Our beloved Lord warns us of the final pitfall of the false reception of His word. The Lord is fully aware of all the pitfalls that can hinder a proper response to His word. He thus speaks to us to guide us in the paths of righteousness and obedience to His commands. May the Holy Spirit evermore guard us against a dishonest response of indolence and inaction, and may He propel us toward an active practice of the words of our Savior and continuance in His narrow way.

The second pitfall to the narrow gate and way is the dangers of false profession. Jesus anticipates “many” will presumptuously expect Christ to know them, when all the while they did not honor HIm or treat Him as the Lord that He is. The Lord describes the lifestyle of all such people as lawlessness. Yes, true believers are a lawful, not lawless, people. The Lord also points out the devastating expectation of those who falsely professed faith in Him: banishment from God and everything good that comes from Him. May the Lord grant to us all the wisdom to take heed to this warning of our Lord so that we would all be ready for HIm as those readily known by Him when we must face Him on judgment day.

Jesus calls us to choose the narrow gate and the narrow way, the way of obedience to His word. He points out only two gates with their corresponding two ways: the narrow and the wide. The two cannot be more different. They are distinguished by their popularity, their difficulty, and their destination. The Savior calls all to choose the narrow pathway to life. Out of His magnanimous grace, the Lord also warns us of pitfalls that can dissuade us from the right path. In this sermon, we examine the two ways and the first of the three pitfalls, false teaching. May the Lord evermore keep us on the proper path of righteousness.

The disciples of Jesus have an access to God like the access He had with His heavenly father. He shares His birthright of prayer with those who belong to Him. Jesus shows us that in Christian prayer, our Heavenly Father hears, He answers, and He gives according to that which He knows to be truly good and according to His good purposes of His kingdom. May the Lord teach us to pray even as He prayed and may we exercise this right of prayer with earnestness to advance our Father’s purposes on earth. May His kingdom come and His will be done!

Leading others to Christ inevitably means confronting their sin and their need of the Savior. But there are many pitfalls in bringing correction to another sinner. The Lord gives us the wisdom to navigate this difficult task of exposing the darkness of this dying world. He teaches us the principles of reciprocation, double standards, and discernment. May the Lord enable us to be better instruments in His skillful hands to save souls and lead the converted to greater faithfulness and usefulness to Him.

What hinders us from serving the Lord as we should? Jesus pins down the common cause of this compromise: worry. What enables disciples of Christ to serve God heartily and seek His kingdom and righteousness first is our heavenly Father’s infinite love and care for us, His own spiritual sons. Thus, Jesus encourages us to look at nature, know we are not pagans, and see tomorrow as God’s business, not ours, so that our hearts would be unshackled from the worries of the world and be free to serve our heavenly Father as we should.

We are to live the Christian life with heaven in our hearts. We are to leverage all that the Lord has entrusted to us for eternity. We are to do so because our hearts follow our treasures. The Lord in this passage wises us up to the detriment and foolishness of storing up treasures on earth. He also prescribes for us the regimen for a healthy heart that invests toward eternity. May our hearts brim over with the joy and the wonder of heaven and our glorious God (the centerpiece of heaven), and may we, thus, earnestly use all He’s given us to bear much fruit for His name’s sake.

At the core of the Christian faith is a reconciled relationship with God. This means that for all who have truly received Jesus as Savior and Lord, there is a living relationship with God as their heavenly Father. Jesus addresses the hypocrisy of His day that revealed the tragic absence of this crucial core of Christian spirituality which the Jews of His day lacked. May the Holy Spirit keep us from the same hypocrisy and instead enable us to be a church of the children of God who know to connect with our heavenly Father in a true spiritual relationship with Him through Christ.