Testing, Testing

 February 19 2023

Matthew 7:12-20

         As I get older I continually am looking for thinks I am thankful for. Just this week I got a notice from my insurance company stating just how much they paid for a medication I take and after I had gasped at the cost of it, I gave thanks to God for insurance. That was not all, because what was not covered by insurance was paid by the drug company so, in essence, I got a drug which costs thousands for absolutely nothing. Now you know why I praise God! I also praise God that I am no longer in school. The mind which used to keep facts and figures fairly straight has become a muddled mess. The thought of having to take a test to see just how much I know or how much information I have retained makes me shudder. So, again, I praise God that there is no test taking on the horizon to make my hands sweat and my mind ache.

         I had this idea of test taking on my mind because, as many of us might remember, the last line of the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”. Now upon hearing this you might object, and tell me that there is no mention of testing anywhere in this petition however the word we commonly use, “temptation”, can be translated as being, “testing”, which, if you think about it, is pretty much the same.  When a person is tempted to do something wrong it is fairly clear that at that moment they are being tested to see if they are who they say that they are. I also sense that this petition should be, “And lead us not into hard testing but deliver us from evil.”, because we, as the children of God, are asking our Heavenly Father to take us by the hand and lead us. I think we would all wonder about any father who put their children into a situation where they would be tempted to do something wrong. If we can see how nonsensical it is for us as earthly fathers to do such a thing, I think then it just makes sense that we should not believe our Heavenly Father would think of doing so.

         So, what is being asked for is that our Heavenly Father would take and lead us, and that we might not find ourselves being tested but instead we would find ourselves being delivered from evil. One more aspect of this petition has to be explained and that is just what is meant by this idea of being, “delivered”. To me, delivered conjures up images of letters or packages from Amazon not the transportation of people from some location marked, “Evil”. No, the original Greek word is much more descriptive because it speaks of drawing someone to yourself. Think of a person who is struggling in the water, barely keeping themselves afloat and along comes a boat and an arm reaches out and pulls this drowning person onto the safety of the boat. That is what is meant when we say that we are delivered. It is very important that we have this original meaning in mind because when we think of God drawing us to himself then we must also be reminded of something Jesus said in the tenth chapter of John, the the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth verses, where Jesus says, “I give them eternal life and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”. Can you get this image in your mind of the hands of God clutching you tight, pulling you from danger, drawing you into his loving embrace? This is what is meant by being delivered from evil.

         Yet even though we have such a beautiful promise of deliverance through the hands-on action of God, we must still ask our Heavenly Father that we might not be tested, that we might not come unto a trial, which seems rather odd, doesn’t it?  I mean how can we be tested if the hands of God are holding us? What this can only mean then is that we may be uncertain about which hands we allow to take hold of us. Which hands are we hoping will drag us out of the evil which surrounds us and pull us to safety? One thing that is known about rescuing people who are drowning is that often they thrash about so much that they often put into peril those who are trying to save them. Perhaps, God is only going to grasp and draw to himself those who are no longer thrashing about in their allegiance to him.

         We get this sense of having to be certain that it is God alone who can deliver us, when we look at the images that Matthew gives to us, which depict this testing which must accompany our deliverance. In our scripture for today, Matthew paints for us a picture of two roads. The first road is a wide road, so imagine if you will, the widest road you might think of, perhaps it might be a four lane interstate highway. Then, use you imagination and see a small opening in a fence barely big enough for you to squeeze through and once past this opening you see a very small path, perhaps nothing more than a deer trail, which meanders up the hill into a very steep climb with a lot of rocks and rough patches. Jesus in his teaching to his disciples told them and us that it is this small, narrow, opening in the fence, this is the one we are to choose, this is the narrow way, the way that will be difficult and strenuous yet still, Jesus promises, this is the way which will lead to life. As we go along this upward climb we will have few companions who will stick it out because most people are looking for the easy way out. These are the ones who would rather take that interstate highway, which is wide and the ride is easy. It is this wide and easy highway, that Jesus warns, is the way which leads to destruction. Again, the original Greek word which is rendered, “destruction”, is much more descriptive as it means something that is completely severed from what could or should have been. It is to utterly perish, a most miserable end. When we pause and consider this tragic ending that many have experienced and will continue to experience, we should want to understand just what Jesus is referring to, I mean, after all, who really wants to be cut off from what they should of or could have been apart of? Who really wants to have their life to come to a horrible end?

         To grasp what Jesus is getting at it is obvious that what he is describing in this image of two roads is the very division of humanity. This is rather surprising because as we have said before, the will of God is to unite all humanity in Christ. Yet God also knows that there will be those who for one reason or another, will refuse to be apart of what he is doing. So, to understand this division we must go back to what Jesus has previously been teaching to see if this sense of division has come up before. What we find is that, yes, Jesus has taught about what divides people. In the sixth chapter of Matthew, the nineteenth through the twenty-fourth verses, Jesus teaches about two distinct groups within humanity. There is one group which stores up treasures on earth and there is another group which treasures that which is in heaven which, as those who know the Lord’s Prayer, we know is our Heavenly Father. Jesus further teaches that where our treasure is there our heart is also. So, the longings and love of our heart is either focused on what we treasure here on earth or our heart, with all of its longings and love, is focused on our Heavenly Father. This is a clear division because as Jesus goes on to say, a person cannot serve two masters, which is what our treasures really are to us. If we love our treasures here on earth we will serve them, as strange as that might sound. Since they are treasures we will watch over them with great care and see to it that they remain safe because to suffer a loss of our treasure would be to suffer a loss of our heart, something that would be greatly devastating. So, Jesus concludes that one cannot serve God and what is normally translated as being, “money”. Once again, we must look to the original Greek to discover that what the word actually means is, “the treasure a person trusts in.” So, we can either trust in the treasure we have in heaven, our Heavenly Father, or we can trust in whatever treasure has taken hold of our heart at the moment. 

         One more word must be said about what divides humanity and that is found in the fifth chapter of Matthew, the forty-fifth and forty-sixth verses, where we learn that God’s love which is found in the sun he shines upon the evil and good alike and the rain which falls upon the just and unjust all the same, is a love which loves without any thought of any expectation or concern. This is a holy love. The common, ordinary garden variety of love is a love that comes with expectations. It is the love which asks, what have you done for me lately? In this kind of love, loving our enemies would gain us nothing so there is no real incentive to do so. Now, if we try and love God with common love we do so with expectations. In other words, we come to God and we say, God, I will worship you, serve you and your church faithfully, all I ask is that when I call on you, I expect that you will answer my plea and bless me with whatever I need or desire at the moment. When it is put like that we can begin to sense why it is not a holy love. When we love God like this we are telling him that we are not loving him for who he is rather we are loving God for what he can do for us. What we treasure is really what God can bless us with, and not God in and of himself. It doesn’t really matter if what we ask of God is good or honorable, a better marriage, better finances, or even our own happiness, when we ask for any of these things or those like them, we have made them more important to us than God himself. These things become the treasure that we have placed our trust in instead of placing our trust in God alone.

         So, returning to our image of the two roads, the wide road is the road which is travelled on by those who place their faith and trust in earthly treasures. These are not just those who do not know God; no, it is also those who know God and think of him as someone they can bargain with to get what they desire, they too are those who are riding on the highway to destruction. The narrow road, on the other hand, is for those who treasure only God. God alone is the treasure that they seek and they can willingly suffer the loss of all things for they have found the pearl of great price which is worth giving all one has to obtain it.You see the road is narrow and difficult simply because the wants and desires of this world are so overwhelming. The testing that we face is when we are challenged by life’s difficulties will we turn to God first, allowing his arms to hold us steady as we go through our trials or will we plead with God for something that we believe will be a way out of the difficulty that we are in. How easy it is for us to place our trust in everything but God especially in those times of great pain and hurt when God feels so far from where we are at. How hard it is for us to remember that the arms of God are always stretched out toward us, reaching out to take hold of us to draw us to his side yet trusting these arms alone is the test that we must go through again and again.

         What helps us turn to God and him alone when the storms come and life appears to overwhelm us is two realities. The first is that earthly blessings will always fail us in the end. Jesus tells us in the nineteenth verse of the sixth chapter, that earthly treasures can be destroyed by moth or rust or they can be stolen by thieves. What Jesus is saying is that to put our trust in earthly treasures is to bring upon ourselves unnecessary worry and anxiety which will hopefully, bring those who trust in them to seek the one they can trust who will bring them some lasting peace. The second reality is that we do not have to face our trials and difficulties alone. When Jesus tells us to beware of false prophets he is speaking about something that would occur within the gathering of his church. What Jesus is stating is that even within the church what must be of utmost importance is that we surround ourselves with those who have chosen God alone as the highest treasure. Yet even so, Jesus warns us that even in the midst of his church will come those who by all appearances seem to be good, upstanding, followers of Jesus but who they really are is wolves who are wearing wool coats. They are false prophets, those who appear to speak for God but they are in all reality, not speaking for God at all, in fact what they say is just opposite of what God declares to be the truth. They are also ravenous, which is a word which means one who snatches or grabs at their prey, a word very similar to what we heard in John’s gospel that those held in the arms of God cannot be snatched away. What these wolves desire is to grab ahold of those attempting to walk on the narrow way and drag them with them to walk with them on the wide and easy road. The question, then, becomes, just how are we to know just who are these wolves in disguise? Jesus tells us that if we want to know the real sheep from wolves in disguise all we have to do is to look at their fruit, after all a good tree bears good fruit and a rotten, corrupted tree bears only evil fruit. It is easy to miss the extraordinary nature of what Jesus is teaching us here. He is telling us that it is possible for us to determine good from evil, this is where his teaching has brought us. We now know that good fruit is produced when we love God for who he is and not for what he can do for us, when we treasure God because he has always treasured us and called us his own. Out of our love for God, we will desire only that people will know that the name of God is holy because his love is holy. We do this by loving others with a holy love having no expectations that those whom we lavish our love upon will ever return the favor. Quite naturally then, we will long for the kingdom of our Heavenly Father to come into our world, a kingdom where his holy love creates a new world of peace. We will seek to do our Father’s will seeking only to cherish our relationships with others, leading always with reconciliation. We allow this unity to make us whole so that we become people of integrity, doing exactly what we say that we are going to do. With this understanding that God desires to unite everything in heaven and on earth we welcome people to the table of the righteous, those who place their faith in their Heavenly Father alone and we forgive the debts of others with lavish extravagance because this is how God has first forgiven us. This then is the good fruit which organically flows out of loving God with a holy love the same holy love with which he first loved us.

         Evil on the other hand is in a word, violent. Wolves only seek to kill and devour. When trying to figure out the evil fruit that comes from corrupt trees we should remember the words found in the fourth chapter of James, the first four verses which state, “What causes wars, disputes, battles, strife and quarrels? Is it not this, your longing for your desires? You set your heart upon and covet what you desire yet you do not have, so you murder and kill. You actively seek what you want but you cannot obtain it, so you end up fighting and quarreling, getting into conflicts which escalate into battles and wars. You see, you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your sensual desires. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is to make yourself an enemy of God?” Can you understand how vastly different this life that James describes is from the peacemaking way of life that Jesus expects of those whom God has blessed by his holy presence. So, we must beware of those who want to take hold of us and lead us into this evil way of life. Jesus died on the cross so that those who were his enemies might come to be at peace with God. How very wrong it is then when we spurn this peace and make ourselves once again enemies of God. So, we must continually ask ourselves, just what fruit is my life producing? Let us hope that we are indeed good trees producing good fruit which brings glory to God. Amen!