Sermon details
- Scripture
- Matthew 7:13-14
- Series
- Matthew
- Speaker
- Keith Goad
- Date
- 25 May 2025
- Length
- 42 minutes
Read the sermon
Enter by the narrow gate
Good morning. We have so many choices to make in life. As more and more options are available, life gets more and more difficult with choices. And I want you to ask, what are the most significant choices you think you still need to make or have made? We usually think of these as which school I'll go to, which internship, which job, what house will I buy, When will I retire? Who will I marry? How many kids? I want to press in that the most important decision you make, you make every year, every month, every week, every day, every hour, every minute. Do I believe Jesus is the Son of God? Now, you might not feel that pressing in every day, Every moment is an opportunity to say, I'm going to trust Jesus and follow him. Every day, we're pressed with all kinds of decisions. Will I be honest in my business dealings? Will I show kindness to my children? Will I be patient with my spouse? Every day is an opportunity to know, will I trust Jesus to help me walk in his way? But by God's grace, he gives us all we need to believe in him and to follow him. Will you believe and remain faithful? Will you cling to Christ and walk in his ways? The small little decisions, will I take his word and read it and trust him? Will I bend my knee in prayer? Will I attend worship, prayer, with other believers and fellowship? Will I repent of sin? Will I avoid those sins that plague me and hinder me from knowing Christ and making Him known? This is why often I ask folks, what's in pen and what's in pencil? What were the hard and fast decisions you have made in life to make sure you are prioritizing the faith walk with Christ? What are we committed to? We're in the Sermon on the Mount. If you're new with us, we're walking through the Gospel of Matthew and we're coming to the end of what's mostly considered one of the most significant teachings of Christ. It's Christ the King teaching his believers how to live in his kingdom. If you go to the beginning, there's the blessings, and we have numerous commands that we've walked through. There's warnings of religious false spiritual practices in chapter six, heart problems in chapter five, warnings of things that are out of bounds of the kingdom and storing up treasures and being anxious. Last week, we looked at the call to ask and to seek and to knock, a welcome to pray and trust God. I want you to see the last three teachings are all united. They're warnings. And it's very typical for throughout the Old Testament, we see prophets do this. Moses ends Deuteronomy like this. Choose life or choose death. Joshua, before he goes to the promised land, who will you serve? Jesus gives us this hard warning in three different ways. And there's only two options. Life, death. To be woken by Christ or to be denied. To be on the rock or to be washed away. There's only two ways to live. It's presented throughout scripture. We saw it earlier in Psalm 1. And these are meant to be warning passages to help you see the significance of the decision being pressed upon you by Jesus Christ. The command of the text is absolute. Enter by the narrow gate. There are two gates. The command, the invitation of Jesus Christ is to enter by the narrow gate. I'm gonna walk through this text a little differently. I want you to first see there are two different ways to live. And then I wanna walk through the contrast that he makes that's very consistent, and then I'm gonna come back to the command, enter by the narrow gate. The one stark absolute in all three of the ways Jesus teaches us, there are two ways to live. Here it's two gates, two ways, two ends. We also make sure we understand there's also two amounts. There's few and many. There's the narrow gate and there's the wide gate. There's the easy way and the hard way. There's the end of destruction, the end of life, and there are many that go to the wide gate and there are few that enter the narrow gate. The contrast is absolute. We like to pretend there's more than two options. We can figure out our little extra lane, we can put our little flare on the way we're gonna do it. There's two options. There's in Christ and in him alone and only by his way carrying your cross, denying yourself, following Him. And there's every other way to not trust God, know Him, love Him. Now often these two ways are demonstrated as living in absolute sin, following after just your own lust and anger, and then there's the righteous way. And I believe that's a helpful way of looking at it, but I think we need to let Jesus' Sermon on the Mount really define how he would have us think about it first and foremost. And the contrast Jesus constantly made between his kingdom and something else is his kingdom and the legalism of the Pharisees. Remember Matthew 5.20, a key verse,
your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees.
The key is not just external change, but internal heart change. Or Matthew 6, 1, 5, and 16, you must not practice like the hypocrites who do so publicly only, but it must be private. There's something important about Matthew 5 being an internal heart change and Matthew 6 being a private focus and discipline towards God. And then Matthew 7, the contrast is the hypocrite again, The one who wants to correct everyone else, but is not themselves corrected. I think we need to first see the contrast is a false religion, which is the most dangerous way to be on the wide, in the wide gate, in the broad path. It's most dangerous because it's a false path, and Jesus' next teaching is really going to focus in on that. They'll say to me when they come into the kingdom, I prophesied in your name, and he's gonna say, I never knew you. The real danger is to believe you're on the right path, but yet be a false professor. The call today, walk in the way of Jesus that leads to life. Walk in the way of Jesus that leads to life. If you're taking notes, we're just going to walk through the different contrasts. The first thing we're going to see is the contrast between the gates. Verse 13.
Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the way is easy. It leads to destruction, and those who enter it 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.
So we have a wide gate and a narrow gate. There's some debate as to how the order's supposed to go. Is it the way that leads to the gate that leads to the end? Or is it the gate you enter that gets you in the way that leads to the end? And either one, I think, is fine. You can have a discussion over lunch as to which you think it is. The key thing is there's an absolute equation, one plus one equals two. The gate and the way and the end must all be consistent. There is no wide gate, hard way that leads to life. The gate, the way, and the end are all consistent. So what is the narrow gate? What is the narrow gate? I believe we must see, first and foremost, Jesus is the narrow gate. We read earlier he calls himself the door. Very similar language. There's other thieves that come and they destroy. You hear that same language. Jesus is the entry point. Jesus is also the way. Jesus is also the life. Jesus is the narrow gate in that he is the one son of God who came down to be like us by adding to himself our human nature. He's the one who came to fulfill all the promises of God, to give us life when we had chosen death, to give us forgiveness when we have chosen sin. He created us, came down to be with us, added to Himself our nature so that He could die, so we can be forgiven rather than destroyed, so we can rise again to secure the new life that we get when we enter into Him in His presence. He provides what only our God and creator can provide. He is the king of kings, the true prophet, the word of God. Now this is important because that wide gate has lots of ways of talking about Jesus. There's usually some form of Jesus in every other religion. We can take Mormonism. Mormonism denies he's the son of God. He's a mere moral exemplar. He is not the one who's able to come with life and give life. You can just simply be like Jesus. He is not the true son of God. Islam also has Jesus in their religion. He's a great prophet, not the true final prophet. Most significantly, Jesus couldn't die on the cross for your sins, according to Islam. He was too good to die. That denies the very good news of what Jesus has come to do. I share those two because there's numerous ways in which we can think we're believing in Jesus, but the wide gate has all different ways of thinking about Jesus. It's just not the true Jesus, the true Son of God, the one who became flesh, the one who died on the cross, the one who rose again, the one who's at the right hand of glory. The narrow gate has one name, and it's Jesus Christ, our creator who is holy, holy, holy, who has all authority and uses all of his authority for our good, who saves us because of who he is and what he's done. That is why salvation is in no other name. There's something about this narrow gate. Interpoint is the access to God and life. We must understand Christianity has an exclusivity to it. There is salvation in no other name. Salvation, true life and salvation is exclusive. It is only by believing in Jesus Christ. He alone died for us, rose again for us. There's also a beautiful universal aspect to it. That exclusive name gives you every blessing of salvation. That one name gives you all of life. It is exclusive that you must believe in Jesus, but the universal blessings that come when you believe in that one name. If you're not a Christian this morning, We'd love to talk to you about who that one Savior is, Jesus Christ. We'd love to talk to you about what it means to enter into that narrow gate. Please do not leave without talking to someone around you or me afterwards. The wide gate, it says it's for many, and sadly, that's because we're all on that way and we're already in that gate. We're all born in sin. There is no command to enter into the wide gate, because you're already there. We're already on the broad way to destruction. We're all born with a disposition to finding out our own way to think about how we're going to live. We come up with our own idea of who God is and what he must like. And it's interesting, on the wide way, God usually agrees with you constantly. The wide gate says, come and do it your way. Come and practice your religion. Come and decide what you think is worthy. God designed us for worship. We are always worshiping someone or something, and outside of it being centered upon Jesus Christ, it's not God. The way of the many is the way of those who rebel against God. And oftentimes we think of just the licentious and the radical sinners. Oftentimes it's those who are most religious, but not in Christ. So there's two gates. There's only one gate that you can enter that brings life and salvation, and it is Jesus Christ. And I wanna look at the amount, right? You see at the end of both those declarations, the many and the few, the many and the few. That's the last part, but I wanna go ahead and talk about it now. Few find the narrow gate, many enter the way of destruction. There are many who choose the wide gate because that's where we're born, we're born in sin, we're born in Adam. We have a disposition to already reject God, to suppress what he reveals himself to us all. It's significant that those who enter the narrow gate, they're the ones who find it. It isn't clear if it's discovered as they're walking, as if it shows up before them, or if they're seeking it. I do love, I think it's important we keep the category of seeker. Someone who isn't professing Christ, but Christ has clearly done some work in their heart to make them realize there's something more to life. We pray for more seekers, more doubters is actually a good way of thinking about it. Someone who realizes something isn't right in life as we know it, and there's something more. Praise God for those who would want to have an interest in knowing more. Nothing excites me more than someone to show up and just say, there's something else, what is it? If that's you this morning, and there's a Bible in front of you, take it and read. And start in Matthew. I was saved by just reading the book of Matthew by God's grace, and this teaching is what stood out. I was destroying my life on the way of destruction, but God in his grace gives life. Many because we're all born running away from God. The few makes it very clear that not everyone's saved. We're not universalist as if everyone will get to heaven in their own way, because there's only one way. Again, that's the exclusivity of Christ, and the one thing that's supposed to make sure we do is it humbles us. Lord, why? was I made a guest. Why am I one of the few who get to hear, believe, and be saved? The gospel salvation, the gospel proclamation, the gospel message, and the gospel invitation to enter that gate, that is not common. That is a precious gift. One to always be thankful you can hear and have heard. And if you're a believer, it should stir up the desire that we would spread that name. We would want that name, the only name by which anyone could be saved, to go out. That's why we're concerned about making sure we're raising up missionaries, sending up missionaries. We must be burdened that the gospel goes out. And universalism, I get the temptation because we should want God to save more. All right, Spurgeon, he himself said,
Read the full sermon
I know God has elected, but I'm going to pray that he would elect more.
That's some wonderful tension in your theology there. We are called to go and proclaim the one name to everyone. We must be burdened to do it. The few hear and believe. I want to spend most of our time here on the two ways. I think this is the challenge of the text. The way to destruction is easy. The way to life is hard, difficult, afflicted. Let's make sure we feel the weight of what this is and wrestle with it with other texts. Well, again, I wanna make sure as we're wrestling with what Jesus is saying here, he's concluding a sermon and I don't always follow this rule. You're not supposed to introduce something new at the end of a sermon. That's a rule. I don't, I rarely follow that, but that's what you're supposed to be hearing every Sunday. So I'm gonna say like, there's something he's already said to help us understand what is hard about this. That's pretty easy to go back and see, isn't it? It's not just murder, it's hatred in your heart. It's not just adultery, it's lustful intent in your eyes. He calls us to be meek, pure in heart, seek first the kingdom of God. We are called to forgive. In order to be forgiven, we will be judged according to the measure we judge others. If you've been walking through the Sermon on the Mount or you just read it quickly this afternoon, it's not hard to see how hard it is. Real heart transformation is what Jesus expects of his kingdom citizens. Real change that by God's grace does take place with real effort and repentance. God calls us to difficult things. Let's make sure we frame this right. God calls us to the good, the right, and the true way. He created us, he designed us, he knows what's good for us, he sees what's corrupting us, and he's seeking to take away that which is corrupt and bring us up to his right way. Well, the call to be a follower of Jesus is deny yourself to follow him. Deny sin, And we need to be careful as we think about what that hard way is of that heart work that Jesus has talked about throughout the whole sermon of the mount. You're denying sin. And it isn't as simple as, oh, this doesn't fit, so I'm gonna move it over. Sin, we too often identify with and love. Sin, we hold to like a blanket that comforts us too often. Zen are those coping mechanisms we use to make ourselves feel better and becomes part of us. The hard work of the disciple is to deny yourself, repent of things your heart actually likes and loves. The way of Christ is hard because of the heart work he calls us to. But because of the true interchange, that's different than the Pharisees. That's different than the easy way that, ah, just put on a new kind of practice. Just change a little behavior. Let's just modify what we say and what we do a little bit. Let's try a little harder. Let's do something so that others will praise us. That's easy. Just a little modification with a little more effort. It's frustrating because it doesn't ever change anything, but it's easy. The hard work is the faithful effort to keep in step with the Spirit. The hard thing is it's easy to change a few behaviors, but it's real hard to work on those desires. I learned this pretty early as a new believer. I had a very foul language. And it was pretty easy to just change the way I talked. But it was the next step of sanctification where he started poking in my heart to show me the anger that resided behind that language. It was easy to change the language. It was easy to just learn a different way of talking. But when the finger of God was placed upon the heart and he started showing the anger within, that was the hard work of repenting. entrusting the God I was learning was all of love. The hard and difficult work on the way of Christ is setting apart from your own heart the things that you love that are out of bounds. You want to wrestle with how much harder this is that Jesus told us not to store up treasures on earth. Another place he tells us it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. There's a way in which we must wrestle with the heart and what we treasure, what we're delighted in. The love of the things in this world, the pride of life, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye. It's hard to cut those logs out of our own eye. But praise be to God that he is at work within us. He gives us the grace to repent. The internal battle I'm referring to as what's so hard, the Holy Spirit's already there. The Holy Spirit is in you to give you the power of the resurrection to put off this sin and become more like Christ. It means we learn to depend upon God more. The second way I believe the way should be understood as difficult and hard is because of persecution. That this has not been as emphatic throughout the Sermon on the Mount, but it is present. He ends the Beatitudes with persecution twice.
Blessed are the persecuted for my name's sake.
We just heard do not give holy things to dogs because they'll turn and attack you. The way is hard because of external problems as well. Those who are gonna oppose you, resist you, fight against you. They crucified the Lord we're seeking to follow. They will not welcome us and praise us. The world will persecute the church. This calls for the hard work of perseverance, church. The third way in which I think we should think about how it is hard, it is a, it requires a long game of loyalty. God has made promises and he's kept them and we must learn to be a promised people who make the right promises and keep them. You can look to Christ's declaration,
let your yes be yes and your no, no.
Make sure you're making the right promises. We had a wedding last week and we have one this coming week. It's important we make and keep the promises of covenant and marriage. We must make sure we make and keep the promises of forgiveness. We must make and keep the promises of repentance. We must learn to walk in the right way for a long time. The way is easy and broad that leads to destruction. This way does not seek God or to be transformed by God. It seeks to domesticate God, to make him fit our patterns. It wants a Christ that's going to resonate more with how we're already wanting to live. We must recognize we're all running away from God in this broad way. We're not obeying so that God would be praised, we're doing so that we would be praised. Our culture has adopted a dangerous doctrine of love. In order to love me, you must affirm me in all the ways that I am, is what our culture says. To truly love somebody means you assume the best and you expect the best. To really love somebody means you have high expectations for them. To have no expectations for someone is to not love them. Friends, the God who is love has high expectations for us. What Christ is calling us to be on His way is a high expectation to be with Him, to be like Him. God who loves us has high expectations for us. The broad way will say there's no expectations. You do whatever you think is right and feel is right and what you want to do. Oh, the good narrow gauge and the hard way. As a love that seeks heart change and hears God's call to real heart change. The way is easy to destruction and hard to life. Make sure we wrestle with this. The God who designed you is remaking you. The God who gave you life in the very beginning has come down to give you life anew, renewed in Christ Jesus. We now seek to be with him in that life. Now before we move on, I wanna wrestle with another text. Jesus tells us the truth that his way is hard, but in Matthew 11 he says his yoke is easy. The way is hard and his yoke is easy. I find this kind of thing fun, I hope you will too. What's hard about it and what's easy about it? We must believe both of these are true. If your theology doesn't have tension, it's not good theology. The yoke, Nick talked about this a few Wednesday nights ago, the yoke is a burden, it's for a beast of burden. Jesus says
my yoke is easy
, that's already just kind of in your face. A yoke is never supposed to be easy. But he's making a comparison to the scribes and Pharisees. The scribes and Pharisees, their way of religion is to put a yoke on you. so that you have all these other rules and regulations of their tradition that are supposedly gonna make you righteous. That yoke is burdensome because it never actually heals the heart. That yoke is burdensome because it's not what God actually called you up to. Jesus' yoke is easy, and that corresponds with the way hard. His yoke is easy because the burden is taken off of us. He's done everything we need to be right before God. He has done everything we need to be lifted up to God. Legalism insists that you must obey their laws and live up to their measure and then they'll judge you quickly. Jesus calls you to live up to himself. The hard way is talking about the repentance we must do to live up to what he has already accomplished for us. His yoke is easy because everything he gives to us is for our good and actually transforms us. His yoke is easy because of the grace of God that actually allows us to do that hard heart repentance. If you look at this one more way, if we go back to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount,
blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who are pure in heart.
The word blessed, really the same word as happy? Christian, you should be living the happy, hard life of Jesus Christ. It's a happy, hard life. Because we're not pretending sin doesn't exist. That's the folly that seeks something easy. The Christian life is one that's happy in Christ because of what he's done. It's happy in Christ because as we obey, we draw closer to him, we see more of his glory and his love. Hold that so together here that it's a happy, hard life that fights against sin to enjoy that life. To give you assurance as you are on this hard way, first, Christ has secured life for you. He has been raised to new life, he is the right hand of the Father, and if you believe in him, that life has been accomplished. You are given new life, you are promised new life, you will enter into his presence and live forever because of Christ. He is the right hand of God now interceding for you so that you have help in knowing how to live that life. So it's not only secured because of his death, resurrection, and ascension, he sent his Holy Spirit to seal you, to apply all that he accomplished. So the difficulty of repentance, while it is hard to repent of sin, we do so by the very help of God internally. Paul tells us to keep in step with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit that gives us the grace of God to repent. The Holy Spirit that frees us from the power of sin. The Holy Spirit that convicts us of sin. The Holy Spirit that's conforming us to Christ. There's another help you have. It's prayer. Just before this, ask and it'll be given. Knock, it'll be opened. Seek your fund. Ask for God's grace to repent. Ask for God's help to believe. We have such access to God and all of his blessings. They've been secured by Christ, who's in the right hand. They're sealed within us, but you must ask. What a blessing it is to pray. The last help is you have church. We're not supposed to do it together. Too many Christians limp along by themselves with a very small group of people that they're only gonna talk to. The whole life of the Christian is meant to be with other believers who will speak the truth in love. If you wanna know more about what it looks like, read later Ephesians chapter four beginning in 25. Numerous contrasts on what not to do but what to do as the people of God. The last contrast, two destinations. Two ends, destruction or life. Our creator and our final judge who died and rose again, he is telling us the way of life. He is risen, he is promising eternal life. Unlike Adam who shares his death with us and his sin with us, he is sharing with us his life. There will be a day when we're perfectly transformed We enter into his presence and we call this glorification, the final destination of the Christian. Unlike Adam and what he gave us, what Adam had, Adam could lose the life he had from God. Jesus comes to give us life we cannot lose. It's perfected. Destruction has a pattern here. We see Adam calls man's sin, all of our sin. He led us into the path of destruction. And the end of that is an eternity in hell. There's a just wrath for sin, God is just. That is part of the good news of the gospel, God is just. And he sent his son to die for our sin so that he also is the one who justifies. He says, I forgive you in my son. Sin promises a happiness but only brings destruction. Sin promises a hope and a future but only ends in judgment and destruction of your heart, your mind, your life, and your relationships. It's important we trust Jesus here. Anything Jesus says repent of is bad. Everything Jesus commands is good. He does not withhold anything good from you. Everything he calls us up to is what's good and right for us. Believer, we too often think that that faith in Jesus is this one time thing and then all of a sudden we're gonna see Jesus and there's nothing in between. Oh, that way is hard. Of putting off sin and repentance. Of longing to see his face. Of longing to know him more now and to make him known. Don't believe the lie that there's one prayer and then one event. No, it's the life that is called to know Jesus every day and every minute. The power of the gospel is Jesus has come to give us his own life by dying for us. He was destroyed on our behalf. He has come to produce in us a new life that will end in a perfected life. The end of Christ's path is life eternal with God, transformed to behold him and rejoice in his love always. The end of Christ's path is life transformed to rejoice in God's love always. The end of sin's path, the wide gate, it takes you to eternal destruction. feeling the full weight of our sin in the presence of God's glory.
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.
The first five words, enter by the narrow gate. Again, the assumption is that we're all on the wrong path to begin with, and so the invitation is to come in the narrow gate, to come to Jesus, to come by faith. Look to Jesus who's come to give you new life and enter his way and you will have full life, eternal life, true life. Faith. This is what God requires of you. To believe in Jesus, to trust the promise there is life. To trust the promise, he is the God who makes promises and keeps those promises. It's faith, his son has come down to save us. We're gonna look back one more time at that passage. Faith is looking to him and asking and he will give it to you. That is life in Christ. Faith is moving toward him and knocking on that door. He'll let you enter. Faith is seeking him and you will find him. If you were here last week, there was one thing I said you should write down. Our good Heavenly Father generously gives good gifts. Our good Heavenly Father generously gives good gifts. That is the foundation of the entire Sermon on the Mount. Ask God for life. Ask God to see His Son. These are the two things He has promised. By faith you receive. Christian, faith is a constant. And with it is repentance. Faith starts with prayer and continues in prayer. Faith was that one moment that God transformed you and renewed you and you came into the new life of Jesus Christ. And now that life is meant to be lived with nothing but gratitude because he's given you all you need for life. Believe. Cling to Christ. deny yourself, and follow Him. Will you pray with me? Father, thank you for the promise that you discipline everyone that you love, Lord, the assurance that we get to be disciplined by you when we are sinning out of bounds from your way. Lord, thank you for the assurance that assumes that we've not lost your way, but you bring us back to the truth of your way. Father, thank you that your love did not let us keep running in the wrong way. Help us look to Christ, the author, finisher, perfecter of our faith, our life, the one who has shared his very resurrected life with us. Lord, may we see we've been purchased by his precious blood. May we see we are being renewed to be like him, the true measure of what a human is now as an image bearer, renewed to be glorified. Lord, help us to see all the warnings of how we're tempted into that broad, dangerous, destructive way. Help us to long to be in your narrow, good, hard way of life. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Transcript from SermonAudio. The recording is the authoritative version.
More from Matthew
- Receive God's Word That Cleanses WithinMatthew 23:25-39 · 4 October 2026
- The Weight of WorshipMatthew 23:13-24 · 27 September 2026
- Humbly Follow ChristMatthew 23:1-12 · 13 September 2026
- Son of GodMatthew 22:41-46 · 6 September 2026