We've been making our way through the Sermon on the Mount for the past four or five months, and today we come to Matthew chapter 7 verses 13 and 14. This section marks sort of the beginning of the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ's conclusion to this sermon. Matthew 7 verses 13 and 14, and I invite you to stand with me in honor of God's Word as we read it together. This is the Word of God. 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. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, please take the Word that's before us now and work it deep into our hearts and minds and lives that we might find the narrow gate and we might stay on the path that is hard in order that we may one day come into your presence and there find life everlasting. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
You may be seated. In verse 13, Jesus begins the conclusion of his Sermon on the Mount. He's wrapping things up.
He's making final arguments. He's drawing conclusions from the truths that he's preached, and so these last several verses contain profound assertions of eternal consequence. Heed these verses and eternity will go well for you. Ignore these verses and eternity will be devastatingly awful for you. Does this mean that we need to read these verses with fear?
Well, partially. We need to fear our own foolish tendency not to listen to God as we should, to neglect obedience to Christ and to be distracted by a dozen lesser concerns, but we also need to read these verses with hope because with every stern and sober warning, Jesus gives us a way of escape. He tells us how to be rescued from these frightening eternal dangers. So the point of these closing verses is simply this, run to Christ. Run to Christ.
And that's really always the point, isn't it? If you're laboring and heavy burdened, run to Christ. If you're surrounded by a way to sin that clings so closely, look to Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. If God seems distant or absent, gaze upon the one who is the image of the invisible God.
Look to Jesus Christ. If you don't know what to say or what to think or how to feel or what to believe, then remember this, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount is about the gospel. Yes, there are some very scary statements in these concluding verses, but let those scary statements simply drive you closer to the incredibly good news that Jesus Christ saves sinners. If you're outside of Jesus Christ, let these verses drive you to Him. If you're in Christ, let these verses bring a smile to your face over the fact that though you once were lost, you now have been found by the only one who knows how to find and rescue sinners. In these last few verses of the Sermon on the Mount, there are all sorts of dangers that we encounter. Gates that entice us down roads that lead to destruction, wolves that trick us into thinking they're safe and harmless sheep, thorns and thistles and disease that are good for nothing but to be thrown into the fire, false professions of faith, false miracle workers, sinking sand that seems like a good place to build a house but isn't, storms and floods and winds and destruction.
But listen to this, church, Jesus Christ can save you from them all. So let's keep a steady gaze on Him as we work our way through the scary but gospel saturated conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to only look at two verses this morning, two verses that are almost entirely metaphorical. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which something is symbolically used to refer to something else.
Something figurative is used to explain something that is literal. In Matthew 7, 13 and 14, the metaphor, the symbol is a pathway. In fact, there are two pathways. One of them begins at a narrow gate and leads down a difficult path to a surprisingly beautiful place of life.
The other begins at a wide inviting and welcoming gate. It leads down an easy path but it ends at a place of unexpected and sudden destruction. These gates and pathways are not literal, of course. So what is Christ referring to? What does the metaphor mean? Well, the most obvious clues are the words destruction and life. These are our epic words that point to profound realities. They're the most literal words in our text this morning and they describe the ultimate destinies of the wicked and the righteous respectively. Psalm 1 alludes to this contrast between the wicked and the righteous. The one is decaying and unwanted and perishing.
The other is fruitful and prosperous and healthy. John 3, 16 draws the same contrast between those who through faith in Christ have everlasting life and those who reject Christ and perish. In fact, over and over again in these closing verses of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is contrasting choices and foundations and circumstances that lead either to life or to destruction, to heaven or to hell, to eternal joy or to eternal sorrow, to good fruit or to bad fruit, to a solid foundation or to a collapsing foundation. And if this is the context of Matthew 7, 13 and 14, then the metaphor's meaning is very clear. The end of the road is heaven or hell. The pathway is a life of following Christ or a life of rebelling against Christ.
And the gate is the initial faith in Christ at conversion or faith in something other than Christ. Jesus is essentially saying by way of metaphor, are you going to heed this sermon or not? Are you going to listen to what Jesus has been saying now for three chapters? Are you going to enter the narrow unappealing gate of poverty of spirit, brokenness, spiritual bankruptcy? And are you going to stay the course of obedience and humility and even persecution because if you do these things, the end result will be glorious beyond your wildest imaginations.
But the opposite is true as well. Are you going to insist that you're not really spiritually bankrupt, that you have enough inherent goodness in you, that you really don't need a savior at all? And if that's your opinion of yourself, then you're not going to go to the trouble of obedience and humility, certainly not of persecution. But if you live your life this way, be forewarned, it will end in sudden ruinous destruction. So if the choice put before us is so obvious, of course we'll pick the right path, right? I mean, why would we ever not pick the right path given those circumstances? Who wants their life to end in destruction?
Well, nobody. And yet people choose self-destruction over eternal life all the time. Why is that? Well, Jesus tells us why. In fact, he mentions three reasons why.
The first is this. We tend to choose the pathway of destruction because the entrance appears promising. The entrance appears promising. Christ's illustration begins with a command, enter by the narrow gate.
And that word narrow means narrow, not wide, not easily accessible, constricting, confining, inconvenient. The alternative to the narrow gate is a gate that's wide, it's broad, it's expansive, it's convenient, it's inviting. When you're looking for a parking spot, you choose the one that's closest to the building and the one that's easiest to get in and out of.
You don't pick that spot that's flanked by two huge dualies whose fenders are intruding into your parking spot. You don't get in and out of your house by means of the crawl space door. You go in through the front door, you go in through the door that's closest to the driveway or the garage. We use the practical door, right?
We pick the convenient parking spot. We naturally enter through the wide gate. Now, here in Christ's illustration, the entrance onto the pathway refers to the beginning of a spiritual journey.
But there are two journeys or pathways to choose from. One pathway begins at a narrow gate, the other one begins at a wide gate. The narrow gate as we will discover is the right path to choose because it ends in life. The wide welcoming gate is counterintuitively the wrong one to choose because it ends in destruction. Spiritually, the narrow gate represents Christian conversion.
The Christian faith begins experientially with repentance of sin, faith in Christ, conversion. On the other hand, the wide gate which looks so convincing and pleasant and obvious represents every other option, any course of life that is devoid of Jesus Christ. Jesus makes this crystal clear in John 10. In John 10 verse 1, Jesus says, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. And then in verse 9, he says, I am the door of the sheep.
If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Christ is the narrow gate of Matthew 7. Christ is the only entrance to the path that leads to life. All other gates lead to paths that lead to destruction. The path to life is an exclusive path.
There's only one of them. And so we say to ourselves in our open-minded sophistication, surely that can't be right. What are the odds that of all the possible paths of life, only one of them is the right one, there must be other ways. And so we invent other ways, alternative doors, accessible entrances precisely because they're wide, they're easier to get through. I don't know if you've ever read John Bunyan's classic allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress.
If you haven't, you really should. But I can't read these verses without thinking of the beginning of that story. At the beginning of the story, the main character, whose name is Christian, becomes aware of the misery of his life. And then a man named Evangelist tells him there's a way to get out of the misery and experience unimaginable happiness. And that the way that leads to that place of unimaginable happiness starts at a small, unassuming gate. It's an allusion to Matthew 7 13. So Christian begins making his way toward this gate, but along the way he encounters several obstacles, the same obstacles that we encounter on our way to repentance and faith in Christ. The first obstacle is maybe the most unexpected of them all. It's his own wife and children. They plead with him not to embark on this foolish search for happiness.
It's usually the people and things that we love the most, isn't it? That deter us from the narrow gate. Don't do this to your family. Don't give up this incredible career path that you're on. You're sacrificing way too much for this passing religious infatuation. Well, Christian doesn't listen to that obstacle he moves on, but next he stumbles into a bog, a swamp of despondency, despair, hopelessness. He bogs down in discouragement. How many people have been swayed from starting with Christ by sheer, simple hopelessness?
Oh, that won't work. Surely Christ won't be enough. Surely for something as profound as eternal salvation in life, the solution must be bigger and shinier and flashier and more obvious than simple faith in some Jewish prophet. Well, Christian manages to get unstuck from this bog of hopelessness, but then he runs into Mr. Worldly Wise, a sophisticated man of the world who just seems to have all the answers.
And he says, oh yeah, I've seen your type before. You're just a religious fanatic, but that narrow gate will not provide any solutions to your problem. What you need is Mr. Legality who lives in the city of morality. Keep the law. Be a good person. Make yourself righteous. Don't fool yourself into thinking that some divine savior can save you.
That's all just a distraction. Well, folks, that's the lie of self-righteousness, isn't it? Salvation through good works.
Do enough good and your good will outweigh your bad and all will be well. Well, Christian is rescued from the lie of Mr. Worldly Wise and finally makes it to the small gate, but close to the small gate is one final deterrent.
It's a castle from which the devil and his minions are firing arrows at unsuspecting people just as they're trying to enter the pathway that leads to life through the small unassuming gate. The point we take away from Bunyan's allegory is that there is no shortage of alternative options. There are gates that promise entrance onto paths that are easy and navigable, that are respectable and intuitive, that grant immediate happiness and credibility. But the unifying reality of all of these alternatives is this, they end in destruction, every one of them. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. If you want the path that ends with eternal life, there is one and only one option for you.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. But if you're uninterested or unconvinced or apathetic about Christ's efficiency to save, there are a million other options for you to try, but all of them end in destruction. Narrow is the gate that leads to life, wide is the gate that leads to destruction. But not only is the point of entrance a stumbling block, we sometimes choose the path that leads to destruction because secondly, the way seems easy. The way seems easy. You see, walking through the gate is just the beginning.
Saving faith in Christ is just the start. There is a whole pathway to be traversed on the other side of that gate. The Christian life doesn't jump from justification to instant glory any more than Israel's crossing the Jordan River resulted in their instant possession of the promised land. No, crossing the Jordan was just the beginning for them. There were battles to be fought, cities to conquer, a temple to build.
The entrance into the land was just the beginning. Beloved, our justification at conversion is just the start of a journey that will inevitably end in glory, but that journey will be hard. The Beatitudes at the beginning of Christ's Sermon on the Mount give us a clue as to what's on the other side of that gate. It's things like poverty, mourning, hunger, thirst, persecution, insults, false accusations. The life journey of a Christian is a journey of sharing in the sufferings of Christ and becoming like him in his death. It's a life of killing sin. It's a life of resisting devils. It's a pathway that descends right down into the very valley of the shadow of death.
So who wants to sign up? Well, no one wants to, if that's all there is. But does this mean there's nothing to be enjoyed on this Christian path? No, there are joys. But the joys of the Christian life are the kinds of joys that have to be learned.
One must acquire a taste for these joys because they're not the inherent joys of sinners. The joys of the Christian life are delightful, like broccoli and Brussels sprouts are delightful. Broccoli and Brussels sprouts are incredibly healthy foods to eat, but their taste and texture and the sheer amount of chewing one must do to digest these healthy vegetables are not generally appealing. Now I know that some of you were born loving broccoli and Brussels sprouts.
I'm happy for you, but don't ruin my analogy. For most of us, certain foods that are undoubtedly and exceptionally healthy to eat are also hard to eat. We have to overcome our aversion to them.
We have to learn to like them. We have to make ourselves eat what we know we ought to eat because it's healthy rather than eat what we want to eat because it gratifies our appetite. But in time, our palate matures and as our medical costs go up and our palate matures, our appreciation for the benefits of healthy food increases.
What we turned our noses up at as children, we actually purchase at the grocery store and cook it and eat it and say that was good. Good things, healthy things, right things, godly things don't always immediately feel good, healthy, right or godly. Living righteously doesn't always make life immediately easier or better or happier.
The fruit of righteousness, the ease of it, the goodness of it, the happiness of it comes later, sometimes much later. The pathway itself is hard but the end of the path is life rather than destruction. Now we need to understand that the reason the path to life is hard for us is not because there's something wrong with the path, it's because there's something wrong with us. Matthew Henry said it well, he said, the bodies we carry about with us and the corruptions remaining in us make the way difficult.
But as the understanding and will grow more and more sound, it will open and enlarge and grow more and more pleasant. And so because of this inward corruption that remains in us, we are easily deceived into thinking that the right path is the wrong path because it's the hard path. And we're deceived into thinking that the wrong path is the right path because it's the easy path. Our rationale goes something like this, God wants me to be happy, this circumstance or this belief or this standard doesn't make me happy, therefore this must not be the right circumstance or belief or standard.
We measure the rightness or wrongness of things by their immediate consequence rather than by their ultimate consequence. Remember several years ago I was on vacation with my family in an area that we weren't familiar with, we were in the mountains, we were trying to drive to a restaurant in the next town over and so I put the address into my GPS and it spit out several routes for me to choose from so I naturally chose the fastest route and began blindly following my GPS's instructions. They eventually had me driving our massive family van down this increasingly narrowing road in the Appalachian Mountains. The pavement turned to gravel, the gravel turned to dirt, the dirt turned into a washed out goalie alongside a creek bed. At one point I had to literally stop and let a horse and buggy, I kid you not, get around us.
It felt like we had gone back in time and I was sure we were going to disappear and never be heard from again. But eventually the goalie became noticeable, a noticeable road again, the dirt became gravel, the gravel became pavement and we arrived at the restaurant. But I can assure you it was no shortcut. I thought the fastest route was the best route but I should have stayed on the tried and true pathway. The enemy of obedience is often not disobedience but expediency. The enemy of obedience is often not disobedience but expediency.
Get me there quick, gratify me now, make this problem go away. We want a smooth, wide path and so we settle for the easy road but it is a road that leads to destruction. Well there's a third reason that we choose the pathway that leads to destruction. Not only do we choose it because the entrance appears promising and because the way seems easy but thirdly we choose the wrong path because the company feels right. Jesus says that the sheer number of people on the road to destruction is many but those on the road to life are few. And just like our tendency to measure the rightness or wrongness of our life choices based on the immediate consequence, we also have a tendency to measure our life choices based on popular votes.
We say to ourselves everybody's doing it this way, nobody's doing it that way, therefore this way must be the right way because there's no way so many people would get it wrong. Everyone sows a few wild oats, everyone indulges in a vice here or there, nobody's perfect and before you know it we've justified our march down the wide path that leads to destruction on the grounds that everybody's doing it. But listen to this, Matthew 22 14, many are called but few are chosen.
First Peter 3 20, God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through the water. First Corinthians 1 26, not many of you are wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth but God chose what is foolish in the world and weak and low and despised so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. Brothers and sisters we don't determine the will of God by headcount, we determine the will of God by what he has spoken, by what he has revealed, by what he has commanded. Be careful of placing too much value on the size and credibility of the company that you keep.
Young person, the quantity of your friends is not half as important as the quality of your friends. Single person who desires to be married, a life of singleness with Christ is better than a fun-loving but godless spouse to walk with you down the wide path of destruction. Elderly Saint, compromising your long-held faith at the end of your journey for the sake of a little bit of company is not worth the price you'll have to pay. Few is better than many when the few are walking together on the road to life. So Jesus has exposed these subtle deceptions that we are all too prone to embrace, deceptions that will set us on a destructive trajectory and as an alternative to that destructive path Jesus gives us one singular command.
It's right there in the very first sentence of our text, enter by the narrow gate. Start with Christ and you will end with life everlasting. According to Jesus, we ought to be evaluating the path of our life not by the immediate gratification it brings, not by how popular it is, but by what it's leading us to.
Where does it end up? No one in their right mind would choose the guillotine or the gallows simply because the sidewalk to these devices of execution is well landscaped and inviting. So as it turns out according to Jesus when it comes to a proper evaluation of the trajectory of our life it's not about the journey after all, it's actually about the destination. So we ought to choose the pathway of life because it ends well, it ends with life. A wise Puritan preacher once said that the gate is narrow and the way is uphill but one hour in heaven will make it all worth the while. In Romans 2 verses 6 through 8 Paul explains Christ's metaphor of the two gates and the two pathways only he doesn't use metaphor figures of speech.
He very plainly and literally says this, Romans 2, 6 through 8, God will render to each one according to his works to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness there will be wrath and fury. So there are two and only two roads to choose from, the hard road and the easy road. And I suspect that for most of us here this morning we understand the foolishness of choosing the easy road.
I mean after all we're Christians who obviously go to church on Sunday, who sit through sermons with Bibles on our laps, of course the wide road that leads to destruction is something we want to avoid. But I suspect that for us perhaps the greater danger is of another sort. The danger we face is one of thinking we're on the narrow road to life when we're really on the wide road to destruction. You see there are two ways to navigate the narrow path to life. One way to navigate that narrow path is by perfect obedience to the law of God. Do not stumble over a single pothole. Do not veer from the path in thought or deed or motive and keep doing this for the entirety of your life and you'll be successful.
Do you know what the problem with that option is? We've already messed it up. In fact we were born having already messed it up. We were born with a sin nature that we inherited from our first ancestor Adam.
A sin nature that predisposes us to not only stumble on the potholes but to go looking for the potholes and never make it to the finish line. But there's another way to navigate the hard road and it is to let the strong arms of Jesus carry you down this impossible road of righteousness and persecution and temptation and loneliness and fear all the way to that magnificent destination of life and joy unspeakable. The Christian life is the only life that ends with glory and joy but it is a difficult and hard life. The only hope you have of making it to the end of keeping the faith of finishing well is to run with full abandon and trust into the arms of Jesus and let him carry you all the way. Enter by the narrow gate so that you can be carried by the one whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light for then and only then will you find rest for your souls.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father what an amazing amazing love you have loved us with that you would give your only begotten son to forge a path for us that leads from sin and death to heaven to glory to life. We who deserve to have been abandoned on the road of false security and of shallow happiness and of futile alternatives have instead been rescued and forgiven and washed and adopted and treated as beloved children or we don't deserve such grace and yet you give it without limit without qualification without regret. You give us your saving grace with pleasure delight in your heart for your son and for the children whom your son has redeemed with his own blood. Lord may every person in this room be found washed in that blood on Judgment Day. May our children and our children's children be covered by that blood on the last day and may our voices ring out for all eternity with this resounding song of praise. You have drawn us up from the pit of destruction out of the miry clay. You set our feet upon a rock making our steps secure. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So thank you Father, Son and Holy Spirit for life and salvation and the promised hope of glory in the precious name of Jesus Christ. Our door, our pathway, our companion. Amen.
