Sermon: Four Warnings (Part One): Enter By the Narrow Gate
God's Way Is Not Easy
#1735
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 18-Nov-23; 83 minutes
description: Intelligent Bible scholars (not having God's Holy Spirit) have purported that the teachings of Christ's Sermon on the Mount are of random order, like pearls on a string, having no relationship with each other. Since God is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians 14:22), we can assume there is no randomness in the Sermon. With God's Holy Spirit, all the jigsaw pieces fit together. When we go beyond hearing to doing and obeying, God provides insight into His mysteries. The Sermon on the Mount could be called Discipleship 101, a proven way to process and refine a diamond in the rough, requiring a lot of cutting and polishing. After giving positive instruction and summarizing it in the Golden Rule, Christ gives the disciples four warnings: enter by the narrow gate, beware of false teachers, do the Father's will, and build on the right foundation. Each includes a contrast between right and wrong, a requirement to take corrective action, an emphasis on a good or bad outcome, and a narrowing focus on the disciple himself. We are admonished to seek the narrow, difficult gate rather than the wide gate and the broad, well-traveled easy way, representing Satan's reprobate teachings.
transcript:
Since April of 2022, we have been making our way over 22 sermons (this will be number 23 if I have counted correctly) through Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount.
As I mentioned before, some commentators, when they look at these three chapters in Matthew (5, 6, and 7), see little organization. Instead, they see a collection, a sampling, of Jesus' sayings cobbled together by Matthew in a maybe a deliberate way. But they do not see them as connected very well. They do not see them as a full sermon. They will even say that they are highly doubtful about Jesus ever giving this sermon as we see it, but that Matthew took various bits that he had heard over the course of the three and a half years that he spent with Jesus and he kind of cobbled them all together to make a sermon out of them because he had a particular point that he wanted to get across.
Now, this idea of some sort of a random order to all of these things has been called, as I mentioned before, pearls on a string. That is, pearls of wisdom, one right after the other on a string that Matthew strung together for his own purposes. They have also used the same description "pearls on a string" for the epistle of James.
One of the reasons why modern commentators do this is because they have, in their wisdom, come up with a theory and the theory is that there was a manuscript, which they call "Q," that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and perhaps even John, but John does not show much use of it, of Jesus' sayings, and then they put the Bible stories, you know, all the stories of Jesus' ministry and His itinerary here, there, and everywhere around these sayings. So we have Matthew, Mark, and Luke being very similar, but they arrange things a little bit differently. They use different descriptors, but a lot of the sayings are very much alike. Sometimes they put them in different contexts or being said to different people. But those sayings are pretty consistent. So this is their theory of "Q."
Now, like I said, it is a theory. There is no "Q." There has not been found a collection of Jesus' sayings that could be "Q." It is just a theory that they have because they cannot believe that human men like Matthew, Mark, and Luke could be so consistent in remembering these sayings so there must have been something written down. Now, this totally takes out God's own inspiration in all of this and that is how commentators work. God's inspiration is pretty low on the list of priorities for them. They are trying to come up with human answers to these problems that they see.
In I Corinthians 14:33 (one of those memory scriptures), God is not the author of confusion but of peace in all the churches of God. And because of this, I cannot accept this idea of randomness in the Sermon on the Mount. I do not think there is anything random about the Sermon on the Mount. As a matter of fact, I am being pretty conservative in the way I look at these things. I think this was an actual sermon that Jesus gave and it is just like it is said there in Matthew 5:1-2. That He went up on a mountain and His disciples gathered around Him and He sat and He taught them these things. That this was something that Matthew jotted down in his notes and saved it.
Matthew was a tax collector. He was a guy that was very, what would you call it, exact in the way he did things. And so I think Matthew took notes throughout the ministry of Jesus and he can give us a very logical, very plausible, very exact representation of what it was like to live with Jesus for those three and a half years and hear the teachings that he heard.
So I cannot accept this idea that these were random sayings that Matthew just cobbled together. I see a great deal of order here, deliberate meaningful organization of these three chapters.
Now, I will admit that if you have a surface reading of them, the paragraphs and the chapters seem to bounce from one subject to another without much transition. It does seem like they are a bunch of sayings that are strung together. I have mentioned in the past (it was in "Ask, Seek, Knock") that some paragraphs are answers to unspoken or unwritten questions like Ask, Seek, Knock answers the unwritten question, "How can a mere human being fulfill the difficult expectations of God?" So Jesus gives instructions to His disciples about asking, seeking, and knocking that will help you stay on the path and fulfill the discipleship that Jesus expects of us.
It also helps tremendously that we have God's Spirit that helps us understand Jesus' teaching far more than people out in the world can understand them. We should be able to use God's Spirit to have a very deep insight into what Jesus says here, way more than most commentators.
Now, commentators are usually super-intelligent people. You know, usually they have a bunch of letters after their name because they have gotten a doctorate or two or three or six. They know languages, Hebrew and Greek especially. So they are not dummies by any means. And sometimes these commentators express belief, that they say they are Christians.
But one thing that commentators are not is consistent doers of the Word. They are professors of the Word, they do a lot of studying of the Word, but most of them do not do what Jesus tells them to do, even if they are nominal Christians, because they have convinced themselves that there are a lot of things that they do not have to do, like keep the Sabbath. And so once you start doing that, once you start eliminating things that Jesus tells you to do, you lose understanding, you start misunderstanding things and that is what happens with these commentators. They cannot make the right connections. And the reason they cannot make the right connections is that they have not practiced what Jesus said. They, in many cases, have never tried to do those things.
But we, being more, I do not know, simplistic in the way we approach Christ, if Christ says it we should do it. I mean, that is kind of how we approach things. We understand Christ's teachings because we have tried to do them, we have maybe tried to do them for many, many years and failed a lot and understood how hard it is to do them. But we also know that if we do them and we begin to do them well and consistently, that we learn more, we understand things, the jigsaw pieces fit together a lot better. And we have, then, a great deal of insight into what Jesus is saying because we say, "Yeah, I did that. I tried that. I went through this and that's how it really works. And if I want to be like Jesus Christ, this is what I've got to continue to do."
But commentators do not necessarily do that. They are like James says in James 1. I want to go to this one. Maybe this is another reason why Martin Luther did not like the epistle of James. He called it an epistle of straw because it advocated doing things and working.
James 1:22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourself.
It is a deception to think that you can know the Word and that is enough. We have to be doers. It is not just enough to have it come into our ears. It has got to come out in action.
James 1:23-25 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the word, this one will be blessed in what he does.
And one of the blessings that a doer of the Word receives is further understanding. Mr. Armstrong used to illustrate this a lot with the keeping of the holy days. Almost all commentators get the holy days wrong. Their usual explanation is very simple: that these were harvest rituals of one form or another that the Israelites, usually they say they borrowed them from the Canaanites or some of the other people around them, and they kept as religious festivals. They are so much more than that and they did not get them from the Canaanites.
So you see the the curse on mankind of having the knowledge of good and evil. That is what commentators usually spit out and that is why you need to be wary of the things that they say. Not all of them are wrong; not all of them are right either. So you have an advantage being a hearer of the Word and a doer so that you can have insight into these things and be able to distinguish the truth from the error and just choose the truth and go with that.
What I am saying is that the Sermon on the Mount is organized. It is well organized, it is just not overtly organized. You know how God tends to hide the truth a little bit, make it into a little bit of a mystery? Well, I think He is doing this here because what He says in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 is just for His disciples. It is not for the world necessarily, because you cannot do the things that He tells people to do in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 unless you are converted, unless you have God's Spirit. And so I will not say it is totally unclear. But let me just say this too. It is not totally unclear and you can use it on just the surface level. But there is a lot of depth to what is taught here in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
So, like I mentioned with the example in Ezekiel, where there are various levels of depth. The water goes to your ankles, it goes to your knees, it goes to your thigh, and then suddenly you are swimming in the water because you cannot touch the bottom. That is the way the Sermon on the Mount is, but there is organization there. I think modern versions help us to see it a little bit plainer because modern versions usually include headings on each paragraph and that is helpful. So you could see the whole paragraph or the theme of the paragraph at one time. But there is an even higher level order that organizes the paragraphs into sections of similar teachings or subjects.
So, better late than never, just remember this is sermon 23 out of 23, I am going to finally give you an outline of Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the Mount, so you can just have this to refer to. (I am going to have to make sure that Diane will get this into the transcript and maybe we can make it into like a PDF or something if you want it that way.)
But the sermon in my way of organizing it, and I am not going to say that this is the only way of organizing it, but I have seven sections. Seven major section sections and then there are underneath those sections, various paragraphs and other examples and stuff that go under them. But first I will just go through one through seven. (Trying to speak an outline is a lot different than writing one.) Each topic will have other subtopics beneath it. So this is the top level.
1. Christian attitudes.
a. The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12)
b. Witnessing by example (Matthew 5:13-16)
2. The spirit of the law.
a. Christ fulfills and expands the law (Matthew 5:17-18)
b. Christian righteousness exceeds the letter. (Matthew 5:19-20)
c. Examples of the spirit of the law.
1. Murder (Matthew 5:21-26)
2. Adultery (Matthew 5:27-30)
3. Divorce (Matthew 5:31-32)
4. Oaths (Matthew 5:33-37)
5. Retaliation (Matthew 5:38-42)
6. Love your enemies (Matthew 5:43-48)
3. Personal and private religious practice.
a. Good works (Matthew 6:1-4)
b. Prayer (Matthew 6:5-15)
c. Fasting (Matthew 6:16-18)
4. Impediments to sanctification.
a. Materialistic priorities (Matthew 6:19-21)
b. Spiritual double-mindedness (Matthew 6:22-23)
c. Divided loyalties (Matthew 6:24)
d. Faithlessness, or we could also call it unnecessary worry (Matthew 6:25-34)
5. The necessity and pitfalls of judging.
a. Avoid hypocrisy in judgment (Matthew 7:1-5)
b. Be prudent in evangelism (Matthew 7:6)
6. Helps to fulfill God's expectations.
a. Ask, seek, and knock (Matthew 7:7-11)
b. Live by the Golden Rule ( Matthew 7:12)
7. Four warnings to the disciple.
a. Enter by the narrow gate (Matthew 7:13-14)
b. Beware of false teachers (Matthew 7:15-20)
c. Mere profession is not enough (Matthew 7:21-23)
d. Hearing without doing (Matthew 7:24-27). We could also call this one, if you want an alternative, build on the right foundation.
So I can see here in this organization, a lot of logical, realistic movement from one subject to another. It flows, to my mind, logically and very neatly and nicely from one thing to another. It starts with inside of us, what our attitudes need to be, and then it gives us a set of standards, of expectations that we need to follow. Then it tells us the path we need to follow and exercises that we need to inculcate into our lives, like good works, fasting, prayer, those sorts of things that we need to maintain a proper relationship with God and fellow man. And then, once you get beyond that, you get to this last section where there are warnings. What could go wrong? What are the pitfalls that I need to avoid as I go along this path toward the Kingdom of God?
And so Jesus lays it out really very clearly and, it seems to me, a pretty straight line toward answering all the questions that a disciple might have about how to be a good disciple. So we could call the Sermon on the Mount "Discipleship 101." These are the basics of what a disciple needs in order to get started and move along the path for God's Kingdom, following Jesus the whole way.
As I mentioned before, today's sermon is going to be about the first of Jesus' warnings there in the Sermon. And He admonishes us to enter by the narrow gate (which is the subtitle: "Four Warnings, Part One: Enter by the Narrow Gate"). Those scriptures that will be going over are Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14.
Now, in these two verses Jesus warns us against our human propensity or tendency to follow the crowd, to follow what is popular, to do what is easy or convenient rather than what is difficult. Instead, He tells us that we are to take on the narrow, constrictive, difficult way of God. The human way we could call Satan's way or human nature's way, is to make it easy on the self. And God says, "No. If you live like that, you're living in a way that's selfish. It's self-centered and it's not going to benefit you as a disciple. It's the hard way that helps you to find the facets of the diamond in the rough that you are, to cut away the stuff that is not good, and put on those things that are good."
So you are a jewel to God, a gem, and it is just like you have come out of the mine and you are rough and dirty when you start and it takes a lot of cutting and abrading and rough cleansing to make you into the gem that will be His in the Kingdom of God. (Ted talked to us about that just last week.)
Before we get to Matthew 7:13, I want to read verse 12 just to get a little bit of a running start here. This is the Golden Rule.
Matthew 7:12 "Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."
Now, some commentators see the Golden Rule as the summary and the culmination of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon. It is a concluding statement. Especially they look at the word there that begins the verse, "Therefore." They think that it is not just for the previous section about asking, seeking, and knocking, but also about all of the things that He has said between Matthew 5:3 and Matthew 7:11. So we could say that these words, as Jesus does in the last bit, this is a concluding statement, a summary statement; this is the law and the prophets. We could also say this is the gist of the Sermon on the Mount, that God wants us to treat others in the same way you would want to be treated.
So in a way, we could say that this verse provides a dividing line between His Christian living instructions, which we could say were all chapters 5, 6, and 7 up to this point, and then His subsequent warnings against proper responses to the Christian living teaching that He has given. So He goes from being very positive in 5, 6, and 7:1-11, to being much more negative in chapter 7, verses 13 through 27. Because the warnings are very negative or can be looked at as very negative because He is telling us that if we do not apply the things that we saw in the first part of the Sermon, we are going to end up in the second death.
It is very abrupt in the way that He says these things. But they are warnings that are needed because look at the world's Christianity. As we go through these four things, we will find that the world's Christianity has been doing these things that Jesus warned against since the third or fourth century at least. It probably goes back even further than that. They have fallen into these wrong ways that Jesus warned against. And He says, "My disciples, My true disciples need to take these warnings to heart because if they don't, they are going to end up in the Lake of Fire." The reason why it is very important to understand, very obvious to us, is because His true disciples have the Spirit. This is their one chance for salvation and they better make the most of it. They better not falter, they better not let any of these things trip them up, because that is fatal—not just physically fatal but spiritually fatal.
He ends up here in Matthew 7:12, giving us a nice summary, a nice nice way to remember what we have to be doing. And that is "whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them." So that kind of finishes that.
Now He gets into His warnings. I could picture Him stopping for a little minute and getting His mind, His mental state right so that He could be a little bit more firm, a little bit more demanding, a little bit more stern even, about what He had to say to the disciples at this point because they need to take this to heart, because there are four principles here that He is going to talk to us about in these four warnings that we have to be thinking about a lot. We need to have them top of mind so we can avoid them and evaluate ourselves against them from time to time.
I want to give the four warnings in full. So we will read that now, verses 13 through 27 just so you can get the feel for them, get the the gist of it.
Matthew 7:13-27 "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few to find it. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesized in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me you who practice lawlessness!' Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall."
In a little bit, we will concentrate a little bit more on verses 13 and 14. But I do want to give you a few words on the four warnings as a group. I want you to see that they do not look very similar on the outside but when you get into them, there are great similarities between them. They are four sketches, you might say, four vignettes that illustrate varying and ultimately futile responses to God's calling and instruction.
Now, they lack pretty much all literary uniformity like we saw in other sections of the Sermon on the Mount, like the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes all had the same form; you go through them, "Blessed are the meek," "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." They all have very similar formats. Also the same could be said for all of the, "But I say to you" examples that He gave about the spirit of the law or even the three private religion exercises that He gives us: the good works, the prayer, and the fasting. All those sections are very similar in the way that they are presented. And you can see that they are supposed to be understood as a group.
But these are not, they do not have much in common in a literary way, in the way that they are formatted. So that is why some commentators see these four things as kind of tacked on or late additions to the text, or simply a few more of those "pearls on a string."
However, they are alike. And I found four likenesses, four similarities among all of these warnings.
First, they are all alike in that each focuses on an illustrative contrast between right and wrong responses. They give an illustration showing a contrast between a good thing, a right thing, and a bad thing or a wrong thing. So we have the first, that is, the contrast between narrow and wide gates or ways. The second one is a contrast between good and bad fruit. The third is a contrast between obedience and lawlessness. And the fourth one, He gives us a contrast between a sound and a faulty foundation. So that is a point of similarity among all of them. And these contrasts, then, shed light on what Christ expects of us in major areas of conversion. Of course, we always want to be on the light side, not the dark side, of these contrasts.
A second similarity among the four warnings is that they all motivate, even require, the disciple to take appropriate action. These are not things that we are supposed to contemplate or ponder theologically or philosophically, but they are things that we need to act on, especially if we find ourselves on the wrong side of one or more of them. We need to get out of it if we find ourselves in it. So we need to correct our standing before God and do something, we need to change. We need to get out of that bad situation and get into a right one.
And I have noticed this among certain people. Many people are adverse to doing something. They tend to like to pray it out or think it out without actually doing something. Now, the praying and the thinking are necessary, but Jesus is trying to get us to understand that we have to do something too. It cannot just linger in the mind as something we need to do or change, we need to do it. It needs to go from a mental or spiritual activity to an actual physical activity. So we cannot just pray our bad response away and hope that Jesus is going to change us. And I have seen this too. We cannot just fatalistically decide that that is just how we are. That is our lot in life. We cannot change the way we were born. Well, we can! If your eternal life is on the line, you had better do something about it.
The key words that we need to focus on in the second similarity are the fact that Jesus uses action verbs. He says, "enter." That is something you do. He says, "know, do, build." The know in this case, this is the one about knowing them by their fruits, it is more like judging, evaluating, you have to do that. You have to make an effort to do that. And once you get to that point where you are judging the fruit, the good fruit or the bad fruit, there are things that you have to do to make sure that you are not being in any way affected or influenced by those who have good fruit and bad fruit.
Now, you do want to be affected by those who have good fruit, and you want more of what they have to give, especially in terms of being a teacher, a prophet, a minister, of that sort. But if you find yourself on the wrong side of this and find that you have been listening to someone whose fruit is bad, then you have to do something about it. You have to make sure you do not listen, you have to make sure you find a teacher that is giving you the truth. And so even your knowing and your judging in that part requires a response. You have to do something.
Let us go on to the third similarity between these sketches. Each warning emphasizes the good or bad outcome that each response leads to. So it emphasizes whether the thing is going to lead to something good or whether it is going to lead to something bad or destructive. So, in the first one, it is a contrast between life as a result or destruction as a result. And it is not just simply destruction, it is total nihilism. The second warning has a contrast between the outcomes, life, again, or being cut down and burned. Again, the same sort of end for a person who does not heed the warning. The third one is the difference between entering God's Kingdom or being excluded. Jesus does not know you. And finally, the fourth one is a contrast between standing or falling.
So our actions or our lack of actions have consequences. And as Jesus shows here, the consequences are eternal; they are either eternal life or the second death. So we should not minimize the importance of these warnings. Jesus is telling us you need to watch out for these things because they could mean the difference between eternal life and eternal death!
The fourth parallel or similarity, which also points to the deliberate order and inclusion of all these things, is that each warning draws us closer to ourselves, closer to the true disciple. Now, what do I mean by that? It is, everybody has looked up into the air and seen buzzards going around in a circle, flying over something is dead on the ground or it is about to die and they know and they are just waiting. And they are flying these circles that are slowly coming closer to the carcass that is, let us say, on the desert floor.
That is what these warnings look like from 30,000 feet. They are getting closer and closer and closer to the disciple. Another way you could think of it if that buzzard analogy does not get your juices flowing, is water going around a drain goes around and around and around and finally it plunges through the drain.
So we have here a focus that goes from wide to narrow. The first one focuses wide. It is to the many and He gets to, then, the few after that. So you even see in this first one that He is showing you the direction He is going with all these, from the many to the few. But He is telling us that the first warning is speaking in a very wide way to a lot of people. So it is the many versus the few. The second one, "you will know them by their fruits," Jesus talks about outsiders. They are the false prophets. They are not true prophets, they are false prophets. So they are outsiders who pretend to be insiders. That is His focus there.
Then we get to the third one where the person is saying, "Lord, Lord, we've done all these things for You in Your name." This one is speaking of outsiders again who mistakenly believe that they are insiders. There are a lot of people who profess Jesus, a lot of people who do things in His name, you know, taking His authority for what they do, but they are not true Christians. He tells us, "Depart from Me. I never knew you. You weren't part of My group. You aren't one of those that I chose."
And then the fourth one about the foundations, the different types there, this one is spoken to those who are in the church but makes a distinction between those who build properly on the right foundation and those who build on an improper foundation. (And of course, we could then go to I Corinthians 3. We might do that when we get to that sermon about people building on the foundation of Jesus Christ with different materials right here.) He is mostly focusing on the fact that we build on Him. He is the Rock, His Word. Those are things that will be level and true all the time, no matter what beats on them.
But we have to think about these things and understand that they are warnings to us that we have to be careful about how we use the time of our conversion. What we do with what He has given. His point overall in these warnings is that spiritual dangers crouch in wait all around us, whether they are big things that involve the majority of people out there in the world or the majority of professing Christianity, or whether they are people you come in contact with like false prophets or people doing what they think Jesus wants them to do but not having His authority to do them, or within our own heart and our own abilities. our motivations to follow Christ. So we have always got to be on guard lest we find ourselves sliding away from true discipleship.
And this is what the author of Hebrews means in Hebrews 2 where he says,
Hebrews 2:1 Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.
Hebrews 2:3 How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him?
Once we have been given these things and set on the path, we need to be diligently doing what He says, but also being aware of what is going on around us. And the temptations (like James said just a little earlier in the sermonette), that are always there waiting to pull us off the track and they can come in various forms and guises. But we need to be wary that Satan is trying to take us away from Christ, trying to trip us up, and he will use whatever method he can to make sure that we do not develop as fully as we could—or take us out altogether.
So, we are not to think that it is easy by any means to follow Jesus Christ. We are to understand that it is going to be tough. It is going to ask a lot of us and we are going to have a lot of opposition. So we need to be ready to fight that and to make the most of our time and the gifts that we have been given.
Let us go to verses 13 and 14 and kind of explore this just a little bit so that we can understand it more fully.
Matthew 7:13-14 "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it."
Now, one of the thoughts I had as I was going through this, and I think it holds some water, is that Jesus may have had a pilgrimage journey to the Temple as the background of this illustration. And that is something the disciples would have been familiar with. There were three pilgrimage festivals in the year—Unleavened Bread and Pentecost and Tabernacles—and they were (all the men at least) all to go up and appear before the Lord. And so wherever they lived in the land of Israel, they were to make this journey to Jerusalem where God had placed His name. And so they were used to the scene of many people, thousands of people journeying, pilgrimaging into Jerusalem all at the same time. Thousands of people on the roads all trying to get into the gates of Jerusalem and into the city.
And so when you got to the city, you had these crowds in front of the major gates of the city and they were all trying to press in through that gate; and the gates of Jerusalem, most of them were wide. Some of them were quite ornate. They were big gates. They could handle a lot of people coming in and out of them. Think of them as kind of like when you go to Los Angeles and you have, I do not know, 16 lanes trying to funnel into the city or out of the city. That is kind of how these gates were. They were big and they allowed a lot of people through.
But Christ says you do not want to go that way; find the small, tight, constricting gate. That is how you want to enter the city. This is what He tells His true disciples. You do not want to go in and out where all the people are going, who are just there because that is what they are to do. The true disciple is to find that small gate, a postern gate maybe, like medieval cities had, or a sally gate where you could get one warrior or one horse and warrior out of it so that they could attack the people who were attacking them if they were besieged. But you have to find that small gate, the unremarkable gate to enter into the city.
Entering by the narrow gate, the one that will allow just one person in at a time, takes effort and it is very inconvenient both to find and to move through. And sometimes it could be even daunting, a daunting task with a lot of obstacles set in one's way. And not only that, beyond the gate the streets are also difficult and constricted and compressed and confining, but they lead to the goal, they lead to eternal life.
Now, I know the background here, the analogy only goes so far, so I do not want you to think I mean too much about this. But this is kind of the idea that you have; that there are thousands of people all trying to get in. He does say at one point that people are pressing into the Kingdom. But He is telling us here that all those people pressing into it are not the true disciples. There are a lot of people going in trying to get to the goal by going the wrong way and the way, the truth, and the life is the way. That is a very narrow way. And that is through Jesus Christ.
Notice, in the warning there are two gates and two ways. And each set of a gate and a way has a narrow and a difficult type. So there is a narrow gate and a narrow way and then there is, on the other hand, another set is a wide gate or a broad gate and way. Broad, by the way, in verse 13, could be also translated as spacious or commodious or roomy. It is very easy, you have no friction, you are going through the gate without any problems. But He says here that "narrow is the gate and difficult is the way" (verse 14).
That word difficult has the idea of compression. It means it is confining. You feel like you are being put upon. The words that I used before, constricted is one of them, like you are being throttled by a boa constrictor or something like that. You are being pressed on and feel like you are going to be injured almost because the compression is so terrible. That is why it is difficult; because, you could say, the world does not want you to move forward on this way. Satan certainly does not want you to move forward. And so it is constricting us.
And ironically, the constriction we feel is actually up here. It is because our human nature is telling us that we should go the easy way. But Jesus and the Bible are telling us that we should go His way. And so we feel like we are being squeezed both in the gate and in the way. But all of that pressure that we feel, that stress that we feel, is a good thing because that pressure is telling us that we are going the proper way. If it were easy, we would be in the majority and going the convenient way. But the pressure gives us some encouragement that we are doing it the right way.
A gate is obviously an entry point. It is a beginning. And a way, whether we call it a way, a path, a road, is a continuing course. You have something that begins an entry point and you have something that continues over an amount of time. So if we compare it to the fourth warning about the foundation and building on that, where Jesus shows us that you have to first have the foundation and then you can build upon it, we have a similar illustration. A beginning of the foundation and followed by a consequent sustained activity, which is the building. So you have something that happens initially and then you have something that continues for the rest of the way until you get to the goal. It is the same in both of these warnings.
Now, because of John 6:44, meaning that the Father has to call us and bring us to Christ, and the fact that the Father's individual election of each person, each of His potential children, initiating their call and drawing them to Christ is the way that we have been shown is the way it is done. I do not think Jesus intends us to understand entering the gate as what people out in nominal Christianity believe about seeking the Lord or about getting saved. This has nothing to do with people finding some bit of spiritual knowledge and trying to find God. There is nothing like that in what Jesus is saying here.
Remember He is instructing His disciples whom He has already called. This is something that happens post calling, it is post calling instruction. It does not necessarily have to be post conversion. It does not have to be after you are converted, but it definitely has to be after you have been called. Because when you go through the gate, that is the decision you make in response to God's calling. So in most cases, it does happen pre-conversion, if you will, pre-baptism, that God has actually called you and given you this choice. And so the person who has this choice has to determine whether he is going to go through the narrow gate or the wide gate. We can maybe see this a little bit just by looking at the first word in verse 13. It is "enter." He does not tell us what we are entering. He says, "Enter by the narrow gate." What is the gate, the entryway, to?
In the illustration, we can assume it is a city. But notice in verse 21 He uses the same verb, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the kingdom of heaven." Let us go back to 5:20, "For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will know by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." So if we use just the Sermon on the Mount and the occurrences of the word enter, He is talking about entering the Kingdom of God, not necessarily a city, although the Kingdom of God is compared to a city that Abraham sought, a city whose builder and foundation are of God. So that parallel fits.
But we could actually say without being wrong, that the whole Sermon on the Mount could be considered a response to the question, "How can one enter the Kingdom of God?" And so Jesus says here in verse 13 of chapter 7, enter the Kingdom of God by the narrow gate. Your entry into the Kingdom of God begins when you make that choice. So you need to enter through the narrow gate and walk the difficult road to reach that goal. But it starts with the decision we make about entering the gate. It has to be that far back in our conversion. And you could say that making the choice to enter the gate, the narrow gate, is conversion because you have made the right choice that is going to set the tone for the rest of one's conversion, one's spiritual life.
Now, it does not always do that but in most people, having seen what God has revealed to them and the awesome grace that has been given and the terrific reward that we have in front of us, they make that decision and they stick with it—at least they should, of course. But it is often that the initial actions set the tone for the rest of the journey.
Let us go to Matthew 22. I want to show you something here. Let us read this whole Parable of the Wedding Feast, 1 through 14. This seems to be a companion passage to what Jesus says here in Matthew 7:13-14. So think of it in those terms.
Matthew 22:1-14 Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, "See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding."' But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them. But when the king heard about it, he was furious.
And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.' So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, 'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."
So we see here that God's invitation goes out broadly due to the preaching of the gospel. He has for centuries called certain individuals and they have gotten the word out there and many have responded to it. It is a very attractive message. "Hey, the Kingdom of God is coming—utopia!" You know, people are wanting to be comforted and to have the rewards that God is willing to give. So the truth makes some kind of impression on them and many pursue it, they want to find out more—some even with joy and wonder and a great desire.
But what happens is at some point, early on, usually it is early on, sometimes it is not, sometimes it takes a while to come to a point where it makes a difference, but at some point, some element of the truth or some circumstance grinds that person's gears, chaps their hide. Something about it makes them mad, makes them think, makes them worried, makes them rethink, and they get put off. They begin to doubt; maybe it is something that goes against their traditions or their preconceptions of the way they thought it would be. In the words of the parable, it is at this point, once they begin to reject it, that they refuse to wear a wedding garment. They refuse to be clothed in the proper clothing.
The Bible defines what putting on a wedding garment is in Revelation 19:7-8. It shows there very clearly that putting on a wedding garment is putting on righteousness, being clothed in righteousness or in holiness because that is what is required to be a fit bride for Christ. That is what this parable is all about. Because remember, the first thing that we are told here is the king wants to have a bride for his son. So at some point, there is a refusal to transform into the new man. And frankly, the new man is the gate. He is the door, he is the way. So at some point, they refuse to go through the narrow gate or walk the narrow way and they go off. They, in many cases, return to the broad way because it is easier. It does not go against their preferences or does not go against their traditions or their preconceptions.
Let us go back to Matthew 13 where He speaks about a very similar thing in the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. Let us just look at His explanation in verse 18. He says,
Matthew 13:18-19 "Therefore hear the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside."
So here we are seeing a very similar thing. He is talking about a road and this person was on the side of the road, but he did not understand it and he just dies there, if you will, because Satan has come in and taken away his desires or whatever to pursue the way.
Matthew 13:20-21 "But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles."
Here is one who has a preconception about how easy the way would be. But when difficulty and hardship comes up, he, even though he had been joyous about all of it, the difficulties, the trials make him stumble.
Matthew 13:22 Now he who received the seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful."
These are different reasons why he will not grow or will not walk any further along the narrow way, because he has other interests.
Matthew 13:23 "But he who receives seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."
These are the people who are, in short, the chosen. These are the people who decide that whatever comes, thick or thin, they are going to walk the narrow way and they are going to see it through. These are the people Jesus is looking for.
So we can see from these examples that a fair number of people even go through with baptism, become church members, and fellowship among us. But as Jesus says here in Matthew 13, too frequently something comes up to forestall their progress and they fail to grow, they fail to produce fruit, and they return to the easy way.
So in Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus is speaking of the gate as our initial or early response to God's calling and the way is our subsequent course of life—from our initial response all the way to the Kingdom of God. We do not need to make it any more complicated than that or try to make it more concrete. As I said, our early choices set the tone for whether we progress to chosen, many are called, few are chosen. Few go through the whole course and pass with an "A," if you will. But these are the ones, definitely, who take the narrow road and or the narrow gate and the difficult way. So the way we live after making that initial decision validates which road we are on: the narrow road that leads to the Kingdom or the broad way that leads to destruction.
Now, I should give you a caveat here: that one mistake does not throw you into the broad way. We make those mistakes and God will allow us to repent and correct our course. But for some people, it is more permanent and those are the ones that go to destruction because they end up ultimately rejecting it all. So Jesus advises here in verses 13-14 that the choices we make once God opens our mind to truth should be always, or maybe I should say, almost always, of the narrow, difficult, confining type rather than the wide, broad, easy, convenient decisions that many make. Taking the unpopular, narrow, and difficult gate and way leads to eternal life in God's Kingdom, whereas the wide and the broad way definitely ends in destruction and ruin—the opposite of eternal life. So He is talking about the second death.
What I would want you to take out of this most is that our decisions, no matter how small we think of them, have eternal consequences. We need to be thinking people and not just reacting people. Our response should be thoughtful, logical, and spiritual. So we need to make sure that we give serious thought to how we react to things because Jesus is not playing around here. He wants us to be in His Kingdom and so He is giving us this warning that we need to be careful about the decisions we make, especially the more important decisions on how we act, how we speak, family decisions, those sorts of things; how we interact with one another as church members.
Let us wrap this up in Galatians 5, maybe on a little bit more theological bent, where Paul puts this in a way that maybe some people can grasp more spiritually, more logically to them. Paul puts it into a neat package here. I could have gone to many places, but this will work.
Galatians 5:16-25 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. [this is the broad way] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit [and I can add here, walk the narrow way, the narrow path].
Galatians 6:8-10 For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.
We can see this section here as a commentary on Jesus' illustration. And he tells us, just as his Master did, that we need to avoid the wide gate and the broad way and walk, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit—the narrow gate and the difficult way. That is walking in the Spirit. And if we do that, we will reap everlasting life.
The parallel between these passages is very close. It is very easy and convenient to follow the desires and the urges of our flesh. And it is so difficult to deny them and display the fruit of the Spirit toward other other people, especially toward, let us say, undeserving enemies and haters. It is hard! As Paul says, it is wearying to crucify the flesh, crucify selfish human nature, and disheartening to try to do good but see little progress or limited success in our good works.
But that is the confining, constricted way God has called us to. He wants us to take that path, a life of sacrifice to conform to the image of Christ, to follow His example as closely as possible. Why? Why could not God give us an easy life? Well, it is because the struggle to live the life of God in this world of sin produces the best children, children of God, children for the God Family. Going through these hard times, suffering, sacrificing, produces Christ-like character and holiness. As John writes in I John 3:2-3, ". . . we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure."
If we want to be in the Kingdom of God, we must be as much like Jesus Christ as possible and identify with Him and His way no matter how hard it gets. So the next time you are faced with a decision, do not hesitate. Take the narrow way. Make the difficult choice to be in God's Kingdom and have eternal life.
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