Plot Lines: The Golden Rule of the Christian Life - 02.10.13
Matthew 7:12-14 NIV
Introduction: If you become a reader you’ll quickly discover that a great plot makes for a great book. A lousy plot makes for a lousy book. What is plot? It’s the sequence of events in the story combined with the motivation for why the characters do what they do. Plot is both the WHAT and the WHY!
When it comes to writing my story of my Christian life, the plot is also crucial. It’s WHAT I do as a Christ-follower combined with WHY I do it. A great plot leads to a great Christian story. Lousy plot, lousy story. The question we want to answer today is this: What makes for a great plot in my Christian life? To answer that we go to the pinnacle of Jesus’ teaching in his Sermon on the Mount.
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. 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.” Matthew 7:12-14 ESV
This is the plot of the great Christian story: FIND the narrow gate, ENTER through the narrow gate, and WALK the narrow road.
I. ___FIND___ the narrow gate.
“Only a few find it.” Matthew 7:14b ESV
The Christ-follower’s plot line begins with searching, seeking. This is not something that is easily found. In fact, Jesus tells us that there are few who find it. This doesn’t mean that Christianity is exclusive. It doesn’t mean that we who call ourselves Christian should be full of ourselves or not caring about other people. In fact, we’ll soon see it’s exactly the opposite. It does mean that we never come across the way to Christ accidentally or casually. It always starts off with an intention, deliberate effort to learn WHO God is and WHO I am in relationship to HIM. Eugene Petersen puts it this way:
“The way to life - to God! - is vigorous and requires total attention.” Matthew 7:14 The Message
Jesus teaches that there are two paths. One leads to life, the other to ruin. The one leading to ruin doesn’t take much searching or much sacrifice and many - MOST - are on this journey. The journey to life is narrow, not easy to find, and sometimes it takes the long way. There are no shortcuts. Again, from The MESSAGE:
“Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do.” Matthew 7:13 The Message
As your pastor and your preacher, there are two important points I want to make about this FINDing the narrow gate. (1) The first is that if you are here and haven’t decided yet to follow Jesus, but are honestly searching for spiritual truth. You are looking for THE WAY... then you are most welcome here! This is what we want CR to be about: helping spiritual travelers find the narrow gate of Christ. Be diligent about your search. Seek with all your heart. I’m convinced as both a pastor and Christ-follower that if you look for God, you will find him. Believe it or not He is looking for you just as diligently, just as intently, even more so, than you are looking for Him. In another part of the Bible Jesus says:
“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” Revelation 3:20 NLT
(2) The 2nd thing about FIND is to those who are part of CR, who have made the commitment to Christ, and who have already been on their journey, have entered through the gate... DON’T ever forget the importance of the FIND. We must be a church that welcomes the seeker, the searcher. We must always be a church that allows people to discover Christ on their own. We can point the way. We can assist. But each person discovers Christ on his own. We cannot force it. And we should never judge the journey another person is taking toward Christ. His or her journey may be different than yours. His or her FIND may not look like yours. And that’s ok. Maybe your FIND was at an altar. Or maybe at the knee of a mother or father. Or maybe through the prayers and counseling of a good friend. Or maybe the result of a crisis. Celebrate the FIND... not the methodology! Give room for people who haven’t yet become convinced like you already are. God allows each of us to FIND Him if we diligently search. Allow someone else to have the same joy of discover in their FIND as you had in yours, even if it’s different!
II. ___ENTER___ the narrow gate.
“Enter by the narrow gate.” Matthew 7:13 ESV
Jesus taught that the gate was narrow. We might think of it as more like a turn-style. It is not something that you can go through and take everything with you at the same time. The idea of “narrow” is that you have to turn sideways to get through. There’s room for you but just barely. You have to leave a lot of your baggage behind in order to get through. It’s like passing your hand through a narrow opening. There’s room for your hand, but not for your fist holding on to anything. You must first let go of what you’re holding onto in order for your hand to fit through. What are the things you must release?
4 Things I Have to Release to Fit Through the Gate:
- Self - ___CONFIDENCE___. I give up thinking that I can handle anything and everything on my own. I come to a point where I recognize that ultimately I disappoint myself. I realize that I need help to get through the gate and to live the life that I was designed to live. “You were made by God and for God and until you understand that, life will never make sense.” Rick Warren
- Self - ___ACHIEVEMENT___. God wants us to achieve great things in life. In fact He designed us to achieve great things. But we do this with Him and through His power and working through us. We have to jettison the human idea of accomplishment by ourselves without the help of God and others.
- Self - ___RIGHTEOUSNESS___. We must give up the idea of being right on our own. The Bible teaches that all of us have failed and that none of us, apart from Christ, are right enough, true enough, or good enough to justify our existence.
- Self - ___SATISFACTION___. We finally let go of being satisfied with our own confidence, achievement, and righteousness. We realize there is more to our life than what we can bring to it ourselves. We finally give up everything that is selfish about ourselves. We seek selfLESSness, but become frustrated that we can never truly be selfless. At our core we are selfish. And so we seek One who can help us enter the selfless “plot”.
Jesus: “Yes, I am the gate. Those who come in through me will be saved.” John 10:9 NLT
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12 NIV
III. ___WALK___ the narrow road.
“Narrow the road that leads to life.” Matthew 7:14b NIV
We must continue this path for the rest of our lives. For the Christian, this is where the focus of life must be, where the plot of our life story is found. We must FIND and ENTER through the narrow gate, but then we must continue to WALK the narrow road. For too many Christians it would seem like the focus is entirely upon the finding and the entering, as if that were the end of the story. That is only the beginning! We find our entire purpose in God and in what He has created for us to do!
“For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, ... everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.” Colossians 1:16 The Message
“We are God’s Masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” Ephesians 2:10 NLT
Sometimes we have the mistaken belief that our only purpose is to get saved. If that were the case then upon our making our commitment to Christ, He would immediately take us to Heaven. Clearly we are all still here. Why? So we can do the good things He planned for us.
Here is the question we must ask: How do we know what those good things are? We come back to Jesus’ teaching in his master sermon. What we know as the “Golden Rule,” but what can only be accomplished once we have both FOUND and ENTERED the narrow gate.
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12 ESV
Some say that this Golden Rule is universal and is a part of all religions. This is not so. Most have this rule in the negative: “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you.” But Jesus taught it in the affirmative. The positive version to go out and do for others what you’d want others to do for you!
It’s no accident that the golden rule comes right before the teaching about the narrow gate and road. Because living this kind of life is something that can only be done by totally selfless people. And there is no such thing apart from Christ, apart from God in our lives. It is maybe something that we would like to become, but without Jesus it is impossible.
Conclusion: We’ve held off the communion service until the end of our worship time today. Before we take communion together, I’d like you to reflect on the “plot” of your life story. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Consider 3 parts of talk today: FIND, ENTER, WALK. Where are you at today? Are you in the FINDING mode? That’s totally wonderful and I hope that you’ll continue your search with great diligence. I also want you to know that you are welcome to hang out here at CR as long as you’d like, to search out the claims of Christ, to see if they are true.
Maybe some of you are ready to ENTER. Maybe even you’ve already committed your life to Christ, but you’re finding that you’re holding on to self in too many ways... that you need to let go of self-confidence, self-achievement, self-righteousness, and self-satisfaction.
Perhaps you’re WALKing the narrow road, but need to focus more on the next twist or turn. How often are you stopping on your journey and thinking through the implications of the Golden Rule? How much are you relying on the power of God’s Spirit to do in you what you cannot?
Let’s pray. Play “Narrow Road” by Jared Anderson. Communion.
