“Everyone Goes To Heaven, Right?”: One of the most telling, surprising, shocking statements that Jesus ever made is that only a few find salvation.
- Matthew 7:13-14; Luke 13:22-30.
- You could say that this section (along with vv. 24-27) is the “invitation” of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He is pressing us for action and to be a part of this radical Kingdom.
- And so He gives us the warning that the gate is narrow, but then gives us insight into why the gate is missed most often.
- He’s being honest with us but wanting to give us every chance to make it.
- The narrow gate is not hidden or camouflaged or impossible to find, but it must be sought.
- You’ve got to seek the gate – it’s not something you’re likely to stumble on.
- This is a truth that we need to preach a lot more, talk about a lot more, and dwell on a lot more.
- It’s a truth that gets under your skin when you think on it for a while.
- It’s a truth that has the ability to change how we view much of our spiritual life.
- It’s a truth that has the power to create an evangelistic urgency that we now lack.
- This truth is a challenge, a warning, a motivator, a fact. We need to preach it more.
- This stands in stark contrast to the way that Christians speak.
- Just think for a minute about how many funerals you go to where the person’s presence in heaven is assured. Compare that to how seldom an possibility of hell is even considered.
- Think for a minute about how pastors speak of anyone who says they believe in Jesus is a Christian (no obedience or discipleship required!).
- Think for a minute about how we presume that every church member is alright with God.
- Think for a minute about how everyone presumes that saying “I believe in God” is sufficient to grant entrance to heaven. Or even “I believe in Jesus” – big deal, the Devil believes that Jesus exists.
- Think for a minute about everything we say (not only in our culture but even within the church) pushes the idea that heaven will be a reunion with everyone there.
- Think for a minute about when the last time was that you heard someone seriously talk about this truth either in a sermon or just in conversation.
- It needs to be clear that when Jesus says here that “only a few find it” He doesn’t mean that God desires for only a few to be saved. The point is that only a few want it.
- Lots of people want a salvation that involves no obedience, no sacrifice, no change of behavior, no giving up of sin, no denial of self. But that’s not what Jesus is offering.
- Jesus didn’t come to excuse our sin; He came to forgive our sin.
- His bloody and painful death on the cross was not done so that we could continue to dwell blithely in our sin. It was so that we could live in victory over our sins and actually live lives that bring glory to God.
- If we’re not interested in that – if we want to continue to be the gods of our lives and enjoy a season of sin – we may do that, but we can’t do that and call ourselves saved.
- I got an email the other day from someone who had visited NewPoint in the past. They were asking to be taken off the email newsletter list (which is fine), but then they went on to say that church wasn’t something that seemed to be working out right now for them, but maybe it would at some point in the future. I don’t have a problem with someone walking away from our church – I know that no church is for everyone. I do have a problem with someone walking away from God.
- What really stuck with me as I’d been studying this passage on the same day I got that email was how casually they were putting God on the backburner. Everything they said seemed to drip with “It’s no big deal - we’ll get to it later.”
- It is a big deal – it’s eternally a big deal. Yet her attitude was so casual.
- Why would people put off something so important?
- We do it all the time: putting off making a will, doing that project around the house, having that difficult conversation, going to the doctor, etc.
- And God, being unseen, is easy to put off.
- It’s interesting to me that this statement comes right after Jesus sharing about the Father heart of God and how He loves sharing good things with His children (vv. 9-11).
- It’s so easy to take that truth and presume on the Father-heart of God. “Of course God will let me in heaven – He’s a nice God.”
- But Jesus follows up that truth with this rebuke to that kind of soft belief. He is a God of love, but also a God of justice.
- There is certainly no doubt that we have shifted in the American church to a much stronger focus on God-is-love than we have in the God-is-just.
- The way that we do church flies in the face of believing that few are saved.
- We are interested in big groups and praise those who have huge crowds.
- We lack a focus on discipleship.
- We fail to call folks to obedience.
- We push a cheap grace gospel that asks for nothing more than a vague “belief.”
- We have little urgency in our evangelism.
- Why does it have to be a narrow way? Why not widen it?
a. It’s as wide as it can be.
b. This doesn’t refer to the narrowness for the sake of limiting how many can find it, but simply the hard truth of how few will choose it.
c. The whole point of Jesus’ coming is to give us an alternative to the sinful hearts that the fall of humanity has caused. You can’t widen the road to make it indistinguishable from the other road without losing sight of what Jesus came for in the first place.
d. If people don’t want to have a changed life and be close to God, you can’t force them without trampling on human free will.
- Jesus adds some thoughts along similar lines in Luke 13(:22-30).
- He is asked if only a few people are going to be saved. He responds that we should “make every effort to enter through the narrow door.” He goes on to explain that, after death, many will try to enter through that door and not be able. For our purposes this morning, though, the important thing is the idea of striving to enter the narrow door.
- You could compare it to an Olympic athlete. There is a desire deep within the athlete that says, “I want this.” It motivates their sacrifice and passion. I am not arguing that we earn our salvation – it comes by grace through faith – but when we see what Jesus is offering (forgiveness, new life, a new heart, the Spirit within us guiding, a life of victory over sin) there should be something within us that screams, “I want this!” This is worth striving for, this is worth seeking out, this is worth finding.
- As Jesus mentioned in the parable of the hidden treasure (Matthew 13:44) and the parable of the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45-46), entering the Kingdom is something to be ecstatically excited over, something to want with all our hearts.
- Another passage that’s helpful in understanding what Jesus is saying here is the parable of the four soils (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23).
- Jesus tells of a seed that is planted and immediately eaten up. Another seed is planted in rocky, shallow soil and withers under the heat of the sun. Another seed is choked by thorns and dies. Finally, another seed is planted in good soil and produces great fruitfulness.
- For our purposes this morning, the middle two seeds are the focus. Jesus explains that the second seed is a picture of someone who turns away because of trouble or persecution. The third seed is a picture of someone who turns away because of the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of riches.
- These are some of the reasons that only a few find salvation. Some start with good intentions, but do not persevere in their obedience to God. Some would argue they were saved and lost their salvation; others would argue they never were saved. The larger point for us this morning is that in the end they are not on the narrow road and they ultimately are not saved.
- Another passage that’s helpful in understanding what Jesus is saying here is those on the cost of discipleship (Matthew 16:24-26; Luke 14:25-33).
- Jesus speaks of the need to deny yourself, to take up our cross, to follow Him, to lose our life in order to save it, to hate our family, to count the cost, to give up everything. The call of Christ is a tough one, demanding sacrifice and obedience.
- This is a far cry from the “believe now, live your life however you want, and go to heaven someday” gospel that’s preached widely today. This helps us to understand why Jesus says it’s a narrow way.
- We have to ask ourselves how badly we desire what God is offering.
- Am I willing to pursue it through pain? Am I willing to walk through change in my life? Am I willing to go through struggle? Am I willing to persevere when things get tough? Am I willing to sacrifice even when it hurts?
- True or false: Being a follower of Christ is the primary way that I identify myself? Is this part of my life or the focus of my life?
How Can I Be One Of The Few? Two Major Reasons People Miss The Narrow Gate:
- How can I be sure I’m ok? There is good news: Jesus immediately and directly answers that question.
- Jesus here provides two warnings to help us to avoid missing the mark.
- It’s good to know that there are ways to discern if you’re on the right track.
1. Teacher-deception.
- Matthew 7:15.
- This is a call for discernment as far as preachers and teachers go. We cannot just point our finger at them on Judgment Day and say, “It wasn’t my fault.”
- There are ways to tell between the good ones and the bad ones.
- We need to not just blindly trust in the man in the pulpit.
- It is sad but undeniable truth: some preachers and teachers are sharing lies. Some of them are easy to spot (health/wealth gospel or a Joel Osteen positive psychology gospel), but others can become so familiar that we take them as truth (the just-believe-in-Jesus gospel that populates Baptist churches that lacks any call to discipleship or fruitfulness). We are responsible for making sure that what we’re following is the truth.
- And in our age of easy access to the Word as well as many resources to dig into it, we are utterly without excuse for falling for falsehood.
- Why is it that so many fall for teacher-deception?
a. Laziness in not wanting to dig into the Word.
b. They trust preachers.
c. They’ve believe that the Bible is only for preachers and teachers, not everyday folks.
d. It’s what they’ve always heard.
e. The Bible is seen as too difficult to understand.
f. All paths lead to the mountaintop anyway, right? (Wrong.)
g. The preacher is charismatic.
h. They trust authority.
i. What the preacher said doesn’t totally sound right, but he knows more about the Bible, so he must be right.
j. They don’t want to be confrontational.
k. You can’t question an expert.
- How To Avoid This In Your Life: Know that good trees produce good fruit.
- Matthew 7:16-20.
- Understand that this is an expectation God has: that your life will produce fruit. It’s a regular emphasis of Jesus’ teaching.
- The idea that God expects fruit from His children is repeated throughout Scripture. A few examples include Matthew 3:8, Matthew 7:19, Luke 13:7, and John 15:8.
- Both this and the later (vv. 24-27) story of the two houses, one of which crashed and one of which stood strong, suggest that there is an objective, visible, here-and-now reality to the Kingdom of God and doing the Father’s work. Certainly the Kingdom is within us and much of the spiritual work that we do will be unseen, but the natural and inevitable consequence of Kingdom-living or world-living will be known.
- I think we need to take a prayerful, thoughtful, prayerful look at this “good tree = good fruit/bad tree = bad fruit” truth.
- We need to look at our lives in light of it: am I producing good fruit or bad? What does that say about where I’m at spiritually? Do I even have any expectation of producing fruit for God with my life?
- We need to look at the church in America in light of it: are we producing good fruit or bad? What does that say about where we’re at spiritually?
- Is this true for everyone or only for the teachers/prophets?
- In everyone’s life does good fruit come from a good tree and bad fruit from bad? Or is it messier than that in most people’s lives?
2. Self-deception.
- Matthew 7:22-23.
- It’s important to understand that He’s talking here about religious people. These are people who think they’re ok with God. These are people who think God has used them.
- This is a scary thing: they’ve deceived themselves into thinking they have something that they don’t actually have.
- This is a loud wake-up call for everyone who puts confidence in:
a. “I go to church.”
b. “I was saved as a child.”
c. “I was raised in church.”
d. “I’ve been a member here for 20 years.”
- One objection that folks might throw out here: how could so many people be so deceived about themselves?
- That can actually be answered in two words: American Idol.
- Although I’m not a regular viewer of the show, I have seen a couple of the audition shows. It’s stunning how many people go on there totally convinced of their magnificent talent, only to be shocked when they are told they completely lack musical talent. Our ability to deceive ourselves knows few limits.
- One of the ways that we deceive ourselves is with our belief that if we’re doing what most folks are doing then we’ll be just fine.
- We do this in many areas of our life: rather than go through the hard work of figuring out the best thing to do or what our beliefs about something really are, we just look around at what everyone else is doing and go with that.
- In church life, we look around and see that the Christian life apparently means claiming Jesus as your Savior, showing up a couple times a month to church, giving a little money, having a nice leather Bible to tuck under our arm, and being nice. “Ok,” we think, “if that’s what everyone else seems to be doing, then that’s what I’ll do too.”
- The fallacy of that, of course, lies in Jesus’ statement that only a few are saved. This is a narrow road – looking like everyone else is not a good thing. Not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord” (v. 21) is really a believer.
- This “go-with-the-flow” attitude is true of how we deal with our culture, but at least there we have a vague notion that we shouldn’t be doing that. The “go-with-the-flow” attitude within the church is more dangerous because it gives us a false assurance. Especially when you consider the truth we just mentioned from vv. 16-20 that bad trees produce bad fruit and you consider what the fruit being produced by the American church right now is, it’s probably not a good idea to going along with everyone else.
- There is absolutely no way to make an argument that obedience is normative among within the American church. Given the warning of v. 21, that should give us pause with just doing what everyone else is doing.
- Yet rather than being reflective about the lack of fruit, we’re blindly and boldly confident in our insider status, irrespective of what our life is producing.
- A big part of the need here is to understand that salvation is so important – it is ultimately the one crucial issue of life. It is certainly worthy of us doing some digging and questioning and exploring and seeking.
- There are some who confident in their salvation who will surprised on Judgment Day. Sometimes when we hear someone say that they have no doubts about their salvation that that seals the deal. Well, not necessarily.
- Sometimes overconfidence is a problem because it leads us away from spiritual self-examination.
- How To Avoid This In Your Life: Know that flashy religious stuff is no substitute for doing the will of Jesus’ Father.
- Matthew 7:21.
- One simple way to say that we should do the will of the Father is to say that we need to live out the Sermon on the Mount. We praise Jesus’ sermon as the greatest message ever shared, but we don’t live it out.
- In fact, some people have even argued that it’s not even relevant to our lives today – it’s for a future age. There’s a name for that belief: heresy.
- We need to take His message here seriously and make it our goal to live it out.
- What is the difference between a real disciple and the false ones described in v. 22?
- They did do religious stuff and made a big show of it.
- I think the main difference is that doing God’s will is not always flashy. It has results that can be seen, but the actions themselves are often hidden. It has to do with what’s going on within our hearts and our minds.
- On the other hand, doing flashy religious stuff gets a lot of attention but doesn’t always mean that we have a relationship with God.
- A good passage for us to keep in mind is Matthew 25:31-46. It’s a final judgment passage where Jesus says that the sheep and the goats are separated based on what they’ve done for “the least of these” (the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned). It’s notable that none of that stuff is flashy – it’s all “ugly love.”
- How did the false believers in v. 22 do those miracles? There are basically three options:
a. It was God’s power doing good, even though they were unbelievers.
b. It was Satan’s power, masked to look like God’s power.
c. The claims of miracles are false, although they may have looked like actual miracles.
- Which one is it? The answer is probably “all of the above.” Looking over the whole history of the church, there are undoubtedly times when each of these have been present.
- In looking at this truth and then considering (just to name two) the pathetic Biblical knowledge and amount of time in prayer that American Christians have, we’re not looking too good.
- I was reading The Cost Of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and he is profoundly right when he writes, “Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.”
- There is in Christian life really no such thing as a belief that creates no obedience.
- Jesus tells a story in Matthew 21:28-32 about two sons. One says he’ll do the work his father asks him to do but then doesn’t. The other said he wouldn’t but then does. He makes it clear that God isn’t looking for empty words, but faithful actions.
- Being obedient simply means (a) learning what God’s will is, and (b) doing it.
- The first requires that we pray and dig into the Word. The latter requires that we not treat his commandments as suggestions.
- In the end, it’s not particularly difficult to understand, it just requires that we pursue it.
