Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” …. Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”….These are two scriptural quotations that I have heard taken out of context more times than I can count. People use them to try to prove something the wrong way. Jesus never stated isolated platitudes. He always said things within a framework of a larger context of an area of truth He wanted to emphasis. All of Matthew 7 goes together. You can’t just pick out the pieces you like and skip the rest. The gist of the whole thing is a rebuttal to hypocrisy. Don’t “act” like you are something that you are not. Don’t be a put on. Don’t think that because you are in one social position, that you are above the behaviour that you expect out of others. We see this in politics all of the time. People in positions of political power come to think that, because of their elevated positions of influence, that they are above being called to account when their behaviour is immoral and destructive. People in positions of corporate power that make decisions that may profit them financially, (corporate mergers and buy outs that make the shareholders and the CEO a lot of money quickly, but hurt thousands of hard working people who have been the backbone of productivity, by either cutting their wages grossly, or putting them out of jobs.) Matthew 7:3-5… We can’t be focused on trying to get other people straightened out until we have dealt honestly with our own issues and short comings. (The less politically correct way of saying that is just calling it “Sin”.) 7:6… Don’t have a flippant attitude toward God’s holiness. With this generation’s focus on love and grace (which is a perfectly good thing), we lack a real, old time, healthy fear of God. 7:7-12…. This section has been taken out of context by the “Name it, Claim it” fringe. We don’t just get what we ask for by believing real hard and praying the right way. Yes, God is good, and He desires to give us good things because He is good. We are pretty rotten at times, but we all like to treat our kids well, unless we are just really psychologically and emotionally messed up. But God is way better than we are, even at our best. He loves to shower us with good….. but there is a caveat: God expects us to treat others the way we want Him to treat us. I will be the first to tell you, “I NEED GRACE”! If I am depending on my good behaviour to get me into heaven, I am doomed. That doesn’t mean I take good behaviour lightly. I try really hard. But I mess up. I get irritated sometimes. I sometimes don’t act like I know I should, so I need forgiveness. But, in order to have God’s forgiveness available to me, I have to be willing to forgive everyone else, and be willing to show them grace. Even a boss who has me fired based on false accusations and slander. 7:13-14… This is not an “easy” path to walk, but it is the ONLY path to life. The majority of people do not live this way. The gate is “narrow”. The reason why this is so is because, by default, we do not act this way. It is a conscious choice we make, and it does require a lot of work. Of course, God will empower us if we ask for His help. I don’t have to do it on my own. 7:21-23…. A lot of people run around pretending to be holy and righteous, but inside, they aren’t really. It is just a big put on. But don’t get bummed out about that. We don’t really have to try to figure out “who is and who isn’t”. As the old bumper sticker says, “Let God sort them out.” That is why I don’t get all hung up on Election and Predestination. It is not my place to try to figure all of that out anyway, because when I do, then I put my place in the position of guessing who is and who isn’t. I really don’t care. I am going to treat everyone the same way anyway, by God’s grace. I am going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and take what they tell me at face value, unless I have a good, provable reason to think they are just lying. If they are lying, God will deal with them. 7:24-29… Time will tell. If our lives are built on the right foundation, they will stand the storms. If not, they will fall down, and our hypocrisy and phoniness will trash everything we have worked so hard to built for the wrong reasons.
Danny's Stump 