Two Ways to Live | Matthew 7:13-14
Brian Hedges | May 24, 2026
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew 7. We’re going to be reading just two verses this morning, Matthew 7:13-14.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s, I used to read “choose your own adventure” stories. Has anybody ever read a choose-your-own-adventure story? That’s quite a few hands, some of you kids. I think they’re still around. I had three or four of these choose-your-own-adventure books. I remember I had one that was called Mountain Survival. Of course, the point of these books is you would read a story, and then it would give you an option. You’d make a choice, and depending on which choice you’d make, it would take you to a different page number, and you would kind of follow that thread until you came to the end of the story. It could end great, or it could end badly. So in Mountain Survival, you’re kind of stranded up in the mountains, and if you make the wrong series of choices you end up getting eaten by a grizzly bear or something; but if you make the right choice then you end up getting rescued.
I actually think those are really good books for kids, because they illustrate a fundamental truth in life and a truth from Scripture, and that’s this, that choices have consequences. Choices have consequences. Our choices take us somewhere. They lead us down a certain road and to a certain end. It may be a good end or a bad end, but choices have consequences.
We live in a world that highly values choice. Everyone is about freedom of choice in every dimension of their lives. Whatever you do, don’t take away someone’s personal choice. Don’t judge someone’s personal choice. But I think our world also lives sometimes in denial of consequences, at least until you get to that point in your life when things are falling apart and you can no longer deny the consequences of your choices and of your actions.
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount speaks to our choices and our consequences, and especially in the passage we’re going to read this morning in Matthew 7.
We have been studying together the Sermon on the Mount, and we’ve really come to the final movement of the sermon. In fact, verse 13 begins Jesus’ conclusion to the sermon. He has said much about life in the kingdom of God. This sermon is a manifesto of the kingdom. He has talked about what it means to live under the saving reign of God. He has held out for us a vision of the good life, the life that is available for us as heirs of the kingdom, as citizens of the Father’s kingdom, who live under God’s rule and reign.
We have worked through all that Jesus has said about personal ethics and morality and the need for a righteousness that is greater than the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, a righteousness that is internal and from the heart. We’ve looked at the characteristics of these kingdom citizens as Jesus described them in the Beatitudes. We’ve tried to understand what it means to practice our righteousness before the Father without hypocrisy, but rather with sincerity of heart; not to be seen by others, but to be seen by God. We’ve talked about prayer and our relationship with the Father, as well as our relationships with others in the world.
Now, Jesus comes to the conclusion of the sermon, and from here until the end of chapter 7, he is really just stacking one contrast upon another as he talks about two different kinds of people. He talks about two gates and two roads that lead to two destinations. He talks about two trees that bear different kinds of fruit. He talks about two kinds of people who will stand before God in final judgment. He talks about two different builders who build their houses on different foundations, and the outcomes of those two buildings. And all of this is Jesus’ urgent application of his teaching.
It’s a good lesson for everyone who ever teaches or preaches the word of God, that we need not merely knowledge, we need application; we need not just theology, we need transformation; we need the truth applied to the heart, and that’s what Jesus begins to do here.
So we’re going to see this morning that Jesus calls for a choice, he calls for decision. In fact, there’s one central command in these two verses, and then Jesus develops a series of contrasts. I want to read the passage—I’m going to read it in two different translations this morning—first of all in the English Standard Version, which is the translation we’ve been using throughout this series, but then I want to read it in the New Living Translation, which is a little more interpretive, but I think it does give us the sense and explain some of what Jesus means here. So, first of all, in the ESV, Matthew 7:13-14. Jesus says,
“Enter by the narrow gate. [There’s the command.] 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.”
This is God’s Word.
Now, let’s read it in the New Living Translation. It says,
“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.”
I do think that translation is helpful in this regard, that it clarifies what the narrow gate is an entry point to. It’s an entry point into God’s kingdom. That really is drawing from verse 21, where Jesus a few verses later will use this same language of entering into the kingdom of heaven.
So, this is what this passage is about. It’s about entering into God’s kingdom through the narrow gate. Jesus commands us to do this. This is the invitation and the command of this verse, and then he gives us the reasons for doing this in this series of contrasts between two gates, two roads, and two destinations. And that’s basically the outline this morning. I just want us to work through the contrasts that Jesus gives us in these two verses.
1. The Two Gates: Wide vs. Narrow
So, number one, the two gates. There is a wide gate, and there is a narrow gate.
A gate, of course, is a point of entrance, right? It’s an entry point. So, think of a gate that leads into a park or a gate that leads into a theme park. It’s a point of entrance.
Jesus here talks about these two gates. He contrasts the narrow gate, which he commands us to enter by the narrow gate—he contrasts that with a wide gate. Let’s think about those two gates for just a minute.
First of all, the wide gate. This word “wide” is a word that literally means that which is broad or spacious. It’s a Greek word that’s actually behind our word “plateau”—kind of Greek to Latin to French to English—but the word “plateau,” something that’s broad and flat, spacious.
There’s actually a word play here in the original. Jonathan Pennington points this out in his book on the Sermon on the Mount, which I highly recommend. He points out that this word is also used, or at least a relative of this word, in Matthew 6:5, where Jesus is talking about the hypocrites who love to stand on the street corners praying, and it’s the word “street.” It’s also a broad, flat, open space. Jesus says these people love to stand in this broad street corner, the broad street. They love to do so, praying so that they will be seen by others.
Then, another relative of this word is used in Matthew 23:5, where Jesus talks about the hypocrites who love to make their phylacteries broad. A phylactery was a garment in the ancient Jewish person, a part of the garment that held their verses of Scripture, and it was a way of showing their piety, their religion to others.
So, the point of all of that is that this wide gate is descriptive not only of the obviously sinful, immoral, ungodly person, although such people would also be going through a wide gate, but in context, the wide gate represents the way or the gate of pharisaical religion—those who are externally righteous, externally religious, but they are lacking the greater righteousness, the heart righteousness, the inner righteousness that Jesus calls for in the Sermon on the Mount.
I go at length to explain that because I just want us here at the beginning to recognize that this passage is speaking to us. This is not just for the obviously lost person out in the world; this passage is speaking to us in the church. It’s possible to be in the church and to be in the church for years and not actually have gone through the narrow gate. You can have a religion that is external, you can have a righteousness that is not the greater righteousness of the kingdom of God. You can be self-reliant and self-righteous rather than dependent on Christ and be a person who has gone through the wide gate rather than through the narrow gate.
The narrow gate, in contrast to the wide gate, is something that is confined. It’s something that is small, that you have to press your way through. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his sermon compared this gate to a turnstile. So think of a turnstile in the entrance to a theme park, or if you ever go to Menards in Mishawaka, there are these turnstiles. Only one person can go through a turnstile at a time. And Lloyd-Jones used this as an illustration of how you could not take certain things through this gate. Just like you can’t push a shopping cart through a turnstile, in the same way, if you’re going through the narrow gate into the kingdom, there are things that have to be left behind. We have to leave behind our sin. We have to leave behind the world. We have to leave behind even ourselves. Jesus says, “If anyone would be my disciple, he must come after me. He must follow me. He must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” There’s a denial of self that’s fundamental to being a follower of Jesus Christ. This is part of this narrow gate.
Jesus here is calling for decision. He’s calling for a choice. He says, “Enter by the narrow gate.” That implies a moment of decision in our lives, a point in time where we decisively commit ourselves to following Jesus Christ.
I just want to ask this morning if you have come to that crisis point in your own life. Have you entered by the narrow gate? Can you look at your life and say there’s come a point when you cross the threshold from darkness into light, from spiritual death to life in Christ, from serving idols (including that greatest of all idols, the idol self), from serving self to serving the true and the living God? Has there been a point in your life when you were born anew, when you received spiritual life from the Spirit of God, indwelling your heart, making you new, expressed in faith towards Christ and repentance of your sins, so that you can say with John Newton, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see”? Has that happened in your life? Have you entered by the narrow gate?
Maybe the greatest illustration of this in literature is in John Bunyan’s great allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, the story of Christian, who’s on this journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Early on in the story, he encounters this figure who is named Evangelist, and Evangelist shows him the way to Wicket Gate. Now, it’s not wicked with a D, but wicket with a T—gate. It means a little gate, a small door. And he shows him the way, he tells him the way to go.
You may remember that Christian initially gets distracted, and he gets on a wrong path because he listens to Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who points him to the way of morality. So he’s seeking salvation through his self-effort, through morality, and of course that doesn’t work, and Christian ends up in this quagmire called the Slough of Despond. So he is despondent, and he is discouraged, and he only gets out as he finds the steps out of the Slough of Despond, the steps which are the promises of God.
Then he encounters the Evangelist again, who tells him once again, “Go to the straight gate, the wicket gate.” And finally Christian gets there, and when he comes to the gate, he sees that above the gate are written these words from Matthew 7:8: “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” And he knocks, and he knocks, and he knocks, and finally a very grave figure comes to the door. His name is Goodwill, and Christian has a conversation with Goodwill. Goodwill asks, “Who is there, and why have you come, and what do you want?”
And Christian says, “Here is a poor, burdened sinner. I come from the City of Destruction, but I am going to Mount Zion, that I may be delivered from the wrath to come. I would therefore, sir, since I am informed that by this gate is the way there, know if you are willing to let me in.” And Goodwill says, “I am willing with all my heart,” and he opens the door, and Christian goes through the gate, and he’s now on the road to the Celestial City.
It’s a beautiful picture, and I want you to know this morning that God’s goodwill, his desire to save, his grace for sinners is available to you. If you’ve never entered through the narrow gate, today can be the day when you repent of your sins, when you express your faith and your trust in Jesus Christ, and when you begin the journey of following Jesus on the road to life.
Now, I do want to speak just a minute to those of you who have been churched your whole lives, because it may be that you just heard what I said, and it just raised a question, and you’re not sure, “Have I entered? Have I entered through that gate?” You try to remember, and it may be that you prayed a prayer when you were five years old or six years old, and your parents remember it, but you don’t remember it very clearly, and you get a little nervous when you hear a pastor or preacher talking about a moment of decision.
I think what will help you is to examine yourself not just by the moment of decision, but examine yourself with the second point and ask, which road am I on? Because the two gates lead to two roads—point number two—and these two roads are described as being easy and being hard.
2. The Two Roads: Easy vs. Hard
Now, this word “way” literally means a road. That’s what the way is, just as a highway today is a road along which someone travels. I’ve pointed out many times in the series that Jesus here is speaking not only as Savior and King but he’s speaking as a wisdom teacher, as a sage, and he’s using a category from Old Testament wisdom literature, the category of the two ways.
You find this often in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 30, for example; in Jeremiah 21:8. Let me read this—it’s just a simple little verse. “And to this people you shall say: ‘Thus says the Lord: Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.’” There it is—the way of life, the way of death.
It’s also what you have at the beginning of the Psalms, in Psalm 1, which contrasts the way of the righteous with the way of the wicked. And Jesus is using that language as he now speaks about these two ways, these two roads.
This was so common in early Christianity that in the book of Acts the disciples of Jesus, the Christians, are called “followers of the Way.” So this is really crucial for us to understand. What does it mean to follow Jesus in the way? What does it mean to be on the right road? Let’s look at these two roads.
First of all, there is the easy road. Verse 13: “For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many,” or in the New Living Translation, “The highway to hell is broad and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way.”
This word “easy” literally means that which is spacious, that which is easy. It’s the idea of a road without restrictions, without confinements, without difficulties. And it does, of course, include what we might think of as the easy life of moral laxity and looseness, when people throw off the biblical standards concerning sex and money and power. In fact, some of you might have even thought of these words when I said “highway to hell”:
“Living easy, loving free,
Season ticket on a one-way ride;
Asking nothing; leave me be;
Taking everything in my stride.”
That’s the song “Highway to Hell” from ACDC. If you know those words, you might need to repent at the end of the service.
It does include that. It does include that: the loose-living, immoral person. But listen, it also includes the person who would never live that way and looks down their nose at anyone who does. So if you were judging all the people who knew “Highway to Hell,” you may need to repent as well this morning.
It includes both the unrighteous and the self-righteous. It includes both the irreligious and the legalist. It includes both the person who is throwing off all restraints to live an easy, loose life according to their own whims and desires, and the person who settles for easy religion.
There is such a thing as easy religion. This is religion without repentance. It is truth without transformation. It is Christianity without a cross. It’s doctrine without discipleship. It is the person who says all the right words—they have a form of Christianity—but they don’t have the power, and they’ve not applied it to their hearts. Jesus calls this the easy road. It’s easy. It requires nothing of you. No confinements, no restrictions, no deep heart repentance or application.
But Jesus says this easy road leads to destruction; and in contrast to that, there is a hard road or a difficult road. It is the road that leads to life. “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
The Greek word here is actually a verb, not an adjective, and it implies that this road is pressured. That’s the idea. Hard. It’s the word for pressure, for hardship, for tribulation and affliction. In fact, the noun form of this word is the word for tribulation that we have in Scripture. You may remember that Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulations, but be of good cheer, I’ve overcome the world.” Or Paul and Barnabas in the book of Acts, Acts 14, go about strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying that it’s through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God. Well, they got that from Jesus. That’s what Jesus is saying here. You enter the kingdom of God by traveling along this hard road which is pressurized with tribulation, with difficulty, with affliction.
So what is it that Jesus means by that? What are these tribulations? Why is this road to life, the way of following Jesus, difficult? Why is it hard?
I think there’s several reasons why it’s hard. One reason it’s hard is because it does require this difficult heart transformation that the Sermon on the Mount is all about. It’s difficult. It is difficult to live in the way that Jesus calls us to live. In fact, it’s impossible in our own strength. It requires the grace of the Holy Spirit changing us from the inside out to live according to the Beatitudes, to be someone who is poor in spirit and mournful and meek, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, pure in heart, merciful to others, a peacemaker, persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
Jesus says this is the good life—“Blessed are those who live like this”—but he doesn’t say it’s an easy life. It’s difficult for us to have a whole heart for God. Our hearts are naturally divided between God and the world. But if we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves; if we are to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; if we are to set our hopes not on riches but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness—all of that requires change. You can’t be as you are naturally as someone who is just born according to the flesh and the world. You have to be born by the Spirit of God, born again. So it’s hard.
This way of righteousness, this way or road of life, is hard because it involves conflict. As soon as you become a Christian, you are at war. You are at war with the world, the flesh, and the devil. You will be in conflict with the world system—the values, the morals, the perspective, the worldview of the world, who do not believe in God, who do not believe in Jesus, and who have a different set of values. And you’re going to find yourself in opposition, in conflict with it.
You will also find yourself in conflict with something in your own heart and life. As soon as you become a Christian, you declare war on sin. And while your sins are forgiven, and while every Christian has repented of their sins, we are engaged in an ongoing battle, the battle for sanctification, the battle for holiness. Every day of my life has conflict because of the seeds of sin in my heart. We are surrounded by temptations, by dangers, toils, and snares.
We are in conflict with the world, with the flesh, and of course with the great enemy of our souls, the devil, who like a roaring lion is prowling around seeking whom he may devour, and is exploiting the world and our own flesh with temptation and deception to lead us into sin, and ultimately to attempt to lead us away from Christ altogether.
There are many obstacles to overcome in the Christian life. That makes the road hard. There are temptations to quit. One of the hardest things is just to keep going, to keep walking, to keep enduring, to keep persevering. This call of Jesus is a call to do that, to continue in the faith, walking along this hard road, even with all of its conflict and sometimes even persecution.
Once again, The Pilgrim’s Progress is a great, vivid allegory of this. If you’ve never read the book, I would encourage you to read it, as it charts Christian’s journey and all of the obstacles that he encounters. There’s not only the Slough of Despond, but he also finds himself in the Valley of Humiliation, where he is in hand-to-hand battle and conflict with Apollyon. It finds him in Vanity Fair, representative of the world, where he is in conflict with the values of the world and is persecuted for the sake of Christ. It finds him in Doubting Castle, locked up by Giant Despair, as he’s dealing with those internal feelings of doubt and despair that sometimes we face as Christians. He has to climb up the steep mountain called Hill Difficulty. All of these are obstacles that are common. These are things that we all face in our Christian lives.
Then ultimately, the final obstacle he faces is the River of Death itself, where he wades into those waters with fear in his heart whether he will make it through. But he does make it. He does make it, because of God’s grace sustaining him all the way, and it’s the way we also continue on this road.
Sometimes we sing these words:
“Mine are days here as a stranger,
Pilgrim on this narrow way.
One with Christ, I will encounter
Harm and hatred for his name.
But mine is armor for this battle,
Strong enough to last the war,
And he has said he will deliver
Safely to the golden shore.”
We have armor. We have Christ at our side, the Spirit in our hearts, enabling us to walk the difficult road.
The road is difficult. We might at first glance prefer the easy road, but Jesus says the easy road leads to destruction, while the hard road leads to life.
So once again, ask yourself this morning, which road are you on? Because whichever road you’re on will lead you to a certain destination.
3. The Two Destinations: Destruction vs. Life
The first destination, Jesus says, is destruction. Verse 13: “For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.”
What is this destruction that Jesus speaks of? There are some interpreters who contend that this destruction is something like annihilation of existence, so that a person who does not believe and who refuses God’s mercy in Jesus Christ will just be annihilated and will cease to exist, following final judgment, in eternity.
That’s not what this word means. This word actually means “ruined.” Theologian and New Testament scholar Douglas Moo has done the heavy lifting on this, to study the word group across all of its uses in the New Testament and related literature, and he shows that this word doesn’t mean so much destruction in the sense of extinction, rather it’s destruction in the sense of no longer being fit for the original purpose for which something is made.
So he shows that this is a word that’s used to describe the ointment that is poured out for no apparent purpose, it seems wasteful, when the woman anoints Jesus with the ointment. It seems wasteful to others. The ointment still exists, but it seems ruined to them.
It’s used of the wineskins that can no longer function if they have been burst. It’s used of the coin that is lost in Luke 15. The coin exists, but it’s lost, and so it’s useless until it is found.
Moo shows that in none of these cases do the objects cease to exist. They cease to be useful or to exist in their original, intended state. He says it’s very much like our language when we say, “The tornado destroyed a house.” The components of the house remain, but it’s no longer functionally a house because it’s been ruined. That seems to be the idea behind Jesus’ word here.
C.S. Lewis puts it like this in The Problem of Pain. He says “to enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast or casts itself into hell is not man, it is remains.” It’s the ruins of a human life, but it’s not the cessation of existence. Instead, the Scriptures speak, when you put all the passages together, of this reality as being eternal and miserable, and yet the just retribution for our sins, the consequences of our choices.
Let me just give you one illustration from Scripture. This is from Luke 16, where Jesus tells the story of these two men, the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man is a rich man who is clothed with purple garments; he lives in luxury; he eats, you know, wonderful meals every day; and he's completely indifferent to the poverty of a man named Lazarus who is at his gate begging. He has no compassion on Lazarus. Eventually, the two men die.
Lazarus, the poor man, is carried by the angels to Abraham's side (kind of a euphemism for paradise, for the afterlife), and the rich man dies and is buried and is cast into Hades, where he is in torment. And he lifts up his eyes, and he sees Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his side, and he calls out—this is what he says. He says, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.”
Abraham says to him, “Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus, in like manner, bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish,” and there is no comfort for the rich man in Hades.
This is the picture that Jesus gives us in Scripture. It’s the picture, that is uniform across the biblical writers, of eternal misery for those whose lives are ruined because of sin and because they have refused the path of faith and repentance.
I know this is a sobering thing to think about, but I want you to think about it for a moment now, because it is likely that some of you in this room today are on the road that leads to destruction; that you live with little thought for tomorrow, much less for eternity; that your life is self-centered and self-absorbed. You are indifferent to the needs of others. You may be self-indulgent and living an immoral life, or you may be self-righteous and living a legalistic life, but either way, you’re lacking in the Spirit-given, heart righteousness that Jesus calls for in the Sermon on the Mount. You have lived without faith, without repentance, without confessing your sins, without seeking forgiveness, without the reality of new birth, new life, transformation that comes by God’s grace. If that describes you today, you are on a road that leads to destruction. It will lead to ruin.
The good news today is that Jesus gives an invitation and says, “Enter by the narrow door. Enter by the narrow gate. Walk this road, difficult though it may be, and this road will lead to life.”
Today can be the day of your conversion, the day of your salvation, the day when transformation begins in your life, when you confess your sins, you seek God's forgiveness, you place your trust and your faith in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection for your sins, and you receive the gift of new life and begin to follow Jesus on the hard road, the road that leads to life.
There are two destinations: destruction and then life. Let me tell you about the life for just a couple of minutes before we close.
Verse 14 says, “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” This life is, first of all, eternal life. Every time that phrase “eternal life” is used in Scripture it’s this word for life. It’s a general word for life, but Jesus characterizes the life that he promises, the life that we receive when we believe in Jesus Christ, he characterizes it as eternal life; that is, life in the age to come. It does mean going to heaven when you die, it also means life in the new heavens and the new earth; but it also means a quality of life now, where we begin to experience eternal life in the here and now. This is life that comes through the Spirit as we are born again into new life and hope in Christ.
This life is a gift. It’s a gift. You cannot earn this, you can only receive this. Paul says that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). It’s a gift, and so you receive this life through grace.
But—and this is not in contradiction with the gracious nature of this life—this life is given to those who have walked a certain road, and there is no contradiction here between Paul and Jesus.
I want you to see what Paul says in Romans 6 prior to verse 23, which I just read. Look at what Paul says in Romans 6:21-23, and he puts all of this together. He says,
“What benefit do you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Eternal life, but it’s eternal life that comes to those who have walked the way of holiness. We can only walk that way by God’s grace, but when God’s grace has begun to change us it leads us along this path, so that we begin to pursue the holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 10:14).
This life is eternal life. This life is a gift. This life comes along or at the end of the road of holiness. This life is the greatest existence possible for a human being. So when we finally are with Christ in resurrected bodies in the new heavens and the new earth, as Lewis says, we will be more human than we ever were on earth. We will be rid of everything that makes life difficult and miserable now. We will be done with sin, we will be finished with suffering. Every tear will be wiped away from our eyes. There will be no more sorrow, no more crying, no more tears. It will all be done, and we will be whole and glorified and perfected and made like Christ. And it will be the best possible existence you can imagine—far greater than you can imagine. As we read in our assurance of pardon this morning in Ephesians 2, God will lavish the “immeasurable riches of his kindness upon us in Christ Jesus” forever and ever and ever.
Finally, this life will not be everyone’s destiny. So Jesus’ words here end on a sober note. He says, “Those who find it are few.”
This is one of the hard sayings of Jesus, and it does have to be interpreted with everything that the Bible says, including a passage like Revelation 7, which describes a great multitude that no one could number who’s singing salvation to our God and to the Lamb who sits on the throne. There’s a paradox there. It will be a great multitude that no one can number—a new humanity, a redeemed humanity from every nation and tribe and people and language who stand before God forever—and yet there are few who find it.
The question for this morning, for this passage, for this message, the question is this: Have you found it? Have you found it? Have you entered the narrow gate? Are you walking on the difficult road that leads to life?
I want to conclude with this story about a young man who found this way. Some of you may recognize this story. I’ve told it before, but it’s been a few years.
There was a young man who in the early twentieth century was the son of Christian parents. They were fervent in their love for Christ, but he had rejected their faith. He was involved instead in the occult of theosophy. But he was still living at home, and he came home one night, was preparing for a meeting in the Theophicist Society where he would be speaking, and as he was headed to his room, his father said these words, quoting Proverbs 14:12 from the King James Version. He said, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” That's all he said.
His son went to his room; he was haunted by those words, and he didn’t come out for three days. And when he came out, the change was recognizable, and his father saw what had happened and said, “Praise God, my son has been delivered.”
That young man’s name was Arthur Pink, Arthur W. Pink. He was one of the great Bible teachers in the early twentieth century. His books are still read today. But his life began with this crisis, with this change, where he left the way that leads to death, and he got on the path that leads to life.
We’ve looked at two gates, two roads, two destinations. Which road are you on? Are you following Jesus? Have you turned from your sins and trusted in him? If you’ve never done so, today can be the day where you make that choice. If you are a Christian, if you are following Jesus, then be encouraged as you walk on this road, as difficult as it is, because this is the road that leads to life. Let’s pray together.
Holy Spirit, would you come into our midst and into our hearts this morning to apply the word of the gospel, with both its warning and its promise, to apply it to our hearts and lives this morning? Would you help each one of us to search our own hearts in your presence today, to see whether we are in the faith, whether we are on the road that leads to life? Would you bring conviction and repentance wherever that is needed?
And Lord, where there has been spiritual death, would you bring in these moments spiritual life, as sinners lost in themselves turn from self and sin to Jesus Christ? Lord, we’re asking you to do the work that only you can do. Apply your word by your Spirit.
For all of us who are believers this morning, Lord, help us to make our calling and election sure, and may the results of examining ourselves afresh in the light of your word be a deeper assurance that we are yours, that we belong to you, and a deeper dependence on you for your grace to live as Jesus has called us to live in this path of discipleship.
As we come to the table this morning, we pray for renewed faith and repentance as we remember what Christ has done for us in his death and resurrection. So draw near to us in these moments, we pray in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
