***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Speaker: I want to invite you to give careful attention to the reading of God’s holy word found in two passages in the Gospel, Matthew 7 verses 13 to 27. Enter ye in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. And many there be that go in there at, because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, we have not we prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works. And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Therefore whatsoever or whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
Then reading in Titus the second chapter verses 11 through 15, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.
With this beautiful message of encouragement in our minds, I would like to ask you for a moment to assist me in prayer for a young man named Roger Watkins who is in the hospital.
Dallas: And there’s some difficulty in his condition. He has had a burst appendix and some infection. And for his mother and others who are in the family, they are in this congregation some. And I would invite you also, if you have other needs, to lift them up as we bow for a moment of silence and then prayer.
Now if you will look with me this morning into the seventh chapter of Matthew, you will find my text in the 13th and 14th verses. And I read it again just to focus our attention upon it. It says, enter ye at the straight gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth into destruction, and many there be that go in thereat, because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth into life and few there be that find it.
Before beginning to deal with the deeper message of this text, some clarificatory words need to be said.
Because of the way that history has developed around the teachings of Christ, we often experience them as very mean, as hard, as onerous, as laying great burdens upon us. And we read this perhaps in the same way. And there has passed into the English language the terminology of walking the straight and narrow way, which people will often refer to in song, in a joking manner, in a way of referring to the difficulty of the manner.
But what I want to say to you in opening this text this morning is that this says nothing about difficulty. It does not say that the way is hard.
Many people who read this and have in their minds the verses at the end of the eleventh chapter of Matthew where we read, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart and you shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. They say, what then can this mean? But they are a contradiction. For now we read of a straight way and a narrow gate. But I say again, straightness and narrowness have nothing to do with difficulty. They have to do with coming at the matter in the correct way.
When our forebearers lunged out in their covered wagons to come across the great plains in the mountains, they did not have a narrow way to follow. The whole landscape lay before them. There was no constriction of which way they could go, but the way was very hard even though it was broad.
When you go to get on a freeway, you go to an entrance that is not very wide, but it isn’t hard. Indeed it is the very narrowness, it is the very straightness of the freeway that makes it a freeway. It defines the path. It makes it easy to go in. That’s why it’s called a freeway.
Now whenever we come to read this verse, we must remove from our mind that Jesus is saying, now you’re really in for a hard time. That’s the way it’s often read. Remember that Satan will do everything he can to make it bad news instead of good news. And what Jesus is really warning us against here perhaps can be best classified as a kind of drift, which simply says you can go at the life in the kingdom of God in almost any way you want to. The saying is we’re all serving God in our different ways. You cannot drift into the kingdom of God. It requires a decision that has a very specific point and it requires a way of life which is very narrow but sweet and easy and full of strength and joy and power.
So let’s remember that now as we go on into this verse because we must dismiss that association with difficulty. The gate is narrow, small, the way is narrow, and it will be hard for those who do not come at it rightly. But for those who come at it rightly, it will be a broad place, a great expanse in which God’s glory is seen and they will enter into life. Now that’s what the verse is about.
And I’m going to be saying some things, part of which are written on the little sheet that is included in your bulletin today. And you may want to glance at them as I go along. It will perhaps save us a little time and help you understand.
But what I say to you first and foremost is that this verse concerns entry into life.
Now entry into life we’re familiar with as birth. And I want to insist upon the connection between what Jesus is saying here and the oft-repeated use in the New Testament of the concept of birth to explain the entry of life. Entry into life is a birth, but what is a birth? When life comes into the womb and grows and comes forth then into the world in birth, we have the emergence of new power, for life is power to do. All of life is power to do.
A little cabbage that you plant in the garden consumes the rays of the sun and the nutriments of the soil and the water. You can’t eat dirt, but it can. It has that power. And it’s very fortunate because you can eat cabbage, but you can’t eat dirt. If you were to eat dirt, it would just give you the tummy ache or something worse. You don’t have that power. And that’s because you don’t have the life of a cabbage, you see. But you do have life and the cabbage itself couldn’t eat a cabbage, but you can. And you see I’m trying to make the point very simple. Life is power and the kind of life means the kind of power.
Now there’s something we have to understand about power. And that is that power exists only in relation.
If you take the little cabbage plant and lay it up on your window sill and leave it there with its roots bare, what will happen to it? It will die. Why does it die there? Because it is not in the right relationship to other things.
Some of you people who spend your time putting automobile engines apart and together know that power in an engine has something to do with pistons. But is a piston by itself powerful? Not at all. The power of the piston only comes when it is appropriately sleeved in a cylinder. When it is hooked up to a crankcase. When there is gasoline and oxygen and a spark and valves and other pistons hooked onto that same crankshaft, then you get power.
So many people who have such a hard time in life wonder why they’re so powerless and so in bondage. And the reason is very simple. They’re not hooked up right.
If we would have power, we must enter into the right relationship to the other proper things.
The old Beatles song, all the lonely people, where do they all come from? And it’s very simple. They come from disconnection. That disconnection comes from the deep, broken, corrupt condition of the world in which they are brought forth and raised and into which they are thrust, and they never enter into right relation. And because they don’t, they come to identify freedom with not being under any obligation, not being in contact with anyone, being free. But is it the song, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. You see, that’s the world’s view of freedom. From that view of freedom, the piston lying here on the floor is perfectly free and also perfectly powerless and useless.
I restate, life is power. Power is right relations.
Now then, let me tell you what the kingdom of heaven is, and I have written a statement on that sheet which you have in your bulletin. The kingdom of heaven is a specific realm of personal relations. It is a certain type of personal relationship, first to the members of the Trinity and then to other persons around us. And it is in this realm of relations that we receive power.
If you turn to John 1.12, you will read there that he came unto his own and his own received him not, but unto as many as received him, to them gave he power. I’d like to step aside a moment and quarrel with some translations of that verse. Not that it is entirely unjustified, but the word there is ekusia, and that is properly translated in many contexts, right. And some of your versions, I think the New American Standard, the Williams and many others does have, unto them gave he the right to be the sons and children of God. And that’s okay, but let me just remind you that a right without power is worthless. And it is also a proper translation which you have in your older versions, many of them and many of the modern versions, but unto them that received him, unto them gave he power to become the children of God.
And he gives that power as they enter into relationship with him. And then as they enter into relationships with other people around them, I so love that verse which Cal read to us, the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust. We should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us in order that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people. A bunch of oddballs is what that means, zealous of good works.
It is as we enter into that relationship that we receive life and that life is expressed in power to be godly and to do the works of God in this present world.
It is for this reason that in Philippians, the second chapter, I believe it is, we see Paul saying, Wherefore, my beloved, the twelfth verse, as ye have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God which is in you. In other words, when you are working out your salvation, you are dealing with God who is in you. The salvation which is in you is God. He it is that saves us, that enables us to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. And as we work out the salvation which is in us, as we have come in repentance and faith into a right relationship with Jesus Christ and through him to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, we work that salvation out with fear and trembling, because it is God who is in us both to will and to do his good pleasure.
Now look at these next verses, because you see how peculiar you are supposed to be. Do all things without murmurings and disputings. Do all things without murmurings and disputings. Now if you do that, you are going to be so strange that the world will set up and take notice and they’ll say, what’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you murmuring and disputing? If you take murmuring and disputing out, nearly everything that we recognize in the common social order through our communication systems vanishes. Take murmurings and disputings out of the Los Angeles Times. Take murmurings and disputings out of the National Enquirer. Take it out of the news programs. Do all things without murmurings and disputing that you may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse people among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life. You see, that’s the order of progression. God is in us. We work out the salvation that he puts in us. It transforms our lives totally so that we are likened to a light located out in a dark area.
Dwight Moody used to say that whenever a light gets ready to shine or a bell ready to ring, it doesn’t have to give an announcement and say, now I’m about to shine. Now I’m about to ring, it just shines. And this light that is placed in us stands out in such a way that it is the most natural and proper and effective thing in the world to then hold forth the word of life. We hold it forth, we say here it is, as we stand in the light which we are.
In Ephesians, the fifth chapter and the eighth verse, for you were sometimes darkness but now you are light in the Lord, walk as children of light. For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Notice here Paul simply says you are light in the Lord.
There is so much confusion about the relationship of works and grace, I want to say just a word more about it because there are many, many people today in the tragedy of our world today, the tragedy of our nation, which is ultimately the tragedy of our churches, is that God’s part in salvation has been preached without a clear understanding of man’s part.
Jesus here says, enter at the straight gate. Look with me down at verse 21 in chapter 7. Not everyone that sayeth unto me, Lord, Lord, not everyone that calls Jesus Lord is going to enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many people look at that and they say, oh, works salvation. It doesn’t say a word about earning your salvation here. It doesn’t at all say that because of what you do you are worthy of salvation. There is no question of earning it. Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but by his mercy he saved us by the washing of the Word, the renewal of the Holy Spirit. That’s settled. Put that away and understand that it’s settled.
But now the question comes, how are you going to receive this great salvation? What do you do to receive it?
And it is here we have to understand that the metaphor of birth must not be pushed too far. When you were born, you didn’t do it. Your mother did it. Someone else gave you life. And similarly in your entrance into the kingdom of God, someone else is going to give you life.
But now the question is how are you going to receive it? Someone can try to give me something and I may not receive it anyway. If someone says there is a thousand dollars over here on the curbstone for you, just go over and pick it up. If I don’t go over and pick it up, I won’t have it. And unless we turn to do the will of God, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except you be born again, born from above, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s true. But verily, verily, I say unto you that except you turn to do the will of God, you will not meet the new birth, which through the grace of God brings you into the kingdom of heaven. Translate you, as Paul says in Colossians, into the kingdom of his dear son.
Let me give you a passage which ties together these two concepts of birth and doing the will of God. On one occasion in Jesus’ life, in the 12th chapter of Matthew, we see him pressed in his teaching and his work, and his own family had a hard time getting to talk to him. And so in verse 46 of Matthew 12, the impetus that we have, the desire we have to protect ourselves by the immediate lie, and then in him when we find there is no need to lie, when we find in him that we do not have to play games with social things, that we are accepted, then the desire to lie begins to dissipate, and the conformity to him, it’s not always easy. That costs. It only costs him his life. And so in verse 46 of Matthew 12, while he talked to the people, behold, his mother and brethren stood without desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without desiring to speak with thee, but he answered and said unto them that told him, who is my mother, and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples and said, behold, my mother and my brethren, for whosoever shall do the will of my father, which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother.
Now you see in this final verse, verse 50, the combination of birth and doing the will of God. Being a member of a family is a matter of a birth. If you want to be the mother, the father, the brother, the sister, and so on, if you want to stand in that familial relationship with Jesus Christ, you must be born into it. So there is a birth to be had. But on the other hand, if there is not a repentance and a turning and an acceptance of the will of God as the rule of life, there is no birth.
These are hard words to say in our time, because as I say, we have had it preached to us over and over, the new birth, but the role of repentance and obedience has not been clearly understood. And we must always remember that the work of salvation is not seen simply in the forgiveness of sins. That is fundamental. That is terribly important. But anyone who divorces that from obedience by the grace of God, from a life such as we’ve seen depicted in the Scriptures we’ve read this morning, is doing something which God does not do.
I know the mercy of God is great. I’m not here to try to tell you who’s going to get into heaven and who is not. In fact, what I’m talking to you about this morning is the kingdom of heaven. And what I’m explaining to you is Jesus’ words about the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is God’s rule in this earth right now in this present world. And what I’m saying to you is this very simply. When we look at entry into life, we are talking about entry into the kingdom of heaven here and now in this present world. And when we’re talking about entry into the kingdom of heaven, we are talking about doing the will of God by the grace of God. Very simple.
Many people are troubled on this matter because it has to do with predestination and man’s responsibility and how we get saved and whether or not God picks us up and throws us into heaven or hell, as the case may be, regardless of what we want to do. And there is, from our point of view, something of a paradox in all of this, I think. But practically, Charles Spurgeon expressed it so well when he said, as I stood outside of the kingdom of heaven, I looked over the gate and it said, whosoever will they come and take of the fountain of the water fly free. Then as I walked in through the gate and looked back, it said over the gate, ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.
There are the two sides, the birth and the doing of the will of God. And when we put these together, we began to understand then the basis of Jesus’s remarks in the remainder of the seventh chapter of Matthew.
The scripture makes it very plain that the will of God for us is, to use the words of the Apostle John in 1 John 3, 24, to believe on the name of his son, Jesus Christ, to put all of our trust in him, all of our confidence, all of our loyalty, all of our ultimate hopes and expectations in him, and then to love one another as he gave commandment. That’s the rule of life. And if you wish to say it so, you might say that the straight gate is precisely total resignation to Jesus Christ. As mediator, he is the one who arranges by his death and his life for the forgiveness of our sins and for the continuing contact that we have God because he ever liveth to make intercession for us. As provider of all of the provisions we need, all things, as Peter says, that pertain unto life and to godliness. And finally, as Lord, as governor of our lives.
Negatively what that means is we don’t run our lives. And I think this perhaps is the hardest part of the straight gate. This is what Jesus had in mind when he said, verily, verily, I say unto you, accept a person, take up his cross, deny his family, daily self-denial and walk after me. He cannot be my disciple. That’s the straight gate. Because what it means is not to trust yourself, not to trust your arrangements.
Only times we trust in our families and one of the bitterest disappointments in life is in the family. Some years ago on Mother’s Day, there were 17 murders in Los Angeles County.
And indeed, that day brings forth much anger because of the disappointment which people have had in their families. And they come together and they try to act as if it were all right because they feel they ought to. But it isn’t. And the anger wells out and the family feuds and fights are renewed.
That is why Jesus in his teaching said, you must set aside your relatives. That is why in the passage I read a moment ago from Matthew 12, he said, these are my brothers and my sisters and my mothers. He wants to say that their blood may be thicker than water if you wish, but there’s something thicker than blood. And if we place our hopes in our family, our family will not save us. Our family is not God. Our family is not a refuge from all things. It is only when we turn and have our refuge in God and our trust and confidence in him that then we can have decent and reasonable expectations of our mothers and our fathers and our children and our mates. And until then we just tear them to pieces by our expectations and our miseries. Jesus is saying the strait gate is the way where you lay all of that down. You lay down your confidence in yourself as the rule of life.
Now I want to say he’s not talking about self-confidence or families or other things which we might rely upon and saying we’re to have no confidence in them at all. We’re not to use them any more than, as I said the other day, he’s telling us we don’t need to plan on supper because the birds and the lilies and all of that don’t do it. It is a question of priorities, of where our confidence is. And the strait gate says very simply our confidence must be totally in Christ. And as we lay it on Christ through a course of experience, we come to the place to where we understand fully that that confidence is warranted and we know exactly how it works.
The grand old hymn was saying last Sunday night, my faith hath found the resting place, not in device nor creed. I trust the only living one and I know him in the ordinary concourse of life. And he enables me to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. The narrow way is nothing but persistent obedience in following him in that way.
And once we understand that this is the way of Christ, that this is entry into life and this is life indeed, then we’re able to see the false prophet, the false Christian. Jesus here says that the false prophet has sheep’s clothing and is a wolf inside. You see Jesus is talking about the deep spirit which governs the life. And he’s telling us that the person who does not do the works of Christ, who does not walk in his teaching, is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Now very practically put, the wolf in sheep’s clothing is the one who is attempting to use religion to get their own way. The sheep’s clothing is the outward profession. It is outward religion. But when you get to know this person, you find that what they’re really after is their own way. They want what they want when they want it. And Paul in Philippians again speaks of those whose God is their belly. I think it does us good sometimes to fill out the imagery and envision these people with an idol which is their belly. And they’re bowed down worshiping it and trying to make it feel good and live just right.
Now the belly is that central part of the body where our feelings settle. And the main point about the belly is that when we feel uneasy or unhappy or unpleasant about anything, it makes us feel bad. That’s why there are 9 million alcoholics in the United States. That’s why there are 10 million drug addicts. Because what you want when you drink and when you take drugs is relief from that agonizing uneasiness and mistrust and fear that always settles right there. And they’re trying to make it feel good. Their God is their belly.
And the person who is a minister or a Christian but is out to serve themselves is precisely the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Show me the minister or Christian who cannot let others have their way. I will show you a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Show me the minister or Christian who professes and who teaches people that they do not need to follow Christ and who do so in order to have their own way. I will show you a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
By their fruits ye shall know them. When we allow the way of Christ as straight and narrow in the sense I’m explaining it to stand forth as the way of Christ, then many things become clear. It also becomes clear who is wise and who is foolish.
And Jesus says very plainly, the wise man is the man who hears his sayings and does them. The foolish person is the person who hears the sayings and does not do them. Whatever the reasons may be, it may be high blown theories and doctrines to the effect that we can’t. No matter what it may be, Jesus says, the foolish person is the one who hears the sayings of Christ and does not do them.
I think that many folk in the church today are not as responsible for this as they would be otherwise because they’ve been taught that they really don’t need to do what Christ says or that they cannot do it. But I’m telling you that Jesus says to us, why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not the things that I say? And I’m saying to you that the mission of the church in this world is to follow Christ, to do what he does and to teach others how to do those same things. And all in the manner of showing it forth as the way of life. This is what life is.
Life is living according to the teachings of Jesus. Strength comes from that. The relation we enter into Christ in this regard gives us the power like the cylinder which is taken off of the floor and put into the block of an engine. And everything is arranged. Then the cylinder has power. And until we come to the point in our lives to where we trust Christ enough to say, yes, you can do it in me, then our faith has not moved to the place to where we can experience the life of the kingdom of God and know how our faith struggles. And when hard times come, we are bitter and disappointed and feel deserted. But you see, you can’t use God as an aspirin. You can’t just live your life and then when you get a headache, run and say, oh, God, please fix my headache. It doesn’t work that way.
Now, having said that, I have to say that God in his mercy sometimes meets us anyway and gives us a spiritual aspirin. And that’s wonderful. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking to people in this group whom I believe want to know how it works as a reality day by day. And I’m saying very simply, the way you put the cylinder in the block, the way you put the cabbage plant in the ground, is you accept the teachings of Christ as the rule of your life and say, by your grace, I will know the reality of that kind of life.
We’re going to sing a good old song, number 79, Simply Trusting. And I’ve asked Bob to lead us in the first three stanzas because the words are so good. And that’s what we’re talking about, is trusting Christ enough to believe that in all of the connections of life, he can so live out his life. And if you say, I cannot do it, that’s fine. The point is, will you let him do it by your commitment to have him do it in your life? We’re going to invite those who may wish to come forward to come forward for help and counseling if they so desire. But it may be that in the hours we close, you should be thinking in terms of the afternoon or the evening or spending the next week finding your way into the straight and narrow path as a way of life, simply trusting Jesus. Let’s stand together and sing, unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the glory of his presence with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory, majesty, dominion and power, both now and