The One Sermon That Exposes Every Weak Man — Sermon on the Mount

[00:00:08]There are two gates at the end of every road that a man walks, and he does not get to build a third.

[00:00:15]He does not get to vote them away.

[00:00:17]He does not get to wish them into a single wider door that lets every traveler through with his baggage and his idols and his unrepented years.

[00:00:27]There are two.

[00:00:28]One is wide and the way that runs to it is broad, and the gate is hung so generous that a man may walk through it carrying everything he loves and never once turn sideways to fit.

[00:00:40]The other is narrow.

[00:00:42]The way to it is hard.

[00:00:44]And the master said said it with the same mouth that spoke the worlds into being, "Few there be that find it."

[00:00:53]Few.

[00:00:54]Hear the weight in that word.

[00:00:56]Not most. Not the majority.

[00:01:00]Not the comfortable consensus of the age you happen to be born into.

[00:01:04]Few.

[00:01:06]The broad road is crowded because the broad road costs nothing at the entrance. It only collects its toll at the end, and the toll at the end is everything.

[00:01:16]The narrow road is empty because the narrow road collects its toll at the gate.

[00:01:21]It asks for the baggage before it lets you through.

[00:01:25]It asks for the idols at the threshold.

[00:01:27]It asks for the man you used to be.

[00:01:30]And it does not negotiate the fee.

[00:01:33]And this is the prophecy that hangs over your one and only life, that the crowd is not a compass, that the multitude is not a map, that the great moving river of humanity flowing wide and easy and laughing down the Broadway is not flowing toward the city.

[00:01:49]It is flowing toward the cliff.

[00:01:52]And Christ, standing at the fork with the the of eternity in his garments, points not at the river, but at the thin, hard path climbing away from it into the rock.

[00:02:03]And he says, in the only voice that has ever raised the dead, "Enter.

[00:02:09]Enter ye in at the strait gate."

[00:02:11]You stand at that fork now.

[00:02:14]The wind is already moving. The crowd is already pulling.

[00:02:18]Will you press through the narrow gate or drift with the wide and easy many?

[00:02:24]That is the question the whole of heaven leans down to hear you answer.

[00:02:28]And the question does not wait politely.

[00:02:31]The road is dividing under your feet as you breathe.

[00:02:35]Every choice you have ever made has been a step toward one gate or the other. And every choice you will make from this hour forward is the same.

[00:02:44]There is no standing still at the fork.

[00:02:47]To stand still at the fork is to be carried by the current.

[00:02:51]And the current runs wide.

[00:02:53]The man who refuses to climb is already descending.

[00:02:57]The man who will not choose the narrow has already chosen the broad.

[00:03:01]Neutrality is the broad road wearing a mask.

[00:03:05]Do not be deceived by the width of a thing.

[00:03:08]The world has always mistaken width for truth.

[00:03:11]The wide road looks like wisdom.

[00:03:14]It is paved with the agreement of millions.

[00:03:17]It is lined with the applause of the age. It has signposts written in the language everyone speaks and rest houses at comfortable intervals and no hill steep enough to make a man sweat.

[00:03:29]And it ends.

[00:03:31]Jesus said it plainly and prophets do not flinch from the end of a sentence.

[00:03:35]It ends in destruction.

[00:03:37]Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be which go in there at.

[00:03:43]The crowd is not safety.

[00:03:45]The crowd has never been safety.

[00:03:48]The crowd at the foot of Sinai built a calf while Moses was on the mountain.

[00:03:53]The crowd in the city cried, "Crucify him."

[00:03:57]while a thief was set free.

[00:04:00]The crowd is going somewhere and the somewhere is not the city of God.

[00:04:06]So, set your face away from the river.

[00:04:08]Set it toward the rock.

[00:04:10]And as you climb, beware the voices that line the narrow way pretending to belong to it.

[00:04:17]For Christ gave a second warning and it is sharper than the first.

[00:04:22]"Beware of false prophets." He said.

[00:04:25]"Which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

[00:04:31]Here the architecture of that deception.

[00:04:34]They do not come dressed as wolves.

[00:04:36]A wolf dressed as a wolf would frighten no one off the path.

[00:04:41]They come dressed as sheep.

[00:04:43]They come speaking the language of the narrow way while walking the broad one.

[00:04:48]They come with the vocabulary of heaven and the appetite of hell.

[00:04:53]They preach a gate so wide it is no gate at all.

[00:04:56]A cross with no weight. A kingdom with no king.

[00:05:00]A grace that asks for nothing because it was never grace at all, but permission dressed in borrowed robes.

[00:05:08]How then will you know them?

[00:05:11]He did not leave you defenseless.

[00:05:13]"By their fruits." He said. "Ye shall know them."

[00:05:17]Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?

[00:05:21]A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

[00:05:28]You will not know the false prophet by the smoothness of his voice or the size of his following or the gold of his house.

[00:05:36]You will know him by what grows on him and by what grows on those who follow him.

[00:05:42]Look at the fruit.

[00:05:43]Always look at the fruit.

[00:05:45]The orchard does not lie even when the mouth does.

[00:05:49]Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

[00:05:55]And Paul, who had been bitten by such wolves and had laid down his own life among such sheep, sharpened the same warning for the Roman church.

[00:06:05]Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned and avoid them.

[00:06:14]For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly.

[00:06:19]And by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.

[00:06:24]Hear what the Apostle named as the marker.

[00:06:27]Good words.

[00:06:28]Fair speeches.

[00:06:30]The wolf in the modern age, like the wolf in every age, does not snarl at his prey.

[00:06:36]He charms it.

[00:06:38]He addresses the simple in language sweet enough to slip past every defense the watchman might have lifted.

[00:06:44]And the bait beneath the sweetness is always the same, his own belly.

[00:06:49]His own appetite.

[00:06:50]His own gain dressed in the vocabulary of the kingdom.

[00:06:55]Mark such men, the Apostle said. Mark them.

[00:06:59]Avoid them.

[00:07:00]Refuse the seat at their table. Refuse the platform under their voice. Refuse the orbit of their flattery.

[00:07:08]The narrow way has no room for the company of the wolf, no matter how soft his fleece has been brushed.

[00:07:15]And here the prophecy turns its edge toward the most terrible deception of all.

[00:07:21]Not the wolf outside, but the false peace inside.

[00:07:26]For the Lord said a thing that should rob every presumptuous soul of its sleep.

[00:07:31]Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven.

[00:07:41]Hear it.

[00:07:42]Lord, Lord, the right words, the orthodox confession, the name on the lips, and it is not enough.

[00:07:51]There will be men at that gate who called him Lord with their tongues and served the broad road with their lives, and the saying will not save them because the saying was never the gate.

[00:08:03]Many will say to me in that day, many, the same word he used for the broad road, and that is no accident. Many will say, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works?"

[00:08:22]And then will I profess unto them, profess, declare, say it plainly in the hearing of all heaven, "I never knew you.

[00:08:31]Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

[00:08:35]I never knew you."

[00:08:36]Sit in the horror of that sentence.

[00:08:39]Not, "I knew you once and you fell away."

[00:08:42]Not, "You were mine and you wandered."

[00:08:45]"I never knew you."

[00:08:47]There is a way of working in his name that he does not recognize.

[00:08:51]There is a way of building a ministry, a reputation, a following, a whole religious life that the king looks upon and says, "I do not know whose work this was, but it was not mine."

[00:09:04]The deeds were impressive.

[00:09:07]The name was right.

[00:09:08]The fruit was wrought, and the gate did not open.

[00:09:13]Because in the end, the question is not whether you recognized him.

[00:09:17]The question is whether he will recognize what you spent your life building.

[00:09:21]What are you building that he will not recognize at the gate?

[00:09:26]Stand in that question.

[00:09:28]Do not flee it.

[00:09:30]Stand in it the way a man stands in cold water until he stops shivering and starts thinking.

[00:09:36]What in your life carries his name but not his nature?

[00:09:40]What in your hands is done in his name for your glory?

[00:09:43]What reputation have you built on the broad road while telling yourself it was the narrow one?

[00:09:49]He is not asking to torment you.

[00:09:51]The prophet's blade does not cut to kill.

[00:09:54]It cuts to expose so that what is rotten can be torn out before the harvest while there is still time, while the gate is still open, while the saying can still become a doing.

[00:10:07]You will not be saved by what you called him.

[00:10:10]You will be known by whether he can call you his.

[00:10:13]And test yourself before the day tests you by the measure Christ himself gave on that same mountain.

[00:10:20]"Judge not," he said, "that ye be not judged.

[00:10:25]For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.

[00:10:29]And with what measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again."

[00:10:33]Hear what he did and did not forbid. He did not forbid discernment. He did not say close your eyes to the fruit.

[00:10:41]He commanded a different vigilance that the eye which examines the brother first be checked for what it carries.

[00:10:49]"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye?"

[00:10:54]he went on.

[00:10:56]"But considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye.

[00:11:00]Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, 'Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye,' and behold, a beam is in thine own eye.

[00:11:10]Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

[00:11:20]There is the verdict on every disciple who has gone hunting the failures of others while a great timber dragged behind his own face.

[00:11:28]The beam does not feel like a beam.

[00:11:31]The beam feels like clarity.

[00:11:34]The beam feels like discernment.

[00:11:37]The beam feels like the very gift that qualifies you to correct the brother.

[00:11:42]And the Lord, who saw the beams in every age, spoke one word over the man who had not noticed his own.

[00:11:50]Hypocrite.

[00:11:51]Take the word soberly.

[00:11:53]He did not call him deceived. He did not call him misguided.

[00:11:57]He called him a hypocrite, a player of a role, a wearer of a mask, a man who had taken the seat of the judge while the dock was empty behind him because he had never stood in it himself.

[00:12:09]The narrow gate has no room for the beam bearer.

[00:12:12]The beam will not pass through the straight door.

[00:12:15]A man does not enter that gate dragging timber.

[00:12:18]He enters carrying only what the Lord has cleansed in him.

[00:12:22]Lay down the timber.

[00:12:24]Lay it down before you turn another sentence of [music] correction toward your brother.

[00:12:29]The narrow way begins with the surrender of the seat of judgment over those who walk beside you.

[00:12:35]And the acceptance of the seat of judgment over the only soul God has placed under your full authority, your own.

[00:12:43]What beam have you mistaken for vision?

[00:12:46]Breathe slow beneath the question.

[00:12:49]The beam is heavy.

[00:12:51]The beam has been there so long the eye has learned to see around it as though it were the natural shape of vision.

[00:12:57]The beam is the unconfessed sin you have stopped seeing because it has stopped hurting.

[00:13:02]The beam is the doctrine you defend with venom because you have not yet repented of the practice of it.

[00:13:08]The beam is the criticism you sharpen on your tongue against the brother whose sin is smaller and louder than your own, quieter, larger one.

[00:13:17]The beam is the timber you have learned to call wisdom, the rafter you have learned to call zeal, the great rough plank of pride disguised as the love of truth.

[00:13:28]The beam is what every disciple must extract first because no man enters the narrow way still carrying timber in his face.

[00:13:36]And once the beam is removed, the Lord gave one more warning before he turned toward the gate itself.

[00:13:42]For the disciple who has begun to see clearly is a disciple who is given things to guard.

[00:13:49]"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs." He said.

[00:13:53]"Neither cast ye your pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you."

[00:14:03]There are sacred things in the disciples keeping.

[00:14:06]There are pearls bought at great price by Christ in the dark of his own bleeding.

[00:14:11]These were not given to be flung at every mocker who demands them, not to be cast before every spirit that will scorn what it cannot value.

[00:14:20]Hold the pearl.

[00:14:21]Carry it covered.

[00:14:23]Speak of it only where it will be received.

[00:14:26]The narrow way is also a way of guardianship.

[00:14:30]The disciple is not only a traveler, he is a steward of the costliest cargo in the world.

[00:14:36]And before you take another step toward that gate, count the cost.

[00:14:42]Christ himself made this the entrance [music] fee.

[00:14:45]And he made it in the hearing of great multitudes who had begun to follow him cheaply.

[00:14:50]There went great multitudes with him and he turned and said unto them, "If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

[00:15:10]And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple."

[00:15:16]Hear what he means and what he does not mean.

[00:15:20]He does not command malice toward the household.

[00:15:24]The same Lord commanded you to honor thy father and thy mother.

[00:15:28]The same Lord commanded the husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church.

[00:15:33]The same Lord said that he who provideth not for his own hath denied the faith.

[00:15:39]The hate in his mouth is the Hebrew comparison to love every other love so utterly less by comparison to him that beside the love which has captured you, every other affection looks like it's opposite.

[00:15:52]Christ must be loved with such totality that every other loyalty is reordered beneath his.

[00:16:00]The disciple who keeps father, mother, wife, child, brother, or his own life above the master has already failed the threshold.

[00:16:10]The narrow gate does not ask you to abandon love.

[00:16:13]It asks you to crown the only love that can rightly order all the others.

[00:16:18]Here the verb cannot.

[00:16:20]Not should not.

[00:16:22]Not had better not.

[00:16:24]Cannot.

[00:16:25]The door does not even open to the man who has not first sat down and counted what the door will cost him.

[00:16:31]For which of you, the master went on, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost whether he have sufficient to finish it.

[00:16:42]Lest happily, after he hath laid the foundation and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, "This man began to build and was not able to finish."

[00:16:56]Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with 10,000 to meet him that cometh against him with 20,000.

[00:17:09]Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage and desireth conditions of peace.

[00:17:18]The narrow gate is a building project that you must finish.

[00:17:21]The narrow gate is a war that you must wage to the end.

[00:17:25]And the man who enters the gate without counting will be the man who lays a half foundation and walks off.

[00:17:32]Or who raises a half army and surrenders before the first engagement.

[00:17:37]Sit down.

[00:17:38]Count.

[00:17:40]Be honest about the cost.

[00:17:42]The narrow way will take from you what you cannot now imagine giving. And will give back what you cannot now imagine receiving.

[00:17:50]But you must walk in with your eyes open.

[00:17:53]So likewise, the Lord concluded, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

[00:18:03]All. Not most. All.

[00:18:07]The narrow gate does not measure your inventory. It empties your hands. And the disciple who has not learned to come empty-handed is the disciple still trying to drag the broad road's baggage through the straight door. And once you have counted and chosen, do not turn back.

[00:18:25]Follow peace with all men, the writer to the Hebrews wrote.

[00:18:30]And holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

[00:18:34]Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. Lest there be any fornicator or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.

[00:18:52]Hear what the apostle warned.

[00:18:55]The disciple on the narrow way is not safe from himself.

[00:18:59]The narrow road is climbed in the company of his own heart, and the heart has been known to grow bitter when the path is long, to grow profane when the bread of the broad road still smells from below, to sell its birthright for a single morsel that satisfies the moment and forfeits the inheritance.

[00:19:17]Pursue holiness.

[00:19:19]Pursue it as the climber pursues the next handhold on a face that does not forgive distraction.

[00:19:25]Without it, the apostle said, "No man shall see the Lord."

[00:19:31]There is no shortcut.

[00:19:33]There is no exception.

[00:19:35]There is no narrow gate disciple who reaches the city by another path than the path of holiness.

[00:19:41]Now lift your eyes higher up the narrow path, for it does not only descend through warning.

[00:19:48]It ascends toward a glory the broad road cannot imagine.

[00:19:53]The captain of your salvation did not call you up the hard road to abandon you on it.

[00:19:58]He went up it first.

[00:20:00]He is the gate.

[00:20:02]"I am the door," Jesus said.

[00:20:05]"By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture."

[00:20:12]The narrow gate is not a slot in a wall.

[00:20:15]The narrow gate is a person.

[00:20:17]It is narrow because he is the only way, and there is no width to a single door, and there is no second door cut beside him for those who find the first too costly.

[00:20:28]He is the gate, and he is the path, and he is the rock under the house, and he is the city at the top of the climb.

[00:20:37]The whole of the narrow way is him, from the threshold to the throne.

[00:20:43]And the few who find it, hear this.

[00:20:46]You who are weary of being few, the few who find it are not the strong.

[00:20:52]They are not the clever.

[00:20:53]They are not the ones who climbed by the power of their own legs.

[00:20:57]They are the ones who knocked.

[00:20:59]"Ask," the master said, "and it shall be given you.

[00:21:04]Seek, and ye shall find.

[00:21:07]Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

[00:21:10]For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

[00:21:18]The narrow gate has a latch on the inside, and the latch is lifted from heaven for the man who will not stop knocking.

[00:21:25]The broad gate stands open because no one guards what leads to ruin.

[00:21:30]The narrow gate must be knocked upon because what lies beyond it is worth a guard and worth a price and worth a wait and worth the whole of a man's persistence pressed against the door until it gives.

[00:21:46]And Christ himself spoke a parable to this end that men ought always to pray and not to faint.

[00:21:54]There was in a city, he said, a judge which feared not God neither regarded man.

[00:22:01]And there was a widow in that city, and she came unto him saying, "Avenge me of mine adversary."

[00:22:08]And he would not for a while.

[00:22:11]But afterward he said within himself, "Though I fear not God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me."

[00:22:25]And the Lord said, "Hear what the unjust judge saith.

[00:22:29]And shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?

[00:22:37]I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.

[00:22:40]Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"

[00:22:46]Hear what the master held up before his disciples in that hour.

[00:22:50]A woman who would not stop.

[00:22:53]A widow with no power, no name, no allies, no leverage, and one weapon.

[00:22:59]Persistence.

[00:23:01]She wore down a judge who feared neither God nor man.

[00:23:05]Not by argument, not by threat, not by bribe, but by refusing to walk away from his door.

[00:23:13]And if such a woman, before such a judge, with such a wrong on her account, could not be denied, how much more shall the Father, who is righteous and longing and listening for the cry of his own, open the door to the disciple who will not be turned away?

[00:23:30]Pray as that widow stood at that gate.

[00:23:33]Pray with the bones of a refusal to leave.

[00:23:36]Pray as a man who has nowhere else to go, no other door to knock upon, no other name to call upon, no other king who could possibly hear the case.

[00:23:47]But notice the question the master folded into the parable.

[00:23:51]When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

[00:23:56]Not whether he will find religion, not whether he will find believers in the abstract, whether he will find the kind of persistent, knocking, refusing to give up faith of the widow.

[00:24:09]The narrow way is not lost by men whose intellect fails.

[00:24:13]It is lost by men whose persistence fails.

[00:24:16]The disciple who stops knocking is the disciple who never enters.

[00:24:21]The disciple who keeps knocking is the disciple the returning king finds still at the gate, still pressing, still calling, still trusting that the door is real, and the judge is righteous, and the cry is heard.

[00:24:37]So, the question is not whether you are strong enough to force the narrow gate.

[00:24:41]You are not.

[00:24:42]No man is.

[00:24:44]The question is whether you will knock and keep knocking, and refuse to walk back down to the wide and laughing road, while the latch is still lifting.

[00:24:54]The kingdom does not yield to the violent in pride.

[00:24:58]It yields to the violent in prayer.

[00:25:01]Those who lay hold of heaven and will not let go until the blessing comes.

[00:25:06]Those who press, those who persist.

[00:25:09]Those who would rather die at the narrow gate knocking than live at peace on the broad road perishing.

[00:25:15]"Strive to enter in at the straight gate." The Lord said in another hour.

[00:25:20]For many, many again, always the many on the broad road, many will seek to enter in and shall not be able.

[00:25:28]Here the terror folded inside that mercy.

[00:25:31]There comes a day when the master of the house has risen up and has shut the door and you begin to stand without and to knock at the door saying, "Lord, Lord, open unto us." And he shall answer and say, "I know you not whence ye are."

[00:25:46]There is a knocking that comes too late.

[00:25:49]There is a seeking that begins at the hour the door is shut.

[00:25:53]The gate that is open now will not be open forever.

[00:25:57]The latch that lifts today will one day be sealed.

[00:26:00]This is why the prophet's voice rises, not to frighten you for sport, but because the hour is real and the door is real and the shutting is real and the only safe time to knock is the time you still have, which is now, which is this breath, which is this word falling into your ear in this very moment that will not come again.

[00:26:22]Do not wait for the broad road to grow tiresome.

[00:26:26]It will not until it ends.

[00:26:28]Do not wait for the crowd to thin.

[00:26:31]It will not until the cliff.

[00:26:34]Do not wait until the easy ground beneath your house begins to shift.

[00:26:39]For by the time the sand moves, the storm is already upon you and the time for digging is past.

[00:26:46]The narrow gate is best entered young, best entered early, best entered before the baggage grows so heavy you cannot turn sideways to fit.

[00:26:55]But it is entered at any hour by the man who will drop what he carries and knock with empty hands.

[00:27:02]For the gate does not measure your years, it measures your surrender.

[00:27:07]And what waits beyond it.

[00:27:09]The broad road promised everything and delivers a cliff.

[00:27:12]The narrow gate asks everything and opens onto a city, a city whose builder and maker is God, a city with foundations that no storm has ever cracked and no flood has ever moved.

[00:27:25]Abraham looked for it.

[00:27:26]He dwelt in tents in a land of promise, the Apostle recorded. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

[00:27:36]He died without setting foot in it.

[00:27:39]He saw it from afar, embraced its promise, confessed himself a stranger and pilgrim on the earth.

[00:27:46]And the city that he saw by faith was the city that the narrow gate at last unlocks.

[00:27:52]Hear what the seer saw of that city in his vision.

[00:27:55]He saw it descending out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

[00:28:02]The holy city, new Jerusalem.

[00:28:05]And he heard a great voice out of heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God.

[00:28:19]And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

[00:28:23]And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.

[00:28:30]For the former things are passed away.

[00:28:33]And he that sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new."

[00:28:40]That is the city at the end of the narrow road. No tears, no death, no sorrow, no pain, no former things.

[00:28:49]The city has no temple, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. The city has no sun, for the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

[00:29:01]The gates of the city are not shut at all by day, for there is no night there.

[00:29:06]And the saved walk in its light, and bring their honor and glory into it.

[00:29:11]And the names of all who climb the narrow way are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

[00:29:17]And there shall enter into the city nothing that defileth, nor whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.

[00:29:25]This is what the narrow road has been climbing toward through every weary hour.

[00:29:30]Not survival, not consolation, city, a built place, a homeland, a throne and a feast and a bridegroom and a marriage that has no end.

[00:29:42]The few who climb the hard road arrive and discover they were never few at all, but a multitude no man could number, gathered out of every nation and tribe and tongue. Every one of them a traveler who turned from the river and faced the rock, and knocked until the latch lifted.

[00:30:00]The narrow road is lonely in the climbing and crowded at the summit.

[00:30:05]The broad road is crowded in the walking and silent at the fall.

[00:30:10]This is the prophecy, and the prophecy does not bend to make you comfortable.

[00:30:14]There are two gates. There is no third.

[00:30:18]One is wide and crowded and easy, and ends in the dark. One is narrow and lonely and hard, and opens onto the morning.

[00:30:26]Christ stands at the fork with the wind of eternity in his garments, and he is not neutral.

[00:30:33]And he will not pretend the roads are equal.

[00:30:35]And he points away from the river and toward the rock, and says the word that has divided every soul that ever lived.

[00:30:43]Enter.

[00:30:44]So, tear yourself from the current. Turn your back on the laughing crowd. Climb.

[00:30:51]Dig down to the rock and build there, though the building costs you everything the sand dwellers keep.

[00:30:57]Test every voice by its fruit and flee the wolf in the wool.

[00:31:02]Make sure the name you call him becomes a will you do.

[00:31:06]Lest you stand at the gate one day with the right words and the wrong life. And hear the only sentence in the universe more terrible than silence.

[00:31:15]And knock.

[00:31:17]Knock as a drowning man claws for the shore.

[00:31:21]Knock as a child beats the locked door of his father's house in the night.

[00:31:26]Knock and do not stop.

[00:31:28]For to him that knocketh it shall be opened. And the latch is lifting even now for every soul that will not turn back.

[00:31:36]When the door of the house is finally shut and the master has risen up. And the broad road has emptied at last onto the edge of the dark.

[00:31:45]Will you be found inside among the few who pressed through the narrow gate or outside? Knocking at an hour that has no answer left in it.

[00:31:54]There is the straight gate.

[00:31:57]There is the rock beneath your feet if you will dig for it.

[00:32:00]There is the door that opens to the one who knocks.

[00:32:04]Enter ye in.