Prayer: Lord, we worship You for Your recovery. We remember, Lord, that this is not our recovery but Yours. How we thank You for the past. Until today we have enjoyed Your rich presence all the time that has made up for our weakness and our shortcomings. Lord, we have fully experienced and realize that we are nothing. Apart from You we can do nothing and have nothing. Lord, we need You. We need Your presence all the time with Your rich mercy and Your abundant blessing. Lord, thank You. It has been Your mercy with Your blessing that has brought us through all the time. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and even year after year, Your mercy has been our strengthening and our trust. Lord, we still ask for Your mercy, for Your blessing, for Your presence, for Your anointing, for Your Spirit, and for Your word. Thank You, Lord. Amen.
In this message we want to fellowship about the narrow gate and the constricted way. In Matthew 7:13-14 the Lord said, “Enter in through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter through it. Because narrow is the gate and constricted is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it.” The human thought is that we first walk the way and then enter through the gate. But the divine way, God’s way, is to enter in through the gate and then walk on the way.
This word is in the Lord’s decree of the kingdom’s constitution recorded in Matthew 5-7. Nearly all the Christian teachers refer to this as “the sermon on the mount.” But I do not like the word sermon. The Lord was not a professor, giving the people a sermon or a lecture. He is the King. The New Testament opens by presenting to us the kingdom. It is not just the kingdom of God but the kingdom of the heavens.
After a long period of time in the Old Testament through thirty-nine books, the New Testament came to present us the first item on the heart of God. This first item is the kingdom, not just the kingdom of God but the kingdom of the heavens. Regretfully, many Christian teachers do not know how to discern between these two aspects of the kingdom. The first aspect of the kingdom is the kingdom of God. That is somewhat general. But the second aspect is the kingdom of the heavens. This is neglected and nearly missed by most Bible teachers. If you go to them and ask them what the difference is between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the heavens, they will say that they are the same. But if you know the book of Matthew, you can see that Matthew stresses the aspect of the kingdom of the heavens to the uttermost. Kingdom of the heavens is a term used exclusively by Matthew, indicating that the kingdom of the heavens differs from the kingdom of God. Matthew mentions the kingdom of God only four times (12:28; 19:24; 21:31, 43). But all the way through the twenty-eight chapters of Matthew, the kingdom of the heavens is mentioned repeatedly (see note 34 on Matthew 5:3 in the Recovery Version for the denotation of the kingdom of the heavens).
The four Gospels present to us a Savior of four sides. He is a “square” Savior. The New Jerusalem is not round but square (Rev. 21:16), and our Savior is also square. If you are a “round” man, you are crafty. We all need to be square like our Savior. Even the universe has four directions: north, south, east, and west. Christ has only four sides. In Matthew He is the King; in Mark He is the Slave; in Luke He is the Man; and in John He is God.
Matthew presents to us the first aspect of Christ. Chapters one through four of Matthew are an introduction. After this introduction the King came. He went to the mountain and in chapters five through seven gave the decree of the constitution of the kingdom which He was going to establish. Matthew 7:13-14 is a little part of this constitution decreed by our King in His kingdom.
Some of us may wonder why I am sharing this in our vital group training. We need to see that the decree of the kingdom’s constitution is altogether a matter of regulating God’s people’s life and work. When I use the word life, I mean living, and when I use the word work, I mean working. I am not referring to just our life within but to our living without, our daily living. God’s people’s living and working should be something organic according to the divine regulations fulfilling the spiritual requests. This is fully revealed in the decree of our King in His kingdom’s constitution.
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