“The Narrow Gate and the Hard Path”

Real quickly before we jump into the sermon I want to reiterate the announcement that was made earlier about our Family Gathering/VBS Setup tonight. If you are a member of Liberty then your presence here tonight is greatly appreciated. We especially need help moving some heavier stuff around and getting some bigger things setup, so for those of you who are physically able to do that please make sure you’re here by 5pm. Many hands makes for light work, so let’s jump in and tackle this together. The plan right now is to work from 5-6 and then stop at 6 to eat together and spend sometime praying together. Church this is our biggest outreach of the year. We prayed this Tuesday morning for our VBS teachers and the kids that are coming. Tonight I want to do that again and my hope is that this is the biggest VBS we’ve ever had. The gospel will be presented clearly, so let’s be praying that the Spirit of God will open kiddos eyes and that children will be saved! Let’s pray that as parents drop their kids off we’re able to engage them with the love of Jesus and invite them to join us here on Sunday mornings. Growth in numbers isn’t the goal. Seeing people fall in love and be changed and brought back to life is the goal. So will you make a it a priority to be there tonight as we seek to fulfill our mission of making disciples here in Dalhart. Who knows what God might do with our faithful prayers and hard work?

Along those lines, Ministry safe announcement.

If you have your Bibles go ahead and flip on over to Matthew 7:13-14. Over the next few weeks we’re going to wrap up our series on Kingdom People and Jesus’ sermon on the Mount. And each week Jesus shows us that there’s going to be 2 different options. It’s really a beautiful conclusion in which Jesus brings to an end what he’s been doing throughout the whole sermon and that’s showing that in order to be a true member of the Kingdom, a Kingdom Person, a disciple of Jesus, a true Christian, that you must choose between 1 of 2 ways. Today, we’re going to look at 3 different sets of 2: a narrow gate vs a wide gate, a hard vs an easy path, and life vs destruction. In looking at these 3 different things we’re going to see 1 main point and that’s this: In order to be a Kingdom Person you must walk through the narrow gate and down the hard path that leads to life. That’s the main point of our sermon today. In order to be a Kingdom Person you must walk through the narrow gate and down the hard path that leads to life. So let’s read our passage and dive into it. Matthew 7:13-14

Matthew 7:13–14 ESV

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that 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.

These are the words of our Lord Jesus. Let’s pray.

Have y’all ever watched any of those Red Bull sporting even highlights? Just watching them gives you and adrenaline rush. There’s this one where a guy is on a mountain bike and he’s going to ride down this impossible trail. There’s a point on it where I swear his tires are wider than the trail itself. If he slips right or left he will fall to his death. They have like drones and helicopters and helmet cams and this guy and off he goes. He doesn’t really pedal that much because it’s such a steep hill where they gain enough speed to jump from one cliff to another. Away this guy goes and the view you get is through his helmet camera. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to making that ride. After several heart stopping minutes the guy makes it to the bottom without as much as a scratch. But one misstep, one miscalculation and he’s dead.

Now Jesus isn’t calling us here to go down an exhilarating mountain bike path. But the narrowness of the gate he’s calling us through and the path he’s calling us down is much harder than the path of the Red Bull guy. What I want to do this morning is just compare and contrast the 3 different sets and then at the end give us a chance to think about how we respond to his call. So let’s start where Jesus does and that with the narrow and wide gate.

Kingdom People pass through the narrow gate.

Now other than the obvious, what’s the difference between the narrow and the wide gate? Really, what we’re asking is why the narrow gate? What’s Jesus getting at? Let’s define our terms for a minute. In it’s adjectival form, man I feel smart saying that, when narrow is used as an adjective to describe something it means narrow. In it’s verb form it means to be crushed or restricted. So what Jesus is saying here is that when you walk up to the narrow gate the first thing that you find is that it’s restrictive; that it’s really crushing.

Think about what Jesus has been teaching throughout the Sermon on the Mount. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You walk up to this narrow gate and in order for you to pass through it you have have to be more righteous than the guys who had the first 5 books of the Bible memorized. They knew the law so well and were so afraid of breaking it that they actually came up with restrictions to keep them from getting close to breaking the law. That’s how righteous you have to be. But not just that, Matthew 5:48 “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” You level of perfection must match that of your heavenly Father. He actually is perfectly perfect in every way.

Now we can take the 6 antithesis that we looked at in chapter 5 and begin to see them as what all we must do in order to enter through the narrow gate. We can begin to work and work to try and keep these instructions as our way of passing through the gate and when we do that do you know what the Sermon on the Mount becomes? It becomes crushing. It becomes restrictive. Sure you may do well on one or two of them today but what happens when you slip and don’t do one perfectly? Now if you’re counting on your ability to keep them you have to work twice as hard to make up for it. The weight of the righteous requirement of God to pass through this narrow gate crushes you because you don’t measure up.

Not only are the requirements for this narrow gate restrictive, but also this narrow gate is restrictive in what it lets through. We walk up to this gate with all the things we’ve accomplished in life, the times we’ve gone to church or bible study, having been baptized, the good works we’ve done and we want to say, “look what I’ve done!” But the problem is you can’t bring that all in the gate. As Lloyd-Jones said, “Living the way of the world and the life of the world in a different setting does not make us Christian. In other words, we must leave outside the gate the things that please the world.” Lloyd-Jones is saying that if you look just like the world does every other day of the week besides Sunday, then really how are you different from the world? Those good deeds aren’t things you can use to purchase your way in. You’ve got to leave all that outside the gate. Only you can fit through as you are. Either perfect or not at all.

This is why only a few find this gate. Many don’t even know about it, and there’s even more who do know, but when they see that the restrictions are so great they don’t want to go that way. However, for the few that find the gate and in the narrowness they don’t find restrictions but instead see it as beautiful and not really restrictive, but freeing, freeing from themselves. Because when they look at themselves they find that there is in no way that they can ever pass through because they can’t meet the restrictions. So how then do they open the gate? What is the way through?

Well, what did we talk about last week? Matthew 7:7 ““Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” When you walk up to the gate and find you can’t get through you knock on the door who do you see on the other side? “Behold I stand at the door and knock.” Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life. He is the way through the Gate. In John 10:7-9 Jesus says he is the door who lets the sheep in. You see the only way through the narrow gate is through Jesus himself. The one who is the gate. The one who is the righteous standard of God. The only way through the narrow gate is through Jesus.

You see when you find that you can’t meet these narrow restrictions, when you realize you can’t measure up and that you truly are poor in spirit, you cry out and ask for God to help you. You seek his deliverance and you knock at the gate wanting in and he opens the door for you. Not based off of you, but based off of who he is. Who his character is. God hears your cry and God answers. This is what he’s been doing since the beginning. He has made a way through. He is the way through. Your entrance through the narrow gate has nothing to do with you and everything to do with him.

Now how does this differ from the wide gate? One of our favorite things to do during the evenings when we don’t have things going on is to go on a walk. We typically eat dinner, get stuff cleaned up and then we walk on down the dirt road. Now on this walk I’m just trying to burn off what I ate. I’m typically walking in a straight line straight ahead, but my kids, they’re just along for the stroll. They certainly don’t care about counting steps or burning calories. They roam back and forth across the road. They explore looking for nails and old pieces of barbed wire or even old hammers. They find ladybugs and ants and weeds and all sorts of stuff. They enjoy the space that is Dalhart, TX America.

When Jesus talks about the broad gate he’s talking about a spacious gate. One in which there’s room to roam. So what does that mean for us? Well in contrast to the narrow gate in which there’s only one way to enter with the broad gate everyone is traveling the path so enter how you wish. You actually get to decide what’s best for you. Do you see where that places you? When you are determining what’s best you’re god. You are the sovereign over your own life.

This is one of the reasons the narrow gate is hard. Those entering through the wide gate look at those going through the narrow gate and think, man must be tough having to submit to the Lordship of someone else. When I walk through the wide gate I get to determine how I want to live and what I want to do with my life. The narrow gate seems narrow minded to those at the wide gate.

At the narrow gate we found that only we can go through. All of our good works, efforts, pedigree, accomplishments—what I’ll call baggage—has to be left outside the gate. We come just as we are in our brokenness. But at the wide gate since we’re trying to establish our own way and prove our goodness we can take all that baggage with us. Now instead of trusting in God’s approval of us because of the gatekeeper, now we’re looking to earn God’s approval by how we walk.

And who all finds this gate? Many! All actually start life at this gate. “In sin did my mother conceive me,” says the Psalmist. But that’s part of the problem, all are walking down it. So when you through this gate determining what is best for you it’s all good because it’s a broad gate, there’s room for you to do that. Until your view bumps into my view. Walking with our kids at night is great, until they start to race. Then little brother starts to fall behind so he reaches out and pushed big brother because he’s faster and they both fall and everybody is on the ground crying. We’re good to “live & let live” until your way of living causes me to fall behind or look insecure or impotent so what do I do?

Isn’t this what modern politics is all about? As Keller said, “Liberals say the real problem is conservatives and the conservatives say the real problem is the liberals.” But listen to how Keller wraps up his point, “ The people on the narrow way say, ‘I’m the problem.’” The broad way seems great, till I look across the isle to see how they think we should progress. Then there’s finger pointing and bickering, just like kids on walk. But when we realize it’s not the other person, it’s me, we’ve begun to find the narrow gate.

Do you see the irony in this? It’s the broad gate; there’s freedom, right? I get to determine what’s best, right? I get to prove my own worth, right? Really, the broad gate is the one that ends up restricting you and crushing you. In the broad gate you are working yourself to death trying to prove you worth. You are stressed and anxious because you keep finding that you actually don’t know what is best. That weight crushes you.

So church, the question for you is are you finding that you are trying to earn the approval of God by doing things your way? Are you working yourself to death trying to show that you’re lovely and acceptable to him? If that’s you, the good news for you today is that you can stop. You can come to the end of yourself and see that in your weakness, in your being made narrow, in your crushing of yourself, there is one who will pick you up just as you are and set your feet on solid ground so that you can walk through the narrow gate on to the narrow path. If you haven’t repented of your self-righteousness then the call for you today is to stop, repent and believe. Enter through the narrow gate. When you do you won’t find that it’s just a narrow gate, but it’s also a narrow, hard road. That leads us to our second point:

Kingdom People walk the hard path.

Having passed through the gate Jesus makes clear that the way ahead isn’t easy, but will be hard. But what is it about this path that makes it hard? Again, just look back a few verses to see how Jesus describes us. Matthew 7:11, “If you then, who are evil.” You who are what? You who are evil. We spent time on this last week so I’ll be brief here. Think about your fleshly nature; your true nature outside of Christ.

I heard Tim Keller tell a legend about Jesus’ disciple Peter. This isn’t a true story so don’t look for it. The legend goes that one morning Jesus was with his disciples and he looked at all of them and told them to pick up a rock and come and follow him. Peter kinda scoffed at the instruction, but reached down and picked up a small pebble and stuck it in his pocket. The day goes on and they get to lunchtime and Jesus looks at his disciples and says to them, ok, go ahead and get out your rocks and let’s eat. So the disciples do and when they get their rock out it turns into a loaf of bread the size of the rock. Peter’s mad; or hangry. Here he is with little tiny loaf of bread. He throws it in his mouth and doesn’t even need water to wash it down. The rest of the disciples chuckle as they finish up lunch.

Afterwards, Jesus says again, ok, pick up a rock and follow me. Peter’s smarter now, right? So he finds the biggest boulder he can possibly carry and figures out how to strap to his back. They go on through the day and at dusk they come to a river. Jesus says, ok, throw your rocks into the river. So they do and then Jesus says, ok come and follow me. Peter is now miffed. He doesn’t understand. He looks at Jesus and says hang on a minute! Jesus looks back at him and says, “Peter, who were you carrying that rock for?”

You see, that’s our nature. We’re happy to carry the rock as long as we get the benefit of it. Jesus then is not someone we love & adore, he’s a means to an end. In our sinful nature we’re not actually following Jesus because he saved us, we’re acting a certain way because we think it ultimately serves ourself. But the way of Jesus doesn’t allow for self-service. Matthew 16:24 “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” To follow after Jesus, to walk the hard path, doesn’t enable my ascent to the throne by satisfying my wants, needs and desires. To follow Jesus means that we in faith trust Jesus to sit on the throne of our hearts and instead we die to our wants and needs and desires. We follow him in obedience on this narrow path because not only do we see him as beautiful and lovely, we all so see the mercy and grace he’s lavished on us and that makes him worthy of giving him our very lives.

That however is impossible, because it’s contrary to our own nature. So in humility, when we cry out to God he in his mercy doesn’t just save us, but in his extravagant generosity grants us his Holy Spirit that enables us to walk this narrow path. However, The Spirit doesn’t just enable us to walk in obedience, he sustains us on it.

The word used for hard can be translated as afflicted or oppressed. Remember back at the beginning when Jesus concluded the Beatitudes what did he promise would come? Matthew 5:10

Matthew 5:10 ESV

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The narrow path of following Jesus will bring about persecution because it’s not going with the flow of culture. It’s contrary to the rest of the world. We should expect persecution and if we don’t ever get any, I think we should be greatly concerned.

Now when we think about persecution we tend to think of martyrdom, but persecution and affliction doesn’t always mean death, although it might. When you follow Jesus through the narrow gate you’re walking a narrow path that is opposite of the way of the world, so when the flow of the world is going one way and you’re going the opposite then you will be afflicted, oppressed, and persecuted.

So why is this narrow path hard? It’s hard because it’s contrary to our nature and in it we will face affliction, oppression and persecution. Sounds like lots of fun, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t want to sign up for the narrow path? Well let’s look at the other option: the wide path.

Why is the wide path so easy to travel? Well, it’s just the opposite of the narrow path. the narrow path is contrary to our nature so the wide path is our nature. This is where we get to rule the day. I get to live according to my wants, my needs, and my desires. I get to be god of my own life. Not only do I get to be god of my life, but you get to be god of your life! And we all get to live this way—determining for ourselves what is best. It’s all great, right? There’s no oppression or affliction or persecution on this path because we’re all our own god! Of course, that’s unless you’re a liberal and i’m a conservative or I’m a conservative and your a liberal, then I look at you and you look at me as the whole problem of society.

This path is well traveled & it sure seems to start off great, but as we make our way down the road do you know what we begin to find out? We begin to see that we make for terrible gods. The road seems wide and easy because it’s natural, but the problem with the wide road is where it leads. This takes us to our third point:

Kingdom People are focused on the end.

The problem with the wide road is that it leads to destruction. The more of life I experience the more I realize how terrible of a god I make. I see how much I really don’t know and that when I make decisions I do so with such limited knowledge. Look, it’s truly only by God’s grace that I haven’t destroyed more than I have at this point.

When I was a kid I was especially destructive. My mom loves to tell this story about one of her friends who’s a professional harpist in Amarillo. Think those big harps that you sit and strum. Well at some point as a small child I decided that it looked like a great object to climb. It fell over and literally broke in half. At least mom tells this story, I don’t remember this happening. Maybe I was KO’d in the process. I’m sure I wish I was KO’d afterwards. We make decision based off what we know and how often does it end in destruction? We know that to be true. Walking down the wide road seeking to be god of our own life will end in destruction, but the destruction Jesus is talking about here isn’t just temporary, it’s eternal.

Churck Quarles says, “Destruction” (apōleia) speaks of the utter ruin and eternal punishment that those who repudiate Jesus and His teaching will face after eschatological judgment.” What Jesus is speaking of hear isn’t temporary consequences of our foolish decisions, he’s talking about eternal damnation to hell. When you look at the rest of the book of Matthew destruction is something he covers frequently. In Matthew, Jesus describes hell as eternal conscious torment, not annihilation or that we’ll cease to exist. In John, Jesus described destruction as being a place where the fire never goes out. It’s a blazing furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Hell is described as the outer darkness where the devil and his angels will reside for eternity. The wide road then is a dead end road that has the most frightening ending. Friends, hear me today, if you choose to be the god of your own life and not submit to the Lordship of Jesus you are traveling the wide road and are on a fast track to a cliff that leads to eternal destruction.

But if you’ve passed through the narrow gate and traveled the hard, narrow way where does that path lead you? “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life!” What kind of life is it In Matthew it’s a life of rest, because we’ve taken his yoke upon us. Throughout the rest of the book of Matthew and the rest of the gospels we see it’s an eternal life. In John 6 Jesus describes a satisfied life, one in which we don’t hunger and thirst anymore because we’re satisfied in him. In John 8:12 it’s a life without darkness because he is the one who lights our way. In John 10:10 it’s an abundant life. In John 15 it’s a life that bears fruit and is full of joy. In Acts and even here in our own passage today it is a life with a direction and a purpose.