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The Rock Family Worship Center
Taking The Church Outside The Walls
The Rock Family Worship Center
RE-EXAMINING THE NARROW GATE
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We re-examine Matthew 7:13–14 and argue the narrow gate is not an afterlife map but a present call to live constrained by love. We tie the verses to the Golden Rule, the goodness of the Father, and the Sermon on the Mount’s everyday focus.
• why context anchors the narrow gate to verse 12
• how “because” and “difficult” change the meaning
• constrained love versus permissive ease
• destruction as present outcomes, not afterlife threats
• the Golden Rule as an active command to do
• reconciling the cross with common readings of Matthew 7
• why few find the path of intentional love
• practical pictures of boundaries that lead to life
So anyway, one of the things that I wanted to mention on that is the fact that, you know, why are we teaching some of this stuff the way we're teaching it? Because some people may ask, you know, why can't we just have a regular sermon? Why can't we just why do we always dig down into everything and stuff like that? And I believe there's a reason for it. I didn't realize it until uh it must have been yesterday or day before yesterday. I was going back over some of my notes and I was reading something to Cindy and I read it to her and I said, hey, listen to this a minute and see if this makes sense. I said, because I'm trying, I know what's in my head, but I need to make sure I can get it out in words the right way. So I was reading it to her, and uh then it hit me and I said, You realize what I said, what we're doing here is I said, we're going back and we're looking at a specific verse, but then we're we're showing that you can't understand this verse if you isolate it from the verses that was before it. Now we've always been taught that, but I believe God's really starting to show us that if we want, I feel like that's what maturity is. It's truly understanding the word so that I can walk out what he's called us to do in the word. I can't do that sufficiently if I don't truly understand the word. If my understanding is misinformed in some way, I can't truly walk out what he's calling me to do in that scripture. So I believe that he's got us in a place right now. I believe that prophetic word was so accurate. He's refining some things. He's refining the why. Why do we teach what we do? Why are we doing things the way we're doing them? Uh and he's saying, don't rush the maturity that he's trying to put in us. And sometimes breaking, taking one simple verse and breaking it down and truly getting an understanding of what the verse is saying means so much. And it'll open, it'll open the rest of the Bible up to us in a way that it never has before. So I want to read a passage to you this morning. I'm going to read it really slowly. We're going to break it down. But I want you to do something a little different. I want you to imagine yourself kind of walking through this. Uh, you're going to know the verse in a minute. It's very familiar to you. Most of you can probably quote it if you did, even if you don't know where it's at in the Bible, you still are very familiar with it. Uh, but it's going to come out of Matthew 7, uh verse 13 and 14. And again, this is a very familiar verse. I want to slow down right here because I want you to hear, I want you to hear this. Most of you have many times, but I want you to hear it in a different way this morning. Matthew 7, 13 and 14. It says, Enter by the narrow gate. For wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction. And there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way which leads to life. And there are few who find it. Now we could we could sit there and break that down from right here, but then I'd get off track and I'd go all kind of places. So I kind of want to just slow down and just and just follow uh my line of thinking right here in this. I want to show you something. First of all, I want you to picture this. Don't just hear it, but actually picture this. You're walking up and there's two there's two gates sitting here in front of you. There's two paths. There's a path on each one of those gates. One is a narrow path, one is a wide and a broad path. Many, it says, many choose the one that is that is wide and broad, but very few enter onto the one that is narrow. Now, the reason I brought this verse up is because I believe this is what I've been praying for. Let me tell you this, and you'll understand where why I'm going in the direction I'm going a lot of times. One of the things I pray for is I say, God, give me verses, give me revelation on things that has us confused, that has us in a place to where if I misunderstand this verse, then everything out here is going to flow from that. And if this is misunderstood, then the rest of this is misunderstood. Does that make sense? So that's what I've been praying for on a personal level is bring me to these verses, even if it's old verses that we're used to hearing. Bring me back to these verses. Show me what they're really trying to say. Break them down so that we can teach them in a way that brings truth, so that now we not only understand that scripture, but everything before and everything after that scripture begins to make sense. So if you picture that, two gates, one wide, one there, you got a lot of people going down in the wide one, and you got just a few people. It says, that's that's the word of the scripture. It says only a few. I don't know how you define few, but you know, it's not many. Let's put it that way. I think this is a good place to really stop and ask questions at. I don't think we need to read over this scripture so quick because it's so familiar to us. I think we need to stop right here on this scripture and ask questions. Uh, questions like this. This is the ones I had. Why does the narrow way feel so narrow? What makes it narrow? Why is it difficult? What makes it difficult? Why do only a few people find it? Those are questions. When I read that scripture, I didn't used to have those questions, but those are the questions I have now. Why is it narrow? Why is it difficult? And why is only a few people going on this one, but a bunch of people's going on that one? And I just stop right there and say, God, help me understand this. Because it's not making sense in the way that it's always been taught to me. Some people assume, like I did for many years, that it's because God is demanding. Being a Christian is difficult. We've all heard that. People say it all the time. Being a Christian, doing the right thing over and over and over, it's difficult. It's hard sometimes. Living a Christian life's not easy. We've all heard people say that. Most of us were taught from a framework. Don't care what denomination you come from, originally come up in. Most of us were taught from a framework that assumes that the narrow gate is going to heaven. And the broad gate, the wide gate, is going to hell. That's the way this verse is taught. I don't care what denomination you come up in. That is the way this is one of the first verses that people go to when we're talking about heaven and hell. I feel that that understanding that this is talking about heaven and hell comes from a sincere desire to truly understand and take Jesus seriously. I don't think it's just, you know, for from some flippant reason that I believe that. I believe it's sincerity in I want to know what Jesus is saying. I believe people are sincere about that. But the problem is sometimes sincerity can cause us to read ideas into a passage and not see what's supposed to come out of the passage. And we do that a lot of times with a lot of scripture. If this passage in 13 and 14 of Matthew 7, if this passage were meant to explain who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, what words would we expect Jesus to be using here? That's one of the questions I had when I started reading it. There's no mention of heaven. There's no mention of hell or gehenna. There's no mention of judgment day. There's no mention of afterlife. Period. Now that doesn't mean that Jesus didn't talk about these things in other places. My point is in this particular set of scriptures right here, those words are just not there. So it makes me have to say, I know what my teaching has been over the years. I know how I've heard this verse taught. I know what 99.9% of Christians are going to tell you when you say explain the narrow gate and the wide gate. But everything they're saying has nothing to do with what Jesus explained. So I'm the type of person that says, wait a minute now, I'm not going to go on just saying this and repeating this because everybody else does. I want to know what it really means. What is he really trying to show us in this verse? Why? Because I want to understand. It brings life. And if I want life, if I want true life, if I want to walk out the life that he gave me, then I've got to figure out why the road is narrow, why's few people going on it, and how do I make sure I get on it. I can't just take the wide road because everybody else is taking it. I've got to look at this narrow road, which is what the title is Re-examining the Narrow Gate. We're not just going to take it as we've always took it and just say, this is the definition, this is what it means, because that's what's always been taught. It's okay to re-examine some of this stuff. We may come to an understanding later on and say, you know, hey, we were wrong on this, and that's okay. We may dig deeper and realize that somebody taught us something years ago, and we thought they were wrong. And you know what? Maybe they had it right. Maybe they were on to something. Maybe I should have listened a little bit more instead of just saying, you know, that's wrong. So that interpretation of heaven and hell based on the words in this scripture is imported in. You can't go in there and pull heaven and hell out of this verse because it's not there. I mean, it literally does not say anything about heaven, anything about hell, anything about the afterlife. So if that is the meaning of destination, you can't pull it out of that verse because you can't pull something out that's not there. And literally, it is not there. The words are not there. Heaven is not there, hell is not there, afterlife is not there. So I when I sit down and I and I have the verse here, and then I have this understanding that it's not there, the next thing I say is, God, you got to show me what this means. Because what I've always believed about it is just not lining up anymore. So show me what this verse is talking about. To me, it raises questions about what the cross actually accomplished. Because think about this now. If Jesus is saying that most people, and I'm using his words right here, most people will end up in hell. If we take that verse as a destination verse, you're going to heaven here, you're going to hell on this road, if you take this path. If we use this scripture as a destination verse, then Jesus' own words are saying that more people will end up in hell than will end up in heaven. Now, I'm not, that's not my opinion. He said, many go on the path that leads to destruction, but very few find the path that leads to heaven. So if we take heaven and hell in there, it's basically saying very few is getting to heaven and most are going to hell. I don't believe that. I find that hard to believe. Why? Because that doesn't align with the God that I worship. That's my opinion. I'm not putting that on you. That's my opinion. So I'm telling you what it does to me is it makes me go in there and it challenges me to re-examine some things and say there's a good chance that although I don't like to admit this, there's a good chance I could have been wrong before. There's a good chance that I have misunderstood what is being said in that scripture. There's nothing wrong with that. That's maturity. I'm breaking a verse down and saying, give me the truth in it. I want to be more mature in this area. See, we focus too much on just don't be wrong, don't be wrong, don't be wrong. Instead of saying, no, be more mature, be more mature, be more mature in this area. So if he's saying that most people will end up in hell and only a few make it to heaven, then there's several things that must be re-examined. Not just this verse, but if that is what he is saying in this set of scriptures, then automatically there's a bunch of other things that must be re-examined now. It raises the question about what the cross actually accomplished. Scripture says in John 1, running on, don't, you don't have to go here, but listen to these three verses. I poured these because they're very familiar. John 1, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John 1 and 29. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. 2 Corinthians 5 and 19. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. And Colossians 1 and 20 says, reconciling all things through the blood of Christ, through the blood of his cross. So when I take just those three verses, it challenges me to say, he said this in John and 2 Corinthians and Colossians, but then this is saying heaven and hell. It don't align. So I have to go back and I have to begin to break it down. I have to begin to ask questions and just really re-examine it. If the cross, if this cross really reconciles, then Matthew 7 can't be about how people make it to heaven. It must be about something else. So here's my question. What's it about? That's what we gotta ask. Paul also makes a very deliberate parallel parallel in Romans chapter 5. I want you to look with me at verses uh 18 and 19 and look at what he says here. Because this is important. He says, Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men. We're talking about Adam here. Through one man's offense, through Adam's offense, judgment came to all men. I don't know no other way to define all men besides what it says, all men. Don't matter if you look at it in the Greek, the Hebrew, or anything else. You don't have to be a scholar. All men means humanity. All men. Resulting in condemnation. Even so, even through so through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. Man, we hang on that. We grab onto that part right there, and we say, You were born with a sin nature. You were born a sinner. And we use that for justification as the reason that you need to come to an altar. Because by one man's disobedience, all were made sinners. And then we stop. We stop right there. There's a comma, which means this thing continues. But we never read the rest of it. So also by one man's obedience, many were made righteous. We got to read the whole scripture to get the whole understanding of what it's talking about. If Adam's act, which it talked about in the first part in verse 18, if his act truly affected all men, but the act of Christ only affected some, I got a problem with that.
SPEAKER_00:You know why?
SPEAKER_01:Because that's telling me that the first Adam was more powerful than the second. Or the last Adam. It's telling me that the first Adam had more authority over humanity than the last Adam did. It's telling me that the first Adam was the greater Adam.
SPEAKER_00:And the last one, he was the weaker one. Now that ain't the truth. But I'm saying that's what that verse is implying to me.
SPEAKER_01:In the Sermon on the Mount, I'm not going to go through it, but you guys all know it. Jesus reveals a father who includes enemies. He rejects transactional righteousness. And he grounds everything in sonship. He's not grounding it in threats and stuff like that. He's grounding it in sonship. If he ends the same sermon, and I want you to understand right here that what I'm reading in Matthew chapter 7 is part of this, okay? The Sermon on the Mount. He says the Sermon on the Mount, and then when you move into chapter 7, he's finishing it off. But it's still part of the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00:You got to see that.
SPEAKER_01:When he talks about the Sermon on the Mount, he reveals, Jesus reveals a father who includes enemies. Listen, he rejects transactional righteousness, which means I can work to be righteous, and he grounds everything in sonship. He doesn't start this thing one way and then about midway through say, oops, made a mistake, and totally flips it around to something else. What do I mean by that? If he ends the same sermon by implying that most people are eternally lost, he reverses his own revelation of God.
SPEAKER_00:Because if you go back and read the beginning of it, what he said about God, it's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:He defines who God is, he defines what God is about. And then at the very end, if we turn this thing around in chapter 7 and change into heaven and hell and say most people are lost, he just totally contradicted what he said in the first five chapters.
SPEAKER_00:I have a problem with that.
SPEAKER_01:So therefore, I want to jump in and I want to dig in and I want to say, help me wherever I'm misunderstanding this at.
SPEAKER_00:The narrow gate means people miss heaven. Then the cross did not accomplish what Scripture says it did.
SPEAKER_01:Matthew 7, 13 through 14 isn't about getting into heaven.
SPEAKER_00:It's about whether we actually live what Jesus has taught. When? Now this is a now, this is now scripture.
SPEAKER_01:This was for them back then when he was teaching it. And it's for us now as well. It's not about a destination. Jesus does not suddenly change subjects mid-sermon. This is the sermon on the mount.
SPEAKER_00:We love to preach on that. I mean, we hold to his words on the Sermon on the Mount. So powerful. And then midway through, we say, Jesus had a change of heart. He changed it. No, he didn't. We're just misreading it. So on the Sermon on the Mount, he's teaching how to live as God's children.
SPEAKER_01:The entire sermon addresses present life. He's talking about things such as anger, forgiveness, generosity, enemies, prayer. Things that every single one of us deal with every day in our life. Would it make sense for Jesus to end the sermon about everyday life by suddenly shifting to a warning about afterlife? Without even saying it. He didn't give any warning or nothing. He didn't say, I'm about to flip the script here. Would it make sense to talk about life and then all of a sudden move to afterlife? In the same sermon. So here's something that made me take a pause on this. If Jesus is saying that most people end up eternally lost, as that scripture says, if we believe it that way, that seems to contradict the way he just described the father. What do I mean by that? He said before in these other chapters preceding that, he said God gives good gifts. He said God includes the enemies. He said God is generous and God is trustworthy. Why would he reveal a father like that? And talk about a father like that, and then imply that most of humanity is ultimately excluded from that father.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think he would do that. So I have to question what's going on here.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like that shift, this kind of shifts the process of salvation. If we believe that this verse in chapter 7, the two verses in chapter 7 is talking about heaven and hell, I believe this shifts the process of salvation from Christ to my human response. If I can save myself, why did he go to the cross?
SPEAKER_00:If I can do it on my own and don't need him, then what are we preaching for to begin with? Just go out and do good. So let's look a little closer at the text.
SPEAKER_01:That word, go back to verse uh 13 just a minute. I don't know if it's 13 or 14. 14, I'm sorry. This word right here in 14, look at the first word.
SPEAKER_00:What's it say? Because most of the time we just skip right over that and we just read it.
SPEAKER_01:But but think about this a minute. Because. Verse 14 doesn't say the way is narrow and therefore it leads to life. It says the way is narrow because it leads to life. That's important. You may say, I don't understand what he said. Just listen, you will. This is important right here. That changes everything. And there's even more to it. That word translated, difficult, because narrow is the gate and difficult. And I think some translations change that word around. It may be something different, but this is the New King James Version. It uses the word difficult. That word's important. That word, I looked it up, the word difficult right here actually does not mean cruel or punishing, punish, punishing or anything like that, or mean or whatever. In the Greek, it actually means constrained. Think about that word, constrained, presti and limited, held by boundaries. I think about a river. I used to teach this in counseling all the time, you know, what makes a river flow the way a river is supposed to flow? The banks, the boundaries. If you go out there on a river and you tear the boundaries down, it becomes a swamp. Because it's a water that's flowing in no particular direction. What makes the water flow the way it's supposed to flow is the boundaries. So he's saying right here because narrow is the gate and constrained is the way which leads to life. There's boundaries. You're walking on a constrained road right here, on a constrained path. It's not constrained because God's withholding life, but because true life only flows in one direction. This road will only lead you in one place. The other road, you can get on the wide road, you can party, you can do whatever you want to do.
SPEAKER_00:But this road only flows one way and it's straight to life. Remember, it said the way is narrow because it leads to life.
SPEAKER_01:Again, stop and think about that just a minute. You don't end up on this path by accident. And you don't walk it while holding on to everything that you've picked up along the way. This road has boundaries to it. But these boundaries are not to punish you, but to guide us, to keep us in the right direction. It always moves us toward love, toward truth, toward becoming more Christ-like. And life as Jesus defines life here is not measured by comfort. It's not measured by convenience or by ease. We don't have to try to guess to figure out how Jesus is defining life here. Some people would read this verse and say, well, he's talking about it brings you to life. But what is life?
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question to ask.
SPEAKER_01:Because if you go back a couple of scripture, he defines it for us. We don't have to guess. He actually tells us what this life is. Life is measured, he says, by how we love one another. By how we speak when it's going to cost us something. By how we choose faithfulness over self-protection, humility over pride, service over status and over money and over all these other things. The narrow way does not promise an easier life. But it does promise a true life, defined in the way that Jesus describes it, not me. Now we say it all the time here: context matters. We've got to understand what these verses are actually saying. We can't truly understand verses 13 and 14 that we've just read if we divorce it from verses 1 through 12. And that's what we've done. We've taken verse 13 and 14 and we've made a heaven-hell theology out of two verses. And we have totally overlooked the 11 verses that lead up to it. That he tells you what life is, he tells you these other things, he tells you all this stuff, and then he says, therefore. All of this, therefore. That's important. We're going to get to that in just a minute. But I can't take these two verses and separate them from the rest of the verses and get a true understanding of what it means. It's not going to make sense. That's why I said the meaning that we've put on it has been imported to it. You can't actually find it in Scripture. We always say, I've always told like this, let Scripture interpret Scripture. If you let Scripture interpret Scripture here, there's no heaven and hell nowhere in there, in that, in 13 and 14 of Matthew 7. Nowhere in there. So if you're getting that understanding, then you have imported that in. You never got that from Scripture.
SPEAKER_00:There's no way. Because it's not there.
SPEAKER_01:See, when we do this, when we just take it and we divide it out and we pull it apart, what we start seeing, we see it as if it's describing the afterlife again. And we miss what Jesus is actually saying in here and what he's trying to get us to see. Because these verses are tied together directly and intentionally. We have to see what comes before it. We can't pull them apart. So let's go to verse 12. Matthew 7, verse 12. And just look at what it says. We're just going back one verse. Therefore, told you, we'll get on that in a minute because that word's important. If you've been to this church for any amount of time, you ought to know when we see the word, therefore, we better stop and we better pay attention. Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them. For this is the law and the prophets. From the time you were five, six years old, maybe even smaller, you have heard this verse and you have heard it called the Golden Rule. Treat others as you want to be treated. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's the first thing we're taught.
SPEAKER_00:So it makes me question sometimes if it's the first thing we were taught, why do we mess it up so much? There's a reason.
SPEAKER_01:So Jesus is saying here, therefore, now think about that word just a minute. That word tells us we have to look backwards. That word don't mean look ahead. That mean word means look backwards. Because what he's saying right now is absolutely connected to what he just said. So if I don't know what he just said, then this doesn't make any sense to me. And then when I miss this one, I'm gonna miss 13 or 14 too. And if I don't know what it means, I'm just gonna put my own definition onto it. And that's what's happened. And then it got passed down and passed down and passed down and passed down. And now we just say, hey, that's the Bible. Yeah, it's the Bible, but it's not the true meaning of it. Because it's something that we've implied. So this word tells us, therefore, look backwards. Jesus is saying, in light of everything I've just said, and we're gonna look at it in a minute, in light of everything I just said, now enter the narrow gate.
SPEAKER_00:That's another catch to it that you've got to see there too. That was a command. The very first word in verse 13 is enter.
SPEAKER_01:He didn't say if you are good enough, if you meet the requirements, if he said, enter.
SPEAKER_00:That was a command. So what does he just said?
SPEAKER_01:I'm not, for sake of time, I'm not gonna go back and read them, but I'll just summarize it for you. In verses 7 through 11, you can go back and check on your own, make sure I'm reading it right. Jesus describes a God who invites us to ask, to seek, to not. He describes a father who gives good gifts, a God who is attentive, who is generous, who is trustworthy. This is not a harsh God. It's not an angry God.
SPEAKER_00:He's not an angry God setting traps for us to fall into. He's a good God. And that's what Jesus is telling about.
SPEAKER_01:He's telling about the good Father. And then he says, therefore, because God is good, because I've just shared with you the nature of the Father. Because he's good, because he can be trusted, because God desires life for his children.
SPEAKER_00:He then says in verse 12, Whatever you want others to do to you, you do to them. That word do, small word, but it matters.
SPEAKER_01:Because we've turned this thing all around right here. Even this doing to others as you would have them do unto you. We have totally turned that verse and messed it up and because I want you to notice something right here. He never says in this verse, don't hurt people. He never says don't offend anyone. He never says, don't cross the line, don't drink, don't get on drugs, don't cuss, don't do. This verse has nothing to do with don'ts.
SPEAKER_00:It has everything to do with do. We've turned it into a don't verse. What does do mean? It means act. Initiate. Have intent. Be intentional about what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01:And yet so often the church has reduced discipleship to a list of don'ts. Don't do this, don't do that, don't drink, don't cuss, don't mess up, don't be like them. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.
SPEAKER_00:And the whole time Jesus was simply saying, do. Do this. We've taken it and we flipped it.
SPEAKER_01:And we made it into rules. And we spend so much time focusing on the things that I don't want to do, that I that I shouldn't do, to where we miss the one truth in here.
SPEAKER_00:That said, do. Be intentional.
SPEAKER_01:Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The gate is narrow, not because there are so many rules about what you can and can't do. It's narrow because love asks something of you over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00:Do it asks you to speak when sometimes staying silent would be easier.
SPEAKER_01:It asks you to keep showing up when walking away would sometimes be more comfortable. It asks you to forgive when it's a lot more fun holding on to the bitterness.
SPEAKER_00:I've been there. It's a lot more fun to hate. He says, do this. That's what makes the gate narrow.
SPEAKER_01:That's what makes the way constrained, difficult. Not because of the don'ts, but because of the do's.
SPEAKER_00:You can't hurt others and call it justified.
SPEAKER_01:Or protect your ego by harming someone else because it makes you feel better. Because why? That revenge feels good. It does. I'm not advocating for you to go out and try it, but I mean, if you've been there, you know. If you've been done wrong, it feels good to get revenge. You can't claim truth without love. Or even or walk away when love becomes inconvenient. It becomes conditional. And all of a sudden you're not doing what I think you should do, so I'm gonna walk away.
SPEAKER_00:Because the love's not there anymore. No, the feelings ain't there anymore. Every step on this path, the narrow path, ask the same question. What does love require me to do?
SPEAKER_01:Because again, it's a restrained road. It's a narrow road, which means that it's specific. Very specific in what has to be done. This way is narrow because love removes alternatives. It constrains self-interest, it limits justification, it demands integrity.
SPEAKER_00:The broad way is wide because it allows anything you want. It allows everything else. You can put yourself first.
SPEAKER_01:You can justify pride, you can justify anger, you can justify indifference. You can do whatever you want on this wide road, on this broad road. You can do nothing. Think about this now.
SPEAKER_00:You can do nothing and still call it freedom. I'm free to do nothing. That's why it feels easy.
SPEAKER_01:Remember, it's a broad road, it's an easy road. That's why it's easy because there's no restraints there.
SPEAKER_00:You're just free willy doing what you want to do. It's easy, it's open.
SPEAKER_01:And Jesus says that's the way that leads to destruction. Come on. Most of you in here have kids or had kids, younger kids. And you know what it's like when there's a teenager, when that teenager wants to just run wild and be free, and they want to rebel from you, and they don't want your rules, they are stupid, your rules don't matter. And they they they truly think there's freedom in what they're doing. They don't realize that they're leading to a path of destruction if you allow them just to do what they want to do. They don't realize that you're helping them, that you're trying to keep them from destruction. It's the same with this road here. If we just free willy rip with it and say, do what you want, that's why he says it leads to destruction. He never said it leads to hell. He's talking about now life. He's saying if you go on this road and you do what you want and you just act the way you want to act and do the things you want to do, you're going to see a marriage busted up. You're going to see friendships torn apart. You're going to see a messed up family. You're going to see alcoholism. You're going to see addiction. You're going to see all these things. Why? Because that's destruction. Ask any addict. And they'll tell you they're living a life of destruction. I mean, they have destroyed things in their life. Anybody who goes down this road is heading toward a life of destruction. This is not talking about one day, it's talking about now. He says it leads to destruction now.
SPEAKER_00:Has nothing to do with afterlife. It's not a threat when he says that, it's a description.
SPEAKER_01:Jesus doesn't define life as where we go later. He defines it as how we live right now in our life. Life equals love, trust, integrity, reconciliation, destruction. Again, is that relationship issues, hardened hearts, fractured communities, busted up families, addiction. That's destruction. You don't have to be in hell to live that.
SPEAKER_00:You can do that today if you choose to. So Jesus isn't threatening people.
SPEAKER_01:He's describing the outcomes of each one of these paths.
SPEAKER_00:If you go on this path, you're going to find life. If you choose this path, you're going to find destruction. Enter the narrow gate. What are you saying? Enter life. Enter here. Few find the narrow path. That's scripture. Few find it.
SPEAKER_01:This is not saying few go to heaven. This is saying few find the narrow path because God. Few find the narrow path not because God is harsh, not because a life of intentional love is what it is, because to be intentional with something, to do something godlike, even though it don't feel natural to me, is rare.
SPEAKER_00:Because I know what I really want to do. Come on, we all maybe you I'm not too holy to admit it. There's been times I want to lay hands on people. And it wasn't holy hands. And I was still saved. I still believed in God, but I really wanted to pop somebody in the mouth.
SPEAKER_01:You've been there too, don't act all holy.
SPEAKER_00:You know you have. We do.
SPEAKER_01:We constrain ourselves because we're not what we used to be. Had I been what I used to be, I'd probably be sitting up there, and you'd go on a website and look at me and see what my charges were. Why? Because that's when I'm not constrained, so I just do whatever. And it leads to destruction. It makes a difference. Seeing this as life and not seeing it as afterlife makes a huge difference. So even with all that being said, Jesus still starts verse 12 with a command. Enter. Very first word in verse 12: enter. Step into the narrow gate. Trust the goodness of the Father. And do love. Deliberately, actively, faithfully. Let it constrain you. Let it guide you. Let it measure everything that you do. Do into unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's why that verse, we can't disconnect that verse from what he's talking about right here with the narrow gate and the wide gate. Because that is the purpose of it. You will enter into the narrow gate when you can do this.
SPEAKER_00:When you can do, do unto others. They're all interrelated. And we have to see that. So let me end right here with this.
SPEAKER_01:Let it constrain you, let it guide you, let it measure you, everything that you do. Because the narrow way, although it's constrained, it's life. And that's what he told us to step into. Real life, life that connects, not just with him, but connects with each other. A life that heals and a life that flows. We always say, I just want to flow with what God's. Really? Do we? Are we willing to? Are we willing to step on the narrow road and flow with life?
SPEAKER_00:Or does it feel too good to get on the wide road? Be honest, the wide road feels good. It really does.
SPEAKER_01:That's why so many enter it. That's what he's talking about. He's not saying half of humanity or three-quarters of humanity is going to hell. He's saying three-quarters of humanity enjoy the destructive life. Because it feels good. It's fun. When we understand that this verse is talking about life and not talking about heaven and hell, it changes everything about the way we look at this. So these are the verses that I'm starting to look at now and say, Lord, show me what this really means because this your scripture, the words that you're speaking, cannot be saying that most people are going to hell. Because if it's truly saying most people are going to hell, then you lost on the cross.
SPEAKER_00:That's my words. That's the way I look at it. And I want to win. I want to worship a God who wins.
SPEAKER_01:There's too much loss in the way we're teaching the Bible. We are losing. Humanity is losing at the way we're teaching the Bible. And I want to win. I want to worship a God who I feel like went on a cross and he accomplished something. And we're not losing at it. It's almost like he went to the cross and then he came down and he went to heaven, and all we're doing is losing. And it's so bad, and all we want to do is get away and go to heaven. He said, No, live life. I've given you a path, a narrow path. This is life. But you got to step onto it. I'm tired of losing. I've never, listen, I'm competitive. Me and Tucker played checkers the other day, and I beat him every time. I won't let him. Well, I don't like to lose. It's just something. And when I see the Bible causing me to be a loser, and causing you to be a loser and causing humanity to lose, I don't like it. And I'm saying, no, this ain't right. This is not right. Because God didn't lose. Jesus didn't lose. So why are we losing? So it automatically makes me say, something's something's not right here.
SPEAKER_00:I got to re-examine this. That's all it is. And if you call that me being a heretic because of that, call me a heretic.
SPEAKER_01:Call me whatever you want to call me. But I'm gonna get an understanding of what it really means. You keep believing whatever whatever you decide to believe. All we're trying to do is just get people to think. That's it. Think beyond where you've always been at and see where it takes you.