Matthew 7:13-14. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 21, 2024.
We have reached the point where Jesus concludes his sermon. It is a series of warnings to those who have heard the teaching of Jesus. If the warnings are heeded, then they will enjoy the fruit of being a disciple of Jesus, but if they are not, then the words of Jesus will do them no good. Thus, it is not enough to hear the words of Jesus. One must put them into practice in the way that he intends.
Our emphasis today is on the metaphor of a narrow gate. Jesus is a polarizing figure, not because he intends to be so, but because he is absolute truth in a fallen and sinful world. Thus, the words of Jesus put the ball in our court. What are we going to do? Will we believe in Jesus and obey his commands, or will we not believe in him and reject his commands? In fact, Scripture reveals Jesus as the very embodiment of what the Bible itself is pointing to (Revelation 19:10). He is the Living Word of God (John 1:1f).
Let’s look at our passage.
Jesus gives his listeners a command, “Enter by the narrow gate…” This is the righteous, proper response to hearing the Messiah. He is opening the door to the kingdom of heaven and they need to enter.
Hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a privilege and great blessing, but it also puts a big decision on your plate. What will you do with Jesus? This is the wonderful grace of God that He sends people with the Gospel to us. He also forgives the sins of those who put their faith in Jesus. On top of this, what if God only let us hear the Gospel once and then held us accountable for that first decision for eternity? Yet, this is not how God deals with us. He holds his hands out to us even in our stubbornness and resistance. God’s grace allows us to repent of our past choices to reject the Gospel.
However, we should be careful not to take it for granted that we will have tomorrow, or our old age, to “get right with God.” Now is the day of salvation.
The gate is an access point. Jesus is the access point into the kingdom. We need to go into it. Yet, there is another gate, another door. The other gate is described as a wide gate. The narrow gate is not as easy to enter, but the wide gate is eay to enter. There is plenty of room. It is probably far more impressive because of its wideness too. In fact, if we picture the narrow gate as that one degree that puts us on the right path, then we will see that the wide gate is the infinitude of other choices, and other voices, that we can hear and choose to follow.
The gate or door, as I said earlier, points to Jesus. He alone has the words of the Father. Jesus makes this clear in John 10:7-9. “I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out to find pasture.
There are two ways we can look at this gate. In Matthew 7, Jesus pictures the gate as an access point onto a way that leads to a particular destination. John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress from this Word to the Next uses this analogy. Christian must turn away from living in the City of Destruction and go through the narrow Gate towards the Celestial City of the King.
In John 10, Jesus is using the imagery of the flock of the LORD. The good shepherd lets the sheep come into the pen, which represents the place of safety. The sheep are cared for by the shepherd, who takes them in and out in order to obtain what they need. It is a picture of life in the kingdom. In that sense, we are not so much trying to go somewhere. We are simply in relationship with the Good Shepherd.
If we put these two images together, then we recognize that Christ takes care of us as we grow in this life to image the Father. This is all possible because we have a Good Shepherd. When we physically die, we will only enter into that next good thing that the good shepherd has for us.
We can also think of the narrow gate in the same way that Paul reveals it in Galatians chapter one. People can misrepresent Jesus and the Gospel into a different Gospel, a different Jesus. In Galatians 1:7, Paul warns against those who pervert the Gospel of Christ. Thus, the narrow path represents the Jesus who is revealed to us, once and for all, in the New Testament and, through typology, in the Old Testament. We must pay close attention to Jesus and put our faith in him.
The two gates open up onto two very different paths, roads, or ways. This is not a literal path. It represents a person who is following the Way of the LORD. It represents living a life that is informed, empowered, and directed by Jesus.
The way of Christ (the narrow gate) is described as difficult. The word is connected to tribulation and has the sense of pressure that squeezes us. Of course, this is in contrast to the way that the wide gates opens up to.
The wide gate leads to a broad way. The word broad literally has the idea of spacious country. This road is not just wide. It is easy with plenty of room for everyone. There is no squeezing and cramping of your style on this path. Essentially the difference of the two gates, narrow and wide, extend to the two paths, difficult and easy.
Imagine looking through a small gate and seeing a way on the other side that is difficult and filled with tribulation. Then, imagine looking through a wide gate and seeing a way on the other side that is easy and has no tribulation, at least not comparatively. Note: I don’t want to give the impression that Jesus is saying that non-believers have a life that is completely easy. However, their way is easy in all the respects that the difficult path is hard.
Here are some verses worth meditating upon.
2 Timothy 3:12, “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”
1 Thessalonians 3:4, “We told you before when we were with you that we would suffer tribulation, just as it happened, and you know.”
Revelation 1:9, “I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island of Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
The way of Jesus is difficult because of several reasons. First, our flesh doesn’t like what Jesus commands, at least not all of it. The Bible says that our flesh is hostile to the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5-8).
Second, the way of Jesus is difficult because the world is full of people who are going their own way, and many who have rejected Jesus. They represent a flow of the stream in a different direction. This is hard for us. Also, Jesus tells us to love those who hate us and spitefully treat us, i.e., our enemies. This too is very hard on our flesh.
Third, The way of Jesus is difficult because we have spiritual enemies, the devil, his angels, and the demons, who do not want us to follow Jesus. They employ every temptation and scheme that they can to make it hard for us to follow Jesus.
I purposefully used the phrase “the way of the LORD” earlier. We see this phrase throughout the Old Testament. In Genesis 18:19, God recognizes that Abraham will command his children to keep the way of the LORD. We should also make the connection back to Genesis three, where the way to the tree of life is blocked by the cherubim. There was not going back into the garden as sinful people. We had to trust God and go forward. Israel had this same dynamic when they first refused to fight the giants. When God told them that they would go into the desert for 40 years, they tried to go back and fight. It was too late. Their resistance and rebellion to the plan of God required going forward and learning the lessons of God’s faithfulness. God’s way takes us forward through the scary things ahead of us, and brings us out the other side to the good thing that He has planned for us. We can trust Him!
This is similar to how Psalm1 and Psalm 2 fit together. The blessed man rejects the way of the wicked but meditates on God’s word. It makes him fruitful tree. In Psalm two, we see the Anointed One of God. He is the perfect Israelite who sits at the right hand of the Father, even though the wicked fight against him. It ends with saying that those who trust in Messiah are blessed, i.e., Messiah sums up the way of the LORD. He is the ultimate tree of life to whom we can connect and become a righteous branch. He is the waters of life to whom we can draw life and be fruitfulness. He is the ultimate Blessed Man of Psalm 1 (Genesis 12) in whom all others are blessed.
Next, we are told that the two ways lead to two different destinations: life and destruction. Life here is the full life of God, eternal life, but not just in terms of length. It is a quality of experience that can be described as a fullness of life without end. The narrow gate with its difficult road leads to eternal life. More than this, from other places, we know that the way itself has an experience of this life along the way (John 7:38).
Yet, the wide gate with its easy way leads to destruction (death). This is reminiscent of Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” We need to be careful the gate we go in, and the path that we walk (even if it is difficult). The best things in life are always at the end of a difficult journey, and even the difficult journey itself becomes a kind of life as we persevere, cry out to God, and see His help.
The word “seems” in the above quoted verse is important. One path seems good and feels good. Yet, it leads to destruction. Of course, all scams are set up to use your flesh against you. Here, Jesus is warning us against the ultimate scam of this world. If we follow Jesus, we will encounter difficulty, but we will take hold of the very life of God too. If we reject Jesus, we may encounter ease and comforts, but we will find our life full of destruction in the end.
The narrow gate with its difficult way is loathed by our flesh. However, if we continue to stay connected to Jesus by faith, we will find his supply of life flowing into our hearts and mind, even though we are in these mortal bodies. This is why Paul taunts death and the grave. “O Death, where is your sting, O Grave, where is your victory?” As the follower of Christ approaches death, they can be never more alive because of what is only moments away, union with our LORD!
This is the same decision that Moses spoke about in Deuteronomy 30:19. He said to them, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live…” It really is a choice between life and death, but not just in the natural. It is a spiritual choice that impacts eternity, and that impact on eternity impacts our mortal life now.
We end with the shocker. The shocker is that Jesus, speaking to Jews who had the word of God and His help, reveals that few will find the way to life, and most will follow the way to destruction. This same point is made in a different context in Luke 13:23. There a person simply asks Jesus if many people will be saved or few. Jesus answers with this narrow gate imagery. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” It is the difficulty of the road and the pampering of their own flesh that disables them.
In John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Notice that the same components of the gate, way, destination are in this. Jesus is not only the gate, but he is the path that we walk, the truth to which we hold on firmly. Yet, relationship with the Father is the life that we will have, which is also relationship with Him. Jesus is our everything. Jesus is the fruitful tree of life and water of life that all who want to be fruitful in this life and the next will connect to. When we do that, we will bring forth life in the here and now.
Perhaps, you hear this and are discourage because you failed to follow him. The apostle Peter also failed to follow Jesus, and yet God still loved him and offered him another chance. Do you know that God still loves you too? May God help us to choose life this morning and everyday hereafter so that we can be a conduit of God’s life into this world.