The Acts of the Apostles- 90

Subtitle:  Almost Persuaded

Acts 26:19:32.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty on February 2, 2025.

It is not common for a person to put their trust in Jesus the first time they hear the Gospel of Jesus the Christ.  We can be stubborn in our ways, and thus resistant to it.  However, we can also be resistant to change even when we know that it is the right thing to do.  We may say to ourselves:  “Not now,” “I’m not ready,” “I have too many fun things to do” and “I’ll get around to doing it later.”

When people come to that place of making a decision it is much like coming to an intersection.  You need to make a choice, and there are many reasons why you won’t come to a stop and deeply ponder the choice.  At the moment, you sense that there is something real to this message.  You believe that it really is God touching your heart and mind, drawing you to Himself.  However, regardless of our choice, that moment passes us by.  It becomes easier to keep doing what you were doing before.  

The flesh does not like being in this awkward pinch of admitting our life has been lived unrighteously and that we are in need of God’s saving grace.  It will do anything to resolve the tension of the moment and get back to normal, whatever that is.  The danger here is that God’s conviction comes and goes.  We can let it pass and miss the opportunity for the time being.

Yet, God in His grace gives us an undetermined amount of time in this life to come to our senses and put our trust in His Messiah, the Lord Jesus.

Today, we will look at a man who was almost persuaded, but almost is not enough.  Let’s look at our passage.

Paul addresses King Herod Agrippa II (19-23)

We are picking up at the point of which Paul has told the account of his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.  Verse 19 is where he turns from the story the encounter to speak about his response to that event.

It would be easy for us to read that account and think to ourselves, “If Jesus did to me what he did to Paul, then I would believe.”  Of course, this is easier to say than to do.  Many people have experienced powerful moments where they saw miraculous things and believed God was speaking to them.  Yet, later, after the moment had passed, they began to doubt it.  They think that it was just a subjective, psychological event instead of a real encounter with God. 

Our response to the overtures of God is critical.  He puts intersections in our path, whether we know it or not.  As we cruise through these intersections, our decisions determine whether we embrace Jesus and step onto the path of blessing, or whether we remain upon a path of destruction for ourselves and for others around us.

Paul let’s Agrippa know that he believed and obeyed the heavenly vision he received that day.  He went into Damascus, where his plan was to arrest Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem for trial.  Yet, his purpose was changed.  He waited for the Christian Ananias to pray for him, and then he began preaching to the people in Damascus to become Christians.  He preached to Jews, but he also preached to Gentiles.  Jesus was God’s Anointed man not just to save Jews, but Gentiles too.  This is a different Paul with a different purpose.  He was now about the purpose of Jesus.  When you live for your own purposes, you stay the same person in general.  There may be some hiccups and drastic moving around of the props on the stage of our life, but in the end, we keep going in a direction of wasting our lives on the lesser things of pleasing our flesh, satisfying our momentary desires.  However, to live for the purposes of Jesus is to become a very different person who is on a very different trajectory.

Paul preached a message (verse 20) of repentance, turning to God, and doing works that are appropriate to one who is repenting.

Repentance is essentially having a change of mind.  In this context, you are having a change of mind about how you have been living your life, i.e., for pleasing yourself.  However, it is not enough to just change what pleases you.  This is not a repentance that saves.  It only puts you on another dead end path.  Repentance must move to the second part of the message, turning to God.

All of our self-choices lead us away from the path of God, but they also lead us away from relationship with God.  We are not just talking about things that God wants you to do, and things he wants you to refrain from doing.  We really need to stop ignoring God, or even being hostile to Him.  We need to learn the wisdom of yielding to His great wisdom like a child recognizing that their father knows best.

It is from this relationship that we can express the third component of Paul’s preaching.  We do works that are appropriate to repentance, or fitting for it.  It is not enough to change how you talk about God.  Those who repent want their lives to become like Him and their lives to accomplish His purpose.

This last point is not to imply that we cannot make mistakes, or have weak moments of doubt or temptation.  It really is a calling of a person’s bluff.  You can say that you believe in Jesus, but if you continually refuse to listen to all of his words, then you are kidding yourself and trying to deceive others.  You do not believe in Jesus, but rather, you believe in the Jesus of your own making.  Let’s be clear.  No one makes it into heaven by perfect performance.  But on the other hand, you are not going to fake your way in.  You either live for the purposes of Jesus out of a relationship with him, or you don’t.  It is as simple as that.

Think about it.  The love of God sends Christians across the path of individuals in order to wake them up to this need to repent.  He continues to do this over the top of the many times that we stiff-arm the moment and continue on in stubbornness.  He continues this to our last mortal breath.

Paul then says that he was seized in the temple and nearly killed because of this obedience to Jesus.  Yet, God helped him so that he could keep testifying to the life changing truth about Jesus. 

The help of God doesn’t always look like an angel appearing and slaying all of our enemies.  Sometimes it comes in the form of a pagan, Roman commander who is only concerned about keeping his own job.  Could God use a bureaucrat when you are sucked into their little fiefdom of power?  You bet He can.

We have seen this help throughout the book of Acts.  It was not about removing all difficulty and bad things from Paul’s path (the path of Christians).  It was a powerful help, but not one that insulated us from all that feels like it is harming us.  Paul would eventually be helped into the presence of God through martyrdom in Rome, but his time was not yet.  In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul takes the time to enumerate some of the difficult things that happened along his way.  We already talked about how he was beaten in the temple in Jerusalem.  However, what about the time in Lystra where he was stoned by the crowd and left for dead?  God helped him that day.  He didn’t’ die.  Yet, he still felt the pain.  He was still rejected and moved on to another city.  Paul suffered many things for the cause of Jesus Christ.  Yet, he learned to trust the path that Jesus was leading him on.  In the 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul then moves to speak about a physical malady that he suffered.  He prayed for the Lord to heal it, but the Lord told him “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  (2 Corinthians 12:9). 

Think about that.  If we never had any difficulties, then God’s power would not be what He wants it to be.  It would be lacking somehow.  It is not lacking power because God is omnipotent.  But the power is enhanced in our lives when we have weakness.  The weakness here is not talking about moral weakness, but even that is a testimony to the power and greatness of God.  Paul then states a lesson he had learned, in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10.  “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast ^[c]about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. ¹⁰ Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”  He is strong because the power of God uses it in ways that we don’t see, and in ways that we would rather not see.

If you think that God is not being fair and that it is cruel to not remove our sufferings, then just remember that he too walked this life and suffered.  The power of God was displayed in what looked like a weak man named Jesus.

Many today disregard Jesus as a weak message that must be rejected.  They think of the effect of his message on society as a weakening of that society.  But, they are wrong.  In truth, they are seeing the power of God and rejecting it, at least for now.  Still God’s grace works to convict their hearts of their error.

So Paul testified to Jews and to Gentiles that the prophets of the Old Testament had said these things would happen to the Messiah.  First, Messiah would suffer, and second, the prophets said that the Messiah would raise from the dead.

The Anointed Savior would suffer on behalf of our sins.  This is all through the prophets when you have eyes to see.  Even the promise in Genesis 3:15 of the Seed of the Woman who would crush the serpent’s head has a promise of suffering for him.  The serpent would do the same to his heel.  This may sound like a lesser blow, but a bite from a poisonous viper can be a mortal blow, even in the heel.  What about Psalm 16?  David prophesies that the Messiah would not be left to the grave and see decay.  Hmmm, sounds like some suffering would occur.  What about Psalm 22?  In the midst of existential suffering, something happens that is so great that the whole world will be amazed.  It even speaks of all those who died worshiping him.  Of course, the powerful passage of Isaiah 53 is shocking in its description of Messiah’s suffering.

The third things is that Messiah would proclaim light to the Jews and to the Gentiles.  He would be a healer of the breach and lost inheritance. 

Even though this is highlighted throughout the Bible, some people had too much to lose to believe in Jesus.  “The Romans will come and take our power away!”  Yet, in refusing to embrace Messiah by letting go of their power, they missed Messiah and still lost their power.  In the end, they lost everything, and many even lost eternal life.  “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”  (Mark 8:36).

Paul is interrupted (v. 24-32)

Festus cuts Paul off and declares that he is mad.  He has apparently had enough of this babbling about Jewish prophecies and Messiahs.  It is also possible that he is quite uncomfortable with this powerful moment.  Perhaps the Holy Spirit is touching his heart, and his flesh is kicking against the goads.

The devil is always looking for useful tools to break up God’s convicting work in others.  The interruption of Festus breaks up the flow of Paul’s defense for following Messiah Jesus.  Yet, Paul brushes this aside deftly.  He tells Festus that he is not mad, but speaking sober truth.  We know what truth is.  Paul is not lying.  However, the word translated sober has the concept of a sound mind that is self-controlled and not under undue influence.  Paul is in his right mind and dealing with reality, not some hypothetical, prophetic fantasy.  He is in full command of his faculties as he speaks the truth.

Paul then quickly turns the discussion back to Agrippa.  Agrippa is his true target because he is well versed in these issues and knows that Paul is not talking gibberish and out of his mind.  Paul then puts a rhetorical question to Agrippa.  “Do you believe the prophets?  I know that you do.”  He doesn’t get into all the different rabbinic schemes for how Messiah would come and what all he would do.  But, Paul knows that Agrippa has at least a rudimentary acceptance that there is something to these prophecies.  There is truth in them.

Paul has given Agrippa evidence that demands a verdict, and so, Paul is not just asking Agrippa if he has a general belief in the prophets, but whether he believes Jesus is what those prophets was talking about.  This is the question that Paul is putting before Agrippa.  Are you ready to join us Christians in believing Jesus is Messiah?

The response of Agrippa can be summed up by saying that he is not ready to join the Christians in this believing Jesus stuff.  He literally says, “In a little, you persuade me to become a Christian.”  It is traditionally taken to mean that he is almost persuaded, but not quite.  Others see here an ironical statement or even a question.  Do you persuade me to be a Christian in such a little time?  Whether Agrippa is close to believing, or actually stiff-arming Paul, the net effect is still the same.  He is not persuaded.

The truth is this.  You cannot almost believe in Jesus.  You either do or you don’t.  The term Christian here needs to be understood in its context.  It was a term of derision about a heretical group that was being quashed by the religious leaders.  Agrippa may even be shocked that Paul could consider that he would join this outcast group.

There is an old hymn called Almost Persuaded.  Here are a few of the verses:

 V. 1: Almost persuaded now to believe; Almost persuaded Christ to receive; Seems now some soul to say, Go, Spirit, go Thy way; Some more convenient day On Thee I’ll call.  Comment: notice that the decision is put off to a more convenient time.

V. 3: Almost persuaded, harvest is past!  Almost persuaded doom comes at last!  Almost” cannot avail; Almost is but to fail! Sad, sad, that bitter wail, Almost, but lost!

What a powerful statement.  Almost is but to fail.  When the question is put to people, it goes through their mind what it would mean for them to become a Christian.  To follow Jesus and live for his purposes would upend the life of everyone who does it.  What would it mean if you became a follower of Jesus?  In how many ways would your life be “ruined?”  Paul lost a career among the most prestigious Pharisees.  He lost a life of wealth, comfort and the accolades of the powerful men of society.  Yet, he gained Jesus!  He gained the favor of God the Father.

None of us can save people.  Paul couldn’t save Agrippa, but the Spirit of God was there to help Agrippa if he wanted it.  The rest of the story for Agrippa is not important to us today.  Did he ever come to faith in Jesus?  There is no record of that.  However, the key for you or for people to whom you witness is this.  You can’t always know how much the Holy Spirit has prepared a person to hear.  We must be faithful to plant the seeds of truth, water those seeds with more truth, and yet, only God can bring in the harvest.

People need to face the question.  What will you do with Jesus?  Will you now believe and follow him?   Yet, we must also know that this is a work of the Holy Spirit.   Through prayer, we can learn to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes we may be silent so that the Spirit can incubate the message.  However, other times, we need to put the question before people, nudge them to make a decision, rather than letting the flesh just fall back into its routine once the moment has passed.

May God help us to be fully persuaded and be used of God to persuade others.

Almost Persuaded audio

The Sermon on the Mount XX

Subtitle:  Conclusion-Build on the Rock

Matthew 7:24-27.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, May 5, 2024.

Today, we will finish the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the concluding warnings that Jesus gives.

He first warned us about the difficulty of following him into the Kingdom of Heaven.  It is difficult to follow Jesus, and they would be tempted (we are tempted) to quit the way of life and go down the easy road that leads to destruction.

He then warned about deceivers that we would have to avoid in order to remain with him in the Kingdom.  They may have a powerful appearance, but they can be known by the fruit of their life.  This is one of the difficulties that we will face on this path to eternal life.

This last warning has to do with how we live our life.  This will be tested and proven, one way or another.

Let’s look at our passage.

The person who does what Jesus says (v. 24-25)

We must be careful how we live our life because decisions and actions have consequences.  Jesus has put a way of life in front of us through this sermon, but we have a decision to make.  He calls us to join him in being salt, light, and a city on a hill that is visible to all in our communities.  Believers in Jesus are meant to be visible to all.

This sermon had three main points.  First, he tells us that we can join him in fulfilling the law.  He would teach us to see and live out the Father’s heart that is behind all that the law says.  Second, he tells us that we can live out true righteousness, instead of the false piety of the hypocrites.  They look good on the outward, but the do not care for the Father’s heart, nor do they seek to please Him.  Third, he showed us how we could avoid the pitfalls of becoming hypocrites ourselves.

Verse 24 gives us the final “therefore” of this sermon.  It ends with a tension that we find in the book of Proverbs.  Who is the wise man, and who is the foolish man?  Who is on the path of wisdom and who is on the path of folly?  You may remember wisdom and folly personified as a woman on a hill calling for people to enter their houses (Proverbs 8 and 9).  The emphasis is that wisdom leads to life and folly leads to death.   They same is presented here.

Every person had a decision before them that day.  The choice involved wisdom versus folly, but another way to view it is that is involved following the Spirit of God versus following your own fleshly desires.  The Bible tells us that our flesh is hostile to the Spirit of God and the Word of God because it too is spiritual (of the Spirit).  This is important because it means that our flesh is hostile to the things that lead to eternal life, but like the things that lead to destruction.  The choice in the moment is always this.  What will you do about Jesus now?

However, even when we choose to follow Jesus, we have an ongoing choice, day by day, that continues to ask.  Will you continue to live by the wisdom and commands of the LORD Jesus?  Thus, it is not enough to begin well, enter the narrow gate, but then fall away. 

Regardless of where you are today, you are able to turn towards Christ and believe.  We can’t change the past, but we can change the power that the past has upon our present.  In fact, if you know God, you will understand that you don’t need to change the past.  The bad things in your life that you have complained and grumbled about can all become blessings in disguise when you put your hand in the hand of Jesus.

The devil uses hurts, wounds, fear, anger, and anything else to keep us stuck in a decision to neglect the words of Jesus.  He wants to discourage you.  But always remember this.  If it was easy to become like God, then everyone would be doing it.  It is precisely because it is hard that most walk away.  Yet, God is committed to you.  Jesus told us in Matthew 5:48, “You shall be perfect , just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”  Yes, this is a challenge, but it is just as much a promise.  He who has begun a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.  Do not lose faith because He will make sure that you are perfect before Him before it is all done.

Jesus first state the positive side, i.e., what we should do.  He emphasizes that it is not enough to only hear his words (or read them on a page).  One must also do them. Hearing must be followed up with exercising our faith in Christ by doing the things that he says.  Just think of all the bright, enlightened men and women who have read the words of Jesus.  Many of them felt that there was a little bit of good in his teachings, but that they were mired in first century Judaism.  They hear, but then walk on by.

Here are some scriptures to ponder.

Romans 10:17.  “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  If people have never heard the Gospel of Jesus, then they don’t know what they should believe in.  Therefore, people need us to tell them the good news about Jesus.  Yet, that hearing in and of itself is not enough.  It must lead to actions of faith. 

James 1:22.  “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”  He pictures a person looking in the mirror, recognizing that they need to make some improvements (comb your hair, wash your face) and yet, continuing on without doing anything.  This is not God’s intention for us.

I should mention dead works here.  Dead works are the actions of the religious who are hypocrites.  They are merely actions of the flesh trying to obtain fleshly things.  God is opposed to dead works, but not the works of faith, works that are born out of a desire to please God.  The works of true righteousness are those who put their faith completely in Jesus and learn to obey his commands by the help of the Holy Spirit.

Though we can use the term commands because Jesus did, the picture of a Father that we were made to image is not so much about commands and obedience.  These are the things for children.  But, as we grow in spiritual maturity, our hearts change and begin to desire the same things that God desires.  We begin to see the wisdom behind His instructions to us.

Always remember that two people can do the exact same thing (give money to the poor, pray, and fast), but for one it may be a dead work, and for the other, it may be an act of faith, true righteousness.  It all comes down to the motivation of our heart.

Jesus gives us a metaphor of a man who is building a house.  Those who hear the words of Jesus and do them are like a wise man who builds on a rock.  You will notice that this picture has nothing to do with people thinking you are wise.  Let me tell you a secret.  The truly wise are not generally recognized by those who are not wise.  Without the Holy Spirit, it would be impossible to find wisdom, and then become wise by learning from it.  Who are the wise of this age?  It is those who are bringing their gifts and laying them at the feet of Jesus in worship.  Many people sound wise, but they will not stand with the wise at the side of Jesus in eternity.  That is what this is about.

The rock is using foundation terminology.  It represents a sturdy, trustworthy surface that will not allow the building to sink.  The rock represents Jesus himself, and the teaching that he has given to us.  If you live your life by the wisdom of Jesus and by the help of the Holy Spirit, then your life will be upheld by the Truth, by reality itself.  Those who follow a different “wisdom” are actually building on a false truth.  It has no true substance.  Though it may have an outward form of truth, it is incapable of really, truly, holding up the weight a person’s choices place on it.

Jesus is the rock; He is the very Word of God.  He is the First Light that dawned in the void and brought forth all that has been created.  Yet, he has laid himself down as a sacrifice, as a foundation for us.  He is the absolute unifying Truth that lays at the foundation of all that you see.  Nothing has any being or substance, but through him.  Thus, even millions of people in the wilderness could not overcome the Truth that God wanted Israel to live and not die.  The waters that came out of the Rock to keep them alive are a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.  His being struck at the cross produces for life for all who will drink.

Thus, building here represents the way that you live: the principles you use to determine the actions you will take.  This leads to consequences.  Jesus is saying that the consequences of living your life by his words is eternal life, not just quantity, but even more, quality.

This should teach us to be humble.  Have you ever heard of unintended consequences?  Almost nobody says that they want to fall and fall greatly.  Instead, they believe they are wise.  Jesus warns us to live our lives by following him, if we want to have life.

All buildings are tested by the world around them.  It would be nice if our building, our life, was never tested.  Jesus points to the threat to natural buildings, storms.  Storms bring wind and excessive rains, which bring floods.  Of course, Jesus is making a spiritual point.  The storms are all the ways in which our faith in Jesus (or whatever else we put our faith in) is tested.  The floods represent the sea of people around us who are tossed to and fro by the winds and by the lusts of their own flesh.  These same lusts can seep into our house and life if we are not careful.  The winds represent the ideas, false religions, false teachings and philosophies of this world.  Ephesians 4:15 puts it this way.  “We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine [teaching], by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

False teaching is not the only storm.  The disciples were tested in the garden when they let sleepiness get in the way of prayer (lust of the flesh versus spiritual preparation).  They were all tested when they were threatened with imprisonment, beatings and death.  We are tested when people say all manner of evil things about us.  We can cave in under the pressure and seek an easier way.

We should also recognize that there are teachings of demons that promote false teachings through other willing humans.  Without Jesus, you will be tossed about like little children by the winds of life.

Jesus then tells us that the wise man’s house will not fall during the test.  It was tough and difficult, but the house was on a strong foundation, so it did not fall.  Those who put their faith in Jesus will not be taken out by these storms of life that test us along the way.  Yet, the greatest test will be the test of death.

The approach of death proves the foundation of many a person.  When we stand before God and give account for our life, it won’t matter how good things looked.  Christ will know exactly the motivations of your heart and what you were building upon.  We do not want to fall in that judgment, but instead, we want Jesus to welcome us and enable us to stand.  And, he will!  We don’t have to live in fear because He can be trusted.  Yet, we must not fool ourselves that He knows the truth.

The person who does not do what Jesus says (v. 26-27)

Of course, many who hear his words will not build on them.  They do not do what he says.  This can be in an irreligious way.  They can completely walk away from God and live for themselves and a different “wisdom.”  Or, we can reject Jesus in a religious way.  Many would follow the religious leaders of Jesus day and use the fact that he was executed as proof that they were right.  We can also live a religious looking life, but internally be as atheistic as the irreligious man.

The man who hears and doesn’t do what Jesus says is being foolish and walking down a path of folly.  Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise.”  Whose wise counsel do we need to heed?  The counsel of Jesus! 

Jesus pictures this as building upon the sand.  Sand is simply disintegrated rock.  We can use our human wisdom to cherry pick the words of Jesus, those we like versus those we don’t.  Yet, the wisdom of Christ is not disintegrated.  It is an absolute whole.  If you reject his wisdom in one place, then you are also rejecting the parts that you think you accept.  An eclectic picking and choosing may feel like you are gaining wisdom.  However, think about who is doing the choosing.  How can I be obtaining wisdom by being the one to pick and choose?  Have I not made my foolish self a wisdom unto myself?  Like crossing a creek on stepping stones, we can do quite well for a while.  We can develop principles like never using wet rocks.  Yet, you will eventually reach that large rock that is dry and looks substantial, but when you jump to it, it wobbles and you fall into the water.  Not all such falls lead to the end of our life.  In such a case, we have the grace of recognizing that our wisdom can’t always determine the best course forward.  We need One who has gone there before us, and that is Jesus.

Notice that the foolish man’s house is tested by the same tests of life as the wise man’s house.  The blessing of the storms of life along the way is that we have rebukes that warn us that we are not building on the rock.  We can then choose wisdom.  Of course, it will not be a download of all wisdom in an instant.  The situation may have been bad, but it will bring forth good, if I will place my failure on the altar of God and ask for His help.

We can move from the storm imagery to the imagery of melting down ore.  When the heat is turned up on our lives, we may pray for God to take it away.  Then, we see ourselves melting and falling apart.  We then desperate cry for God to save us from melting.  Yet, God uses it to bring impurities to the surface.  If we will listen to Him, He will help us to scrape them off and be cast into a new mold.

Regardless, all lives are tested, both in the now, and later at the throne of God.  This is what makes the foolish man foolish.  Somehow, he believes that he can cut corners and that his building will be good enough.  He believes that he can disregard God’s Word and still build something substantial.  That is the folly of it.  You were warned and have countless examples around you everyday.  Yet, you persist in following the lusts of your flesh, the lusts of your eyes and the pride of life.

Sometimes the tests of life come in the form of a loved one who dies early.  God why did you let that happen?  It can come through persecution, deception, even a loved one who walks away from Christ.  Regardless, we will all be tested.  Have you built your life on the words of Jesus, or followed the hypocrites and only made it look like you were following him?

A fool’s life may even look like it has held together quite nicely all the way to death.  Yet, God is not mocked, and He is never fooled.  Do you remember the story of the Rich Man and Poor Lazarus?  The rich man looked righteous, but he ended up in torments in the grave.  Lazarus looked abandoned by God in this life, but when he died, he ended up in the paradise of Abraham’s Bosom.  The greatest test of death is faced by all.  A foolish man goes into eternity betting that he will not be held accountable to these words of Jesus, but he will.

We cannot imagine the magnitude of stepping into eternity and being found as wise or foolish.  The best thing that can happen to a person building on sand is that their house can collapse before death.  At least then, they have a wake up call and can choose to build properly.  The thief on the cross was in such a moment.  He didn’t have much time to build, but he took his stand upon the Rock, the Lord Jesus, and it was enough. 

Jesus says that the foolish man’s house will fall, and great will be its fall.  The fall of national Israel in the first century was a great fall because the leadership refused to build upon Messiah, Jesus, the Rock.  Down through history, individuals, empires and nations have continued to walk this same path of choices.

America also faces this today.  We have been building on sand for a very long time, and we are seeing our building fall apart all around us.  This is the grace of God.  Even now, God is pleading with us.  Why will you die?  Choose life!  May God help us to be a witness, a light, salt and a city on the hill to our own people.  Forget about America being a city on a hill for the world.  We need Christians who will stand up and be a city on the hill to our own republic!  This is the only truly wise thing that we can do.  May the Lord Jesus help us to build on the Rock!

Build on the Rock audio

The Sermon on the Mount XVIII

Subtitle:  Conclusion-The Narrow Gate

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.

Enter the narrow gate (v. 13-14)

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.

The Narrow Gate audio