Matthew:Jesus the Judge

Listen in as we wrap up Matthew 7 and the Sermon on the Mount.

 

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 7:13-29

 

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to” - C.S. Lewis

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” - G.K. Chesterton

“You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.” - Tertullian - 2nd Century Ad

“It is possible to work for Jesus and yet not live under him. We can be intoxicated by the power of Jesus and yet be hostile to his hard commands. “Inever ever really knew you; get out of my face, you doers of the very opposite of my teachings.” They believe that they know Jesus, but apparently they never gave him a chance to know them (“I never really knew you”), that is, they never gave him a chance to come into personal contact with their innermost life (the force of the biblical word “know”). It is strangely possible to serve and even to glorify Christ and yet in one’s own personal life not to obey him.” - Dale Bruner

 

“For many, the first great surprise of the Christian life is in the form of the troubles we meet.” - Eugene Peterson

 

“Obedience to Jesus’ words is not so much protection from troubles as protection in them, just as rock under a house does not shield from storms but supports during them” - Dale Bruner

 

“Almighty God, give us grace to be not only hearers, but doers of thy holy word, not only to admire, but to obey thy doctrine, not only to profess, but to practice thy religion, not only to love, but to live thy gospel. So grant that what we learn of thy glory we may receive into our hearts, and show forth in our lives: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”