The Narrow Gate & the Hard Way
Sermon on the Mount # 15

a sermon on Matthew 7.13-14
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama


Going through your mail you find yet another complicated offer. The word FREE screams at you from the top of the page in six-inch-high letters. Below that you are informed how lucky you are to be receiving such an incredible opportunity. Then on the back, in letters so small you could print the whole Bible on a postage stamp, warnings, exclusions, and extra costs are disclosed. The fine print.

I am thankful for the fine print. If you are willing to get a microscope and spend the day trudging through it, you can figure out what the catch is. If it were not there, we would be at the mercy of unscrupulous marketers. Still, it bothers me. I wish offers could be simple and plain. Just tell me the total cost. Don’t say it is only $19.99 per month when we all know another $8 in fees, taxes, and miscellaneous charges gets tacked onto the bill.

I buy a candy bar. The entire inside of the wrapper is covered in tiny blue letters explaining in detail the rules of the company’s latest promotional contest. They protect themselves from every possible legal angle. All this so that I can be informed, “Sorry, you are not a winner.” I guess I always kind of suspected, but it still comes as a shock to know for sure.

When you lease an apartment or get a mortgage to buy a house, you are expected to sign agreements containing many pages of fine print. You have about five minutes to read through them. “It’s standard,” you are told, and you hope that it is.

The fine print—it’s just another crazy part of life in our topsy-turvy times. We are nearing the end of our series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and today we reach the fine print. Only, to his credit, Jesus does not give it to us with subtlety. Jesus gives us a plain, direct, simple offer. He is offering us the Kingdom of God. He invites us to become his disciples, to learn from him what life is really about. And he is not about to trick or manipulate or coerce anyone. Here it is. It is glorious, and it is hard. He began the Sermon on the Mount with blessings, and he ends with warnings; but we cannot pretend to be surprised. When he starts out, “Blessed are the poor in spirit … blessed are those who mourn … blessed are you when you are persecuted for my sake …” well, he’s not sugar coating things.

Jesus always gives it to us straight. That is why his blessings can sound ominous, and his warnings always contain a bit of hope. The end of the Sermon on the Mount comprises several teachings that share a common theme: Obedience is not optional. If you come to Jesus, you must be willing to do what he tells you. He demands and expects absolute loyalty and heartfelt obedience. He is worthy of them. He can give you the one thing you really need in order to find fulfillment and eternal life. Only he can give it. Yet he is clear about what this life entails. In today’s passage, we are warned that the way to life has a narrow gate and a difficult path. Few find it. On the plus side, there is a way to life. There did not have to be.

My plan this morning is simple, as usual. Two points. First, what is Jesus saying? What does he mean? We want to hear him warning and encouraging us in this passage as he meant to. Second, there is a lot in these two brief verses that grates against our postmodern sensitivities. People today cannot hear Jesus say this without objections cluttering their minds. Why is the gate narrow? Why is the way hard? Why do only a few find it? I hope to meet some of these objections.

So … first off … what is Jesus saying? To get his meaning clear, we need to figure out about the gates and the paths. These are common enough metaphors in religious teaching. How does Jesus use them? Are they just a poetic way of saying, “It’s easy to live a wasted, meaningless life and end up in hell. Lots of people do it. All you have to do is keep doing what you are doing. Do what everyone else does. But … if you want to enter the Kingdom of God—if you want a new kind of life now and resurrection to eternal life in the age to come, you need to turn around. You need to take the more difficult path”? I think this is part of what Jesus is saying, but I think the gate and the path can be defined more specifically.

Several ideas about the gates and the path have been floated by preachers and teachers through the ages. I subscribe to a popular one. I think Jesus is the narrow gate and the Christian life is the difficult path. I do not think the broad gate and the easy path can be pinned down with such precision. They are simply the sum of every other way through life.

To support this conclusion, I call as my first witness what Jesus says in John 10.7-9: “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. … I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” To this I would add John 14.6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” In Greek, the word for “door” or “gate” in John is different from the one used in Matthew, but the word for “path” or “way” is the same.

Jesus is saying in our scripture reading that a life lived apart from God and ending in destruction is our default position. It is what comes naturally to us. It is the path of least resistance. Just live for yourself, do what you want, act like everyone else—and your destiny is assured. The broad gate. The easy road. There is, however, an unpopular alternative. The gate is narrow. The path is difficult—think of the narrow, winding, unpaved, uphill footpaths familiar to residents of first century Galilee and Judea, roads through hills filled with bandits. Does Jesus promise us an easy ride? Just the opposite! But he does promise us life.

Life: That little word life carries rich layers of meaning. On Jesus’ lips it means we can live the way God intended. We can be the people he created us to be. We can live as he designed us to live. We can know the peace and joy and strength he intends human life to have. So it refers to the quality of our life, not just on the other side of death but right now. Also, however, it points toward eternal life—the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Jesus himself is the model for every layer of meaning. He enjoys life to its fullest as it was meant to be enjoyed. He lives the resurrected life of new creation. All this he gives to us—by grace, through faith. We do not earn this gift, but receiving it changes us.

In this passage, Jesus makes clear that our choices matter. Our actions and motivations matter. Following Jesus matters. Jesus takes nothing away from grace when he says that your destiny is determined by the choices you make for him or against him. And that is also part of what this passage means: Jesus is the only way to life. His uniqueness and importance mean that although there are about as many paths through life as there are people, for all eternally meaningful purposes there are only two gates and two paths: Jesus or not Jesus.

Finally for this first part, hear the tone Jesus speaks with in these verses. He is warning, but the more dominant tone is encouragement. There is path to life. Take it! Enter by the narrow door! Persevere on the difficult path! It leads to life! Few may find it, but you can be one of them. Surrender to Jesus. Live according to his teachings, especially his teachings so far in the Sermon on the Mount. He will give you life. He is telling you, throughout this sermon, throughout the gospel, by what he says and what he does, what life is: what it looks like and how you live it.

Very well … that is what Jesus is saying. He is encouraging us to seek Gods kingdom with all our hearts and to find it in him. Now we must answer some objections that get in the way of taking his words to heart and acting on them.

Objection # 1: Why is the gate narrow? If God loves us, wouldn’t he want to make it as wide as possible? Or make many different gates, all leading to the same good place? Our democratic values and sense of fair play cause us to shudder at the thought of a narrow gate. A narrow gate is what you put up when you want to keep people out. A God who offers just one narrow gate doesn’t sound very loving to us. Why is the gate narrow? I offer three thoughts for your consideration.

First, we ask the wrong questions because we do not comprehend magnitude of our hopelessness without Christ. We are alienated from God. People today take sin lightly, and they imagine forgiveness is an easy thing for God to do. Consider this: Whatever the scope and nature of our problem, its solution required the death of God’s Son. Is this an easy thing or a light matter? The death of the only Son of God. If nothing less than that is required to save us, we must be beyond hopeless. If that is what it takes to make the gate in the first place, how wide or how many gates should we expect? Sure, if all we needed was good teaching or a timely infusion of grace, why not a slew of wide, pretty gates? Our situation is far worse than we have imagined, and we should be thankful there is any gate at all!

Second, we are God’s creation. When he made us, he made us for fellowship with him. We are designed to find our fulfillment and joy in him. Now it is true that in this life we enjoy many good things. They give us a measure of joy. But they exist to point us toward our Creator. C.S. wrote about the elusive nature of joy. You can find it in stories, music, nature, or something else. But if you try to capture it, you find it has vanished. You look to the sign instead of the Creator, and you make an idol of it. Only in God can you find peace, joy, and yourself. As Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.” If this is true, then only one gate will do—God himself. Any other gate is a false gate precisely because it can only offer transient joy. We are made for God, and not until we hear his voice in Jesus do we know him. Jesus is God, our destination. He is also the most truly human person who ever lived. He shows us what humanity is supposed to be.

Perhaps this will help: My freshman year in high school, I rode to school with a neighbor up the street. She was the first kid on our block to drive a car. One day she got careless at the pump and filled the tank with diesel. It was a gasoline engine. Fortunately she realized her mistake before she started it up, but her Dad had to have the car towed away and the tank drained. Disaster was narrowly averted. They sell lots of liquids at the gas station: Coca-cola, water, coffee, antifreeze, motor oil, beer, grape slushies. Only one will make your car run. Why? Your car is made to run on gasoline. In a not entirely different manner, you are made to run on God. Of course there is one gate, and of course it is narrow. It has to be because of who you are.

Third, although Jesus calls the gate narrow, it is open to everyone. It is narrow in the sense that you go in Jesus’ way or not at all. It is not, however, exclusive, like a club that checks ID at the door. Jesus is the gate, and the gate stands open to every human being who will enter. In this passage, Jesus encourages you to enter.

Objection # 2: Why is the way difficult? Didn’t Jesus say, “Come to me, and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light?” Now we get this business about the way being difficult. What happened to user-friendly? Why can’t God be more consumer-oriented?

Well, there’s the problem right there. God is very consumer-oriented, but we got it backward. God is the consumer! We are what you might call “service providers.” Yes, God loves his creatures, but precisely because he does, he has some high expectations for us. We think God ought to make our life easy. God thinks we ought to live our life right.

And living right is what makes the way difficult. Why? Because we live in a broken world. Look what happened to Jesus. You see what can happen when God’s love meets human sin. Humanity is alienated from God, and so we live in societies scarred by sin. This means our environment makes it easy to be bad and hard to be good. Or as I say often, Christians have to swim against the current. Jesus does give us peace, joy, and many other blessings; but he never promises an easy ride. He warns that following him may be hazardous to your health. Yet, ironically, it is the only path the leads to eternal life.

Another reason the path is difficult—and remember we identified the path as the Christian life—the reason living for God is so difficult is that we too are broken. The residual effects of sin remain at work in us. God’s Holy Spirit is also in us and is stronger, but we often choose sin instead. So we make the path harder than it has to be. The path is hard because we have a long way to go.

Why, you may wonder, does God make us holy through a long, difficult process? Why doesn’t he just zap us and—POW!—instantly transform us into Christ-like perfection. The answer is … I don’t know. Only God knows, although he must have a good reason. I refer you back to Matthew 7.11: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” I for one am willing to trust that God knows better than I do what he is doing, so I will do my best, by his grace, to stick to the difficult path.

Objection # 3: Why do only a few find the way to life? Doesn’t God want all people to be saved, as it says in 1 Timothy 2.4? Maybe the gate has to be narrow. Maybe the path has to be difficult. But why must only a few find it? On this I have two thoughts.

First, we would be wrong to say only a few must find it, as if only a few were allowed to find it. Only a few do find it. Perhaps the fault lies not with God but with us. Jesus preached to thousands of people. How many followed him? How many were with him in the upper room? How many stood by him when he died? When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, there were 120 gathered. I have preached before about the mysterious way divine sovereignty and human freedom work in the matter of a person’s faith and life. Wherever you place the emphasis, the fact is, many people encounter Jesus—through scripture, preaching, or the witness of Christians—and they say, “No, thanks.” Jesus shows an awareness of this in our scripture reading. Not everyone enters the gate.

Second, how many is a few? Luke has a different version of this saying in his gospel: “Someone asked Jesus, ‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ He said to them, ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able’ [Lk 13.23-24]. Jesus doesn’t give an answer. Instead he encourages his listeners to be among those who do enter by the narrow door.

How many is a few? Christianity is the largest religion in the world. Well over a billion people identify themselves as Christian. “Well,” you might say, “some of them are probably Christians in name only, not true followers of Jesus.” No doubt. There are still a lot of sincere Christians out there. If only 1 in 10 is truly dedicated, that’s still over 100 million. How many is a few? Is it relative to the population at large? Many follow Christ, although the majority do not? I do not think Jesus is answering that question in our reading. He is saying the way to life is narrow, difficult, and unpopular. Reading through the Sermon on the Mount, you can see why. Looking at the example of Jesus, you can see why. He calls us to a different way of life, one that cuts against the grain of our broken world and our sinful hearts. He encourages us to live this way because it is the only path to the life full and eternal that God wants us to enjoy. It is the kind of life we were made for. The life of the kingdom of God. Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat or bury the details in fine print. He makes an offer, straight and plain. He offers you life, full and free and eternal. No one else can offer that. Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
July 8, 2007