All Sermons

Christian Conversion By Albert N. Martin

12/06/1987

Now, if you have brought a Bible with you, may I encourage you, please, to turn to the portion of God's Word that was read in our hearing.
For those of you who were not here, for the reading of the Word, that reading was found in the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew's Gospel and the seventh chapter.
Now, there are many things in this life concerning which ignorance and indifference are neither blameworthy nor fatal.
Now, I had several ears that did not hear me when I said what I said, and it's important, and I want to repeat it.
There are many things in this life concerning which neither ignorance nor indifference are either blameworthy or fatal.
There are many questions and many issues which, if you or I were asked about them, we could say, I don't know, and I don't care.
And we would be nonetheless for our ignorance or our indifference.
But there are some matters concerning which ignorance or indifference are both blameworthy and fatal.
Issues concerning which not one of us in this room tonight ever dare say, I don't care, I don't know, I could care less.
And it's those issues to which I want to direct your attention tonight, issues concerning which ignorance and indifference are nothing less than both tragic, blameworthy, and fatal.
Now, one such issue is the issue bound up in this question. What must I know? What must I do?
What must I experience in order to be ready to die and to be thrust out into that world of eternity from which there is no return?
Now, that's a question concerning which none of us has the luxury of indifference.
Because there's only one thing sure about every man, woman, boy, or girl in this room and those of you in the side room, and it's this.
You will die, and you will be thrust into that world of eternity from which there is no return.
For the scripture says, it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this comes judgment.
And if the Bible makes anything clear, it makes it very clear that thrust into that world, we will be in one of two places forever.
A place of unspeakable bliss, a place of unspeakable glory, a place of ineffable light and joy and delight,
or a place of woe, misery, torment, and agony where there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and from which there is no escape.
So when we come to the question, what must I know? What must I do? What must I become in order to be ready to be launched into that world, into the place of light and joy and safety,
the place that the Bible calls heaven, the place where people come into the full possession of eternal life?
I say ignorance or indifference to that question is blameworthy, and it is tragic, and it is fatal.
And I know a few passages in all of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation which more clearly address that very question and answer it in a concentrated, simple, and vivid manner than does the passage that we will examine in our study of the word of God tonight.
And I'm referring to Matthew 7 verses 13 and 14.
Here our Lord Jesus Christ speaking says, Enter ye in by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction and many are they that enter in thereby.
For narrow is the gate and straightened or compressed hedged up is the way that leads unto life and few are they that find it.
Now before we begin to examine these words very carefully, let me say just two very simple but important things on the threshold of entering into our study of these words.
First of all, let me remind you of who spoke them.
These are the words of our Lord Jesus Christ himself.
These are the words of the incarnate God.
These are the words of him who said, I am the way, the truth, as well as the life.
These are the words of the one who said, though heaven and earth pass away, my words shall never pass away.
These are the words of the one who said in John chapter 12, the word that I have spoken unto you shall judge you in the last day.
If these words were just the words of a fellow human being, you might snub them, you might debate with them, you might ignore them.
You might even spit upon them and trample them under your feet and have no tragic results followed.
But these are not the words of a fellow human being.
They are the words of God himself, the incarnate God, the God-man Christ Jesus who said, though heaven and earth pass away, my word will never pass away.
And he said, the very word I speak unto you will meet you in the day of judgment.
These are not the words of a reverend.
They're not the words of a preacher.
If they were, you might discount the words of a clergyman.
For a clergyman, if he speaks his own words, is simply another fellow human being with a title and perhaps with a collar and a gown or an ordinary business suit, but he's simply another fellow mortal.
These are not the words of a priest.
These are not the words of a pope.
These are not the words of a rabbi.
These are not the words of anyone other than God himself, the incarnate God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
You better listen to what God says.
You see, what this preacher has to say about this great question, this great question, what must I know?
What must I be?
What must I do to be ready to die and go to judgment and from judgment enter heaven?
When Jesus Christ speaks to that issue, you better listen, because in the last day, it is Christ who will determine your destiny, not this preacher,
not any other clergyman, priest, pope, rabbi, or professional religious person.
So I would remind you on the threshold of who it is that speaks these words, but then secondly, I would remind you of the setting in which he spoke them.
These words were not spoken in a vacuum.
They were spoken as our Lord brings his famous, what we commonly call Sermon on the Mount, to a conclusion.
And in this sermon, the great Magna Carta of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus has been describing the subjects of his kingdom in those wonderful beatitudes in Matthew 5.
He has been describing the righteous standards of his kingdom in Matthew 5, 21 and following.
And then in chapter 6, he has been describing the practical concerns and the religious and personal life of the subjects of his kingdom.
But now as he comes to chapter 7, like any good preacher, he is concerned that people not merely have an understanding of the subjects of his kingdom,
the standards of his kingdom, the practical concerns of living life in this world as a son or daughter of the kingdom, he is concerned that people actually enter into that kingdom.
And so now he comes at this point to begin to press upon the consciences of his hearers that it is not enough to know about his kingdom.
He is concerned that all his listeners enter into that kingdom, and so he says as he draws his sermon to an application and a conclusion, enter in.
And he says it in the imperative. He speaks these words with regal imperative authority, enter in.
Enter in by the narrow gate, walk along the compressed way that leads unto life.
Well, so much then for those brief words of introduction, but they're necessary so that as we come to the passage, you will not indulge the luxury of saying,
oh well, another preacher with another few ideas, interesting, not so interesting, dull, lively.
My friends, those issues don't matter. Jesus Christ is telling you in this passage what you, you, you, you, you must know, what you must be, what you must do if you are to enter light.
May God grant that we shall listen and take to heart the words of the Son of God.
First of all, then, note what he tells us in this passage about the necessity of that real conversion which leads to eternal life and to heaven in the end.
What he tells us here about the necessity of that real conversion which leads to eternal life and heaven at the end.
Notice how our Lord ties these three things together. He says in verse 13, enter ye in by the narrow gate.
And then he describes an alternate gate and way and then he comes back in verse 14 and notice how these three things are tied together.
For narrow is the gate and straightened or compressed, hedged up is the way that leads into life.
So you have three things, a gate that opens up into a way or a path and the path which leads to its destination called life.
Now do you see that in the passage? Enter in to the gate which leads to a way which issues into life.
So you have the three things joined inseparably by our Lord in that order. The narrow gate, the compressed way, and the destination of life.
Now according to the Bible, life is not mere existence. According to the Bible and according to this passage, life is the opposite of destruction.
Notice verse 13, wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.
So the opposite of life is destruction and in the scriptures destruction is not annihilation.
Destruction is that place I alluded to earlier called hell, outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
And the companionship of the devil and the damned and all who are strangers to God and his salvation in Jesus Christ.
Life then is the opposite of that. Life in this passage is heaven itself, that place of ultimate perfection where God will be known with undimmed spiritual knowledge.
Where communion with God will be enjoyed in unbroken delight. Where there will be unfettered access to the tree of life.
And where there will be the company of all who have been redeemed by the grace and the power of the living God.
Now let me ask you a very simple question. What is your desire with regard to your ultimate destination? Is it destruction or is it eternal life?
What is your desire? Sitting here tonight in this building, this night, the 12th of June 1987, what's your desire?
Is there anyone here who in his mind is saying I really desire destruction at the end of the road? I really do.
I can't wait until I die and go to judgment. I can't wait until in judgment Almighty God says to me,
depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire. I can't wait until I sink into hell.
I can't wait until I feel the agony of God's wrath poured out upon me and gnash my teeth and weep and wail.
I can't wait for it. Is there anyone here so utterly demented to say I can't wait for destruction?
That's what I look forward to. I trust there is none so utterly spiritually insane as to entertain that thought for a moment.
No. In the breast of every one of us I trust there is some measure of desire for life.
That when I die, when you die and go to judgment, there is some element of desire sitting here tonight that the other side of judgment,
there will be the words welcome into the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world.
Welcome into light, into life, into joy, into love, into everlasting peace and happiness
and the companionship of God and of his son and all of the redeemed and Moses and the prophets and the apostles.
I hope there is at least some little inkling of longing for life. Well if so my friend will you listen to the words of Jesus?
You'll never come to the destination of life unless you get through the narrow gate and walk along the compressed way because Jesus has tied them together.
Do you see that in your Bible? I didn't do it. He tied them together.
He who came from heaven, in order to take a great multitude back to heaven with him, he says enter the gate, walk along the way which leads unto life.
If you miss the gate you'll never get life. If you say you're in the gate but you're not on the way, you deceive yourself for it's only the way which leads unto life.
But you can't get into the way unless you get through the gate. If you get through the gate you're on the way. If you're on the way you'll end up with life.
Gate, way, life and what God has joined together let no man put asunder.
Let no clergyman tell you that because he's put water on your head or dunked you in a tank of water 557 and a half times that that will get you into heaven.
Let no clergyman, let no priest, let no church tell you that you can get to heaven if you go through certain rituals and mumble certain words and go through certain rubrics of religion.
Jesus has said you must get through this narrow gate. You must be found upon this compressed way if you would ever attain to life.
Jesus Christ himself has said it and because he is God no one can negate or alter his word.
What do we learn from that? Well we learn from that the necessity then of that real conversion which leads to eternal life.
For this entering through the gate is simply a pictorial way of setting forth the concept of real conversion.
Now then notice in the second place having convinced you I trust from the passage of the necessity of real conversion which leads to eternal life.
Notice what our Lord says about the difficulty of that real conversion which leads to life.
The difficulty of that real conversion which leads to eternal life.
And our Lord underscores the difficulty by the use of a very vivid figure of speech and every Palestinian would have understood what he was talking about.
He likens true conversion to passing through a very narrow passageway or portal.
You might be coming into a city and at a particular place in that city the only way to enter in was through a very narrow portal.
It may have had a very low entrance, very narrow entrance and if you came up to it with a knapsack on your back and in contemporary parlance if you came with a two suitor in one hand and a three suitor in the other and an over-the-shoulder garment bag on your back and a knapsack strapped over your back there's no way you could get through without unpacking and squeezing yourself through that narrow portal.
To use a contemporary parallel it's like the turnstile at a football stadium.
At one of our big stadiums when you come up to the entrance and must pass through the turnstile and people that are a little portly often have to suck in their chest and turn sideways to get through.
It's narrow to make sure that people don't go through two by two and get two through on the ticket of one that they've paid for.
Well that's the picture. Jesus is likening the difficulties of true conversion to passing through a very narrow portal, a very narrow passageway, a very narrow turnstile.
And whatever you are carrying with you as you come up to that portal you must put it down, you must unpack, you must rid yourself of it, you must be stripped of it that you might pass through that portal and into that narrow compressed way which leads unto light.
And this is why in a similar passage in Luke's Gospel chapter 13 Jesus used even stronger language. He said agonize to enter in by the narrow gate.
He said agonize, in other words he said whatever you've got to do to get your nap stack off your back, to get rid of your baggage and squeeze through, be prepared to do anything necessary to get through that narrow portal.
For it and it alone puts you on the way which alone leads to life.
Now to be specific, what are the specifics which make entering this narrow gate so difficult?
Well according to the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of the Bible there are four things, four basic things which make it difficult to enter that narrow gate and these comprise the heart of the difficulty of true conversion.
We've seen the necessity of true conversion, we must get through the narrow gate even though there's a very pleasant alternative beckoning to us, a nice big wide gate that opens up into a very broad way.
Jesus said that leads to destruction, the judgment of God, outer darkness, weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth.
We say no, as attractive as it appears, I don't want that, I want life even though to have life I must get through the narrow gate and I must walk upon that compressed and straightened way.
It is that which I desire. Well what are the difficulties then?
If you would enter through the narrow gate of true conversion what difficulties will every one of us encounter?
Number one, the difficulty of forsaking from the heart all self-sufficiency and self-righteousness as the basis of obtaining eternal life.
This is the primary difficulty of entering through the narrow gate.
It is the difficulty of forsaking from the heart all self-sufficiency and all self-righteousness as the ground or the basis of obtaining eternal life.
You see sin has so twisted our minds and perverted our judgment that left to ourselves we are either completely unconcerned about obtaining eternal life or completely deceived as to how we obtain eternal life.
And Jesus illustrated both kinds of people in parables. Some of you will remember in the 12th chapter of Luke he told the parable of a certain rich man who became very successful and he pulled down his barns and built bigger barns and then he took an early retirement.
And he sat back, folded his hands and said, Now soul, you have much goods laid up for many years. Take your ease. Eat, drink and be merry.
You see there was a man completely indifferent about obtaining eternal life. This present life was so good to him he had no time to even think of eternal life.
If someone had come up to him and said, Sir, when your money's gone and your health's gone and you come to the door of death, what then? He would have said, Look man, I've got no time to think morbid thoughts.
I've got no time to think negative thoughts. I've worked hard. I'm now going to reap the benefits of my labors. Leave me alone to enjoy my life.
And Jesus said, That night God said to him, You fool, you fool, this night shall your soul be required of you and those things that you've provided, whose will they then be?
You see, Jesus described people who don't give a hoot about eternal life. All they're concerned about is this life and its pleasures and its rewards.
But then Jesus also described someone who was concerned about acceptance with God and eternal life but who tried to get it on the wrong foundation.
He described him in Luke 18. A certain man went up into the temple to pray and it said he prayed thus with himself saying, Oh God, I thank you. I'm not like other men.
I'm not a murderer. I'm not an extortioner. I'm not even like this publican. I do my religious thing, my fast, my tithe.
You see, he was concerned about life but he was absolutely deceived concerning the basis on which a man gets eternal life.
So you have in this world two great classes of people. Those who don't even care about eternal life.
All they're concerned about is filling their bellies, gratifying their passions and their appetites and the pleasures of this present world.
They live as though they had no never-dying soul that would live in heaven or hell forever.
And if there are such people here tonight, I pray God will somehow bring you out of your never-never land of spiritual indifference and bring you to the reality,
my friend, that you're going to live somewhere forever and you better be concerned about eternal life.
But then there are others. They're concerned about life. They're concerned about getting to heaven.
They're concerned about being accepted by God and with God and going to be in his presence forever.
But like that Pharisee, they're completely deceived as to the grounds on which sinners obtain eternal life.
And this is what makes the gate of true conversion a narrow gate because you know what we must do when we come up to that gate?
According to the Bible, every single man or woman who ever comes up to the narrow gate of true conversion must forsake from the heart all self-sufficiency and all self-righteousness as the ground, the basis of obtaining eternal life.
We must come up to that gate where we will always find a cross. And when we look at that cross, that cross is God's changeless monument to the fact that no sinner can earn eternal life by what he does.
The scripture says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God and that the wages of sin is death.
And the prophet Isaiah said that even our best things, our righteousnesses, are as filthy rags in God's sight.
So that if you come up to the gate and say, God, I should get through the gate that leads to the road that leads to life because look, God, I've done this, this, this.
God says your best things are like filthy, polluted, defiled garments. Now if the best things we do are filthy and vile, what must the bad things be?
You see, in this very Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was exposing the religion of the Pharisees who thought that they could build a ladder to heaven out of the raw materials of their own religious endeavors and their own self-righteousness.
And he was demolishing their mistaken notions and showing them by going to the true meaning of the law, which not only touches what our hands do and where our feet go, but it touches the motives of the heart, the thoughts of the heart.
Here a Pharisee would come up to the gate and say, oh, God, let me in because I never defiled another man's bed by adultery. I never stained a knife with the blood of a fellow human being.
I've never committed adultery. I've not murdered. I've never bowed down to a foreign God.
Jesus said, you poor Pharisees, you don't understand that God's law goes beyond what your hand touches, beyond where your feet go. God's law touches the deepest springs of your heart so that the very look of lust is adultery.
The very attitude of hatred is murder. The very desire for an object that is not yours in the will of God is idolatry. Covetousness is idolatry. And he was showing these Pharisees that they could not get to heaven based upon their own doings.
And that's true of us as well as of them. And the gate that leads into the way that issues into life is a narrow gate because at that gate we must forsake from the heart all self-sufficiency and all self-righteousness as the ground of obtaining life.
That's why when Jesus starts describing all the sons and daughters of the kingdom in the Beatitudes, do you notice where he begins? Turn back to chapter 5 of Matthew's Gospel. Where does he begin?
He begins right here. Blessed, happy, fulfilled, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
The first two characteristics he describes of all the sons and daughters of the kingdom is they are poor in spirit and they mourn. What's a poor man? He's a man who doesn't have what it takes to eke out a subsistence existence.
Well, Jesus said all the sons and daughters of the kingdom are poor in spirit. They have been brought to see. I have nothing. I can do nothing to earn life, to commend myself to God. If ever I'm to have eternal life, I must have it as the gift provided by another.
I'm going to make a statement and they may shock some of you, but it's true. No one gets to heaven who doesn't deserve it and hasn't earned it. Heaven is a reward earned.
But the problem is you and I can't earn it. Someone else has earned it for sinners. By his perfect life, by his death upon the cross, Jesus earned a title to heaven for every sinner that will acknowledge he has no title of his own and will put the case of his sinful soul in the hands of Jesus.
No one gets to heaven but those who earn it. But we can't earn it. We have forfeited all title to heaven because of our sin and there is nothing we can do to earn back that title.
And this is the glory of the gospel, that Jesus Christ came into our condition and where we lived, he perfectly kept the law of God in thought and word and motive and deed, everything God required from the deepest springs of desire and perspective and motive and attitude and disposition to the outward deeds of life.
The father could say of his son, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And then all that human sin deserved in terms of the wrath of God against our breaking God's law.
The scripture says Christ became a curse for us. Christ died the just for the unjust. The scripture says he who knew no sin was made sin for us.
In other words, he earned a title to heaven by his perfect life and by his death upon the cross. And he is prepared to give us a gift, that title, to everyone who come up to the gate and say, oh God, I've got nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing to hold in my hands as a ticket of entrance.
In the language of that well-known hymn, we must come say, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I claim.
Now that's why it's a narrow gate, because you see in the pride of our hearts we want to feel, well at least I've done something, at least I've got some good breeding, at least I had some good upbringing, I learned my catechism, I was confirmed, I was baptized.
My friend, listen, there is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at that gate that you can sneak in with you and then bring it out and say, look God, I've got this goody, doesn't this help though?
God says you must forsake from the heart all self-sufficiency and all self-righteousness if you are to enter the narrow gate.
You want a beautiful commentary on a man who did this? You read Philippians chapter 3, where the apostle Paul speaks about his good breeding, he speaks about his perfect religious upbringing, he speaks about his religious zeal, his religious activity, and you know what he said about all of it?
He piled it all up, one thing upon another, and he said, I count it all but dung.
And the euphemistic translations of some of the modern renderings are just that, he called it dung, skubala, cow dung.
He said, that's what I think about my perfect breeding, that's what I think about my being circumcised the eighth day, that's what I think about all of my religious activity and zeal and knowledge and my good religious breeding and associations.
When it comes to commending me to God, it is of no more worth than a stinking rotten pile of cow dung.
Pretty flattering, isn't it?
Now are you prepared to call all of your lovely breeding, all of your lovely remembering your Bible verses and getting your little string of pins for perfect attendance at Sunday school until it almost bent you over by its weight?
Are you prepared, all your years of church attendance and all the rest, are you prepared to say all of that is nothing but a pile of dung as far as commending me to God and giving me a title to heaven?
Now do you see why it's a narrow gate? The pride of the human heart is such that there are very few who are ready to call all of their own righteousness filthy rags and cow dung.
But my friend, until you are, you'll never get into the gate. It's too narrow for you to slip through even with a little cosmetic case of some of your nice little deeds you did in Sunday school and some of your nice little services performed to the little old ladies in the church and taking care of the flowers at the table every Saturday.
My friend, you can't even get through with a little cosmetic bag of your own virtue. You've got to stand there stripped, utterly naked of anything to commend you to God.
That's why few find it. But that's what Jesus said, enter into the narrow gate. And I wanted to spend most of my time there because that is the heart of the gospel.
The heart of the gospel is the call to sinners who have no righteousness to own up to the reality and then throw themselves upon the mercy of Jesus Christ who is made unto us righteous.
But then secondly, much more briefly, there's a second great difficulty when we come to that narrow gate and it's this. It is the difficulty of forsaking from the heart self-will as the governing principle of life.
You see, we must not only forsake self-righteousness as the ground of obtaining life and take the gift of righteousness from God in Christ, but we must, if we're going to get through that narrow gate, forsake from the heart self-will as the governing principle of life.
When man came from the hand of his creator, he came forth a creature whose whole life centered in doing the will of God. There was a throne in Adam and Eve's heart and on that throne God sat as the unrivaled and well-beloved sovereign.
But when sin came, self-will became the usurper king in the heart of man. So that the scripture says, all we like sheep have gone astray, we've turned every one of us to what? His own way. We've turned to doing our own thing.
2 Corinthians 5 15, and that he died that they who live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him no longer live unto themselves. That's a description of every one of us by nature. We live to please ourselves. Self-will becomes the governing principle of life.
Now when we come to that narrow gate, we not only find a cross which says we must forsake all self-righteousness as the ground of obtaining life, but we also find a crown that says we have got to bow and give up self-will as the governing principle of our lives.
Whenever Jesus called people into attachment to himself, what was the first requirement? If any man will come after me, let him what? Deny himself. Notice he didn't say, let him deny smoking cigarettes. Let him deny chewing tobacco. Let him deny drinking beer. Let him deny going to the cinema.
Let him deny this, that, or the other. No. He said let him deny himself. What does it mean to deny himself? It means to look yourself in the eye and say whatever your name is, you have been sitting on the throne that doesn't belong to you.
There's a throne in your heart made by God and for God, and you have been a usurper king. Get down and welcome the rightful king to his rightful place in your heart. That's what it means to deny yourself.
People will gladly take up a little bit of religion, a little bit of morality, a little bit of decency, just so long as they can go on running their own lives and doing their own thing.
Just so long as they can define what masculinity is and femininity and roles in husband-wife relationships. Just so long as they can go on calling the shots about ethics and morals and what is permissible and not permissible in personal relationships, sexual practices, preferences.
Just so long as they can sit on the throne, or they'll gladly do a little bit of religious thing here, a little bit of religious thing there, but to get down off the throne and say, oh living God in the person of Jesus, I abdicate the throne.
You take up the throne that was made by you and for you and sit as unrivaled king.
Now my friend, that's why it's a narrow gate, and Jesus Christ will not tolerate anything less than unrivaled right to sit on the throne room of your heart.
He said, if any man come to me and hates not father, mother, brother, sister, gay in his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
He said, if you come after me, you will find that there may well be a sort of division in your own family. He that loveth father, mother, brother, sister more than me is not worthy of me. That's what Christ said.
That's why it's a narrow gate. That narrow gate of conversion not only says that I must repudiate all self-righteousness as the ground of obtaining life and be prepared to accept the gift of life and give all of the praise to Jesus, the author of life who died and rose for sinners that I might have life,
that I must repudiate from the heart all self-will as the governing principle of life from henceforth to become the bond slave of Jesus Christ.
Now that's why some of you aren't Christians. And you know what's the tragic thing? In our day, people have been told this damnable lie that you can trust Jesus and what he did in his perfect life and death
and have the benefits of his cross and get through the gate while carrying with you all the baggage of still running your own life. And sometime later along the way, you can decide to put down the baggage of self-will and you can surrender and you can take Christ as Lord.
My friends, that's a lie from the pit. It's a narrow gate and you don't go through with the two-suiter of self-will unchallenged and unbroken.
But then it's a narrow gate for a third reason because when we come up to that gate, there is the difficulty of forsaking from the heart all sin as the willful practice of our lives.
There is the difficulty of forsaking from the heart all sin as the willful practice of our lives.
You see, all the way through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been making one thing abundantly clear. His kingdom is a righteous kingdom.
You remember one of the Beatitudes? Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after what? Righteousness. Blessed are the pure in heart.
People who are concerned for something more than just mere external morality. They want a purity that touches the springs of their being.
And then he goes on in chapter 5 and says, you have heard that it was said and he describes the external shallow moral code of the Pharisees.
And he says, no, God's law and obedience to that law demands that you're prepared to have God renovate your thoughts and your motives and your looks and your glances.
And then Jesus really used what we would call grotesque figures of speech.
He said if there's a certain sin or appetite or relationship that seems to constantly lead you into sin, if thy right hand offends thee, hack it off and cast it from thee.
It is better to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into hell.
He said if you have an eye that offends you, gouge it out and cast it from you rather than having two eyes to enter into hell.
My friends, the meek and gentle Jesus said those words. I didn't say them. He said them. Right here in the Sermon on the Mount.
What is he saying? As he comes to a conclusion, he says, my kingdom is a kingdom in which all the members of it have forsaken from the heart all sin as the willful practice of their lives.
Will they still sin? Yes, because in this very sermon he said, when ye pray, say, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts.
He knows that those in his kingdom will still sin. But there's a world of difference between sinning because of the infirmity of the flesh and remaining corruption.
But hating the sin, loathing the sin, longing to be rid of the sin, and drinking in sin like water and deliberately, willfully sparing some darling right hand sin, some darling right eye sin.
You see, it's a narrow gate because there are few people prepared to forsake from the heart all sin as the willful practice of their lives.
That's why the rich young ruler couldn't get through the gate. Not because he was rich. Rich men have gotten through the gate. Zacchaeus was a rich man. He got through the gate.
Abraham was a rich man. He got through the gate. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 6, charge them that are rich in this world. There were rich Christians in the church at Ephesus.
You see, it wasn't the rich man's riches in themselves. It was his determination to keep those riches as a god. And Jesus said, smash your god or you'll never get through the gate.
And though he loved him, the scripture says he let him go. He went away sorrowful. Why? He did not want to put down the god of his attachment to his riches.
Now I ask you, young men and women, older men and women, what sin is as dear to you as a right hand or a right eye? What sin? What is it?
You've been nursing that grudge to that relative that you feel snubbed you 30 years ago and you said, I won't forgive them. I should have been asked to be the bridesmaid or the maid of honor.
And all I was asked to do was to, oh yes, I've met people nursing sins like that for 50 years. I confronted that just two weeks ago in pastoral counseling.
One of our own members coming saying, pastor, I need help to try to help my aging mother. She's been nursing for 50 years, a bitter grudge, because she felt she wasn't given quite the place of prominence in her sister's wedding, she should have.
Imagine going to hell for nursing a 50 year old grudge. What's your sin? Dear is a right hand. Precious is a right eye. You say, I just couldn't live without that thing.
Jesus said, you won't live unless you get rid of that thing. You don't get rid of it in your own strength. You don't get rid of it in your own power.
But when you come to the gate, you say, Lord Jesus, I do desire by your power to cut off that right hand, to pluck out that right eye.
Lord Jesus, I do desire to get through the narrow gate. That's what repentance is. One Puritan called repentance the vomit of the soul.
It's a bit coarse, but it expresses the reality. It's the vomit of the soul where sin is regurgitated and appears in your eyes now no more attractive than that which has been regurgitated.
Are you prepared to get through a narrow gate that demands the forsaking from the heart of all sin as the willful practice of your life?
If not, there's only one way for you, my friend. It's the nice big wide gate of sham conversion, of decisionism that says all you need to do is nod your head, tip your hat to the fact Jesus died on the cross and you're fixed up forever.
That's a big wide gate. But Jesus said you go through that gate and onto that road and it ends in destruction.
But then, fourthly and finally, there's this great difficulty that makes true, real conversion difficult. And you know what it is?
It's this fourth difficulty of forsaking from the heart all willful attachment to the world as your companion in life.
The difficulty of forsaking from the heart all willful attachment to the world as your companion in life.
Now the word world in the Bible is used many ways, but here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses the world to speak of the aggregate, the sum total of unsaved men and women with their standards and ambitions.
And he says my people are the light of the world. They are the salt of the earth.
And now he says would you get through that narrow gate? Then you've got to be prepared to take the wedding band that has married you to the world, take it off and throw it into the deepest sea and say goodbye to the world.
That world of unconverted men and women, fellows and girls, work associates and neighbors with their standards of morality or non-morality, with their standards of right and wrong and their standards of values, their notions of the role of women, the role of men, their notions and standards of what is important.
Jesus said you've got to be prepared to forsake the world as your companion in life and be prepared to attach yourself to the people of God called the church, his people, with what the world calls is their funny standards and their narrow-minded thinking.
They're so narrow-minded they think there's only one way to heaven. That's right, they do, because Jesus said there is only one way. And they're so narrow-minded they say adultery is wrong in every situation. Premarital sex is wrong in every situation.
They say in their narrowness that women are actually to have a fixed role if they're married, they're to be submissive to their husbands, they're to be keepers at home.
If men are married, they are to lovingly and graciously rule their homes. As Christ rules the church, they're a narrow-minded, strict bunch. That's what the world says about us.
You've got to be willing to join that bunch and live by the standards of that bunch, or if you are determined to keep the world as your companion, then you'll perish with the world in heaven.
But you can't have both. Listen to John, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world, and the world passes away and the lust thereof.
But he that does the will of God abides forever. You see why real conversion is difficult, don't you? You see it? See why it's difficult?
It's a narrow gate. It's a narrow turnstile. And you've got to put down the free suitor of your own righteousness and confess that there's nothing you can do to commend yourself to God.
And if you're ever to be accepted before God, all of the credit will go to Jesus Christ who died and rose again for sinners to make a perfect righteousness and then to give it as a gift to everyone who comes to the gate naked and stripped and poor in spirit and says like the publican, God be merciful to me, the sinner.
It's a narrow gate. We must not only forsake from the heart all self-righteousness as the ground of life, we must forsake from the heart self-will as the principle of life and be prepared to say, Lord Jesus, I embrace you as the rightful owner of the throne of my heart.
I welcome you to sit upon that throne to be my sovereign and my guide through all of life, to live by the rule of your word in the strength of your spirit.
You must thirdly forsake from the heart all sin as the willful practice of your life, the most darling sin, the most hidden sin, that grudge, that lust, that appetite, that practice known only to you and God, as dear and as much a part of you as right hand and right eye must be cut off and cast away, plucked out and cast from you.
It's a narrow gate and you must at that gate forsake all willful attachment to the world as your companion in life.
Now notice how Jesus closes the sermon and this is what makes it so sobering. Look at the passage. He says in verse 14, narrow is the gate, compressed is the way that leads to life.
And this to me is one of the most tragic statements in all of the Bible. And few, and few, and few are they that find it.
Now the few is not absolutely because the Bible says Christ died to purchase to himself a great multitude whom no man can number out of every kindred, tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.
And they shall be one day in all the splendor and glory of his own redemptive work in them before his throne, singing blessing and glory and honor and praise be unto him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the lamb forever and ever.
And they shall see his face and follow the lamb whithersoever he goes. So when our Lord said few there be that find it, he doesn't mean few in absolute terms, but he means this.
Few in any given generation. Few even in the midst of the most religious people because he was talking right there in the midst of the only nation under heaven that had God's word, the Jewish nation.
The only nation under heaven that had the place of God's special dwelling, the temple, that had a divinely instituted priesthood and sacrificial system, and yet with all of those privileges he said few there be that find it.
Why? Why? Why few that find it? Not because it's not made plain, but it's because men love their sin and their self-righteousness and the world and self-will.
Now I ask you as I close tonight, will you be one of the few in this generation who say, oh God, I'm going to take the words of Jesus seriously.
I'm done with all this fooling around with religion. I want to know I'm through that gate. And I'm not going to give myself any rest until I am absolutely certain based upon the word of God that I have turned from all self-righteousness as the ground of my acceptance with God, from self-will as the governing principle of my life, from all willful attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to sin as the practice of my life, from all attachment to
the world as my companion in life, God I will not rest until I know that I'm through the narrow gate and on the compressed way that leads unto life. Oh my friend, listen, listen. Old Matthew Henry stated it so beautifully. He said, what would you think if there were set before a man a very narrow, compressed, craggy gate that led upon a rock-strewn, difficult,
compressed, craggy path, but at the end of that gate and path there was a beautiful mansion. And within that mansion there was spread a banquet table. And then over to the left there was a big, wide, beautifully ornate gate that led out on a very smooth, wide, commodious, what we would say highway. But you could see that at the end it led down into
a horrible pit of muck and filth and quicksand that swallowed up everyone who went through that gate and on that way. What choice would you make if you saw the whole picture? You stood back and you said, boy, that's a narrow gate. I can't get through there with any of the possessions I now have, but it leads on a wave that looks full of dangers.
A banquet house spread and furnished and prepared for me. And the other alternative was just to saunter through a big, wide gate and amble along a very wide, smooth highway. But at the end, the muck and the quicksand that drowned men. What choice would you make? You say, well, any sane person would make the former choice, wouldn't he? He'd be willing for some temporary
convenience. He'd be willing if necessary even to have his flesh ripped open by squeezing through the narrow portal. He'd be willing to have his feet made torn and bloody and full of thorns upon a difficult way. If only he knew it would issue in the mansion of light and of bliss and the spread table. That's what Jesus is saying here.
But the tragedy is, men choose the wide gate and the broad way, for Jesus said, many are they that enter the way. But my friend, if you go through that gate and on that way, like it or not, you'll end up in destruction. Mark it well, you'll end up in destruction. But blessed be God to get through the narrow gate and on the narrow way, you will end up in destruction.
There's no hope in life. Now these are Jesus' words. That's where we started. That's where we closed tonight. You can go out of here and say, well, you know, hadn't quite heard it that way before. That wasn't interesting. It was good to hear that American preacher and his wrinkle on things. My friend, this wasn't the American preacher's wrinkle on things. This is the word of Jesus. You're going to meet that word in the day of judgment. It's not my word. It's his word. What will you do with his word?
Enter the narrow gate. Enter the narrow gate. Wide is the gate. Broad is the way that leads to destruction. Many go in. Straight is the gate. Narrow is the way. It leads to life. Few there be that find it. Oh, may you be one of the few. See the Lord Jesus standing at that gate which he himself is, beckoning by his wounds, beckoning by the glory of his perfect life.
By the wonder of his death for sinners, beckoning by the largeness of his heart in which he says for his own. He gives them life and that more abundantly and promises to keep and preserve us through all of the trials. He promises to be with us and bring us home at last into his presence. Oh, heed the call of Jesus and go through the narrow gate and enter upon the compressed way.
Which leads unto life. Let us pray.
And write them upon our hearts. And even this night constrain many in this very building to enter into the narrow gate. And to embark upon that life, upon the compressed way of gospel holiness and radical biblical discipleship. In company with your people knowing that all of this will issue in the glory of life.
In the very presence of Jesus and the holy angels and all of the redeemed and that forever. Oh, may your word bear fruit unto everlasting life in many hearts for Jesus sake. Amen.