INTRODUCTION
• Life is full of choices isn’t it?
• Just take a moment to think about how many different decisions that you made just to get to church this morning. What time to get up? Shower or bath or nothing? What to wear? What to eat? Which car do we drive? Do we come this morning? What do the kids need to wear? Which path will I take to get here?
• Each day we are confronted with choices. Some of the choices that we make on a daily basis have very little impact on our lives such as what and where to eat? Other choices can significantly change the course of our lives, such as “Do we have children?” Do we get married? What career do I chose?
• Then we have a whole other set of choices dealing with our daily conduct.
• John MacArthur writes in his commentary on Matthew, “Our lives are filled with decisions—what to wear, what to eat, where to go, what to do, what to say, what to buy, whom to marry, what career to follow and on and on. Many decisions are trivial and insignificant, and some are essential and life-changing. The most critical of all is our decision about Jesus Christ and His kingdom. That is the ultimate choice that determines our eternal destiny. It is that decision that Jesus here calls men to make.”
• MacArthur hit the nail on the head. The most important choice you will make in your life is whether or not you are going to follow Jesus and give your life to Him. All the other important decisions in life hinge on that choice.
• There comes a point in our lives where we are standing at the crossroads. We will be standing at the crossroads where there are two signs, one pointing to Jesus and eternal life and the other pointing toward a path of destruction. Each of us will have to make our own choice.
• In our passage we will look at the two paths that Jesus tells us we have to choose from. The title to my message today is “Standing at the Crossroads”.
• As you stand at the crossroads of life, which way will you go? Let us look at the contrast of the two paths.
• READ MATTHEW 7:13-14
The first contrast we will look at is the:
SERMON
I. THE ENTRANCE
The key word for the entrance is DECISION.
As we stand at the crossroads, we are confronted by two gates, the narrow and the wide gate. Let us look at the wide gate first.
A. The wide gate.
• The wide gate is one of the choices that we have as we stand at the crossroads. Notice that Jesus gives us the choice as to which gate we are going to enter.
• The gate is wide and is easy to enter. Many people can go through it at the same time. When we go somewhere we would naturally choose to go through a wide passage verses a narrow one.
• The gate is wide because more people will choose to enter in through it.
• The nice thing about the wide gate for many people is the fact that because the gate is wide, they are able to take anything they want with them on the journey once they enter in through this wide gate. Have you ever had to take a door off the hinges to get an appliance through it because the door was not quite wide enough?
• Wide doors or gates are inviting.
• On our journey through life many will want to take as much baggage with them as they can, the wide gates allows for that.
• As we stand at the wide gate we peer down the path and it looks very wide and inviting also.
B. The narrow gate.
• The narrow gate does not have room for anything but you. You must leave all the baggage behind. Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow Him daily. This implies that our agenda is the one that Jesus has.
• There is no room for chasing after the world and its pleasure, no room for unforgiving spirits, and there is no room for the self-righteous.
• The narrow gate will not be as easy for us to walk through. All the things that Jesus has told us up to this point has been to prepare to be able to walk through the narrow gate.
• In LUKE 13:24 Jesus say, "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.
• Jesus tells us that we must strive, or put out a great effort to enter through the narrow gate.
• ACT 14:21-22 After they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, "Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God."
• The gate is narrow because not many will chose to enter through it.
• If you are going to enter in the narrow gate, Jesus MUST be first in your life.
• The key word here is decision. God allows you to choose for yourself. Some make the choice by just doing nothing. When we choose not to decide, we choose to go through the wide door by default.
II. THE PATH
As we stand at the crossroads, we are confronted by two gates, the narrow and the wide gate. Once we enter in to the gates, there are two paths, the wide and the narrow. Let us look at the wide first.
A. The wide path.
• The wide path is the one most traveled. It is the easy path. As I said before, you do not have to do anything to walk this path. Apathy puts you on it.
• The path is wide because there are many ways that lead to destruction. Some will travel down Substance Abuse street. Some it will walk down Pride Avenue. Others will travel down Materialism Way. Some will travel down Sexual Sins Estate road. Some will take Hate Street or they will walk down Murder Avenue. Many will walk down Apathy lane.
• The wide paths have many ways that you can take and stay on the path.
• PROVERBS 12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But a wise man is he who listens to counsel.
• PROVERBS 14:12 There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.
• The well traveled path has no rules, no restraints! It is a path that has everyone doing right in there own eyes!
• All the great injustices of history have been committed in the name of unchecked and unbridled "majority rule."
• The late Senator James A. Reed, of Missouri, in one of the most forceful speeches ever delivered before the Senate, observed with great truth: "The majority crucified Jesus Christ; the majority burned the Christians at the stake; the majority established slavery; the majority jeered when Columbus said the world was round; the majority threw him into a dungeon for having discovered a new world. Christ always calls us to follow the lifestyle of the "Minority opinion." Don’t be deceived by the loud voice of "majority morality."
• The wide path is the one that most of the people will be on. It is the path that most of the people will encourage you to walk down. As you stand at the crossroads looking down the paths, are you going to be swayed by what “everyone else” is doing?
• The majority of people will follow the wide path and they will make fun of you for not. The majority is not always right. It does not matter what 95% of Americans think about anything, if God has already told us how it is!
• The majority of people will take this path because they do not want to “give up” anything. They want to trust in their own judgment and goodness.
• According to a 2001 Barna study half of all adults (51%) believe that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during their life, they will earn a place in Heaven. (2001)
• People are blinded to the truth. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:4 says, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
• Will you choose the wide path? If you are doing nothing, you are on it.
B. The narrow path.
• The way is narrow or restricted. LUKE 13:24 "Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.
• The word for narrow means, difficult to be entered. Access is not denied to people, they keep themselves out.
• It is difficult to walk this path because it takes discipline and desire.
• Jesus has been telling us what is required of us.
• It requires us to allow Jesus to change our life, which in turn will cause us to change our behavior.
• Many people will not choose this path because it is not easy.
• A little boy, caught in mischief, was asked by his mother: "How do you expect to get into heaven?" He thought a minute and then said: "Well, I’ll just run in and out and in and keep slamming the door until they say, ’For goodness sake, come in or stay out.’ Then I’ll go in."
• A lot of people think that they can enter the gate when they are a kid, and then they will just enter into heaven. You will not get to heaven unless you stay on the path that God has set for us. You cannot enter the gate, and then make your own path.
• There is only ONE way to God. There is only ONE path to God. The is only ONE truth that leads to God. That way, path and truth is Jesus!
• JOHN 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
• There is a growing tendency to believe that all good people, whether or not they consider Jesus Christ to be their savior, will live in heaven after they die on earth.
• In 1999 the public was almost divided on the matter: 53% agree, 40% disagree. This represents a significant change since 1992, when 40% agreed with this notion and 1994 when 46% agree, 47% disagree.
• The Key words for the path is DESIRE and DISCIPLINE.
• If we are going to walk on the narrow path we must have the discipline not to be drawn off the path by the majority who are not on it. How many times have people tried to drag you off the path so that you could participate in things you KNOW are not pleasing to God?
• It take desire to walk the path, the desire to see further than the moment, desire to please Jesus and not others.
III. THE DESTINATION
A. The end of the wide path.
• The wide path ends in destruction. Many people do not think this will happen.
• Three in ten adults (31%) see hell as an actual location: "a place of physical torment where people may be sent." (1996) Four in ten adults (37%), say "hell is not a place, but it represents a state of permanent separation from the presence of God." (1996) Describing hell as merely a symbolic term, not referring to a physical place was true for two in ten Americans (19%). (1996)
• PHILIPPIANS 3:18-19 For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.
• Some people, who believe in the passages in the Bible about heaven, utterly reject the references to hell. Robert Ingersoll, a famous lawyer and atheist in the latter part of the nineteenth century, once delivered a blistering lecture on hell. He called hell "scarecrow of religion" and told his audience how unscientific it was, and how all intelligent people had decided there was no such place. A drunk in the audience came up to him afterward and said, "Bob, I liked your lecture; I liked what you said about hell. But, Bob, I want you to be sure about it, because I’m depending upon you."
• We do not like to talk about hell, but it is as real as heaven. It is a reality. Do you want to trust the Bible, or do you want to trust what other people who are on the wrong path say?
B. The end of the narrow path.
• HEBREWS 10:36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
• A loving God will not make people go to heaven if they did not want to go there when they were on earth.
• Jesus tells us that the narrow road leads to life. Where is the path that you are following going to lead you? Where is it taking you now?
• In John 6 starting about verse 50 Jesus tells the crowd who is with Him that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood that they will not have life.
• At this according to verse 66 many of the people who were following Jesus withdrew from Him.
• Jesus turns to the twelve and asks if they are leaving also since they were struggling with what He had said to the crowd.
• In verse 68-69 Jesus gets His answer. Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. "We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God."
• To whom shall you go? Jesus is the only path to God. At the end of the narrow path you will find eternal life!
CONCLUSION
• Life is about choices and life is about the freedom to make choices. God loves us so much that HE did not take that ability to choose away from us.
• God does not send people to hell, we choose to go there by the way we respond to the grace of God through Jesus.
• In Deut 30:19-20 God told Moses to tell the people that they needed to choose who they were going to serve. God said that life would be found in obeying Him.
• In Joshua 24:13-15 upon entering the Promised Land Joshua told the people to choose this day who they would serve.
• As Elijah was about to take on the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, he told the people to choose to either follow God or Baal in 1 Kings 18:21.
• God never forced people to follow Him, He gives us a choice. The question is when you are at the crossroads of faith, which way will you go?
• Many of chosen to go the wrong way. Are you going to let the majority take you with them? Do we love the majority enough to stand as an example and share with them the faith within us?
• God loves you enough to give you a choice. If that choice is the wrong one, God loves you enough to let you make that choice, but it is with a heavy heart.
• As Joshua said in Joshua 24:15, no matter what the rest of the world chooses to do, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!
