Please take your Bibles once again and turn with me to Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7. Our focus this morning will be just on two verses, verses 13 and 14. We'll be taking these verses a bit out of sequence. If you've been tracking with our study in the Sermon on the Mount, we ended the last study at verse five of chapter seven. And what we will do this morning is jump ahead a bit to verses 13 and 14 and then come back next Lord's Day and look at verses six through 20 and consider the full sweep of that passage, which seems to be a call to spiritual discernment. It's a well known passage. What I say will be nothing new, but I pray that Christ will impress these words upon our hearts. It's a fairly brief passage, and so let me first pray and then read the passage. So let's pray together. Our Father and our God, we call upon you again and confess that our hope is in you. Lord, you say that your word is truth. And we believe that, and we pray now that You would sanctify us by Your truth, or that we would, as it were, sit at the feet of Christ and learn. We pray, Lord, that He would be abundantly glorified in the reading and the preaching and the hearing of His Word. We pray all of this in Christ's name. Amen. Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14 Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. When these well-known verses our Lord puts before us, A straightforward illustration. He says there are two gates and there are two ways. The narrow gate that leads to life represents salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. The hard way that the Lord speaks of is our walk of faith in this world. It is the Christian life. On the other hand, the wide gate and the easy way represent life outside of Christ. There are only two ways. There are only two alternatives in this life. Either you are in Christ or you are not. Either you are on the way to life or you are on the way to death. But what we must remember as we consider these well-known words of Christ is that he was originally giving this teaching to a group of religious people. In other words, they were not necessarily outwardly wicked people. They were engaged in a religious activity. They were listening to a sermon. They were hearing the word preached by Jesus himself. And so the wide gate and the easy road do not necessarily represent a hedonistic, irreligious life. In fact, the easy way is occupied by people who would profess some kind of religion. Our Lord's point is that it is just not the right kind of religion. The Lord is asking his hearers and us to decide and to discern what kind of religion we are relying upon. He wants us to think carefully. He wants us to take everything that we have heard in the Sermon on the Mount thus far and discern where our hope is. To discern which gate we have entered and which road we are walking. Scripture teaches that there are only two kinds of religion. There is, on the one hand, the religion of human achievement. And on the other hand, there is the religion of divine accomplishment. And apart from true Christianity, every single religion is a religion of human achievement. It relies on human works to achieve right standing with God. It comes in different forms and with different names, but all human religion claims in some way to be able to earn heaven by our own merits. And by contrast, the Bible sets forth a religion of divine accomplishment. A religion that rests not on what we can do, but on what God has done for His people and His Son. This true religion teaches that we can do nothing without Christ. And for all of history, These two kinds of religion, the religion of human achievement and the religion of divine accomplishment, have been at odds with one another. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been comparing and contrasting these two kinds of religion. He compares the true religion of divine accomplishment with the sham religion of human achievement. And this contrast comes into sharp focus as the Lord concludes his sermon. The narrow gate and the hard way represent that true religion of divine accomplishment. It is occupied by people who have trusted in Christ, people who have violently entered through the narrow gate, who are walking that hard way dying to themselves in the process. On the other hand, the wide gate and the easy way represent the religion of human achievement. It is occupied by people who have embraced a false religion, who in some way are attempting to earn heaven by themselves. And so both of these gates are labeled heaven, but only one goes there. And so our Lord pictures our life on earth as a journey that leads somewhere. There are only two ways that lead to two destinations. And our Lord emphasizes that we have to choose. The Sermon on the Mount is not just some abstract ethic that Jesus wants applause for, but rather he wants a decision from his hearers. And so he closes the sermon with a very personal and a very honest message. He says, where you end up is inevitably connected with where you begin. If you want to get to the right destination, the Lord says you have to enter through the right gate. And so he commands us to enter the narrow gate. But he is honest. He tells us that it is hard to find, it is hard to enter, and the road that it leads to is hard to travel. But despite all of that difficulty, the Lord presents the narrow gates and the hard way as something that is inviting and worthwhile, because it leads to life with God. So if you find it helpful you have an outline in your bulletin. Let's first consider Christ's call to decide. He says, enter by the narrow gate. Jesus brings his teaching to a climax by emphasizing the importance of responding to his teaching. He wants us to decide between these two ways. And you'll notice that there are only two choices. There is the narrow gate or the wide gate. There is the hard way or the easy way. There's no third alternative. There are not many ways. There are only two ways. But Jesus says only one leads to life. Once again, as the Lord has done throughout this sermon, He is pointing us to Himself. He is preaching Himself. He is urging people to trust in Him, to embrace His words. Jesus wants a decision from you. Now, some of us may chafe at that language. Some of you may have grown up in churches where that is all you heard, where the focus was on you making a decision for Christ with a total disregard for the sovereignty of the Lord and salvation. But friends, there's not necessarily a contradiction here. God is sovereign in our salvation. He has to open the eyes of the blind and save us. But yet there is a human side to that. The truth of God's sovereignty and salvation doesn't mean that we could just sit back in our spiritual armchairs and not do anything. We have to respond. And so there's no contradiction here. God is sovereign in salvation, but yet we are still called to decide whether we truly believe in Christ and whether we truly believe in the truth of the Gospel. And this call to decide is nothing new. God frequently called His people to decide which way they would go in the Old Testament. Jeremiah 21.8, the Lord says, Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. Deuteronomy 11, 26. See, I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse. There are two ways and the Lord calls us to decide. I'll notice also the contrasts between these two paths. One gate is narrow and constricted. It's not inviting or attractive. The other gate, on the other hand, is wide. It's very inviting. It's very attractive. Everyone can get on. You don't have to give anything up. You can take everything with you. The destinations are also contrasted. The unattractive narrow gate and the hard way lead to life. But the attractive wide gate leads to destruction. The narrow gate has few, the easy way has many. Commenting on these contrasts, R.T. France says, the choice is set out in the imagery of two roads, contrasted in their character, broad and narrow, in their popularity, followed by many and few, and their destination, the way of life and the way of death. Now these contrasts tell us that Christianity is not a religion that appeals to the natural man. It's not appealing because the gospel is something that drives us out of ourselves. It's something that crushes our egos and our self-righteousness. It won't let us take our self-righteousness through that narrow gate It says to us, you contribute nothing because you are dead. It's a religion of divine accomplishment. We do nothing to help ourselves. And that is why Jesus begins the sermon by saying, blessed are the poor in spirit. The narrow gate and the hard way involve recognizing our spiritual poverty. It's admitting that you could never please God apart from Christ. And so Jesus is saying to us, you can't just see yourselves as people who need a little help. You must see yourselves for what you are, as poor, blind, spiritual beggars. The true gospel drives us out of ourselves. It drives us to the merit and the goodness of another. That is the narrow gate and the hard way. And it is not attractive to people. The fact of the matter is we are born through the wide gate onto the broad road. Because of sin, we enter into this world on that trajectory towards destruction. That is why the wide gate and the broad road are so easy to find. We don't have to be told to enter the wide gate. We don't have to be told to walk the easy way. That comes naturally to us. But since sin entered the world, we do have to be told to enter the narrow gate. That brings us secondly to consider that the narrow gate is both hard to find and hard to enter. Let's hear these verses again. Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." And so the way of salvation in Christ is both hard to find and hard to enter. First, notice that our Lord says that the narrow gate is hard to find. He says those who find it are few. Not many people find this gate. And we should ask, why is the narrow gate, why is the way of salvation in Christ so hard to find? Well, first of all, it's not something we are naturally looking for. We are naturally opposed to the truth of the gospel. We resist the truth of our sin and our need for Christ. The gospel is not attractive. It's offensive. Paul said that the message of the cross is foolishness to the world. John Calvin said that there is nothing more opposed to the flesh than the doctrine of Christ. We're not looking for it. But second, the narrow gate is hard to find because We don't like being in the minority. We find comfort in numbers. Our Lord says that many are going through the attractive wide gate, but there's just a few going through the narrow gate. And we've all felt this discomfort of being in the minority. Whether you're driving somewhere, whether you're hiking, you go off the beaten path, as it were. and you don't see anyone for a while and you start thinking, am I lost? And you get this sinking feeling in your stomach thinking, I've gone the wrong way. We don't like being in the minority. But thirdly, the narrow gate is hard to find because Satan is hard at work deceiving people. He's steering them in the wrong direction. Satan uses false teachers doctrinal confusion and indifference. He uses self-delusion, all to keep people on the easy path. And so the way of salvation in Christ is hard to find. But Jesus says, not only is the narrow gate hard to find, but the narrow gate is hard to enter. Twice in these two verses, Jesus calls the gate narrow. The word means constricted. Modern commentators compare it to a turnstile. If you've ever been through a turnstile, you'll know that you go through that turnstile alone. You can't carry any bags. You can't carry anything with you. It's a very narrow space. So Jesus is teaching that salvation is hard. The broken body and the shed blood of Christ was the cost of that salvation. And we should compare Jesus' teaching with many modern gospel presentations which tell people that getting saved is easy. That it's just a formula. That is just a few words that you repeat after someone. John Stott says, it is clear that our Lord does not follow the method that is used by certain self-styled revivalists who speak as if getting saved is one of the easiest things in the world. Jesus, on the contrary, pictures entrance into the kingdom as being, on the one hand, most desirable, yet on the other, not at all easy. Think about the rich young ruler and his encounter with Jesus. Here was a man who found the narrow gate, as it were. He came to Jesus. But when Jesus confronted him with the second half of the Ten Commandments, his response was, All these I have kept since I was a boy." His self-righteousness and his love for the things of this world kept him from entering the narrow gate. Christ would not let him bring those things through the narrow gate. And in Luke 13, 23 and 24, after hearing Jesus' Gospel message, One said to him, Lord, are there a few who are saved? And he said to them, strive to enter through the narrow gate. For many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. And the word that our Lord uses there for strive gives us our word agony, agonize. The narrow gate is hard to enter. In fact, it is impossible to enter. It takes a supernatural work of God in us to enter this narrow gate. We can only enter the narrow gate when the Spirit of God convinces us of our sin and our misery and enlightens our minds renewing us and enabling us to embrace Christ. The narrow gate, our Lord says, is hard to find and hard to enter. Thirdly, let's consider that the narrow gate leads to the hard way. So Jesus doesn't say, Once you have squeezed or agonized through that narrow gate, well, then things will get easier. He says, for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life. Life in Christ is a constricted way. It's a narrow way. Again, John Stott puts it well. He says the way is narrow. Its boundaries are clearly marked. Its narrowness is due to something called divine revelation, which restricts pilgrims to the confines of what God has revealed in Scripture to be true and good. And so both the gate and the way are narrow. And again, let's consider Jesus' description of the way. What is it like to follow Jesus? In Luke 9, 23 and 24, Jesus said to them all, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. And later on in that same chapter, Jesus had people come to Him and say, we want to follow you. And our Lord, again, made it abundantly clear that the way is hard. And again, we should compare our Lord's description of the Christian life with the message that we hear so often today. where in Christianity is presented as something that will make your life better. Where the measure of spiritual success is whether you are healthy or wealthy or happy. People are told that an easy life is a sign of God's blessing. And if your life is hard, then you simply don't have enough faith. But we find No such teaching from Jesus. Jesus clearly says that the way is hard. The word can mean constricted or compressed. It can carry with it the idea of oppression or affliction, even persecution. It is a narrow, constricted way. And Jesus already alluded to this in the opening verses of this sermon. In the Beatitudes, our Lord pronounced blessing on His people. The Christian life is a blessed life. But at the same time, Jesus said that because of who we are and because of the lives that we live, people will hate us, they will persecute us, and they will slander us for His sake. And what makes the way harder is that we encounter dangers along the way. And Jesus has already warned us of some of these dangers that we face. In chapter 5, He exposed our tendency to turn God's law into something merely external. And Jesus narrowed the way then by showing that the law of God is a matter of the heart. In chapter six, he warned us of religious hypocrisy, of turning our religious duties into mere performances to be seen by others. He warned us of the love of earthly treasures and of anxious thoughts, all of which can derail us from the constricted way. And all along the way, he is presenting himself as the one who protects us and keeps us on the hard way that leads to life. Finally, let's consider some of the relevant applications for us in this text. First of all, I think this text tells us that you must decide. You must decide personally whether Jesus' words are true, whether they apply to you. In other words, you can't not decide when it comes to these two ways. It's not enough for you to simply hear the gospel. It's not even enough for you to acknowledge Jesus' words as being true. You must decide whether they apply to you and whether you personally need Jesus Christ. You must decide if what He says about the depth of sin applies to you. You must decide if you really need His righteousness credited to you. You must trust Christ personally. You can't leave the gospel outside of you. You must decide. Secondly, this passage teaches us that we must discern. In these words is a call to spiritual discernment. Remember, Jesus had previously told us not to judge wrongly, but now He is encouraging us to judge rightly, to think critically about our own lives, to think critically about spiritual matters, to recognize that things are not always what they seem. The Bible tells us that Satan is active deceiving people and leading them astray. The world and our own flesh are deceptive. We must be discerning. We must seek the wisdom of our Heavenly Father. Thirdly, this is relevant for our evangelism. This passage calls us to honest evangelism. It is our job as the followers of Christ to give an accurate and honest description of the Gospel. We must talk about the beauty and the grace and the love of Christ. We must talk about how His yoke is easy and His burden is light. But we must never lead people to believe that getting saved and walking the Christian walk is the easiest thing in the world. It's not our job to make the narrow gate and the hard way attractive to people. The Holy Spirit will do that. He is the one that will enable people to embrace Christ and to enter the narrow gate. Finally, this passage is relevant for your assurance. you might be thinking it's actually having the opposite effect on me right now. You might be thinking this is actually making me doubt. Because many times I feel like I am on that wide road. Friends, we must be careful not to push this illustration too far. Because in this life, we live with the reality of our sin and we stray from the narrow way. We sin. So the best way, I think, to think of it would be to use the illustration that we thought about last Lord's Day evening from the book of Hebrews. Imagine if you were training for a race. Someone paid your entrance fee into a race. They gave you a training program to follow. And you started the training program. You were getting up early. You were training. You're eating healthy. But every once in a while, you skip a workout. Every once in a while, you stop at the donut shop and grab a donut. Every once in a while, you get discouraged and think, I really don't want to run this race. But in the end, you persevere. And when people look at you, they say, that person is a competitor. And that's how we should think of this hard way. Is the general direction of your life on the narrow path? We don't walk it perfectly. We walk it in Christ. But is the general direction of your life on the narrow path? Finally, let's think about the Good Shepherd and the narrow way. It's no coincidence that Jesus calls Himself both the door and the way. He said, I am the door of the sheep. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me. And so it is Christ who brings us through the narrow gate. He is the true way that leads to life. And so even though the gate is narrow, and even though the way is hard, friends, that doesn't mean that life in Christ is not joyful and wonderful. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Even in this life that is filled with sorrow and trouble, we can have joy in abundance. Because what makes the hard way so sweet and so wonderful is that we are with Christ. He is with us. I did a long, hard mountain bike ride with a good friend this past fall. One of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. There was a lot of suffering and pain. But I had a great time, and I would do it again. And what made it great, in spite of all the pain, was that I was with a good friend. And that's what makes the hard way so wonderful. Christ is with us. He's the Good Shepherd who is with us, and caring for us, and leading us, and loving us. In John 10, verses 9 and 11, Jesus said, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. And so Christ, the good shepherd, makes the hard way a restful and joyful Matthew Henry put it beautifully. He said, Christ knows all that are His, calls them by name, marks them for Himself, leads them out to green pastures, makes them both feed and rest there, speaks comfortably to them, guards them by His providence, guides them by His Spirit and Word, and goes before them. to set them in the way of His steps. The narrow gate and the hard way is the way that leads to life. But Christ, the Good Shepherd, makes that hard way a joyful way. Let's pray. Father in Heaven, We thank you for Christ's great work in us. We thank you that your spirit has enabled us to embrace Christ and to enter through that narrow gate. Lord, forgive us for often despising the narrow, constricted way. And we pray, Lord, that in spite of its hardness and narrowness, that we would find joy and abundance in the reality that Christ is with us. And so we pray that we would look to Him, that we would learn to trust Him more, that You would indeed forgive us of our sins, Lord, and restore us on paths of righteousness for Your namesake. We do pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.