The Narrow Gate

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Justin (mic off): Good morning, everybody.

Debbie (mic on, loud): Good morning! Oh!

Justin, to Debbie: Do you want to preach?

Debbie: No! [Everyone laughs]

[feedback] Oh. We've got some feedback going on. Is it this mic right here? Are we better? Okay. All right. Well, I hope you're doing all right. That was an exciting way to start the sermon off today. A few weeks ago when we were doing our Bible study on the difficult words of Jesus, our difficult word for the night was the weeping and gnashing of teeth and the outer darkness. So that was a fun night at Bible study. And as we were talking about Jesus's difficult words there, I brought up the fact that I had to go to Judgment House every year as a kid. And nobody knew what I was talking about, which is probably a good thing. Does anybody in the room know what Judgment House is? Or have you... Cody knows what Judgment House is. Yeah. This circle over here. Okay. I'm glad that you don't know what Judgment House is.

Basically, what would happen is during October as a Christian alternative to haunted houses, you would have churches in the area that would do Judgment Houses. And you would... A big group would go to the Judgment House and they would have a story set up through different scenes in the church. And a church member would guide you through this story with the point of getting you to give your life to Jesus at the end of the thing. They literally wanted to scare the hell out of you.

And so the story that I remember the most was about these two girls who are in high school and they go to this party and there's alcohol that ends up being involved in it. And after the party, they get in a car accident and they both die because they have to be judged, right? And so the next scene that they take you to is a judgment scene. And you walk into this room and it's set up like a courtroom and the Christian girl steps forward and God says, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." And they send her off to these angels who greet her and she walks behind this white curtain. Well, then Jessica gets up there and Jessica is the girl who's not a Christian who got drunk at the party and she has to stand before God. And God says, "Depart from me, I never knew you." And these cloaked figures come out and drag her off as she's screaming, "No, if I had just heard about Jesus, I wouldn't have gone to that party." And they take her off behind this curtain.

And so the next scene that you have to go to is obviously hell. That's what everyone's there for. And so you walk into this really dark room and there's strobe lights going off and I kid you not, this church had hair burning in the back of the room to make it stink when you walked into the room. I promise you. And I was like 11 or 12 and I was so uncomfortable and I was standing there and I felt someone walk up behind me and I closed my eyes and I was like, "Don't let it be Satan. Don't let it be Satan." And it was. I turned around and I promise you, this dude was dressed up in like a Darth Maul costume from Star Wars and he had a vocoder on and he goes, " Jessica, I've been waiting for you." And I have never in my life wanted to leave a church so fast in my life, but you can't leave because they have to get you to this big room at the end to say, "Well, you saw what happened to Jessica tonight. If you want to avoid that same fate, fill out this comment card and we'll pray with you."

I am setting up this sermon that way because our text for this morning is not an easy one. And if I'm being honest, nothing about the Sermon on the Mount has really been easy for us, but this passage in particular gets a lot of air time by pastors who are trying to spiritually manipulate and abuse and intimidate us. And that is simply not my goal. And so my hope this morning is that you would not walk away feeling condemned by this passage, but that you would walk away feeling challenged to be more faithful and to take a discerning look into your life and into your heart. And so our text for this morning comes from Matthew chapter 7:13-23 and it says this:

Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction. And there are many who take it, for the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few who find it. But where are false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves? You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits. 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, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?" And then I will declare to them, "I never will." I never knew you. Go away from me, you who behave lawlessly."

That's heavy. And for those of us who grew up in traditions with a lot of hellfire and damnation, texts like this can make us extremely uncomfortable because like my judgment house experience, we are taught a version of the gospel that is not good news at all. It's actually horrible news. And so we've built our faith on fear rather than on love. And I don't want that for any of us. And so I'm going to make this sermon as practical as I possibly can, and we are going to build this thing off of love and opportunity rather than fear and obligation.

Next week Debbie is going to finish out this series, but in the text for today, Jesus starts to come to some conclusions. He's wrapping his sermon up, and he starts out by saying, "Enter the narrow gate." So if we enter through a gate, that is a conscious decision that we make to enter through a particular gate.

And in this story, there are two gates that we have to choose from. And I think it's really important for us to grasp that because many of us grew up in church traditions that like my judgment house experience told us, "Well, if you just fill out this comment card, if you just pray this prayer, then you are going to go to heaven when you die." And I don't think that that sounds anything like what Jesus is saying to us here. Jesus is being much more intentional about the pathway to discipleship because the truth is entering through the narrow gate is not a one-time comment card, prayer sort of choice. It's a daily decision to continue following Jesus through every gate and every opportunity that we have.

The type of life that we're called to live through the Sermon on the Mount is a life of sacrifice and service. It is a life that places the needs of others before our own and calls us to radically forgive those who have wronged us. It's a humble life that doesn't pride itself in power or status but flourishes in the love that we have for our neighbors. It's a life of faith that chooses to see the goodness of God even in the darkest of valleys. And that's what makes this gate narrow. It isn't easy.

And in fact, the Greek word for narrow is thlibo and it means pressure and struggle and affliction because thlibo is actually used as a verb quite often to talk about the pressing of grapes, sort of like a winepress to get all of the good juice out. And so this narrow gate is a compressed gate. It's a countercultural way that we can exist in this world that is sure to bring some pressure into our lives.

And that just makes good sense to me because as I think about all of the things that we've discussed in the Sermon on the Mount, I think, well, yeah, it does feel good to accumulate wealth and to have a lot of stuff. It does feel good sometimes to not forgive someone and to just, it's easier to just hold on to the anger. It does feel good sometimes to just get the approval of everyone around us and not have to worry about going against the grain on something. But that's not the path to life. That's not the path that helps us grow as human beings. And Jesus knows that and I think that we know that too.

Think about the moments in your life where you've grown the most as a person. It's always those moments where we've chosen the narrow path that was sure to bring about some pressure and some tension in our lives, but it also brought a whole lot of peace and wholeness on the inside, right? And so this gate is narrow because it's demanding. It isn't easy and not many people are going to choose to put in that kind of effort, but it's also a path that requires a lot of discernment on our part because Jesus tells us that we should be vigilant of these false prophets who come as wolves in sheep's clothing.

Not everybody has your best interest at heart, right? And since the path of discipleship is not an easy one anyway, it's much easier for us to get lured off of a good path and to embrace a way of Jesus that isn't Christ-centered at all.

And so in this period that this text was written, you had a couple of different kind of leaders in Israel. You had the king who represented the people before God. You had the prophets who spoke on behalf of God to the people. You had priests through whom the people spoke to God. And you had sages who would help people navigate the realities of everyday life. And there were expectations on these leaders to lead well and to mediate well between the people and God, but that didn't always happen. Instead of being good mediators, oftentimes these leaders would become stumbling blocks and obstacles to people's faith. And we have to be careful of the same thing today. We have politicians who love to name-drop Jesus because they know that if they just speak the name of Jesus, that people will vote for them. But really, they are just self-promoting and looking for power and a way to hang on to that authority. We have pastors who are very charismatic and can draw in crowds and preach great awesome sermons, but behind closed doors, they're manipulative and abusive.

And we have podcasters and influencers who are there to sell you their wisdom by getting you to click on their content. But really, that wisdom is pretty short-sighted, and it turns out that many of them don't even believe what they're talking about in their podcast anyway.

And so that's why it's so important in this climate in particular to be careful about the voices that we are letting speak into our lives. And for you, that includes me, and that includes Debbie as your pastors. You should be discerning about what you hear us say and about the fruit that grows in our lives because the way that Jesus directs us to be discerning is to look at the fruit that grows.

And as you attempt to follow Jesus, you have to stay aware of where you're being led and the fruit that's produced from that.

Do you remember Tom Toms? Those were the GPS's that we had in our cars before our cell phones would tell us where to go. Old habits die hard, I guess, because my dad, who is also his Randy, he swears by the GPS. And at this point, this GPS is from like 2005, so it's a horrible guide on where to go. But he swears by it, and he's going to do whatever it says. It could tell him to drive straight into the Atlantic Ocean, and he would just do it.

And so we were in the mountains one time for a vacation, and we were trying to get to a place that we could get to from the highway, but the GPS, the Tom Tom, told him to take a shortcut through the woods and the mountains. It was a gravel road, and I was like, "I don't know if I feel great about this." And so we get on this road and talk about narrow. It's starting to get more and more narrow. It's on a steep incline, and he's in a Nissan Frontier, which is not the biggest truck in the world, but it's not the smallest either.

And so this road is getting more narrow. We are on the side of a mountain, and my mom is starting to hyperventilate because there's hardly anywhere else for us to go. And my dad was like, "Well, this is where the Tom Tom is telling me to go, and he won't go off of the road." And I say, "Look around you. We're not going to be able to go much further on this path. There's nowhere else for us to go. We can't keep going on this path."

And when I look at the state of the church, I feel the same way. We can't keep going on this path. The voices that we allow to speak into our lives and speak truth to us, it's not okay because the fruit of some of those voices is really rotten. And that should be concerning to every single one of us. And I don't think Jesus wants anything to do with some of that rotten fruit that's being produced today in our culture.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer once said, "The word of Jesus assures us that a bad tree will bring forth bad fruit. It is bound to give itself away sooner or later." I believe that. I think that bad fruit does give itself away at some point, but we have to be aware and vigilant of where we're being led, and we have to know what we're looking for. And so for me in my life, there are four areas of scripture that have kind of helped give me a lens for seeking good fruit and bad fruit. And so I just wanted to give those to you for your own personal reflection. And the first one is the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7. The Sermon on the Mount that we've been in, this series that we've been in since September is really a manifesto that declares the values of God's kingdom and what it looks like to live that out on earth as it is in heaven. And so when you're looking for good fruit, we are looking for the influences that are peacemaking and are hungry for righteousness. We're looking for those who don't sit in their anger but are there to seek reconciliation. We're looking for those who refuse to cave to the temptations of wealth and power. All the things that we've discussed since September are those fruits that we want to see in a disciple's life. The second place that I like to look is the narratives of Jesus's death and resurrection in all four of the Gospels. As Christians, this is the story that we're supposed to live out over and over again with our lives. And so when I think about Jesus on the cross and he looks up and he says, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

What should that say to us about the relationship that we have with people who maybe have wronged us? Or when we think about Mary going to the tomb to see the body of Jesus and she's told that Jesus isn't there by the angel anymore and the text says that she runs away afraid but filled with joy. What should that say to us about maybe the next step of faith that we choose to take and the ways that, yeah, it might be scary but there is so much joy in us being faithful.

Jesus's death and resurrection should be speaking life into the spaces that we inhabit. The third place that I like to look is the fruits of the spirit in Galatians chapter five. This one has been critical to me in my own journey because as I deconstructed, I also decided that, well, I need to rebuild a faith of my own too and I need some good building blocks to make my faith more Christ-like and the fruits of the spirit is the place for me where I started to rebuild my faith and I started to ask myself, "Well, does my belief system lead to joy and peace or is it leading to more divisiveness and fear? And are my practices helping me be more gentle and gain self-control or is it causing me to lose control and be more judgmental?" I cannot tell you enough how important I think it is for you to memorize the fruits of the spirit and allow those to guide you in the decisions that you make.

And in the same vein, the definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13 I think is a wonderful place for us to go for guidance because Paul tells us there what love is and what love isn't. He tells us that love is patient and kind and that it protects and that it trusts and that it hopes, but he also gives us what I think is more important here, which is to tell us and teach us what love is not. Actual love is not going to dishonor other people. It is not going to present itself as jealous or boastful. As someone who is walking in love, that person is not going to be easily angered. So there are of course more scriptures that we could point to, but these four are such a great place to start to give us a good lens of what it looks like to tell the difference between good fruit and bad fruit. And that's true for the leaders that we follow, for our own personal growth, and for the theologies that we espouse.

I think back to that judgment house experience that I had as a kid and it was designed to instill fear in you so that you would say a prayer, that you would fall in line. And I think that's actually the opposite of what Jesus is doing in this text. He's being rhetorical by making these stark contrasts between good fruit, bad fruit, life, destruction, wide and narrow to express how important it is for us to consider the paths that we're on and the motivations behind those choices that we make.

And so while I don't think anyone is going to get dragged behind a black curtain to spend eternity with Darth Maul and Jessica, I do think that it's really important for us to ask two foundational questions for our own discipleship. And that first question is, am I someone that Jesus would recognize? Like when you go home and you are all alone and there's nobody but you, who are you? And is that a person that Jesus would actually recognize? Or is the person that you actually are and the person that you present yourself to be two totally different people? Is the fruit that looks good on the surface actually starting to rot? Or is it truly good fruit from a life that is being transformed by the love of God?

And the second question that I think we should ask is, would someone recognize Jesus because of me? When we think about those different scriptures that I just mentioned, the Sermon on the Mount, the definition of love, the fruits of the spirit, the death and resurrection of Jesus,

is your life a genuine reflection of the love of God that we meet here in these different passages and stories? Those are two really hard questions for us to be honest about, but they are questions of transformation. And I think that's what the narrow gate is all about. It's about transformation, to know God and to be known by God in such a way that the love of Christ begins to shape everything about us, our motivations, our choices, our priorities. Because when it's all said and done, as Scott McKnight so beautifully puts it in his book on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus will not ask us about our gifts, but if our cheeks have touched the cheeks of those who suffer, if our hands have held the hands of those who endure pain, and if our gifts are directed at those who most need them.

And so even when the narrow gate presses us and pressures us, may we continue to be transformed by the love of God so that we can keep transforming this world into a place where good fruit thrives. Amen.