Matthew 7:13-14
In life we walk through many types of gates. Some gates are to keep things out, or to keep some things inside. Some gates are just decorative. The church is the gatekeeper of the Biblical faith. In 1973 I walked through a gate that I will never forget. It was a different kind of experience that day, going through that gate. The day started with a call from a funeral home asking if I would do a funeral for a person that was not a member of our church. I said, “Yes. Can you tell me about this person?” This was her story. At age fifteen she was married. At the age of nineteen her husband was killed in a car wreck leaving her with two young children. At the age of twenty-two she married again and at the age of twenty-seven her husband left her with their three young children, plus her two children by her first marriage. At the age of twenty-nine she and her five children were living with her father in an old farm house in the middle of a cow pasture. Her father looked after the cattle for a doctor who owned the land. The barn was in better condition than the house. At this point in her life she was dating a married man that was the father of five or six children. They had a lover’s quarrel. He shot her six times which killed her and then he dumped her body in the cow pasture.
The funeral home was being paid by county funds. My church provided a burial spot for the burial in our graveyard. The funeral director said that they would take the body back to the old farm house until we had the funeral service at the church and wanted me to meet them when they took the casket out to the house. When I got out to the pasture gate, the funeral home director asked me to help carry the casket through the gate to the house. The gate was made so that cows could not make the turns in the gate and walk out, but a person could walk through the turns without a problem. To get the casket through the turns in the gate was a real challenge. The narrow gate is not always an easy way to get to the place where you are going. That narrow gate reminds us of what Matthew wrote about the narrow gate: “The highway to hell is broad and its gate is wide for many who choose that way.”
But the gateway of life is very narrow and the road is difficult and only a few ever find it. It is by the amazing grace of God that responds to our faith that gets us through the narrow gate to life. John Wesley wrote in sermon five of his basic “Forty-four Sermons” that the way through the narrow gate is by faith in Jesus Christ. “And such is faith. It is peculiarly fitted for this end: for he that cometh unto God by this faith must fix his eye singly on his own wickedness, on his guilt and helplessness, without having the least regard to any supposed good in himself, to any virtue or righteousness whatsoever. He must come as a mere sinner, inwardly and outwardly, self destroyed and self-condemmed, bringing nothing to God but ungodliness only pleading nothing but his own sin and misery. Thus it is, and thus alone, when his mouth is stopped: and he stands utterly guilty before God; that he can look unto Jesus as the whole and sole propitiation for his sins. Thus only, can he be found in Him: and receive the righteousness which is of God by faith.”
It is by God’s righteousness and God’s amazing grace that will bring us by faith through the narrow gate into God’s kingdom. In his love and forgiveness he responds to our faith that saves us when we are on the road of life that leads to destruction. Our faith in Jesus gives us the ticket for the narrow gate. You can have this ticket by seeking God’s amazing grace that offers us forgiveness from our sin.
The ticket through the narrow gate calls for our living out our faith in Jesus Christ. Charles Wesley wrote what we, as ticket holders, by faith in Jesus Christ must do in our day to day response to God’s forgiveness. “A charge to keep I have. A God to glorify. A never dying soul to save and fit it for the sky. To serve the present age, my calling to fulfil. O may it all my powers engage to do my mater’s will! Arm me with jealous care, as in thy sight to live, and oh, thy servant, Lord prepare, a strict account to give! Help me to watch and pray, and on thyself rely. Assured, if I my trust betray, I will forever die.”
By faith we can choose to receive the ticket for life through the narrow gate or we can choose the wide gate of the world; for that is the way and the road of death. What kind of ticket do you have now? Is it the ticket for the narrow gate to life or is it the ticket for the wide gate and death?
