Matthew 7, a visual study of the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, including judging, asking, the Golden Rule, the two ways, and the wise and foolish builders, from The Lampstand Project.
Two ways to build.
The sermon comes to its close. Stop judging and start seeing. Ask, and keep asking. Do to others what you would want. And then a series of forks: two gates, two trees, two confessions, and two houses in one storm.
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock."Matthew 7:24 ESV
Matthew 7 ends the Sermon on the Mount. After the Beatitudes, after the teaching on the heart, after the practices done in secret, Jesus brings it all to a decision. Nearly everything in this chapter comes in twos. The sermon does not end with information. It ends with a choice.
One road, then two.
The teaching narrows to a fork. One way is wide and easy and crowded. The other is narrow and hard and quiet. Tap any numbered marker to read its section below.
Tap any numbered marker to read its section
On judging.
"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you." Jesus is not forbidding all discernment. He is forbidding the hypocrisy of condemning in others what we excuse in ourselves.
The image is almost comic. A person with a log in their own eye, squinting to remove a speck from someone else's. The order matters: first the log, then the speck. Once you have dealt honestly with yourself, you can see clearly enough to help your brother, and you will help rather than condemn.
"Let a righteous man strike me; it is a kindness; let him rebuke me; it is oil for my head."
Ask, seek, knock.
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." Three verbs, each more active than the last. Prayer is not a single polite request. It is asking, then searching, then pounding on the door.
The promise rests on the character of God as Father. If a human father, flawed as he is, knows how to give his children good things and not stones or snakes, how much more will the perfect Father give good things to those who ask. The argument runs from lesser to greater, the same shape as the birds and lilies in chapter six.
"You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart."
One sentence that Jesus says sums up the entire Old Testament. Every law, every prophet, distilled into a single move of the imagination: picture what you would want, then give it. The whole sermon turns on this hinge.
The two ways.
After the Golden Rule, the teaching narrows into a series of choices. Each one is a fork. Each one asks the same question in a different form: which way, which tree, which confession?
"The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."
"The gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many."
"Every healthy tree bears good fruit. You will recognize them by their fruits."
"The diseased tree bears bad fruit... and is thrown into the fire."
"The one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter."
"Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter... 'I never knew you.'"
The two builders.
The sermon ends with two men and two houses. From the outside they may have looked the same. The difference was underground, in the foundation, and it only showed when the storm came.
"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."
"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."
Both men heard the same words. Both built. The wise man was the one who heard the words and did them. The storm did not choose between them; it fell on both. Only the foundation decided which house stood.
Looking down.
The genealogy looked back. The geography looked out. The river looked up. The wilderness looked ahead. The mountain looked inward. Chapter six looked beyond. Chapter seven looks down, to the foundation, to the rock beneath the house, to what your life is actually built on when the storm arrives.
And with this, the Sermon on the Mount ends. Three chapters of the steepest teaching ever given, closing not with a summary but with a choice between two foundations. When Jesus finished, the crowds were astonished, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. The teaching was over. The building was about to begin.
"And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority."Matthew 7:28-29 ESV
All scripture quoted from the English Standard Version. A study from The Lampstand Project.