00:00:00.000 - 00:00:26.160

The following sermon is preached by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. His sermon is entitled "The Narrow Gate." Let us give reverend attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the gospel according to Matthew, the seventh chapter.

00:00:26.160 - 00:00:49.640

I begin the reading at the verse numbered 13. 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. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it

00:00:49.640 - 00:01:04.880

are few. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.

00:01:04.880 - 00:01:33.240

Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? So every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

00:01:33.240 - 00:01:56.520

Thus you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast

00:01:56.520 - 00:02:23.800

out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?" And then will I declare to them, "I never knew you. Start from me, you evil doers." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his work.

00:02:23.800 - 00:02:58.000

Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Jesus said, "The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

00:02:58.000 - 00:03:20.640

What did he mean when he said this? Well this is certainly not an argument for the need to be narrow. There are some people who, to justify their own prejudices, go to this passage of Scripture in order to present their arguments.

00:03:20.640 - 00:03:41.400

There are some, for example, who believe in narrow practice in the church. They understand the only things that the church does which are right are the things that come out of yesterday. Their answer to every problem confronted by the church is another dose of the same old

00:03:41.400 - 00:04:02.320

thing. Their direction in the church is always backward. Every congregation has people like this. Recently two very eminent psychologists, Dr. Charles Glock and Dr. Rodney Stark, did a

00:04:02.320 - 00:04:30.640

study of this kind of personality in many congregations across the country. And they found that in general these people are very judgmental, gossip more than most, are idolatrous with regard to their own opinions, have little joy in their Christian life, and are particularly paranoid.

00:04:30.640 - 00:04:55.680

Jesus is certainly not advocating anything like that with these words. Then there are others who take this text and use it to support their arguments for a narrow theology. These people have closed minds with regard to theological and philosophical thought.

00:04:55.680 - 00:05:17.880

They are essentially anti-intellectual. They believe that after God's book went to print, he's never had anything else to say. These people believe the most important thing to be orthodoxy, and of course they define orthodoxy in terms of what they themselves believe.

00:05:17.880 - 00:05:36.760

Now this can be a very comforting view. If all you have to do is believe a certain set of doctrines and glory is yours, well that's a sure passport to paradise. And many people are anxious for that kind of thing.

00:05:36.760 - 00:05:58.760

They will advance the idea, for example, that if you believe in the virgin birth and if you believe in the substitutionary view of the atonement and if you believe in the plenary verbal inspiration of scripture and if you believe in believers' baptism or infant baptism or sprinkling or immersion or whatever their particular theological prejudice has to be,

00:05:58.760 - 00:06:24.920

then you will be able to know the kingdom of heaven. They forget that Jesus summed all theology when he said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and body and thy neighbor as thyself." There's no narrowness in that.

00:06:24.920 - 00:06:55.800

Then some people use this passage from Jesus' word to defend a rather narrow view of what the nature of the church ought to be. And in our time, this is presented most often in an adulation of what Dr. David Hubbard at Fuller Theological Seminary has called "psychic sectarianism."

00:06:55.800 - 00:07:18.540

Now what does that mean? Well we live in an age when small groups have grown very rapidly in the church. Many call them "tear and share" groups, vulnerable little fellowships of people who get together and share their needs, their triumphs, their victories, their defeats, and in that intimacy

00:07:18.540 - 00:07:43.140

they find their faith. The old fundamentalism said, "Believe certain doctrines and you're saved." But Hubbard points out that this new fundamentalism argues for a kind of idolatry of the emotions -- the important thing is not so much your faith as your feelings.

00:07:43.140 - 00:08:10.780

And this kind of attitude can be very divisive in a church. Forty percent of the members of this congregation have joined this church in the last six years. And we recently conducted a telephone survey of all of these people. And one of the questions we asked was, "What was the single most important factor in getting

00:08:10.780 - 00:08:35.220

you to join to become a part of the First Presbyterian Church?" And the answer given second most commonly -- not the first answer, but the second most common answer was, "I feel a great deal of warmth and joy and friendship in First Church." And that is certainly a good thing.

00:08:35.220 - 00:08:57.860

But my friends, the foundation of a church has to rest upon more than warm, fuzzy feelings. And therefore, this defense of a narrow idolatry of the emotions, that's not part of this text either. The past is important.

00:08:57.860 - 00:09:15.920

It has much to offer to us, but it is only prelude. Theology is important. We need a standard and a system of belief. But as soon as someone believes he or she has all the answers, it's doubtful whether

00:09:15.920 - 00:09:40.940

they even know all the questions. Fellowship is essential to the life of any congregation of God's people. But we are called to love not only those who make us feel good in our care and share group. We're called to love all, including our enemies.

00:09:40.940 - 00:10:09.900

So what does Jesus mean when he says, "The gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few"? Well, this is essentially an announcement that excellence requires effort. I wonder if you're familiar with the Japanese poetic form called haiku.

00:10:09.900 - 00:10:37.380

Haiku is very plain poetry, very simple language. It is designed to capture only a single thought or moment. It tries to put a frame about an instant. For example, one of the most famous and well-known haikus is this, "An old silent pond.

00:10:37.380 - 00:10:52.380

Into the pond a frog jumps. Splash. Silence again." Now chances are if we were walking down a country road and something like that happened

00:10:52.380 - 00:11:09.860

just off the road, we would ignore it. We'd pay no attention to it at all. But the haiku, you see, takes what is ordinary and makes it very particular. It doesn't change what happened, but it focuses on what happened so that we see it with a

00:11:09.860 - 00:11:32.100

new intensity and clarity. Now Jesus in this passage is speaking to his disciples about discipleship. And in a sense, he sums up what he is saying to them with the argument that excellence invariably requires effort.

00:11:32.100 - 00:11:55.780

Now that's a very simple proposition. Even a child understands you have to work at something in order to be good at it. And Jesus sums up this proposition with what we might call a Hebrew haiku. He says, "The gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who

00:11:55.780 - 00:12:15.100

find it are few." If you want to be able to dive like Greg Louganis, then you must be willing to practice and discipline yourself like Greg Louganis. If you want to be able to cook like Julia Child, then you have to be willing to devote

00:12:15.100 - 00:12:36.840

your life to learning the culinary art as she has learned it. If you want to be able to operate like Thomas Starzl or play the cello like Yo-Yo Ma or draw a comic strip like Charles Schulz, then you must be willing to invest in that effort what it takes to accomplish those goals.

00:12:36.840 - 00:13:00.460

If you want to be an expert manager like Iacocca or a great writer like Tom Clancy or a fine actress like Jessica Tandy, then you must be willing to put out the effort that that kind of excellence requires. It makes no difference whether you're talking about sports or cooking or teaching or business

00:13:00.460 - 00:13:27.620

or art or any of the human disciplines, and especially this is most true when you're talking about the heroic enterprise of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Christ never made any effort to conceal the truth of this. He says to his disciples, "If you're going to follow me, then you must be willing to

00:13:27.620 - 00:13:43.900

deny yourself." He says to them at another point, "If you're looking for peace, then understand that I bring a sword." He says it again another point, "The world hates me, and if you will be my disciple,

00:13:43.900 - 00:14:00.060

then you can understand that the world is going to hate you." There's a scene in which a group of people want to become the disciples of Jesus, and what does he say to them? "Go home and count the cost before you enlist."

00:14:00.060 - 00:14:21.620

And then of course his best known word on the subject, "Whosoever would be my disciple, let him take up his cross daily and follow me." All of this is summed by this word, "The gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

00:14:21.620 - 00:14:40.740

Have you noticed how popular tens have become in our time? I mean now you see lists about the ten best books or the ten outstanding films or the ten best records. They made a movie a few years ago about a very, very beautiful girl.

00:14:40.740 - 00:14:57.300

She was described as being a ten. That was the name of the movie, Ten. Unfortunately, the moral level of the movie was zero. One of the young student doctors who helped me when I was in the hospital a few weeks

00:14:57.300 - 00:15:17.060

ago walked in one morning and said, "Well, on a scale of one to ten, how are you feeling this morning?" Well Christ never talked to his disciples about one to ten, and the reason is because he expected of his disciples that they would be tens.

00:15:17.060 - 00:15:39.980

He says, "Be ye perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect." He said, "If your folks are more important to you than I am, if your children are more important to you than I am, if your job is more important to you than I am, then you have no part of me, for I demand full and total commitment."

00:15:39.980 - 00:15:53.780

How often do you hear people say, "Well, I guess I could best be described as a rather average Christian." I always wonder about that phrase. What does that mean?

00:15:53.780 - 00:16:18.800

If you were lying down with your head in a stove and your feet on a block of ice, one could say that on average your body was comfortable. I suppose "average" means five. I defy anyone to find any place where Jesus calls his disciples to be fives.

00:16:18.800 - 00:16:48.060

He calls them to be tens, or to be striving to be tens. What he says very clearly here is that there can be no excellence in things of the Spirit, as in every other dimension of life, if there is not going to be effort. Now if I were to stop right here, then every word which I have said from this pulpit this

00:16:48.060 - 00:17:14.160

morning would be true, but it would not be good news, because the fact of the matter is that most of us are honest enough to admit that we're not tens. If it takes a ten to make it, then most of us are honest enough to say, "Then I don't have a chance."

00:17:14.160 - 00:17:39.620

It's an extremely difficult thing to live the Christian life in this kind of world. How, for example, do you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and then love the enemies who join up against you because you've done so? How do you see a human need and make personal sacrifices to meet that need, and at the same

00:17:39.620 - 00:18:08.180

time avoid having a judgmental spirit against the people who have created that need? How do you believe that the Church will have ultimate victory in history and at the same time have to struggle through the many vicissitudes, the pains and the agonies that the Church knows and the frequent defeats which it encounters?

00:18:08.180 - 00:18:32.340

How do you witness to Christ and at the same time not cast your pearls before a swine? How do you live a life of responsible stewardship in a world which is totally enslaved by consumerism? I think most people, when they think of these kinds of questions, recognize that this is just too much for us to master.

00:18:32.340 - 00:19:00.700

So if all I said from this sacred desk this morning is this, that the narrow gate is not a defense of a slavish allegiance to the past or a narrow-minded theology or holding hands and humming, but rather that it is a call to perfectionism in the Christian experience, if that's all I say from here this morning, then I have not shared with you the gospel.

00:19:00.700 - 00:19:37.580

The gospel is that in approaching that gate and walking that hard way, Jesus Christ accompanies us. Frederick Buechner is a very well-known Christian novelist and poet and teacher, and he's had in many ways a hard and difficult life which began when he and his brother were only eight years old and heard the shot in which their beloved father took his own life.

00:19:37.580 - 00:20:07.220

He describes his life as "nightmare after nightmare," and he says that his Christian experience is full of what he calls "unanswerables." But then, having acknowledged this, he says, "When I confront the unanswerables, I remember that God doesn't give us answers.

00:20:07.220 - 00:20:28.140

He gives us himself." When you're talking about the gate, remember that it's Jesus who said, "I am the door. I am the gate." When you're talking about that way that is hard, remember it was Jesus who also said,

00:20:28.140 - 00:20:39.940

"I am the way. I am the door. I am the way." And this one who says these things is the same one who is like the shepherd who leaves

00:20:39.940 - 00:20:58.260

the ninety-nine saved sheep to go in search of the one who is lost. This one who is the gate and the way is the one who loves us so much that he knows the number of hairs on our heads. His passion for us is measured by the fact that when he was crucified, he said, "Father,

00:20:58.260 - 00:21:17.420

forgive them." This Jesus with whom we have to do has said to us, struggling toward this gate and on this way, "I do not call you servants. I call you friends."

00:21:17.420 - 00:21:44.540

One of the greatest Christians that I have ever known was Dr. James Leon Kelso. He was a great man, a very modest man, a very humble man. When I was with him on the night before his death, he said to me, "Theelman," he always called his students by their last names, "Theelman, I'm approaching my final exams and I find

00:21:44.540 - 00:22:12.420

that if it weren't for Jesus, I couldn't even write my name on my paper." Now here's a man whose archaeological excavations concerning the things of the Bible are world-renowned. Here's a man whose books on subjects like the ceramic vocabulary of the New Testament have never been equaled.

00:22:12.420 - 00:22:29.020

Here is a man who touched the lives of thousands of students and made them better ministers because of his touch. Here's a man who knew great heartache in his own life and it expressed itself in a consummate love.

00:22:29.020 - 00:22:58.780

Here's a man who came as close to a 10 as anybody I've ever seen. And he said, "Theelman, I'm taking my final exams and I find that if it weren't for Jesus, I couldn't even write my name on the paper." We look at the way and the gate and say it's impossible and Jesus says, "With me, all things

00:22:58.780 - 00:23:20.620

are possible." We approach the door, we approach the way, very conscious of our sin and Jesus says, "While you were yet sinners, I died for you." There comes a moment in every true Christian experience when Jesus Christ draws near and

00:23:20.620 - 00:23:43.020

when he comes in all the swirling majesty of his infinite power and person. All precepts and all commands and all rituals disappear away and he stands before us and confronts us as naked spirits. And in that moment, if there is any honesty or sensitivity in us at all, we're filled

00:23:43.020 - 00:24:08.740

with fear because we know we are far from 10s. What do we discover? That this Jesus we face has the countenance not of an enemy but of a friend. You remember when the prodigal son headed home, the only thing he was afraid of was

00:24:08.740 - 00:24:30.460

the look on his father's face. And when he got there, he found a smile. So the gate is narrow and the way is hard, but the gate is Jesus and the way is Jesus and Jesus is a five-letter way to spell love.

00:24:30.460 - 00:24:52.600

So if you're lost in your sin, call out to him as Savior. If you're a slave to your passions, call out to him as Redeemer. If you find yourself confused in ignorance, call out to him as Teacher. If you want some to mold your goals and focus your ambitions, call out to him as Master.

00:24:52.600 - 00:25:09.880

If you're in the darkness of bereavement and despair and hopelessness, call out to him as the light of the world. If you don't understand your own person, call out to him as the Son of Man. If you don't understand the nature of God, call out to him as the Son of God.

00:25:09.880 - 00:26:07.740

But call and he will answer and his answer will be the answer of love. For the scriptures say of him that even the dimly burning wick he will not quench. Let us pray. Oh God, our Father, apply the truth of the gospel to us.

00:26:07.740 - 00:26:57.140

Let us pray. Lord, we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. We pray it in thy Son's name, amen. Amen.