Entering By the Narrow Gate, Part 3

The point: Examine your professed relationship to Jesus Christ to determine if it is real and saving, or hypocritical and self-deceived.

The professed relationship to Christ is described as a 'mere shell and a sham, without life and without substance' if it is hypocritical or self-deceived, highlighting the emptiness of false conversion.

In an earnest and concentrated effort to help you avoid this tragedy of all tragedies, this tragedy of all tragedies, this is the fifth successive Lord's Day in which I've been seeking to set before you portions of the word of God that will help you to answer, by the objective, changeless standard of Scripture, this question, Are you for real? Are you for real? So, is your professed relationship to Jesus Christ a real and a saving? Or is it a hypocritical, formalistic, self-deceived relationship, a mere shell and a sham, without life and without substance? In the first of those two messages, I...

2:06 - 3:28 Read in full sermon

Driving home: it's narrow because you must renounce from your heart all confidence in what you are or are not, in what you have or have done or hope to do, as the ground of your acceptance with God.

Entering the narrow gate is likened to throwing away 'loom efforts' (self-righteousness) and being clothed in a garment manufactured exclusively from Christ's perfect life and death, illustrating the necessity of imputed righteousness.

what you have or have not done or ever hoped to do as the ground of your acceptance with God. Or to state it differently and expressed under the imagery of a garment with which we can clothe ourselves in order to find favor with God, let me state it this way. At the narrow gate you must throw away upon the loom efforts and be prepared to have your moral nakedness covered by a garment manufactured exclusively of the perfect life and substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

19:07 - 20:00 Read in full sermon

Driving home: it's narrow because you must renounce from your heart all confidence in what you are or are not, in what you have or have done or hope to do, as the ground of your acceptance with God.

Trying to get through the narrow gate with 'four layers of clothes' (self-righteousness) or even 'one inch thread' is impossible, emphasizing the absolute requirement of utter spiritual nakedness.

And that's why the gate is narrow. For you see at that gate we cannot come through with four layers of clothes made up of what we are and what we are not, what we've done and what we have not done or what we hope to do or be, but we must be stripped utterly naked down to the last thread. If you try to get through that gate with but one one inch thread on your shoulder, a thread of something you have done or not done or a pinch of thread on the sole of your feet, you won't go through the gate.

20:01 - 20:51 Read in full sermon

The point: Be willing to make a general admission of being a sinner, but also to strip down to nothing, bringing nothing in your hands, and fleeing to God to be clothed in Christ's righteousness.

Man's pride makes it hard to 'strip down' even his best 'righteousnesses' which God sees as 'polluted garments' or 'menstruous cloths,' illustrating the offensive nature of self-righteousness to God.

You mean down to just the underwear of some of the prayers that didn't quite have enough heart in them and some of the psalms and hymns that I sang in a half-hearted distracted way and the sermons I listened to when my mind roamed from Dan to Beersheba to the gazebo and back again. God says no. Strip yet. Strip further and take your moments when you have felt the most nearness to God and the most passion in prayer and the most holy. Take your righteousnesses and depart from union with my son and depart from the virtue of his perfect life and his death for sinners. Your righteousnesses are as a...

28:01 - 28:53 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He demonstrates God's rejection of self-righteousness through Romans 10:1-3, where Israel's zeal without knowledge led them to establish their own righteousness, and the parable…

The Pharisee's prayer is called a 'self-terminating soliloquy of self-righteousness,' highlighting that his prayer was not truly to God but a self-congratulatory act.

they did not do. Who were what they were not or who were not what they were. And then he gives us a clear example of such a person. Two men went up into the temple to pray. The one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. And the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. I call it his self-terminating salvation. Soliloquy of self-righteousness. He prayed thus with himself. He wasn't praying to God.

36:51 - 37:20 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Everyone that exalts himself shall be humbled, but he that humbles himself shall be exalted.

The Pharisee is depicted as 'preening himself' with his self-made garment of righteousness, thinking it beautiful, which illustrates the pride and delusion of self-righteousness.

I thank thee, he's giving credit to God, that I am not. As the rest of men. I don't do what the rest of men do. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. And he begins to tell God what he does do. I fast twice in the week. God never required that. God required one annual fast per year. He went far beyond what God required. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I get. I give tithes of all that I get. Here is a man who is really convinced that what he is and what he is not, what he does and what he doesn't do, and what he's going to do in the future, gives him a f...

37:40 - 38:43 Read in full sermon

The point: When you see debauched sinners, do not look down on them, but humbly acknowledge that without God's common and special grace, you would have 'outdone him a hundred times.'

The listener is challenged to consider how they view a 'lawless, lecherous, debauched, foul, wretched, stinking, rotten' sinner, and whether they truly believe that without common and special grace, they would be 'a hundred times' worse, illustrating the humility of the poor in spirit.

Stinking. Rotten. Lawless sinner. You don't look at them like this.

54:50 - 54:55 Read in full sermon

The point: You must say, not just with your lips but from your heart, that you count all your own righteousness as loss and desire to be found in Christ's righteousness alone.

A quote from a Puritan preacher describes unconverted man's attempt to cover his shame with his own 'fig leaves' and 'duties,' illustrating the natural human tendency towards self-salvation.

Man seeks to cover himself with his own fig leaves. I wrote in my notes. Adam and Eve were the first shop foreman. In union number one.

58:09 - 58:22 Read in full sermon

The point: Settle it in your heart that you must look out of yourself and away from your own doings for help, throwing yourself wholly upon Christ.

The imagery of Naaman leaning on his master when entering the house of his god is used to illustrate how the sinner must lean wholly upon Christ in all approaches to God.

For he dare not come into the presence of God. And he leans upon Christ. And so bows himself in the house of his God. The imagery you remember of Naaman.

59:47 - 59:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Settle it in your heart that you must look out of yourself and away from your own doings for help, throwing yourself wholly upon Christ.

The listener is warned that they are 'lost if you hope to escape drowning on any other plank but Jesus Christ,' emphasizing Christ as the sole means of salvation.

You must look out of yourself. And away from your own doings for help. You're lost if you hope to escape. Drowning on any other plank.

60:18 - 60:27 Read in full sermon