S.O.T.M. The Narrow Way [Matthew 7:13-14]

Stand for the reading of the word of God [Matthew 7:13-14]

Starting in verse 13-14 we come now to an important division in the sermon on the mount. Our Lord is really finished with the sermon as such as laying down doctrine and principles and now He begins to close by applying it and urging His listeners to the importance and necessity of practising and implementing it in their daily lives.

We’ve noted already several times that this chapter 7 in the sermon has an essential unity and common theme, namely the theme of judgment…and that doesn’t change here as our Lord goes on to apply the principles He’s laid down.

His object in this Sermon, as we have seen, is to bring Christian people to realize first of all their nature, their character as a people, and then to show them how they are to manifest that nature and character in their daily life. Our Lord, the Son of God, has come from heaven to earth in order to found and establish a new kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. He comes into the midst of the kingdoms of this world, and His purpose is to call out a people unto Himself from the world and to form them into a kingdom.

Therefore it is essential that He should make it quite plain and clear that this kingdom He has come to establish is entirely different from anything that the world has ever known, that it is to be the kingdom of God, the kingdom of light, the kingdom of heaven. His people must realize that it is something unique and separate; so He gives them a description of it. We have been working through that description.

We have looked at His general portrait of the Christian in the Beatitudes. We have listened to Him telling these people that, because they are that kind of person, the world will react to them in a particular way; it will probably dislike them and persecute them. Nevertheless they are not to segregate themselves from the world and become monks or hermits; they are to remain in society as salt and as light. They are to keep society from corrupting and from falling to pieces, and they are to be its light; that light, apart from which the world remains in a state of gross darkness.

Having done that, He then comes to the practical application and outworking of it all. He reminds them that the kind of life they have to live is to be entirely different even from the best and most religious that was known at that time. He contrasts it with the teaching of the Pharisees and scribes and doctors of the law. They were considered to be the best people, the most religious people, and yet He shows His people that their righteousness is to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. And He proceeds to show how this is to be done by giving detailed instruction as to how we are to do our giving, and how to pray and how to fast. Finally He deals with our whole attitude towards life in this world, and our attitude towards other people in the matter of judgment. He has been laying down all these principles.

‘There’, He says in effect, ‘is the character of this kingdom which I am forming. That is the type of life I am going to give you, and I want you to live and manifest it.’ He has not only laid down principles; He has worked them out for us in detail. Now, having done that, He pauses, as it were, and looks at His congregation and says, ‘Well now; there is My purpose. What are you going to do about it? There is no point in listening to this Sermon, there is no purpose in your having followed Me through all this delineation of the Christian life, if you are only going to listen. What are you going to do about it?’ He comes, in other words, to exhortation, to application.

Here once more we are reminded that our Lord’s method must ever be the pattern and example for all preaching. That is not true preaching which fails to apply its message and its truth; nor true exposition of the Bible that is simply content to open up a passage and then stop. The truth has to be taken into the life, and it has to be lived. Exposition and application are essential parts of preaching. We see our Lord doing that very thing here. The remainder of this seventh chapter is nothing but a great and grand application of the message of the Sermon on the Mount to the people who first heard it, and to all of us at all times who claim to be Christian.

So He proceeds now to test His listeners. He says, in effect, ‘My Sermon is finished. Now you must ask yourselves a question, “What am I doing about this? What is my reaction? Am I to be content to fold my arms and say with so many that it is a marvellous Sermon, that it has the grandest conception of life and living that mankind has ever known—such exalted morality, such wonderful uplift—that it is the ideal life that all ought to live?” ’ The same applies to us. Is that our reaction? Just to praise the Sermon on the Mount? If it is, according to our Lord, He might as well never have preached it. It is not praise He desires; it is practice. The Sermon on the Mount is not to be commended, it is to be carried out.

Then He goes on and says that there is a further test, the test of fruit [v.15-20]. There are many people who have praised this Sermon but who have not manifested it in their lives. Beware of such people, says our Lord. It is not what a tree looks like that matters; you test it by its fruit.

Then there is a final test, and that is the test applied to us by circumstances. What happens to us when the wind begins to blow, and the hurricane threatens, the rain descends and the floods come and beat upon the house of our life? Does it stand? That is the test. In other words, our interest in these things is quite useless and valueless unless it means that we have something that will enable us to stand in the darkest and most critical hours of our lives.

That is the way in which He puts His application. Listening to these things, hearing them, praising them is not only not enough; according to our Lord, it is extremely dangerous. This Sermon is practical; it is meant to be lived. It is not merely an ethical idea; it is something that we are meant to implement and put into practice. We have been reminding ourselves of that as we have gone through it in detail; but the whole purpose of the remainder of this chapter is just to exhort us to do that in a most serious and solemn manner, and always in the light of judgment.

And, of course, that is not only the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount; it is the teaching of the whole of the New Testament. Take a portion of Scripture such as the Epistle to the Ephesians, chapters 4 and 5. There you have exactly the same thing. The apostle gives them practical injunctions, tells them not to lie, and not to steal, to be loving and kind and tenderhearted. That is just a reiteration of this Sermon on the Mount. The Christian message is not some theoretical idea; it is something that really is to become characteristic of our daily life and living. That is the purpose of the remainder of this Sermon.

So, how does our Lord begin to apply His own message…verse 13-14. Look at these verses like this. He tells us that the first thing we must do after we have read this Sermon is to look at the kind of life to which He calls us, and realize what it is. We have seen time and again that the danger in dealing with the Sermon on the Mount is to become lost in details, or to be side-tracked by particular things that interest us. So our Lord tells us to wait a moment and to look at the Sermon as a whole and to reflect upon it.

What would we say is its outstanding characteristic? What is the thing that emerges as being of supreme importance? What is the one thing above all others that we have to grasp as a principle? He answers His own question by saying that the outstanding characteristic of the life to which He calls us is ‘narrowness’. It is a narrow life, it is a ‘narrow way’. He puts it dramatically before us by saying: ‘Enter in at the narrow gate’. The gate is narrow; and we must also walk along a narrow way.

His illustration is a very useful and practical one. He puts it in a dramatic form and the scene is plain in our minds. Here we are, walking along, and suddenly we find two gates confronting us. There is one on the left which is very wide and very broad, and a great crowd of people are entering in.

On the other hand there is a very narrow gate which takes only one person at a time. We see as we look through the wide gate that it leads to a broad way and that a great crowd is surging along it. But the other way is not only narrow at the beginning, it continues to be narrow, and there are but few to be seen walking along it.

We can see the picture quite clearly. That, says our Lord in effect, is what I have been talking about. That narrow road is the way along which I want you to walk. ‘Enter in at the narrow gate.’ Come on to this narrow way where you will find Me walking before you. At once we are reminded of some of the outstanding characteristics of this Christian life to which our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ calls us.

The first is...

The Christian life is narrow at the very beginning

Immediately it is narrow. It is not a life which at first is fairly broad, and which as you go on becomes narrower and narrower. No! The gate itself, the very way of entering into this life, is a narrow one. It is important to stress and impress that point because, from the standpoint of evangelism, it is essential.

When worldly wisdom and carnal motives enter into evangelism you will find that there is often no ‘narrow gate’. Too often the impression is given that to be a Christian is after all very little different from being a non-Christian, that you must not think of Christianity as a narrow life, but as something very attractive and wonderful and exciting, and that you come in in crowds.

But our Lord doesn’t paint it like that. The gospel of Jesus Christ is too honest to invite anybody in that way. It does not try to persuade us that the Christian life is something very easy, and that it is only later on that we shall begin to discover it is hard. The gospel of Jesus Christ openly and uncompromisingly announces itself as being something which starts with a narrow entrance. At the very beginning it is absolutely essential that we should realize that.

We are told at the very outset of this way of life, before we start on it, that if we would walk along it there are certain things which must be left outside, behind us. There is no room for them, because we have to start by passing through a narrow gate. I like to think of it as a turnstile. It is just like a turnstile that admits one person at a time and no more. And it is so narrow that there are certain things which you simply cannot take through with you. It is exclusive from the very beginning, and we’ve seen in this Sermon on the mount some of the things which must be left behind.

The first thing we leave behind is what is called worldliness. We leave behind the crowd, the way of the world. ‘Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many go in by it: because narrow is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads to life, and few find it.’ You must start by realizing that, by becoming a Christian, you become something exceptional and unusual. You are making a break with the world, and with the crowd, and with the vast majority of people.

It is inevitable; and it is important that we should know it. The Christian way of life is not popular. It never has been popular, and it is not popular today, even though it’s been broadcast as popular in some circles. It is unusual, exceptional, strange, and it is different. On the other hand, crowding through the wide gate and travelling along the broad way is the thing that everybody else seems to be doing. You deliberately get out of that crowd and you start making your way towards narrow gate, alone. You cannot take the crowd with you into the Christian life: it inevitably involves a break.

The Christian life is something intensely personal. As much as our modern world loves to think of ourselves as individuals, most of us a slaves to the done thing. We come into a world full of traditions and habits and customs to which we tend to conform. It is the easy and obvious thing to do; and it is true to say of most of us, that there is nothing we hate so much as being unusual or different we want to be accepted by a group.

There are exceptions of course, some who are eccentric by nature; but it is true of the vast majority of us like to be the same. Children are like that. They want their parents to be the same as other parents; they do not want anything unusual. It is amazing to observe how people instinctively like to conform to pattern in custom, habit, and behavior; and indeed, at times, it is even amusing.

We hear certain people objecting to the conforming to certain things. They voice their objections to it strongly, as they do their belief in individuality and freedom. Yet they themselves are often just typical representatives of the particular section or group in which they have been brought up, or to which they like to belong. You can tell almost at once the school or university they have attended; they conform to pattern.

We all tend to do this and as a result of this one of the most difficult things about the Christian life is involves this separation from the crowd. i.e. When a person is made alive to Christ by God’s grace through repentance and faith they say to themselves, “I am responsible for my own actions and my own life.” It doesn’t matter which way everyone else is going, I’m going the way in which God wants me to go. I’m following the path in which He has set me on…not the path the crowd tends to follow. Because I must stand before the eternal judge of my soul one day and I must answer to Him.

But not only must I leave the world outside, I must leave the way of the world outside as well. i.e. it’s not removing ourselves from society it’s removing the ways of the world from us as well. You can segregate yourself from people and still be just as filled with the ways of the world as anyone. Remember our Lord addressed this chapter 5 when He talked about going the second mile and loving your enemies. The way of the world is to hit back and strike back and defend when I’ve been wronged…the way of the narrow path is to offer the other check or to give my coat, or to go the second mile. So it’s not just leaving in proximity it’s leaving the ways of the world.

It’ boils down to leaving self outside. And there is the greatest stumbling block, leaving self behind. Self is the way of Adam, the way of the fallen/natural man; Christ says the old may must be put off, leave him outside the gate. There is no room for two men to go through the gate together. The old man must be left behind…yet there is a real sense that the old man is not put off..the old man often rears his ugly head in our lives. So we fall on God’s mercy.

The New Testament is very humbling to self and to pride. At the beginning of the Sermon we are confronted by: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’. No natural man born into this world likes to be poor in spirit. We are by nature the exact opposite to that; we are all born with a proud nature, and the world does its utmost to encourage our pride from our very birth, the world encourages and celebrates pride. The most difficult thing in the world is to become poor in spirit. It is humbling to pride, and yet it is essential.

At the entrance to that narrow gate there is a notice that says: ‘Leave yourself outside’. How can we bless them that curse us, and pray for them which despitefully use us, unless we have done this? How can we possibly follow our Lord, and be children of our Father which is in heaven, and love our enemies, if we are self-consumed and always defending and watching self and being concerned about self. Remember what our Lord said in Mark, If any man will follow me-what must he do? Let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

The Christian life is difficult

It is not an easy life. It is far too glorious and wonderful to be easy. It means living like Christ Himself, and that is not easy. The standard is difficult—thank God for it. It is a poor kind of person who wants only the easy and avoids the difficult. This is the highest life that has ever been depicted to mankind, and because of that it is difficult, and narrow. Yes impossible apart from Christ living in you and the Holy Spirit guiding you.

You could say the Christian life is such a wonderful life that there are few who find it and enter, simply because it’s difficult. The Christian life involves suffering and persecution. It’s not always suffering and always persecution…but those things are a reality. Jesus said, “in this life you’ll have ease and comfort???” No, he said in this life you will have trouble…He used the word tribulation…intense troubles.

You must also be ready to be misunderstood. Certain things the world will not understand about the Christian life and that may even mean being misunderstood by you nearest and dearest friends or even family. Christ has told us that He came ‘not to send peace, but a sword’, a sword that may divide mother from daughter, or father from son, and those of your own household may be your greatest enemies. Why? Because you have been set apart. This narrow gate does not admit us by families, but one by one. It is very hard, it is very difficult. But the Lord Jesus Christ is honest with us; and if we see nothing else, God grant that we may see the honesty and the truthfulness of this gospel which tells us that we may have to separate from those close to us.

But let us also understand that the life is narrow from beginning to end. It’s not just a narrow gate we must enter in by…it’s a narrow path we walk all the way through. There is no such thing as a vacation from the spiritual realm. There is no saying, “I’m going to take a break from the Christian life for a while and enjoy myself.” No we must continue to fight the good fight of faith always, everyday, all of our lives and it can be very tiring.

You might be thinking, “are you trying to talk me out of being a Christian pastor?” No, not at all. The Christian life is the most glorious joy filled life one could ever life. But we do live in a world of darkness and there are powers of evil at work against us…there subtle dangers and temptations on the road of life…and if you and I are not on guard and watching out, if we relax a bit it could be dangerous for us. You see

The Christian life is a call to action

The gospel of Jesus Christ makes demands upon us, and the first demand is a decision. Having come face to face with the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ we are faced with a decision to repent and believe or continue in our rebellion and disobedience towards God. You see it in Jesus earthly ministry when He approached a man like Matthew He said “follow Me” and Matthew got up and followed Him. The gospel doesn’t say ‘consider me’ or ‘admire me’ it says ‘follow Me’ ‘believe me.’ It calls for a decision. There is no universalism taught in the bible, not everyone is going to be saved, you must make a decision the narrow way to life or the broad way to destruction. As Baptist we are good at pointing this out and focusing upon a decision. What we are not as good at is the second point of action.

The gospel of Jesus Christ demands our total commitment. Many of us are committed to many things in our lives, some things we have committed too may even take priority over God Himself. Here’s a real test of your faith. What you are really committed too will control your daily life. What is really controlling your life? Are you committed to serving Christ, His church, and others? Or are you serving yourself? Are you committed to walking in the faith of our savior Jesus Christ day by day or do other commitments come first?

What dominates your life? What is actually governing and controlling our practices and decisions? There are two paths you can go down…one that leads to life the other leads to destruction. What path are you walking?

Do you recognize this as God’s truth? Do you recognize Christ’s calling upon your life? If so then you should be able to say, “I am going to give myself to this truth and calling on my life. I am going to take Christ at His word, repent of my sin and believe Him…and I will act upon it by following Christ and committing to Christ and His church. This will be my life.” With the help of my Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit which guides me.

I hope everyone who hears these words can make that confess and profession of faith. Not one of us is with out excuse. Repent, believe, and commit your life to Christ.