Matthew 7:13-23

The narrow gate.

We as a church are in the book of Matthew.

Matthew is one of four books that talks about Jesus.

Right?

So this is in the middle of your Bible, a little bit, maybe the latter third of your Bible starts the New Testament, and everything before that has been leading up and preparing for Jesus.

And then we get into Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

We're in Matthew 7, so if you have your Bible, you can turn there.

Matthew is all about Jesus.

And then we've been in this section of the book of Matthew that's called the Sermon on the Mount.

The Sermon on the Mount.

It's a famous sermon.

Some of the material you'll see in there, you've heard it in pop.

You may have never been to church before, but you've heard things from the Sermon on the Mount just by watching TV or reading books or living and breathing in our culture.

So we've been studying through the Sermon on the Mount for the last few months, and we're coming to the end.

We are at Matthew 7 in verse 13.

And there's 11 verses, 13 through 23, that talk about both the broad path and the narrow gate.

And last week we talked about the broad path and some of the characteristics on the broad path that everybody's doing it.

And it's the easy street.

And like there's uh it's the popular place to be, and um, and yet it's the path that leads to destruction.

So we looked at the broad path last week.

This week we're gonna talk about the narrow path.

So let's um read the text.

Let me read the text to you.

We'll pray and then um we're gonna look at it.

We're gonna study it a bit.

I'm gonna teach through it, and we're gonna be asking God's Spirit to really teach us and speak and preach into our hearts what we need to hear this morning.

All right.

So starting in verse 13, Jesus says this enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it.

How narrow is the gate, and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.

Be on your guard against false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravaging wolves.

You'll recognize them by their fruit.

Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?

In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit.

A good tree can't produce bad fruit, neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.

Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit, it's cut down, it's thrown into the fire.

So you'll recognize them by their fruit.

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?

Then I will announce to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you lawbreakers.

Wow, let's talk to God about this for a second.

Lord, we're gonna read and study through these verses here that you spoke 2,000 years ago.

And you promised that the Spirit would be with us, even though you're up in heaven, your spirit is with us.

And we ask that your spirit would teach us right now.

Help us to understand.

You're you've been with us this week.

You know everything about us.

You know our entire story, you know the thing the state of our heart and our minds.

And we just ask right now that your spirit would teach us.

We also want to pray for our kids.

We're so grateful that we have a lot of kids, and we know, Lord, that that being a kid is difficult.

Getting into those teen years is difficult.

And man, if they would have a relationship with you from a young age to know the Bible, it would save them so much pain.

And so we pray for them this morning as they're studying at their level and they're trying to understand about the Bible, and Miss Crystal is teaching them this morning.

We just we pray, Lord Jesus, that you would bless them and that their hearts and minds would be open to what you want to teach them as well.

We pray that in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Our upstairs resident is um vacuuming upstairs, so you hear a little bit.

That's not some large mouse.

That should be just a vacuum, just a vacuum.

Okay, so last week we talked about the broad path.

So we're talking about two paths, right?

We it's just like um um uh the matrix.

You got the blue pill and the red pill.

Jesus is saying there's two paths, right?

And you need to choose.

And we talked about the characteristics of the broad path last week.

And this week we're gonna talk about this narrow gate.

Oftentimes in culture we talk about people being on the straight and the narrow.

This is one of those Bible ideas that has just jumped off the pages of the Bible and it's embedded itself within our culture.

Sometimes it's used to describe, you'll see it in like a TV show like Law and Order, where the rigid law, there's a rigid law enforcement officer who is more has morally upright character and always will play by the book.

You're familiar with this character, Lonnie Briscoe, who's the detective.

Lonnie Briscoe, he was known for having uh alcohol in his past and just kind of a checkered past, and he went through recovery and uh he was sober and he was constantly making this decision that he would be kind of on the on the straight and narrow, we might say.

It's this cultural idea uh where we talk about somebody who's not living a life that is loose or corrupt or lawless.

Instead, that person is got their act cleaned up and they're doing the right thing.

That that's kind of how we use the term culturally, but our question is hey, Jesus is the one who said it.

So what is this, what did Jesus mean?

What does it mean when Jesus says that you need to take the narrow gate, that that's the gate that leads to life.

So we're gonna just look through this, and the one of the ways that we like to study the Bible is like, what's just right on the surface?

Jesus says right at the opening to take the narrow gate.

And then he goes on and he explains it.

And so we're gonna be kind of like, you know that guy that goes around the beach with the metal detector?

Like, and he's digging down deep?

Well, sometimes you don't even have to dig deep in the Bible to get what's Jesus.

He's just like, hey, here's here's right on the surface, here's the good stuff.

Here's what it means to be on the narrow path.

So let's look at this together.

Starting in verse 13, it's it opens up with a command, right?

This whole section that we've been studying for two weeks, it opens up with this statement: enter through the narrow gate.

Jesus just says, the narrow gate, that's the right gate.

Now, he goes on from there and he gives a substantiation or he explains it because we see this word here.

Now, if you're you're learning to study the Bible, this right here, this is a flag word.

Sometimes the word for should it should kind of put off an alarm in your head when you're studying the Bible, and you should say, okay, this is a structural law, this is a grammatical structural law that indicates a substantiation is about to follow.

You're like, well, Josh, what are you talking about grammar for?

Okay, here's the thing.

When the Bible, or when in any language, when you're trying to make a case, sometimes you'll make a statement and then you'll back it up with proof, right?

When you go to court and somebody charges you with a crime, it's the it's the job of the prosecutor to substantiate the claim.

Well, Jesus did that in his teaching, Paul the Apostle did that in his teaching.

And here, Jesus doesn't just say, enter the narrow gate, but he says, Let me explain to you why.

Let me substantiate for you my claim.

So first, the first characteristic that we see about the narrow gate, it's the right way.

Like it is the one that Jesus says to use.

Enter through the narrow gate.

That's where you're supposed to enter.

But it doesn't only say that, it's the proper entrance.

It also says some other things here.

It says the gate, there is a wide gate and a broad road that leads to destruction.

There are many who go through it, but then we start going to talk again a little bit about the narrow gate.

How narrow, he says, how narrow is the gate that leads to life.

How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and how few find it.

So we see that he doesn't just characterize it as the right gate, but he also says that it is narrow.

We talked last week about the Compassion Center, our relief center off Eastern Avenue, and how it has just one door.

And it's like a bottleneck, right?

Of it's tough to get in and out.

In Jesus' time, cities would be built if they had a sense of um uh their their setting was precarious and they were very uh they wanted to guard their city, they would make the gate more narrow so that if they were attacked, only a small number of um uh opponents could get through the gate at one given time.

And so Jesus says that narrow gate is the gate that is difficult and it leads to life.

It's interesting how this is the second idea here is that it's both narrow and that it is difficult.

We see that this same idea is recorded in the Gospel of Luke, in Luke 13.

Um he says this not only is it the proper entrance, but he says in Luke 13, 22, he went through one town.

This is speaking of Jesus.

He goes through one town and a village after another, one village after another, teaching and making his way to Jerusalem.

Lord, someone asked him, are only a few people going to be saved?

And he said to them, Make every effort to enter through the narrow door.

Because I tell you, many will try to enter and won't be able.

Once the homeowner gets up and shuts the door, then you'll stand outside knocking on the door, saying, Lord, open for us, and he will answer you, I don't know where you are from.

And so when this question is posed to Jesus, Jesus says, He's he's basically saying, No, not everyone will be saved.

There are these two paths.

There are these two ways of entrance.

One entrance is narrow, one is broad.

And the narrow path, it leads to life, but it is also a difficult path.

The question that we then ask is why would God, the God of love, make it difficult to get in?

Why is he the the God of love?

Why is he leaving people out?

If he wants people to be in his kingdom, why does it have to be so hard?

Is that a fair question?

Thank you, Felicia.

You're always you always agree with me.

Exactly, exactly.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

So Luke thirteen.

He does.

He's a god of love.

So can I make the case?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Okay, so that's you've set me up well.

You would think I paid you.

I'm sorry.

Felicia, I can always count on you.

I know.

That's why, that's why we're studying this together, right?

Because it looks like it's like, wait, you're the God of love.

God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, but why is it narrow?

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Okay, so let's look at let's look at this for a second.

First of all, when we look at the Bible, we see that God in Psalm 19, it says that God makes it clear that he exists.

Now, does everybody believe that God exists?

No.

No, not everybody.

There are people that are atheists and um agnostic.

An atheist is someone who is um absolutely sure, they believe they're absolutely sure, that God does not exist.

And there are people that are agnostic who are say, I don't think that it can be determined that God exists.

And yet Psalm 19 says that God makes himself known.

He makes it clear that he exists through creation.

You should be able to look at creation and the design of creation.

Does anybody ever go along and you've let's say you found in a field a Rolex watch?

Do you look at that Rolex watch and go, man, I'm glad there was a big bang and that thing just evolved into being a Rolex watch out here in the middle of the field?

Is that your response?

No, we look at the design, right?

We look at the design of that watch and we go, somebody designed it.

And so when we look at the intricacy, some of you are in the medical field, you look at just how the eye works and what it can take in.

Right now we're in the middle of kind of the AI boom with technology and the processing power, like the more powerful we can make these computers and the compute power is gonna translate over to the speed in which these large language models can process the prompts that are put into the AI, right?

And we're trying to scale up the processors.

The amount of data that your your the optical nerve can receive and process is mind-boggling.

And yet there are people who want to say that, hey, that just kind of it just happened, it just kind of evolved into that state.

The Bible in Psalm 19, it says that God made it clear through creation that he exists.

So he's not, it's not diff, it should not be difficult to acknowledge that there is a God.

But not only that, he left a witness, he picked a people called the nation of Israel, and he worked miraculously on their behalf.

He kind of held them up as a trophy and said, This is what it looks like to be my people.

And you're all invited to follow my covenants, my law, all are what he set up that nation.

He said, He he built into the nation of Israel um laws that said, welcome in the non uh the non-Hebrews.

Like the aliens are welcome.

Let them worship, right?

Let them be a part of what's going on as my covenant.

So he left a witness with a uh with a race.

And then God sent prophets to speak on behalf century after century.

So God makes himself known, and he is the God of communication, even before Jesus comes on the scene.

But then finally, Jesus does come on the scene 2,000 years ago, and one of the names of Jesus is that he is the word of God.

That word in Greek is the logos.

In Greek, logos is not just he's just like a phrase, he's not just like a slogan of God.

To be the logos, the word of God means to be the full expression of God.

Jesus came to the world to be the full expression of God.

And he's communicating through the Sermon on the Mount, he's preaching these messages.

He's saying, here's what the kingdom of heaven is, here is the offer.

Then, if it wasn't enough for him to just communicate about the kingdom of heaven, he goes to the cross, sacrifices his own life on our behalf so that people he didn't even interact with face to face could be forgiven and accepted into the family of God.

So God has done all of this to clear the path.

So what why is the path difficult?

The reason why the path is difficult is because of human nature.

Human nature.

Maybe somebody comes along and says, well, maybe it's narrow and difficult because of all the steps you have to take.

Maybe that's what Jesus is talking about.

Maybe there's some manual.

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, yeah.

That human nature, yeah, you're kind of jumping ahead of me.

You're preaching my sermon.

But you're right.

No, no, no.

That's what that's right, that's right.

Yes, Felicia.

I think it comes down to free will and free choice.

Yeah.

It gives you the choice.

If you choose the right man, you go to heaven.

If you choose the wrong past, you go to hell.

Good.

I can become a preacher.

I think that's I think you're right.

I think you're right.

But but but it it's not, but some people think of like, well, to become a Christian, maybe it's like one of those big fat user manuals, right?

Or it's like an IKEA, put it together, right?

Where it's just like, if this is ever gonna end, like one time I moved and I like spent 10 days doing IKEA furniture, it was like purgatory.

It was the worst thing ever, right?

But no, look at this.

Look at it's it's you're right.

You guys are both right.

That that it is, it is the human condition that because God's done everything he can do.

Like, like, here's this beautiful, this beautiful thing.

Like, if you go over to Isaiah, right?

In Isaiah, God tells the nation of Israel, he's like, you guys are like my vineyard.

I plowed the ground, I weeded it, I put a whole fence around the thing, I put a tower in the middle of it so a guy can watch out for the enemies, right?

I've done everything that I could do to make you a beautiful vineyard, and yet you're bearing bad fruit.

And that comes down to that human self, that freedom that God's given to everybody, and the ability to choose what is bad.

But look at look at these verses.

This is in Acts, which comes, it's the fifth book of the New Testament.

Um, this is an interaction with the Apostle Paul.

You probably heard of the Apostle Paul.

He was a follower of Jesus, and some people asked him, sir, what must what must I do to be saved?

Right?

That's the question.

How am I to be saved?

How can I be rescued?

How can I be forgiven of my sins?

How can I enter into the kingdom of heaven?

Right?

That that's the question.

Here's what here's what Paul said.

Believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved.

Where's the big fat manual in that?

There is none, right?

The the way to be saved, it's it's just, is it that easy?

Is it that easy?

That's that's what it says.

It says, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

You and your household.

Wow.

Maybe is that just a fluke?

Maybe there's maybe that is that all in the Bible?

Well, let's look at another verse.

Look at Romans 10.

Romans 10, 9, it says, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him.

Who?

Who yeah, what who are we believing that God raised?

Jesus.

If we believe that God raised him from the dead, you will what?

May be saved?

No, you will be saved.

And that's why the road is so narrow.

Because it's simple.

Maybe that's right.

That's a good point.

Yeah, maybe it is that simple.

Maybe, maybe it's narrow because it's there's a simplicity about it, and it's just difficult because of the human will.

Jesus is talking about when he says that the gate is narrow and the path is difficult.

What's he talking about there?

It is the human experience.

Here it is.

Here's what I put down in my notes.

It's our nature that makes it difficult.

We're our worst enemy sometimes, right?

Anyone been your own worst enemy?

Oh man, I'm good at that.

It's also the people around us make it difficult, and the brokenness of systems.

That's right.

That's right, because the broad path is the popular path, right?

And Jesus is saying, though, this path, this straight and narrow path, this is the one that leads to life.

I want to show you a picture.

This is a pic.

Does anybody know this guy?

This guy is from Baltimore.

This is W M A R2, uh, did a little story about Justin Wilkes.

He lives off Wilkins Avenue, and he responded to the mayor's office of neighborhood safety, um, and there was a letter that was put because there were some shootings that had gone on in the neighborhood over there, and they put out leaflets and just kind of encouraging um uh the residents there to choose something different from violence.

It says in the article, he says, I was about to go back to hustling because I was working, I wasn't working.

It was hard for me to get a job.

I was about to give up and go back to something I knew.

In this article, it talks about how Wilkes chose, they literally they use the phrase, the straight and narrow path.

He made a decision that he would not do what was being um what is widespread in his neighbor, the neighborhood there, the path of violence, the path of hustling on the corners.

Sometimes life is hard, and there is the easy street, like we talked about last week, and difficulty comes up.

We see this in the parable of the sower.

Remember when Jesus talked about the guy who sowed the seed, and there's some plants that grew up but then were choked out?

Look at this one group.

He says, the one who Was sown on the rocky ground, that seed that was sown on the rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word.

They immediately receive it with joy.

They're excited.

They're like, oh yeah, I want to hear about Jesus.

That's awesome.

They receive it with joy.

It's like the little plant starts to come up.

But that plant has no root.

Like they haven't read their Bible.

They don't understand how the Bible affects it.

They're not going to church.

They're not hearing the sermons.

They're not understanding it, right?

When distress or persecution comes because of the word, immediately he falls away.

Here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

Life can be difficult.

And Jesus is saying there is this narrow gate that you need to enter through.

And that is the path, it leads to life.

But you need to understand that that is also a difficult path.

These types of things happen.

And they're those people who initially they choose, I'm going to go down that narrow path, they face difficulty, and they fall away.

I spoke to one of my friends this week.

He's in his 50s.

His life has been turned upside down over the last couple of years.

And he's facing a set of moral dilemmas that are normally faced in your late teens and early twenties.

It's like a he's had a just a reset on most of his life.

And basically he's facing a series of choices over what door, what path he wants to walk through.

And y'all are in those that kind of place too.

We are all making a decision.

Ultimately, what are we going to do today?

Are we going to follow Jesus?

Are we going to take that narrow path, that path, and we're going to use our autonomy and our freedom to choose Jesus, or are we going to use our autonomy to take the broad path?

So we've seen that the narrow gate, it's the right entrance.

It's narrow and it is difficult.

Let's keep going.

We also see in our text the narrow gate leads to life in the kingdom of heaven.

Super simple, right?

We said we were going to keep it simple.

In verse 14, he says that this road, this narrow road, leads to what?

It leads to life.

It leads to life.

And if we jump over to verse 21, he's talking about these people knocking on the door who are claiming to have done things in his name, and they want to have this entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

So this whole section here, these 11 verses are talking about the entryway into life, the entryway into the kingdom of heaven.

If you don't choose God's way, you're choosing the path of death.

The narrow gate leads to life, and it is the entrance to the kingdom of heaven.

Look at this awesome verse.

Can you look at this?

Look at this.

Let's read this out loud, right?

Let's read it out loud together.

Jesus says, I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.

Isn't that awesome?

Who wants abundant life?

Nobody, right?

Yeah, I want abundant life.

Jesus came.

That's right.

Jesus came so that we would have life and that more abundantly.

There's one of my favorite.

Jesus is instructing.

He's instructing the crowd, inviting them to find life.

The Bible describes, the Bible describes the human experience.

When you're separated from God, if you have not yet received Jesus, then you're not a friend of God.

You can't be in a relationship with God if you've rejected Jesus.

But, and if you have not entered through the narrow gate, then you, the Bible describes you as a dead person walking.

Okay?

Do you hear that?

If you have not accepted Jesus, then the life you're living is you're alive, but you're dead.

One of my favorite Christian movies is the Pirates of the Caribbean.

You didn't know that was a Christian movie?

It had to have been written by a Christian.

Because you've got the pirates, the pirates who look like you and me, right?

In the normal day, but in the light of the moon, what happens?

They look like this.

And so here's here's uh Barbosa.

He says, I, the gold, ten years we've been searching for it.

And when we finally set hands on that treasure, we cursed ourselves.

You see, the moonlight shines so clearly through our bodies.

The food we eat won't nourish us, nourish us.

The drink won't quench us.

We are cursed men, Miss Turner, condemned to eternal torment and hunger.

Elizabeth replies, This is a nightmare.

And Barbosa says, Welcome to the Caribbean, my love.

That is who you and I are when we are separated from God.

If you're on the broad path, if you're on the broad path, then you are a dead person walking.

But you're invited.

You're invited to have that curse broken over your life through Jesus so that you can have life and that more abundantly.

Jesus came, died on the cross, rose from the dead so that you and I could have life.

He canceled the curse and brings life within.

He says, listen, the kingdom of hand, it's it's it's at arm's length.

It's right there.

It's ready for you to take a hold of and receive.

So we've seen that the narrow gate, it's the right entrance.

It's narrow and difficult.

It offers life and an entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

And then the narrow gate leads to good fruit.

I've been tripping out on this in a good way.

This whole fruit thing, I man, I'm just like seeing it all over the Bible right now.

When I'm reading the Bible in the mornings, it's like you and I are designed to bear fruit.

And here's the thing, you don't even have a choice.

The Bible says you're either bearing good fruit or you're bearing bad fruit.

And we see here in verses 16 through 20, he says, you'll recognize them by their fruit.

Here's the thing.

Remember, just 14, 15 verses before this, you had Jesus saying, Don't judge lest you be judged.

Now that same Jesus is saying, listen, evaluate their fruit.

So when Jesus says, don't judge, what he's saying is, don't condemn people as like you're going to hell.

There's you are hopeless.

No, he's and so he's saying that in verse 1, 7, 1.

What he's saying here is, look at people's lives.

Look at the fruit coming from people's lives.

You'll recognize them by their fruit.

Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes and figs, uh, figs from thistles?

Let's try to say that five times fast.

In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit.

That makes sense, right?

We've got a couple landscapers in here.

Good fruit comes from good trees.

Bad fruit comes from bad trees.

If that bad tree is bad, it is gonna be bad fruit.

Like you're not changing that bad.

If you got a weed in your yard, Loretta.

What?

You think?

I don't know.

We'll have to go gardening together.

You and me go gardening.

That yes, that's right.

That's if we jump over the metaphor, yes.

Okay, okay, yes.

Jesus has opened up a can of worms here amongst us.

We have a good, we have a good debate going over good and bad fruit.

Let's see what he says in 19 and 20.

Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

So you'll recognize them by their fruit.

Here's the thing, and we we're we're totally out of time.

Uh otherwise we could keep going.

But Jesus says, look, you're designed.

We're designed to bear fruit, and he says, you're a branch in God's vineyard.

You just need to abide in me.

Like take your life, connect it to me, be in me, be in relationship with me, and your life will produce fruit, which is awesome because the very last thing that he says here is that the narrow gate means obedience because of a relationship with God.

I'm just going to show you this verse because we've run out of time and I promised you that we would close and not do church all day.

But he says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, or do many miracles in your name?

All that stuff's good, right?

But here's the point.

Here's the point that Jesus is making.

You did the good stuff, but they were not in relationship with him.

He says, Then I will announce to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you lawbreakers.

Do you see this is the key word?

This is the key word for you and I.

It's relationship.

We are designed to be in relationship.

Fruit of our life comes from relationship, right?

Who you're in relationship with, the good thing about us humans, so you go and you get in relationship with God, the good fruit comes from us, right?

The other, you know, in in um landscaping and trees and all of that, horticultures.

Thank you, thank you so much.

Yes.

In that arena, so whoever has to listen to the audio of this is gonna be like, what they're gonna only hear, they're only gonna hear half the conversation, right?

Here's what Jesus says listen, you need to be in relationship with me.

So Jesus here in his teaching, he's like, he's honoring your freedom.

He's not forcing you and I to do anything.

He's saying, he's saying, you're loved, you're invited into the kingdom of heaven, you're invited into relationship.

He's not even saying, listen, you need to go and do all these like check the boxes on behavior.

He's like, I just want you to obey, I want you to have like behavior that flows from relationship.

Relationship.

That's the invitation of this text this morning.

If you don't hear anything else this morning, know that Jesus is here making it very clear from a position of love, inviting you into a relationship with him.

And some of you are there, you're just starting out.

You're like, this Jesus thing, this church thing, this is crazy.

Like they're giving away all this food, and how does that fit in?

Listen, if the only thing that you understand from this morning is is you're invited to be in relationship, to be that branch that's connected to the vine.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

There's so much here, there's more than we could ever cover in 35 minutes together.

And God, I just pray for each person here.

Thank you for the freedom that they have, the love that you have for each person in this room.

Thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and rescuing us, wanting to rescue us.

Lord, I pray for anyone here that doesn't know you, that Lord Jesus, you would work in their hearts and minds.

Like there's some stuff here to ask.

There's some good questions that we're wrestling with here this morning about your love and and that freedom and all of that stuff, God.

I pray that you would be answering, you'd be the God that just answers the questions this week.

And that you would just open up spiritual eyes and that people would be um just taking that next spiritual step of following you.

Thank you for the ability to take communion together, too.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.