Read Along
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used with permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Two men build two houses. Jesus never says what either house looked like. He doesn’t mention the walls or the roof. He says both men heard the same words, and both men built. And then the rain came.
One house stood. The other fell with a great crash. And that crash is the last thing Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount.
The sermon that opened with “Blessed” ends with a house falling down. Why would Jesus end there?
This is episode twelve of twelve, the last one in our series on the Sermon on the Mount. Last time, Jesus gave the Golden Rule. This time, Matthew seven, verses thirteen to twenty-nine. Almost everything in this last stretch comes in pairs. Two gates. Two trees. Two kinds of people who call Jesus “Lord.” Two builders. And then a crowd that can’t get over what they’ve just heard. One question carries it all: what choice does the whole sermon end on?
Start with the gates. “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Think of a city gate. A wide one lets the whole crowd stream through without thinking. A small one you have to look for, and walk through on purpose.
The people listening had heard this kind of choice before.
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