Do you think Jesus is worth following?
If Jesus were to try and persuade you to follow him, how would he go about it? How would he say that it’s worth your while?
If you’re someone who’s still looking into Jesus’ claims, what would convince you to sign up? And if you’re already a Christian, we all go through phases when we wonder why we’re doing it. How do you counsel yourself to keep going?
We have reached the closing section of the Sermon on the Mount, the big block of teaching that is Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7. In it, Jesus has set out who he is, and what it means to follow him.
He came to bring God’s blessing to those who don’t deserve it. He came to fulfil the Old Testament, making new people who follow God from the inside. He calls us to live a life of trust in God as our heavenly Father, speaking to him, and putting our life in his hands. He calls us to love those around us as we would like to be loved, which is nearly impossible to do. And then he brings us back to where he began: God’s blessing is not to the self-satisfied, the sorted, the religious, the perfect. God’s blessing is for those whose lives are full of holes, who know it, but who come to him for a fresh start.
That’s what he’s said so far. Now it’s time to round off. Jesus has told us what following him involves. Jesus now spends the rest of Matthew 7 urging his hearers to follow him. To put the rest of the sermon into practice. To come to him for forgiveness, to be adopted by God our Father, to be changed into those who love God and our neighbour from our hearts.
So if we want Jesus to have a go at persuading us to follow him, this is where he does so.
And what he says is a big surprise. Most of what he says here would actually put someone off from following him. Jesus is not someone who puts his house on the market having papered over the cracks. He doesn’t talk up the good bits, and hope nobody notices the drawbacks, the strings involved. He’s open and up front. He wants us to know what it’s really like.
If you were trying to sell your house, that may seem like a massive risk. Be too honest, and nobody will want it. Jesus can do this, though, because even telling us what it will cost, the case is still overwhelming. Having heard what Jesus says here, why would anyone not follow him?
Jesus says two things here about following him.
Following Jesus is the narrow way
First, following Jesus is the narrow way. Following Jesus is the narrow way.
He pictures two roads. Two ways you might travel through life. And to get on those roads, you pass through one of two gates.
One way is broad and spacious. The gateway is wide and easy to find. The road you would travel is easy, comfortable and enjoyable. And it’s very crowded there. Jesus says: Those who enter by it are many. It’s a road full of travellers, all enjoying life. It’s where the fun is.
If you’ve ever been on the streets of London when there’s a great crowd, you know what it’s like. Perhaps you’ve been to Notting Hill. Or outside the palace for the changing of the guard. Or queuing to get into the Olympic Park, a football ground, or Twickenham. Or even just emerging from Bank Station in the rush hour. The crowd surges, and you are swept along. It’s very hard to go anywhere other than where everyone else is pouring. People teem down the same streets, like a river in a gorge.
Life is like that on the open and wide road. It’s the motorway option. With comfort and ease you travel through life, swept along with the majority.
Or there’s the other road. Jesus says the gate is narrow and the way is hard. … Those who find it are few. This is not a popular choice.
Have you ever thought what it must be like to be an aid worker going to work in one of the war zones around the world today? Refugees pouring out of Syria. The security risks are massive. People who have lived there all their lives are running with the few things they could carry. And you’re going the other way. As hordes stream out, you go in.
That’s what it feels like to be a follower of Jesus. It’s what it was like in Jesus’ day. It’s what it’s like in Britain today. Ours is a country that is turning its back on its Christian heritage. When laws are changed, it’s rarely to bring them in line with Christian moral values. Every census has fewer people tick the “Christian” box. People are streaming out of Christian Britain. To become a follower of Jesus is to go the other way – to go back in. Not a popular choice.
Not a popular choice because it’s hard. Jesus says the gate is narrow and the road is hard.
Both those words carry the idea of being constricted, squeezed, and squashed. Narrow is it.
It’s hard for two reasons. Firstly, Jesus makes demands of his followers. Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth, and he calls us to put him first. When you follow Jesus, he starts to change the way you see your money. He changes how you conduct your relationships. He transforms the way you pursue your career. And perhaps the hardest one for us: He asks to reshape the way we use our time.
Following Jesus is no hobby. It’s a life-changing experience.
Now we mustn’t get Jesus wrong here. Later in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus will say these words: Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Jesus asks to be number one in our lives. To be the one who calls the shots. Who sets our priorities and goals. At times that feels constricting to us. Sometimes he asks us to give something up that we’d rather hold on to – a relationship, a habit, a hobby, a job. But even when it feels constricting, it’s always liberating to follow Jesus. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. To live for him is to live the way we were always made to be.
We worry it might hurt to have your teeth filled. But once it’s done, the toothache is gone and your mouth feels healthy again. But that doesn’t stop us feeling nervous about a trip to the dentist. Here’s one reason why the way is narrow and few travel it. Who knows what he will demand? Jesus makes demands of his followers.
The other reason why this way is hard is that the world despises Jesus’ followers. There’s the threat of persecution.
The word used here for the road being hard is an uncommon word, and it’s closely related to the usual New Testament word for persecution. In chapter 5, verse 11, Jesus said: Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account. On my account. Because we identify with Jesus, others will mistreat us.
Then in verse 44 of chapter 5, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Here’s the thing. The world doesn’t like people who go the wrong way. If hordes of people are streaming through life in one direction, and you try to go the other way, what are you saying? Are you implying there’s something wrong with the way they live? Why can’t you just fit in? In some company, it’s amazing how quickly the person who doesn’t swear is noticed. Noticed for what they don’t say. But that’s just one example. Live to a different standard. Follow a different master. People notice. And they take it as a criticism of them. And they let you know.
Over the past month and a bit, three different street preachers have been arrested by British police officers. One of them has been arrested twice. They’ve all been released without charge, because they weren’t breaking any laws. But the arrests happened because passers-by chose to complain about the volume. Never mind that nearby buskers were making more noise. Never mind that the complainers were making more noise than the preachers. It’s not really about the noise. It’s members of the public not liking what they were hearing, and getting poorly briefed police officers to do their intimidation work for them.
And never mind that most of us here would never preach on the streets. It’s just a little cameo of modern Britain. Which is really no different from any other age.
To follow Jesus is to be despised by the world that doesn’t value him. People the world over have found this. It’s been true down the centuries. The more Jesus’ values and ways start to take over your life, the more you’re life becomes a challenge to the majority who are going the other way.
Following Jesus is the narrow way. The way of the minority. The way to have Jesus make demands of you. The way to be mistreated by the unbelieving world. Following Jesus is the narrow way.
Following Jesus is the way to life
So why would anyone do it? How does this count as Jesus persuading us to follow him? It puts you off!
… Because when we’ve heard the other thing he says, the case for following Jesus is simply overwhelming.
Following Jesus is the way to life. Following Jesus is the way to life.
You’ll have noticed the bits that I missed out when I quoted these verses earlier.
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 are few.
I’ve never been to Australia. I’d love to go. One thing that slightly puts me off is the length of the flight. But I’ve got the answer for that. Board a plane to Lisbon instead. It’s a much shorter flight.
The important thing about a road is not how easy it is to travel on but where it leads. Does it get you where you want to go?
You see the wide easy road is the highway to hell.
Jesus doesn’t use that word. But he does elsewhere. Almost all of the hard to swallow teaching on hell in the Bible comes from Jesus’ own lips. Here he simply says the road leads to destruction. It’s a word that means ruin. If you travel that road, your destiny is to be ruined. Wasted. To be destroyed is not to be cancelled or eliminated. It’s to have everything good taken away from you. It’s to spend eternity cut off from God, living without friendship, separated from happiness, taken away from everything good. You’ve seen ruined buildings. This is to be ruined human.
It doesn’t make a lot of difference if the road to get there is easy, does it? It’s not a place that anyone would want to go.
Or you could travel the narrow way. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, Jesus’ demands may at times feel unwelcome. Yes, others may mock and ridicule, or even cause you pain and hardship. But it’s the road to life.
Life is another concept that Jesus will develop as Matthew’s gospel progresses. He paints pictures of the best banquet imaginable, of being invited to a royal wedding, of being given real responsibility as Jesus rules the earth, of being transformed into the most gloriously full humanity, of sitting next to Abraham and all the greats of old to enjoy God’s presence, of seeing Jesus in all his splendour.
Those who travel the road to life will one day witness Jesus return to this earth. They will live life on this earth in 4 dimensions, vivid colour, and total joy. All that spoils life will be gone, Jesus himself will live here with us, and every moment will be better than the one before. That is life!
It doesn’t make a lot of difference if the road to get there is tough, does it?
It’s not tough because the only way to life is on our own hands and knees. It’s not like climbing Everest. Jesus paid the admission cost in full when he died on the cross.
No, it’s tough because we follow the one who went to the cross, and so our lives start to look like his. It’s tough because we follow the one who rose from the grave, but only after he’d gone down into it.
But just as surely as you don’t want to end up in the city called destruction, so nothing you have to go through would make it better to miss out on the place called life. Whatever else you do, make sure you’re on the road to life. And that means following Jesus.
You see why Jesus can be so honest about what following him might cost. Because there is nothing that following Jesus might cost that would make it a bad choice.
But if he was not honest that the gate is narrow and the road is hard, we would not be prepared for it. And being unprepared for the challenging sections of the path is the way to give up.
Applying
Which brings us to where we are today, and what this passage is saying to us.
Some people here are not yet following Jesus. They greatly enjoy discovering more about him. If you’ve still got lots of questions, please take every opportunity to ask them.
But maybe some here are nearly at the point where you’re ready to follow Jesus. How to begin? The way may be hard, and the gate may be narrow, but it is just a matter of stepping through it. Tell Jesus that you’d like to follow him from now on, you’d be grateful for his forgiveness for all you do wrong and his Spirit to change you from within. And tell someone else here that you’ve taken that step.
Many of us here are following Jesus. Some of us have been doing so for many years. Jesus is startlingly honest with us about the hard road we’re on. And yet sometimes, when following Jesus works out hard for us, we’re taken aback.
These words of Jesus should remind us that it’s normal for the road to be tough. When Jesus asks things of us that makes us question our sanity for choosing to follow him. When following him gets us into hot water. When we start to wonder why we chose this path. At those times we come back to these words. This is just as he said it would be.
And we come back to the fact that following him is the road to life.
So even knowing all you now know about how tough it can be, if you weren’t already a Christian you’d begin today. Because it’s the only sane way to live.