(Text and Audio)
Title: Narrow Means Narrow
I have to very careful this morning. I’m already wound-up, fired up, and ready to start screaming…and we haven’t even prayed yet. If you’ve looked ahead at today’s passage you may know why why I feel this way.
Jesus’ words here cut right to heart of a matter that is killing the name and reputation of Jesus in America right before our eyes. And I have to guard my tongue before you, hold my emotions in check (we’ll see), and show you exegetically, show you scripturally, where and why there is such a divergence in what Jesus clearly says the Gospel is, and what believers today want it to be.
So, before I lose it, let’s read, and pray.
(read pray)
I just have one main point for you this morning, but I beg you to hear it clearly:
Main Concept: When we make Christianity easy we reject the Gospel as Jesus taught it.
If you remember nothing else from today’s sermon, please, I beg you, remember this. Jesus says the gate is narrow. Period. We want to make it wide. I want to look at two questions aimed at our Christian Society, and then dig into Scripture’s responses.
Why do we make the gate “wide?”
- Makes us feel better about an “all loving” God.
- Allows us certain liberties and freedoms in our daily lives (indulgences=sin).
- Makes Jesus more appealing to non-believers.
- Others?
How do we make the gate “wide”?
- Denying the exclusivity of Christ, meaning that there are several ways to salvation.
- Arguing that Jesus’ blood saves everyone eventually. (Rob Bell “Love Wins” quote: The writers of scripture consistently affirm that we’re all part of the same family. What we have in common—regardless of our tribe, language, customs, beliefs, or religion—outweighs our differences. This is why God wants ‘all people to be saved.’ (99)
A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will
5spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided, toxic, and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear. (8)
- Portraying the Gospel as easy to live out. Joel Osteen: If we say it long enough eventually we’re going to reap a harvest. We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying.
You may make some mistakes-but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.
Do all you can to make your dreams come true.
God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.
- Others?
Scriptural Responses:
First of all, scripture told us this was coming.
2 Tim. 4:3-4 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”
Let’s compare these concepts from today’s Christian Leaders with what we see in Scripture elsewhere:
Acts 14:21-22 “And when they had preached the gospel to that city (Derbe) and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”
Luke records Jesus saying it this way in Luke 13:24: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”
Close:
I’d like to offer one final thought on an interesting textual variant. This verse has two main versions from the earliest Greek manuscripts. Textual variants make verse also translatable as: “How narrow is the gate and confined is the way…”
This translation puts a lot more emphasis on God’s hand over who find this way, and in so doing, it should call us to strongly reconsider Paul’s words in Philippians 2 to “work our our salvation with fear and trembling.”