Matthew 7:13-20 // Choose Life

So today we're going to continue marching through Matthew 7.! It's turning out to be a multi-month chapter, but that's the way it is sometimes.

! We're going to be in verses 13 to 20 today. Matthew chapter 7. You want to open your Bibles or swipe your way there. Jesus has been taking us and his disciples on this amazing tour of what it means to live a life with him, what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, what it takes to be in a life, walking alongside him, with him, following him along.

And as you all know, this is not necessarily an easy calling. Sometimes it's a very dangerous calling. What I know for sure is that it is a calling for us to die to ourselves on a consistent basis.

Our rights, our attitudes, to look and put them on the cross. To be able to let go of them. And what we witnessed this morning, and I'll call you out again, Diana, is I appreciate Diana being real with how her morning was going.

I pray for this church every day. That we would be real. Real with one another. Honest with our shortcomings, with our needs, our prayer requests.

Tuesday morning Bible study, the ladies, they do this very, very well. And I appreciate that. Because the opposite of it is just to simply be fake. And to pretend and call it in.

We can't do that with our faith. We should not do that with one another. So when I'm sharing about something like an argument that Maria and I had, or anything like that, I'm being frank with you.

And I think we need to be more open and honest with one another as we move forward. As we continue to grow together as a church. Because we're always going to have new people that come in. Right?

And we're going to have new people that we welcome. With much love. And we want to show a reality to them. You know what it's like. I mean, even in meet and greet time.

And I hope nobody experiences this. But I have experienced it before. Where somebody will come up and I'll stand away, you know, a little bit here. But like, hi, how are you? Oh, it's great to see you. And that can mean everything.

They can be very genuine. But it can also be kind of fake. If we're not careful. Because it depends on what's going on in here. So what do we do when we find a wolf in the hen house?

See, Jesus gives us some very clear direction here. That there is fruit that we can see in our own lives and the lives of one another. And I'm not talking from a judgmental standpoint.

I'm talking about just simply that character matters. What we believe about God matters. So let's dive in here.

I'm going to read 13 to 20 and then we'll take it verse by verse. 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. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit. But the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit. Nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Jesus is always calling his disciples to make a decision. If you notice that, if you read his words, his encouragements to us, there's always some point of decision.

This is one of them. There is a wide way and there is a narrow way in this world. We're born into the wide way. And you know what?

It's kind of like, I don't know about you, but if you've ever had that one family member at a family dinner that just brings up certain topics that you know are going to be explosive and they just sit back and watch the chaos just go throughout the dinners.

Yeah, we've all seen that, I'm sure. And it's fun for a little bit. And then you realize this isn't fun at all. This is terrible. And you can see a conversation of how healthy it is by his fruit.

Did this cause division, disunity, chaos? Or is it bringing unity? Is it bringing love and understanding? The wide way is anything goes.

The narrow way is that there is truth. There is truth. And that means that there is something that's false as well. And Jesus is causing us or calling us to make a decision.

When he's walking on the shore of the Galilee and he sees these guys and they're out fishing and they're out doing their stuff in the nets and they're working their jobs. He didn't say, guys, come and make a list of pros and cons of what it would like to follow me.

He didn't say, well, come and think about it for a while. Hear me out first. Let me give you the sale. And then you be the judge whether you want to follow me.

Jesus just simply said, come and follow me. He left them with a decision. Peter and Andrew left their nets, left their livelihood, their work. James and John, they left their father and their work.

Matthew, the tax collector, he left his occupation, the comfort of being employed. Right? The gospel always calls us to make decisions, ones that are not easy.

And they will always be decisions of whether we take the broad path or the narrow path in life. Okay? The rich young ruler has another great example of this.

He comes up and, you know, he already kind of was hoping what the answer would be. That's the funny thing. He wasn't a bad guy. He had lived a pious life. He had lived by the law.

He had done everything. He had made some wealth. And so he comes up to Jesus and he says, Teacher, how can I earn eternal life? How can I inherit it? Because he's thinking that it'll just be a simple add-on to what he's already done.

And Jesus looks at him and I'm paraphrasing, but he just looks at him and says, Sell everything you got, give to the poor, come follow me. And the guy went away sad because he had great wealth.

That's a decision that he had to make. It was a calling. You know, I can't wait to get to heaven for a lot of reasons, but some of it is to fill in blanks of stories like this. What happened after that?

What happened after that? Was there conviction? Did he come to do this at some point? I don't know. But there's a broad way and a narrow way. He chose the broad way.

Jesus never chased him down. He never watered down the message. He never said, Oh, oh, your wealth could really help our spiritual campaign, so maybe I'll make an exception for you.

Okay? Maybe just hire a manager and then just come part-time. You notice how Jesus never watered it down for him. It was very simple. Give all that you believe in, all you trust in, and come and follow me.

Jesus never watered it down for him. Not once. Jesus' call is not just to be heard, but it's to be practiced and obeyed.

Verse 13 says, Enter the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy. That leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. So there are two paths, and this decision is before each of us.

One path is wide. It's easy to enter. The other is narrow, and it's a narrow path from the start. You notice that? The gate is narrow.

It doesn't start wide and then funnel in. It starts narrow. That's the narrow path. In broad, the word that is written here, it means quite spacious.

Once you're on that path, you can do whatever you want. You can walk down any side of the road you want. You can do cartwheels. If you can do cartwheels, I can't. You can do whatever you want, but it ends in destruction, in ruin, in waste.

I often look at the broad road, the wide road, right, as a very small mindset. And what I mean by that is that it's looking at life, this is all we got.

Whereas if you look at the narrow way, it's an investment for the eternal life, which we can start right now. We can live an eternal life right now, knowing that what we breathe at this moment is just for a short time.

But you have to have a long vision for that. Verse 14, for the gate is narrow, and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Now, the word hard here is used to also represent an olive press, right?

Compacted down. It's difficult. There's strain. There's pressure. It's hard to walk the narrow path. It is. And I think that's why we need one another so desperately, as a church, as a family, as a community.

We really need one another because the way that we choose to have chosen is narrow. But it's decision-making time.

There's a wide path and a narrow path to life. Which do you choose? And it's a choice that some of us have to make on a consistent basis. Do we choose the wide path or the narrow?

But Jesus gives us the answer right away. You enter by the narrow gate because it's a choice of life over death. It's a choice of blessing over curse.

So what does he actually mean by the narrow path? You decide to follow Jesus down the narrow path. You have to understand that it is narrow from the very beginning, as I said.

John 14, 6 says, Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. That is a narrow path.

All roads do not lead to heaven. All religions do not lead to heaven. And the funny thing is, is there's a movement called Coexist, and if you've heard of it, the idea is just that all of these different religions, philosophies, faiths, and whatnot, all have so much that they actually somehow support one another, and they can live together.

And it always strikes me as someone who has not studied religious studies, that if you actually study Islam, if you study some of these things, as I have, you recognize there is no commonality in where you end up.

Not one bit. One wants to kill the other for what they believe. One wants to accept everybody, but they'll be rejected by this group. It goes on and on and on and on. No, no.

The wide way leads to chaos. It's like an argument at a dinner table you never wanted to be a part of. The narrow way is through Jesus, and it is a narrow way, and that's why there's a decision and a cost.

John 10, verse 9, says, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Jesus is the way we enter this path.

He's the only one who left heaven to be a substitute for you and me. We celebrated this just now in communion, this idea of remembering what he did, the cost that was upon him.

Like I said, in Romans 5, 8, while we were still sinners, this is when he did this for us. That is a love that is hard to put words to.

It really is. So I think there's two things we have to consider about this narrow path. Number one, it requires surrender, absolute surrender.

It's small, it's tough to get into, and you have to lay things aside to get into the narrow way. And I know some of you may be thinking, what are you talking about, man? Well, if you've been through a TSA check in an airport, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I go up there, I have a beard and tattoos. You know, I get randomly selected in air quotes for a security check every time I go through.

I'm quite serious. I always get pulled off to the side. Now, it helps me jump the line, so I've come to actually kind of think it's quite a blessing. And I joke about it when, you know, I'm pulled aside.

I always get pulled aside now. I have to take off my belt, my shoes. They'll often, like, pull apart stuff, you know, look in my bags or whatever. I mean, you have to just take off your jacket, you know.

It's something. So nobody can say if they've been through an airport, you don't know what I'm talking about, having to let go of some things to get through a tiny little gate because they walk you through that little thing like this and you're just kind of like, okay, I hope I don't beep, you know.

Try to put my hands. Okay, there we go. Something whirls around and they have to tell you, okay, here you go. And I'm kind of thinking, this is an introvert's nightmare. I want to go just lay down and recover from this. But it reminds me of the narrow gate.

You've got to let go of some things in order to enter. You've got to let go of some of the things that you bring with you in life. One of my absolute favorite stories about this is in 2 Kings 5, okay, Naaman and the prophet Elijah.

So Naaman had leprosy and he thought, you know what? I'm a commander. I have all of these men. I have all of these accomplishments and achievements. Rides up on his horse and he's like, I'm going to get healed.

And Elijah looks at him and he says, okay, you've got to get rid of all of that and you've got to go dip yourself in the Jordan seven times. You know what Naaman did? He was furious.

He huffed away because he didn't want to let go of all of his accomplishments. He didn't want to let go of his name. He didn't want to let go of all of his pride. Everything. He wanted to keep all of that stuff and still get that blessing of the narrow way.

And a servant comes to him. I love this servant. One of the beautiful, nameless servants in the Bible that we read about and says, my Lord, wouldn't you do this if the prophet asked you to do a great thing?

Wouldn't you do it? And he said, this is a small thing. Talking about a wonderful conversation with your superior of just like focus, right? This is a small thing.

Just take your stuff off. So Naaman did. He went down and he took off all of his armor, stepped off on his horse, did all of that, dipped himself in the Jordan seven times.

You know what happened? He was healed. We've got to let go in order to take the narrow way. And it's going to cost you. I'm not talking money, but I am talking pride.

It's going to cost us to take the narrow way to follow Jesus. It cost the disciples their livelihood. It cost them relationships that they had that they were leaving behind. They had to because it cost them something to walk the narrow way, but it is the way of life.

Number two, the narrow gate requires surrender, but it also requires suffering. The way is difficult. And with an all of press, there's crushing.

There really is. There's a moment of crushing. Press down. And this struggle is not easy. And you know exactly what I mean because it's not easy to turn the other cheek.

It's not easy to not seek revenge. It's not easy to struggle with lust. It's not easy to be the more mature brother or sister in a situation.

It's not easy. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's not an easy road, but it is the right one. And it takes time. Romans 12, 2 says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, by the testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The world, the broad way, wants us to conform. They don't understand. They think, why are you going to church on Sunday? We could do all of this other kind of stuff. Why spend your time here?

Why do you believe that way? Wouldn't the family table conversations just be easier if you weren't a Christian? Right? The broad way wants us to conform to that.

But the wide gate leads to destruction. The problem is we need to understand the idea of delayed gratification. And this is what I mean about the eternal mindset.

Because when you have the eternal mindset, you realize the pressing, the crushing, the struggle, the difficulty that we may experience along with the joy, the peace, the love, and belonging that we can also receive, all of that, all of that comes with a great cost of our pride.

Now, these decisions are not easy to make. The narrow path can be tiring. But we're all born to this broad path. Romans 3, 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

All, not just some, all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We're born on the broad path. The decision is ours to step off of it. And we need to make a decision to break up with the world.

Get out of that ten-lane highway that goes nowhere and get into that one lane that leads to life. Deuteronomy 30, verse 19 to 20. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

This is Moses to the Israelites, of course, the Jewish people. Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him for he is your life and length of days that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give them.

Today is your day of decision. Choose life. Choose life. It isn't easy, but you're not alone.

We are not alone in this. Choose life. It's before you. It's tough. It's hard. But Jesus is the only way to the Father.

He's the only way into heaven. We need to understand that. Because there are people that will pull us away to that broad path. And that's where we switch into this last part.

Verse 15, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. Pay attention. Be on guard. Really terrible teachers and prophets exist.

They're out there. They're all over YouTube. Okay? You have to be very careful in discerning. I think a multitude of teachers is a great thing. I'll never say stop watching anything.

But I will say this. Be careful with who you watch. And be careful with their teaching. There's some guideposts that I think are helpful and healthy. Paul said in Acts 20, verse 29, I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock.

So it's interesting that Jesus is talking about two paths. The broad and the narrow way. But we also have to be aware because there are some false prophets and teachers that will pull us from one to the other if we're not careful.

And one of the easy signposts to recognize where do they sit with who Jesus is and where do they sit with what the Bible says. Because if a teacher says, well, the Bible didn't really say that.

Or the Bible didn't really mean to say this. Or Jesus, and this is what I heard this week, Jesus was wrong when he said this. You know immediately, run.

Run. Run. Those are terrible, terrible teachers that are drawing you from the narrow path to the wide. If they're trying to take the Bible, spin it, and change it so it actually fits their ministry, their message, or their calling, run.

Because it should be doing the opposite. The teacher or the prophet should 100% have their lives molded by the word of God and everything else is filtered by their life through that.

And that's a test. And it's an important one for us to have. So if you're hearing someone on YouTube or a quick soundbite walking through a reel and they say something, don't just go, oh, that sounds good.

That would sound way better at the dinner table if I brought that up. Take it to the word, read through it, and see it. Is it garbage? And if it is, throw it out and move on. Because they're deceptive.

They come in sheep's clothing. You know, it wasn't until medieval art, really, that we started to see the devil with a pitchfork, red with horns, you know.

And somehow that on the continent, we kind of forget that he actually started off as an angel. And I've heard reports even now. It's like, if you were to think about the devil, who he is, who he should be, he'd be beautiful, deceptive, cunning, evil.

But make no mistake, they don't advertise wolf and sheep's clothing. Hi, how are you? Right? They don't. They come in and they sound okay.

But their character and their life speak something very different. But I'll get into that in a minute. Verses 16 to 19. You'll recognize them by their fruits.

Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits. The type of tree determines the fruit you get. I'm learning that with my extremely limited knowledge of gardening that I'm trying to overcome right now.

The condition of the fruit reveals the character of the tree. So one, we need to discern the way they speak. We need to think about what words they're choosing to use.

How do we know if the teaching is false? Well, like I said, does it line up with scripture? Is it said right here? Or are they trying to make some weird accommodation by dismissing what the Bible actually says?

Do they claim to know something new? Oh, I have this new revelation. I have another book to write in Acts. Or I have another book that I can write. And I know it's from the Holy Spirit.

I'm going to add to the Bible. Run. Fast. Run from that guy or girl. Run. Do they deny a truth from the Bible to support their own ministry?

You know, God says, and I'm going to pick on one flavor of it right now. God says he wants us to have prosperity. But it's not what the world would tell you prosperity means.

God wants us to prosper in him, fully in him, from the inside out with our relationships through forgiveness, by receiving his mercy, by trusting on his unseen riches for the supply of the need of our life.

You may be called to have a great number in your bank account and to be a great servant of that with the people around you. Praise the Lord. You may be called to have a two-digit number in your bank account on a weekly basis, but you trust Lord with everything in your heart, your soul, and your body, and your mind, and you are absolutely trusting him to put food on the table, and he does.

Maybe you need to ask for help. Maybe you need to find out who needs the help. So I'm not making an argument for one or the other. What I'm saying is that it is really bad teaching when someone tells you that in order to be a mature and successful Christian, you have to be rich, or that it is somehow a product of a faithful life.

And oh, by the way, you're not healed because your faith isn't enough. This is reeking of the prosperity gospel, and it is false, false teaching. And I know this for a couple reasons.

One, because when we talk about faith and healing, okay, let's look at the Apostle Paul. He prayed three times, three times, to be healed, and the Lord said, my grace is sufficient for you.

And he wasn't. Can any of us sit in front of Paul, look him in the eye, and say, brother, you just don't have enough faith? No. In fact, if you want to try, please let me be a fly on the wall.

I want to see how it goes, but no, we can't do that. So that's one of the reasons. And the other reason is that we have to look at Jesus' life. He was born into a very poor family.

He worked with his hands. He helped his father as a carpenter. And that wasn't just working with wood. That was actually a multi-purpose role doing lots of different things. He knew how to live a practical life.

He knew how to deal with having more months at the end of the money. Jesus grew up in that environment fully man, yet fully God. And before he was released into his ministry, that's what it was like.

And after he was released into his ministry, he didn't have a private jet, he didn't have a driver, he didn't have anything like that. In fact, he quite often said that he doesn't even have a pillow. Do I have a rock for my head?

Do I have a place to sleep? They spent a lot of time out in the Judean wilderness. I've been there. It is wilderness and hot. Okay? So if we look at the life of Jesus and how he operated being fully man, and then we look at the heart of faith that we can see in Paul, who is an incredibly faithful man, yet still dealt with something that he couldn't have healed, then it's not about shame and it's not about guilt and it's not about oppression, which bad teaching will always, always give you.

It should be always about our Lord, always about God, his humility, his approach. There's one guy that we talked about earlier who says he has a private jet because there's all those demons that fly in public airways.

You know, and I heard that, I'm like, oh brother, you know, that's so painful to hear because I love riding on public airplanes. I won't shut up. I got a two-hour flight with somebody sitting beside me, that's captive audience.

see my tattoo. You know, Jesus, right? Do you want to talk about that? I love it. I can't wait for it. But there are some people that, like this other particular guy, he thinks, no, no, I'm going to have a private jet.

Again, look to the life of Jesus to show the wolves because here's Jesus, goes to Jacob's well, right, encounters a woman at the wrong time of day where women went to go gather water and she was doing that because her life was a little sus and you know, just, she didn't want all of the gossip.

She'd had a few lovers, had a few husbands, it was complicated. So she went to go draw water and here's Jesus sitting there and says, hey, can you give me a drink? We have no evidence to suggest that she didn't give him a drink of water.

So I like to think that she did. But they also had this conversation and this is a conversation that a rabbi should never have had with a woman by himself, let alone a Samaritan woman, right?

But he did that because he values people over process. And I heard the word recently and I love it that God just repurposes people or repeoples them.

There's a couple of different ways of doing it. I love that. So the false teacher is going to take a private jet to avoid his job. And if you've got a private jet, I'm not trying to judge you, I really am, but that to me is a dividing line in a way.

I look at that and I think, why not be with the people that you're trying to communicate the gospel with? Jesus went into uncomfortable situations to share the truth and the light and the love of God in places nobody else would go.

So shouldn't we? I don't know. The second one that we can look at is how they live their character. Does what the teachers say line up with how they live?

We have to be able to look at that. If they are really, really deceitful and angry people, but on Sundays they're just a big warm kitten, but they go home and they beat their wife, which is a real situation I heard of years ago.

You can't tell me that that's not a wolf in sheep's clothing. A broken person that needs healing and help and support. Yes. But they need to get away from the pulpit for a while.

Maybe forever. So we have to be able to tell what the fruit is like. Does it line up with the way they speak? Are they speaking unity or disunity?

If someone gets up and says, ours is the only true church in town, wrong. If someone gets up and says, our denomination is the only one that really follows the gospel, wrong.

You see what I'm saying? Lined it up with the word of God. Jesus instructs us, be aware there is a right path and there is a wrong path. There is a wide path and there is a narrow path.

Verse 20 says, thus you will recognize them by their fruits. The fruit will find them out. Get really, really good at studying the word of God because it's really hard to tell a fake if you don't know what the true one looks like.

So look to Jesus as our ultimate shepherd, our ultimate priest, okay? And I know it's an unfair comparison for any of us to compare ourselves against him.

But what I like to say is that's falling down in the right direction when we start looking to Jesus as our example in life and in love and we start acting like him and doing what he would do and asking ourselves that question.

There are a couple of words that I think I want to leave off with today just to challenge us a little bit in this. And the first is desire. Do you desire to know the Lord?

And I'm not talking about, yeah, I'll check out his book. I'm not talking about it at all. I'm talking about a desire from in here where you just can't help yourself.

I got to get to know this guy. I have to get to know this man, Jesus. I have to get to know my Lord. I have to get to know what communion really means for me.

I have to get to know him and what he spoke in these different situations or what I'm going through in my life. Do you have that desire to pursue him, to read his word?

Being rooted firmly in the word, reading it regularly and taking his word into your heart because you want it more and more. Do you have that desire? And maybe you're all going to say, absolutely.

Praise God. God, if I'm going to be real with you, that desire is up and down sometimes for me. I'll wake up and man, I'm just sometimes I can't get enough of this.

And other days, I'm so full and tripping over my own attitude that I put this aside. It's always a mistake. But I do it.

And maybe if you want to be real and honest, you do it too. And that's okay because this is not called to a life of perfection. This is just simply a call to life to follow Jesus who is perfection.

But it's hard to tell a counterfeit unless you know what the real thing is. Read the word however you do it. If you listen to an audio Bible and that's how you read the word, good for you.

If you read the physical Bible, good. If you read it on your phone, great. Whatever. Whatever it is, just read the word. The second word is delight. And it may seem a funny word to add to this but bear with me for a moment because the danger is all around us.

Maybe look back at the past year and something's made you angry and something's made you frightful or frustrated and you're not enjoying the path that's before you. Will you delight with me anyways?

Delight that the Lord has a plan. And it doesn't end here with you and me. That it's an eternal plan that we're a part of. That even if our part in this story is only for a moment, that others will carry on this legacy beyond us.

Delight in that. Delight in it. When I pass on from this church which I'm quite convinced will be when I pass on from this earth, I know that there will be people here to take over and carry on that heart of being real.

Carry on because it was already here. Make sure it's here from this place, from the pulpit. I charge you with that task when I'm taken from this planet.

Make sure whomever is up here is real. Not like fake Sunday voice. No, you don't need that. Nobody needs that. It's not real.

Be real. Okay? So delight in this. The way is narrow, but Jesus goes before you. He's beaten the path already on the cross. He's right in front of us carving that path now.

I've many, many times followed Jesus into the dark not knowing what step was next. Coming here was a part of that. There was moments where it was like, I remember I told the guy who took over the church that I left in Canada.

I sat down with him and I said, okay, I have to go. And he was like, okay. I told him the whole story. I had been praying about this for a year. He said, well, where are you going?

I said, I have no idea. I have no idea. But I know that I'm on this process now of following the Lord into something and he's just calling me to take one step into the darkness each way, trusting in him.

Right? And he led us here and he made the way here and he beat the path for us here and we followed. But it was one step after another into the dark.

light. And now there's light. And I can look back at that and I can say, God, I know you can do this. You're going to do this for all these other situations. Because that's what you do.

Your light sometimes has to shine a long way, but it does shine. And the darkness can't overcome it. So let's embrace a brand new day together. Read the word.

Get in the word. Be able to tell the fakes and dismiss them. Unsubscribe for them. Delete the channel. Whatever you got to do. Delete the text chain. Whatever it is.

Start a new day. Start afresh. Choose the narrow path. And though it may be difficult, you will never walk alone. Let's pray.