The Two Roads

Choices! Life is full of choices. When you go to purchase a new car, you have to decide which options you want to include on it. When you go to the grocery store to buy breakfast cereal, you are confronted with over a hundred different varieties.

Even when you want something as simple as a cup of coffee, you have to choose among dozens of different alternatives. Do you want cappucino, espresso, flavored, or plain? Decaf or regular? Sweetened or unsweetened?

We live in a world of bewildering choices. But when it comes to the most important choice in all of life, there are only two alternatives. We want to look at those alternatives today.

We have been studying the Sermon on the Mount for the past several months. Believe it or not, we’re coming down the home stretch! Jesus has showed us what it means to be kingdom people. He has explained what God’s righteousness looks like, and how we can get it.

Now, in the final section of the Sermon, which is found in Matthew 7:13-27, Jesus sets before us a series of four pairs of alternatives.

1. Two Roads

2. Two Trees

3. Two Claims

4. Two Builders

Jesus is showing us that, when it comes to the kingdom of God, our choices determine our destiny. Today, we want to look at the first set of choices—the two roads. In verse 13, Jesus says…

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

On June 29, 1956 President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act which created the Interstate Highway System. Over the next 30 years, almost 100 billion dollars were spent on creating a national network of high speed multi-lane superhighways throughout the United States.

Today, 42,000 miles later, we have a system which handles 20% of all the vehicular traffic in the U.S., even though it comprises only about 1% of the total highway mileage.

Just a few years ago I was driving along a newly built section of I-75 near Sarasota, Florida. It was eight lanes wide - four in each direction - and there was no traffic on it at all. It was well-paved, well-lit, and well-marked. You could practically go to sleep at the wheel, the driving was so effortless.

The only problem was that that brand new section of I-75 didn’t lead anywhere. Before you got to Sarasota, a big sign said Highway Ends - All Traffic Must Exit. There I was, on one of the best highways in the world, enjoying a smooth ride to nowhere.

And that’s where a lot of people find themselves spiritually today: on a smooth road leading to nowhere.

In verses 13-14, Jesus tells us that there are two gates, two roads, two crowds, and two destinations. There are two gates—a wide gate and a narrow gate.

The word “wide” that is used there is the word “plateia” in Greek. It means a flat, wide space. We get our English word “plateau” or “plaza” from the same root. There’s plenty of room at the wide gate for everybody to go through. Picture Main Street USA at Disneyworld—room for lots of people, with their strollers, and their video cameras, and their tote bags.

But the narrow gate isn’t like that. The word narrow, in Greek, is the word “steno”. We get our word “stenography” from it. Stenography, or shorthand, is literally “narrow writing”. It’s writing that is boiled down to its barest essentials.

The idea behind this word “steno” is one of restriction. It’s not “come as you are and go through as you please”. It’s confining. It presses in on you and constrains you. Picture the New York City subway. To get on the subway, you have to go through a turnstile, and you have to go through one at a time.

Jesus says that the gateway to the kingdom is like a narrow turnstile where only one person can pass through at a time. You can’t carry any excess baggage with you—there’s no room. You go through the gate as an individual.

You have to leave all your luggage behind - your pride, your possessions, your philosophy of life. You have to lay it all down and leave it behind if you want to go through the turnstile. There’s no special gate off to the side where you can go through with a stroller full of stuff.

Some sports stadiums have a special pass gate. You go to that gate if you are a member of the media, or if you belong to the stadium staff, or you have a luxury box, or whatever. You just show up at that gate, flash some i.d., and in you go.

There are a lot of people who believe that they can get into the kingdom of heaven on a group pass. But there are no group passes into the kingdom.

You can’t get in just because you’ve been born into a Christian family. You can’t go through a special gate just by flashing an i.d card that says you’re a Baptist, or a Presbyterian, or a Catholic.

No, the gateway to heaven is narrow—it’s restrictive—and people nowadays don’t want to hear that. They want to believe that there are many gateways to heaven, or that the gateway to heaven is wide enough for everyone to enter. But it’s not. Jesus said that it’s not, right here.

He says it’s narrow. You know why it’s narrow? Becausehe himself is the gateway to heaven. Jesus is the turnstile. When you come to the gateway to heaven, you’re coming, as an individual, into a face-to-face encounter with another individual—Jesus Christ. It’s one on one.

John 10:9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.

You can never enter the kingdom of heaven by any other gate - there simply is no other way. Check it out for yourself—it’s in the Bible.

John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (That’s pretty exclusive language!)

Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. (Sounds like the apostle Peter, who said that, could have used some diversity training.)

If these statements in the Bible are true, it means that there are not going to be Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims in heaven. There are not going to be nature lovers who worship the sun and the moon and the stars. There are not going to be New Agers who believe in crystals and reincarnation and channelling. There are only going to be people who have accepted Jesus Christ.

That is an inflammatory viewpoint, nowadays. It is narrow and confining. And that’s why people don’t like it.

Because we live in an age of tolerance, and there is something about this teaching that is very intolerant. We live in an age of inclusion and diversity and sensitivity to other points of view, and other lifestyles. Yet this message of the Bible is exclusive and uniform and absolute.

If you espouse this viewpoint, people will call you an intolerant religious bigot; a fanatical, right-wing religious fundamentalist. They’ll say that you are a hate-monger, and they’ll tar you with the same brush as the Oklahoma City bombers. How dare you suggest that people can get into heaven only one way?

But that’s what the Word of God says. That’s what Jesus Himself said. If you don’t come to grips with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will not get into heaven. Period. Because He is the only gate by which you can enter. I didn’t say that; Jesus said that.

Each gate opens up to a roads; the wide gate leads to a broad road. The narrow gate leads to a narrow road.

A little over fifty years ago, in the waning days of World War Two, Adolf Hitler launched a massive counter-attack against the Allied forces that were closing in on Germany. It was his last-ditch gamble to avert defeat.

The attack was a total surprise to the Americans and the British, because it came in the dead of winter, just before Christmas. The Germans had secretly assembled their best tank divisions in a quiet, forested section of the Western front, where the Allies were not expecting them to be.

When the Germans launched their attack, one of the first things they did was to infiltrate special units of the SS behind the American lines. These German special forces all spoke fluent English with an American accent. They wore American uniforms. They drove American Jeeps. Their job was to sow confusion and sabotage behind the Allied lines.

One of their specific projects was to change the road signs. That way, the American reinforcements coming up to the battle would become confused, and would go the wrong way. At each intersection, there were road signs, but the signs were deceptive.

That’s what Satan does with the broad way that leads to destruction. He puts a road sign on it that says “This way to happiness. This way to life. This way to fulfilment. Get on this road. You can believe whatever you want. You can live however you want.

You won’t have to obey any traffic regulations. You won’t have to stay between the lines. Nobody will put any constraints on you; there are no limitations, nothing to hem you in. You can do as you please. and you’ll end up in the right place.” But that’s a lie.

Because the two roads lead to different destinations. The broad road leads to destruction. But the narrow road leads to life.

If you want to travel the narrow road, there will be limitations on you. You’ll be under contraints to follow the guidelines, observe the rules, to stay on the road.

When we lived in Colorado, one day we drove to the top of Mount Evans - 14,200 ft. - on the highest paved road in North America. As we went up the side of that mountain, the road went through numerous switch backs and hairpin turns. There were no guardrails.

The road was very narrow. At times, we weren’t even sure where the road was! We knew we were getting pretty high when we looked out the window and saw mountain goats. Jonathan was just four years old at the time, and he was so scared that he wouldn’t even look out the window. He just buried his face in the back seat and said “Tell me when it’s over!”

You didn’t have to convince me that it was important that I stay on the road. Even though that road was narrow, it was worth staying on, when you considered the alternative. So we stayed on the road, and when we reached the top of the mountain, we were rewarded with a view that took our breath away.

Christianity is like a narrow road up a steep mountain. Stay on the road and you’ll be okay. Leave the road and you’ll get hurt. And at the end of the road: a magnificent reward.

But some people who set out to follow Jesus want the road to be just as wide as the broad way that leads to destruction. They can’t understand why God would put limits on them; why He would expect them to follow His teaching.

They don’t understand that the principles of the Word of God are like invisible guard-rails designed to keep us from crashing off the road and hurting ourselves and those we love.

There’s something else about the narrow road—it can get lonely at times. It isn’t the most popular route through life. God’s way is not the way of the majority. Most people choose the easy way.

Christ is going to make demands of us if we would be his disciples. He’s going to put constraints on us. That’s why so many people opt out. They don’t want to submit their will to God’s will. They want to do their own thing.

In John 6, Jesus was teaching his followers about the demands of discipleship. After he got finished, it says in verse 66

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

They found his teaching too restrictive, too confining. It didn’t leave room for them to do their own thing. So they quit following him.

We make a serious mistake when we present Christianity in such a way as to minimize the idea of that it involves a total commitment to Jesus Christ. Perhaps we’ve been guilty of sugar-coating the message of the Gospel by giving people the impression that if they follow Jesus, they’ll have nothing but happiness and fulfilment and answers to all their problems.

Maybe we’ve tried to make Christianity appeal to the masses—make it more marketable; more seeker-friendly. But according to these verses, true Christianity is never going to appeal to the masses.

Now I believe that becoming a Christian is the best thing that can ever happen to anybody. But I also believe that we’d better tell people up front that if you want to follow Jesus Christ, you’re going to have to completely submit your life to his leadership. Jesus said “If anyone would be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

That’s radical. That’s demanding. But that’s the truth.