Pastor Martin continues his exposition of Matthew 7:13-14, emphasizing the inescapable necessity of entering the narrow gate and walking the restricted way to attain eternal life. He highlights the inseparability and irreversible order of the gate, the way, and life, arguing that true conversion (the gate) must manifest in an ongoing life of sanctification (the way). Martin warns against 'cheap religion' and self-deception, using John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' to illustrate the danger of a 'vain hope' that bypasses the true narrow gate.
Primary Texts
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Matthew 7:13-14This passage is the central text, providing the sermon's title and core theme of the narrow gate and restricted way to life.
Review of Christ's Authority and Sermon on the Mount Context3:58
The Inescapable Necessity of the Narrow Gate and Restricted Way14:24
The Nature of the Narrow Gate and Restricted Way20:57
Addressing Preaching Style and Audience Expectations23:05
The Absolute Inseparability and Irreversible Order of Gate, Way, and Life26:45
Why the Inseparability Matters: Warning Against False Assurance30:16
Marks of Genuine Faith and the Struggle Against Sin34:18
Challenging False Conversion and Dominion of Sin37:28
The Illustration of Ignorance from Pilgrim's Progress41:51
Key Quotes
“For when the word Christ written is read and actively preached, Christ Himself is presently speaking.”
“The righteousness of the kingdom, so aptly described, both in principle and in detail, would be seen to involve self-sacrifice at every step.”
“If indeed the sons and daughters of the kingdom are described by the character traits of the Beatitudes, then there is a narrow gate through which to pass and a restricted way on which to walk.”
“The inescapable necessity of entering the narrow gate and walking in the restricted way if we desire to go to heaven when we die.”
“Christ has made it narrow. He has prescribed it as narrow and there is no power in heaven or on earth that can change its dimension.”
“The purpose of getting through the gate is to get on the way. And the purpose of being on the way is that you might live the way.”
“You can't choose a narrow gate in a big, broad way, and they might. You can't choose a narrow, constricted way in a big, broad gate.”
“My Bible says, see we have not exercised worship over you. Our text in Romans 6 says that if we've come to the gate, we've been made free from the dominion of sin.”
Applications
All listeners
Settle it in your mind and heart: if you ever enter heaven, it will be through the restricted beginning and restricted way.
You've got to settle it, just that, clear it, just that, radically, just that, right at it in your own heart. Jesus has joined these things, life, the way, and the gate.
Don't lay that kind of guilt on me, I'm failing. And I'm warning my brethren over the next few years not to get bullied into that because I see it as an emerging articulation of something that's growing up and percolating in the ranks of our churches and it will be in depth and accurate and solid with the Church.
No one has any right to claim he's come through the narrow gate unless he is found in concrete, specific manifestations of life where he lives it in the restricted way.
Woe be unto who satisfies your conscience that you have been truly united by faith, and yet, and yet, you do not have it all.
You don't just come Sunday morning to do your thing. And have a marginal commitment to the life of the church and the means of good. You're here, so you're not.
You're trying to live by the equal standards of character as the leaders of the evangelicals. You're trying to train your life by the standards of righteousness which is established by the breadth of God's law as expounded by the Lord Jesus in the last chapter. You're trying to live a life in which the eye of the Father is your great concern when you pray and when you deny yourself in religious exercises for the sake of your soul and the souls of others.
No urge. You need to count it. While you had some kind of an experience that made the semblance of something like conversion. With the passing of the years. It did us. It made us. We have to say though you made all kinds of change. Those areas that marked you as you stood at the gate.
A full transcript is available on the
tab. 109 paragraphs, roughly 48 minutes.
Machine transcription
Introduction and Parallel Passage in Luke
Enter ye in, whether narrow or wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to it, and many are they that enter in thereby. For, or how narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads unto life, are they that find it.
There is a parallel passage in the Gospel according to Luke chapter 13, where we release the shatters in this passage of the Gospel of our early exposition of Matthew 7, where we remain in the direct reference to it. Luke chapter 13, verses 22 through 27. Luke 13, verse 22. He went on his way through cities and villages, teaching and teaching.
And journeyed on unto Jerusalem. And one said unto him, Lord, are they few that are saved? And he said unto them, why do you enter in by the narrow door? For many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able when once the master of the house has opened up and has shut the door.
And you begin to stand. And without it, you knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us. The answer is, say to you, I do not know you whence you are. Then shall you begin to say, we did eat and drink in your presence, and you did teach in our streets.
And you shall say, I tell you, I know not whence you are. Depart from me, all burdens. Amen.
Thank you. Thank you. Exalted was God with the eagles, burning into his male face. And the throne cry for you, holy for you is the Lord God.
Thank you for your blessing, for your efforts to do this. And we thank you for granting us a sobering sense of the great issues of life and death.
This way, we take up these very searching words. Come, Lord. Come, Lord. Come, Lord.
the Prince of life, the King of grace, the One full of grace and truth. Oh, may the Spirit attend the effort with His own illuminating depth. Amen.
Review of Christ's Authority and Sermon on the Mount Context
The scriptures tonight is a continuation and a conclusion of our initial study in Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14. In attempting to set before you, as a company of professed disciples of Christ, the objective biblical data by which you may answer the question,
have I for real, we have arrived in Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14. And we began our study with the assertion this morning that if you are for real, it is because you have entered through the narrow gate and are walking upon the restricted way which alone leads unto life. And as we took up the Matthew 7, 13 and 14 passage this morning,
I laid before you two basic introductory concerns and they took up the entirety of the allotted time. The first introductory concern, was to draw your attention afresh to the One who is speaking these words. And you'll notice I did not say to the One who spoke them. For when the word Christ written is read and actively preached, Christ Himself is presently speaking.
It is no dead word that we consider, but the living word of the living Christ, who in His livingness by the Spirit through the word speaks, in the company of His people. And as we come to these words, enter in at the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads away, that leads unto destruction. And many, many are they that go in thereby, for narrow is the gate and restricted the way that leads unto life,
and few that even find it. We need to remind ourselves continually, that this is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ in His capacity, as God's final prophet speaking to our hearts. That prophet which according to Acts 3, 22 and 23, fulfills the prophecy of Moses, and concerning whom God says, that if we do not hearken unto whatsoever He says unto us, we shall be cut off. And then we must remind ourselves that these are the words of Christ, for according to John 12 and verse 48,
the standard by which He will judge you in the last day, is the very word of which He has spoken to us. And then the second introductory concern, to which I directed your attention this morning, was that of examining the setting in which these words were spoken. They were not spoken in a vacuum of immediate reference, but rather they come at a point of what the old rhetoricians would call the peroration of an oration. That is, the section in a speech in which the speaker seeks to take all that he has previously said
and hurl it upon the wills and the affections and the consciences of his hearers, seeking to elicit an appropriate response. And these words of Matthew 7, 13 and 14 come at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, or in the concluding section of the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon in which our Lord has been opening up the nature of the kingdom He has come to establish, the character traits and the patterns of life that will obtain within that kingdom and among all the subjects of that kingdom.
And I sought to underscore that when our Lord Jesus says, Enter by the narrow gate, narrows the gate, and restricteth the way that leads to life, no one was shocked in His words, for having set forth these various dimensions of His own kingdom, these words were most appropriate words of summary, conclusion, of appeal and application. In an excellent commentary, which would be very helpful as a household, a book, David Brown's Expositions of the Gospel,
David Brown made a very similar observation that in giving his comings on the Sermon on the Mount, he describes verses 13 to 29 as conclusion and effect of the Sermon on the Mount. Writing on the matter that this is the conclusion, starting in verse 13, he says, The righteousness of the kingdom, so aptly described, both in principle and in detail, would be seen to involve self-sacrifice at every step. Multitudes would never face this. But it must be faced, else the consequences would be fatal.
This would divide all within the Son with these truths into two classes. The many who would follow the path of ease and self-indulgence anywhere it might, and the few who bent on eternal safety above everything else, take the way that leads to it at whatever cost. This gives occasion to the two opening verses of this section of application and then he moves into his exposition of verses 13 and 14. And while many of you expressed gratitude that I did not rush through that material
and I am most appreciative of that expression of your gratitude, I have done so because the human heart will do anything it can do to wriggle out from the clear teaching of verses 13 and 14. And there's no way to wriggle out from that teaching unless we're prepared to overturn the entire pressure of the teaching of the Sermon in the Mount in all of its strands of emphasis. If indeed the sons and daughters of the kingdom are described by the character traits of the Beatitudes, then there is a narrow gate through which to pass
and a restricted way on which to walk. If the true sons and daughters of the kingdom are the salt of the earth, the radically different counterculture, if they are the light of the world by what they are and what they do, then surely to become one of them one must enter a narrow gate and walk upon a very restricted way. And if we are followers of a king who has not come to abrogate the law but has come to fulfill it and has come so to work in the hearts of his people that out of love with him and out of a renewed heart that has an affinity for the righteous standard of the law, if they are to walk in the light of that law
in all of its spirituality and all of its demands, it cuts the deepest streams of thought and motive and desire and disposition as well as the external acts and deeds of the life, then the way into a kingdom where all of the subjects make conscience of God's law as it touches the attitudes of the heart, even the words by which we express ill will to others, even the looks of the eye, then surely, surely to get amongst such a people one must pass through a narrow gate and one must be prepared to walk upon a very restricted way.
If indeed, as chapter 6 indicates, the sons and daughters of the kingdom in their religious acts are not concerned with what men's eyes see and what men can observe, but though men may observe them, their passionate concern is what God knows their hearts to be, then by nature, those of us who are content to be accepted by others in our profession and in the semblance of religion, we must pass through a very narrow gate to come to the place where nothing really matters at the end of the day. But the eye of God, if it were to make our way through a world of the food
and clothing and shelter and the necessities of life in such a way that we trust our Heavenly Father to supply these needs, while our hearts are never ideologically set upon the pursuit of these things, that is not making to us. We must indeed enter a very narrow gate and be stripped down to the fares. So you see that the entire sermon conditions this appeal of our Lord Jesus rendering by the narrow gate which issues in the walk upon a respective way.
The Inescapable Necessity of the Narrow Gate and Restricted Way
So much for that brief review of those two introductory observations. And what I propose to do tonight is begin the last half of this morning's sermon, which is to be comprised of three basic observations of the text itself. In introducing our study of the text, we consider afresh who speaks these words, the setting in which it speaks them. Now as we come nearer to breaking down the text without really opening up in detail the nature of the gate and the nature of the way that will have to wait for our belief in the next week, I want you to observe with me
three very fundamental realities concerning this text that in my judgment are crucial if you are to feel the full weight of the text upon our hearts. And the first observation is this, known to be the inescapable necessity of entering the narrow gate and walking in the restricted way if we desire to go to heaven when we die. The inescapable necessity of entering the narrow gate and walking in the restricted way
if we desire to go to heaven when we die. Our text clearly states that one course and one course alone leads into or unto life. Verse 14, you see the phrase that leads unto life. And that one course and one only that leads unto life is preceded or is comprised of the restricted way and of the narrow gate.
Hence our Lord says, narrow is the gate and restricted is the way that leads unto life and few, are they that find it. The word for narrow means just that. It is a narrow, it is a small gate. As I indicated this morning, the word rendered straightened in the older versions does not mean straight as opposed to crooked.
But it means compressed, it means restricting. The same root word from which we get our word affected, affliction. What is affliction? Affliction is a combination of pressures that are brought upon us.
And so it is a restricted way. And it is our Lord who says the one alternative to a pathway that leads to life that begins with a very narrow gate that is marked by its restrictiveness and all along the way the only alternative to a narrow gate and to a restricted way that leads to life is a wide gate and a broad way that inevitably leads to destruction. Now listen girls and women,
unless you treat your never dying soul like a worthless worn out gate and God has blessed you so, unless you would treat your never dying soul like a worthless worn out gate, then you should settle it in your mind and heart. If I ever enter heaven, if I will ever be triumphant, what it is to have the angels accompany me through the gates and into the presence of King Emmanuel.
There it is. You have a restricted beginning and then it falls down like an hourglass in the mid-course and then get...
No, no. It is restricted at the beginning, first step. Restricted at the second step. Restricted at the third and the tenth and the ten thousandth step.
It's restricted all along. You have to do something that is restricted at this narrow gate. Christ has made it narrow. He has prescribed it as narrow and there is no power in heaven or on earth that can change its dimension.
Settle it in your heart. Nevertheless, certain is the axiom if I do not breathe I will die. If someone this night were to meet you in the hallway, let's say, play a little game. You lie on the floor.
I'm going to put a pillow over your head, over your face, lie face up and I'm going to sit on it for ten minutes. You would say, okay, after a minute when the lungs begin to burn, you begin to feel light happen down in the air, you weren't having any oxygen, you were about to pass out and in a couple of minutes you might lie there dead, no, you wouldn't allow it. You could take a forty year old kid and he would have a flood of adrenaline that would enable him to push off in a hundred pound bully. A forty pound kid could take a hundred pound bully and somehow wriggle out.
Why? Because he's convinced no egg can give him the life of all his friends. He said, I will not go to heaven. I came on a simple hotel where Jesus Christ lives.
The Nature of the Narrow Gate and Restricted Way
You've got to settle it, just that, clear it, just that, radically, just that, right at it in your own heart. Jesus has joined these things, life, the way, and the gate. I said to my wife this morning, I said, honey, I suppose because I've come here a long time, I want to put a platform up on that platform while I preach. What would you do that for?
I said, I draw, I draw a very narrow path, and I draw the waves that are coming out of the sun, shining like the light that would keep heaven from falling. And then I went back to heaven. Yet if by the eye I gave His will, so that when your own heart, and when the world, and when cheap religion, and
the sacrament of truth,
Addressing Preaching Style and Audience Expectations
and basic observation, I want you to make about the text, and I wish I could have worded it more simply, but I gave you these notes this morning because the best I could do after meditating and working on it this afternoon, still didn't do any better. I want you to know I do work, but I make it simple, and I refuse if I break it down so simply that I butchered the truth. And my task is not to preach so that eight-year-olds who understand everything I say take clear notes,
and I will not be bullied into thinking that. There's a danger in our Reformed Baptist Church, and I want to address it. And the danger is because we trained our children to sit and listen, to see if they're able to take notes. It's a marvel to outsiders how many children sit and tend to listen and take notes in our services.
And I bless God for that. I think we've had our God do something to reestablish it out in our lives. And it is a great thing to be able to do this. I've heard parents communicate this every week.
They say, well, we can't take clear notes, we need to make it worse. Where in the Bible does it say, as a preacher, my primary concern is to speak so that eight-year-olds can understand everything I say? That's not my job, that's your job as parents. Amen.
I'm the shepherd of the flock of God made up primarily of reasonably intelligent adults. And my burden, though I have the children in my heart, that they know it, they know I love them, and I seek to address them in due course and in due proportion, but I will never be bullied into thinking unless my sheds have their words. If you are clear enough for eight-year-olds to all take clear notes, I'm failing. Don't lay that kind of guilt on me, I'm failing.
And I'm warning my brethren over the next few years not to get bullied into that because I see it as an emerging articulation of something that's growing up and percolating in the ranks of our churches and it will be in depth and accurate and solid with the Church. And the Sunday School lesson is very good. Thank you.
Strongly, of all those who are fully in part strongly sometimes using words that eight-year-olds can't understand. I'm sure there were a few eight-year-olds when the Book of Romans was read to the church in London for the first time they'd never sleep to the money Paul's using so many big words I can't follow them. And surely when the Epistle to the Ephesians gave the one sentence that goes on for a whole paragraph verse 3 to 14 you Greek students know you've got to sort that thing out and die in that way. It's not safe.
And Paul was not at all embarrassed to know that the kids were going to be there when the Epistle was read to them in chapter 6 he said, children, what they do happens in the world and this is right. Right? On my biblical grounds though, it's another bully. You know there ain't one bully you've been preparing for the ministry.
But there ain't one bully. And I was just a little excited and burning and looking for a chance to get it out and out and out and straight away this is coming, right here. Let's take it a little closer. It's coming right now.
The Absolute Inseparability and Irreversible Order of Gate, Way, and Life
There we go. The absolute inseparability of the narrow gate of the narrow gate is the absolute inseparability and irreversible order of the narrow gate and it is written there in the book of Acts the absolute inseparability and the irreversible order of the narrow And the restricted way, which we would enter heaven, can be done. In the text, as we've already seen, we have Jesus saying, verse 14,
Now is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads unto life. Life is at the end of the way, and that which issues into that life is the restricted path and the restricted way. And that which brings people into the restricted way is the narrow gate. So you have the gate, the path, and life.
And these things are absolutely inseparable. Wherever one gets through the gate, he's on the way. Anyone who's on the way got through the gate. Yes.
And he who came through the gate is on the way. Well, he's on the way. Enter into the unsubstantialness of life in the place called heaven. These three things are absolutely inseparable.
And their order is irresistible.
The order is irresistible. You cannot truly live the life required of you on the way. Unless you experience what must be experienced as the gate at the gate is what happens at the gate that prepares one to walk on the restricted way. As I hope to demonstrate next week, the way is nothing more or less than the extension into the particulars of life for as long as we live of the issues that are resolved at the gate.
Hmm.
You cannot... You cannot live the life on the restricted way unless you come through the gate.
Likewise, if you say you've come through the gate, you've got a four-volume account of my experience of every day that we've got through the gate that you're on the way. Not that you can write bestseller books about the gate and how I got through it. If you cannot get this way, then you're on the restricted way that you can get through the gate. Nobody ever gets through the gate this way.
No one ever gets through the gate and parks and pitches a tent and then writes books on describing the gate and how I got through it. The purpose of getting through the gate is to get on the way. And the purpose of being on the way is that you might live the way. There is both an acceptability of these things and an irreversible order.
Why the Inseparability Matters: Warning Against False Assurance
I ask you, why make such a big deal? I see it. But I'll tell you why I make such a big deal. I want you to listen very carefully.
Some think that they have entered the gate and that they will end up in life regardless of whether or not they walk in the restricted way. They are really convinced that if you get what you see through the gate is, you convert to it. They are absolutely certain of entering the life, whether or not they ever walk the restricted way. But according to this passage, if the gate is a real experience of converting grace and the way is an ongoing walk of sanctifying grace,
then no one has any right to claim he's come through the narrow gate unless he is found in concrete, specific manifestations of life where he lives it in the restricted way. As I said this morning, there's no fix and match in these realities. You can't choose a narrow gate in a big, broad way, and they might. You can't choose a narrow, constricted way in a big, broad gate.
No, these things are inseparable in the teaching of our Lord Jesus and in all valid Christian experience. What is described here in pictorial language is described in the Bible. Theological language by the Apostle Paul in Romans 6, 22. Look at this verse for a moment, so that I may carry your judgment that I'm not pressing more than the text warrants.
Paul in this chapter demonstrating that all truth, saving faith, unites the sin of Christ. And if we're united to Christ and share in the virtue of his death, burial, and resurrection, and one of the results of that is we with him will die. To the reign of sin and rise with him to the newness of life. Coming to the conclusion of the chapter in which they're opening up that thesis, he says in verse 22, But now, being made, or better rendered, having been made, free from sin and become servants of God.
That's what already happened to you when you got to the gate. Sin's meaning was broken. The service of self and of the world was done away. When radically and fundamentally being made, free from sin and become servants to God.
Having gotten through the narrow gate. In present tense, you're through the sanctification. You are now on this.
You are on that way. And the end was eternal.
Here in non-pictorial language is the same theology of the inseparability and the irreversible order of the gates. The gate, the way, and life, and woe be unto who satisfies your conscience that you have been truly united by faith, and yet, and yet, you do not have it all.
As divinely described in the book of 1 John, as divinely described in the instructive passages of the epistles, and everywhere in the word of God. No, you cannot hope that you come through the gate. No, you cannot hope that you come through the gate. Unless you do.
Marks of Genuine Faith and the Struggle Against Sin
You are genuine. You are concerned. You see, these things are irreversible. You understand that there is not fear.
There is something in this place. You are really inclined to live the life of the ones who are in this place. That's why you're here. You're not alone.
You don't just come Sunday morning to do your thing. And have a marginal commitment to the life of the church and the means of good. You're here, so you're not. And you'll be backed out many of your ways tonight.
But your wife will be here. Your husband will be next to you. Whatever it is that you work out as a pastor. And I believe there are people sitting in this room tonight who are truly trying to live the life of a sickly man.
The way that we consider it our overview of the several lives. You're trying to live by the equal standards of character as the leaders of the evangelicals. You're trying to train your life by the standards of righteousness which is established by the breadth of God's law as expounded by the Lord Jesus in the last chapter. You're trying to live a life in which the eye of the Father is your great concern when you pray and when you deny yourself in religious exercises for the sake of your soul and the souls of others.
You're trying to live a life of a single eye and not be idolatrous to be attached to the things of this life. You're trying to live a life in which you have a history of chronic faith. You're trying to live some fundamental errors of your ethics. Those chronic patterns of faith that can re-screw all the ordinary things of faith.
Preaching. The Lord's faith. Prayer. Pastoral counseling.
Personal pride and devotion. Reading books on mortification. And you don't know it. You've had to say it.
But there are specific things in your life that mark any claim you make that sin to you has been broken in you. Because there is hatred of sin. Or, certainly, of sin. If you're honest, you have to say it as much powerfully now as you ever have, in fact, in your life.
Before you even lay down to death. Your heart has been broken in sin all your life. And it's hard to meditate upon this text. I support the belief that there are people who are desperately trying to live the life of the restricted way.
Challenging False Conversion and Dominion of Sin
And they have to take it. And they are prepared to live the life of a state that gives them to make the tree. And then it gives them to make the tree grow old. And then its truth grows old.
And could it be that some of you, particularly, whose background. And early exposure that has been bathed is in a context where there was no effort to plow up your brain. Or the power to lead with your inner being. With the awareness.
Claim. It's a sin by claim. It's a radical, biblical demand. Is it?
No urge. You need to count it. While you had some kind of an experience that made the semblance of something like conversion. With the passing of the years.
It did us. It made us. We have to say though you made all kinds of change. Those areas that marked you as you stood at the gate.
You were a master. You were a master. You followed before them with faith. You struggled with them constantly.
You were in the seventh cluster. But that they actually exercised worship over you. My Bible says, see we have not exercised worship over you. Our text in Romans 6 says that if we've come to the gate, we've been made free from the dominion of sin.
And we become bond slaves to God. And we are having the statement of reality. From sin to God. Some more fruit than others.
In the life of any individual believer, more fruit at one time than another. I know. You sit on this fitness. It's given due proportion.
In the teaching. But my question is this. What should I get on the TV to do a particular sin on me? To be settled.
God. This grace. You know this. The dynamics.
It's natural. To be quick. To walk in this. They think I understand moments that are powerful.
To train them. To embrace from the heart all of this. They pick up perspectives and desires along with me. Along with motives and dynamics.
So that they actually walk. In the language of Hebrews 12, 14. They actually do the whole piece. You're about to reach.
The Illustration of Ignorance from Pilgrim's Progress
You know that. Any John Bunyan understand this very clearly? You know one of the emphases of Bunyan, it must be very clear. The Christian faith that can hope for the other characters.
You know that. Do you think? He loves his brothers. Getting back to the Buckeye Meadow.
And then you remember. Christian even ended up. One time, he got into this very classic. Bunyan.
He was a realist. But you remember. Whenever they entered the dialogue, the people seemed to be on the way. They were speaking to life.
One of the questions they asked their people of life was this. How can one get up from the dead? Or did you tumble over the wall some other way? Now they would ask themselves.
Why did Bunyan have that difficulty? I wonder why you didn't have to ask the same question I asked you. Go on. In areas that when I say it, they flash into your mind, you almost get embarrassed from me, if I don't say the words that were there on your seat.
It's very rude. Because it's been so long, SO CONSISTENT, THAT THAT SHIT GOES IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE,
IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, IN SPICE, hearts to sing praises to the Lord. They were all so deaf they had witness, and they answered one another without intermission, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. After that,
they shut up the gates, which when I had seen, I wished myself among them, and every night surprised me. Now while I was gazing upon all these things, I turned my head to look back and saw ignorance coming up to the river side. But he soon got over that without half the difficulty which the other two men met with when the river is dead. And passing over the river is dying. And he says, Ignorance, who didn't have the ring of the matter in
him, he had very little trouble in his death. When ignorance was asked, How do you know that you have a silent heart? I must have a reassurance because I have a reassurance. And they quote from the text, He who trusts in his own heart is true. And they were
asking, How do you know that you have a silent heart? And they said, I must have a reassurance because I have a reassurance. And they quote from the text, He who trusts in his own heart is true. And they said, I must have a reassurance because I have a reassurance. And they
rationalized around every text in which they tried to get ignorance to see his true state. He answers with more texts. He's determined to believe it's on the way, those gentlemen. And everything through the narrow gate. But this man, Ignorance, he
got over it without half the difficulty. For it happened that there was in that place one vain hope of carrying him, that with his hope helped him over. He had a vain hope of carrying him through death and through death. He could stand on his best and he died in the cross-roads of the temple. And when he was about to return to the body of the Lord,
God who is the sole guide for his community, came over. He was opening his heart, and he was dancing with the rest of the world. But when that man heard that each of the tombs had fallen and that he had been taken, he saw Santa Hilda come up to the gate. Oh, he came along. Neither did any man meet him, but he seemed urgent. When he was come up to the
gate, he looked up to the writing that was above. And then he bent the knot, supposing that anything was going to be administered to him. He was asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate, Where did you come from? And what would you have? He answered, I have
eaten and drunk with the presence of the King of the 나를. He has called in our streets, There's no Fuß in my hand, They might be very insured, but it's a problem if this wasn't the end of it. Um, then, sir, they have none. He shot me once, and he got me both, and he put me in a big place, and finally, he handed me the book, and handed it over.
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Passages Expounded
Matthew 7:13-14
This passage is the central text, providing the sermon's title and core theme of the narrow gate and restricted way to life.
Texts Expounded
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This is the primary text for the sermon, detailing the narrow gate and restricted way to life versus the wide gate and broad way to destruction.
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Martin uses this verse to provide a theological, non-pictorial explanation of the inseparability of being freed from sin's dominion (the gate) and becoming servants of God (the way), leading to eternal life.