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The True Meaning of _I Never Knew You_ Will Change How You Read Matthew 7_23 · Bible stories

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Speaker 1: QR code to donate directly. Thank you for helping us
0:27
Speaker 1: keep these Bible Stories going. Jesus ends his most famous
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Speaker 1: sermon with a sentence that has frightened Christians for 2,000 years.
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Speaker 1: Speaking as the judge of the last day, he tells
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Speaker 1: a group of confident religious people, I never knew you.
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Speaker 1: Most people hear that and assume it means a believer
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Speaker 1: can spend a lifetime trying his best and still be
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Speaker 1: refused at the end because of some rule he was
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Speaker 1: never told about. The sentence is doing something different. The
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Speaker 1: word Jesus chooses for new is the word for a
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Speaker 1: shared life between two people, and the word he places
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Speaker 1: in front of it closes off every moment that ever existed.
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Speaker 1: He is describing people who were never inside the relationship
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Speaker 1: at all, not people who were put out of it.
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Speaker 1: That matters if you have ever lain awake wondering whether
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Speaker 1: God still counts you as his. It matters if you
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Speaker 1: have ever finished a prayer and felt like you were
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Speaker 1: talking into an empty room. And there is something in
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Speaker 1: this sermon that almost nobody connects. The same teacher who says,
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Speaker 1: I never knew you, at the end of chapter 7,
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Speaker 1: spent most of chapter 6 telling people to do their
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Speaker 1: best work where absolutely no one could see it. Those
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Speaker 1: two instructions are one instruction. When you see how they
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Speaker 1: fit together, this verse stops being a trapdoor under your
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Speaker 1: feet and becomes the clearest description of Christianity in the
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Speaker 1: whole sermon. The Sermon on the Mount runs from Matthew
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Speaker 1: chapter 5 through Matthew chapter 7. It is the longest
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Speaker 1: unbroken stretch of Jesus teaching anywhere in the Gospels, and
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Speaker 1: by the time he reaches the end of it, he
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Speaker 1: has taken almost everything his listeners believed about God and
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Speaker 1: turned it inward. Murder becomes anger. Adultery becomes the look.
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Speaker 1: Giving becomes a question of who you wanted watching. Prayer
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Speaker 1: becomes a matter of what you do when the door
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Speaker 1: is shut. Then the sermon reaches its final stretch and
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Speaker 1: the tone changes. Jesus stops explaining and starts dividing. There
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Speaker 1: are two gates, one wide and one narrow. There are
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Speaker 1: two kinds of trees, and you tell them apart by
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Speaker 1: the fruit that hangs on them. There are two sets
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Speaker 1: of people at the judgment. There are two builders, two houses,
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Speaker 1: and one storm that finds out which is which. Every
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Speaker 1: image in the last part of the sermon comes in pairs,
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Speaker 1: and every pair asks the listener to stand on one
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Speaker 1: side or the other. That is the ground our verse
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Speaker 1: is standing on. It is not a stray warning dropped
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Speaker 1: into a gentle talk. It is the third of four warnings,
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Speaker 1: and it is the sharpest. Here is how it opens.
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Speaker 1: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter
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Speaker 1: the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does
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Speaker 1: the will of my Father who is in heaven. Matthew
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Speaker 1: chapter 7 verse 21 says, Slow down on the doubled name.
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Speaker 1: In the Bible, saying a name twice is the sound
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Speaker 1: of closeness. God calls from the burning bush, Moses, Moses.
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Speaker 1: He calls the boy in the temple, Samuel, Samuel. Jesus
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Speaker 1: himself says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, over the city he is weeping for.
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Speaker 1: Doubling a name is what you do when you are
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Speaker 1: already inside someone's life. So the people in this verse
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Speaker 1: speak to Jesus with warmth, with certainty, with the whole
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Speaker 1: vocabulary of someone who assumes he belongs. And that is
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Speaker 1: exactly the group Jesus says will be turned away. There
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Speaker 1: is something else here that gets missed, because we are
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Speaker 1: so used to it. Look at who is doing the deciding.
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Speaker 1: Jesus speaks the verdict himself, in the first person, and
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Speaker 1: he is the one on the seat. He is the
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Speaker 1: one who lets people into the kingdom, or keeps them out,
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Speaker 1: and he says so in front of a crowd of
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Speaker 1: Jewish farmers and fishermen who knew perfectly well that only
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Speaker 1: one person in the universe holds that job. Matthew tells
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Speaker 1: us how the crowd took it. They were amazed because
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Speaker 1: he taught as one who had authority and not as
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Speaker 1: their teachers of the law. The scribes quoted other men.
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Speaker 1: This man quoted no one. Then the scene sharpens into
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Speaker 1: something you can almost see. Many will say to me
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Speaker 1: on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in
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Speaker 1: your name, and in your name drive out demons, and
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Speaker 1: in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell
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Speaker 1: them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.
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Speaker 1: Matthew chapter 7 verses 22 and 23. Read what they
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Speaker 1: hand him, not attendance, not tithing, not fasting twice a
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Speaker 1: week or keeping the Sabbath or memorizing the law. They
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Speaker 1: hand him prophecy, deliverance, and miracles, which were the three
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Speaker 1: most powerful things a person could possibly be known for
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Speaker 1: in that world. If you had done any one of
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Speaker 1: them in a first-century village, people would have talked about
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Speaker 1: you for the rest of your life, and they did
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Speaker 1: all of it in his name. That phrase appears three
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Speaker 1: times in a single sentence, which is not the way
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Speaker 1: people normally talk. They are pressing it. Among these people,
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Speaker 1: a name carried real power. To speak in a man's
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Speaker 1: name was to stand in for him, borrowing weight that
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Speaker 1: was never yours to begin with. So these people are
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Speaker 1: telling him they walked out into the world, wearing his
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Speaker 1: authority like a coat, and it worked. Now watch the
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Speaker 1: part almost everyone reads past. Jesus never tells them they
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Speaker 1: are lying. The prophecies are not called invented, the demons
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Speaker 1: are not said to have stayed, the miracles are not
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Speaker 1: exposed as tricks. He lets the entire list stand, and
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Speaker 1: then he says he never knew them. That should land
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Speaker 1: somewhere deep. It means a person can stand in front
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Speaker 1: of a room and say true things about God. A
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Speaker 1: person can pray for someone who then gets better. A
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Speaker 1: person can be the one everybody calls when something is
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Speaker 1: spiritually wrong, and can be genuinely useful to God's work
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Speaker 1: in the world, and still be a stranger to God himself.
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Speaker 1: Gifts are given. Relationship is entered. They are not the
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Speaker 1: same door. And if you have ever sat in a
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Speaker 1: congregation feeling small because you have no story like that,
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Speaker 1: no ministry, no platform, nothing anyone would call a calling,
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Speaker 1: notice what this verse does to that feeling. The people
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Speaker 1: with the impressive list are the ones in trouble here.
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Speaker 1: Whatever Jesus is measuring, it is not measured in results.
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Speaker 1: Matthew has already prepared us for this a few verses
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Speaker 1: earlier when Jesus warns about false prophets who arrive dressed
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Speaker 1: as sheep and are wolves underneath. His instruction there is
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Speaker 1: one sentence long. By their fruit you will recognize them.
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Speaker 1: Matthew chapter 7 verse 16. Fruit takes a season to appear.
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Speaker 1: It grows slowly, in weather, over time, and it cannot
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Speaker 1: be borrowed from another tree or nailed on for a weekend.
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Speaker 1: Miracles happen in a moment. Fruit happens in a life.
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Speaker 1: The sermon is teaching people to watch the slow thing
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Speaker 1: rather than the loud one. There is also a man
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Speaker 1: in Matthew's own gospel who makes this frighteningly concrete. Three
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Speaker 1: chapters after the sermon, Jesus calls twelve men together and
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Speaker 1: gives them authority to drive out impure spirits and to
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Speaker 1: heal every disease and sickness, and then Matthew lists the
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Speaker 1: twelve by name. The last name on the list is
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Speaker 1: Judas Iscariot. Whatever that authority produced in the other eleven,
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Speaker 1: it was handed to him with the rest of them.
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Speaker 1: He walked the same roads, carried the same commission, and
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Speaker 1: was near enough to Jesus for three years that when
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Speaker 1: he finally arrived in the garden with soldiers behind him,
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Speaker 1: nobody in the group guessed who it was going to be.
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Speaker 1: That is the shape of the warning. A man can
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Speaker 1: stand that close for that long and still be a stranger.
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Speaker 1: Everything now depends on one verb. I never knew you.
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Speaker 1: If we only ever read it in English, it sounds
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Speaker 1: almost impossible. How can the Son of God stand in
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Speaker 1: front of somebody and say he has no idea who
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Speaker 1: this is? He has their name. He has every thought
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Speaker 1: they ever had. He has the number of hairs on
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Speaker 1: their head, because he says exactly that earlier in this
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Speaker 1: same gospel. He plainly knows what they did, since he
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Speaker 1: just stood there and listened to them describe it. So
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Speaker 1: he cannot be talking about missing information. He is talking
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Speaker 1: about a missing relationship. In Greek, the verb here is ginosko.
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Speaker 1: It points to knowing a person through contact, through shared life,
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Speaker 1: through being with them across a stretch of years. But
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Speaker 1: the real weight of the word does not come from Greek.
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Speaker 1: It comes from Hebrew because Jesus grew up inside the
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Speaker 1: Hebrew scriptures, and the Greek Bible his generation read used
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Speaker 1: ginosko to translate one particular Hebrew word again and again.
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Speaker 1: That word is yada. Yada can mean ordinary knowing, the
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Speaker 1: way you know a road or a trade. But in
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Speaker 1: the places where the Bible wants to describe belonging, yada
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Speaker 1: is the word it reaches for. Genesis uses it for
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Speaker 1: the closest bond two human beings can have. Now Adam
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Speaker 1: knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.
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Speaker 1: Genesis chapter 4 verse 1. That is knowing as union.
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Speaker 1: Two lives joined so completely that something new comes out
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Speaker 1: of it, and God uses the same word about his
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Speaker 1: own people. Through the prophet Amos, he says to Israel,
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Speaker 1: You only have I known of all the families of
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Speaker 1: the earth. Amos chapter 3 verse 2 God is not
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Speaker 1: claiming ignorance about Egypt or Babylon. He made every nation
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Speaker 1: on earth, and he knows each one down to the
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Speaker 1: last person. What he is saying is that with Israel
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Speaker 1: there was a relationship. He brought them out. He fed them.
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Speaker 1: He argued with them. He was their God, and they
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Speaker 1: were his people, and that arrangement had a word attached
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Speaker 1: to it, and the word was no. That is the
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Speaker 1: vocabulary sitting under Matthew chapter 7 verse 23. When Jesus says,
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Speaker 1: I never knew you, the language he reaches for is
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Speaker 1: the language of belonging, of covenant, of two lives bound together.
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Speaker 1: He is not saying he lacked facts about them. He
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Speaker 1: is saying they were never his. You knew my name
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Speaker 1: and you used it well. You spoke for me and
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Speaker 1: people listened. But we never shared a life. There is
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Speaker 1: one more word in that sentence, and for anyone who
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Speaker 1: carries fear about their salvation, it may be the most
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Speaker 1: important word in the verse. Never. The Greek is odepota,
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Speaker 1: and it means at no point, not at any time,
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Speaker 1: not once. It is total. Jesus does not say, I
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Speaker 1: knew you, and then I lost track of you. He
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Speaker 1: does not say, we were close until that year you
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Speaker 1: stopped praying. He does not say, you belonged to me
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Speaker 1: until you failed one time too many. The whole span
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Speaker 1: is denied at once, not during the prophesying, not during
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Speaker 1: the deliverances, not during the miracles, not before any of it.
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Speaker 1: The whole timeline is empty. Think about what that rules out.
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Speaker 1: This verse is not a description of someone who fell.
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Speaker 1: It cannot be, because the sentence itself denies that anyone
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Speaker 1: ever stood. The people Jesus is describing here did not
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Speaker 1: lose something. They never had it, and their entire ministry
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Speaker 1: was built on top of that absence. There is a
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Speaker 1: picture that helps here. A man who has walked away
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Speaker 1: from his marriage has still been married. Whatever else is
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Speaker 1: true about him, there were years, and there was a home,
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Speaker 1: and there is a history that cannot be erased by
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Speaker 1: what happened later. That is the situation people are terrified
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Speaker 1: of when they read this verse, and it is the
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Speaker 1: one situation Jesus rules out. Nothing was walked away from
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Speaker 1: because nothing was ever entered. Which means the person lying
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Speaker 1: awake tonight afraid of this verse, replaying a sin from
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Speaker 1: years ago, wondering if that was the moment God walked away,
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Speaker 1: is afraid of something the verse does not say. Whatever
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Speaker 1: else Matthew 7, verse 23 is doing, it is not
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Speaker 1: a record of a relationship that ended. Now go back
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Speaker 1: one chapter, because the sermon has already told us what
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Speaker 1: Jesus is actually weighing, and it did so long before
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Speaker 1: the judgment scene. Matthew chapter 6 opens with a warning
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Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with sin as most of
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Speaker 1: us picture it. Be careful not to practice your righteousness
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Speaker 1: in front of others to be seen by them. If
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Speaker 1: you do, you will have no reward from your Father
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Speaker 1: in heaven. Matthew chapter 6, verse 1. Then Jesus works
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Speaker 1: through the three great acts of Jewish devotion, one at
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Speaker 1: a time, giving to the poor, prayer, fasting, and each
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Speaker 1: time he describes the same character, the person who performs
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Speaker 1: the act where a crowd can see it, and each
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Speaker 1: time he passes the same verdict on that person. Truly,
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Speaker 1: I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
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Speaker 1: Matthew chapter 6 verse 2. That phrase was a business term.
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Speaker 1: It was what you wrote at the bottom of a
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Speaker 1: receipt when a debt had been settled and nothing further
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Speaker 1: was owed. Jesus is saying that the applause was the payment.
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Speaker 1: The transaction closed the moment the eyes turned. God owes
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Speaker 1: them nothing more because they already collected. Then he says
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Speaker 1: what to do instead. But when you pray, go into
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Speaker 1: your room, close the door, and pray to your Father
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Speaker 1: who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is
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Speaker 1: done in secret, will reward you. Matthew chapter 6 verse
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Speaker 1: 6 A shut door, one person, no audience. Jesus is
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Speaker 1: describing the place where the relationship actually happens, and it
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Speaker 1: is deliberately the one place no one can put on
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Speaker 1: a resume. Now hold those two chapters next to each other.
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Speaker 1: In chapter 6, people do their religion in public and
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Speaker 1: get paid in public, and the father in the secret
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Speaker 1: room has nothing left to give them. In chapter 7,
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Speaker 1: people arrive at the judgment carrying the most public list imaginable, prophecy, exorcism, miracles,
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Speaker 1: and the man on the seat tells them they were
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Speaker 1: never in the room with him. It is the same
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Speaker 1: verdict twice, once in a low voice, once at full volume.
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Speaker 1: The sermon warned them about it before it happened to them.
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Speaker 1: That is why chapter 6 is such good news for
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Speaker 1: the kind of person watching this. If the thing that
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Speaker 1: decides everything happens behind a closed door, then it is
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Speaker 1: available to a woman who cannot get to church anymore.
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Speaker 1: It is available to a man in a hospital bed
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Speaker 1: at three in the morning. It is available to anyone
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Speaker 1: with no platform, no ministry, no audience, and no results
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Speaker 1: to show for their faith. Nobody is ever locked out
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Speaker 1: of the secret room. Go back to verse 21, because
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Speaker 1: Jesus gives the test himself. The one who enters is
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Speaker 1: the one who does the will of his Father in heaven.
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Speaker 1: That sounds simple until you notice the problem it creates.
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Speaker 1: The people who are turned away in the next verse
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Speaker 1: were doing things, enormous things. If doing the Father's will
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Speaker 1: meant religious activity, they would be the safest people in
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Speaker 1: the crowd. So the word does here has to mean
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Speaker 1: something other than being busy. Matthew tells us what it means.
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Speaker 1: Later in the same gospel, Jesus is teaching in a
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Speaker 1: crowded house when someone tells him his mother and brothers
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Speaker 1: are standing outside asking for him. He looks around at
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Speaker 1: the people sitting in front of him and says something
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Speaker 1: that must have stopped the room. For whoever does the
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Speaker 1: will of my Father in heaven is my brother and
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Speaker 1: sister and mother. Matthew chapter 12 verse 50. There it is.
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Speaker 1: In Matthew's Gospel, doing the Father's will is not a
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Speaker 1: job description. It is a family membership. The person who
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Speaker 1: does the Father's will is the person who lives in
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Speaker 1: the house, eats at the table, and belongs to Jesus
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Speaker 1: the way a brother belongs to a brother. The sermon
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Speaker 1: then tells us what that family actually does, and it
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Speaker 1: does it in the very next paragraph. Jesus finishes with
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Speaker 1: two men building two houses, one on rock and one
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Speaker 1: on sand, and he explains the difference himself. The wise
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Speaker 1: builder is everyone who hears these words of his and
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Speaker 1: puts them into practice, these words. Not religious achievement in general.
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Speaker 1: The sermon we have just listened to for three chapters.
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Speaker 1: The Father's will, in this passage... is the thing Jesus
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Speaker 1: has been describing since he sat down on that hill.
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Speaker 1: So go back and see what it actually contains. It
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Speaker 1: describes a life that mourns honestly, stays gentle under pressure,
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Speaker 1: and stays hungry for what is right. It tells a
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Speaker 1: man to drop his anger before it hardens into something worse,
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Speaker 1: to keep his word without having to swear on anything,
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Speaker 1: and to pray by name for the people who have
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Speaker 1: made his life difficult. It tells him to give where
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Speaker 1: nobody can see it, to forgive a debt he is
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Speaker 1: genuinely owed, to stop lying awake over tomorrow's food and clothes,
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Speaker 1: and to take the plank out of his own eye
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Speaker 1: before he goes anywhere near his brothers. There is nothing
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Speaker 1: spectacular anywhere in that. Every item is small, daily, and
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Speaker 1: mostly invisible, and every item is impossible to fake for
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Speaker 1: very long. That is the will of the Father in
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Speaker 1: the Sermon on the Mount, and the people in verse
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Speaker 1: 22 skipped straight past all of it on their way
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Speaker 1: to the miracles. which means verse 21 and verse 23
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Speaker 1: are saying the same thing from two directions. Verse 21
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Speaker 1: says the ones who enter are family. Verse 23 says
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Speaker 1: the ones turned away were never known. Family and knowing
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Speaker 1: are the same reality described twice, and the resume sits
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Speaker 1: outside both of them. You can work for a household
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Speaker 1: your whole life and never once be part of it.
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Speaker 1: You can be excellent at the work, trusted with the keys,
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Speaker 1: spoken well of by everyone in the family. And when
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Speaker 1: evening comes, you walk to a different house, because employment
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Speaker 1: was all it ever was. Notice what that does to
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Speaker 1: the fear most people carry out of this passage. A
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Speaker 1: son does not lie awake, wondering whether he is still
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Speaker 1: legally his father's son. That anxiety belongs to the employee
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Speaker 1: who knows the arrangement can end. If your faith has
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Speaker 1: felt like a job you are afraid of losing, this
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Speaker 1: verse is aimed at the arrangement and not at you.
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Speaker 1: Matthew is the only gospel writer who gives us this scene,
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Speaker 1: and it turns out he gives us more than one.
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Speaker 1: Later in the same book, Jesus tells three stories in
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Speaker 1: a row about the last day, and two of them
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Speaker 1: speak directly to our verse. The first is a story
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Speaker 1: about ten young women waiting through the night for a
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Speaker 1: wedding to begin. Five of them run out of oil
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Speaker 1: while they wait, and while they are away buying more,
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Speaker 1: the bridegroom comes, and the door is shut. When they
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Speaker 1: finally arrive and call out to be let in, the
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Speaker 1: answer is short. Truly I tell you, I don't know you.
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Speaker 1: Matthew chapter 25 verse 12 The same verb again. Not
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Speaker 1: a word about their behavior, their morals, or their beliefs.
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Speaker 1: The whole weight falls on whether he knows them. But
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Speaker 1: the second scene is where everything turns, and this is
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Speaker 1: the part I want you to hold on to. Jesus
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Speaker 1: describes all the nations gathered in front of him, and
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Speaker 1: he separates them the way a shepherd separates sheep from goats.
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Speaker 1: To the people on his right he says, I was hungry,
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Speaker 1: and you fed me, thirsty, and you gave me a drink,
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Speaker 1: a stranger, and you took me in, sick and in prison,
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Speaker 1: and you came to me. And they have no idea
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Speaker 1: what he's talking about. Lord, when did we see you
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Speaker 1: hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something
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Speaker 1: to drink? Matthew, chapter 25, verse 37. Put the two
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Speaker 1: judgment scenes side by side, because Matthew clearly wants us to.
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Speaker 1: In chapter 7, a group of people arrive with a
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Speaker 1: spectacular list of everything they did for Jesus, and they
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Speaker 1: are certain. They are turned away. In chapter 25, a
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Speaker 1: group of people arrive with no list at all, cannot
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Speaker 1: remember doing anything for him, and are genuinely confused when
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Speaker 1: he thanks them. They are welcomed in. The confident ones
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Speaker 1: are refused. The surprised ones are received. That is not
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Speaker 1: a small detail. It tells you what kind of life
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Speaker 1: Jesus is actually looking for, and it looks nothing like
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Speaker 1: the one we imagine. It looks like a woman who
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Speaker 1: took soup to a neighbor and forgot about it by evening.
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Speaker 1: It looks like a man who kept visiting a friend
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Speaker 1: in a care home for 11 years and never thought
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Speaker 1: of it as ministry. These people are not keeping score
23:47
Speaker 1: because people who belong to a family do not keep score.
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Speaker 1: The ones in chapter 7 kept a very careful record.
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Speaker 1: That is almost the tell. You keep receipts when you
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Speaker 1: expect to be asked for proof, and you expect to
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Speaker 1: be asked for proof when you are dealing with someone
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Speaker 1: you do not really know. There is one more thing
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Speaker 1: in that scene worth holding. When Jesus explains why the
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Speaker 1: small kindnesses counted, he says that whatever they did for
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Speaker 1: one of the least of these brothers and sisters of his,
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Speaker 1: they did for him. He puts himself inside the hungry person.
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Speaker 1: He stands behind the stranger at the door. So the
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Speaker 1: people on his right had in fact been meeting him
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Speaker 1: for years, without recognising his face, and the meetings had
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Speaker 1: all been real. Set that against Matthew chapter 7 one
24:39
Speaker 1: last time. One group spent their lives using his name
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Speaker 1: and never met him. The other group spent their lives
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Speaker 1: meeting him and never used his name for anything. That
24:51
Speaker 1: is the whole difference, and it has almost nothing to
24:54
Speaker 1: do with how much religion a person is carrying. There
24:58
Speaker 1: is one word left in the verdict, and it is
25:00
Speaker 1: a strange one.' Away from me, you evildoers!' Underneath that
25:06
Speaker 1: phrase sits the Greek word anomia. Break it open and
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Speaker 1: you find two pieces, a small word meaning without, and
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Speaker 1: the word nomos, which means law, without law. That is
25:19
Speaker 1: a hard word to explain, because these people were not
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Speaker 1: lawless in any way you could point to. Their lives
25:25
Speaker 1: were full of religious work. So why does Jesus reach
25:29
Speaker 1: for a word that sounds like it belongs to criminals?
25:33
Speaker 1: Because law here means someone's rule over you. To be
25:38
Speaker 1: without law is to have no one over your life.
25:41
Speaker 1: And a person can be tremendously busy in God's name
25:45
Speaker 1: while nobody at all is actually in charge of him.
25:49
Speaker 1: He chooses the work. He chooses the hours. He chooses
25:53
Speaker 1: which parts of the teaching to carry and which to leave.
25:58
Speaker 1: The name of Jesus is on everything he does, and
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Speaker 1: his own will is behind every decision. That is the picture.
26:07
Speaker 1: The work was real, the authority over the worker was missing,
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Speaker 1: and on the day when it counts, Jesus looks past
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Speaker 1: the work for the man underneath it and finds nobody
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Speaker 1: he has ever met. This also explains a phrase that
26:22
Speaker 1: sounds severe until you understand it. Away from me. It
26:27
Speaker 1: reads like a sentence being handed down, and in one
26:30
Speaker 1: sense it is. But look at what it actually describes.
26:34
Speaker 1: These people spent their whole lives at a distance from
26:37
Speaker 1: Jesus while using his name at close range, and the
26:41
Speaker 1: judgment simply makes visible the arrangement they had already chosen.
26:46
Speaker 1: He is not tearing them away from something they were holding.
26:50
Speaker 1: He is stating out loud where they have been standing
26:53
Speaker 1: the entire time. There is a mercy hidden in that,
26:57
Speaker 1: though it is hard to see at first. Jesus said
27:00
Speaker 1: all of this out in the open, on a hillside,
27:03
Speaker 1: years before anyone stood at that judgment, to a crowd
27:07
Speaker 1: that had come to hear him and could still do
27:10
Speaker 1: something about it. He told them the ending in advance,
27:14
Speaker 1: and a warning given that early is a door being
27:17
Speaker 1: propped open. So, how does anyone come to be known?
27:22
Speaker 1: Matthew answers that too, in a passage that rarely gets
27:25
Speaker 1: read beside this one. In chapter 11, Jesus is speaking
27:30
Speaker 1: about the mystery of who knows whom. All things have
27:34
Speaker 1: been committed to me by my Father. No one knows
27:37
Speaker 1: the Son except the Father, and no one knows the
27:41
Speaker 1: Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son
27:44
Speaker 1: chooses to reveal him. Matthew 11.27 Knowing God runs through Jesus,
27:53
Speaker 1: he is the one who opens the Father to people.
27:56
Speaker 1: And having said that, having placed the whole thing in
27:59
Speaker 1: his own hands, listen to the next words out of
28:02
Speaker 1: his mouth. Come to me, all you who are weary
28:06
Speaker 1: and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew chapter
28:11
Speaker 1: 11 verse 28 There is no test at the door.
28:15
Speaker 1: Come tired, carrying whatever you have been carrying. That is
28:19
Speaker 1: the entrance, and Jesus put it two words after the verse,
28:24
Speaker 1: about who gets to know the Father, because the two
28:26
Speaker 1: belong together. If the question is how a person moves
28:31
Speaker 1: from being a stranger to being known, the answer in
28:34
Speaker 1: Matthew's gospel is that you go to him and you
28:38
Speaker 1: stay there. Nothing more sophisticated than that. The relationship is
28:43
Speaker 1: built the way every real relationship is built, by turning up,
28:48
Speaker 1: by talking, by trusting him with what you actually are
28:53
Speaker 1: instead of what you would like him to see. And
28:56
Speaker 1: that brings us back to where we started. Somewhere out
28:59
Speaker 1: there is a viewer who has been afraid of Matthew
29:02
Speaker 1: chapter 7 verse 23 for years. Maybe you have carried
29:07
Speaker 1: a sin so long that you have stopped expecting to
29:10
Speaker 1: feel clean. Maybe your prayers have felt flat for months
29:15
Speaker 1: and you have decided that means something terrible. Maybe you
29:19
Speaker 1: are old now and slower, and you look back at
29:22
Speaker 1: a life that produced nothing you would call a ministry,
29:25
Speaker 1: and this verse feels like it was written with your
29:28
Speaker 1: name on the envelope. Read the sentence again with everything
29:33
Speaker 1: we have seen. It was spoken to people who brought
29:36
Speaker 1: a spectacular list and no relationship. It was spoken... to
29:40
Speaker 1: people who had never once been in the secret room.'
29:43
Speaker 1: It was spoken to people who never went to him
29:46
Speaker 1: weary' because they did not think of themselves as weary.'
29:50
Speaker 1: The whole scene is built out of confidence,' and there
29:53
Speaker 1: is not one trace of confidence in the fear you
29:56
Speaker 1: are carrying.' The people in that passage are not frightened
30:00
Speaker 1: of Jesus. They are arguing with him. They stand at
30:04
Speaker 1: the judgment, holding up their achievements as proof, which is
30:08
Speaker 1: exactly what a person does when he has nothing else
30:10
Speaker 1: to offer and knows it. You do not fix a
30:14
Speaker 1: fear like that with more work. You cannot out-prophesy it,
30:18
Speaker 1: out-serve it or out-perform it, and the people in this
30:21
Speaker 1: passage are the proof because they tried harder than any
30:25
Speaker 1: of us and it changed nothing. The answer is smaller
30:30
Speaker 1: and much kinder than that. Go into the room, close
30:34
Speaker 1: the door. Say the true thing to the Father who
30:37
Speaker 1: is already there. He is not waiting to be impressed.
30:42
Speaker 1: Think for a moment about how ordinary the entrance actually is.
30:46
Speaker 1: Every relationship a human being has ever had was built
30:50
Speaker 1: the same way, out of time spent and words said,
30:54
Speaker 1: most of it forgettable. Nobody becomes a father through one
30:58
Speaker 1: grand gesture. Nobody becomes a friend by presenting a list
31:03
Speaker 1: of services rendered. It happens in kitchens, in cars, in
31:07
Speaker 1: the twenty minutes before sleep, in a thousand exchanges too
31:11
Speaker 1: small to remember individually. God has never asked for anything
31:16
Speaker 1: more impressive than that, and the sermon on that hillside
31:19
Speaker 1: said so plainly by sending people into a room by
31:23
Speaker 1: themselves and shutting the door behind them. Jesus never once says,
31:28
Speaker 1: Depart from me, to a person who came to him.
31:32
Speaker 1: Every single time in the Gospels that somebody approached him tired, ashamed, unclean, half-believing,
31:40
Speaker 1: or completely undone, he received them. The lepers who had
31:44
Speaker 1: not touched another human being in years. The tax collector
31:49
Speaker 1: called by name while he was still sitting at his booth.
31:53
Speaker 1: The father who said he believed and needed help with
31:57
Speaker 1: his unbelief. Not one of them was turned away for
32:01
Speaker 1: coming with too little. So let the verse do what
32:04
Speaker 1: it was meant to do. Let it strip out the
32:07
Speaker 1: idea that God is grading your output. Let it end
32:11
Speaker 1: the exhausting business of building a case for yourself. And
32:16
Speaker 1: then let it hand you the thing it was protecting
32:19
Speaker 1: all along, which is that the God of the universe
32:22
Speaker 1: is not looking for your record. He is looking for you.
32:27
Speaker 1: And when He says on that day, I know you,
32:30
Speaker 1: it will not be because of anything you performed in
32:32
Speaker 1: His name. It will be because a thousand ordinary evenings ago,
32:38
Speaker 1: in a quiet house nobody was watching, you shut a
32:41
Speaker 1: door and started talking to Him, and He was there.
32:44
Speaker 1: If this video helped you grow deeper in God's Word,
32:47
Speaker 1: I want to personally invite you to be part of
32:50
Speaker 1: what we are building here. Every video on this channel
32:54
Speaker 1: takes many hours of study and careful research to make
32:57
Speaker 1: sure we bring you content that is faithful to Scripture
33:01
Speaker 1: and worthy of your time. If you would like to
33:04
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33:08
Speaker 1: you can find a link in the description below to
33:11
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33:17
Speaker 1: no matter the size, goes directly toward creating more content
33:21
Speaker 1: like this. And if you are not in a position
33:24
Speaker 1: to give right now, that is completely fine. The best
33:29
Speaker 1: thing you can do is subscribe, share this video with
33:32
Speaker 1: someone who needs to hear it, and keep studying God's
33:36
Speaker 1: Word with us. Thank you for being here, and may
33:39
Speaker 1: God bless you richly.