Finding Your Way

Maps are a great way to get lost!

A map is only useful if you can find where you are and figure how to get to where you are going. You have to get your bearings. You have to know where N is and which way is E or W.

If you are in Dallas and I give you a map of Houston it’s worthless, confusing, paralyzing, and hopeless. When that happens, most people just throw away the map and strike out on their own looking for signs.

Long before maps, people used the sun, moon and stars, wind, and currents, to give direction and guidance. It didn’t always work, Columbus set sail in 1492 for Asia and after two months landed in the Bahamas thinking he had made it to Japan. Sometimes we can trust our maps, sometimes our maps our outdated or just wrong and they get us completely off course, and then there is always the inevitable user error!

Today’s maps are digital and crowd sourced, so that they can be updated in real time with traffic delays and optional routes. Leading to more decisions about the path we will take.

Along the way in life, we have to make choices and decisions about which path, which road am I going to travel. Robert Frosts famous poem, The Rad Not Taken ends with this refrain …

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Over the course of your life how many times have you had to choose between two paths? In my own life, those choices have been game changers. The choice to give my life to God, the choice I made about serving in the military. The university I chose to attend, the job I chose over other opportunities. Often times it is the choice of others that greatly impacts our lives. I was thankful that Baylor said yes when I applied for admission. I was so happy that Gail said yes, when I asked her to choose me. There are many choices that others have made that have impacted my life and changed everything.

Throughout our lives we all make choices about schools, jobs, kids, marriage, direction, paths, doors, relationships and more. In our text today Jesus says …

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easythat leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7:13–14

This passage is an invitation to choose to live by the words of Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven just the way Jesus has been laying out for us in the sermon on the mount. Jesus is going to give us three metaphors to consider, the gate, our fruit and the foundation. We will look at the last two next week as we close out this series on the sermon on the mount.

But this morning we want to look at the choice that is before.

Adam and Eve came to such a choice. Two paths, two choices, one right and one wrong, trust and obey or turn away and disobey. They did not choose wisely. They sinnedand were cast out of the Garden and humankind has been on a journey back to God ever sense.

Life is filled with choices!

Some choices don’t matter a great deal. Whether you scramble your eggs or fry them. Whether you where get up at 4:30 or 5 a.m. or what you wear today, unless of course it is over 100 degrees outside and you choose to wear long pants, a long sleeve shirt and a coat. That choice may have an impact on you.

Some choices are not hard, while other choices are big ones. Who you will marry, where you will live or in whose hands you will trust your eternity. In the Sermon on the Mount choices are everywhere and the decisions are many.

Over the past weeks you have been presented with choices. Will you live with an eternal perspective or a temporal focus.

Eternal Perspective or Temporal Focus.

That single choice changes everything in your day to day living. Your relationships today and tomorrow. When you choose the eternal over the temporal, you think more about the impact in the Kingdom of Heaven, you think more about your relationship to God and your eternity. Jesus said in Matthew 6:19-20

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. Matthew 6:19–20

It is so easy to focus on your physical looks, your financial standing, your clothes, house, food … Jesus invites us into a relationship with God that changes our perspective about the here and now for a now and later eternity.

There is also a choice we make about an internal reality versus external experience.

Internal Reality or External Experience.

Jesus, uses words like hypocrite to describe those whose life is about appearances over substance. Experience over reality. It is a life that says if I can just get you to think I am awesome, amazing, or if I can control the external image without any thought to or change in my heart then everything will be great.

Jesus tells us time and time again, it’s your heart. And your treasure, that is that things that give you the most joy reveal your heart.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21

You have heard it said … but I say to you. This is Jesus saying, you think that because your external experience is in line with the command that your heart can be far from God. Your internal is more important than the external.

We are told to choose the way of the heart over external conformity. Then there is the big choice of God’s will or my desires.

Will of God or my Desires.

This is always where the rubber meets the road. I want God to bless my choices before or without ever seeking to understand His will for life. I want out of a broken wanter. I spoke to our students at Youth Kamp last week and talked to them about our broken wanters. How we all want and that we want what is most often not what God wants for us. But when we have an eternal perspective with a desire to focus on our internal reality. Then we are in a good place to seek God’s will and surrender our desires.

In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus prayers …

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:10

That is the prayer of Jesus for our lives. That we would be a people, a family, moms and dads, friends and neighbors that would be more about God’s will than our desires.

I shared this before, but if you want to know God’s will and make choices that align with scripture then here are ten things. They are not on the screen, so you can write them down.

It’s God will that … saved, filled with the spirit, sanctified, serving and suffering.

Questions to ask when having to choose the path forward.

Is it legal? Is it ethically? Is it moral? Is it biblical? Is it beneficial? Did you prayer about it?

This process has always revealed my heart’s hidden desires and brought be to focus on God’s will more that what I want. Now I know that you and can go through that process to check the box, proof texting along the way. But you need to know that your choices have consequences. There is a way that leads to life and a way that leads to death.

The Way of Life or the Way of Death.

That is a heavy choice to think about. But what scripture teaches is that physical death is not our focus. Spiritual death is our focus. An eternity with God is our focus. After all what does it profit you if you can the world and lose your soul. As Jesus said in Mark 8

When he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

This is the choice, enter the narrow gate my choosing life through death. Life in God is death to the things of man.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.” Deuteronomy 30:19–20

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Proverbs 14:12

This greater life in the kingdom of heaven that Jesus calls us into is found through a personal relationship with Jesus. So we come to end of the Sermon on the Mount and we see three metaphors that we look at this week and next, where Jesus says that we must choose!

This choice ultimately is about choosing to follow the way of Jesus. To believe in not just His wisdom or His teachings, but to believe in Him. That He is the Messiah, the one who will lead you home!

How do you find your way in this life?

First, I have made wrong choices, gone down dead ends, and suffered losses in my life. But I will say this …

What matters most is who is with you!

When you make a wrong turn, get off track, face difficult choices and challenges. Or even when you make the right choice, but it is hard. Who is with you?

King David wrote in the most famous of all Psalms …

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Psalm 23:4

Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, Matthew records these words from the prophet Isaiah…

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). Matthew 1:23

When God is with you then …

There is only one way to really live that leads to life!

We live in a time when the politically correct thing to believe and to say is that all religious roads are valid, as long as a person is sincere in holding that belief. That is, it doesn’t matter how a person seeks to worship God, or how one seeks to become spiritually mature or enlightened, or whether it is even necessary to hold any belief at all – because God/Source/the Universe loves every one of us! But Jesus, shockingly, says just the opposite.

He states there are actually only two roads we can travel in this life: the broad road or the narrow road.The broad road is every other religious or spiritual belief outside of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ; it is well-traveled, but leads to destruction. The narrow road is a genuine, personal relationship and trust in Christ Jesus; it’s the only road that leads to life!

Jesus left heaven to come to earth to show us where we were and how to get home. He came to show us the way to God. He said to the disciples as they were wondering where Jesus was going. There hearts were troubles and Jesus said …

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6

So what do you and I need to do? Well first realize that we are …

We are measuringall the wrong the things.

We are looking to the wrong things to give us purpose and meaning in life.

We measure bigger because we believe it is better!

Bigger salary, bigger house, bigger life!

We measure morebecause we believe more is a good thing!

More fun, more comfort, more leisure, more convenience, more choices.

We measure control because we believe it all belongs to us!

It’s my choice, my life, my money, my job, my family, my vacation, my kids, my, my, my! In this upside world of the Kingdom of Heaven we measure things differently. It’s not about quantity or even quality.=

The truth is … life is about love that leads to a changed heart and different choices.

Jesus says …

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easythat leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7:13–14

Hard is good, easy is bad. Narrow is good, wide is bad.

Often we are looking for the well walked path, the path of least resistance or the obvious choice because it seems popular and culturally approved of or it is what we desire out of a broken wanter.

Don’t choose the way because it is bigger, more or you think you have control! Choose the way that leads to life eternal.

So how do I get on the right path when I have made all the wrong turns?

· Come to Jesus

· Enter His Kingdom

· Take up His mission

· Live life with Him

Wide and Easy … Narrow and Hard?

The choiceis yours … choose wisely!

… choose this day whom you will serve, … as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15

Communion

Song Narrow Road