The Narrow Way
Matt. 7:13-14
13. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
14. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
In High School I studied Robert Frost’s poem “A Road Less Traveled” It wrote:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood. And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay, In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
We talked about the poem in English class referring, of course, to more than a walk in the wood. Poems are meant to discuss life. Some choose paths that the crowds do not choose. It makes a difference. In fact, following the crowd in most cases generally proves disappointing, yet, we are all deeply affected by other people and what they think of us.
The Lord taught about the broad and narrow gates. The narrow gate being the road less traveled and the broad gate being the way most people go. It makes all the difference when we discuss important an issue as where we will spend eternity. It is important to know what Jesus says.
Recently I heard some preacher talk about salvation by death. What he meant was that more often than not he would hear everyone was going to heaven. Every funeral he went to assure the grieving that their loved one awaits them in heaven and has gone to a better place. The criteria for heaven was just to die. This is a far different teaching that what we will look at this week.
