Text: Matthew 7:13–27, Part II
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé

Broad & Narrow, Sand & Stone

When we last opened the gospel of Matthew together, we took up Part I of Matthew 7:13–27. So this morning, we will wrap up our look at that section with Part II. Let’s begin by getting the text in front of us to refresh our memories, then I’ll recap what we saw in Part I before continue on.

Look with me, if you would, at Matthew 7:13. This is the Word of the Living God:

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

-Matthew 7:13–27

Thus ends the reading of God’s Word; may he write it on our hearts by faith.

Three Issues

In Part I of our time in this text, I pointed out three issues to understand, believe, and obey in the words of the Lord to us in this section:

First, we needed to understand the glory and audacity of this hard saying of Jesus—that there are only two ways, the wide or the narrow. That there are only two foundations to build on, sand or stone. That you can have him and have life, or you can have anything else and death. So we saw that the first and most obvious application of Jesus’ words to us here are plain: By grace and through faith, put one foot in front of the other on the narrow path. Trust wholly in Christ. 

There is only one way to life, and he is it. Don’t trust in your works. Don’t be lulled by the deceitfulness of sin into wandering from that hope to trust in any other. We sing “On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.” Don’t be seduced by the shouted lies of the world, that their wide and easy way is the way to life and joy; it is not. Their end is only death. So heed that again now. Believe that again now. 

Second, we needed to heed the various warnings that he issues as we face this chasm, this antithesis, that cuts through all of reality. There are not only two ways to choose between—the broad and the narrow—and two foundations you could build on—the sand and the stone—there are also two great dangers to be warned of. We will pick back up at this point in a moment, which is where we left off.

But finally (and we did’t get to this part at all), we need to see how the Lord’s instruction in this section of the sermon has particular relevance and application for the specific audience in front of him and the moment in God’s story of redemption that he stands in as he gives this instruction. And seeing this will help us resolve what might at first glance appear to be a tension between his words here and the confident declarations of many other passages in the Scriptures—including some of Jesus’ own declarations in the very next chapter of Matthew!

Two Great Dangers

So let’s pick back up where we left off, right in the middle of that second point. The Lord has set before us two ways for all of life, two ways that are fundamentally opposed to one another: The broad way to destruction, or the narrow way to life; the foundation of sand or of stone. And between verses 15 and 23, he warned us of two great dangers. We named them in Part I.

The first danger is the danger of being misled by false prophets—wolves in sheep’s clothing, who would try to lure you away from the narrow way to life and onto the broad road to destruction. The second danger is the danger of being a false convert—of falsely professing to belong to Christ, only to discover on the last day that he did not know you. 

And in Part I, I hinted at the testing point of both of these great dangers. Let me expand on them in more detail now.

The Testing Point

Jesus gives a decisive litmus test that marks the broad way, the false prophet, the false convert, and even the one who builds on sand rather than stone: It’s their works. Their fruit.

The wolf in sheep’s clothing is known, how? By his fruit. By his works and what his works produce. He will say one thing, but then do another. Even if his words are true—and some of them will be!—you will know that he is not true, not a true man, by the fruit his life and works and words bear. 

Same with the false convert. They will point to their works—great works of religious zeal, even—but the Lord will point back at their true works and say, “I never knew you. Your works proved that. You were a worker of lawlessness.”

Now, there are two truths here that we need cling to, believe in, and press our lives around—two truths that are often dressed up as enemies in the modern church and made to fight. But they won’t, because they are friends, not enemies. 

The first truth is that we are justified by grace alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone. In the Schmalkaldic Articles, written in 1536 to essentially boil down the Protestant case against Roman Catholicism to its essence, Martin Luther called this doctrine the “first and chief article.” By that, he meant that if you get it wrong, you get it all wrong. He later called justification by faith the article by which the Church will stand or fall.

This is true. You are not—indeed, cannot be—saved by your good works. You were dead, and only the righteous life, substitutionary death, plundering descent into the grave, and victorious resurrection of Christ can save you. You are saved by the works of Christ credited to you by faith, saved because he bore the record of your debt on the cross, and that alone. Your works do not add to your justification.

But justification—the legal declaration by a holy God that you are clean, justified to stand before him because of that great exchange of the cross—is only a part of salvation. Salvation includes every aspect of the story—from your corruption in sin, to your new birth in Christ, to your sanctification by his grace, to your own future resurrection to glory, to your eternal life with God.

So the second truth is that nobody is justified who will not then be sanctified. It’s an impossibility. And that is what Jesus is talking about in this sermon. In our section today, Jesus is not speaking primarily about justification, but about the fruit of justification, the fruit of new birth—our sanctification. And this is the testing point of all of the examples he gives in this section:

We see it in verse 14, that the way to life is hard, while the way to destruction is easy. Meaning it really is hard to live out the righteousness of the Kingdom of God in a world that hates God! 

You all know that, right? It’s hard to live with sexual purity in our world, right? It’s hard not to love money, lust after spandexed bottoms parading around in public. It’s hard not to live in frustration and anxiety and fear of man. It’s hard not give in to the foolish pride and arrogance of the flesh.

We see it verses 15–20, that what marks false prophets—who pretend to be sheep, but who really hide fangs and claws under that sheep’s wool—is bad fruit. Their works, their fruit, betray that they are thornbushes, not grapevines. They are diseased trees, not healthy trees.

We see it with the false converts in verses 21–23, where Jesus says,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

-Matthew 7:21–23

Notice to the contrast between two kinds of works, here: On the one hand, the false converts Jesus describes boast of great deeds. They have prophesied and cast out demons, and done might works. But Jesus says to depart from him, because he never knew them. How do we know that he never knew them? Because he calls them workers of lawlessness.

They put many ostentatious “works” on display, but those were just a religious smokescreen for lives that bore thistles and diseased fruit. They outwardly looked like powerful men of God, but in the weighty matters of the law, they were lawless men. Think here about a guy like Kenneth Copeland. He would boast of casting out demons, of prophesying in Christ’s name, but he is actually a charlatan who robs widows houses in the name of Jesus.

We see this same contrast in verses 24–27, with the two builders. What does Jesus say marks the one who built his house on the rock? The one whose house stands hears his words and does them. The one whose house falls hears his words and does not do them.

See? Beginning to end, Jesus is talking about fruit.

And so often, the church today ties itself in theological knots trying not to see this kind of talk in the Bible. We talk about gospel centrality and the law/gospel distinction, and so often do everything we can to avoid applying the text and calling for fruit, for obedience to the words of Christ, lest we prove to be the foolish builder. But such words are pervasive in the Bible! And more, we need not fear these words; we need not fear the call for fruit! Why not? Because it’s God who works in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Two truths, then, for us to hold together: We are are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Amen. No hope without it. And this salvation is so radical that it cannot happen without producing the fruit of good works any more than the blind man whom Jesus healed could be healed and still not see.

A Handful of Sand? Or All the Shores?

Now, the last thing we need to do is to see how the Lord’s instruction in this section of the sermon has particular relevance and application for the specific audience in front of him and the moment in God’s story of redemption that he stands in as he gives this instruction. 

And seeing this will help us resolve what might at first glance appear to be a tension between his words here and the confident declarations of many other passages in the Scriptures—including some of Jesus’ own declarations in the very next chapter of Matthew!

Few Will Find It?

Here’s the tension: Jesus seems to be saying that very few will be saved in the end, right? He says that the way to life is narrow, and few will find it. And what many have done with this passage is to conclude that there will be a tiny, tiny percentage of people saved in the end. 

This kind of thinking leads to my least favorite kind of Calvinism, by the way, and one of the reasons I believe many balk at the idea of a God who sovereignly elects, who sovereignly chooses to save whom he will save, a potter who is free to make of the same lump of clay some vessels for honorable use, and some for dishonorable.

I’ve met these guys. It’s like the only two passages they have memorized are this one and Romans 9, and they talk as if on the last day, it will be them and about 8 of their friends in the Kingdom of God, and they’re not really sure about 4 of those friends. 

But that’s just not how the Bible talks, and therein lies what may be felt as a tension here between Jesus’ teaching in this section and huge swathes of both the Old and New Testament.

But What About The Stars?

You might read this passage and ask: What about Revelation 7? What about Revelation 7:9–10? What about that “…great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”?

And what about Abraham? What about those great promises to the father of faith—that his descendants would be as the stars of the sky and the sand of the seaside? What about the sky’s stars and seaside’s sand—especially once you read Galatians and discover that the true sons of Abraham aren’t those of DNA, but of faith? That we part of the fulfillment of that promise?

What about the Psalms? What about Psalm 22:27, that:“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you”?

Or Psalm 72, that the Lord Jesus will have dominion from sea to sea and from the great river to the ends of the earth, that the remotest regions of the earth will be his Kingdom?

And what about Daniel? What about Daniel’s vision of the stone that topples the governments of the world and grows into a world-swallowing mountain? 

What about Isaiah? What about Isaiah 2, where the prophet tells us that the nations will stream to that mountain for instruction from the King?

And what about the Lord? What about his claim that the world, that this age, was like a wheat field—that even though the weeds will grow up alongside the wheat, that it will still be a wheat field, not a weed field? 

What about the Kingdom that is like leaven in a lump of dough, spreading throughout the lump and transforming it as it does so? What about the Kingdom that is like an infinitesimal seed that fell to the ground in the first century and died, only to come up a tree which will swallow the world? 

I mean, come on! What about Matthew 8:11, not one chapter after this one, where Jesus says that “…many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven”?

Resolution: Israel at a Crossroads

There’s a tension, here. Is it a few, or is it the sands of the seasides and the stars of the sky? 

Understanding the context in which Jesus is speaking in the sermon on the mount will help us see that there is no real tension between these things, that the Lord isn’t limiting his Kingdom to only a tiny, tiny handful of saved in the end. He is not here overthrowing the expectation of the whole Bible—Old and New Testaments—that the Lord will save a vast and uncountable number of people by the time he is done with history.

This sermon comes, Jesus comes, at a decisive moment in Israel’s history, one that has been foreshadowed many times before in their story. It is a moment in which Israel—this nation created to foreshadow and bring forth the Messiah and his Kingdom—faces a crossroads: Will you obey God, or will you be judged and go into exile? Will you take the broad way, or the narrow?

They faced this in Jeremiah’s day. They faced it many times. And they chose, over and over again, to have their sin. So it will be with Israel in the first century.

Jesus comes, and he lays before Israel the same two ways that are set before us, even now, by his words: If you want to live, come to me. It is a hard way. You will have to renounce all your cherished idols. You will have to lay down your Pharisaical, external religion—religion that neglects the weightier matters of the law even as it makes a show of obeying the tiniest particles of the law. You will have to lay down your trust in chariots and horses and Herods. 

But if you do, if you lay it down and receive me as your Temple, your King, your Prophet, your Priest, your Lamb—then you will have life. But the broad way, the seductively easy way, is also before you. Reject me and die. Reject me and be destroyed.

Did they receive him? No. In John 1:11, the Apostle tells us that “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”

And even a chapter later, in Matthew 8:11–12, “I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The truth is, only a scattered handful, a tiny remnant of the genetic sons of Abraham would follow their Lord, receive their Messiah in the first century. Paul lamented this very fact in Romans 9–11. The Jews became the greatest enemies of God there were.

They had made the mistake of getting the door wrong. They thought the door to the sheepfold was ethnic descent from Abraham. They thought you were on the narrow way by birth in Abraham’s line. They thought the fatherhood of Abraham would save them. But by rejecting Christ, they showed that they were not sons of Abraham, but rather sons of the devil!

And so the ways Jesus lays out before this crowd are immediately pressing: Within a single generation, by 70 AD, most of Israel would take the broad way of rejecting their Lord, and subsequently find themselves slaughtered with the destruction of their city. 

They would find that their great big stone house—the Temple itself—wasn’t a sure foundation for their faith, that it might as well have been build on sand. And so Jesus’ warning here that their house would not stand becomes a prophecy by Matthew 24, and that prophecy comes to pass within a generation in 70 AD. Their house topples; their house is left to them desolate. And only a few would find the narrow road to life.

But glory of glories—the Gentiles would pour in through that doorway, through Christ. And they would find in the process that they, who were far off, had been brought near. They would find that they, who were sons of fallen Adam, had become true sons of Abraham the only way you ever really could: By faith in Abraham’s God, by a faith like Abraham’s own faith. 

And so the Revelation 7 vision would be a true vision: In this age, the age in which we live now, Christ’s Kingdom would be a world-swallowing one. He would save—he will and he is saving, in fact!—a great multitude from every tribe and nation and people.

The Kingdom’s door is narrow. His own people didn’t find it, not but a few. But it is a narrow door, opened wide. And the Lord would bring in many sheep from other folds into his great, world sheepfold.

And by the end, we are even taught to expect that the ethnic sons of Abraham will turn, en masse, to their Lord. Read Romans 11 and you’ll see: All Israel will be saved, in the words of Paul. But that’s a sermon for another day.

Trust Like Abraham Did

So here’s the conclusion; here’s what I’ll leave you with: Trust like Abraham did, and you will be his son. The door to the narrow way, the stone to build on, it’s Christ. Hear and obey him by grace and through faith. Be washed of your sins, be clean in the cleansing blood of Christ.

Don’t continue in faithless lawlessness. If you are caught in sin—whether you are proud and arrogant, lustful and sexually immoral, hard and unforgiving, greedy and selfish, whatever it may be—come to the Lord. 

Be cleansed in the water and the blood. Be free from that slavery. Be renewed after the image of the Lord. You have nothing to earn, nothing to prove: He has done it all. You need only come.

And so come.
Come and welcome to Jesus Christ.