Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Introduction
Pluralism
Whatever you think about President Obama politically, I think it is fair to say that he is an excellent spokesman for the most dominant religious belief system in our culture. In a 2004 interview he said this: “I am a Christian. … So I draw from the Christian faith. On the other hand… I believe that there are many paths to the same place…” He went on to say that “All people of faith—Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone knows the same God.” Then he said this: “There's the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people have not embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they're going to hell. … I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can't imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity.” That is a view known as religious pluralism, and it is probably the most dominant religious doctrine in our culture. On October 7, 2007 President Bush said the same thing: "I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God.” The reason I give you these quotations is not to stir up any political strife. My purpose is to show you how incredibly dominant this religious viewpoint really is. Anytime you get George Bush and Barak Obama saying the same thing about an issue, you know you are dealing with a very dominant, very widespread cultural consensus. This is the religion of our culture – pluralism. All faiths are essentially the same, we are all praying to the same God, hell probably does not exist. And if it does exist, the only person there is Adolf Hitler. For some reason in our day Hitler is the only one who is actually responsible for his sin. But the great majority of us will not go to hell.
And it is not just politicians who preach this religion. The Roman Catholic Church has moved in this direction, and so has much of evangelicalism. Even Billy Graham has said he believes there will be Hindus and Muslims and non-believers who will end up in heaven even though they have never heard the name of Jesus.
Religious pluralism is the biggest religious consensus in our culture. And preaching it is a sure ticket to popularity. People write about the Christian view of heaven and hell all the time, and none of them ever become bestsellers. But Rob Bell, who is part of the Emergent Church movement, wrote a book titled “Love Wins” arguing that God would not send anyone to hell, and everyone gets a second chance after they die – his book immediately became the #1 bestseller of all religious books on Amazon. Joel Osteen preaches this message and he had to move his church to a football stadium because 44,000 people crowd in every Sunday because of how much they love this message. It is the religion of Presidents Obama and Bush, it is the religion of the pastors of some of the biggest churches in the country, it is the religion of the modern Roman Catholic Church, it is the religion of Oprah, the religious of Hollywood, and it is the one and only religion teachers are allowed to push in public schools. It is truly the sacred cow of our age. If you speak out against this religion, in our culture, you will be hated and despised and in some cases you might even face legal repercussions.
And it is not hard to figure out why it is so popular. If there is only one way to God, then only a small minority of human beings will be saved. And that is hard to swallow. Everyone making it to heaven is so much more pleasant.
This is not a new controversy. It existed back in Jesus’ day. In Luke 13 the people heard Jesus preaching and started to think, “Man, this sounds so exclusive. If I’m understanding Him right it sounds like he’s saying hardly anyone will go to heaven.” And so finally someone asked Him:
Luke 13:23 Someone asked him, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" He said to them…
Context
Actually – before I read you Jesus’ answer to that question, let me fill you in on where we are in our study. We have been studying Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount for the past year and a half or so, and we come this morning to the closing section. Jesus wraps up this sermon by giving four warnings. He warns us about the broad road, wolves in sheep’s clothing, calling Jesus Lord but not knowing him, and building our lives on a foundation of sand. The first one is in verses 13-14, and it is very straightforward – a command followed by some reasons to obey the command. Jesus says Enter through the narrow gate for… and then goes on to give four contrasts between the two gates. And those contrasts are the reason Jesus gives us for the command, so let’s look at those first. Jesus contrasts the narrow and wide gates by showing that they are different in four areas. The first of those four is popularity.
1. Popularity
Matthew 7:13 For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
The broad road is wildly popular – bumper-to-bumper traffic as far as the eye can see.
14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
The narrow road is desolate, lonely, obscure. It is a little two-track trail that seems to just go off in a strange direction – uphill, rocky, and looks like a dead end – so hardly anyone takes it. So we have our answer to the question the guy asked Jesus in Luke 13.
Luke 13:23 "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" He said to them, 24 "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 25 Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' "But he will answer, 'I don't know you … 27 Away from me, all you evildoers!' 28 "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.
According to Jesus, only a tiny percentage of the human population will be in heaven. And if that is something you have a hard time swallowing, just make sure you know your argument is not with me – it is with Jesus Christ. This is what He taught. And so it is true. When you are a baby you have the option, if you do not like something, to just put your hands over your eyes and pretend it is not there. But when you become an adult, and you receive news that you do not like, you do not have the option of ignoring it. You have to deal with it. If you live in Alabama and you get a phone call saying your house has been destroyed by a tornado and your family did not survive – everything in you may want to say, “No, it didn’t happen.” But if the reality is that it did happen, then you have to face it. When you are an adult you do not believe things based on whether you want them to be true; you believe things based on whether they actually are true. So when Jesus tells us something that comes as a shock, the wise course is not to try to argue our way out of it; the wise course is to accept what He says and deal with the news. Instead of arguing about whether the people on the broad road should be saved, the wise man or woman will just get on the narrow road. You do not have to understand why God does everything He does, but you do have to do what He requires you to do. And in this case, if you want life, you must enter through the narrow gate.
2. Exclusivity
So these gates differ in popularity. Secondly, they differ in exclusivity. The wide road is the road of diversity and pluralism and ecumenism and tolerance and open-mindedness. People on that road will accept any religious system as long as it does not contradict their cardinal doctrine of pluralism. Your beliefs do not matter, which god you worship does not matter, your relationship to God does not matter – nothing matters except the one doctrine that everyone goes to heaven.
But Jesus said there is one way and one way only to heaven. This is probably the one of Jesus’ teachings that our culture hates the most.
John 14:6 I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.
Romans 10:13-15 – no one can be saved who has not heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The truth is always narrow. If you ask someone for directions to a particular place and they tell you, “Just get on any road and travel any direction and you’ll get there” – if you believe that advice, it proves one thing. It proves that you do not really care about arriving at the destination; you just wanted permission to go whatever direction you want to go.
This culture boasts about being so open-minded. And I want to ask them, are you open to the idea of a narrow way? Are you open to the idea of only one way to heaven? If you are not open to that, and if you are not open to the idea that maybe Jesus was right, then I guess you are not as open-minded as you thought. The pluralists are just as narrow-minded as anyone, because they insist their open-minded, pluralistic way is the only right way, and any narrow way is dead wrong. You see, both roads are exclusive. The narrow road excludes all the people on the broad road, and the broad road excludes everyone on the narrow road. Both are exclusive – the only difference is whom they exclude. The broad road excludes narrow-minded Christians and Jesus Christ Himself.
3. Difficulty
So these gates differ in popularity, in exclusivity, and thirdly, they differ in difficulty. That is the point of the narrow and wide. The word translated narrow in verse 14 (thlibo), is usually translated “trouble” or “affliction.” And it is very closely related to the word for “persecution” (thipsis). In the Greek language they conveyed the idea of trouble and hardship in terms of being in a tight, constricted space. Kind of like when we speak of being hard pressed – or being in a tight spot. So by calling this gate and road narrow, Jesus is saying it is hard.
And by calling the other gate and road wide Jesus is saying that way is easy. Some of you may have been taught that it is easy to become a Christian. It is just a matter of walking forward in an invitation or signing a card or raising your hand and repeating a prayer, and it makes no demands on your life. That teaching has become known as “easy-believism” (or the anti-lordship salvation view). They say, “You don’t have to repent, you don’t have to confess Jesus as Lord. Zane Hodges says being a Christian requires “no spiritual commitment whatsoever.” He says only disciples have to bow the knee to Christ, but regular Christians don’t have to. Then he says this: "How fortunate that one’s entrance into the kingdom of God did not depend on his discipleship. If it did, how few would ever enter the kingdom!" There’s that argument is again. People see the narrowness of the gate and they say, “That can’t be right because it would mean very few people make it to heaven.” So instead of accepting Jesus’ word that few make it to heaven, they invent all kinds of religious systems to make it so the masses also get to go to heaven.
But Jesus was very clear – few people will go to heaven because the gate and road are so difficult. And so He says in Luke13:24, Make every effort to enter through the narrow door. The word translated “make every effort” is agonizomai – to strive or struggle. It was the word used of athletes striving to win. It speaks of the utmost effort.
The wide road is easy to find, it is easy to get on, and it is easy to stay on it. It is crowded, people love that road because it is downhill, and it is paved, and it is wide, and there are no double yellow’s.
Hard to find
But the narrow road is hard – in a number of ways. For one thing it is hard to even find. Notice verse 14.
Matthew 7:14 only a few find it.
It is not that everyone sees it and rejects it. There are people looking who never even discover it. It is hard to find. There are so many false gospels and false religions and wrong teachings out there, if you want to find the truth it is not easy. You could spend years of your life going to one hundred different churches before you find one that will tell you the truth. And when you finally do, it is hard to recognize the truth as being true because there is a part of us that does not want to accept it. The narrow gate is hard to find.
Hard to enter
And once you find it, it is hard to enter. It is so narrow. You have to let go of your sin and the things you treasure in this world. If there is anything that you refuse to let go of, you cannot make it through this gate. Does that mean you have to be perfect? Of course not. You will still struggle with sin, and still stumble into sin every day as a Christian. Jesus does not require that you have total victory over all your sin, but He does require that you regard Him as a greater treasure and greater source of joy and satisfaction than anything in this world. If there is something in this world that you look to for your joy and you treasure more than Jesus Christ, you cannot pass through this gate into life.
Matthew 13:44 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
Hard to travel
So the gate is hard to find, when you do find it, it is hard to accept, and when you do accept it, it is hard to enter. And then once you enter it, the narrow road is hard to travel. Jesus switches the analogy from entering through a gate to traveling on a road. It is hard to become a Christian in the first place and it is hard to live the Christian life. It is a life of humbling yourself and forsaking the treasures and joys of this world in favor of treasures and joy in the next life. It is a life of suffering and persecution.
“Wait a minute – what about Jesus’ words in Matthew 11, where He said,
Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. … 30 For my yoke is good and my burden is light.
How can Jesus say the road is hard and then turn around and say His burden is light? Which is it? Is the Christian life easy or hard?
The answer is it is a hard road that is made easier the more closely you draw near to Jesus. But the lightness of the burden comes not from the removal of suffering and trouble, but through the strength you receive from fellowship with Jesus. Like Jacob, who worked fourteen years to get Rachel as his wife. But in Genesis 20:20 it says those years seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. Our love for Christ has a similar effect when we draw near to Him and receive grace from Him. So ironically, it is the people on the hard, narrow road who are joyful and unburdened, and it is the people on the wide, easy road who are so loaded down with their bondage to sin, and so handcuffed to the consequences of their sin and so enslaved to the pursuit of sin that…
Proverbs 13:15 the way of the unfaithful is hard.
4. Destination
Two roads, different in popularity, in exclusivity, in difficulty, and then finally, in destination.
Matthew 7:14 small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life
So one destination is life. Obviously it is a reference to spiritual life, because the people Jesus is talking to are already physically alive. It is possible to be physically alive and spiritually dead, and Jesus tells us that the reason it is worth taking a road that is unpopular, exclusive, and difficult is that it leads to spiritual life. What is the other destination?
13 …wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction
So let’s think through these two destinations.
Destruction
First, destruction. This word destruction is the same word Jesus used to describe the place where Judas ended up (Jn.17:12) and where the Antichrist ends up (2 Thes.2:3, Rev.17:8). In Hebrews 10:39 going to destruction is the opposite of being saved. In Romans 9:22 it goes along with being the object of God’s wrath. That is not heaven. There is no wrath in heaven, no destruction in heaven. So what is it?
Could it be annihilation? Some people teach that rather than go to hell, unbelievers just go out of existence on Judgment Day. They just sort of fade to black, and then they are gone forever. What did Jesus teach on this question of what happens to unbelievers on Judgment Day? In Matthew 18:8 He said those who are lost will be thrown into eternal fire. And if we monkey around with the word eternal and try to make it mean something other than everlasting we run into real trouble because our existence in heaven lasts for the same kind of eternity as the unbelievers in hell.
Matthew 25:46 Then [the goats] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
So if hell is not forever, heaven is not forever either. “Well, maybe “forever” just means they stay out of existence forever.” No –
Revelation 20:10 They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
It is not just forever – it is torment forever. There is absolutely no way around the language of Scripture. Hell is a place of God’s wrath and punishment. It is a place of fiery, eternal torment.
How could God do that?
Now, if you are like the average person in our culture you have a strong, negative reaction to what Jesus is saying here. (A lot of people claim to admire Jesus, but when they are confronted with what He taught about hell they hate it.) What is it that has made Republicans and Democrats, presidents and pastors, Catholics and Protestants, celebrities and common folks – anybody and everybody in our culture agree on this idea that everybody goes to heaven? What kind of brilliant, unarguable proof is so powerful and so incredibly compelling that it would convince such a wide variety of people who do not agree on anything else to all join in lock-step on one particular religious view of the afterlife? It is not complicated. The argument that has everyone convinced can be stated in one sentence. It is this: A loving God would never send anyone to hell. Period. End of argument. As soon as someone throws that argument out there all thinking is supposed to stop, and everyone should just immediately agree and join in with the crowd.
But whenever I hear someone give that argument I want to say, “What if you’re wrong?” People say, “I can’t imagine God doing that” – but what if an infinitely wise, all-knowing, eternal God sometimes does things that are different from what a limited, ignorant, temporal, sinful human being might think is best? Can’t we at least acknowledge that as a possibility? That an infinitely wise, perfectly holy God might not see everything exactly the same as a limited, sinful human being sees them? If you cannot imagine a loving God doing something, isn’t it possible that God is not limited by what you can imagine in every case?
What if it turns out sin is more serious than we ever dreamed? What if it turns out sin against God is more serious than anything we could possibly imagine? What if it turns out that whatever we think about Adolf Hitler – if you think of him being way down at a negative one hundred on the evil scale – what if it turns out you and I are actually down at a negative one million (and Hitler is negative one million, one hundred? What if it turns out God is holier than we ever imagined or could imagine, and so any sin against Him is worthy of an infinite punishment? Are we really going to bank our eternal destiny on a one-liner argument that assumes we have perfect, infallible knowledge of everything God would or wouldn’t do? And then risk everything on that one-liner argument even though it is the total opposite of what Jesus taught? That is irrational. Jesus Christ rose from the dead – He is a far more reliable authority on the subject than our own knee-jerk feelings about what a loving God may or may not do.
Life
So the destination of destruction is unthinkably horrible. What about the other destination?
Matthew 7:14 narrow the road that leads to life
What is life? Jesus uses a physical reality to describe a spiritual reality. So to understand spiritual life let’s start with understanding what physical life is. What are the differences between someone whose life is ebbing away and someone who is bursting with life? Well, I can think of at least five differences. One is strength. “Full of life” means you are strong, “life ebbing away” means you are declining in strength. Secondly, health. When you are dying the various parts of your body are not working right and are getting worse. Full of life means the parts of your body are functioning well. A third aspect of life is growth. The process of life is a process of growth and development and improvement, rather than decline. A fourth aspect of life is liveliness – energy, motivation, joy, hope, passion. If your life is ebbing away you are declining in energy and liveliness. Full of life means increasing in energy and liveliness. And fifth - sensation and sensitivity. Alertness is part of life. Dullness is part of death. A person who is dying will begin to experience a decline in sensitivity to the world around him. Eyesight, hearing, smell, taste – it all starts to decline until, when death occurs, there is no sensitivity to any stimulus at all.
Those are five obvious aspects of life I thought of – you could probably add to that list. And so when Jesus says there is such a thing as spiritual life, what does that mean? It means to have the spiritual side of you – the side that can interact personally with God, be thriving in those areas that define life – things like growth, health, strength, liveliness, and sensitivity.
If you are not born again then you have no spiritual life at all. You might say prayers every day, but you are not really interacting personally with God. You do not really know Him and the only positive interaction between you and Him is imaginary. But when you are born again, for the first time you can actually know God and perceive Him and experience His presence and interact with Him. And then as you grow, all the elements of life increase.
Sensitivity
For example, spiritual sensitivity – your spiritual senses begin to function. The eyes of your heart are opened more and more to how delightful God is, and Scripture goes from just being print on a page to being delightful, sweet, strengthening, comforting, encouraging, life-giving sustenance from God. Things that God says are true begin to seem true. You become aware of spiritual things that you were completely oblivious to before.
And you also become more sensitive to bad things. Sins that you used to shrug off as no big deal now crush you and break your heart and reduce you to tears of repentance before God. That is part of being alive – the ability to be sensitive to injury. A corpse has no idea if it is being stabbed in the heart with a knife, and a spiritually dead person has no sensation of injury when he disobeys God.
Growth
When life stagnates and comes to a standstill that is more like death than life. But traveling on the narrow road leads to a life of ever-expanding exploration of the wonders of God’s goodness. We grow not only by increasing in virtue and knowledge, but in every kind of good increase. Our joy enlarges, our experiences of God increase in both frequency and intensity, our usefulness expands.
Health
Physical health is when your heart and lungs and arms and eyes and fingers are all in optimal working order. Spiritual health is when all the various spiritual parts of you are in optimal working order. Your mind has the right amount of intelligence, curiosity, and interest in spiritual things. Your memory retains the right things and forgets the right things. You remember God’s Word and forget people’s faults – that is a healthy memory that is working properly. Your soul craves the nearness of God above all things. Your heart loves what God loves and hates what God hates. Your inner man treasures what is truly treasure and despises what is worthless.
A great place to learn about the definition of life is Ezekiel 37. That is the dry-bones chapter. Israel is pictured as a valley full of dead, dried up bones; and God brings them back to life. They get muscles and tendons and skin and the breath of life breathed into them. And then God interprets all the life symbolism for us starting in verse 23:
Ezekiel 37:23 They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people, and I will be their God. 24 "'My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees.
So in the analogy of being spiritually dead and then being given life – skin on the bones and air in the lungs – means preferring God to idols, no more backsliding, cleansing, faithfulness to God, loyalty to the Son of David, and obeying God’s laws and decrees. In other words, life is holiness. That is why John says
1 John 3:14-15 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.
If life is obedience to God’s commands, and the greatest commandment is love, then life is an existence of being a lover of God and a lover of people. Life is spiritual health. The sin in our lives is due to unhealthy parts: Messed up hearts, defective souls, diseased minds, broken affections, a defiled tongue, blind eyes, overfed flesh, underfed spirit, stopped up ears, deadened taste buds. But traveling the narrow road gives us life, which involves getting all those parts working properly. And the better they are working the more abundant the life.
Strength
And with health comes strength – spiritual strength. From a human standpoint spiritual strength looks like weakness. It is a life of not having anywhere near enough resources in yourself to do what you need to do, and being one hundred percent dependent on God in a state of total neediness. And the result is unstoppable spiritual power from God in our lives. Power to accomplish mighty tasks in His kingdom. Power to withstand unspeakable pain and suffering with joy. That power is like the working of His mighty strength which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him in the heavenly realms far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion.
Liveliness
And when you have all that you have spiritual liveliness. You have motivation - 2 Corinthians 5:14 For Christ's love compels us. You have energy - Colossians 1:29 To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. You have joy - Psalm 16:11 in your presence is fullness of joy.
All that is what it means to be alive spiritually. But if you are alive physically but dead to spiritual things than you are way more dead than you are alive. That is why in Matthew 8:22 when Jesus referred to unbelievers he called them the dead. But in John 10:10 Jesus said I have come that they may have life, and have it in abundance. He came so that we would not only have all those elements of spiritual life, but that we would have a whole lot of them.
So when Jesus says, Enter through the narrow gate, and that this narrow gate leads to life, that is what He is talking about – spiritual life. And the amazing thing about spiritual life is it never ends. In this life we enjoy all those benefits in a partial way, but in the next life we enjoy the fullness of all those things in the presence of God forever.
John 11:25 Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."
How to enter
What if it is too hard? What if I don’t have what it takes? It is not too hard for anyone. It is hard, but it is not out of anyone’s reach. It does not require anything you don’t have. It does not require any money, or any special ability, or anything you don’t have. It is a free gift. But it is hard to receive because to receive this gift your hands have to be empty – you cannot be clutching on to this world or some relationship or some sin or anything else. It is hard, not because it is expensive and requires more than you have. It is hard because it is free and requires less than what you have. The treasures of this world are, in reality, garbage, so unless you are willing to let go of that garbage you cannot receive the true treasure of life.
So how do you enter through this narrow gate? One word: faith.
John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.
This includes not just believing what Jesus said, but also trusting Him as a person. Entrusting your life into His hands, so when He says, “This way is better,” you trust Him and you go that way. You are not saved by obeying Jesus. You are saved by His grace through faith alone, but if you have that faith, and you really do believe Him when He says to walk in a certain way, then you will walk in that way. That is why people who are unwilling to let go of some sin are not saved, because it shows they do not really believe Jesus when He says, “The grace I have to offer is better than what that sin has to offer.”
This world has nothing to offer you. When a person gives up everything for Christ – gives up his whole life for Christ – he finds that what he gives up is worthless garbage and what he receives in return is priceless, eternal treasure. If God is moving in your heart – do not push Him away. Today is the day. Call on Him while He may be found. Enter through the narrow gate, and you will have life.
Benediction: Deuteronomy 30:19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live
