Sunday Sermon: Enter Through the Narrow Gate (Matthew 7:13-23)

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August 16, 2020

Pastor Gabriel Hughes preaches from Matthew 7:13-23, where Jesus says, "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many." Visit fsbcjc.org for ore info about our church.

00:18: You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.
00:27: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a
00:32: New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.
00:39: Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. We're going to begin today in verse 13 and we'll read through verse 23.
00:50: The words of our Lord Christ. Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many.
01:04: For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few.
01:11: Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
01:18: You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
01:26: So every healthy tree bears good fruit but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.
01:33: A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.
01:39: Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and is thrown into the fire.
01:46: Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me,
01:53: Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven but the one who does the will of my
01:58: Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?
02:13: And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.
02:23: Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this word today, I pray that we would be convicted by your word so that we may live according to your word.
02:35: I pray that we understand what this means to enter through the narrow gate, that wide is the way that leads to destruction and many are on that path, but narrow is the way that leads to life.
02:49: And may our desire be as Christians that we would turn people from that broad way to the narrow way, knowing that it is only through Christ Jesus that we enter into the eternal kingdom of God.
03:07: And on that day when we do, may we hear the word of our Savior say to us, well done good and faithful servant, for great is your reward.
03:19: May that be our desire to serve our King even in these present days and it's in the name of Jesus that we pray and all
03:27: God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. So it's not too uncommon to hear a criticism from one of my critics to say to me, you are so narrow minded.
03:42: I took a greater offense at that when I was younger than I do now. Now when somebody calls me narrow minded,
03:48: I say, thank you. That's what I'm aspiring toward, that I would enter through the narrow gate.
03:55: For sometimes you can be so open minded, your brain falls out. There is a way that is true and there is a way that is wrong.
04:06: A way that has been set forth before us by God unto glory and there is a way that has been marked out even by Satan unto destruction.
04:18: In the book of 1 John, we are told the reason why the son of man came was to destroy the works of the devil.
04:25: And so Jesus, by his death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave, has undone those things that Satan had wrought upon creation, bringing about sin and the wages of sin, which is death.
04:39: That is what the broad way leads to, is sin and destruction, separation forever from God, eternal wrath upon the person who is judged forever in hell.
04:53: This is the way that most of the world is going, by the way that Jesus says here, that wide is the way and easy is that path that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many.
05:06: For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few.
05:13: We hear Jesus saying here that Christianity is difficult. It is not supposed to be the easy path and it is not going to be the easy path.
05:24: As I've heard Votie Bauckham say, the United States of America is an anomaly in world history. Most of the history of the world has not enjoyed the freedoms that we enjoy here in this nation, especially the freedom of religion.
05:37: Now you don't have to go very far in the United States to be persecuted for your faith. It is nice that we have a constitution that protects the freedom of religion and the right to worship as we please.
05:48: But if you just went downtown and shared the gospel with somebody, you would surely be persecuted for it. Just because we enjoy those freedoms, all that means is that the government is not going to come down on us, at least they shouldn't, for the way that we worship.
06:02: That's supposed to be the right that we have protected by our nation's laws. But there are plenty of other people out there, regardless of what the law says, who are going to persecute you if you say
06:11: Jesus is the only way to eternal life. That very message is completely countercultural.
06:19: There are many other priests that are out there in the world that are going to tell you something different, that have this broad way theology.
06:28: This is the way of most false teachers, to be on the broad path. Get as most number of people as possible into the gates of heaven.
06:36: It doesn't matter if they even know God or not, everybody's going to get there eventually. In fact, one of the messages that you probably hear from one of these false prophets is that all roads lead to God.
06:47: That's what Oprah says, and she's declared as such on her talk show to the millions and millions of people who have listened to her, said it more than once.
06:54: You can find several video clips of her on YouTube saying such a thing, that all paths lead to God.
07:00: You know, the thing about that is she's actually right. All roads do lead to God.
07:07: No matter if you're a Buddhist or a Hindu or a secular humanist or whatever mysticism or pantheism or atheism or any other kind of ism you decide to devote yourself to, all of those paths eventually will lead to God.
07:23: They all lead to judgment before God. There's only one way that leads to eternal life, fellowship with God and life with Him forever in His eternal kingdom, and that way is through Christ.
07:40: Jesus said in John 14, verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the light.
07:47: No one comes to the Father but by Me. Jesus is the only way to God, the only way that we have fellowship with God, the only way that we are received by God.
08:00: Not through any other path do we enter into eternal life. And that gate is narrow.
08:07: Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many.
08:15: The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few. As we just considered this morning in our
08:22: Sunday school class as we've been going through 2 Timothy, the Apostle Paul saying to Timothy that all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
08:42: And notice there that as Paul puts it that way with Timothy, it's just desiring to live the godly life that will lead to your persecution.
08:51: It's not just Paul saying if you go out to the street corners, to the highways and the byways and you stand on your soapbox and you get your bullhorn and you preach the gospel, you'll be persecuted for that.
09:01: That's not the way Paul puts that. If you just desire to live in godliness, we used to have a member of this church here who used to drive a
09:10: Coke truck and he would visit all the different convenience stores and grocery stores and things like that, not just in Junction City, but even on Fort Riley distributing
09:19: Coca -Cola. And he talked about the orientation classes that he had to take from Coke before they even gave him the keys to a truck about LGBTQ inclusion and all of this kind of stuff and whether or not to address a man as a man or a woman as a woman or using their preferred pronouns.
09:37: To drive a Coke truck? He's just distributing soda. What does this have to do with Coke?
09:47: And he said some of the people that he would encounter on his route would just open up conversations with him.
09:53: It was not always just how's the weather kinds of conversations. Sometimes the people that he would talk to would get into some very deep things.
10:01: And there was one woman at a convenience store that he visited with one time who asked him about abortion.
10:08: And he just simply shared with this woman, all he said was, I believe that life begins at conception.
10:16: And I believe that every life is precious from conception to natural death because every life has been made in the image of God.
10:23: That's all he said to this woman and she burst into tears. She said,
10:29: I just find that message to be incredibly oppressive. And he was oppressing her by sharing the opinion she asked for.
10:42: The world does not want you to think like God. And just desiring to live that godly life in Christ Jesus, you will be persecuted, ridiculed, ostracized, may even lose your job over.
11:00: I read a story about a guy who was not a man who was trying to be some sort of proficient published author or anything like that.
11:08: He would just write as a hobby. And thanks to the increase in the advent of technology, he's able to self -publish a few books and sell them on Amazon to some friends who want to read them.
11:20: He thinks that's a pretty cool deal, so he did that one time. And he wrote a book on the sanctity of marriage, had it published on Amazon.
11:28: One of his co -workers found it and brought it to his employer and got him fired just because he wrote in a book that he believed that marriage was to be between one man and one woman as God had created it to be.
11:46: This is the world in which we live. We may enjoy a freedom of religion in the sense that our government is not supposed to oppress us.
11:54: 2020 is showing us a completely different perspective from the eyes of our government, it seems like.
12:01: I think that's one thing that COVID -19 has opened our eyes up to. Your government never really was friendly to you in your freedom of religion.
12:09: But though that may be the law that prevents the government from coming in here and shutting us down, at least it's supposed to, you don't have to go very far before you find somebody who hates you for the views that you have.
12:23: This is a narrow path, and it is hard, it is difficult.
12:28: And beware of those who try to tell you that being Christian is supposed to be easy, or even easier.
12:37: This is not an unusual message. I grew up hearing this in all the different kinds of youth groups that I attended and the different big youth gatherings that we would go to where you have these massive conventions or whatnot, and you have just a bunch of speakers that would be there.
12:54: Just about every one of these that I went to, you would hear from a speaker who would say something like, if you would just give your life to Jesus, your life would be easier.
13:02: If you were to live the way that Jesus tells you to live, your life would be a whole lot simpler.
13:09: You know why your life is difficult? You know why it's complicated? Because you're going out and getting drunk with your friends, and then you have to live with the consequences of that.
13:16: And it's really hard, isn't it? Isn't it difficult, the consequences that come from living a life of sin?
13:23: So you go and you sleep around, and you get a girl pregnant, and now you've got a kid.
13:28: Now you've got a kid that you've got to take care of outside of wedlock. Isn't that life much harder for you? See, if you were to just do what
13:34: Jesus told you to do, life would be easier. Now there's a certain sense in which living a moral life and not having to deal with the consequences of a sinful life, indeed, can be easier.
13:50: But that doesn't mean you're following Christ, because anybody can do that.
13:57: And it doesn't lead to your salvation. Otherwise, that'd be salvation by works. As long as I am just a good, moral person, then life is good.
14:07: Life is easy. I know plenty of good, moral people who have a wrong perspective about God. And when you believe in the
14:15: Christ of the Bible, when you believe Jesus, for who He said that He is, that's the thing that people hate.
14:25: You can live a good, moral, upstanding life. People will admire you for that. But you start saying that you live the way that you live, and you do the things that you do to give honor and glory to Christ, and you follow
14:36: His word, suddenly that becomes radically offensive to the people that are around you.
14:42: This path that we are on is a narrow gate. Jesus Himself is the narrow gate.
14:49: It's in John chapter 10, where He refers to Himself as the door of the sheep. The sheep come in and out and find pasture through Jesus.
14:58: I am the door of the sheep. So when we read earlier, the section that we looked at last week, ask and it will be given to you.
15:06: Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. Who are we asking from? We're asking from Christ.
15:13: Who are we seeking? We're seeking Christ. Where are we knocking?
15:19: What is this door that we're knocking on to receive entrance into? Christ. Christ is even the door.
15:29: He is the gate through which we enter into glory. Enter by the narrow gate.
15:36: I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me. Jesus is the gate.
15:44: Jesus outright from the Sermon on the Mount saying that the way of Christ is hard.
15:52: It is harder than living your life any other way. But the way that is easy leads to destruction.
16:01: It's the way that is difficult in Christ Jesus. That leads to the forgiveness of sins, which we have now even as we walk this narrow way.
16:10: And ultimately the end, eternal life. But there are many that are going to try to lead us off of this path.
16:18: They will try to lead us to the broad way that goes to destruction. And many people that are on that broad path are not just walking that path on their own.
16:26: They're following somebody. They're hearing a message that tells them this is the road that you want to be on.
16:34: And so Jesus, right after saying, enter by the narrow gate, and wide is the way that leads to destruction,
16:40: He warns about those false teachers that are going to lead you on the broad path. And there are going to be plenty more false teachers than there will be true teachers.
16:50: Beware of false prophets, Jesus says in Matthew 7, 15, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
17:00: What is Jesus saying here about these false prophets? They look just like us.
17:10: Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing. We're going to think that these teachers are
17:16: Christians, that they worship Christ, that the name that they speak in is the name of Christ.
17:22: They'll even use all the correct terminology. We'll hear them use Christianese. They will quote
17:29: Bible verses. They know the theological terms. They may even tell you some
17:35: Greek and some Hebrew. So, hey, this guy must be genuine, must be a true teacher, because he knows all the right
17:42: Christian words. He's come to you in sheep's clothing, inwardly, he is a ravenous wolf.
17:50: Somebody who is here to devour the flock of God, rather than lead the flock of God in the truth of Christ.
17:59: This language that's used here, false prophets that come as ravenous wolves, this is the same terminology that we find in the book of Jeremiah, regarding the rebuke of those prophets who were feeding themselves instead of feeding the flock of God.
18:16: And in fact, Jude uses this same language in Jude verse 12, where he talks about shepherds feeding themselves.
18:23: They are hidden reefs at your love feasts. They are shepherds feeding themselves. They are waterless clouds.
18:29: They are fruitless trees. Let's consider some of these terms that he uses. They're hidden reefs.
18:36: Now, sailors, people who would travel in ships, they understood this metaphor quite well, a hidden reef.
18:43: There was nothing more dangerous to a sailor approaching land than a reef that was beneath the water that you couldn't see.
18:52: You run into that reef, all it takes is a little bit of scrape, and it punches a hole right into your boat and sinks the ship.
18:59: The apostle Paul warned Timothy about those who make a shipwreck of their faith.
19:06: And they do so by running against the ground of lies and false teaching that come by course of the word of Satan through these false teachers.
19:15: They are hidden reefs. They're even there among you within your own flock, within your own congregation, but they are running ships aground and destroying people who listen to their lies.
19:31: Shepherds feeding themselves. Now, that word pastor is a word that means shepherd, one who leads sheep, but one who tends sheep, one who cares for sheep.
19:43: So as you find that word even there in Jude 12, you have it in reference to pastors, reverends, teachers in the church that feed themselves.
19:54: See, they're not there to care for the sheep. They're there to use the sheep to provide for themselves.
20:00: A lot of times we think of abusive pastors as somebody who is there to get rich. He uses his church to get rich.
20:06: He loves money. The apostle Paul in the qualifications for a pastor, 1
20:11: Timothy 3, he talks about those who are lovers of money. He cannot be a lover of money.
20:18: Titus 1 says the same thing in the qualifications for a pastor. And so when we read that about pastors, those who are lovers of money, we tend to think of that guy who is there as a pastor that is using his position to try to get rich, but that may not be the case.
20:34: He may just be doing his job to make a living for himself. Maybe he's not trying to get rich.
20:40: Maybe he's just trying to get by, but he doesn't actually care for the word of God or the flock of God. He's just trying to make a paycheck.
20:48: That's somebody who actually loves money more than he loves the word of God or the people that he's been entrusted to shepherd.
20:56: So he's a shepherd feeding himself. Jude says, beware of waterless clouds.
21:03: That's quite a metaphor. You ever seen a waterless cloud? No, it's a contradiction.
21:08: There's no such thing as a waterless cloud. When you look up in the air and you see a cloud, you're seeing a water cloud.
21:15: That's exactly why it's there, because the water droplets have connected with dust and it formed the cloud that is up in the air.
21:20: And eventually that cloud can become so full and so heavy that it turns into rain and the rainfalls of the earth.
21:27: That's where rain comes from, is clouds. So there's no such thing as a waterless cloud. And that's the way it is with these false teachers.
21:34: They are walking contradictions. They may even promise you nourishment and fulfillment.
21:41: And so you stand beneath that cloud with your mouth open as though to receive the refreshing water that they offer and nothing comes from it.
21:49: It's a waterless cloud. They do not actually deliver the thing that they promise.
21:56: And that's the prosperity gospel in a nutshell, incidentally. And Jude also refers to these false teachers as fruitless trees.
22:05: Trees that do not bear fruit. And Jesus even goes on with his warning of false teachers in that same way.
22:13: As we go on here to verse 16, you will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
22:23: You will know them by their fruits. Now, friends, if you've been under my teaching for any period of time, you know that I am sure to warn you about false teachers.
22:33: That's actually one of the job requirements of a pastor. According to Titus 1 9, he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, giving instruction in sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.
22:50: So it is part of my job as a pastor, as a shepherd fending off the wolves, I'm gonna warn you about those wolves.
22:58: The apostle Paul warned the elders at Ephesus about the wolves. In Acts chapter 20, as he's saying his last farewells to these elders before Paul goes on to Jerusalem where he knows he's gonna be persecuted.
23:11: He says, with tears to these elders, fierce wolves are gonna rise up from among you.
23:19: Means they're gonna come into your group. They're gonna look like you and you're gonna think they're brothers. And Paul was, though he was an apostle of Christ, he was still a human being.
23:29: And even Paul had been fooled by some of these wolves. We read about one of them at the end of 2
23:36: Timothy, a guy by the name of Demas, who for a time was actually part of Paul's missionary entourage.
23:46: But Paul says of Demas at the end of 2 Timothy, he was too in love with this world and he deserted me and went back to Thessalonica.
23:56: So Paul warns the Ephesian elders about those wolves. Jesus warns us about those wolves.
24:03: And he says to us, you will recognize them by their fruits. And so whenever I warn you about these false teachers,
24:10: I will not just tell you that this guy is wrong, but give you evidence as to why he's wrong, because you will know them by their fruits.
24:17: I remember when I became pastor here and thank you, Kevin, for bringing up that.
24:23: I've now been here 10 years. I've been in ordained ministry for 10 years. I've been in Christian ministry for much longer than that because I was in Christian radio before I became a pastor in a church.
24:34: But as far as my pastoral ministry goes, I consider that it started on that day when I was ordained,
24:40: August 15th of 2010. And I served as the worship pastor here for a couple of years before then
24:47: I took over for Pastor Nate when he left, went to Kentucky and planted a church there. And I remember the first false teacher that I ever called out in a sermon was actually
24:59: Rick Warren. And quoted from Rick Warren's book, the problems with some of the things that he writes about in the purpose -driven life that actually direct you away from Christ into moralism and a feel -good therapeutic gospel instead of the true gospel.
25:16: And I was warning about some of those things. And there was a couple when I said that, this was the first time
25:21: I had ever mentioned a false teacher's name from the pulpit up here. And when I mentioned Rick Warren and some of the things that he talked about, there was a couple was actually sitting right about where Jim and Judy are, got up and walked out.
25:34: And I never saw them again. And there was somebody who was acquainted with that couple and followed up with them after they left this church and asked them, like, where have you guys been?
25:47: We haven't seen you in a long time. And they said, once Gabe started calling out false teachers, we knew this was a church where we did not wanna be.
25:57: They considered that judgmental. And that I'm just trying to compete with other pastors and trying to say something like, here's why you should listen to me and not listen to that guy.
26:07: Rather than realizing this is part of a pastor's job is to warn the flock about those wolves, inwardly ravenous wolves to devour the flock of God.
26:19: And I don't do this to serve myself. And many of you know of many great teachers that I encourage you to read.
26:26: I kind of talked about that a little bit last week, but warning you about those false teachers so that you will not be led astray. The scriptures are very, very strict about what
26:36: God thinks concerning false teachers. In Deuteronomy chapters 13 and chapter 18, we have two warnings there to the children of Israel about listening to false prophets.
26:49: In chapter 13, it says that if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams comes in among you and he gives you a sign or a wonder and that sign or wonder comes to pass, like he actually declares a miracle and does a miracle, it happens.
27:10: We know the magicians in Pharaoh's court, they were able for a little while at least to replicate the miracles that Moses and Aaron were doing, turning the staves into snake, turning water into blood.
27:23: They were even able to duplicate these things. So if you've got a false teacher that comes in and he does some sign or wonder, but then he tells you, let's go after other gods, gods that you do not know, gods that did not lead you out of the land of Egypt, you will not listen to that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.
27:44: Instead, you'll stone him to death. That's what you should do with that guy. That's what
27:50: God says there in Deuteronomy 13. He comes back to this again in Deuteronomy 18.
27:55: And he says, if somebody comes in among you, a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and they give you a vision, a prophecy, which they claim comes from God, but then that prophecy doesn't come true.
28:12: That guy has spoken presumptuously. And the word that he spoke did not come from me.
28:19: And you're supposed to stone that guy. That's what the penalty was for a false teacher.
28:27: They were to be put to death. Now, we might find that to be rather radical. Like, wow,
28:32: I mean, this guy wasn't, he didn't murder anybody. He wasn't abusing children. He wasn't even kicking your neighbor's dog.
28:39: And we're supposed to take him outside the camp and stone him to death because he spoke a false word?
28:46: My friends, we understand from this just how serious false teaching is.
28:52: It's even worse than a murder against the body. Because murder just destroys the body.
28:59: False teaching destroys the soul. And it leads to eternal damnation.
29:08: Those heresies that even go beyond the saving message of Christ and would lead a person away from Christ instead of to him, those things are especially dangerous.
29:22: And we do need to take false teaching seriously. And if I have ever warned you about a false teacher, it is because I care about you.
29:32: Not because I'm trying to make myself look great against this other person. I don't have anything to share with you that is great in the name of Gabe Hughes, nothing.
29:45: I desire nothing but to proclaim Christ and him crucified. I desire for you to know nothing but him according to his very word.
29:59: And when I've warned you about a false teacher, it's because they have gone contrary to this word or they have become twisters of the word, leading you in a way that is not in the way of life everlasting.
30:11: It is not the narrow way. It is not according to Christ, but according to the way of Satan, the broad path that leads to destruction.
30:21: You can know whether a teacher is true or false. Jesus says that here in verse 16, you will recognize them by their fruits.
30:32: Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes? No, that's absurd. Never found a thorn bush with grapes on it.
30:39: Or figs from thistles? Verse 17, so every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.
30:48: If you wanna see a diseased tree, come by my house. It's the apple tree that's right in front of our home.
30:54: That thing never produces good apples. And my wife had one year where she did pretty good with caring for that tree, and it kind of produced a little something.
31:05: They were at least edible, but you wouldn't call them good. There was one time for Bible study,
31:11: Augusto came over by the house and I'd been telling him about this tree. We'd been trying to care for this tree. My wife's actually been doing a good job with this tree even, and so I think it's producing some pretty decent apples this year.
31:21: So he came over to the house for Bible study one night and passed by our apple tree and he saw a pretty decent apple there.
31:26: It looked good. It looked like a normal apple growing from this apple tree. So he plucked it, and as he's walking up to the door, he took a bite out of it, then immediately spit it right back out.
31:39: He's like, this is not a good apple. And he came to the front door and I opened the door.
31:45: I said, hey, welcome Augusto, and he's handing me a gift. It's an apple with a bite out of it. And he just hands it to me and he goes, these are not good apples.
31:54: And it seems like no matter what we do with that tree, it is never going to produce good fruit.
32:01: It's a bad tree. It's always gonna produce bad apples. I had a friend who was caring for two apple trees.
32:09: And the interesting thing about these trees is they would both produce the same good looking apples until you bit into one.
32:18: One tree's apples were always sour and the other tree's apples were always good. And so there was one year in particular that he gave extra special attention to that bad tree.
32:30: Maybe if I just care for this one more, then I can get it to produce fruit.
32:36: And then he neglected the good tree and then they both produced bad fruit that year.
32:43: And so he decided, you know what, I'm done with this tree. There's nothing good that can come from it. I'm just gonna cut it down so that I can plant something else good there and be able to produce some good fruit from a decent fruit tree.
32:56: And as he cut down that tree and sought to uproot it, it was pulling that tree out of the ground that he discovered the root of the problem.
33:05: It was bad roots. The roots were completely rotted out and infected with all kinds of nasty bugs.
33:13: He said, that's the reason why I can't get any good fruit out of this tree. It's bad from the root.
33:22: And that's what happens with these false teachers. They're bad from the core.
33:28: They may look good on the outside, but on the inside, they're ravenous wolves. They're rotten fruit.
33:35: And so what does Jesus say will happen with such a tree? Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and is thrown into the fire.
33:46: And this is not the first time here in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus has made a reference to judgment by fire.
33:54: Fire, of course, is the picture of hell. It is the consuming wrath of the judgment of God.
34:02: No one in the Bible spoke about hell more than Jesus. Why? A friend of mine,
34:09: Nate Pickowitz, put it this way, that Jesus spoke more about hell than any other person in the
34:15: Bible so that we would know the danger of hell and we would repent and turn from that way so that we may enter into eternal life in heaven.
34:22: If it's not enough for you to hear, enter by the narrow gate, wide is the way that leads to destruction, then maybe it will put the fear of God in your heart to hear that wide way that goes to destruction is eternal destruction by fire.
34:38: That in the fear of the judgment of God, you would realize that's what you deserve because of your sin.
34:44: And you would turn from your sin to the everlasting way of Christ.
34:51: This is the default position for each and every one of us is to be on that way to destruction.
34:57: We see in Ephesians 2, verses one through three, it being said to us, Paul addressing the church, you were dead in your sins and your transgressions in which you once walked.
35:08: Following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
35:29: Everybody is like that until, and then verse four, but God, who is rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us made us alive together with Christ.
35:42: God intervened when we were on that path headed for destruction, and he turned us around, got us off the road to destruction and gave us the path of eternal life to Jesus Christ.
35:59: We heard the law that was proclaimed to us. We realized the sin that we had committed against God.
36:06: We were filled with grief and it produced in us repentance that we would get off that highway that we were on that was leading to destruction and get turned around and get onto the narrow path that leads to eternal life.
36:21: And that message that directed us to eternal life was the message of the gospel. What is the gospel?
36:27: Like when we're talking about false prophets and we're talking about true teachers, what's the true teacher gonna tell you?
36:34: The true teacher is gonna give you the true gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ. What is the gospel?
36:40: Let me give it to you in one word. The gospel in one word is very simple. Christ. That's it.
36:50: That's the gospel. The good news is Jesus. God in human flesh who came to dwell among us.
36:59: God in the likeness of sinful flesh, as it says in Romans 8. He became that propitiation for our sins.
37:08: The sacrifice, the atoning sacrifice that satisfies the wrath of God.
37:13: And by his death on the cross, our sins were placed upon him and his righteousness has been imputed to us.
37:21: By his resurrection from the grave, he has conquered death itself so that we do not have to know the sting of death, but know eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.
37:32: And it is not by your works that you are saved. It is by faith, by grace through faith, you have been saved,
37:42: Paul says in Ephesians 2 .8. This is not of yourselves. It is not of your works. It is the gift of God so that no man may boast.
37:50: That's the gospel. That's the message of the gospel. Let me continue to give it to you even more broadly.
37:55: John 3 .16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son and whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
38:04: 1 Corinthians 15, verses three and four. Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.
38:11: He was buried and he rose again from the grave according to the scriptures. 1
38:16: Timothy 1 .15, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
38:24: Colossians 1 .20, God is reconciling all things to himself, things in heaven and things on earth through the person and work of Jesus Christ, making peace by the blood of his cross.
38:37: Romans 3, verses 23 through 25. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
38:52: God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.
38:59: Romans 5 .8, God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners,
39:04: Christ died for us. Romans 6 .23, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our
39:13: Lord. Any one of these passages, pick one, that's the gospel. The good news that you're forgiven of your sins and you have everlasting life with God, entrance into his eternal kingdom, which you are a member of even now if you are a follower of Christ.
39:30: That is the gospel. Christ, he is the good news.
39:39: That's the true gospel. And the apostle Paul warns Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter six about those who leave the true teaching of our
39:47: Lord Jesus Christ and that doctrine that accords with godliness. What does that mean? Well, the true gospel, when you believe it and when you follow the word of Christ, what it's gonna produce in you is godliness.
40:00: It will lead you to godliness. And those who leave that true gospel and they start going after worldly things, what will they produce as a result?
40:10: Well, Paul tells Timothy, they'll produce evil dissension, slander, constant friction.
40:19: There will be suspicions that people will be making of one another. It's just this nothing but division between people.
40:27: People who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth. That's what happens when you leave the gospel.
40:34: There's unity in the people of God, in the body of Christ, when we believe the true gospel, but there's nothing but division and discord when we leave that gospel and we substitute it for something else.
40:46: If you ever add an adjective to the word gospel, other than true, because I just described to you here the true gospel, or Christ's gospel, something to that nature, if you add an adjective to it, you have a different gospel.
41:01: Let me give you an example of some of these different gospels that you might hear. The first one is the one that I told you about last week.
41:09: Number one, the prosperity gospel. What's the prosperity gospel? Name it and claim it.
41:17: Health and wealth. Believe and receive. All I have to do is say it and it will be mine.
41:25: God wants me to be healthy, he wants me to be wealthy, because God loves me and that's the kind of stuff that he wants for me.
41:32: And if I don't have money in my bank account, then I must not be believing hard enough.
41:38: If I'm not healthy, if I'm sick, it must be because I've done something wrong. These are all lies from the pit of hell, but that's what you find in the prosperity gospel.
41:50: And as I've said to you before, there's only one person who benefits from the prosperity gospel, that's the prosperity teacher.
41:57: He gets your money, you get none of the things that he's promised you. Yeah, that guy's rich and he's got airplanes and mansions and stuff like that.
42:06: You think that God will bless you with that stuff. He's got all that stuff because he's conned you into giving your money to him.
42:13: And there are plenty of people who are willing to go along with this, because as Paul says in 2
42:19: Timothy 4 .3, they are piling up teachers to suit their passions, to scratch their itching ears.
42:26: So there's kind of a symbiotic relationship that exists between the false teacher and the person who follows him.
42:34: That false teacher needs followers, those followers need people to tell them the stuff that they really want, the stuff that they wanna hear.
42:41: They listen to the false teacher because they don't want the true gospel of Christ. The prosperity gospel is probably the most popular of these false gospels, because it promises you the most stuff.
42:55: But in contrast to the prosperity gospel, there's also something, this one's not nearly as popular, but it's still nevertheless a real thing.
43:01: There's the poverty gospel. It's the belief that you have to give up all of your stuff in order to be saved.
43:09: Now, I did a couple of what videos recently, and some of you that are following the videos probably saw the series that I did a couple of months ago where I did two videos back to back on what
43:19: Jesus said about the poor. When he said, blessed are the poor in spirit in Matthew, or he said, blessed are you who are poor.
43:26: What was the context of those verses? What did that mean? And it was not Jesus saying that if you are poor, you're inherently blessed and you're gonna receive the kingdom of God.
43:35: That's not what Jesus was saying. But there are people who believe that if you're poor, you're automatically saved.
43:42: And there was a guy online who was arguing with me about that. In fact, he was very angry that I said that Jesus was not telling people that as long as you're poor, you're gonna get saved.
43:51: He called the church and he left a message on the answering machine. And he said, hey,
43:56: I wanna speak to somebody here at the church about some things that your pastor is saying online. When I was talking with him online,
44:04: I asked him one question. I just simply asked him this question to see, and I was hoping to show him the error of what it was that he was pushing.
44:12: That if a person is poor, that they're automatically saved. Here was the question
44:17: I asked him. Below what income level do I get saved? And he replied,
44:26: I don't know. I just know that the poor are going to heaven. You can't even give anybody the stipulations of what it takes in order to be saved and have eternal life.
44:36: So beware of that one. The poverty gospel. Number three, the pragmatic gospel. The pragmatic gospel is basically like, if it works, then it's good.
44:48: And this was something that was really common in Christian radio when I was a kid. And I was working in Christian radio before I became a pastor.
44:55: Like if you had a Christian song, it didn't matter how bad the doctrine was in this thing that is called a
45:01: Christian song. If it means a person listens to it and becomes a Christian, then the song was automatically good.
45:10: And there are a lot of churches in America that apply this very thing. They will put on the big performances on stage, or they'll do the
45:17: Easter egg drop from a helicopter and get people to come to our Easter service. All of these different pragmatic tools to get people to come.
45:26: And as long as we have people in the seats, then we know this was a good thing that we did. Now they will claim that they're doing this to attract people in so that they can share the gospel with them, but that's not what happens.
45:38: Because you have to attract people by carnal means. So what you give to them is a watered down gospel, not the true gospel, because you know that the true gospel means you're going to lose all those people again.
45:49: So it's a pragmatic gospel. Now, so far I've gone through some alliteration here.
45:55: Prosperity gospel, poverty gospel, pragmatic gospel, but then the next three examples don't follow the
46:01: Ps anymore. Number four, the social gospel. The social gospel is very simply the idea that cultural transformation will lead to people's good and therefore their salvation.
46:13: But as Martin Lloyd -Jones has said, that's a tragic thing to believe that if you just change a man's environment, then you change the man.
46:23: Because it was in paradise that man fell. And so by making the culture better does not mean you're making
46:32: Christians. Number five, the therapeutic gospel. Something that's also referred to as the feel good gospel.
46:40: The therapeutic gospel is basically this, God gives you power to reach your potential and the church just exists to help you find your happiness.
46:50: Number six, the universal gospel. That's just everybody goes to heaven.
46:58: And we know simply from the teachings of Jesus that that's not true. Number seven,
47:04: I wasn't really sure what to call this, so I just called it the Zionism gospel. Everybody know what
47:09: I mean by Zionism? Zionism gospel is the idea that as long as you're a
47:15: Jew, you're saved. And they take a passage out of Romans chapter 11 out of context to say all
47:22: Jews get saved. That's a false gospel, you're telling a person who doesn't know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior that as long as you're a
47:30: Jew and you have Jewish blood inside of you, then you're automatically going to heaven. But the
47:35: Apostle Paul said very plainly to the Galatians, we are not saved by our works, by our keeping of the
47:40: Jewish law. We're saved by faith in Jesus Christ. Anything else, my friends, is a false gospel.
47:47: And so Jesus warns, beware of false prophets. And there are plenty of people out there who are gonna come with this false message and they will use all the
47:59: Christian language and terminology in the world to entice you into thinking that what they're saying is true, but it will lead ultimately to your destruction, not to eternal life.
48:09: And so Jesus gives this warning at the conclusion here, verses 21 through 23.
48:15: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my
48:22: Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?
48:37: There are plenty of people that are speaking the Christianese and they know the Christian terminology. And I'm not just talking about teachers here.
48:44: I'm even talking about those people that follow those teachers. Or you have convinced yourself that as long as you've attended enough
48:50: Sunday school classes, that you're now a Christian. But they will enter into the presence of God on that day.
48:57: And Jesus says, I will declare to them, I never knew you.
49:04: Not, hey, I remember when you were a Christian that period of time back then. Yeah, I remember that. Like we sort of chummed it up a little bit together, didn't we?
49:12: You wore the WWJD bracelet, right? The password to your email address was like a
49:17: Bible reference. Well, you had all the Christian stuff going into the Christian t -shirt and you went to all the conferences.
49:22: Yeah, I remember that. That passing season of a person's life will not save them.
49:31: As Jesus says here, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.
49:40: Based on a parable that Jesus gives later on in Matthew, there's one of two things that we will hear from God when we enter into glory.
49:47: We will either hear from him, well done, good and faithful servant. Now great is your reward. Or we will hear from him, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness.
49:56: I never knew you. Do you truly know the
50:01: Savior? Do you know Christ unto eternal life?
50:08: Are you doing more than just getting by with your religion? Do you love
50:15: Christ? Let me finish here with an illustration.
50:21: I'm borrowing this illustration from John MacArthur. It was in February of 1969 that John MacArthur preached his very first sermon at Grace Community Church, where he's now been for 51 years.
50:36: And the first sermon that he preached was this section, Matthew 7, 21 to 23. Now, if you're trying to impress a congregation that you have now been brought into to be the pastor of,
50:47: I don't think you're gonna pick some of the most controversial words that Jesus ever preached to be that thing that's gonna,
50:54: I'm gonna get these people to love me. But those were the words that John MacArthur preached on.
51:00: Matthew 7, verses 21 through 23. And at the conclusion of that sermon,
51:07: Dr. MacArthur gave this illustration. He said there was an actor that was attending a party and there happened to be a pastor there.
51:16: Pastors usually weren't invited to these kinds of parties, but it just happened to be one of those events where there was a pastor at this particular gathering.
51:23: And the actor began to say to the group, hey, I'll perform anything for you guys.
51:28: Give me something to perform. I'll apply my acting skills to it and show you that you can pretty much act anything out to a great performance.
51:37: And the pastor was actually the first one to speak up. And he said, do you know the 23rd Psalm? And the actor said, is that that Psalm that begins, the
51:45: Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leads me beside the still waters.
51:51: And the pastor said, yeah, that's the one. The actor said, sure, I got that one. I think I can do that.
51:57: So the actor performed it. He performed Psalm 23.
52:02: And when he got to the end of it, there was applause. The audience loved it.
52:08: It was like, oh, that's like the best rendition of Psalm 23 that I've ever heard. The actor, rather pleased with himself, looked at the pastor and said, well, you're the one that recommended
52:16: Psalm 23 and you're a pastor, so I wanna hear you do it. You get up here and do Psalm 23.
52:22: Well, the pastor had never performed before. He didn't ever use scripture as a performance, but he always preached the scriptures.
52:33: So he resolved in his mind that that's what he was gonna do. He was just gonna get up and deliver
52:39: Psalm 23 like he would preach a sermon. And so he stood in front of that crowd and he recited
52:45: Psalm 23. And at the end, there was no applause. But there was also not a dry eye in that room as people were more touched with what the pastor said than this performance that the actor gave.
53:08: And the actor came back up to the front again and he looked at the group and he said, I know the 23rd
53:15: Psalm, but this man knows the 23rd
53:21: Psalm. He knows the shepherd. Do you know the shepherd?
53:30: Jesus Christ, who gives eternal life, the way, the truth, and the life.
53:40: No one comes to the father but by him. He is the narrow gate.
53:46: My brothers and sisters in the Lord, those who may not know Christ, I say to you in love, enter through the narrow gate.
54:02: ♪ Lead me on, help me steady,
54:24: I am whole ♪ ♪
54:29: Through the storm, through the night ♪ ♪
54:34: Lead me on to the light ♪ ♪
54:40: Take my hand, lead me on ♪ ♪
55:34: And the night draws near, and the day is past ♪ ♪
55:47: And God at the rift, guide my feet, hold my hand ♪ ♪
56:08: Precious Lord, lead me on ♪
56:17: Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.
56:22: For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.
56:28: On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.