Time to Choose
Matthew 7:13-14
Sermon Summary
Jesus presents two gates: the wide and the narrow. The broad road seems appealing, and the narrow road is difficult, but each leads to a very different result.
Jesus presents two gates: the wide and the narrow. The broad road seems appealing, and the narrow road is difficult, but each leads to a very different result.
Matthew 7:13-14
“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.”
We’ve come to the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. If you’ve studied public speaking, you know that any good message will wrap things up with a solid conclusion.
In that conclusion there are a couple things that are essential elements. One of the main things is that it makes a good call to action.
This is, you might say, the moment everyone has been waiting for. You have made your case. You’ve set out all the facts and reasons. Now, as you conclude, you come to the most critical moment of your speech. For it is at this moment that you are urging someone to change.
When we started out this series, we said that this was the Greatest Sermon that has ever been delivered. This was the most influential message of all time. And we are now coming to the climax of this message.
As Jesus begins to bring his message to an end, he does so in grand style. In our passage today Jesus has his call to action. You are to choose. He uses the imagery of two different gates, which have two different roads, each of which has two different groups of people, and two different destinations. And he calls you to choose between the two.
Which will you take? Which door will you choose? Which path of life will you follow? Will you choose what is popular and go the route most people travel? Or will you, like Robert Frost’s famous poem, choose “the path less traveled”? And of course, there is the ultimate question: Where do you want to end up?
In other words, it is time to make your decision. It is time for you to commit. Or maybe it is time for you to really evaluate where you actually are and if you need to change the course of your life.
I think that is what Jesus is saying. He’s been talking to church people. His audience is made up of people who have grown up in what you might call a church culture. But, as he has shown, a lot of what they have learned - a lot of what has characterized their typical way of life - has been wrong.
Much of what they had known up to this point was an imitation religion. It was a poor copy that they had created. As we have seen time and again, the faith that they held to was characterized by self-righteousness. Jesus came to show that. He has been revealing what the Scripture really teaches. He’s been showing what the Law of God really requires. In sum, he’s been showing what kind of life a citizen of God’s kingdom will really lead.
And now he says, “Are you going to be a part of this kingdom? Or are you going to continue to be a part of the opposing kingdom?”
That’s what you are to understand by the two different gates.
I. There are two different gates
The first thing that stands out is that there are two separate gates: one is narrow and one is wide. Jesus says that you must enter through the narrow one. And what you are to understand is that these two gates represent the two different religions he’s been talking about through the course of his message.
On the one hand, you have the wide gate, which is the gate that is the most commonly taken. This gate represents the prevailing philosophy. It is the self-righteous approach. It is the kind of life that says, “Yeah, sure. I’ll follow the Lord. Just as long as I can make him conform to my own standards. I’m happy to be religious and call myself a Christian, as long as it really doesn’t demand anything of real significance from my life.” It’s the kind of religion that says, “Hey, there are some really bad things out there, but there’s nothing wrong in here, in my heart.”
That’s why it is wide. It will accept almost anyone and anything. It welcomes the masses because it welcomes everything that comes with a shroud of religiosity.
In opposition to this Jesus says, “You’ve got to take the other one. Don’t choose door number one. Get in the exit lane and head over to the narrow gate.”
What is the narrow gate? It’s the kind of life that says no to our desires. It is the life of discipleship, which says, “I must restrain my sinful inclinations and repent of them. I must recognize that I am called to a life of holiness and must at every turn seek to submit myself to the will of God. And that isn’t easy because it is so often at variance with my own will and inclinations.”
This is probably quite a bit different from what you usually hear. A lot of times you will find that in our culture people say, “Life is hard, so what you’ve got to do is come to Jesus.” The implication is that life will get easier somehow once you add Jesus to your life.
I once spoke with a young girl about this. She had recently made a profession of faith. She was at a Christian camp and, while there, she made some level of commitment to Christ. I was curious about what that exactly meant to her, so I started a conversation with her and asked her what is going to be different now. And she responded by saying, “Well, I think that everything is going to get a lot easier now.”
Being ever so eloquent with words, as I am, I said, “I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but if you’ve really decided to follow Christ, then life has not gotten easier by any means. As a matter of fact, it’s just gotten a lot harder.”
You see, being a part of God’s kingdom means living a life of self-denial. It means setting aside your wants and renouncing your desires. It means passionately pursuing this radical level of righteousness that He has laid out in these chapters. To enter the narrow gate means that it is no longer about me. It is no longer about how I can get what I want or cut some corners and get by looking very pious. To get through the narrow gate you lay all that aside. Stepping through the narrow gate means you are making a full commitment to Christ; His demands, His glory, His law, His way become your ultimate commitments and nothing else. Nothing.
And, as you may guess, once you enter that gate, you are not immediately at your destination. Jesus tells us that inside each gate there are two different paths.
II. There are two different paths
Behind the wide gate is a road that is described as broad, and verse 14 tells us that the narrow way puts you on a hard road.
Now, I just said that the life of discipleship is one that is fraught with difficulty. It is hard because it is the life of self-discipline and self-denial. And now we are told that this road is hard. But what I want you to understand is that this word that we have translated “hard” (the hard way) is not being used in the same sense. Don’t think of it as having the same meaning. It is not referring to a life of rigorous self-renunciation. It’s different.
The word that is used here is a word that means “troubled” or “afflicted.” It can mean “distressed.” Literally, this word was used of compressing grapes in order to make wine. In other words, the hard way has to do with persecution.
Because you choose to follow Christ, and because you have made it your aim to follow the law of this kingdom, you will find yourself at odds with the world. The laws of God and the laws of man’s world are not typically compatible. And when they conflict, you can be assured that there will be heat that is produced. You will find yourself being the object of persecution.
And so, here at the end of this message, Jesus brings us full circle. At the beginning of this message he said, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things against you, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
The way is hard because you now will find yourself “compressed” (the literal meaning of the word hard). This is obviously the exact opposite of the other road. Why is the broad path expected to be easy? It’s because there is very little opposition. You are able to coast along because no one is upset with you. No one is upset because you have given them no reason to be upset.
Let me put it this way. No one cares if you follow your little Jesus. If you accept Jesus into your heart and you decide that you are going to follow Jesus, virtually no one will have a problem with you doing that. As a matter of fact, there are thousands and millions of people who go by the label “Christian,” and they are sailing along though life with very little hardship.
You know why? It’s because they don’t have a Christian worldview. In all reality, they don’t have a clue about what Biblical morality is. When it comes to their religion, it is really nothing more than painting a Christian face on the norms that everyone else already embraces.
You always need to remember that the early church was not in trouble because they believed in Jesus. They could talk about grace and forgiveness all they wanted. That would never have gotten them in trouble. What got them fed to the lions was that they said, “Jesus is Lord.” They wouldn’t offer the sacrifices to Caesar. They wouldn’t give the pinch of incense as a homage to the emperor. When it came to the first commandment, they were at an impasse. They were rocking an otherwise very calm boat.
Paul got in trouble because he said that the religious leaders of both the Jews and the Romans were espousing false teaching. To follow it was to be in error. That’s why he got mistreated.
And that’s what you need to understand before you choose what door to enter. The beautiful thing about what Jesus does is that he lets you see what is behind each gate. This is not like the old Let’s Make a Deal game show where you had to choose between door #1 and door #2 and you never knew what you were going to get. It could be a new car, or it could be a hamster cage
That’s not at all what is going on here. Jesus wants you to understand that the life he calls you to is one of hardship. You may lose friends over this choice. You could be attacked and maligned. So, you need to be aware of what you are getting yourself into. And if that isn’t something you want to deal with, there’s always easy street.
So you have two different gates comprising two radically different lifestyles, and you have two different roads expressing two differing levels of social pressure.
The third thing we find is that there are two different population levels.
III. There is a difference of population
Part of the reason why the gate is wide and the way is broad is because it has so many people on it. It is a superhighway that is, in many respects, bumper to bumper with traffic.
In contrast, the narrow gate isn’t heavily populated at all. At the end of verse 14 Jesus says, “Those who find it are few.”
You might say that those who choose this gate are in the minority. And there’s no doubt why. The lifestyle is one of renunciation and there is a great deal of hardship that you face along the way. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why there are not a lot of people who go this route.
But there is something to acknowledge about the population density. It may even be an affirmation to you at times if you are on this road. If you feel lonely, that might be a good thing. If you feel like you are on an island and not a part of the crowd, then that might very well be an affirmation that you’ve entered the narrow gate and you are on the path that Christ wants you to be on.
You’ll also understand that this means you will not be in the majority, and a lot of people don’t like that kind of thing. They can’t stand not being with the “in crowd.” They want to fit in. They want to have that camaraderie. They don’t want to lose out on those relationships.
To be a follower of Jesus means that you follow him and not the crowd. It means that you are more willing to submit to what he says than to what everyone else says or thinks.
This is where you young people need to really weigh what is being said here, because following Christ means that you will sometimes have to part ways with your peers. Following Christ means not being in the “cool crowd.”
John Bunyan wrote the famous work Pilgrim’s Progress, and that book is based a lot on this verse. Christian came in through a wicket gate and he began to walk along a path. At one point he came to a place called Vanity Fair, and in Vanity Fair there were all kinds of people doing all kinds of fun and interesting things. Christian and his friend Faithful ended up being imprisoned. They were put in a little cage because they were upsetting the whole fair. And the reason they were upsetting the people is simply because they didn’t want to participate in all their delights. Faithful ended up losing his life over it. They killed him.
But Bunyan’s point is this: They could have avoided all that if they simply went along with what everyone else was doing.
If you travel this path, you have to be okay with being weird. You have to be okay with being someone who stands out and stands alone.
The last thing we are told is that these two paths have two different destinations.
IV. There is a difference of destination
Once again, you don’t have to guess what is behind each door. Jesus is very transparent when it comes to what each gate leads to.
In this case, the wide gate leads to a broad road, which has many people. And here is the irony: It sounds so good - at least until you get to the end of it. Jesus says it leads to destruction.
That’s not what you would expect. You build the big road because the thing at the end of that road is supposed to be good. Everyone is trying to get there because there is something desirable. You don’t build a superhighway that ends at a cliff leading all who take it to their destruction.
But when it comes to the spiritual world, this is the reality. A lot of people are running headlong into hell. The path of self-righteousness is an easy path, it is a popular path, but it is not a path that leads to eternal life.
The only path that will get you there is the narrow path. It’s the hard one. It may be the path that is more difficult to travel, but it will get you to a much better place. The one advantage of going this way is that its destination is so much better. Everything about the wide gate sounds good until you get to the end.
Jesus is saying that if you really want eternal life, then you have to realize that there’s only one way to get there.
Now I will mention, just as an aside, that there are many people who take this verse and what it says about leading to destruction as a proof for what is called Annihilationism. It’s the belief that the wicked will be completely destroyed in the afterlife. There is no afterlife for them because they vanish. God in his judgment, they say, causes them to be completely annihilated.
And you can see why they say that. Destruction means being completely broken down. They are destroyed.
But this is where you have to let Scripture interpret Scripture. There are many other places that talk about how death is not the end for the unbeliever. He will live forever, too. It’s just that he will live in eternal, conscious torment.
For example, in another passage, Jesus talks about the worm that does not die. In Matthew 18, Jesus talks about being thrown into eternal fire. And in the book of 2 Thessalonians, Paul talks about facing the eternal destruction.
So there you have a rather explicit contrast to the annihilationist viewpoint. When Jesus uses the word “destruction,” he’s not meaning that wicked people are destroyed and cease to exist. He’s using it as a way to talk about the pain and suffering that will be experienced. They will face what seems like destruction as they come under the eternal displeasure of God and his wrath.
That being said, it doesn’t sound good either way. And that is why he urges you to choose the narrow gate. Enter by the narrow gate. Choose to follow the life of righteousness that Christ has laid out. Why? Because it is the only one that affords hope. It is the only route that will deliver when it comes to the final state. To gain a life of blessedness in the eternal world requires that you diverge from the kind of religiosity that is all too common. Or I should say, it means you must diverge from the kind of religiosity that is all too acceptable to this world.
And yet, if you choose to put Christ and his way first in your life, you will not be disappointed. There may be things in this life that are disappointing, but you will not be disappointed when it comes to these eternal matters.
“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.”
We’ve come to the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. If you’ve studied public speaking, you know that any good message will wrap things up with a solid conclusion.
In that conclusion there are a couple things that are essential elements. One of the main things is that it makes a good call to action.
This is, you might say, the moment everyone has been waiting for. You have made your case. You’ve set out all the facts and reasons. Now, as you conclude, you come to the most critical moment of your speech. For it is at this moment that you are urging someone to change.
When we started out this series, we said that this was the Greatest Sermon that has ever been delivered. This was the most influential message of all time. And we are now coming to the climax of this message.
As Jesus begins to bring his message to an end, he does so in grand style. In our passage today Jesus has his call to action. You are to choose. He uses the imagery of two different gates, which have two different roads, each of which has two different groups of people, and two different destinations. And he calls you to choose between the two.
Which will you take? Which door will you choose? Which path of life will you follow? Will you choose what is popular and go the route most people travel? Or will you, like Robert Frost’s famous poem, choose “the path less traveled”? And of course, there is the ultimate question: Where do you want to end up?
In other words, it is time to make your decision. It is time for you to commit. Or maybe it is time for you to really evaluate where you actually are and if you need to change the course of your life.
I think that is what Jesus is saying. He’s been talking to church people. His audience is made up of people who have grown up in what you might call a church culture. But, as he has shown, a lot of what they have learned - a lot of what has characterized their typical way of life - has been wrong.
Much of what they had known up to this point was an imitation religion. It was a poor copy that they had created. As we have seen time and again, the faith that they held to was characterized by self-righteousness. Jesus came to show that. He has been revealing what the Scripture really teaches. He’s been showing what the Law of God really requires. In sum, he’s been showing what kind of life a citizen of God’s kingdom will really lead.
And now he says, “Are you going to be a part of this kingdom? Or are you going to continue to be a part of the opposing kingdom?”
That’s what you are to understand by the two different gates.
I. There are two different gates
The first thing that stands out is that there are two separate gates: one is narrow and one is wide. Jesus says that you must enter through the narrow one. And what you are to understand is that these two gates represent the two different religions he’s been talking about through the course of his message.
On the one hand, you have the wide gate, which is the gate that is the most commonly taken. This gate represents the prevailing philosophy. It is the self-righteous approach. It is the kind of life that says, “Yeah, sure. I’ll follow the Lord. Just as long as I can make him conform to my own standards. I’m happy to be religious and call myself a Christian, as long as it really doesn’t demand anything of real significance from my life.” It’s the kind of religion that says, “Hey, there are some really bad things out there, but there’s nothing wrong in here, in my heart.”
That’s why it is wide. It will accept almost anyone and anything. It welcomes the masses because it welcomes everything that comes with a shroud of religiosity.
In opposition to this Jesus says, “You’ve got to take the other one. Don’t choose door number one. Get in the exit lane and head over to the narrow gate.”
What is the narrow gate? It’s the kind of life that says no to our desires. It is the life of discipleship, which says, “I must restrain my sinful inclinations and repent of them. I must recognize that I am called to a life of holiness and must at every turn seek to submit myself to the will of God. And that isn’t easy because it is so often at variance with my own will and inclinations.”
This is probably quite a bit different from what you usually hear. A lot of times you will find that in our culture people say, “Life is hard, so what you’ve got to do is come to Jesus.” The implication is that life will get easier somehow once you add Jesus to your life.
I once spoke with a young girl about this. She had recently made a profession of faith. She was at a Christian camp and, while there, she made some level of commitment to Christ. I was curious about what that exactly meant to her, so I started a conversation with her and asked her what is going to be different now. And she responded by saying, “Well, I think that everything is going to get a lot easier now.”
Being ever so eloquent with words, as I am, I said, “I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but if you’ve really decided to follow Christ, then life has not gotten easier by any means. As a matter of fact, it’s just gotten a lot harder.”
You see, being a part of God’s kingdom means living a life of self-denial. It means setting aside your wants and renouncing your desires. It means passionately pursuing this radical level of righteousness that He has laid out in these chapters. To enter the narrow gate means that it is no longer about me. It is no longer about how I can get what I want or cut some corners and get by looking very pious. To get through the narrow gate you lay all that aside. Stepping through the narrow gate means you are making a full commitment to Christ; His demands, His glory, His law, His way become your ultimate commitments and nothing else. Nothing.
And, as you may guess, once you enter that gate, you are not immediately at your destination. Jesus tells us that inside each gate there are two different paths.
II. There are two different paths
Behind the wide gate is a road that is described as broad, and verse 14 tells us that the narrow way puts you on a hard road.
Now, I just said that the life of discipleship is one that is fraught with difficulty. It is hard because it is the life of self-discipline and self-denial. And now we are told that this road is hard. But what I want you to understand is that this word that we have translated “hard” (the hard way) is not being used in the same sense. Don’t think of it as having the same meaning. It is not referring to a life of rigorous self-renunciation. It’s different.
The word that is used here is a word that means “troubled” or “afflicted.” It can mean “distressed.” Literally, this word was used of compressing grapes in order to make wine. In other words, the hard way has to do with persecution.
Because you choose to follow Christ, and because you have made it your aim to follow the law of this kingdom, you will find yourself at odds with the world. The laws of God and the laws of man’s world are not typically compatible. And when they conflict, you can be assured that there will be heat that is produced. You will find yourself being the object of persecution.
And so, here at the end of this message, Jesus brings us full circle. At the beginning of this message he said, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things against you, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
The way is hard because you now will find yourself “compressed” (the literal meaning of the word hard). This is obviously the exact opposite of the other road. Why is the broad path expected to be easy? It’s because there is very little opposition. You are able to coast along because no one is upset with you. No one is upset because you have given them no reason to be upset.
Let me put it this way. No one cares if you follow your little Jesus. If you accept Jesus into your heart and you decide that you are going to follow Jesus, virtually no one will have a problem with you doing that. As a matter of fact, there are thousands and millions of people who go by the label “Christian,” and they are sailing along though life with very little hardship.
You know why? It’s because they don’t have a Christian worldview. In all reality, they don’t have a clue about what Biblical morality is. When it comes to their religion, it is really nothing more than painting a Christian face on the norms that everyone else already embraces.
You always need to remember that the early church was not in trouble because they believed in Jesus. They could talk about grace and forgiveness all they wanted. That would never have gotten them in trouble. What got them fed to the lions was that they said, “Jesus is Lord.” They wouldn’t offer the sacrifices to Caesar. They wouldn’t give the pinch of incense as a homage to the emperor. When it came to the first commandment, they were at an impasse. They were rocking an otherwise very calm boat.
Paul got in trouble because he said that the religious leaders of both the Jews and the Romans were espousing false teaching. To follow it was to be in error. That’s why he got mistreated.
And that’s what you need to understand before you choose what door to enter. The beautiful thing about what Jesus does is that he lets you see what is behind each gate. This is not like the old Let’s Make a Deal game show where you had to choose between door #1 and door #2 and you never knew what you were going to get. It could be a new car, or it could be a hamster cage
That’s not at all what is going on here. Jesus wants you to understand that the life he calls you to is one of hardship. You may lose friends over this choice. You could be attacked and maligned. So, you need to be aware of what you are getting yourself into. And if that isn’t something you want to deal with, there’s always easy street.
So you have two different gates comprising two radically different lifestyles, and you have two different roads expressing two differing levels of social pressure.
The third thing we find is that there are two different population levels.
III. There is a difference of population
Part of the reason why the gate is wide and the way is broad is because it has so many people on it. It is a superhighway that is, in many respects, bumper to bumper with traffic.
In contrast, the narrow gate isn’t heavily populated at all. At the end of verse 14 Jesus says, “Those who find it are few.”
You might say that those who choose this gate are in the minority. And there’s no doubt why. The lifestyle is one of renunciation and there is a great deal of hardship that you face along the way. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why there are not a lot of people who go this route.
But there is something to acknowledge about the population density. It may even be an affirmation to you at times if you are on this road. If you feel lonely, that might be a good thing. If you feel like you are on an island and not a part of the crowd, then that might very well be an affirmation that you’ve entered the narrow gate and you are on the path that Christ wants you to be on.
You’ll also understand that this means you will not be in the majority, and a lot of people don’t like that kind of thing. They can’t stand not being with the “in crowd.” They want to fit in. They want to have that camaraderie. They don’t want to lose out on those relationships.
To be a follower of Jesus means that you follow him and not the crowd. It means that you are more willing to submit to what he says than to what everyone else says or thinks.
This is where you young people need to really weigh what is being said here, because following Christ means that you will sometimes have to part ways with your peers. Following Christ means not being in the “cool crowd.”
John Bunyan wrote the famous work Pilgrim’s Progress, and that book is based a lot on this verse. Christian came in through a wicket gate and he began to walk along a path. At one point he came to a place called Vanity Fair, and in Vanity Fair there were all kinds of people doing all kinds of fun and interesting things. Christian and his friend Faithful ended up being imprisoned. They were put in a little cage because they were upsetting the whole fair. And the reason they were upsetting the people is simply because they didn’t want to participate in all their delights. Faithful ended up losing his life over it. They killed him.
But Bunyan’s point is this: They could have avoided all that if they simply went along with what everyone else was doing.
If you travel this path, you have to be okay with being weird. You have to be okay with being someone who stands out and stands alone.
The last thing we are told is that these two paths have two different destinations.
IV. There is a difference of destination
Once again, you don’t have to guess what is behind each door. Jesus is very transparent when it comes to what each gate leads to.
In this case, the wide gate leads to a broad road, which has many people. And here is the irony: It sounds so good - at least until you get to the end of it. Jesus says it leads to destruction.
That’s not what you would expect. You build the big road because the thing at the end of that road is supposed to be good. Everyone is trying to get there because there is something desirable. You don’t build a superhighway that ends at a cliff leading all who take it to their destruction.
But when it comes to the spiritual world, this is the reality. A lot of people are running headlong into hell. The path of self-righteousness is an easy path, it is a popular path, but it is not a path that leads to eternal life.
The only path that will get you there is the narrow path. It’s the hard one. It may be the path that is more difficult to travel, but it will get you to a much better place. The one advantage of going this way is that its destination is so much better. Everything about the wide gate sounds good until you get to the end.
Jesus is saying that if you really want eternal life, then you have to realize that there’s only one way to get there.
Now I will mention, just as an aside, that there are many people who take this verse and what it says about leading to destruction as a proof for what is called Annihilationism. It’s the belief that the wicked will be completely destroyed in the afterlife. There is no afterlife for them because they vanish. God in his judgment, they say, causes them to be completely annihilated.
And you can see why they say that. Destruction means being completely broken down. They are destroyed.
But this is where you have to let Scripture interpret Scripture. There are many other places that talk about how death is not the end for the unbeliever. He will live forever, too. It’s just that he will live in eternal, conscious torment.
For example, in another passage, Jesus talks about the worm that does not die. In Matthew 18, Jesus talks about being thrown into eternal fire. And in the book of 2 Thessalonians, Paul talks about facing the eternal destruction.
So there you have a rather explicit contrast to the annihilationist viewpoint. When Jesus uses the word “destruction,” he’s not meaning that wicked people are destroyed and cease to exist. He’s using it as a way to talk about the pain and suffering that will be experienced. They will face what seems like destruction as they come under the eternal displeasure of God and his wrath.
That being said, it doesn’t sound good either way. And that is why he urges you to choose the narrow gate. Enter by the narrow gate. Choose to follow the life of righteousness that Christ has laid out. Why? Because it is the only one that affords hope. It is the only route that will deliver when it comes to the final state. To gain a life of blessedness in the eternal world requires that you diverge from the kind of religiosity that is all too common. Or I should say, it means you must diverge from the kind of religiosity that is all too acceptable to this world.
And yet, if you choose to put Christ and his way first in your life, you will not be disappointed. There may be things in this life that are disappointing, but you will not be disappointed when it comes to these eternal matters.