Matthew 7:13-14. “Life is a Journey to Somewhere”

We are all on a journey through life.

The Large Gate and the Broad Road

Imagine a large gate at the start of a broad thoroughfare.  The entrance is so easy to find.  It is so easy to travel along this road.  There are lots of people on it.  Any baggage you want can come with you.  You don’t have to leave anything behind.  Indeed it seems the natural thing to enter this gate and travel this road.  You can just ‘go with the crowd’.  It costs nothing.  However there is a problem.  That faded signpost says, ‘To destruction – to hell.’

On the wide road you can keep doing your own thing and follow whatever foibles you enjoy.  You can gossip, cheat, enjoy pornography, be lazy and even lie.  On this road there is plenty of room for everyone so long as you don’t say one thing is right and another is wrong.  On this road it is acceptable for everyone to have their own opinions about what is right and wrong.

The wide road imposes few boundaries on our thinking or conduct.  On this road all you must do is accept that moral issues are controlled by consensus, the majority view, and not by God.  It is no coincidence that when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, the one thing they were forbidden to do was to ‘eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’.  The lesson is that only God has the right to decide what is right and what is wrong.

But, as many have experienced, journeying on this road is consistently unsatisfying.  The adverts of Satan are lies.  All immorality carries a heavy price later.  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said,

“For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. ” Matthew 7:13

Most people, in practice, have chosen to travel this road.  You’ll be with friends who think the same as you.  But do take note of what Jesus says, this road comes to an abrupt end, to an abyss and there is no way back from there.  This is the road that ends in destruction.

The Narrow Gate and the Narrow Road

“But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 5:14

How significant this little word ‘but’ is.  The contrast is with the road the majority are on.  The gate is tiny.  You can see it as a turning off the broad road.  The road beyond this gate is narrow too.  The gate is so narrow that you cannot take any baggage through, you, and you alone, can pass.

The Sermon of the Mount started with what we call the ‘Beatitudes’.  They start,

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit.”

I must accept that I am spiritually bankrupt in God’s eyes.  I have nothing of worth to offer God.  The second beatitude is about the sense of sin.

“Blessed are those who mourn.”

We mourn because we are not behaving in the way God has intended us to live.

A friend has sometimes taken me to watch Spurs play at their old White Hart Lane stadium.  To enter you have to show your ticket and then pass through a very tight turnstile that you have to squeeze through.  It is a picture of entering God’s kingdom.  We have to have a ticket that comes through turning to Christ and we cannot take any baggage with us.

It is hard to have to admit how selfish and rebellious we are and that we have nothing to offer God to make us acceptable to him.  Yet we must accept this about ourselves as this is the only way into God’s kingdom.

The narrow road ahead remains narrow, it doesn’t broaden out.  However we still do naturally like to wander along the edges of the path and not stick to the centre.  Yet Jesus says,

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23