We are going to start in chapter 7, verse 13. We had an aside last week when we talked about baptism. The week before, Chase talked about verses 7 through 12, I believe it was, so we are going to jump in on verse 13 and we will read that first and then go from there.

It says:

“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. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.”

In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus is dealing with warnings and admonitions about things. He told us not to judge and we talked about what that meant; and after the judging He says, “Don’t give what is holy to dogs.” In other words, we don’t cast the Gospel out willy-nilly; the Gospel is meant to be an arrow. And Chase talked about the idea of asking, giving, and seeking; and the idea about treating people the way you want them to treat you. So He is building a” works” case, in some ways, for what the Gospel is supposed to look like — in one area, anyway. And now He is going to begin to share, what might even be considered, more serious things.

He started with the idea about the narrow gate and the wide gate. And of course, for us, that analogy is something that we know by understanding what the words mean. In His day and age, every city — especially every big city — would be walled and within that wall, narrow gates. If you have ever read the Old Testament and gone through, say, Nehemiah, where they rebuilt the temple; they probably rebuilt a dozen different gates and doors around the temple. Some of the gates would be huge; carts and larger things could pass through. And then there would be narrower gates where maybe just a person could pass through, etc,. And in their mind, when Jesus talked about it, all these visions came to mind: about passageways and the idea of narrowness. Their minds also, of course, would be taken to the idea of passing through the mountains and running through rock crags where you have to sometimes maybe even go to your side and scoot through between two rocks. So, there would be a lot of these images in their mind, whereas maybe for us, the images aren’t there, but rather we just understand the concept.

That word narrow in verse 14 means “to confine or distress.” When it says “the way is narrow that leads to life,” it means the way is confined or distressed. As a matter of fact, in Romans 8:35, there is a verse where that same word is used and it is translated distressed. It says, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress…” That is this word: narrow.
2 Corinthians 1:6 is another passage where this word is used and we translate it here, afflicted: “But if we are afflicted…” That is also this word: narrow. It means to be pressed; to be stressed or pushed or confined. By the way, the word narrow in verse 13 (where it talks about the narrow gate) is a different word. That word literally means “small.” When it says, “into the narrow gate,” it just means, “enter the small gate.” But then when it gets to verse 14, it says, “the way is narrow,” and it’s talking about the way into the Kingdom of God and, possibliy, even once we are in the Kingdom of God.

The narrowness of the message of the gospel presses us to a life that is rich and full; without taint of legalism or law. If we love the world, the life of Christ will seem narrow and small. But if we love Christ, it will seem broad. So even though the Bible is telling us the way is narrow, once you enter into that way, it is not going to seemnarrow to you.

Twice — once in Psalm 18:36 and again in 2 Samuel 22:37 — the Word says, “You enlarge my steps under me and my feet have not slipped.” And I remember thinking about this text years and years ago; about how awesome it is: when we step into the Kingdom of God, how broad it appears. Again, when we love Christ, we feel free. The things that surround the Gospel message, to the people outside, look confining; but we don’t feel confined. We actually feel very much loved and very confident of being able to walk that walk. Why? Because it looks large once you step in.

When we think about this idea of entering the narrow way, it’s not talking about us being perfect. It is talking about us simply attempting to adhere to the gospel message and the things that Jesus has plainly laid out for us. And I get it, we can go overboard and get to the place where we are thinking that Christians have to dress a certain way, eat a certain way, drink a certain way, and the way you speak has to be a certain way. We get legalistic in those things and anytime you are feeling like you are moving into legalism, most likely you are not walking with the Lord. We need to step away from that and we need to let the freedom of Christ come in and actually compel us forward, because every step you take into the right way to live – your path broadens, as a saint of the Living God.

That said, He says “the way is broad that leads to destruction.” That word destruction means, in the Greek: “utter, final ruination.” In the Scriptures that word is almost exclusively used for those who are apostate or have denied Jesus Christ. Somebody, a couple weeks ago, was talking to me; we didn’t talk for very long so I just caught the very briefest of things but I think what he was pointing out was that the possibility exists that we should look at this passage of Scripture not just in the context of entering the Kingdom of God, but also of how things are when you walk in the Kingdom of God. In other words, oftentimes, even within the Kingdom of God, we choose narrow ways. We do not allow ourselves to be broad in our thinking, or to be broad in our walk or actions. We choose narrow ways, and those narrow ways bring life to us. But any time we are standing outside something that seems really wide and broad, Jesus is pointing out that the possibility exists that what is in front of us may not be from Him. When we are walking with Christ, we can look IN to something and sometimes it can feel like, ‘Man it seems really hard to do that. I don’t know if I can do that.’ But then once you take that step inside, the way is broad. And Jesus makes a path for us to walk down that way. It is an awesome way for us to think about things. And when we think about “the way is broad that leads to distraction,” we can’t help but think about our world. And the disciples would have thought about their world at this time, even within the Jewish church: the legalism and the ideas about the anti-Christ things that existed at the time and the concepts of what it means to have faith. In our case, we live in a world where everybody seems to think, “however you think is okay,” unless you are thinking like a believer. There is the one thing, in America, that is virtually always attacked: if you hold up Christian principles. If you hold up any other principles — Hindu, Islamic, no matter what you choose, everybody will give you a pass. Just not that one thing.
But people seem to think however you feel at the present time – that is the most important thing. So if you are not living out your feelings, you are living out a lie. And I would contend, because I understand my frame, if I am living out many of my feelings, then I’m living out a lie. If I live by just what I felt, said everything I felt, acted on everything I felt — then I would be back to where I was before I gave my life to Christ! Because that’s how I lived my life: Whatever I wanted to do, I did. I didn’t care about people — not in the truest sense of the word — because I was willing to disrupt people’s lives for my sake. And that is not the way that Christ has asked us to walk. So when we think about the Christian life, is it narrow? It absolutely is narrow. And if anybody ever tells you the Christian life is not narrow, they are lying through their teeth. But once you step into that life and you love God, love Jesus Christ, that way will seem to you to be broad; because within the confines of that life there is an immense amount of freedom — an immense amount of freedom. And that is the part that sometimes people have such a hard time getting. ‘I don’t want the restrictions, I don’t want to be confined.’ It’s like, ‘Man, just come throught the door, brother! Because you would find a freedom that is unbelievable if you could just walk with Jesus Christ!’

Jesus, in the next two sections (and we’re going to just deal with one section here today), brings up two things that actually are part of this narrowness of walk, or should be.
In the first section He is actually talking about deception in two separate ways. Verses 15 though 20 are about the concept of being deceived by someone else; in other words, by leadership. The second kind of deception, verses 21 through 23, is about being deceived by you, yourself.

We are going to talk about what it is to be deceived by leadership, and move in that area. I get that the things we are talking about today can have all kinds of nuance to them. And we would have to have a discussion about that, but the point is that Jesus understood the frame of mankind. He understood that even at that point in time — for sure when He was gone — there would be people who would try to disrupt the church of the Living God.

In Acts 20 — Paul’s farewell to Ephesus — he says, ‘I know when I leave savage wolves will come in, dressed in sheep’s clothing, and they will try to draw you in.’ (paraphrase) Paul is not saying, ‘This may or may not happen.’ This will happen. And you guys? It always will happen, until Jesus comes again. And it makes our Christian life difficult, at the very least. We get bombarded with all kinds of thoughts and ideas. How do we sort it out? I was thinking about this, this morning, and honestly? There are several people who would call me a false teacher, or leader. Several people would. So we begin to look and say, ‘How do we define them?’ And that is where the nuances come into play; it would be difficult. You guys all know that I don’t have a problem with somebody drinking, I have a problem with drunkenness. But not having a problem with drinking – that would be considered by many people to be a false teaching, which would make me a false teacher. So, those kinds of things come into play where your life is evidenced in some way and someone can say, ‘Well the fruit in your life is obviously bad because you hang around sinful people that drink,’ (or that cuss, or whatever the case may be.) And we go back and we look at Jesus’ life and we realize that that is what Jesus did. Not that I would ever compare myself with Jesus, but that’s the life that Jesus lived. He chose to live amongst the sinners and not amongst the righteous. And that’s the way we should be, too. Our Sundays are a gathering of the righteous, and through the week we should gather with the righteous. But we can’t live our lives all the time with the righteous. We’re not supposed to. We’re supposed to be out in the world, conveying the gospel either by words or actions or some other way.

About a decade ago, somebody told me one of the nicest things anybody has ever said to me: “I’ve never heard anybody say a bad word about you.” And I said to him, “You haven’t talked to the right people.” He started to laugh, but I was blessed that, in his Christian experience, he hadn’t run across anybody who said a bad word against me. I thought, ‘You just need to talk to some other people. I could give you some names.’ But the point is that we will always have people who disagree with us — especially if we are in leadership — because of things we believe, things we might act on, things we say. And that’s just going to be part and parcel of it.

The problem is, though, that we need to be careful that we are not going to become a false teacher in any way, shape, or form. Jesus, in this case, speaks about false prophets; we are going to expand that word today to talk about leadership and the role leadership has, because I don’t want to just confine it to just prophets; I think it should be expanded. And I think it’s safe, biblically, to expand it.
One of the things I want you to know is that Jesus is actually talking about a class of people who believe they are in authority. Any false prophet, or anybody who claims leadership, believes they have authority. Jesus is not talking about, say, people who sit in the pews — or laypeople. He’s telling the laypeople, ‘There are going to be people come over you who are going to be harmful to you, and I want you to know that there is a way you can see who they are. It is by the fruit of their life.’ You can recognize them by the fruit of their life. And I get it; this is not the only way. I think 1 John 4:2 talks about knowing somebody by whether or not they profess that Jesus has come in the flesh; and there are various other ways in which we can recognize the true nature of things. But this is the one that Jesus thought would be the easiest one for people to get: by looking at fruit in people’s life. So He began to tell us the importance of good trees, bad trees, etc.

I want you to know that we are saved by grace through faith, but we are judged by our works. And that is just a fact. It is a biblical fact. You are saved by grace through faith, but you are going to be judged by your works. Throughout the Scripture — Genesis through Revelation — it is about the works. Every judgment seat in the Bible is a judgment of works. I get it; we want to say, ‘That can’t be true,’ but you guys, it is true. The works that we have, the way we live our life (which is “works”) is part and parcel of who we are. The Gospel is not faith as opposed to works. The Gospel is faith that has works. And so, the true Gospel then is a Gospel that brings about righteous, right works. And because Jesus was aware that there was going to be trouble, He began to help his disciples see that, throughout their ministry, they were going to run into various situations where they would need to be able to look and see where someone was at; and oftentimes, they would be able to see by the works. And the works, of course, involve many things, which we are going to get to in just a minute.

I was thinking this morning and wrote down in my notebook: “The ministry of the ‘R,’” and I got thinking about how — a true prophet (or any man of God), stands with his back to God and he speaks to the people from God. A false prophet stands with his back to God and speaks to the people for God. Just one letter, just the letter ‘R’ changes everything. You can speak from God or you can presume to speak for God, and as soon as a leader takes the step to speaking for God, he is moving in very dangerous territory. We are talking about a class of people that may not know that they are hurting people; but as time goes on it becomes more and more evident that that is their nature; it’s what they want to do. They actually are not able to bear any good fruit, because they are not a good tree. And sometimes those kinds of things take time to develop enough for people to see. Over time we finally reach a point where we can recognize true men of God and false men of God; and we recognize them by their fruit.

I was reading in the Didache, which I think was written around 150 A.D. It is a collection of early Christian teachings; kind of like a way-we-should-live book. I say this next thing very cautiously, because I know I do this from time to time and I hope I’m not breaking this law — and it is a law, they said. But basically the Didache says that anyone who asks you for money is a false prophet. Anyone who asks for money is a false prophet. And they took this from the Scriptures where Jesus said, “Be content with what you have.” When you go out, people are going to take care of you, but you don’t want to ask for more. In the Old Testament you see where Naaman went to Elijah and then Elijah’s servant ran and found him and said, ‘Hey, listen. He changed his mind. We want some clothes, etc.’ [paraphrase] The servant ended up being a leper for that. The Scripture has an expectation of the leadership: to trust God and especially not to take or demand personal things.

I say that, again, cautiously, because we had a meeting last year about money and where the church was at. From time to time, and maybe in the future, who knows? Maybe we will have to say, ‘You know, our church is not doing well, etc.’ It would be brief and to the point. But the Didache made that one rule — and it worked, in their day and age. In our day and age, we would have many people not on television anymore — if that was the rule in place — because so many (especially charismatic) teachers spend most of their time on the air, asking for money. These are the ways, I believe, that we recognize a false prophet, and we begin to see who they are.

First of all, we know them by their works. I wrote the word “theology” down in my notebook. A good teacher, a good pastor, a good prophet, a good man of God, has good theology.

[And by the way, just real quick — the last couple Thursday nights we brought up the idea of prophets. I just want to say, if you guys don’t know, I sincerely believe prophets are still on the earth today; I just don’t think they are on television and they don’t write books. I think they are doing what they are supposed to be doing in the areas that they are supposed to be working, in the U.S. and all around the world. They’re doing a good job of what they are supposed to be doing — prophesying and presenting the message of the gospel. They are telling us things that are going to happen in the future and helping us to move into the right areas we need to go; we just don’t know them very often because we don’t run the same circles or run across them like we should. There are people out there who, if we sat down with them, would be able to let us know what was going to happen with our country in the next 20 years. And they would be exact and specific, because God said to them, ‘This is what I want you to tell the people I want you to tell.’ And we could say those kind of people — prophets — can be recognized also by their fruits.]

Back to theology: If your theology is poor, then you can’t bear good fruit in your life and the life of the people around you. It’s impossible. For instance, if you don’t believe that Jesus died for your sins, there is no way you could possibly be a Christian teacher. And yet, we have innumerable amount of pastors in pulpits today that believe just that. We have whole denominations that believe that and we accept it as part of the Christian world. And that’s very sad. Should the Christian world be inclusive? Absolutely. In terms of race and color, and in terms of women and men and children, and all those things. But should we be inclusive to the degree that we stop loving the truth or taking the Scripture at face value, believing what it says? Absolutely not. You have no purpose in spending time with a Christian leader who does not, and will not, share the truth about Jesus Christ in all of its glory.

So the first thing is: the words. We recognize them by their words. Most of us can probably catch those things and kind of make sense of them, although there can be the smallest things that can change the way somebody thinks. I did not bring it, but I have a little book at home — a series of small pamphlets actually — and one has the idea of justification in terms of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Lutheranism. Three different groups of people and how justification is presented from their own writings. And they ask four questions- simple questions, you’d think. But when I looked at the questions I thought, “Whoa, that’s interesting!” Because you could get caught into saying it’s “A” but it’s not “A”, it’s “B,” if you’re not actually focusing on Jesus Christ. And I realized how subtle the doctrinal differences are, but how great they are in terms of how they cause people to look at who Jesus Christ is and what His message is. The smallest thing can move you down a path where all of a sudden you are slowly moving away from the Gospel that Jesus brought to us.

The second thing is — and this is a little more difficult because we are imperfect creatures — but you know them by their disciples. That is where I’m a blessed man. If I consider myself a leader and I consider you guys to be disciples, then I’m happy that the world has you. But, bad fruit brings bad fruit. It is just a fact. People who gather around people who are false teachers; ultimately, are false themselves sooner or later. And remember, if you are a false teacher, it means you think you have authority when you don’t. And the people who surround them are people who think they have authority when they don’t. We recognize them by their disciples. Does that mean that in any given church or in any given denomination, because there are people that are stumbling along, that the leadership is poor? Of course not; because we are growing. We’re getting better all the time. We’re improving; we are supposed to be growing into Christ. But it is that inner circle of things, when you start to see corruption and recognize this is part of the falseness, itself. For instance — I won’t mention the name — but there is a huge, major ministry out in the U.S. today in the Pentecostal church, where virtually every person surrounding this man and his wife — every leader they have — has been divorced once, twice, some of them three times. The leader has been divorced three times; the wife has been divorced once. Now with everybody that is getting around them — their kids and everybody — divorce has been a component of leadership. A corruption of leadership.
Maybe you guys don’t notice things like that, but those are the kind of things I look at. When I meet a new pastor in town and he seems like a really good guy and I really like him – I want to meet his wife. I want to know how he treats his wife. Because to me that is a huge indicator of where a man really is. And I would say the same thing for a wife to a husband. A huge indicator of where a person is really at is in how they deal with their spouse. And then we go down to how they deal with their kids, which brings me to the third thing: the family.

We measure by family. We look at the family of men of God and women of God and we ask, ‘What kind of family do they have?’ And again, I’m not going to go down this road and say, “Everyone in leadership should have perfect kids.” I know that’s not true. Nor would I say that a man in leadership couldn’t have a child who actually would be opposed to the faith; I don’t believe that’s true. But, what I would say is that if that becomes a common thing, then something is really wrong. Every single human being has to make his own peace with God through Jesus Christ. But that said, even in the Scriptures, one of the requirements of an elder is that his kids are believers and that they are well behaved. I mean, those are requirements that they put on the elders way back then, because they understood that good fruit produces good fruit. And if two parents are good parents, most of the time if not all the time, their children, ultimately, will produce good fruit.
Now, some of my kids went through times where they were struggling, and I get that. We are talking about how they ultimately end up living their life; not the moments in their life when they struggle with who they are and how they are trying to find their way. Again, the family is a great indicator of fruit.

The last thing is just character, in general. Is somebody honest; are they trustworthy? Will they do the things they say? Are they angry all the time? And character, by the way, generally speaking, is universal. We get into, say, things that are political and we can disagree on abortion or homosexuality or whatever the case may be. But in terms of character: kindness, honesty, and trustworthiness – those are the things that everybody – everybody – says are important to notice and to see in people. And those things of character help us to reveal that Christ has a hold of us and can move us and change us and mold us in to the image that he wants us to be. Again, I understand that this is kind of murky. One author I really appreciated, and at one time in my life helped me a lot in understanding the grace of God, was also an alcoholic. And he could never get past it — always has bothered me. And I was helped along a path, in a certain time of my life, by his books. But he never could escape from it; he ended up finally dying from it. He would be free for years at time and then be pulled back into that junk.
I have a brother, whom I love, who passed away. His family, for many years, was a mess (and some of them still are.) And it always bothered me. I loved him dearly; learned a lot from him. But there was always that thing in me that, in the back of my mind, was like, ‘Okay, what’s going on? Why has every single one of your kids moved away from the Lord?’ I’m not talking about people who are worldly, these are people who have literally gone away from the Lord and denied Christ. I don’t get it. And yet, I loved the guy; and he helped me out in various things throughout my ministry.
So, I get that there are these examples and nuances and things that take place that cause us to think, ‘how can this be an exact science?’ or ‘how do you measure fruit, even?’ And I understand that can be difficult. But my point is that Jesus said, ‘This is how you’re going to know Christians,’ and ‘This is how you will know leadership.’ Their lives will be fruitful. Some people, by the way, confine that strictly to whether a man of God is having people saved around him. And I never have seen it like that; to me it’s talking about all that he is.

Bottom line is, ultimately, Jesus is saying: a false prophet is a bad tree, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. It’s an impossibility. It may look good until you get up to it, and then you’ll start to notice the rottenness of the thing. And maybe part of our problem is, most of us, we are not privy to being close to people who we look up to and admire. We honestly do not know what goes on with their wives or kids or various things like that. And especially if we’re talking about reading books and listening to podcasts — a book or a podcast is somebody’s best face. But when we learn the day-to-day, and we are living life with people, the ability to spend time with people and recognize ‘this person or that person—they really are genuine;’ to me, that’s the crucial thing in this. So again, Jesus tells us, “Enter through the narrow gate.” Don’t go down that broad way. That broad way seems really sweet and nice and it’s open. And not only is the gate broad, but the whole way seems really broad; like everything will be really good. But you need to go down that narrow way, because that narrow way is going to press you. But I guarantee you guys, as saints of the Living God, when you step into that narrow way, it will seembroad to you. It will not be broad to anyone else looking at you, but it will seem broad to you. Because you’re following Jesus Christ; because you love Him and you could not do anything butgo down this way.

And also, beware of false prophets. We have a lot of them out there today: a lot of people who are just poor leaders. They are teaching things that are unbiblical – unconscionable, as a matter of fact. And yet, people are still hovering around them and causing stirs; and they are still selling their products and they are still getting their stuff.

I just encourage you guys; don’t do that. When you recognize somebody as being false, find somebody to talk to it about; sit down with them if you can. If it’s a book you’ve read and you notice something is really is going astray, then walk away from it. You can accept all the good things you have learned up to that point from that person, but at that point it’s time to cut ties, because we do not want to waste our time with people who are drifting away from the Lord. We want to spend our time with people that are constantly moving toward the Lord.

Heavenly Father, we just thank You for Your mercy and grace. I thank You, Jesus, for the warning. Thank You, Lord God, that you haven’t sugarcoated the Scriptures, Lord God, even though we often sugarcoat the Gospel — make it appear like it’s something it’s not, Jesus … thankful you do not. I pray in your precious Name that we would be faithful both in our entry into the Kingdom, Lord God, for maybe those that maybe have not, And those that are here, for those times that Jesus has asked you to do something and you’re looking at that doorway it just seems impossible to squeeze through there with who you are, and I pray, Lord God, that you would bless us with that ability to say, ‘You know what? I’m going to do it anyway, because this is what God has called me to do.’ I’m encouraged, Lord, that anybody who has ever done that has stepped into what appears to be a large room that is full of good fruit. I pray, Jesus, in your precious Name, that we would be wary, as you said, of false prophets. You told us simply that we’d know them by their fruits, just like we’re supposed to know each other by the love we have for one another. And I pray in your precious Name that we would just be obedient to that. We don’t have to make a scene; we don’t have to make big issues about things; we just have to simply be obedient and to stay away. So, Lord God, I thank you for that. I pray, Jesus, you would help us, Lord God, as we continue our path, walking out the Christian life, attempting to discern right from wrong, trying to make sense of things that sometimes don’t make sense for us. And I pray in your precious Name that we would find our way through this. I thank You again for the clearness of the Gospel message, especially in the terms that surround Jesus Christ – His death, resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. I pray those are the things we would set our fellowship around the most. I get it that we need to discuss many things, but I pray that those are the things that bring us the greatest joy. I ask that in Jesus precious Name.
Amen and Amen.

Lord bless you guys.

Go in peace.

Matthew 7:13-20
Rob Putz, pastor

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