Matthew 7:13-14

Chapter 26

The Straitness of the Gate Seeking and Not Entering the Eleventh Commandment the Exhortation

Prayer

Almighty God, our hearts know thee, and in their deepest love is thy name set as their one jewel and treasure. We cannot understand thee, but we can love thee; thou dost not come into our intelligence or sit down in our understanding, thou knockest at the door of our heart, and into its love thou dost come with all readiness, bringing with thee all heaven. Our hearts are towards thee to-day in great expectancy, we have assured ourselves that this is thy day, and that thou wilt make a temple of every heart, and sit down with every one of us, and make us see thy life. It is not to such expectancies thou dost return some cold reply, thou dost come with swiftness to hearts that are waiting, for the sigh is contrite and the groan is one because of heavy and intolerable sin: where the eyes of our hearts are set towards the cross of thy Son, thou dost come with wings outstretched, flying faster than the lightning, that thou mayest heal and comfort and mightily redeem. We come to thee with our love shaped into an earnest prayer, with our hearts crying after the living God with infinite desire.

We have tested the poverty of time, we have seen the little boundaries which encircle and imprison us, and our souls are filled with infinite discontent because of the meanness of space and time. We would look beyond, we would be drawn by mighty forces that are above, we would yield ourselves to ministries that have no sufficient name, plying the heart with subtle tenderness, luring the affections with mighty strength, promising our love and our whole capacity an ample and sweet satisfaction in regions beyond the line of time.

We bless thee for thy sacred Book, behold it is written with thine own finger; we see no human writing in it. Beyond the human scribe we see the divine inspirer, we hear in human words music that is not of earth, we see in the beauty of thy revelation a light that never fell from created suns. Help us to enter into the sanctuary of thy word and richly to enjoy thy revelation, and may our hearts abound with loving thankfulness to thee for putting into our speech something of the meaning and purpose of thine own heart. Help us to read thy Book wisely, save us from the narrowness and poverty of the mere letter, may the letter of thy Book be but as a door opening upon boundless spaces and liberties, and may we enter in and enjoy the heritage of a glorious and indestructible freedom.

Thou knowest our life: what is it but a breath in the nostrils, a flying shadow, a dying vapour, a post hastening on his way? behold we are as the grass that is consumed in the oven, and in our strength there is no duration, our joys are bubbles upon the stream that burst, and what we gather are but flowers plucked, and that must wither. Help us then to lay up treasure in heaven; may Christ be our wealth, may the Son of God be our chief possession; having him in the heart, dwelling in the mind, ruling the will, directing every step of our life, we shall be rich with inexhaustible treasures. Enrich us, thou Son of God.

As for our sin, who may name such blackness? But thou hast light enough to drive it all away. Who dare speak of guilt so deep and dark? But the blood of Jesus Christ thy Son cleanseth from all sin, so where great sin aboundeth grace doth much more abound; as in the darkness we see the stars, so in our great sorrow, when the tears big and hot fall from our reddened eyes, do thou therein shine upon them a divine light which makes them gleam with many a tender colour. O thou who dost forgive, who has paid a ransom for men, and whose delight it is to release from the torment and the shame of sin, come to every heart to-day with pardon and its attendant liberty.

Look upon those hairs that are grey, that are bent before thee with the reverence of age, and supply the old man with what he needs of grace and light and help. Thou bast chastened him with many an affliction, thou hast dug many a grave on his life path, thou hast startled him by many a fear now let the evening be quiet, take the storm out of the clouds and fill them with hopeful life. Look upon all the young men and women full of life and fire, whose every look is an expectation, whose every word is a vow of nobler life, and grant unto such increasing power of prayer, increasing energy to overthrow every temptation. Hide within young hearts thy living word, an eloquence that cannot be answered, a, reply to which the devil can return no answer. Look upon the busy man lest he be so busy as to let the King pass by, lest he seek in the dust and find nothing there but a pit for his body. The Lord help us all to earn our bread honestly, give us plenty of it, no more than is good for us; and as for our house, do thou keep the key of its principal door, and upon the windows pour the smiling light of thy blessing. Be with us in the cradle, be with us in the marketplace, be with us in the school and in the church and everywhere; may every step we take be a step in the right direction.

Bless the stranger within our gates, the heart that is far from home, between whose love and the objects of it there roll mighty seas or stretch innumerable miles; by the spirit of thy love make the fellowship complete, destroy all space and time, and give the joy of spiritual communion.

Send messages from thy heavens to our sick-chambers. Some whom thou lovest are sick, and thou lovest them to be sick because oat of their sickness thou wilt work a better health. The Lord be their Physician and their comforter, and a light above the brightness of the sun be in their darkened chambers.

The Lord will not forget the prodigal, the wanderer, the man of the hard heart, those who are invincible by any power of ours the Lord's hand be upon them, not for destruction, but for salvation, and bring gladness into our hearts by the intelligence that they have arrived at home.

Dry our tears, make our poverty an occasion of thy coming to us, may our blindness be the reason of thine approach, and do thou dwell in us and make us living temples. Amen.

Mat 7:13-14

13. Enter ye in at the strait gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat 14. Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

This is rather a mournful view, not only of human life, but of the kingdom of heaven itself; as if it would be thinly populated, and give us at last rather a representation of infinite failure on the one side than of red success and completeness on the other. That, however, would be a wrong exposition of the text. There is more light in it than seems to flash upon the eye at the first look. There is really nothing novel or unintelligible in the principle which is here laid down, namely, that, because strait is the gate and narrow is the way, few there be that find it. We know that to be a true principle in the common walks and ranges of life. It is the principle which applies at home, in the school, in the marketplace, everywhere in fact; the principle, that is, that according to the value of any kingdom is the straitness of the gate which opens upon it. If you will accustom the mind to that thought for a moment or two, you will not be struck by any novelty, certainly, by any harshness in the conditions which are attached to entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

Into what kingdom is it that you are anxious now to enter? Above all things you wish to enter into the kingdom of music. Very well. This is the New Testament doctrine concerning the kingdom of music. "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto excellence in music, and few there be that find it." You have to study night and day, you have no time for yourself, you are at it, always at it, or getting ready for it, criticising or being criticised, repeating, rehearsing, going over it again and again, still higher and higher. If that is the law of your little kingdom of music, why should it not be the law of the larger kingdom of life, which includes all beauty, and learning, and music, and power? Show me any musician that is ever really and completely satisfied with his own attainment; in that proportion will he be no musician at all an amateur, easily satisfied with himself. When Handel composed his "Messiah," and sat a long way off to hear it, he came again and again to some of the players upon the wind instruments, and said, "Loudaire;" and again he came and said, "Loudaire," and away he went, and came again and said, "Loudaire;" and at last they said, "Where is the wind to come from?" He wanted all the winds of heaven, and all the thunders that slumbered in the clouds, and all creation to take up his Amen and sing it, till the universe vibrated with its infinite life.

What is the kingdom that you are most anxious to enter into? "I am," say you, "most anxious to enter into the kingdom of painting, pictures, the mystery of colour, the language, subtle and infinite, that expresses itself through the medium of colour." Is it easy? You shake your head in despondent reply, and say that you seem to get worse rather than better. At first you were rather pleased, and now you could tear up the canvas it vexes you by the vulgarity you write upon it with your clumsy fingers. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto art, and few there be that find it. My young friend, do not imagine that you can jump into eminence: if you can jump into it, you may easily jump out of it. Character must be a growth, long-continued and patiently cultivated. One of yourselves took me into his study the other day, and said, "I want you to look at this sketch." Said I, "This lies a long way from your range of studies." "Yes," was the reply "my temptation is towards impatience; I get tired of things, and I at the last lump them and hasten them through, becoming utterly careless towards the close. I undertook this work to teach me patience, slowness, and. completeness of toil. How long do you think I was over that?" "I cannot tell how long." "I spent upon that two hours every day, Sundays excepted, for two months." A little thing about the size of the palm of your hand: he could have done it in half the time, but then he would have missed the direct purpose of his attempting to do it. He must straiten the gate and narrow the road, because he wants to go into a kingdom that is worth going into, and there is no kingdom worth having that you can snatch and pocket, and keep without equivalent toil or thought.

Do you want to enter into the kingdom of influence, do you want to be a man that shall be consulted in difficulties, to whom people shall come in hours of perplexed thought, to whom they shall state their cases, and for whose opinion they shall anxiously wait? Influence comes out of time, care, experience, and these things are not to be hurried. A man, well-known to most of us, is lying sick to-day, and a physician of renown was called in to see him not long ago; the doctors, having heard the opinion of this eminent man, declined, one and all, to give his own conception of the case. Why is it so amongst you that if a great physician gives his opinion, you will not give yours? "Yes there is no opinion after his." The man grows to that do not suppose that you can dream yourselves to that. Inspiration there is in it, no doubt, but a man has to work for it, and pay for it, and climb his way to it, one round of the ladder at a time. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto supreme influence, and few there be that find it.

I have troubled you with these illustrations, just to show that really there is nothing novel, extraordinary, or harsh in the principle that, according to the value of any kingdom that you aim to reach, is the straitness of the gate and is the narrowness of the road leading unto it. It is my wont bear me witness if you please always to speak a word for the weak man. Have I ever put out a finger and laid it upon any soul as a burden that was trying to be better? Cheer me by telling, what is only the truth, that I may have erred in excess of charity, never in excess of severity. Comfort me with these words, tell me you have so understood me, and I shall preach to you with a broader and warmer love. I want to do so with peculiar tenderness just now.

Enter ye in at the strait gate or, as we read elsewhere, strive to enter in at the strait gate, seek to enter in, labour to enter in, agonize to enter in. The fear is that some of you may imagine that striving is conquest, and you may visit upon a man who is merely, though with all his heart, striving to enter in, the judgment that you would accord to him after he had passed the gate, and had walked long miles up the heavenly steep. You have been cruel to some of your friends, you have taunted them with bitter mockery when they have been striving to enter in; you thought they had already professed to have entered, and you have mocked them with bitterness; you have asked them if that was their goodness, you have taken up little specks of their life, and said, "Aha, is this a sample of your piety?" It was only a sample of their agony, it was only a pattern of their striving. It was not to be picked up as a trophy of conquest, but to be referred to as an incident in the great agony of striving to enter in.

When the young Christian slips and falls, don't mock him; when a man is labouring, even in agonistic earnestness, to be better, and when in the midst of it all he gets tripped up, and somehow or other falls down as he were dead drunk at your feet, he may be a better man than you are: you never got wrong socially you may be the worst man alive for anything I know to the contrary, you proud Pharisee, you whitewashed sepulchre, you trick undiscovered take care lest ye be wounding good men who have the true seed in them, but who, peculiarly constituted, fall twenty times a day, and have the devil's iron teeth crushed crushed through them, all over. I do not defend their vices, I sympathise with their weakness; I have known the prayers of such men, and to no other prayers have I ever added so cordial an Amen prayers that had blood in them, and music subtle and far brought and far sounding, prayers of the very inmost soul; and I did not judge them harshly, I saw they were striving to enter in, seeking to enter in, agonizing to enter in, and the measure of their earnestness was the measure of the diabolic assault upon them. If I speak to such hearts now, when possibly I may do so, let my word be one of the broadest cheer, a great sun-like word, brightening upon their lives with infinite hope. Still strive to enter in, and God will be pitiful to you.

But we read that some will seek to enter in and shall not be able. That we read in another gospel than the one we are now expounding. How singular it is then that some shall seek to enter in and shall not be able. Is not this a mockery of human effort? How many persons have been puzzled by that expression, and have gone to their pastors and teachers with it, as men would go with a great pain, ana said, "Can you heal this mortal agony? I am discouraged because it says some will seek, yea, many will seek, to enter in and shall not be able. I may be one of the many God help me. Tell me if it is so: I feel this thought darkening upon me like a cloud of thunder." O distressed one, shall I call thee Fool and slow of heart to believe all that the Speaker spake when he uttered these words that give thee trouble? The answer is in the very next verse When once the master of the house is risen up and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, "Lord, Lord, open unto us," and he shall answer and say unto you, "I know you not whence ye are." The seeking and the knocking referred to take place when the day of mercy is no more. When the good man of the house has risen up and gone to rest, when Christ is risen from the mediatorial seat and has delivered up the kingdom unto God and his Father, then the shout of agony shall die in space, and the cry of despair shall be the awful music of hell.

The words, therefore, do not apply to you at all. The good man of the house has not risen and shut the door, the Son of God has not completed his priestly ministry, Jesus Christ is still able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him, God still waits to be gracious, the door is set wide open, and, therefore, the verse which before was a burden to you and a great darkness may now be lifted off your shoulder and chased away, to the last shadow of it, from your life path, for it never referred to any man who earnestly sought the Lord while he might be found, and called upon him while he was near. What say you to seeking now, and striving? What if we make this day the most memorable day in our life by sending the heart out like a living bird to such a rest in God? Let thine heart fly Godward, poor soul; do thou gather thyself up into one flaming prayer, and say, "God be merciful unto me a sinner," and thy joy shall be too great for words, thy rapture shall leave even music behind it, as the lark leaves under his wings the clouds of the smoking city. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.

"Few there be that find it." Do not judge success by numbers. It is always pleasant to see great numbers gathering round the standard you set up, but always remember that quality is better than quantity, the audience may be fit though few. They are strong men who gather themselves around Christ, for they have nothing to rest upon but inspiration; no property, no ancestry, no fine clothing, no parchments, nothing but the grace of God. Jesus Christ never sought to make his kingdom popular in the sense of bringing into it any and everybody that casually applied for admission. A young man once came to him and said, "I would like to enter in at the gate;" and Jesus Christ said, "Why not? This gate is a strait one, and thou knowest the commandments." Said the young man, "All these have I kept from my youth up." A commandment that can be kept is by necessity a very narrow one; a commandment must always overflow its own letter, if it is really a revelation of the highest morality. The young man measured off the commandments, ten in number, and he said he had kept them, letter by letter, every one, from his youth up. Jesus Christ, closing his eyes that he might see the better, said, "There is an eleventh commandment; sell all them hast and give it unto the poor, and come and follow me;" and the young man went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. He thought the gate was broad enough surely to admit him and all his wealth-burden; and Christ said, "You cannot all get through: there is room only for the soul, and not for these poor perishable holdings that are of no use on the other side of the gate." So Jesus did not add to his numbers rashly.

Another man said to him, "Lord, I will follow thee, but " Christ said, "No, that word but must be dropped, there must be no qualifications; let the dead bury their dead, come thou and follow me." On another occasion he said, "If any man will follow me, let him take up his cross and come after me. Let a man deny himself and follow me. Except a man deny himself he cannot be my disciple." You do not wonder therefore that very few people attached themselves livingly and lovingly to a man whose conditions were so precise and severe. His conditions ought to make us all tremble. Have I denied myself? Where? Have I taken up my cross? What weight is it? Can men see it? Do I feel it? Why, Christianity has been my maker: by the grace of God I am what I am. Christianity, every one of us may say, has made me respectable; I owe all I have to Christianity: I have been a receiver what have I given? I have held out both hands, what have I returned? Do I not encourage every whim, do I not cultivate every prejudice, do I not give scope to every antipathy, am I not harsh in judgment, uncharitable in feeling, pharisaical in self-sufficiency, scribe-like in my obedience to the mere letter of the law, whilst I neglect its infinite spirit? Such questions as these I could inflict upon myself until I destroyed every whit of comfort and solace that I now enjoy. There is no cross-bearing in being a Christian of the nominal sort: what cross-bearing there would be in being a Christian of the real sort, who can tell? If any man will live godly in Jesus Christ he shall suffer persecution.

When I go into trade and arrange all my business, I say I have arranged this business on the principle that I must live. Then it is a false principle, for there is no need for you to live. Did that thought ever strike you? There is a great need that every man should be honest, but not the slightest necessity in the world that any man, either in the pulpit or out of it, should live an hour. "In making my arrangements and dispositions of energy, and talent, and time, I have always had in full view the fact that I must have subsistence." There is your error: that is the fallacy in your practical logic. What is your subsistence? Who wants that mechanism of bones you call yourself to stand upright for five minutes longer? What do you mean by subsistence? You must have infinite capacity of eating and drinking. Subsistence for how many years? On what scale? Do not even the publicans the same is not that pagan talk do not the heathen write such maxims upon their papers and hang them up in their business places as their only Bible? Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but labour for the bread that endureth unto everlasting life.

This is the high gospel of Christ. Who can live it? I cannot, I do not. How then can we classify ourselves? As those who are striving to enter in. Sometimes I have tried for a day or two, but with such ample reservation that it destroyed my action so far as I claimed it. to be one of faith. Sometimes I have said, "Now I will try the sea." I have gone down to it, and waited till it was very quiet, and then have touched it with one timid foot, and called that trusting the sea with a friend holding my hand and my other foot well on shore. I have gone down to touch with reluctance that little foaming wavelet that broke on the golden sand. That is not sea-faring, that is not sea-going but that is my religion in Christ, too much. I speak of myself, lest I should offend any by unnecessary harshness for if any man has gone a mile out into the water, thank God for him, and let him go a mile further still. Yet I feel as if going down to the water was moving in the right direction, and perhaps some day who can tell? I may boldly throw myself on the great wave and be caught by Christ's hand and led to the better land.

Do not let us give up our striving and our seeking and our persevering in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not. Try once more, go again what seest thou? Nothing. Go a third time what seest thou? Nothing. A fourth time, and a fifth, and a sixth what seest thou? A cloud about the size of a man's hand. Hasten that cloud will spread faster than thou canst run, and presently there will be a plash of descending rain, and the earth shall rejoice in the baptism of the divine blessing.

This is the great lesson of striving, and seeking, and trying, and persevering. "Though faint, yet pursuing" be that thy motto, my poor soul. The discouragements are innumerable, but the promises are many and large. "He giveth more grace." Try again! Let me summon your utmost hopefulness into exercise, for when we fear we go down in the volume and quality of our being. Hope is power. Hope is inspiration. Hope is one of the guarantees of its own fulfilment. The great and loving One is watching you from his bright heaven, nor will he spare his angels, even should twelve legions be needed, to give you victory and rest. My soul, hope thou in God, and wait for him until his brightness drives the gloom for ever away.