The Hard Road

“The Sermon on the Mount”

“The Hard Road”

Matthew 7:13-14

Last week we came to a place in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is bringing this particular teaching to a close. Last week we read the first statement in what we could consider His closing arguments. He said, “Therefore whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and Prophets.” Because of everything you have just heard me say, treat people the way that you would like to be treated. Because of everything you have heard me say, Love Your Neighbor As Yourself. What we will continue to see in the coming weeks is that His final statements follow the theme of the Sermon on the Mount and they continue to be hard.

When we started this series at the beginning of the year I said that Matthew 5:20 is the thesis for the entire sermon on the mount. It should easily be considered the goals that we live our lives by. Jesus said that “Unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees we cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.” The expectations that Jesus set forth in Matthew 5:20 aren’t easily accomplished, but that are super simple!

They aren’t easy because we cannot just willy nilly our way through life doing what is common and what feels good. We have to be intentional about following Him, BUT, it is simple in the fact that all we have to do is follow Him. There isn’t a lot we have to go about figuring out on our own. He has laid it all out for us.

What we have to understand, and I will continue to emphasize, is that exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees isn’t something we do on our own. Our duty in this is to give up and give it to God! We understand that the only acceptable righteousness is His righteousness.

The funny thing about Christianity is that what should be so easy, in reality is the hard way more often than not. Jesus said that it would be hard on more than a few occasions, but hopefully this morning you will see that even though it is hard, IT IS WORTH IT!

We will be picking up this morning where we left off last week in Matthew 7:13-14

Matthew 7:13–14 (ESV)

13 “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. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

PRAY

I think most everyone here knows that Kristi and I got away back in September for our 20th anniversary. We flew to Phoenix and spent a few day exploring Arizona. What I realized while I was studying for this message was that I had yet to share any photos from the trip.

So, this morning I am going to share a few of those pictures. I will say that easily one of the highlights of the trip was the Jeep that Kristi reserved for us to have as a rental car for the week. It was our transportation to adventure. The funny thing about it was that no matter where we went or what we did, we were on some kind of road. Some of them were wide, flat, and smooth others were…well as you’ll see here in a minute they were a little more difficult.

First day to Tombstone. 3 1/2 hours of highway and other than the nostalgia of being where the Earp Brothers had been and seeing the OK Corral, it was pretty much a total bust.

BUT THEN WE WENT TO SEDONA!

This first Picture was a while after we left Phoenix. There was some touristy place off the side of the road where we stopped to get something to drink and some snack. We found a place to snap a couple pictures. Way off in the distance you can see a mountain range. We didn’t know it at the time, but that’s where we were headed!

The Second Picture… As we got closer we realized that there was a pretty good chance that somewhere in all that beauty we would find the city of Sedona.

At this point we had been on regular roads. There were wide, flat, and smooth. There was enough traffic to keep you mindful that you weren’t alone. It wasn’t wall to wall cars, but it was a typical highway with typical traffic. Some cars would go faster, others slower. Some got off at exits, others merged on. There were some cars that we seemed to track with for long periods of time, while others got left behind. Everyone was kinda doing their own thing.

Once we got in to Sedona I started to feel like this was not my kinda place. There was a strong New Age vibe all through town. Lots of crystal shops, psychics, tarot card readers….you get the idea. I was afraid that this was going to be another wasted trip…like the 3 ½ hour trip to Tombstone…

But while we were in town I kept noticing these Pink Jeeps (NEXT SLIDE) LOTS of Pink Jeeps. I decided I was going to see where they were coming from. Long story shorter, we ended up at a gate to some kind of recreation area. Shortly after a small parking area with lots of cars, we found a…well for the sake of this mornings message we will call it a road.

NEXT SLIDE

For an hour and a half we had been seeing mountains off in the distance. We had seen beauty and majesty, BUT NOW, we are almost in the mix of it all. We had NO IDEA WHAT WAS COMING NEXT!

I. Choices

a. The rest of Jesus’ teaching involves Choices

b. ONLY 2 CHOICES

i. Hard Road vs. Easy Road

ii. False Prophets vs. Real Prophets vv. 15-20

iii. True Followers vs. Wanderers vv. 21-23

iv. Solid Foundations vs. Shifting Foundations vv. 24-27

c. Choices aren’t a new thing in the Bible.

i. Deuteronomy 30:15-20

1. Deuteronomy 28 blessings and curses

2. Deuteronomy 29 reminders of all that God had done

3. Deuteronomy 30….CHOICES!!!

4. Moses’ Final Words

ii. Joshua 24:14-15

1. Joshua’s Final Words

iii. Choices have consequences

1. Good and Evil

2. Clean and Unclean

3. Holy and Unholy

4. LIFE AND DEATH

iv. The Road Determines the Destination.

1. N. on Main, E. on 160, and E. on 44 won’t take you to California. You will end up in St. Louis!

II. The Easy Road and No Truth (Matthew 7:13)

a. Highways are wide, open, and full of people

b. Everyone does what makes them happy

c. Easy Roads Attract a lot of people

d. The Absolute is relevatized and the relative is absolutized

e. The easy road doesn’t require much effort…Honda self-driving – Tesla’s Completely Self-Driving

f. In spirituality The Easy Road doesn’t require anything

g. Flighty and without boundaries.

h. Universalism is a “philosophy” that believes all people will be saved.

i. The Blind leading the Blind!

ii. The 30,000 Foot VIEW NEXT PICTURE

i. 2 New Yorkers talking… “How could there be just one true faith. It’s arrogant to say that you’re religion issuperior and try to convert everyone else to it. Surely all the religions are equally good and valid for meeting the needs of their particular followers.”

j. Another person “Religious exclusivity is not just narrow, it’s dangerous. Religion has led to untold strife, division, and conflict and may be the greatest enemy of peace in the world. If Christians continue to insist that they have the truth, and if other religions do this as well, the world will never know peace.”

k. (2 Timothy 3)

i. We see people on the Easy road now vv.1-7

1. They will never arrive at the truth

ii. Paul Walked the Hard Road

iii. NEXT PICTURE

1. About an Hour and a half and found out we have covered about 3 of 11.8 miles

iv. God has given us a map for the Hard Road (2 Timothy 3:15-17)

III. The Hard Road and The Hard Truth

a. Way Point 1.

i. (John 14:6) I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

ii. (Acts 4:12) And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

b. NEXT PICTURE The Narrow Road is full of Bumps, it’s hard, it’s confining

i. (Matthew 5:10-12)

ii. (Mark 8:34)

c. While it’s confining, IT’S DEFINING!

i. On the narrow road our thoughts about God and truth are both enlarged and confined. Truth is not left up to the tyranny of democratic consensus. Those who follow Christ will not and may not believe what most people believe. And those on the narrow way will not be popular for their beliefs. For example, our thoughts about God are narrowed. Certain conceptions of God are true, and others are false. Certain views of him are degrading, and others are exalting. But in believing the truth, our vision of God goes far beyond any vision ever dreamed by anyone on the broad road. The Biblical vision of God is electrifying! Who would ever have dreamed of a God who was not confined by nature but was above nature, who holds things together by the word of his power, who is our Father but who also became a man in order to redeem us. So the narrow way brings an incredibly spectacular, immense conception of God.[1]

ii. We had just been to the Mountains on the Right and were headed to the mountains on the left.

iii. NEXT PICTURE… BUT NOW WE WERE EXPERIENCING WHAT WE HAD BEEN SEEING FROM FAR OFF

1. General revelation vs. Special Revelation

iv. The Hard Road isn’t predictable and easy NEXT PICTURE It’s hard to know what’s coming next.

We make the Preparations, BUT LIFE

2. The jeep had an owners manual.

3. Basic survival skills

4. A Map

Conclusion:

We all have decisions to make in life. Kristi and I made a decision to take a hard road. We did it for the excitement, the adventure, and the reward of being up close. We did it for the reward of seeing what many people never get to see on their own. We didn’t have a guide or the comfort of letting someone else do the work. We made the decision to experience something in a fuller measure.

Every person that walks this world has to face similar decisions. We could have never made a decision and sat in a condo for our entire vacation. We could have played it safe and stayed close to the resort. We could have taken it easy and stayed on the easy roads.

The truth is when it comes to spirituality, when it comes to the roads we are really talking about today, the easy road, the broad road that leads to destruction requires almost no decisions. Spiritual apathy and going with the flow will take you places you never want to be. All that road requires is following the masses, making popular decisions, falling for common lies, enjoying the ways of the world.

The Narrow Way, The Narrow Way, THE HARD ROAD....well those require a little bit more. They require relationship with Jesus. As you have seen as we have been journeying through the Sermon on the Mount, well those ways are unpopular.

One author compared the Narrow Gate to the first 2 Beatitudes. Entering into the Narrow gates means passing the gateposts of being poor in spirit and mourning over our sin. Those aren’t popular or easy attitudes. BUT Those are attitudes, those are the gateposts that lead to a path of blessing. They lead to a path of confining revelation of Who God is and What He is Like!

So which road are you on?

Are you taking the Easy road that seems to have no troubles but leads to destruction, OR are you on the Hard Road THAT LEADS TO LIFE?

If you are on the Easy road repent....

If you are on the Hard Road you have experienced bumps, hard times, and uncertainties, and you are here today able to rejoice at all God has Brought you through!

Maybe you are here this morning and you have been travelling the Hard Road and you are on an Extra Rocky part of the Road. There’s curves and tight turns up ahead and you don’t know what’s in store.

Maybe it’s a smooth spot and you are just enjoying the blessings and revelation of God.

[1] R. Kent Hughes, The Sermon on the Mount: The Message of the Kingdom, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 244.