“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. 14 “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
With verse 13 Jesus is beginning His conclusion to this sermon. He has finished His picture of the Christian and will now go on to exhort the Christian to something that the Christian should already have realized is his only available course.
As I pointed out in my end statements last week, Jesus is concerned with the fulfilling of the law and the prophets so much that he topped his description of the Christian with the assurance that God’s Word and God’s Law is fulfilled in us and through us as we love one another with the love with which Christ loved us.
“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. I Jn 4:10
If God loved us sacrificially then the only love we can have toward one another that accomplishes His purpose is a sacrificial love.
Think about what you would have others do for you and think about the way you would have them treat you, He says, and do so for them; behave thusly toward them.
So then we can see if we think this through, that while the work of salvation is all of God and none of us, and while the grace that provided our redemption is full and free, yet the redeemed one, the saved one, is not saved to nothing but there is now a life to be lived with purpose and deliberateness, and it is a life to be lived not for ourselves as when we were of the world, but to God and for our brothers and sisters as those who are more important than ourselves.
ENTER THROUGH
As I said, Jesus is deeply concerned with the fulfilling of His law and the words He gave through His prophets, so much so that He declared not one letter or punctuation mark would go unfulfilled. And if He said that the fulfilling of them through His church was to be by the expression of a Christ-like love, then our next step is to realize that we are called to a very special kind of life that we cannot live in our own strength or out of our own resources.
His next words therefore should make a great deal of sense to us, as they call us away from the direction of the ungodly to a new direction that is contrary to that of the world.
As has been said about some of the earlier comments of Jesus in this sermon, taken out of context they could seem to refer to the process of becoming a Christian. But since we’ve noted all along that the Sermon on the Mount is for believers because no unbeliever could begin to understand the spiritual truths therein, much less live any of them out, then we have to conclude that when Jesus exhorts His hearers to ‘enter through the narrow gate” He is talking about a direction to be taken by the one who is already a Christian. We are not to enter through in order to become a Christian, but because we already are one.
THE NARROW GATE vs THE WIDE GATE
Ok. So we are believers in Christ, born from above, indwelt and helped by the Holy Spirit and we are to enter through a certain gate. Let’s talk about these two gates that Jesus compares and determine what He is warning us about and then we’ll talk about these two ‘way’s He refers to and see how they fit in and what they mean for us.
First then, He says to enter through the narrow gate. The gate to destruction is wide which also implies ‘easy’. But the gate to life is narrow.
When you go to the airport to get on a plane and take a trip you at some point must pass through a gate. Especially since September 11, 2001, the personnel working at those gates are very careful to let only one person through at a time. In fact, the metal detectors are designed in such a way that only one person can go through at a time. They are narrow.
So what can we glean from this picture?
Well let’s approach it by way of contrast. He said the gate to destruction is wide and there are many who enter through that.
When I was in my junior high years my parents took me to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to the services of evangelist, Kathryn Kuhlman.
We had to go there very early as very large crowds gathered there whenever Miss Kuhlman came from Pennsylvania for these special services. Even though we arrived several hours before the doors opened we were far back from the doors and many people came and stood behind us before it was service time. By service time there were approximately 4000 people waiting.
There were 8 or ten double doors stretched across the front of the building and when they opened them all they virtually opened the entire front of the Shrine Auditorium. They planned well, and had people posted on the inside of these doors so that when they opened they literally opened them at the same time and stood back.
As soon as those doors swung open, creating this wide access to the auditorium, the crowd rushed in as one to get the best seats. As a kid I remember thinking if I had just lifted my feet the mass of humanity would have carried me inside. It was a little spooky, actually.
But you know what’s even spookier? And sad? Jesus said the gate to destruction is wide and many enter through it. And when I remember how anxious people were to get in and see Kathryn Kuhlman and the mad rush that threatened to trample the slow mover when the doors were finally opened, and when I think that so many Christians, (remember, He’s talking to Christians) gleefully choose the wide gate and enter in a mad rush, it makes me tremble just a bit.
It makes me sad to think that so many religious people in the church are going through that gate, but it is also spooky enough to make me want to once more evaluate my relationship with God and examine myself once more to be sure that I’m in the faith.
I mentioned a contrast, didn’t I? The narrow gate only allows one person through at a time. By that I mean that you aren’t going to choose this narrow gate by committee. You aren’t going to be ushered through by your pastor or a good friend or a family member or a famous television evangelist.
You make the decision; each of us makes the decision on our own to enter in. You can’t take the world with you, you can’t take self with you and you can’t take anyone else with you. Each one has to make the decision on his own.
I don’t know how much this continues to happen today simply because it’s been a while since I’ve heard anyone say it, but I remember when I was much younger occasionally hearing someone claim that they were a Christian in a tone that said ‘well of course I am’, based on the fact that they were an American and America is a Christian nation, or because their parents were Christians and they were raised in church.
Well it doesn’t work that way. You are only a Christian if you have understood that you are a sinner in need of salvation, and you have heard and believed that Jesus Christ shed His blood and died on the cross to pay the penalty of sin for you and that He rose bodily from the grave on the third day, promising eternal life to all who believe and confess that He is Lord.
In the same way, you only enter through the narrow gate that leads to life by the individual decision you make to truly follow your Lord and not just let the masses of popular Christianity carry you along through the gate to emptiness.
THE NARROW WAY vs THE WIDE WAY
Notice please that Jesus says to enter through the narrow gate and not the wide gate, then He continues on to talk about the narrow way and the wide way.
I tried hard to think of a physical example of entering a narrow gate into some place that continues to be narrow. Usually even if the gate is narrow for some reason, once you’re through you come into a larger place. For example, at the airport even though you pass through the metal detector when the guards are through you are free to walk around in an open boarding area.
But Jesus is narrow-minded. And I don’t mean that in the bad way. In this He is exhorting us all to be narrow-minded. We enter into this life of discipleship by individual determination but there is no real distinction between the gate and the path that it opens onto.
Once you’ve left self and the world and all those who will not follow in behind, believer, there is to be no turning back and there can be no turning aside.
Entering is a commitment in itself, to continue in the nature of this new life.
You can’t just take your membership card and settle into your religious recliner and go with the crowd.
You may have seen a shirt that’s been around for a few years in the Christian book stores and catalogues, where fish are teeming along down stream but right in the middle of them is a little white fish with a determined expression on his little fish face, swimming up stream in the opposite direction and the caption on the shirt is ‘Go against the flow’.
The admonition, of course, is to not go with the flow of the majority and follow worldliness and worldly religiosity. It’s the easy way; it’s down stream. But it’s not the good way. It’s the way to destruction
Christians, one of the devil’s oldest schemes is to get the believer or the deceived pretender to fall into the trap of putting his faith in religious exercise and a perversion of truth and thinking he is alright.
It’s the ploy he used in the Garden of Eden with the first man and woman. He twisted the truth just enough so that they thought they were still following God but their new way was going to make it much easier and much more enjoyable and much more self-fulfilling.
“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” Genesis 3:6
And Christians, many, many, many, not in the world but in the church, have diligently sought out some personalized brand of Christianity that better serves self, that is a delight to their eyes and let’s them think they are wise in choosing it, and they are rushing headlong toward destruction and in their foolishness they are convinced they are alright just because when they look left and right they see so many going along with them.
Their Christianity is one of ease and comfort and entertainment and the pursuit of worldly mammon and the applause of men, and that is very simply NOT the way of Christ!
“And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. Lk 9:23
“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” Lk 14:27
Does that sound easy? Jesus talked of crosses and narrow gates and His choice of words makes no provision for exceptions.
MANY AND FEW
I want to talk just a little about the ‘many’ and the ‘few’ Jesus refers to but first I’d like to let John R.W. Stott make a point:
“…there are according to Jesus only two ways, hard and easy (there is no middle way), entered by two gates, broad and narrow (there is no other gate), trodden by two crowds, large and small (there is no neutral group), ending in two destinations, destruction and life (there is no third alternative).” CHRISTIAN COUNTER CULTURE, John R.W. Stott, 1978 Intervarsity Press, pg 196
Once more here I’ll bring your focus back to the fact that pagans and practitioners of other religions are not being addressed or considered here. Of the two groups, choosing one of two ways through one of two gates all of them are claiming to be Christians.
So Jesus cannot be talking about salvation or lack of salvation here. He is talking about a vital choice that Christians make, and it is a very dangerous mistake for believers to read these verses and take them as though Jesus is drawing a distinction between believers and unbelievers.
If we want to understand clearly what the real distinction is and what He is warning against we only need to go on to the next statements He makes, which we will do, Lord willing, next time we meet.
For now I want you to just listen to these words that follow His exhortation concerning the choices we make.
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”
Fellow followers of Christ, the warning Jesus is issuing in these two verses, and one that every Bible-believing Christian must consider and use to examine himself or herself often, is that choosing the narrow gate and the narrow way, which is the way He has gone before you, is the only way to avoid becoming the victim of, or becoming, one of those He is talking about in these verses to come.
I will guarantee you that the many who choose the broad and easy way are sitting under the influence of false teachers, or they are becoming one, or they are leaving sound Biblical teaching and leadership because it calls them to the narrow way and they have rejected that way.
So what do we mean by ‘many’ and ‘few’? There is not a clear easy answer to that question. We have to consider other passages, such as:
”And someone said to Him, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?” And He said to them, ’Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able’.” Luke 13:23-24
Now that is an interesting twist. He says to ‘strive’, so there is a struggle involved, and then He says many will seek to enter and will not be able. Since we know that it is God’s will that we enter that narrow way we can know that it is not He who keeps us out. And no other, human or devil, can keep us from following Christ where He calls us to go.
So the struggle must be with our selves. When He says many will not be able, He means that they will not be able to overcome self will in order to enter through. Therefore, strive. Be ready for a fight. Your sin nature would hold you back if you listen to the wrong voice.
Next:
“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes,…” Revelation 7:9
So how do we reconcile the ‘great multitude which no one can count…before the throne’, with ‘few there are who find it’?
One student of the scriptures might suppose that Jesus is comparing the uncountable multitudes in Heaven with the billions who entered eternity without Christ.
We might mention the promises to Abraham concerning the number of his descendants being likened to the sand on the sea shore or the stars in the sky.
I personally believe that Jesus was stressing a point that as in every area of life the harder things get the fewer there are who keep going. Christianity is not supposed to be an easy, comfortable life, my friends.
This world is a sinful, fallen one driven by a spirit that hates Christ. That is why it is called the spirit of the anti-Christ. Jesus, who was God in the flesh, walked a rough road that led to rejection, humiliation, torture and a cross. His followers are foolish when they expect any better treatment than that.
The fact is, the degree of comfort we have in this world, the degree of friendliness with which the world and this life treat us, can be used to gauge the distance we are from God and how far down the wide path we’ve gone.
Christ took the narrow gate and walked the narrow way and when we refuse and neglect to follow through with Him we simply are not His disciples.
On the other hand we can rest assured, Christians, and I really mean those words; ‘rest’ and ‘assured’, that though the gate is narrow and the way is rough, you’ll never travel it alone because the One who went before you is there to walk with you all the way.
That’s right. It is too narrow for you and self, it is too narrow for you and the world, but there is just enough room for you and the Lion of Judah who promised never to leave you or forsake you; who said “I am with you, even to the end of the world”.
Pastor Larry White submitted something to SermonCentral.com that I came across in my research for this sermon. He had very little information to give about its source, but said it is believed to be written by an African preacher. The writer’s name is not known, but his heart can be heard in these passionate words:
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE UNASHAMED
"I’m part of the fellowship of the unashamed. The dye has been cast. I have stepped over the line, the decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still.
My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I’m finished and done with low living, sight walking, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals. My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my guide is reliable, my mission is clear. I won’t give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up for the cause of Jesus Christ.
I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till everyone knows, work till He stops me, and when He comes for His own, He will have no trouble recognizing me because my banner will have been clear."
SOURCE: Provided by Love Worth Finding Ministries, the author’s name is unknown. This quote is reported to have been found in the home of an African preacher. This was submitted to SermonCentral.com by Larry White
Where is this brand of Christianity in the world in A.D. 2006? Where in the United States of America? Where, in Montrose, Colorado?
Do you see it? Do you want it?
Just how narrow-minded are you prepared to be?
