Strive to Enter Through the Narrow Gate

Driving home: You must be ready to be stripped of all of the padded, down-filled clothing of your native pride and self-sufficiency, prepared to be stripped down to the naked bare sinner that you are.

The kingdom is likened to a vast banquet hall with a disproportionately small, narrow, and low door, illustrating that entrance into God's kingdom is exclusive and requires humility and shedding of self-righteousness.

Because down in verse 29 he says that those who come from east and west, north and south shall literally recline in the kingdom. It's the picture of a vast, wide, spacious, expansive banquet hall and people are all reclining eastern fashion as they feast together. But there's a strange thing about this large, expansive, ornate banquet hall. It has a disproportionately small door.

20:36 - 21:09 Read in full sermon

The point: If you have any hope of entering the narrow door, you must make this issue the supreme concern of your life.

The word 'strive' (agonizo) is compared to wrestlers on a mat or an athlete straining to break a tape, emphasizing the intense, focused exertion required for true conversion.

The issue of importance is any who are saved are saved by getting through the narrow gate. And this is so true that I command you to do whatever is necessary in the way of conscious deliberate exertion to get through. This is the word you would use of two wrestlers on the mat together. This is a word you would use of an athlete straining to break the tape just a few, excuse me, a few feet in front of his closest competitor.

27:47 - 28:19 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not go on in the idolatry of attachment to people, things, and temporal interests, treating your soul like a piece of junk, because the hour is coming when you will be unable to seek.

Martin recounts a personal experience of a door slamming shut due to wind, contrasting it with the deliberate, firm shutting of the banquet hall door by the Master, highlighting the finality of God's judgment.

And the prophecy is spoken by Him who is truth. I say to you, when the master of the house shall rise up and shut the door, the door to the banquet house is not shut by an inadvertent gust of wind. You know what that is, don't you? Sometime last week, I was taking out the garbage and I carry it from the patio in the back through the hallway and out the front door.

35:53 - 36:23 Read in full sermon