The Cost of Discipleship (Faith Bible Church) — Paul Washer

This sermon was uploaded by Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas and our website is www .gccsatx .com or you can find us on Sermon Audio by going to www .sermonaudio .com.

The Narrow Gate and the Authority of Jesus’ Teaching

Open up our Bibles to Matthew chapter 7. Matthew 7 verse 13. Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide in the ways 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.

Discerning False Prophets by Their Fruit

Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles are they.

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. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

So then you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to me on that day Lord Lord did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles and then I will declare to them.

I never knew you depart from me you who practice lawlessness. Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and acts upon them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain fell in the floods came in the winds blew and slammed against that house and yet it did not fall for it had been founded on the rock.

Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and slammed against that house and it fell and great was its fall.

When Jesus had finished these words the crowds were amazed at his teaching but he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes. Let's go to the Lord in prayer father I lead in this prayer before your people and I do not know the content of their heart nor whether their minds are wandering or whether they truly are seeking you this morning but I come before you in the name of your son and I pray that you would set your seal on these meetings that you would be our helper and Lord if there is any obstacle to your working if I be that obstacle to your working remove me as any other obstacle but Oh God work here among us for the sake of your own glory for the sake of your name that it not be blasphemed among the Gentiles on our account father do a work in Christianity bless us help us and we will be helped in Jesus name Amen.

The Sermon on the Mount in Its Biblical Context

Matthew seven starting in verse 13 is a very prominent text, very powerful text, some would say even a very dangerous text, but before you can understand the power of this text, you need to see it in its context.

When you go back to Matthew five, you see something I want us to address it just for a moment. Verses one and two present to us something quite amazing that is often overlooked. It says when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, I have spent a great deal of time in the Beatitudes, a great deal of time in this chapter five of the book of Matthew. And I am constantly, constantly amazed by it, the power of it, what Matthew under the direction of the Holy Spirit is setting up for us here.

He says when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain. I always ask myself, why is he using this terminology? It appears that he's setting Christ upon this huge mountain. And it says after he sat down, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, I believe that what Moses is doing, what what Matthew is doing here is defining this moment as possibly one of the most important, if not one of the most, most excellent moments in history.

You see, a long time ago, a man went up on a mountain, his name was Moses, and he received a law from God. And he brought that law on tablets of stone down to a people. It was the law. It was the revealed truth from a God still distant, smoking fires and burning and trembling.

And no one was allowed to teach to touch that mountain. But then here in the book of Matthew. We understand that now God has come down on that mountain, God has become flesh and his dwelling with men.

And he is sitting on this mountain and he is opening his mouth and he is going to give them his law. I don't think that there's any way that Matthew could emphasize this anymore, that this is one of the most important events in history and the teaching that is going to flow out from this event is the most important teaching in history.

Christianity as a Transformation of Character

It is what being a Christian or a follower of God is all about. I am amazed among those of us who care a great deal about truth and and theology and doctrine and all that is very important, how we so dwell in the book of Romans and we so dwell in the book of Ephesians and we're so mesmerized with the book of Colossians and rightly so.

But it seems to me that we neglect what's going on here to our own detriment, to our own harm. You see, it's so easy in a sense to take the great truths of the book of Romans and say, yes, I agree with them.

I heartily endorse them. I embrace them. And yet in all our embracing our lives. Well, it can mean it can remain something of a creedalism, something of something in our mind and intellect, a belief. But when we come to the Sermon on the Mount, this teaching is so dangerous because it's impossible just to embrace it with the intellect.

It is something that grabs the entirety of your life. And Matthew says here in verse two, he says he opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, it's almost like a drum roll. That begins in the book of Genesis and goes all through the historical literature of the Old Testament, the wisdom literature and the prophets building momentum and momentum until finally.

Finally, God comes down and opens his mouth to teach us now, how can we neglect such teaching now after this? He immediately goes in to what is known as the Beatitudes, and it tells us something that Christianity is more than a morality.

It's more than just a few laws that we embrace. Christianity is about a revolution in our character. It is about an ontological change that when men embrace Christianity or better said, when Christianity embraces a man, it changes him at the very core of his being.

And everything that he does is flowing out of what God has recreated him to be. You see, sometimes I know I myself with the emails I receive and it's probably my own fault. I'm accused oftentimes of and how this happens, I don't know.

I mean, how can a Calvinist be be accused of teaching works as a means of salvation? They say you talk so much about the evidences of faith. And I say, yeah, but they're just that they're evidences. You see, when we come to the Sermon on the Mount, you have to understand, as you read, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the gentle, blessed are those who hunger and thirst.

But if your doctrine of man and the depravity of man is correct, that all of this is an absolute impossibility. Jesus is not setting this before men saying, if you do this, you will be my disciples. We realize after reading these high standards in the Sermon on the Mount and in the Beatitudes that something miraculous must happen to a man.

In order for these things to flow out of his life, literally become his life. And what is that? The lost doctrine in American Christianity, and I would say the doctrine that is always lost whenever you see dark moments in so-called Christianity.

And it is the doctrine of regeneration. You see, you have to understand this. Men are dead in their trespasses and sins, men are born haters of God, men cannot come to God because they will not come to God and they will not come to God because they hate him.

And therefore, in the work of salvation, it must be preceded or salvation itself must be preceded by a genuine, recreative, dynamic, supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a person that makes that person alive so that they might see properly and might respond properly to the claims of the gospel.

And so what we're seeing here is this since repentance and faith are the result of a supernatural, a definite supernatural work of God, and since every work God begins, he completes. And since salvation is more about than anything else, the declaration of God's power to the universe, you can be assured that if God has saved a person, he has changed that person in the very core of their being.

And he will continue working in that person to bring about sanctification and conformity to Christ. That is why it is absolutely absurd to believe that a man can be Christian and not be changed and not only not be changed, but have his course set by the hand of God so that throughout all the days of his life, he continues to change.

Now, albeit I will give it to you that the Christian life is not necessarily a continual rise. But there is growth and setback and growth and struggle, but throughout the full course of the Christian life, you will see the man being transformed and changed because the God who began a good work in him will finish it.

And that's why we can go to this sermon on the mountain, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Because these people who have embraced the gospel have been changed by the power of God and the God who changed them will continue to change them so that more and more these things become marks of their life.

Regeneration and the Marks of True Faith

Something very important that I think that set out here in verses three and on in the Beatitudes is is these just aren't infrequent things you see in the life of a believer, but they are things that begin more and more to mark the believer.

These are the properties, the characteristics of what a true believer in Christ truly is, and they are things that will come about because it is God who will see to it. So the entire sermon on the Mount must be understood in the context of the supernatural work of God in the heart of every child of God, because if anyone be in Christ.

He's a new creature, and the evidence that he is a new creature is that you begin to see these marks of a new creature in his life. We have spent. I don't know how many years, more than two generations, I would suppose, of taking the doctrine of regeneration and being born again and reducing it down to nothing more than decisionism.

Did you make your decision for Christ? And we have literally millions, untold millions of people who have made their decision for Christ, but there's no marks of true Christianity in their life. It's because a mere human decision is not equal to the supernatural regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the true believer.

And so we're going to go on now, having said that we're going to go to Matthew seven and after all this teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, first in the Beatitudes, describing for us the character of the true believer and then going to show how that character works itself out in the life of the true believer, the external manifestation of that inward character.

And then after he goes through all this rigid teaching, he comes to chapter seven, verse 13, and he gives us a great warning, a great warning. And here's one of the problems that I have with modern day evangelism, whether it be personal or from the pulpit, I never hear any warnings after people have made a profession of faith.

I find that quite amazing, even in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, there are warnings, constant warnings. We don't do that anymore. Now, preachers, I'll give them this. They'll warn the unbeliever about hell.

And they'll warn the unbeliever to repent or believe in Christ or at least make a decision and pray a prayer. But rarely do I ever hear the evangelist warn those who have made a confession for Christ.

And yet that is one of our greatest tasks. As I shared last night, an evangelist, a well-known evangelist, wrote me a while back and he was very angry with me and he said, I just want you to know, Mr. Washer, 22 people, I believe it was, are on their way to heaven now because last night they prayed that little prayer that you're always speaking against.

And I wrote him back and I said, I had no idea you were that charismatic. And he wrote me back, well, I'm not charismatic. Why did you say that? I said, because apart from a supernatural revelation from God, explain to me how you know they were converted.

And he said, well, that's not my job. I said, then what is your job, sir? Your job is that when you have properly preached the gospel and you have called men to repentance and faith, that even though you have surveyed their life for a few hours in counseling, deep counseling, you depart from them with both promises and warnings, promises that if the God, that if the if God truly continues this work, it is evidence that he began it.

And warnings that if after this night or after a short period of seeming to walk with Christ, they fall away or turn away, it's evidence that nothing happened to them that night. When was the last time you warned one of your converts regarding that?

If you say almost never, then you've departed from historical Christianity, more importantly, you've departed from scripture. When was the last time you warned a wayward member in your church with regard to the state of their soul?

You know, I'm amazed how the warnings have changed. Nowadays, when a believer or someone in the church begins to depart from the faith, usually they're just allowed to depart. But if they are warned, they're often oftentimes warned this way.

Do you know you're a Christian and Christians shouldn't act like this? And you're going to lose all your rewards in heaven. That's no warning. A more proper warning would be this, sir, I was there when you made your confession of faith in Christ.

I was there when you publicly identified yourself with him in baptism. I have taught you for a few years. It seemed there was some reality in your walk with Christ and your confession of faith. But now you are departing from the faith and turning back to the world.

And I fear for your soul. If you continue on this path, it is evidence that everything in the past has been false. Now, make your calling and election. Sure. Examine your life. Test yourself to see if you are in the faith.

There's none of that, is there? Isn't it amazing that when you read the old books, most of them were written in regard to what is the true gospel? Now, I ask you, go to a modern day bookstore and try to find a book on the gospel.

I mean, the content of the gospel. Read the old books, I would find a lot written about how to biblically invite men to Christ, to plead with men to repent and believe. Go to a modern day bookstore. If you find anything on invitations, it's usually quite gimmickly and gimmicky, and it's a manipulation of emotions.

Many, many old books written on how to help a person discern the state of their heart. Pastors were referred to as physicians of the soul. They labored to make it sure that it was well with every person in their congregation.

They warned their people regarding the possibility of their confession being false. None of that in bookstores today, none of that in Christian libraries today, and none of that in Christian preaching today.

But we see here with Jesus Christ something quite different. Concluding this great sermon on the Mount, he does so with great warning. Warnings, he says, first of all, in verse 13, enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction.

The Exclusivity of Christ and the Narrow Way

Enter in the narrow gate. You must understand that there is something happening in our day, it is a neoliberalism and it is the most dangerous type of liberalism because it is cloaked in conservative dialogue.

I have been amazed in the last few months of men that I have seen on video. Who, when asked, I mean, leaders of evangelical world, when asked, is Jesus Christ the only way their response has been? I'm not called to judge anyone.

I want you to know that the men who have done that have denied the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't care how long they've been used supposedly in the last several generations to evangelize people. I don't care how prominent they are today.

If you so are confronted with the question, do you honestly believe Jesus Christ is the only way? And apart from him, there is no salvation. If you balk at that question, you are not Christian. You are not Christian.

And if you do the wisdom of the flesh or some even more serious power are able to dodge that question by saying, who am I to judge? God has given me just a ministry of preaching the love of God. I want you to know it is the same.

You have denied Christ, you have denied everything. The Bible speaks about the Messiah as being a light to his own people, the Jews, of being a light to the Gentiles, of being that prophet like Moses, but greater than Moses, that would be raised up and that anyone who did not follow him would be cut off.

That there is no name under heaven. That there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus, it is absolutely pitiful that today in the evangelical community for me to stand up and be so bold is a scandal.

How could it be that in a few short years in our conservative supposed community, that it can be a scandal for a believer to stand up and say, let me make it really clear, Jesus is the only way Jesus is absolutely everything at the name of Jesus.

Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess any prophet that does not point directly to Jesus. His man's only hope is false and damned. And let me make it even more clear for you. Everything outside of Jesus Christ is absolutely absurd.

He is before all things. All things were made by him, through him and for him. Beware. Beware. Know this, that in the Roman Empire, as I've said this so often, believers, if they had only said Jesus was away, they would have never died.

See, Rome was full of gods. They had more gods than we have baseball cards. They swapped them. Everyone was happy with everyone else's God. They would switch them. There are different days of the week.

It was only when the Christians showed up that it ruined everybody's party. Because they said they stood there in front of their culture and they said, Jesus is the way definite article, which logically concludes.

That every other God is false and vain and everybody else is wrong, it is amazing to me, not that liberals would deny this truth, but men who claim to be evangelical. Sidestep it and refuse to make the bold proclamation, they are not of God.

Also know this. That a man who refuses to speak about sin. You can count on the fact that the Holy Spirit has absolutely nothing to do with his ministry, nothing to do with his ministry. You take a man who claims that he is all about the love of God and he never speaks about sin.

You write it down. The Holy Spirit is a million miles. If we could use such a statement from him. Because one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit, when he come when he comes into the world, the Bible says, is he will convict the world of sin.

That will be one of his ministries enter through the narrow gate. Christ. Christ. Not some other way, not multiple choice, not all roads leading to Rome, it is Christ and it is Christ alone. It is not Christ plus or Christ minus.

It is only Christ. As I study the scriptures, I'm absolutely amazed. And this is just not New Testament. It's just not the book of Colossians. You go everywhere in the Bible and I want you to know something.

And this may be offensive to you, but God, the father, is all about his son. Everything is about the son. And if you have a problem with the son, you have a problem about everything in the economy of God, everything in the heart of God.

It is all about the son. And to sidestep a crucial question like that proves you have nothing to do with the son. Nothing. Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, the way is broad that leads to destruction.

Regeneration, Conversion, and Walking in the Narrow Way

Now, here's something that has also been lost in the evangelical community. Christianity has become only a gate. What happened to the way? You know, there was a time when it was called the way. Why? Because those who had passed through the gate evidenced their passing through that gate by the way they walked, the direction of their lives, the character of their lives.

If I were to look at modern day Christendom, churchianity, the evangelical community, whatever you want to call it, I would have to say this. The gate is truly narrow, but the way is broad that leads to life, because most people who claim to have passed through the narrow gate, they walk in the broad way.

Now, to counter that, men with poor theology have developed a works religion, which is just as heretical. They say that you're right, Brother Paul, you must pass through the narrow gate and you must also walk in the narrow way and you must do things and you must work in order to obtain your salvation.

That's not at all what this passage is teaching. What this passage is teaching, again, cannot be understood apart from the supernatural work of God in conversion and regeneration, what happens to a man when God saves him.

You see, those who pass, let me ask you a question. How can a dead man pass through a narrow gate? He cannot. The fact that he passes through the narrow gate is because God has done a supernatural work in his life and that supernatural work in his life, regeneration, the doctrine of being born again, not only enables that man to pass through that narrow gate.

It also enables that man to walk in the narrow way. And he doesn't walk in the narrow way grudgingly, he doesn't walk in the narrow way is some horrible duty he must fulfill in order to obtain heaven.

He walks in the narrow way because his heart has been changed to love the narrow way, because the narrow way is the way defined primarily by the teachings of Jesus Christ. And since he loves Christ, he loves his teaching.

And since he loves his teaching, he loves walking in the narrow way. Do you see that this is so important such? Because we have such a high view of man, we have such a low view of salvation where salvation has become literally just a human decision that may or may not have any earthly results.

But in the New Testament, we see something completely different. Do you realize? And I believe I can back this up, I believe it's there. I love the way the book of Genesis begins with in the beginning, and I love the way John picks up that language in John, chapter one, verse one, in the beginning, I believe that John is referring to a new creation.

And I believe that the conversion of a man, the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a man, manifest as much as if not more of the power of God than the very creation of the universe. And I believe that what happens in the heart of a man is equated in Scripture with the very resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

That we are resurrected to walk in a newness of life, that we are made new creatures, that we are made children of God, and so this new way of life, this narrow way we walk in, this following of his commands, it's not, as John tells us in first John, it's not burdensome.

It's a delight. Now, that is not to say that there's not a struggle with the flesh and a struggle against the devil and a struggle against the world, but the essential part of really who we are delights in the law of God and delights in Christ.

As the brother Charles Leiter, I've often heard him say Christians have it so wrong when they think Christianity is basically trying to be what you're not. It's not, it's simply being what you are, a new creature.

A new creature says 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.

Scripture as the Sufficient Map for Christian Living

Why is it called a narrow way? I believe there could be many reasons for it being called this. But one of them is that God has not left us to ourselves. We are we have no excuse for being like the people in judges who did everything according to what was right in their own eyes.

God has given us his scriptures. John tells us he has anointed us and illumined our minds to know the truth. So we have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling with us. We have the holy scriptures to mark out this way of Christ.

We are to be a people supremely dedicated to this book, to finding out everything it says about every manner of life and seeking to submit to it. But it's not a legalism. We don't want to go beyond what is written, but we don't want to fall below what is written either.

We want to realize that this book is not only infallible. This book is sufficient and therein lies the problem, at least in my own denomination, the Southern Baptist. For years, they fought the war of whether scripture is inspired or not.

Praise God that they won. It's inspired. They've come to that conclusions. I congratulate them all. But there's a greater battle now to be won. It's inspired, you're only halfway there. It's sufficient.

That means I do not need godless psychology. I do not need warped social studies and I do not need to be addressed by my own heart. As a matter of fact, one of the greatest healings in my life has come from the fact that I have learned that I should not let my heart preach to me.

I should preach the truth to my heart. So it's a narrow way. Why? Because it's lined out by what he's given us. Do you understand how privileged we are and how accountable we are to this thing that's been given to us?

I was in the jungles a few weeks ago and it was only the fact that my family couldn't go with me that I actually came back. I think I would have stayed there and you'd never seen me again. Matter of fact, the church down there in Muscle Shoals is being kind of like Pharaoh.

They won't let me leave with my family because they think I won't come back. But I was there and as I was teaching. Teaching these beautiful mountain people that because of the the Sakia, the the drought, thank you, because of the drought had come down and moved into the high jungle.

And I'm teaching and teaching and I see about thirty five women off to the side and they're nursing and they're trying to listen and they can't really understand. Most of them have never read. They don't have a Bible.

And so I said, OK, after this class, I'm going to I'm going to do a woman's conference. And so I got together and all these ladies and pulled them in there and I said, OK, I said, instead of just preaching to you, I know no one's ever talked to you.

I just I've shared the gospel with you now. Now I want to hear your questions. And this was the first question. Is it true that we can't come to church during when we have our period because we're unclean, if only they had what lays on your desk every day, untouched, if only they could read.

It's a narrow way because it's marked out by this book. I want you to know something. People come to me all the time, say, Brother Paul, I got a new relationship with God. And I said, do you have a new relationship with his word?

Because if you don't have a new relationship with his word, you don't have a new relationship with him. It's a narrow way because it's marked out by this book. And it is a lovely book. Wonderful words of life here in this book.

Holiness, Submission, and Conformity to Scripture

The greatest tragedy, so many tragedies, you young men are going to suffer terrible tragedies because you want to jump into the ministry. You have no business there at all. You can do all sorts of things.

My greatest crime. The greatest thing that has hurt me, and I say this in sort of a laughing sort of way, but as I became too useful, too quick, you won't be useful to God. Memorize large portions of this book.

You won't be useful to God. Read this book from cover to cover over and over and be useful to God. Get down on your knees. I heard of one old saying that was so godly, actually read through all of Shakespeare's works on his knees.

If he could do that, at least you could read through the book of Leviticus on yours. Marked out by this book, one of the things that I love about the Puritans, although I do not agree with them on everything about this, but the one thing I do appreciate is that they honestly desired to make every aspect of their life, to bring it into submission to the word of God.

Yes, and sometimes they were rather extravagant. Yes, sometimes I think they pushed it too far. But look at us, your heart, your mind, your eyes, your ears, your feet, everything about you, the direction of your life, your attitudes, your clothing, the way you look on the inside, outside everything else.

Have you addressed this book to find that you're living in conformity to these things that Christ says? No, you don't care. That's why you look just like your culture and you act like it. But you're radical because you got a Christian T-shirt on.

No, no, no, no. Conformity to this book. Let me share with you something I have found it very easy at times to preach when people wanted to hurt me. I have found it very easy to be a missionary. I have found it very easy to do many radical things like street preaching and other things.

I have found it very difficult to submit. The very simple things of my life to this word. Lord, let me give you the toughest love, you know, raise the standard on everything. There you go. You know, I'm going to wander a bit, but everyone knows I'm not that classical of a preacher anyway.

So I'll wander. I was. I was over at the Huntsville Museum Rocket Museum the other day with my boys, an absolutely wonderful place. I saw these people in the long dresses on and and dressed nice and things.

I began a conversation with them about children and then found out they were homeschoolers. I homeschool and things like that began talking. And immediately I recognized there was something going on. They seem to be very pious people.

But then I discovered that they they didn't believe they sinned anymore. They didn't believe they sinned anymore. And I looked at them and I said, well, but have you ever loved God even one moment as he ought to be loved?

Have you ever glorified God, even one moment of your life as he ought to be glorified? The guy kind of got a strange look in his eye, like never thought of that before. You see, this narrow way is not just outward principles.

It's not just external things, although it will affect outward and external things. It is about regulating your heart. Bring your heart and mind and submission to the word of God. It is a narrow way. That is another thing that this means.

Perseverance, Spiritual Warfare, and the Cost of Discipleship

It is a rough, difficult way. It is a way of battle. This narrow way is uphill. It is against the world. It is against the flesh. It is against your culture. It is against everything you've ever been taught outside of scripture.