“The Narrow Way”

 A sermon based upon Matthew 7: 13-29

Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

23^rd Sunday After Pentecost, November 12th    (Series:  THE MISSIONARY CHURCH)

I remember, dreading to hear of another car crash on two lane 421 highway; either heading to Wilkesboro or Winston.  I dreaded it because, like most of you, I had to travel that highway too.   And what about traveling from Winston to Greensboro, after you passed the Sandy Ridge Road exit, before they built the 8 lane Interstate 40?   Can you remember the traffic, the stalls, and traffic jams?  We all longed for the newer, bigger, broader roads.  And this is exactly the kind of big, broad, safer road we now need from Mooresville to Charlotte on I-77, if not even beginning in Statesville.   These big, broad roads not only make traveling faster, they can make it much safer too.   Bigger, broader highways can, and do save lives.

So, then why did Jesus say that only ‘a narrow road leads to life?’   Well, of course, they didn’t have cars, paved roads, or interstate highways back then.   Travel was very different, with different kinds of challenges and dangers.  But isn’t this why people don’t like to read from the Bible?  It may have meant something ‘way back when’, but now it sounds so narrow-minded. Who likes the sound of being restricted or refused anything?  In an extremely diverse culture like ours, any inclination or command toward one, single or narrow path or way of life today, sounds like having to live like Amish, or some other stringent, primitive lifestyle.  

Sorry Jesus, broad is in, and narrow is out.  Or, is it?

    

BROAD IS THE ROAD TO DESTRUCTION (13)

What can Jesus’ vision of a straight and narrow way, mean to people who prefer the way of ‘anything goes’, or the way of ‘Whatever’!   One online dictionary gave an example, of where the ‘whatever’ way can lead.  It gave the example of how one married person saying to the other after a fight:  “If you leave me, l’ll kill myself!  Answer: “Whatever.”  

We may prefer to live in a world full of unlimited options and unlimited choices, ‘no rules, just right’, as the add goes.   But the way of ‘whatever’ can lead to nowhere fast—much faster than we have imagined?    Narrow may sound negating, denying, and limiting, while ‘broad’ sounds like always including, adding, and affirming,  so that we all be ‘all that we can be’ or be what we want to be, but do could we realize that ‘anyway’ could end as ‘no way’?  

Now my mother had the wisdom to choose Jesus over other ‘ways’.   So, when Sammy Campbell, my next door neighbor, asked me to go out and play with him, knowing Sammy’s tendencies toward getting us into trouble, mom would explain my limits:  “Yes, you can go play, but don’t play in the road, don’t go out of the yard, be home before dark, don’t talk to strangers, and don’t go near the construction site….don’t, don’t, don’t.  While it may seem that my mom was being restrictive, overly cautious, and way too demanding!  She was NOT trying to keep me from having fun.  My parents did have rules, restrictions, instructions, and even commands.  Why?  My parents seemed like nice people.  In fact, they were nice people, but they did still set boundaries and had limits they would not let me cross without consequences.  And besides what they told me I should or shouldn’t do, they also made me do things I didn’t always like or want to do.  I had to be respectful of people.   I had to share with others.  I had to eat my vegetables.  I had to clean my room, do my homework, watch my language, go to church, come home before dark, and be home for dinner.   Were they being narrow-minded and restrictive?  Yes.  Of course, they were.    Were they treating me like a child?  Yes, that too.  But they were also treating me like a child who was human being full of potential, possiblities and promise.  They didn’t want me to get hurt, mess up, or be less than I could be.

Did their limits always work?  Well, yes, sometimes, and no other times.  It depended upon my choice.   When I went out with Sammy Campbell to play, after we got bored with the toys, he suggested we go and take a look at the construction site of the new educational building at church.  “But…. I said.”  Sammy was a year older than me; he insisted.   When we got near the deep whole workers had dug the week before, which was still slightly wet from a recent rain, Sammy climbed down into the hole and asked me to come down too.  I did.  But when we tried to get out, I could push Sammy out, but he couldn’t pull me out.   Finally, he had to get my Mom to get me out.  That was his second mistake.    

When Mom arrived, she was more than a little ‘hot’.  She had to get muddy herself to pull me out of that hole.   I can’t remember all that she said, and don’t want to, but I do recall that she did what parents don’t do much today.   She started to threaten my little bottom on the way back to the house.  “Mom, my back hurts”, I said in a very neurotic voice.  She sharply responded, calling my bluff, holding my hand tightly:  “Your back’s not the only thing that’s going to hurt when your Father gets home!”

Now, before you get the idea that my mother and father were tyrannical, dictatorial, oppressive, or restrictive parents, nothing could be further from the truth.  My parents gave me more freedom than I ever deserved.  My mother was not putting excessive demands on me when she commanded me to follow her rules and restrictions, because she knew that life can be dangerous and even deadly.   She was afraid for my skin, and my life, because I didn’t really know how to be ‘afraid’ nor know what could happen.  And she knew that if I just went my own way, even the joy of my own absolute freedom could hurt or kill me.   She was not going to let that happen, if she could help it, so, as best she knew how---whether I wanted to be taught or not---she told me what was right, responsible, respectable, and the safest way to play and live my life.  You see it was life she was after, not narrow ways, just to be narrow.

THE NARROW IS THE ROAD THAT LEADS TO LIFE (14)

So, if we can understand that Jesus, like my mother’s discipline, was not trying to ‘restrict’, nor ‘limit’, but to guide and save (even if it didn’t feel like it at the time), what good thing can we say about this ‘narrow way’ of Jesus for today?  Even more, how can we still say that Jesus is the way, rather than any other way people might choose for themselves?   Can we be on mission, declaring that ‘there is salvation in no one else (Acts 4:12)?”  Isn’t this a lot like saying the earth is flat, or that this earth or our sun is at the center of the universe?    We know that isn’t so, so how do we know that Jesus is still so, when everything has changed and is still changing around us?  A Baptist preacher in Georgia has said: “It’s either Jesus’ way or it’s the highway!”   Isn’t the very kind of narrow-minded, life-cramping style, that’s no longer eligible as a ‘truth’ we can swallow or accept?    

When I was a missionary pastor in Eastern Germany, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was cigarette commercial, as big as the Marlboro man, remember him.   He was in Germany too.  But in Europe, there was a Cigarette named ‘West’ and very popular, catchy motto was:  “Test The Best: Try West”.  Right after Communism fell in eastern Germany,  people were still smoking “West” Cigarettes, but now, there was a new freedom of speech and expression not known in over 50 years.   Once when I drove through eastern Berlin, once the largest communist, atheistic city in eastern Europe, I saw a huge, sign hanging across the city, with the words “Test the Best”.   I figured it was only another cigarette commercial.  Then, as I got closer, I realized the words were hanging from a large church, in the city of the city.  This church added to the words, “Test the Best in the West:  Try Jesus!” 

After communism fell, people found something in the free west, that they hadn’t had in the oppressive Communist culture.   They had freedom.  Who had given the ‘west’ this freedom?  Of course, the church told the truth:  Jesus is the ‘best of the west’.   Jesus is not only the ‘reason for the season’, but Jesus is also the source of life and all our freedom which promises us life and light, rather than death and darkness.   Jesus is why the west, though not perfect by any means, had been better than any other human system on earth.   The west has been the best because the west was founded on the freedom for Jesus to work in the hearts and lives of all people.  Because ‘Christ has made us free’ we have been ‘free indeed’, as Jesus said.  

 But today, in most of the western lands, Europe and North America, there is a loss of any trust in any ‘absolute truth claims’, and as a result, the ‘authority’ for the church’s mission to preach, teach, and live Jesus has been weakened.  Why should we continue to trust, believe, follow or answer Jesus’ freedom and God’s mission in a world filled with so many other options?    As a Christian pastor, a former missionary, and someone who considers himself an ‘evangelical’, that is, a gospel preacher, you may think I would immediately renew our calling to convert people.   But I don’t think it was ever the call or mission of the church to ‘convert’ anyone.   The church has never ever had any power to convert.   The church can only preach the truth and follow the Spirit to share with those whom the Spirit is already at work. 

And in this confusing world, it is even more important to encourage, invite, and embolden a conversation of how, what, and why we still have faith in Jesus.   In other words, we must first show how JESUS SAVES US FOR LIFE.  By conversing in both word and deed, of how we have Life in Jesus, hope still remains in our world.   Interestingly, the old English word, “Conversation” did not mean what you said, or how you spoke, but it originally meant how you lived your life.  This is how many of the older King James Bibles translated it, saying, as James did, we must ‘show a good conversation with works of meekness and wisdom’ (James 3:13). 

More than ever, we must have a living ‘conversation’, with words and deeds, based on living like Jesus.   We must show our life in Jesus with the life of Jesus, having the same ‘fruit of the Spirit’ Jesus had:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, and faithfulness, gentleness and self-control… (Gal. 5:22).   By showing our ‘fruit’ they will not only know us, but they also get to know him, Jesus, who is the ‘way, the truth, and the life’.

ENTER THROUGH THE NARROW GATE. (13)

Finally, ‘why’ should we live or say anything about Jesus at all?   Well the answer can be shocking, maybe even offensive.  Hold on!  Listen closely, to the last thing Jesus says.  

Jesus not only says ‘many take’ the road to destruction, but Jesus also says: “few … the way that leads to life.” (7:14). The way of the majority, the way of the popular, and not even the way of the people, will always lead to life.  Remember, it was the voice of the ‘crowd’ that killed Jesus.   And it is always true, that the way to having our best life, is never living just any old way we want too.   This is a ‘myth’ that Satan, still uses, just like He did in the Garden, when he tricked Adam, saying “Surely, you won’t die!”   Oh, yes you will, die that is, and it can be sooner than you think, want or wish.

My first serious bush with death came at 17 years of age.   It was my senior year in high school.  I was coming home from school, minding my own business, following all the traffic laws, and turning left to go into my home driveway, when a classmate, a 16 year old, passed 4 cars and a school bus, and crashed into my car door going 80 miles an hour.   I didn’t see it coming.  I did see the telephone pole go passed my crashing windshield.  I still hear the noise in my head.  I still feel the pain in my crushed foot that has never recovered, and still swells and hurts every day.  But it is not simply a ‘pain’, but it is also a ‘reminder’ that my life is short, my time is brief, and my days on this earth are ‘numbered’.   I have a ‘narrow’ period that I can call my life, which is a gift to me, not once, but now twice, and probably many other times, I don’t realize.  I’ve had some other close calls which were my fault but I have survived.

 So, let me assure you, that the way to life can very ‘narrow’.   We can all get hurt, become lost, addicted to substances, hate or bitterness, and lose our lives way too easily.   Those who make it to the finish can be ‘few’.   But I can also tell you that “God doesn’t intend for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.” It is only through what the Bible calls repentance that you can find the way of life.  What the Bible means by ‘repent’ is that we must all ‘turn’ toward the direction of God that leads us toward life, not death.   It is the mission of this church, of all churches, to remain true to this most basic message of all:  Only Jesus saves.  No politic can save you.  No religion can save you.   No church can save you either.  “Nothing less than Jesus’ blood, and His righteous alone’ can save.”  It is our mission not to point to ourselves, put to keep pointing to, keep speaking of, and to keep living in Jesus, for there is ‘salvation in no other name’, than his, and his alone.

Jesus is the way to find life, because life can only be found in this “God”… who “so loved the world, that he gave son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but shall have everlasting life…(John 3:16).   Faith in Jesus is the narrow way and the gate, the true door, because only the message of God’s ‘pure’ love can save us, in this death and destruction haunted world.  “Only love believes in Resurrection” said one of most important philosophers of recent years. 

This Austrian-British philosopher name Wittgenstein was born into a very wealthy Austrian family, but most of siblings committed suicide, and he almost did too.  He was brilliant, but complicated man, who taught Kindergarten in Switzerland and later taught philosophy at Cambridge.   It was,  however,  after describing a period of deep depression, with inner feelings of anxiety, guilt and fear, that on a ship to Norway, that he wrote of Christ’s Resurrection and what inclined even him, a Secular Jew, to believe in it.

If Christ did not rise from the dead,’  he reasoned, ‘then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. HE IS DEAD AND DECOMPOSED.’ If that were the case, then Christ was a teacher like any other, ‘and can no longer HELP; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation.’  And if that is all we have, then ‘We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven.’  Wittgenstein, the great 20^th century thinker, a Jew who survived two world wars, realized that if he wanted to be saved, to be redeemed, then wisdom was not enough; he needed faith. 

Wittgenstein the writes some of the most important modern words outside the Bible:

“And faith is faith in what is needed by my HEART, my SOUL, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can only say: Only LOVE can believe in the Resurrection. Or: it is LOVE that believes the Resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to Resurrection …  What combats doubt is, as it were, is REDEMPTION. Holding fast to THIS must be holding fast to that belief. …”  .  http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrs-blog/2009/11/27/wittgensteins-thoughts-in-1937-about-god-the-resurrection-of.html

What the philosopher realized is what every thinking person must realized: Eternal life can only be found in this God who loves, because He is the true God of the narrow way, who never intends to keep anyone out. God only makes the way narrow, sometimes very narrow, so you and can find the single right door to the only right way that leads to the us to true hope in the right one, Jesus Christ.  He is the only one who can give you the promise of life.  But we must hurry to him, or come back to him, before it’s too late, or gets too dark for you to find the way at all.    Amen.