First Mennonite Church
October 5, 2025
There Are Only Two Options
Text: Matthew 7:13-29
As Jesus closed his discourse here in Matthew, he made three urgent calls and gave telltale signs of true prophets and true discipleship. The three urgent calls are:
- Enter through the narrow gate.
- Watch out for false prophets.
- Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.
His first call was to enter the narrow gate. With this closing first call, Jesus highlighted to his audience that there are only two options in life. There are only two ways to choose from which lead to two different eternal outcomes. The narrow gate which he urged his listeners to choose is certainly not an easy one to take. It requires a wholehearted decision to follow. It is the one he described in the Beatitudes and their corresponding demands. The alternative is a broad gate in which many enter. However, this gate only leads to destruction and complete loss. This means, every man and woman only have two options, two gates to choose from, and two possible destinies depending on their choice.
Oftentimes we hear that all roads lead to Rome and that all religions lead to God. Jesus tells us, “No, there are only two gates, but only one leads to eternal life.” You see, religion, in the general sense, is what man—humanity devices in its attempt to get to God. Jesus says, that following him–the only way, is the way God designed for us to reach him. In the gospel according to John, Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved (10:7,9).
The second call Jesus made was: Watch out for false prophets.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus was followed by large crowds. Everywhere he went, people followed him and in one instance we are told that when the crowd learned where he was going to, they beat him arriving there first. At this, Matthew 14 says, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” These people were spiritually hungry and longing for guidance and care. Therefore, at the appearance of Jesus, the multitudes found in him something they had not seen nor heard elsewhere before. Jesus’ words, teaching the crowds with authority and not like the experts of the law, and his deeds of mercy and power gave testimony of the authenticity of being God’s messenger.
Jesus knew how vulnerable the crowd was to follow just anyone with charisma. In their hunger for something new or enticing, this crowd was an easy prey. Therefore, at the end of this section in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus gave some clear warnings on how to distinguish the authentic from the false prophet. Here in this section, he not only described the difference between the true and false disciple, but also about the severe consequences there are.
So, at the closing of Jesus’ discourse, he warned, “Be ware of false prophets.” These, Jesus said, come clothed like sheep but are in fact ravenous wolves. About this, history has given us more examples than we can keep count of. Just recently there were the cases of two churches where the leaders were just taking advantage of the church members. In one, church leaders targeted people who are receiving government money for education and enrolling them in fictitious education programs they designed and pressured church members to enroll in these programs just to take their money. In the other case, the pastor and his associates devised a Ponzi scheme, thus defrauding members from various churches. But there are other types of false prophets, those who proclaim a gospel of their own making and not the one Jesus proclaimed. Last week I was reading about a prominent church leader who is calling for women disenfranchisement and to become subservient to men. He said that just as men “conquer, colonize, and plant” in other lands, so men do with their wives. It is very alarming the level of distortion the gospel of Jesus Christ has suffered and continues to suffer today.
In light of the danger of falling prey to these false prophets, Jesus tells his followers to look at the type of fruit these prophets produce. In Matthew’s gospel, good fruit is the metaphor for deeds pleasing God and the result of true conversion (3:8-10, 12:33, 13; 21).
We should remember that by the time Matthew wrote his gospel (80-85AD) there were Christian communities everywhere. Therefore, this warning about false prophets was a serious problem even at the early stage of the Christian church. However, the litmus test for the authenticity of a prophet is not his/her charisma, eloquence, or display of miraculous powers, nor level of influence, but a righteous life. It does not matter what type of garb they wear or by what title they call themselves. It does not matter how large a following they have or not. True and authentic discipleship and ministerial identity is manifested by integrity, kindness, and humility, which are the very hallmark of Jesus Christ. This is true not only for prophets or pastors, but for every one who claims to be a follower of Jesus.
Here, again, there are only two possibilities of fruit bearing trees: the good tree, bearing good fruit and the bad tree producing bad fruit. The type of fruit a tree bears tells what kind of a tree it is.
Charles Spurgeon said, “Holiness is the visible side of salvation.”
The third call of Jesus sounds more like a warning: “Not everyone who calls me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. . . Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
In this quarter’s first lesson for our Sunday school there is a little story of a pastor who was attending the life celebration for one of his church members. An older relative of the deceased had flown from abroad to attend the service. As the preacher was making his way among the attendees, this lady saw the preacher coming and motioned that he comes and sits by her. The preacher was expecting to hear some tearful story or a somber reflection about the occasion. But to the surprise of the preacher, the lady said, “Preacher, I want to tell you a joke, and it is a clean one. I know my departed brother would approve.” “Uh, Ok. Sure!” the preacher replied. She said, “A preacher and a bus driver die and arrive at the pearly gates at the entrance of heaven. There, they meet Saint Peter. The bus driver, who had been driving all his adult life, comes to Peter and states his name and Peter responds, ‘Yes, yes; we know you very well. Come on in and have a seat at the banquet feast with all the saints.’ “The preacher comes up next and states his name, and Peter says, “I am sorry, but you will not be allowed to come in.’ The preacher, in frustration, says, ‘I don’t get it! I saw that you just let in a bus driver before me. Here I am, and I have been preaching for the past 30 years and striving to bring people to Jesus! Why would you turn me away and not him? Saint Peter responded, “Well, every time you preached, people went to sleep. Every time he drove the bus, people prayed.”
Here, Jesus says many will not enter the heavenly kingdom or find eternal life either because they chose the wide gate that leads to death and destruction. Many will not enter the kingdom because the fruit they produced was rotten. Many will not see eternal life because they were content only with hearing but not doing what the Lord says. Many will come to the tragic, but late realization, that everything they built during their life was on the sand.
So, what must we do?
Let us choose the narrow gate. It’s difficult, challenging, and it’s a gate into which we cannot go through with baggage, but a clean heart before God.
Let us produce fruit worthy of the Lord’s storeroom. Therefore, as the Apostle Paul commands, “Let us Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and (everything that) pleases the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8-10).
Let us listen to what the Lord says, but most importantly, let us do as he says. Let us build on him who is the Rock. It is hard work, but it’s the only way we will enter his kingdom and into eternal life.
“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock,” says the Lord. Amen!
Pastor Romero