MATTHEW 7:13-28
(Exodus 19)
- Perhaps some of you saw on TV some time ago a programme made by Andrew Denton called: “God on my Side.”
- Denton had visited the convention of the Religious Broadcasting Association in the USA and interviewed quite a number of the people there.
- While I don’t agree with most of those interviewed about a number of theological points that were being made, and I certainly don’t agree with them about the impression that everything that the Bible says about the church applies to the USA as a nation, I was very happy with their emphasis on the Bible as the Word of God, and as the only source of our information about God.
- Denton gently pushed those whom he interviewed about Jesus being the only way to God, and those people did well, I thought, in their answers.
- To maintain in our culture that Jesus is the only way to God is very difficult, isn't it, because all the other voices, even many claiming to be Christian voices, are screaming the opposite.
- In the passage which we read today from the Sermon on the Mount, we have 2 blocks of the teaching of Jesus on the subject of who gets to heaven – something of vital interest, not only to those who consume religious TV , radio and internet web pages world-wide, but also to us here today and all of our fellow-countrymen.
- Jesus uses 2 pictures – the first one about a gate and a road, and the second one about a house.
(1) The narrow gate and narrow road.
Matthew ch. 7 vv. 13-14; Jesus said:
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
- This isn’t one of the warm and fuzzy teachings of Jesus that everyone, even the atheists, likes, is it? People love sayings like “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, but they don’t like this picture of the narrow gate and road.
- You ask those non-believers whom you know who think that Jesus was a great teacher if they agree with this teaching!
- I’ll guarantee that they will not.
- It’s not politically correct.
- What the bulk of our fellow Aussies believe on this matter is: either that there’s no such thing as heaven and hell, OR that God is so kind that everyone will get to heaven regardless.
- It seems to me that one either accepts Jesus as a great teacher on a par with Socrates, the Buddha or Mahatma Ghandi, and one is free to choose one line from here in the Bible and one line from there but not the bits you dislike, OR you accept the claims that Jesus made about himself and accept ALL that he taught, even if some of it is not politically correct, nor warm and fuzzy.
- I accept the historic position of the Christian church – that our founder, Jesus of Nazareth, was God the Son become man, and therefore everything that he said carries with it the authority of Almighty God, and must therefore be true.
Matthew ch. 7 vv. 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. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
- This teaching is not hard to understand, is it?
- Two gates, and two roads.
- The first gate is narrow. It’s a bit like one of those stiles in a fence that’s designed to allow only one person at a time to pass through, but not cattle or several people at once.
- It’s a narrow gate because people qualify for entrance to heaven one at a time. Someone else can’t carry you through. There’s no way that a motorbike can get through, so pillion passengers are out. And a car or a truck full of people is impossible.
- This narrow gate allows only one at a time to pass through. And the one who checks for the password, the gatekeeper, asks:
Have you turned from your sins and trusted in Jesus Christ to save you? Have you committed yourself to be a follower, a slave, of Jesus Christ from this time forth and for ever?
- Those who genuinely answer ‘Yes’ are allowed through this narrow gate.
- And then there’s the narrow road.
- I’m immediately reminded of Pilgrim’s Progress.
- Pilgrim has ever before him as his destination the Celestial City, and the road is narrow and hard. He is continually under threat of straying off the path – or being dragged off.
- So, the gate is narrow which leads to the narrow road - which leads to the Celestial City.
Matthew ch. 7 v. 14,
“But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
- The other gate and the other road?
v. 13,
“wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”
- This is not what popular culture tells us, is it? This is not what we see on the movie or TV screen. Our average Aussie doesn’t believe this.
- Many people in our country believe that there are many roads to heaven. The funny thing is that it is impossible to get that idea from the Bible. The Bible teaches quite the opposite plan.
- As we look around us in the world, in our own country, and despair at all the evil, all the selfishness and so on that we see, we certainly continue to strive to do something about it all, but we shouldn't be surprised, because, in Matthew ch. 7 v. 13, our Lord Jesus tells us that the road leading to destruction is very heavily populated, much, much more so that the narrow road leading to the Celestial City.
- What can we do about this somewhat depressing situation?
- We are to love our neighbour with all our strength, and, as opportunity arises, we tell that neighbour that salvation is available through Jesus Christ and him alone.
- Two pictures:
(1) The narrow gate and narrow road.
(2) The house on the rock.
- The house picture is preceded by a warning from Jesus:
v. 21,
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
- Having said that entrance to heaven requires obedience to the will of God the Father, Jesus then says that we need to obey Jesus’ commands.
- We shouldn’t be surprised, because God is Trinity, and what God the Father requires, God the Son requires, and visa versa.