Daily Devotional For Saturday, November 16, 2024
It’s Saturday and you could be in the park. I pray that your long awaited weekend is restful, relaxing, recreational and redemptive spiritually. We are making our way through the most famous and best sermon ever preached or taught – Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount. You can read this entire sermon in Matthew chapters 5, 6, & 7. We have already been through chapters 5 & 6 and are in the middle of chapter seven with Matthew 7:13-14:
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. (14) For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (NASB).
Many people reading these two verses misread it. Some people tend to read and begin to ask the incorrect question. The question is not: why is the gate so narrow? The accurate question is: Why do so many people choose not to enter it or why do so many people go through the wide? In Matthew 7, Jesus gives us three answers to this question.
- First, we are evil and sinful by nature. If you remember, when we started looking at the Sermon On The Mount, Jesus was teaching everyday common Jews on a hill. He was not talking to the Jewish religious leaders. Look at Matthew 7:11a, If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children . . .” (NASB). It’s time for an instant replay. Let’s rewind the video and play it again – “If you then, being evil . . .” Jesus reminds us of the Doctrine of Original Sin here. This repeated all throughout Scripture.
Can you imagine if you were in a meeting at your work with top execs sitting around a table discussing employee morale and the discussion got tense? All of a sudden you spoke up and said, “Well, since we all are evil and all the employees here are evil . . .” What do you think would happen? Maybe a nervous chuckle at first but as everyone continued to look at your face and realized you were serious, they might wonder what planet you were from.
I like how New Testament scholar Douglas Sean O’Donnell puts it on the Doctrine of Original Sin: “Gather a toddler from every country in the world, put them in a room together, and tell them, “Only one of you gets this piece of candy.” See then if they are naturally selfish or not” (Source: Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Preach The Word Bible Commentary, “Matthew: All Authority In Heaven And On Earth,” p. 196).
All of us have experienced our self-centered nature and the self-centered nature of others. It doesn't matter where in the world you go, you will experience this from all people. To say that we and everyone else is evil is not a far stretch, but the truth. It is today people do not think of evil in this way. They have other watered-down modern pop-psychology terms to explain it. But the whole Christian faith stands or falls on the Doctrine of Original Sin – that all people are evil and sinful. If this was not true, there was no need for Jesus to die on the cross and God’s plan for salvation does not make sense and even seems rather cruel and evil itself.
New Testament scholar R. Kent Hughes, as this quote from Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev in his commentary on Matthew, “I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like, but I do know what the heart of a good man is like, and it is terrible” (Source: R. Kent Hughes, Preach The Word Bible Commentary, “Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth,” p. 196).
There are professions where people see evil every day: law enforcement, military, abuse shelters, and even the ministry. In case you misunderstand me here, I am not talking about church members at their worst, but me at my best. If you looked at me from a distance, it all looks nice enough. Here is a man who spends his whole week studying the Bible and preparing to teach it; look at him up there, teaching away. But what you don’t see is that in this heart there is always (at least) a touch of pride, ambition, and worry. I care too much about what the congregation thinks of me. So, although the satellite view can’t detect anything wrong, the microscopic camera picks it all up.
Whether you realize it or not or believe it or not, God sees all in our heart. He knows every thought of self-righteousness, pride, worry, lust, anger, conceit, and etc. This is the point of Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (NASB). So, whether you like it or not, whether you admit it or not, you are evil and so am I according to Jesus.
We do not like to take the more difficult path. We are a people of comfort, convenience and carefree living. Why in the world would we do anything that made our lives harder or more difficult spiritually? The same question could be applied to someone who physically just had knee or hip replacement surgery. Physical therapy is an option. At first, there will be nothing pleasant about it. Your muscles have some atrophy and you do not want to do it because it's painful. We admire the phrase, “No pain, no gain” for others but we do not want to apply it to our lives. But if you do not do the physical therapy, you may find yourself crippled or an invalid for the rest of your life.
What is true physically, is also true spiritually. As evil and sinful people, we have to keep our eyes on the long-term gain, not the short-term pain. Tomorrow, we will look at reasons 2 & 3. Bruce B. Barton writes:
“People take the wide gateway, but they find the narrow gateway. The wide gateway that leads to destruction defines the normal human experience, except for the few who find and enter the narrow gateway. Jesus’ invitation to enter confronts the disciples with the gate itself. They have found the gate; he is standing before them. They can enter by trusting him completely. The invitation still stands” (Source: Bruce B. Barton, The Life Application Bible Commentary, “Matthew,” p. 136).
Questions To Consider
- Do you consider yourself evil and sinful? If you say, “Sinful? Yes, Evil, no!” Jesus says you and I are evil. Why do you think He says that and how does it resonate with you?
- We tend to think that the pedophile or the rapist or the serial killer or the terrorist is evil, but not goody-two-shoes us. Why do you think we split hairs over this?
- Read Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev’s quote above. What do you think about it and why?
- If we are evil as Jesus says, how should we view ourselves in relation to Jesus Christ and others?
- There is no gain without pain for anything, including spiritually. Why do you think we try to avoid spiritual pain? Do you? If so, why? When have you eventually benefited from short-term spiritual pain with long-term spiritual gain? What did you learn from it?
Scripture To Meditate On: Psalm 25:8, 12, “Because the Lord is righteous and good, He teaches sinners the path they should follow . . . (12) Those who have reverence for the Lord will learn from Him the path they should follow” (NLT).
Prayer To Pray: “Dear Jesus, help me to always choose the narrow gate for all things spiritually. I chose it for salvation, but I need to keep choosing it for sanctification (maturity). Lord, I am willing to go through the short-term spiritual pain for the long-term spiritual gain. I love You Jesus. In Jesus’ name, Amen!’”
I love you Southside!--Pastor Kelly