Narrowness is not a flaw but a necessary characteristic of true Christianity, as exemplified by Christ's own life and teachings. The sermon contrasts the broad-mindedness of the world, which often tolerates sin and laxity, with the focused message of the Bible and Jesus' personal engagement with individuals. It illustrates this narrowness through parables and Jesus' direct questioning, emphasizing that salvation is a personal, one-at-a-time entrance through Christ, who himself walked a path of suffering and obedience. The core lesson is that embracing this narrow way, which involves a commitment to purity and deliverance from sin, leads to eternal life, while the broad way offers a false sense of freedom that ultimately leads to destruction.
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against Christianity, in which they'll go after us. They'll call us traditionalists. They'll call us, you know, talk about, call me a legalist. They'll call you all kinds of things. And a lot of it just washes off like water off a duck's back. It doesn't bother me. You just consider the source and you go on. Right? That's all you do, right? But I think there is a danger, and maybe you have felt it the way I have, in which you talk to certain people who are very polite towards you. They don't have animosity. It's the kind of the Peter Jennings of the world, or the Tom Brokaw, the person who seems to be very broad-minded.
And they take in all the different ideologies in one scope, and so it seems. And they seem so very cultured, and they'll come to us in a polite way and say, you know, I really kind of like you Christians, and you're nice people, and yet just this one small matter that I find difficult to accept, and that is that you are so narrow. And as you talk to these folks, maybe as a college professor or somebody you live next to, You just look up and you feel like this cramped, small, little, pinched person down here.
And you feel like so intimidated. Like, yeah, you're right. And I'm afraid that some of the believers, they tend to tuck their tail between their legs and become apologetic at this point. We're not quite sure how to respond. And I would hope that as we look at the actual words of Christ, find out what they mean and embrace them. That we'll not cower, but that when someone comes to us and says, your problem is you're just narrow, that we'll look them in the eye and we'll be able to say, you know, you're right, I am narrow. And it would be much better for you and especially for your wife and children if you likewise would become narrow.
And stop talking about this broad-mindedness, which is nothing but an excuse for looseness and laxity and sin. This problem that we see today is all about us, where it seems as if many people who claim to have faith in God, claim to believe this book. yet they have set up for themselves another authority which they're looking at which is the man of the world this this all-knowing persona out there and maybe it's the garrison keeler of your dreams this kind of thing this person who seems to be so comfortable with every little idea and ideology it reminds me of Esoph's fable And you might remember about the ark and the frog.
And there was this little frog. And he was out in the meadow one day. And off in the distance there was a thunder. And he looked off. And there came this darkness. The shadow came passing over. And he could hear the thunder coming closer. And he looked up and hear right over him. was a huge ox. And that little frog, he looks up and he says, at first, quite terrifying, frightened. But then the more he looks at that big ox, he begins to be quite impressed by the girth and size of this thing.
And then after a while, why, he admires the ox. And he says, if only I could, you know what that frog did? Well, he began to inhale. He wrote, and he got a little bigger and he got a little bigger and he goes and he got bigger and you know that frog he became bigger and bigger and bigger and so you know what happened that frog why that frog exploded and you know I think that that is exactly the danger that many so-called Christians are in.
In their anxiety to be like the man of the world, what little faith they did have in the things of God has exploded and gone entirely out of existence. I see this happening. I see it happening on the university campuses. Naive young people who are greatly impressed by what the world has to offer. The Lord Jesus, He spoke of the way as narrow in what sense? Well, first of all, this book is a very narrow book. The whole message of the Bible, really, it holds itself to one theme.
And from beginning to end, whether it is talking about the heavens, whether it's talking about agronomy or agronomy, whatever the topic is. It always seems to be using these things as they relate to the one great theme of the Bible. What is it? God as he relates to man and man in his relationship to God. And you've got that in Genesis twenty eight in which As we sing that song, as to the pilgrim patriarch, that wondrous dream was given, so seems my Savior's cross to me, a staircase up to heaven. And the Lord Jesus becomes a joining place as God deals with it.
He speaks to us, God and man. The Bible is not like an encyclopedia. You know, in an encyclopedia, you learn a little bit about everything, don't you? And that's what you get really in a liberal education in a university. You'll take so many four credit hours or whatever in a certain topic. You don't learn much, but you learn a little enough that you said you learned some. You learn a little bit about a lot of different things. Well, the Bible doesn't teach you a lot about a lot of different things, a little bit. He teaches you everything about this one topic. Everything you need to know about God in this relationship with man.
The message of the Lord Jesus Christ, likewise, is narrow. He holds himself to this one theme. He speaks. And whether he's out looking at the field and viewing the flowers, what does he do? He sees these beautiful flowers as he rush home and paint pictures of flowers. I know. As he looks at the flowers, he says, now look at the lilies of the field. And it becomes an illustration of how God takes care of them, and likewise he, God, is able to take care of you. He sees the birds of the air. Well, they toil not, and you think. No, that was the flowers, wasn't it?
The birds, they don't gather into barns. And yet God, he takes, he watches each one of them. Everything which he saw became a parable. He would watch the farmer, and he's out there sowing seed. And there he is, sowing these different kinds of, into these different kinds of soil. and in effect turns to his disciples and says, what is that farmer doing? Do you see what's going on there? And he tells a parable of the sower and about how that farmer, as he sows seed, he's testing the soil. And in effect, as those men, those disciples listen to the words of the Lord Jesus, God was testing them.
God is interacting with them and they're responding in one way or another. Of course, the philosophers also talked about the soul and God, and that isn't something unique to Christianity exactly. But what is unique is that when God, the Lord Jesus, spoke, he did something which the philosophers didn't do. He did what, I might add, no polite gentleman seemed willing to do. He got personal with people. Remember how he was dealing there with a woman at the well? And they're talking and they're having a discussion. They talk about politics.
Talk a little bit about religion. And then the Lord Jesus broaches this very difficult thing. He says, why don't you go call your husband? Ooh. This is the first little matter, if it was. She says, well, I have no husband. Yeah, that's correct. You don't have a husband. You've had... That woman was a five-time loser. Had five husbands. The man that you're now living with is not your husband. I was talking with a sister up in Chicago the other day, and her sister had been married six times to four different men.
And it's hard to, well, married more than once to the same fellow, six times to four different men. the sister Charlotte was just talking kind of in an offhand way about that passage and quoted those verses and the sister leaned over and said are you talking about me well the Lord Jesus he does this doesn't he he gets personal with us by the way I didn't come here I didn't travel how many six hundred miles or whatever it is to deliver orations I'm interested in speaking to people are you interested in hearing God is speaking.
And the Lord Jesus Christ, when he spoke there in Luke chapter fifteen, he gave a parable, and he told about a hundred sheep, and one is lost. And then he told about ten coins, and one is lost. And then two sons, and one is lost. He's narrowing it down. One hundred, ten, two, and you. The Lord Jesus was not content to speak about God in an impersonal way. He gets personal with us, doesn't he? That's the idea of the narrowness of this door.
It only admits one person at a time. It's like the turnstile you meet in the department store once in a while. You ever walk up to those three-pronged things and you step up and you go through one at a time. That's the way the gate is. It's a narrow entrance. God doesn't save people in nations. They've tried that in Europe, didn't they? They tried to save people in nations. God doesn't save us in regions or in churches. God doesn't save people in families. He saves souls one at a time. And if you're going to come to Christ, you've got to come all by yourself.
Maybe that's frightening, but that's the way it is. The Lord Jesus said, the entrance is narrow. When he talks about the narrowness, I wonder about how there are circles of friendships that we have which are narrow, aren't they? I'm sure that President Clinton has very few close personal friends. The higher you go in any sphere, whether it's in the business world, the political world, the arts or athletics or whatever it is, I'm sure the higher you go, the fewer the people they're going to be there at the top. And the Lord Jesus Christ, in the same message, this same sermon, in chapter five, he says, Be ye, therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is in heaven, is perfect.
The Lord Jesus, in effect, is saying, I want you to be different. I don't want you to be just like everybody else. Yes, the way is narrow. Why? Well, a few people there. Why are the few people? Well, God is calling us to himself. And when you read in the scriptures, it says, thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil. You know, I... I know that we sometimes think about that as a lofty ideal. It's not simply an ideal to be perfect. It's something which when a person submits to God and comes honestly to Christ for their salvation, a program is set in place where God is determined that what he begins with you, he will bring to completion.
And he wants our compliance. He's saying, will you cooperate with me in this thing? I want to deliver you from all sins. Why? I want to make you like myself. This is the object of salvation, that we would be like his son. Is God going to accomplish it? That's what he says. When we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Is there going to be any sin in heaven? Well, if there were, it wouldn't be heaven anymore, would it? And God is not going to take you into His heaven, kicking and screaming. He's saying, listen, if you want to go to God's heaven, you've got to agree to this, to allow Jesus Christ to deliver you from these sins.
Sins that you may be very much in love with. But I'll tell you something. You may love your sins, but your sins will never love you in return. You may make commitments that I did before I came to Christ. the friends I chose, the places I went, how I spent my money, based on my commitment to my sins. But there came a day when I had to determine, am I going to commit myself to this thing even though it's going to drag me down to hell? Or am I going to cooperate with God in this thing? He says, enter in at the straight gate, this narrow gate. You see, there is a broad gate. The Bible, and not to spoil too many sermons here, but the Bible doesn't say that everyone's born on the broad way.
I don't think that's really the point of what he's saying here. He's saying that we have two choices before us. And all through the passage, he's been talking about profession, discerning between those who profess and are real and those who profess and are phony. And there are a lot of people who would like very much to be called a Christian and wear the label, but they want Christ as a cloak for their sin, not a savior from it. And they are very much attracted to this wide entrance, which will admit anything. Well, you can drive a truck through that wide entrance and go anywhere you want after you get through the entrance. You see, the path on the other side of the entrance corresponds to the gate.
If the gate is wide, it doesn't funnel down to the narrow way. It remains a wide entrance. If the gate is narrow on the other side, the way is narrow. And the Lord Jesus... He stands before us and he says, I am the way by me if any man enter and he shall be saved. And if you want to know what Christianity is about, you just take a good long look at the Lord Jesus. That's what it is. He is the way. And there is no compromise with sin with the gospel. You know, the old Puritan, Baxter, Richard Baxter, he said, Christ never died to reconcile God to man's sin. There's a lot of profession of Christianity around it.
When Jimmy Carter was running for president, what do you estimate? Thirty percent of the United States claim to be born again. A lot of people claim to be a Christian. But I'm afraid some people have entered in at a broad gate, which is very accommodating. You can walk through that gate with your crazy ideas or whatever they are, do your thing with your sin, and go on in the broad way. But then there's another entrance, and this is a narrow entrance, where there's no compromise with sin. And Jesus Christ is saying, I want, you need to make a determination. Do you want your sins or do you want Jesus Christ?
Straight is the gate and narrow is the way. I think the very best illustration of what Jesus Christ meant was in his own life. He walked the narrow way, didn't he? He was born in Bethlehem, and if there was ever a straight gate, he was there in Bethlehem, when the great God of all eternity came down and became a man. And then, if you look at his life, how he limited himself, living that time there, up there in Nazareth, and ministering around Galilee, the poet said, Nazareth was a little place, and so was Galilee. And he would travel about, and then, as you see him, yearly make those trips down to Jerusalem.
And there the Pharisees would be waiting for him. And they would be trying to hem him in, trying to get about him, tie him up. This was their ambition. The Lord Jesus walked the narrow way. He came down. And when he was there in Jerusalem, he's free to move about. But they're closing in. And he goes down to Gethsemane. And there he's in prayer. He's been free to walk about. But now the mob is circling around that garden. And he comes out and they arrest him. And you notice what they do? They bind him.
You see him. They have these soldiers that come around him and they take him away. And you see him take him down into prison. And what do they do in prison anyway? What did they do that night? He kept him up all night. They brought him to these different tribunals. They tortured him. They put the screws on. They put him under extreme pressure. As if they were thinking, well, we'll find out the truth. And they were torturing him. And you see them taking that beam and laying it on his shoulders. And there he goes out to that place called Golgotha. And they pin him to that tree. Up there, hanging upon the cross.
And I can just see in my mind. These Pharisees walking around, there you see, we've got him. He's pinned. So they take that body down and they wrap it up and bring it down into that grave, that tomb. And as you see that stone being rolled across that entrance, why, from Bethlehem up to Nazareth and Galilee down to Jerusalem, the wine press of Gethsemane, the pressure, the agony, the torture of Pilate's Hall and Herod's, and then to Golgotha and the tomb.
It's just as if the whole scene seems to be collapsing on us. Because if I look at that scene, I say, straight as the gate, and narrow is the way, but it lead us. and to life. When we sing a song, up from the grave he arose, the mighty conqueror, all his foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain, and he lives forever with his saints to reign. He arose, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has left for us an entrance to life. He has gone before us. And now he stands before everyone here today.
And he says, However daunting and however difficult this may seem, he says, I am the way. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved. And my word of advice, and I think every true-hearted Christian in this building today says the same with me. If you don't yet know the Lord Jesus and haven't yet entered, our advice to you today is enter in. Let's pray. Our Father, we give thanks.
We're going to eat a meal, and we're very thankful for all the hands that have prepared us. But our God, we know there are some here today, and they have never yet come to the Lord Jesus, been honest with God, honest with God about their sin, honest with God about the Lord Jesus. And Father, I pray that there will be some here today who will agree with God and take Him as a Savior. A Savior from sin. A Savior who can take them out of this world and eventually bring them into His home. A home of purity and light and goodness and truth.
A place there up in heaven. O God, we give thanks. for what the Lord Jesus has done for us. And Father, we do pray then for the blessing upon the word. Help us not to be needlessly distracted so that we'd apply the truth to our own hearts. In the name of the Lord Jesus, amen.