to you honestly.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, you would search our hearts, expose things in us that need to be exposed.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And above all, Lord, comfort us in the places that we need it.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Pray all this in the name of Jesus.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.