True Gospel - Pt5 - the Narrow Way — Paul Washer

The Calling and Humiliation of the Preacher

Let's open our Bibles to Matthew. Young men have been called to preach. They will tell you that you are a professional. They lie to you when they tell you that. They will tell you that being a preacher is a very cultured and eloquent position in society.

They disdain the Lord when they tell you that. Some of you would account me even right now to be wild and even beside myself. My dear friend, the boldest, most cultured, most eloquent man, when the presence of the Lord appears, withers like a piece of baling twine before a fire and is twisted and broken on the ground.

There is nothing professional about being a prophet or a preacher. There is nothing eloquent. Nothing cultural. And God will oftentimes leave you with no respect before even your own brothers and sisters in Christ.

If you are a preacher, you are a fool for Christ. You are a puppet who can be yanked up by the strings at any moment and told to dance. I came up forward here to tell the preacher that I was afraid that I sensed a very special something tonight that the Lord was going to do.

I did not know it would be in my own life. And I'm afraid now to even preach. It's one thing to preach before men. It's another to preach before the Lord of glory. Enthusiasm is a terrible thing. Fleshly outbursts of emotion have nothing to do with the spirit are terrible things.

But at times, God truly does come. If an ordered service is what you desire, then you have no place here tonight. If looking proper and eloquent and professional and cultured is your desire, then you have no place here tonight.

I just want the Lord to move. I want the Lord to touch you. And I know enough in 20 years to know that I could burst out in a song and a dance right now. I could weep before you. I could run up to you and tell you to go to the altar and pray.

And I could try to create something which would all be nothing short of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I could only do one thing, which is to put my head down and preach the text. But I do feel this, that I have plowed much and I must plow again tonight.

Please pray that the Lord would give us wisdom if He would have us extend these meetings so that when the plowing was over, some sowing could be done. I know I have beat you over the head quite a bit.

Plowing Before Sowing

And tonight we must go in even deeper again and look at our hearts. But I feel that the Lord's not done and there may be a time of sowing yet to be done. There is so much good that can be preached. So much about the joys of His presence that I never get to share with you.

So much about dancing in the presence of God. So much about running in the joys of our Heavenly Father. So much about so many wonderful things of His love. The jewels of His tenderness, His compassion, kindness, which you very rarely hear me preach on because you have to plow before you can sow.

It seems that the only time that we have is to plow. Oh, I pray that God would do a work in your life. I pray. I've prayed specifically for some of you whose faces the Lord put on my heart that He would stir you and move you and give you great confidence in Him that He will forgive all your iniquities and take away all your trespasses and give you a time of refreshing before the Lord.

And after I preach, I don't know. After I preach, I might just have to fall down on this altar and enter into another time of worship. I don't know. I don't want to leave here. Maybe only I tonight needed the heavenly vision and no one else sensed the presence of the Lord.

I don't know. And if that's the case, it's not because of my spirituality. It's because of my need. I just want to worship the Lord. And I want to be everything He wants me to be. I felt tonight like I did a few times in college and in seminary when the only thing, before I ever had a name for myself, the only thing I ever wanted to be was His.

Oh, to God, that that would be the desire of your heart. That everything else would be like dung and excrement and that Christ would be your choice and your desire and your passion. I'm going to touch on several texts tonight.

There's a message in every one of them, but I feel like I must move along. There's some things that I must touch on even though I would like to go on to something else. I know in my spirit I must touch on them.

It's going to sound like I'm beating the same dead horse. But until the Lord gives me freedom to do otherwise, I just have to. Matthew 7, verse 13. Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction.

And there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Something that I have recently been taught, and the Lord has confirmed it, not only through the mouth of men, through His own presence, that if you read the entirety of this text, you will discover that He's talking to religious people.

The Narrow Gate and the Broad Way

So many times we look at this text and we think, yes, Christianity is a small minority in the world and only those Christians are going to enter in. Only those who profess faith in Christ are going to enter in.

That's not what He's teaching. He's saying that among those who profess faith in Christ, only a few of them will enter in. Because if you go on in this text, He talks about a man who emphatically declares Jesus to be Lord, and He says, depart from Me, I never knew you.

My dear friend, your children of your culture, your children of your age, you've not looked beyond your own life to look at history, nor the Scriptures. Or you would know that what I'm saying is true.

Few will enter in. Few will enter in. Few among the religious, few among the Christians will enter in. He said, enter through the narrow gate. We've got that down, haven't we? At least some do. The idea that the narrow gate is Jesus Christ, and indeed He is, and that He's the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.

It's quite clear in Scripture. Basically and by and large, we do good at that. We tell people that. There is only one way, only one mediator, only one name, and it's Jesus. There is no other. But a half-truth is no truth at all, don't you see?

We've left out the other part of this passage. In our Baptist life, in an evangelical life, what do we hear? Jesus is the gate. Jesus is the only gate. Jesus is the only way. But you have forgot something.

Look at verse 14. For the gate is small, and the way is narrow. Do you know what is taught? Maybe not directly, but keenly, and for sure is taught in most of our congregations today. If I were to look at the way preaching is preached, if I were to look at the way professors live, it would be this.

The gate is small, and the way is broad that leads to salvation, and many are those who find it. We have people constantly... Think about this on your campus, in your churches, maybe even in your own heart.

Think about this, my dear child. Think! Do not be deceived. Just look around you. Open your eyes. Pray that God would open your eyes. Look around you. What do you see? How many of the multitudes claim to have walked through the small gate, and yet their path is the broad way?

How many on your campus? And if you were to indicate any need for them to narrow their path and to go into a more righteous way of living, you would be called a legalist and a know-it-all and a religious fanatic, wouldn't you?

Or maybe you yourself would call someone that if they corrected you and turned you toward the path of righteousness like the great evangelist in Pilgrim's Progress. You'd not submit to their admonition, no.

You'd balk against it like a mule balks against the plower's rein. And you'd scream out, you legalist, I have my Christian freedom. You see, there is a narrow way, and there is also a broad way. He said, for the gate is wide.

There are a multitude of choices other than Jesus Christ. There's a multitude of voices crying out that they are the way of salvation, but it is all lies and deception. It is either all lies and deception or Jesus Christ is the greatest liar who ever walked on the planet.

Because the one thing that gets Christianity in trouble everywhere is that it is exclusive. That it proclaims Jesus is the only way. But look what it says. The gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction.

The way is broad. There's a broad way out there and many of you are walking on it. And many in your congregations and many in your college, they are walking in that broad way and I would have to tell you you were a liar or either deceived or blind if you told me any other thing because you know it's true.

They're walking in the broad way and they claim to be under the lordship of Jesus Christ. They claim to have prayed that magical prayer. They claim to have some sort of relationship with Christ. They claim to be Baptist.

They claim to be baptized. They claim to be this and claim to be that. But that does not change the reality of where their feet stand. They are on the broad way and Jesus said that broad way leads to destruction.

Grace That Transforms the Believer

Now you say, oh, there you go again. You're talking a work salvation. My friend, if you knew how much I believed in grace, it would offend you. What you need to understand is this. Salvation is only through grace, only by faith in Jesus Christ, not of works and no man can boast, but at the same time, the grace that saves a man and justifies him before God is the same grace that transforms that man's nature and makes him into a new creature and the evidence of his salvation through grace is the way he walks and the way he talks and the way he lives and what he does with his hands and his eyes and his mouth and every sort of thing.

Where did we come up with this idea? This ecclesiastical religious idea that somehow Jesus sprinkles us with a little baptismal water and that's all we need to go to heaven. No, my friend. When Christ comes, he transforms our natures, makes us into new creatures and we walk a different way.

And if you're in the broad path, oh my God, turn from the broad path for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life. Please, stand up. Debate me. Fight me. Now, just something. Is it not true?

Stand up, mock, laugh. I'm used to it. Is it not true though that most people who claim Christ walk just like the world with the exception of Sunday morning and if you could look into their hearts you would still see that even on Sunday morning their hearts are far away even though their lips praise Him.

Are you on that? I don't care tonight about them out there. I don't care because God has not put them under my care for this evening. They're out there. I don't know them, but you are. And I fear for you and I fear for me before you because the shepherd's here.

Are you in the broad way? Then tremble, bold man. Tremble, bold young woman, unashamed. Tremble if you're in the broad way because I'll tell you why. It could be evidence of the fact that you know not God and that God knows not you.

The gate is small. The way is narrow. What is this way? It is the way of righteousness that we have discovered in the Old Testament. It is the way of righteousness marked out by the commands, the precepts, and the wisdom of God's Word that you literally walk with this Bible as a map teaching you.

This Bible, if I could reduce it all down to one thing, it teaches you this. It teaches you the things that God hates and admonishes you to turn away from them. It teaches you the things that God loves and admonishes you to run to them.

And it admonishes you to follow the path that has been marked out by the Word of God. Does the Word of God have any practicality in your life at all? Let's not just talk in generalities. Let's get down to have you taken a look at what the Word of God says about your brain, about your mind and what should enter into it, what you should meditate upon.

Or can you just literally sit there and fill your mind with television and pornography and all the other things that are running wild in your churches and in your campus? It doesn't bother you a bit. Your ears.

Have you studied what the Bible says about your ears and your ears being submitted to the law of Christ? The things that you can listen to and not listen to. And your mouth. What you can speak and not speak.

And your eyes. Job said, I made a covenant with my eyes not to look upon the virgin. Have you made a covenant with your eyes to put them in submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ? And your hands. Are they hands that are bloodied and red with the scarlet color of iniquity?

Or are they dull and pale with just mere idleness? You don't do anything against the Lord, nor do you do anything for the Lord. You are idle with your hands. And your feet. In what direction are they pointed?

Are they on a narrow path? Do you walk often being corrected by God's Word? Or is it very seldom you ever sense any correction from the Word of the Lord? Do you ask yourself, Lord, am I in the right way?

Lord, should I do this? Lord, should I turn here? Lord, should I move there? Lord, how is my house to be built? Lord, how is my life to be built? Lord, what should I do? If all these things are foreign to you, then be afraid.

Because you know nothing of the narrow way. And that is evidence that you know nothing of the small gate. And that is evidence that you are still in your sin, and if you die in that condition, you will go to hell.

False Prophets and Their Fruit

And he says in verse 15, Beware the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. Let me say something. I know that on campus and other places I've caused a great deal of turmoil at times.

I know I've been called the hellfire and brimstone preacher. I know when I preached there last that water balloons were thrown at me and my wife by the students. I know a lot of different things that even things I haven't said that they said I said.

Let me ask you a question. What do you think? I run a mission that depends upon the giving of Christians. Then why do I go to all these churches and speak so harshly and make people so mad? And what could be my motivation?

Some kind of economic gain? Oh, if I wanted to get economic gain out of you, I could do it. I could make you so happy about yourself with the most eloquent of words. So why am I sitting here beating and plowing and beating and plowing?

The deceivers, the ones who want something from you, will tell you pretty things about yourself. But as the Apostle Paul said, the only thing he wanted from the people was to present them as a chaste virgin to Christ.

And he would suffer for that cause. Misunderstood. Even hated. Scoffed at. Laughed and mocked. But his one passion was to present a people to Christ as a chaste virgin. That is my desire for you. That's my desire for you.

That you would stand before Him. That some of your faces you could be my sons and my daughters. That you would stand before Him clothed in His righteousness. That you would stand before Him and by His grace here, well done, my good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.

Oh, precious child, who turned your back on the world and you turned your back on the vain things that charmed you most and you sacrificed them to His blood and you followed the path, the narrow path, and you walked in the narrow way going from glory to glory and greater manifestations of the presence of God until the day you're called home.

That's what I want for you. I want you to stand before Him with joy unspeakable. With joy unspeakable. Though sadness must come for a night, a looking into the darkness of your heart and the rebellion that you've made against God, and a heartbreaking repentance must pour forth in confession and everything else, I know that if that will just work, will just be done in you, that by morning there'll be joy.

Because I've been there. It seems like I'm always there. Beware of the false prophets. They will always defend you before God. They will. You know, you don't have one lawyer. You have two. Except one is true and the other is an accuser.

Give an example. Adam. How dare God tell you you can't take from that fruit? Well, if I was God, I would let you have it. As a matter of fact, Adam, I think you ought to take it. It's your right. This God, He must be harsh to deny you something from the garden.

Jesus. Now, come on. You're hungry. I mean, any God that wouldn't want you to have bread right now, I mean, what kind of God is that? I'll defend you. And Jesus. The cross. The Messiah dying on a cross.

Well, never. That should never happen to you, Jesus. What kind of father would want his own son to die on a tree, crucified, bearing the sins of the world? Yet be behind me, Satan. Do you know how much preachers have to struggle with pride?

Do you know how much preachers have to struggle with arrogance and desiring to make a name for themselves? Do you know how quickly you can be deluded into thinking that you are building big kingdoms? And instead of using your ministry to build people, you begin to build your ministry upon the bones of people and herd them into your church like a bunch of cattle so that you can count them and make the monthly denominational report and be above everybody else in your group?

These aren't the things of God. False prophets abound. An old preacher told me one time, and it's something I shall never forget. It has helped me so much. He said, Paul, your best friend is the one who tells you the most truth.

It goes on. He said, beware of them. You will know them by their fruit, he says. Verse 16. Now, this in its immediate context, of course, is speaking to false prophets, but it's speaking in a wider application to unconverted men and women.

Throughout the Bible, we understand this. There is no super-hidden spirituality in either the Old Testament or the New. That a genuine work of God always manifests itself by fruit. That is just what the Bible teaches from the very beginning to the very end.

Don't you understand? Have you ever read the prophets? Have you ever read the law? Have you ever read the wisdom literature? Have you ever read the history books? Have you ever heard how many times the prophets speaking in the name of the Lord said that with your mouth you serve me?

With your mouth you offer sacrifices? With your mouth you do this, but your heart is far from me? And don't give me your fasts or your holy days, but liberate the poor and stop shedding blood and stop being in immorality and wickedness and sensuality?

Haven't you ever read that? Have you ever wondered how Israel could worship God in the temple and then come out and worship Baal under a tree and not see any difference? Physician, heal yourself, because that's a description of the so-called professing church in America.

Worship God on Sunday and bow down to materialism as soon as you get to the mall. Cry out for God to do a work among you and then go home and watch pornography on your television and wonder why the Spirit's not strong in you.

Holiness and the Power of the Spirit

For what it's worth, you young preachers, young Bible students. There was an old violinist playing, famous in Europe. When he finished, the young violinist, the young boy walked up to him and said, Sir, I would give my life to play like you.

And the old violinist looked down at him and said, Son, I have given my life to play like me. You want to dabble in the things of God and play prophet? It doesn't work that way. I have known in my own life that the times I have separated myself from the things that God hates, His power has rested upon me.

And the times I have given in to worldly vanities and stupidities and things of the flesh, I have lost a sense of His presence and His power. This is not just get a certain amount of knowledge, guys, and then you can go out and preach to the wind with your knowledge.

Have you stood face to face in the presence of God and trembled like a leaf on a tree? Some of you young men, you need to go up on a hill somewhere for a week and not eat and just grab rocks and throw them at heaven until God opens the door and comes down.

You will know them by their fruit. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? You see, I don't know how to describe this. If I was in a class of logic, I don't know, an argument of absurdity possibly.

Jesus is looking at them and He was a master, master teacher, a master catcher of men. Oh, and He was what He commanded His disciples to be. He was shrewd as a serpent. You did not want to get on a one-on-one with Him.

He catches them and He says, Jesus, figs, they don't grow on thorn trees, do they? Well, of course they don't, Jesus. I mean, anybody knows that. If anybody tells you they found figs on a thorn tree, don't believe them.

They're either lying or they're crazy. Well then, thorns on a fig tree, is that possible? Well, of course not, Jesus. We understand you're a carpenter, but no, it's not possible. Anybody tells you that they've got thorns on fig trees or figs on thorn trees, Jesus, it's ludicrous.

It's against nature. It doesn't work. It's impossible. It's stupid. Anybody who would say such a thing is absolutely out of their mind or they're a deceiver. Well then, those of you who profess to be my disciples, if you don't have fruit, you're not.

It would be ludicrous to say that you're a disciple of Jesus Christ and bear fruit of the world. And then we come down. Verse 17,. So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. This passage is read so often. It contains as much theology crammed into these two verses as possibly any other two verses in the entire Bible.

Regeneration and the New Nature

What it's talking about here is nature. And I wish I could spend three hours just discussing with you the idea of nature. That salvation is not this external working and that's all. It's not a human decision to jump out of the line going to hell in order to jump in the line going to heaven.

Salvation is a supernatural work of God through which a dead sinner is regenerated and is given a new nature and becomes a new creature and a new creature will always bear new fruit according to its nature.

Always. Jesus doesn't say there's an exception. In church today, in order to justify our great number of people and the majority of them being carnal and wicked just like the world, we have had to develop three different teachings.

The spiritual Christian, the carnal Christian, and the lost man. When the Bible only sees two. Spiritual Christian and lost man. You say, well, brother, what about sin? My dear friend, let's go into it again.

A Christian can fall into sin, but by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit and even if necessary, the loving discipline of the Father, they will not be allowed to remain in that sin. A Christian will start in immaturity.

That is true. There is such a thing as a babe in Christ, but they cannot stay there. And most people after 30 years in church are just as much a babe as when they started. That's because they were never born again.

They're not really alive. When will we understand that Scripture is true and it really applies? And it is this. He who began a good work in you will finish it. And God with God, there is no partiality.

He's talking about all His children. Now, we're not talking that everyone grows at the same speed. We're not talking about that everyone grows in the same graces at the same time. But everyone grows because it's God who's at work in you.

And if that work fails, then it is a dousing of God's reputation. God is not going to let His work fail because His work is not so much about you and your salvation as it is His name and the glory of it.

He will not allow the work to fail because His reputation is at stake. And so He says, now look at this, a good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. We seem to be quite familiar with the last part, telling men that if they are lost, they can do nothing to bear good fruit.

If they are lost, they can do nothing to win over the favor of God. If they are lost, they cannot do works of righteousness. And even their greatest works of righteousness is nothing more than filthy rags.

But we seem to have forgotten the first part of this. It's not only true that a bad tree cannot produce good fruit or a lost man cannot do works of righteousness, but it is equally true that a good tree cannot produce bad fruit and that means that a true Christian cannot continually produce works of unrighteousness.

Cannot live in that style of life. Cannot walk in that manner consistently as a style of life. It is an impossibility. In the same way that if I was a pig, it would be very possible for me to stick my head down in a bucket of garbage and eat the whole thing and be possible.

But it is humanly impossible to do that! It would be humanly impossible to stick my head in garbage. I would not be able to get it down. Why? I do not have the nature of a pig. And if you can consistently stick your head in the swine of sin, in the filth of that bucket that the world feeds from, if you can consistently do that, it's because your nature has not been changed, you are not a new creature, and you will die in your sins unless you repent and believe.

Hell and the Judgment of the Unrepentant

Now we go into verse 19. Every tree, every tree, every tree, every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Here we go again. I'm on a campus or some place and always the argument against hell, it's always the same argument, a loving Jesus would never throw anyone in hell.

And yet, my friend, what you have to understand is, if it were not for the loving Jesus, we would almost have no doctrine of hell. Hell is found in the Old Testament. It truly is. But it's not quite clear.

The apostles talk about hell, but not with a great deal of attention. In the book of Revelation, we find something more written. If you ever go read a book on the doctrine of hell, almost every verse is taken from the Gospels and the words of the loving Savior Jesus Christ.

It was Jesus who gave us the doctrine of hell. And it was Jesus who preached on hell more than every other preacher in the Bible combined. Why? Have you ever heard of apocalyptic literature? Apocalyptic literature is symbols and signs and dragons and ten-headed beasts and such things as that.

You know what it's all about? It's when the human mind is confronted with a divine reality that is so great that there is no way the mind can understand it or human language can communicate it. Now, what does that have to do with hell?

The reason I believe why Jesus spoke on hell more than anyone else is in His divinity, His deity, His godhood. He was the only one who could truly grasp the terror of it. And in His incarnation, using human language, He uses symbols of all sorts.

Some of them even seem to contradict one another because our human language, even coming out of the mouth of God in the flesh, is not strong enough to communicate the reality of hell. It's there. Hundreds of thousands of people every day are manifestations of the wrath of God against sin as they are swept away by the hand of death and thrown into an eternal hell.

And I do care that you think that that's old-fashioned. I do care that you think that is silly. I do care that you think that's not really true. But it is true. And some of you will go there. Many on your campus will go there.

Many in your churches will go there. And they won't return. Is that an offense to you? Do you not get offended with so much other preaching? Well, let me ask you a question. Why did Jesus Christ, why was He crucified?

Because His preaching was an offense? And He said if they treat the Master that way, will they not treat the disciple that way? And if the preaching you're hearing is not so offensive, do you really think it has anything to do with the words of Jesus Christ or more to do with the country club people that go to your church?

Or the intellectual people who go to your church? Or the fine, upstanding socialites that go to your church? Or the good old Bubba boys with their Bubba Christianity that go to church? The thing you've got to see, my friend, is that Jesus Christ is called the scandal.

In Greek, the skandalon. The offense. The stone of stumbling. And every time there was a group, oh, can you imagine, Jesus' way of evangelism was so strange. If you read the Gospels, the Synoptics, isn't it unusual that almost every time it says, and a great crowd was following Him, He would turn around and look at them all and say, If you don't hate your father and mother, you're not worthy of Me, leave.

And they would. If you don't eat My flesh and drink My blood, not My disciples, you're not saved, you don't know Me. And they would leave. And then He'd look at His disciples and say, Are you going too?

So different, isn't it? The preacher of a very large church I was listening to was very proud of the fact that he no longer takes a Bible up into the pulpit. He rather takes a notebook with the verses written inside of it so that he doesn't offend seekers.

My question is, what are they seeking? This Gospel that saved me is quite offensive. It offended me. It still does. This Word of God that tickles you in your daily devotion. Martin Luther said, The Word of God's not my friend, it's my enemy, because it cuts me off in every place my flesh desires to go.

Every tree, every tree that does not bear good fruit. Now look, it doesn't say every tree that's not a Baptist, every tree that's not this, every tree that's not that. It doesn't say every tree that's not been baptized or every tree that doesn't attend church in a certain place.

It says every tree, every tree that does not bear fruit. We have this super spirituality about us. Well, I know I don't bear fruit, but you can't judge a book by its cover. Let me ask you a question. Who told you that?

Who told you that? Where did you learn that? Can you quote the verse? Where did our Master say you can't know a book by its cover? He didn't. But he did say this, You can know a tree by its fruit. Judge not, lest ye be judged!

The woman screamed back at me and I said, Twist not Scripture, lest ye be like Satan, Madam. Because when Jesus said, Judge not, lest ye be judged, He was not talking about this. He was talking about a group of pharisaical religious leaders who were clawing one another's eyes and skin off in order to get ahead ecclesiastically.

Loveless men who took great joy in tearing down others and snuffing out any divine light that was in them. Because in the same verse, He tells you, You will know them by their fruit, and everyone without exception.

We have so many excuses. Well, I know I don't act like a Christian, but I really am and you can't know my heart. Sure I can. I can know your heart. I just have to look at you. You can't know a book by its cover.

It's not in Scripture. If we applied this same rule of logic to every aspect of life, we would be imbeciles. And that's what we have become, isn't it? With post-modernism in your schools. Is that a cow?

Well, you really can't say it's a cow. I mean, we really can't affirm what this is. Why? Because you just don't know. Do you know men so hate God that they are willing to deny the reality of their own existence before they would accept the reality of God's?

And do you know that men hate God's will so much in order to escape it, they will willingly deny that you can know anything at all to be true. The only reason for the post-modern argument that you cannot know truth is because it's a way to escape from having to submit to the truth.

And when if I came on your campus and I preached about godly living, and I preached about godly clothing, and I preached about godly music, and I preached about godly fruit, I would be labeled a legalist.