Transcript

Let’s go back to Luke and pick up in our preaching through this New Testament gospel. We continue with the section where the Lord is giving a public discourse and he is, once again, I sound like a broken record but once again, he gives some powerfully cutting, convicting, even shocking things that he’s saying to these crowds. One of the things that amuses me is as you read about Christ from the Scriptures and let the text interpret him, you realize what a phony, false, liberalized view of Jesus our world has and what a blasphemy. What a blasphemy to bring our subjective viewpoint onto him. We are to humble ourselves before the word of God and let Christ be who he is. So, let’s do that again this morning, let’s worship him by humbling ourselves and honoring who he says he is and acknowledging and even celebrating the truth he teaches.

We begin in verse 18 of Luke 13 and we’ll go down through verse 30.

“ 18 So He was saying, ‘What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.’ 20 And again He said, ‘To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.’

“22 And He was passing through from one city and village to another, teaching, and proceeding on His way to Jerusalem. 23 And someone said to Him, ‘Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?’ And He said to them, 24 ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 25 Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, “Lord, open up to us!” then He will answer and say to you, “I do not know where you are from.” 26 Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets”; 27 and He will say, “I tell you, I do not know where you are from; depart from me, all you evildoers.” 28 In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out. 29 And they will come from east and west and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God. 30 ‘And behold, some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last.’”

I’ve entitled this section “Discerning the Kingdom.” We have here our Lord giving a powerful and penetrating instruction, teaching on what the kingdom of God really is and what it’s like and as he concludes his discourse, he’s even talking about how the majority of those clamoring around him are not going to be in on it. That’s not a pleasant thing to hear as these people are practically worshiping Jesus in one sense or another, not true worship as embracing him as their only Lord and Savior, but they’re greatly esteeming him: he’s healing them, he’s feeding them, performing other various miracles. He’s a marvelous teacher and yet he looks at them and says, “You are going to be thrown out. And you’re going to be on the outside. And you’re going to be where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. And you will not sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom to come.”

What a penetrating thing and you might say Jesus was a hard preacher. I like what John MacArthur said: “Hard preaching produces soft hearts. Soft preaching produces hardened hearts.” But it’s not that Jesus is a hard preacher, Jesus is a truthful preacher. He wants to save their souls. He wants to shock them out of the doldrums and the strongholds of wrong thinking and wrong understanding and get them to the truth that will save their eternal souls and set them free and that’s why he’s so strong, because they are so wrong. That’s part of why God has ordained preaching. There is a sense in which men need to be shaken out of their stupor and rattled and awakened from their deep, deep sleep of lying in error and in the comforts and the false securities of religiosity and not in the truth.

Well, let’s look at it together: Discerning the Kingdom. First of all, 1. notice it’s unperceived power and growth. It’s unperceived power and growth. The kingdom of God often is advancing and working and multiplying but it’s not seen with the human eye, it’s not discerned by the human ear, it’s unperceived in natural perception. We see this in verses 18 and 19. Jesus says in verse 18, “What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it?” So, he gives us two illustrations. Verse 19, “It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.” First of all, he says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed which is very, very tiny and really a mustard seed is about one of the most insignificant things a person could possibly have in their possession. There’s just not much to it. Jesus said, “Well, that’s what the kingdom of God is like.” Very often when you look at the kingdom of God, you say, “Well, there’s just not much going on there. That doesn’t look like it’s accomplishing much. It doesn’t look like it’s going to go very far. It’s just a little mustard seed.”

So, two thoughts about this mustard seed: first of all, it’s tiny, it just doesn’t look like much; secondly, it’s got unperceived power because if you take that mustard seed and you put it into the earth, what it needs is time and moisture and a little heat and given a little heat, a little time, a little moisture, then the process, even the miracle of germination occurs and that tiny mustard seed begins to put down roots. And you still don’t see anything much and then finally that tiny mustard seed puts out a shoot but there’s not much to it and you think, “Well, I just don’t know that this is going to amount to a whole lot.” But then you give it a little time and it develops into a mustard tree and a mustard tree of that day was a fairly substantial tree as far as they had trees. They didn’t have the mighty oaks and pines we have in our part of the country but it became a tree and even so big that the birds could nest in it. I think that’s what the Lord is saying here. It is unperceived; there is a power and there is a growth to the kingdom and if you’re going to evaluate God’s kingdom with human eyes and human ears, you’re going to miss it. These things are spiritually discerned.

Jesus gave a second illustration that teaches the same thing. Verse 20-21, “And again He said, ‘To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven,’” or yeast, “which a woman took and hid.” I think that’s interesting: he uses the word “she hides it in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.” Now, once again, he used this very inexpensive, it just doesn’t take up much space and it’s one of the most insignificant things a person could have in their possession and he said, “That’s the way the kingdom is.” If you just look at it, again, it’s tiny, it doesn’t look like it’s going to accomplish much. It doesn’t look like it’s going to go very far. If you only discern what you’re going to attach yourself to in your Christian work and ministry, be careful that you attach yourself to what looks big and successful to the human eye. You may miss the kingdom of God.

It’s like yeast but she puts it in three pecks of flour and there is an unseen power there. We all understand it better today, they knew that it worked, we know perhaps better how it works but the yeast the leavens the whole lump of dough and the whole thing rises and you can see the powerful and obvious results. But it took a while. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 2:9 that, “Eye has not seen and ear has not heard and neither has it entered into the heart of men all that God has prepared for those who love him.” In other words, if you’re going to pick, for example, a church to belong to, be careful just looking with your eye and saying, “That looks good.” Be careful just listening with your ears and say, “Well, that sounds like that’s really going somewhere.” Look at the word of God and be spiritually perceptive: “Is this true? Is this right? Is this biblically solid? Then I don’t care what my eye sees and I don’t care what my ear hears, I’m to go by faith and truth. It may not look like much, it may look like a mustard seed or a little yeast but God’s got unperceived power and growth coming if we’ll just stay on the truth.” Can I hear a good Amen? Amen. That’s the way God works.

I thought about a number of things. First of all, one of the quick cross references here: 1 Corinthians 2:14, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they’re spiritually appraised.” He says if you’ll just take your natural senses and try to evaluate God’s work, you’re going to miss it. You’re going to clamor toward the same thing the world clamors toward when they want to be a part of something big or successful. And, of course, here our Lord is, as he’s going to the cross, his disciples are going to be shrinking and it’s going to look like he’s just a mustard seed, it’s going to look like he’s just a little yeast, it’s not working. This is not going to be effective; it’s not going to be what we hoped it would be. So, people continually fall off and he’s trying to tell them, “Don’t discern it that way. Hear my words. Watch my works. I am affirming and clearly biblically clarifying or affirming that I am the true Messiah. Look at the truth. Don’t just look with eyes and your ears.” Of course, the religious leaders of the day are continually working to undermine him and they were the ones in power and control. With the eyes and the ears, they were the ones to look to because they had all the power and control and the numbers following them but Jesus said, “Be careful with that. Be careful with that.”

I thought about our own journey with some of the things we’ve purposed to be a part of through the years. I remember several years ago getting a call from a group in Dallas, Texas and I don’t even remember how it all unfolded but a guy by the name of Jesse Barrington was out there and he said, “You know, I’m just convicted that we need a biblically sound church and we really can’t find one. Would you guys help us? Would you disciple us?” I flew out there several times. I don’t know how many times we talked, many times on the phone. We spent quite a bit of money and quite a bit of energy investing in that and, really, from all human eye and ear perception, they were just a mustard seed, they were just a little yeast. You would think, “Is anything going to come of this?” They have about 200 in attendance now. They send us $1,000 a month with world missions. The birds of the air begin to nest in the branches of the Grace Life Church of Dallas, Texas. Isn’t God good? Now, if we’d just gone by what looked good and what sounded good, we’d of said, “That little bunch isn’t going to make it. Don’t you know in Dallas there are churches with 10,000 people in attendance?” I wouldn’t call them a church, they’re more like evangelical country clubs. Nevertheless, that little group didn’t seem like much.

We were contacted by a college kid in Pensacola, Florida and I had breakfast with him. I was preaching a meeting down there and he’s just a college guy but I thought he had a good heart and I thought he was on the right track and he began to tell me his convictions that a church needed to be Scriptural and biblical and glory of God focused, and Christ honoring and Bible saturated. He didn’t have a condemning spirit but he said, “You just can’t find that and I think I need to start a church.” I said, “Well, we’ll help you.” We’re talking college kids, just a bunch of college kids. You know how college kids are: they’re dreamy, they’re not very sound, they’re not very mature. They look like mustard seed, like a little yeast, just wasn’t much to it. God has blessed them today. They’ve multiplied and multiplied and multiplied and grown and now it’s no longer just college kids but adults are beginning to come and a thriving ministry is there and they’re sending out missionaries to the foreign mission field already. That little mustard seed grew up and became a tree with birds of the air nesting in its branches.

We could go on and on. I remember being contacted, again, I don’t remember how the scenario all worked out but 2-3 families out in Iowa, why would folks in Iowa contact us and say, “We just are convicted. We can’t find a place that’s glory of God focused and Christ honoring and Bible saturated. Can you help us?” I flew out there. We spent time and energy and money again and invested and talked to these people. They didn’t have a preacher. They didn’t have anything so they put our broadcast on and they had their Sunday service around our Sunday morning broadcast and God began to bless. Years went by and they reached more people and now Seth who was an intern here for several years is their pastor out there. They’re being blessed and they send us $8-10,000 a year now to help with world missions.

But if we had just looked with the eye and just listened with the ear and thought, “This is just a one way street. We’re giving out and we’re going and we’re spending time and energy and money and almost without exception, it cost us money and it cost me personally money to go.” And you think, “Well, is there any good in that?” If it’s of God, it’s good. If it’s of God, it will be blessed. If it’s of God, there is an unseen power and an unseen growth. The seed was germinating, it was sending out roots, it was starting to send up shoots. It didn’t look like much but we live in a world today and it’s invaded the church and that’s this thought that we’ve got to see something happening now or we’re not pleased.

That very mindset is the reason now why in Southern Baptist life, the majority of converts comes from – do you know what the majority of converts in Southern Baptist life comes from? Vacation Bible School. Because it’s just easy to get dozens of kids to raise their hand and say they’ve come to know the Lord and then you get them all baptized. The problem is and the facts are in, the facts are in, the facts are in: 80-90% of them fall away by the time they get through high school which means they were not converted.

Now, this doesn’t mean that people are evil, it doesn’t mean that people are trying to be misleading, it’s just that lust for having to see it happen now, immediately, show us results. Jesus said, “Be careful having to measure a ministry’s success by the way you’d measure your business success for the last month. It doesn’t work that way in the kingdom of God.” There may be months and years and seasons of putting the seed in the ground and watering and plowing and fertilizing and weeding and waiting and praying before the roots are established and it starts to come up as a solid, true plant in the kingdom of God.

Well, Jesus said, “I want you to know the kingdom of God, the true kingdom of God isn’t like the big stuff you guys are used to seeing in Jerusalem and the pomp and the ceremony and the high muckety-mucks of Jerusalem. The kingdom of God may look to you like it isn’t going anywhere; it may look like it’s not going to work; it may look like it’s not going to make it. But you stay with what’s right because there is unseen power and unseen growth you don’t even know about but it will show up soon.”

Secondly, not only is there unperceived power and growth in the kingdom but we’re discerning the kingdom. Jesus said, “Be aware that there are relatively few who enter it.” There are relatively few. Now, I don’t mean that there are a few overall, there are millions I’m convinced that are in the true kingdom of God either already glorified in heaven or still living on earth, but relative to the masses and compared to all who claim Christianity, it’s few. The Lord makes this very clear. Look at what he says in verses 22- 24: the first thing he talks about is the demands that make it few. “And He was passing through from one city and village to another,” and by the way, a lot of people will preach these two parables, the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven and then leave it. It goes with the rest of the text. Luke is putting this together to make one overall truth and that’s why I’m going to put all this together.

Verse 22, “And He was passing through from one city and village to another, teaching, and proceeding on His way to Jerusalem.” Now, I can’t pass that up without commenting on it. What does it say he’s doing? Proceeding on his way to Jerusalem. Don’t miss that. Don’t let that just go by. Jesus will do many things and many ministries while he’s on the earth out of his great love and his great compassion for the masses but there is a radar lock in his heart on going to Jerusalem. He must go there to fulfill the primary purpose of his coming. As he said back in Luke 9:51, “When the days were approaching for ascension he was determined to go to Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was the place of sacrifice for sin. That was his destination for there he would become the guilt offering for his children. All of the works and all of the miracles were precursors to that one work that was the centerpiece of why he came: he’s going to Jerusalem to die on a cross, pay for the sins of his children, be buried in the grave and rise again for their justification. Jesus will bypass untold thousands of people that needed healing and he could have healed them but he will not stop and miss the timetable the Father gave him to go to Jerusalem.

Many ministries are good and many ministries are important but all this that we’re seeing today – I was driving through Nashville between buying furniture and there was a Presbyterian church that had on their marquee that Easter Lent ought to, how did they word it? Rise our hearts towards social justice. Listen to me friend, Jesus’ primary mission was not about social justice, it was about spiritual redemption. And that’s what’s ruined our churches and if I might say it very clearly: the African American church has been taken over by liberals who have substituted the true gospel for a social gospel. They need to read the Bible and see how our Lord would set his face like flint toward the spiritual calling his Father gave him to die on the cross for the sins of the children even if it meant bypassing social ills and injustices. As a matter of fact, right before Jesus was delivered over to be crucified, a woman came in and put enormously expensive perfume on his feet. Judas, the social justice advocate of the 12, said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, we could have sold that perfume and helped the poor.” What did Jesus say? “The poor you’re going to have with you always. You do not always have me. Leave her alone.”

Does that mean we don’t have a heart of compassion? Certainly not but isn’t it just like Satan to take a good thing, that’s caring for people who have genuine need. By the way, social justice isn’t always caring for people with a legitimate need, what they’re calling social justice is that everybody ought to have three widescreen televisions in their house. If you’re got three and I’ve only got two, we’ve got to get one from you so that we can each have two and a half. It’s just a ridiculous ploy. It sounds so good but it’s not. Now listen, the people of God always should have compassion on those with legitimate need, our Lord did, but never at the expense of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Never. Never. Never. Never.

He’s proceeding to Jerusalem. That’s what his Father commissioned him to do. That’s a side note, that’s off track. I’ve got to get back on track. He’s going to Jerusalem and verse 23, while he’s traveling, “And someone said to Him, ‘Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?’ And He said to them, ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.’” Folks, strap in. This is strong stuff. The man comes up and says, “Are there only a few that are going to be in the kingdom?” Now, why does this guy say this? Well, he’s Jewish. It’s very probable that his perspective is what most Jewish perspective was and that is: the Jews are God’s elect people; the Jews are predestined by God. Which is true, not unto eternal salvation but unto being a nation of privilege and blessing. And they thought since they were children of Abraham and they were the elect nation of God, they were all in, they were all saved, they were all in the kingdom. They thought, “Well, it’s just us in Israel that are the true kingdom citizens and all the rest are not really going to get in.” Maybe that’s what he meant, that’s likely what he meant.

But also, he may be a perceptive listener and he may have been hearing what Jesus had been saying over and over to them in one way or another and that is: “All of you folks around me, I want you to understand that just because you love my miracles and you’re hailing me right now and you’re celebrating me right now,” just like they will on Palm Sunday when they say, “Hail, Hosanna to the King!” and then later said, “Crucify him!” He said, “You’re all excited, you’re all followers right now but most of you aren’t true disciples yet. Most of you are not converted. Most of you are not citizens of the kingdom.” So, maybe he’s just been hearing Jesus say that over and over. Remember in chapter 12, Luke begins chapter 12 by saying there are so many people around Jesus that they’re stepping on one another? And then toward the middle of chapter 12, Jesus looks at all those people and he says, “Fear not little flock.” Interesting. But he does that over and over.

So, he’s saying that there’s not the majority that are going to make it to the kingdom of God and then he gives that verse in verse 24, “Strive to enter through the narrow door,” or the narrow gather, “for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” Now, he says to strive to enter. Are you listening to your pastor this morning? He said “strive to enter,” he did not say “pause to ponder.” That’s what some of you are doing right now in this church: you’re pausing to ponder the things of God and the kingdom of God, you’re not striving to enter. If you are a pauser and a ponderer, you’re going to hell, you’re missing the kingdom.

He said, “strive to enter.” That idea of striving in a narrow gate has the idea of to groan. It means to fight and squeeze through. It has the idea of agonizing. The true child of God has set their face like flint on honoring, knowing and loving Jesus Christ and their mind and their emotions and their will are in action, going against the grain of this world, going against the current of this present culture, going against the winds of adversity against the truth but they don’t give up. They may get down but they don’t give up. They keep striving to enter. They keep striving to go forward with God. That is not saving them, it’s showing forth that they are a saved one. Jesus said, “Strive. Strive to enter the narrow gate.”

So, the Lord says in effect: it is not those who seek to enter that are saved but those who are striving to enter that are saved. Many today seek with intellectual coldness and indifference. They will not enter the kingdom of God. Some take some pains but they don’t persevere. They gave a good start and they went up like a flash that didn’t last very long. They’re not going to enter; that’s not striving to enter the narrow gate. That’s why our Baptist forefathers coined the phrase “the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.” Now, we’ve dumbed it down and been unbiblical and called it “once saved, always saved.” I believe that but what the Bible really teaches is the perseverance of the saints. If you’re truly saved, you will be a persevering one in your work and in your devotion to Jesus Christ. Not perfect, but it is the pattern of your life to persevere.

Some will tell us, “Well, we will enter if you’ll just widen the gate a little bit.” Jesus said, “No, it’s a narrow gate.” It’s a gate that’s offensive to a lot of people. It doesn’t fit the intellectual conclusions of this world; it doesn’t fit the theories and the notions of “compassionate mankind.” He says, “Enter the narrow gate.”

Did you see this week where World Vision, I assume the largest evangelical Christian ministry for helping poor children, changed their policy and they decided that they would no longer exclude gay and lesbian couples from working in their organization. Well, a lot of people raised their voice and what? 48 hours later, they changed back and said that, “We’ve decided we’re going to be biblical again.” What World Vision did is what a lot of churches are doing today and a lot of ministries are doing. They’re saying, “Look, we want to widen the gate. If you’d just widen the gate, we’re all going to get in.” Like I said on my Twitter thing, you Tweet or something, you put words out there and people read them. I said, “Any organization that had to wrestle with whether or not to condone and celebrate homosexuality, even though they came back, has serious flaws in the foundation.” Just serious flaws.

But that’s where we are, folks, and the founder of World Vision I understand was a solid man of God but that’s what happens with churches and ministries, they just tend to go liberal. That’s why we want to be very careful that we hand this ministry off here to solid young men who would die before they would compromise. I’m not a 30 year old emotional, hopefully immature preacher when I say this: I may not make it to retirement or death without being legally persecuted for our doctrine. I may not make it. I don’t know. That’s just the age that we live in. I’m almost convinced Brother Matt’s generation will serve jail time for preaching the same things I’ve preached to you faithfully. The spirit is “widen the gate and we’re good.” Just widen the gate and we’ll accept it. Well, brothers and sisters, I want it to be as wide as God wants it to be and as narrow as God wants it to be. By the way, are you listening? It’s not my gate and it’s not your gate.

It’s God’s gate and Jesus, God Incarnate said, “I want you to know that this is a gate you’ve got to agonize, you’ve got to strain.” Do you know why you’ve got to agonizing and struggle and strain? Because everything is against you. Sometimes your wife will be against you. Sometimes your husband is going to be against you. Sometimes your children will be against you. I don’t care who comes against you, if it’s clear in the word of God, struggle, strive and agonize but stay on the narrow road. Be loving, be humble, be sweet-spirited but don’t compromise. Listen, you and I are in a culture and a day where it would be so very easy to stop agonizing and striving and just go with the flow of professing Christianity in our age. But something happened to us, it’s called the regenerating power of the Holy Ghost in our hearts. Something got a hold of us and while I may let go, he won’t let go of me. Amen? And when I start slipping and sliding and thinking, “You know, that wide gate looks awful easy. That wide gate looks a lot more fun. I mean, why be such a pariah in the community when we can just go along and get along and just widen the gate out,” and something grabs a hold of you and says, “NO! I saved you and you belong to me. You’ve got to keep striving and agonizing in the truth.”

Now, aren’t you glad it isn’t all hard? There are blessings along the way, Amen? And encouragements and joys. But some of you men, you may face the day when your employer basically says, “If you hold to those beliefs, you can’t work here.” Strive and agonize but stay on the narrow road, enter the narrow gate. You must squeeze through the narrow door. Some in our day will want to ponder theological concepts and they’ll need their theological questions answered before they will enter in and in their proud intellectual debates and discourse, they will fail to enter the narrow gate but you must consistently strive to squeeze through the narrow door and all must drop off of the worldliness and sins that you’ve embraced, once and for all renouncing sin, self, the world and Satan because they don’t fit through the narrow gate. They don’t fit. That’s what’s hard. They keep bending off and you need to throw your shoulders back and you’ve got to keep striving.

Philippians 2:12 says, “So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Do you know what working out your salvation with fear and trembling is? Striving to enter the narrow gate. It’s the same thing. Hebrews 4:1, “Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.” As someone said, “I think not you can rest your head on Delilah’s lap in this life and rest it on Abraham’s bosom in the next.” He alone is wise who is wise for eternity.

Now, I’m going to say a couple of things and then I’m going to close for this morning. You cannot separate this truth from the local church. You cannot create your own definition of how you’re going to strive for the Lord. Here’s what I mean: it’s God’s will for every Christian to join up and joyously assume the duties and the blessings of a good local church. Not a perfect one, but one that is striving to enter the narrow gate. And that’s a little costly, that’s a little difficult but you have not that option and over and over and over and over, we saw it in James a couple of weeks ago, we see it all through the New Testament, it’s clear in the gospels that your devotion to the body of Christ that is also striving to enter the narrow gate is the primary way you show that you are striving to enter the narrow gate. In Matthew 25, Jesus says over and over, “In as much as you did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me.” He says that over and over in Matthew 25. What is the context of Matthew 25? The context of Matthew 25 is Christians are hurting and suffering, they are local church family members and they are being persecuted for their doctrine and their gospel and their convictions and he’s saying, “You will stay devoted to them. You will still love them. You will visit them in prison if they’re locked up for the truth. You will feed them if they’re hungry because they can’t get a job because they hold to the truth. Whatever it takes, you will strive with them. You will stay with your brothers and sisters in Christ.” By the way, that’s the only way we’ll make it in this world.

I’m not fearful but, brother, this thing is coming at a rapid pace. I mean, just in my 33 years of ministry, we’ve gone from what used to be called wickedness and ungodliness in the church to where we’ve embraced just about everything that’s out there. Churches, Christians, listen: according to the Lord Jesus, those that are just going with the flow to that extent are not getting into the kingdom of God. You’ve got to be one that says, “Count on me. I may fail and I may flounder and I may be weak but count on me. I’m in. I’m joining up. I’m one of you.” Together with humility and love for each other and primarily love for our Lord, we’re going to together strive to enter the narrow gate and stay on the narrow road in a world of broadness and anything goes.

Now, brothers and sisters, that’s where I am. That’s where I’m going to stand, by God’s strength. And that’s where I know you want to be and so many of you have already proven that’s what you’re going to be no matter what it takes. I don’t know why, I’m not a mystic, again, I’m not a 30 year old, just starting out preacher with some immature things I’m slinging out of my mouth but in my heart, I’m prepared to give up whatever I have to give up to stay on the narrow road. I’ve got some nice stuff but if it all has to go, it all has to go. It just all has to go. I cannot knowingly dishonor the Lord to get along. You say, “Pastor, is something coming up that we don’t know about?” No, I don’t know anything but I think when we see something like this where Jesus looks at this crowd – look, he’s looking at devoted, committed, hard working religious Jews who believe the Bible, who believe they’re God’s people and he’s telling that crowd, “Most of you are not going to make it. You’d better strive to enter the narrow gate.” Now, there’s another twist to this, another side to this I want to bring up this evening, Lord willing.

Let’s just bow in prayer.