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Awesome. Well hello, everybody. Man. Holly worship team. How is so awesome? Oh come on. Oh it’s not the only one feeling it today.

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Oh, God is so good. He is so good. He’s so faithful, and I just I just loved that the heart of the whole service so far has just been his love. And we’re going to continue into that heart today. It has been a a great several weeks of messages. We’ve been on this Kingdom Way series since September, you guys.

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I promise we will be ending in the middle of May. It’s giving it to you now. We got like a few more to do, but there’s been some really strategic things that God’s been doing and his people in this series. Anybody else? I mean, it’s been significant in my life, and I believe God’s challenging us to put into practice all the things that some of us have known for a long time.

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Some of us have walked out and measure, but God is bringing us into a fullness of what it really means to live in his kingdom. And that is not just something that we look out far away for some distant time. It is for here and now. And I’m so excited about what God is doing. You see, we live in a world with tons of options, right?

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Endless choices, endless perspectives, endless definitions of truth. Just go on to tick tock for a minute.

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Everybody is told to find their truth. Find your path.

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We’re told to define our own reality. To build our own version of life.

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And in this world, this is not a new concept here in 2026. Do you know that?

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This has been a battle of the ages. To define the path that we should walk. So Jesus, when he is speaking in all of these parables and passages that we’ve been covering over the last months, he is speaking to this same culture. It looks a little different. It sounds a little different. Right? But he is saying that there is something different about what he brings than the what the world offers.

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And today we are actually going to be speaking about, out of Matthew 713 and 14 about the narrow way.

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Todd, can you bring that picture over here?

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Today, our passage out of Matthew seven.

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Says, enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction. And those who enter it may be many, but for the gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life. And those who find it are few. This is called prophetic art. You guys.

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I see a pathway in this picture.

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A pathway surrounded by the presence of the Lord.

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A pathway that narrows. That’s awesome.

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That is so amazing. I love how God is so faithful to speak. So we see Jesus here. He’s speaking to this world with abundance of choice, abundance of options. But he is really narrowing it down to two. Not many, not endless, but two gates, two paths, two destinations. That’s it.

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It’s everything else. Or him? It’s not all roads lead to God.

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Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. He is the path and the gate that we must enter in order to find life. Now, before we step into this deeper today, I want to to just anchor some things that Pinnell had said last week, because I think she man, she said a lot of great things last week.

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Thank you panel. So good. But she said a few really specific things that I want to just quote. She said the Kingdom message isn’t about overwhelming us.

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Yes. It’s not about condemning us.

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It isn’t about shaming us.

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It’s about responding to love.

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That is what this whole thing is about.

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Today has been all about love. She also said, none of this is for us to be afraid, but for us to be aware. And those are two very different things. We can walk with the clarity of understanding what’s ahead of us and what’s in front of us and what’s happening around us. Or we can be gripped by fear, which controls our behaviors.

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The Kingdom message does not bring fear and condemnation. It brings liberty and life. So I want to challenge you as we begin to step into this word today. If you begin to feel fear, condemnation, that’s not God. If you fear Holy Spirit conviction, that might be God.

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Conviction to respond to the love that he has. The love of the father for us. This is so important because today we’re going to dive into this set of scriptures where Jesus is talking about narrow gates and destruction and pressure. And if we’re not careful, we can hear that as fear and condemnation. But this Kingdom message is grounded in love, and awareness is not fear, it’s alignment.

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Hear me. Awareness is not fear, it’s alignment. The Kingdom Way series has been asking these questions. What does it look like to live under the reign of God? In a world where another kingdom presses against it?

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Because it’s easy, right? Is there’s no pressure.

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There’s nothing else pulling at our affections and our attention. But the Kingdom Way message speaks to the full reality of life. How do we live under the reign of God, while there’s still a world that is pressing against us, that there is still a kingdom of darkness that is pressing against us, that doesn’t stop pressing because we got saved.

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We may not go to hell, but he as sure as heck wants to make us insignificant.

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He wants to take our influence and our impact. He wants to shut our mouths, put us in a corner, isolate us, torment us, bring fear.

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Chain us to anxiety. Chain us to addiction. This is what our enemy does. He does not play fair.

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He does not play fair. He will put you on the ground and kick you while you’re down. That’s how it works.

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He lures us.

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With what looks good and pleasurable. I was not going to do this, but I want to read something.

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It’s a song. A poem that was written actually by my son.

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And I feel like it’s so appropriate for this. Says, there he stands again. That whispering thief luring your thoughts with lies beneath. He chants, you’re lost. Wearing a bloody crown. He cloaks your soul with a serpent sound. Temptation wears the name of sin. Yet hides the pit it drags you in. It doesn’t show the fire in flame. Just plays rhythm to the serpent’s name.

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But hear this truth. Let no fear swell your faults. Don’t cast you into hell. They merely ache, they pierce, they burn like shadows. Begging lights return to dark. To know where you stand. Too far to see your father’s face I swear to you it’s not too late. Just hear your father call your name.

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This is what the kingdom of darkness does.

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But we have a loving father who is calling and beckoning us to come to him. To come to the way of life. We’ve talked over the previous several weeks. Pastor David preached on the wicked tenants and the rejection of the son, and pastor Pat preached on judgment and eternal judgment. And last week Peniel preached on the strong man, the darkness that resists.

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But how Christ has authority. And every one of these passages have revealed the same thing that there is a clash of kingdoms. There is a real spiritual conflict. Neutrality is not an option.

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I think sometimes we think we can just be neutral in this whole thing.

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I’m just going to live a good life.

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Kind of raise my family well. I’m going to do good things in this world. There is no neutral. There is a clash of kingdoms.

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But here’s one really important point. I’m going to say it a few times today says the kingdom of God is not defined by what it resists. It is defined by the life that it produces.

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Yes. There’s resistance. Leave this up. Yes there’s resistance. Yes there’s conflict. Yes, there’s a real enemy. But the defining mark of God’s reign is not his opposition. It’s his life.

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So today we’re going to step into this passage. It speaks directly into that same tension. So for some context, Matthew 713 and 14 is a passage that comes near the end of the sermon on the Mount. Many of you are familiar to Matthew five six and seven, and for three chapters he describes the life of a kingdom citizen, and Jesus answers questions here, and he he doesn’t, what it doesn’t look like and what it does look like to live in the kingdom, to live under God’s reign.

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He proceeds to walk this crowd of people through this teaching on how blessed are the poor in spirit, how to love your enemies, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to give in secret, to pray in secret. To seek first the kingdom, not to store treasures in earth, but to store them in heaven. And he describes this life that is radically aligned with the King and is so completely different than everything that they know as a culture.

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If you go back through with it, I mean the poor in spirit. Yes, blessed are the poor in spirit. Jesus is flipping everything upside down. Be merciful when you give, do it in secret. Don’t do it in public. When you pray, don’t put on a show about how good and righteous and spiritual you are.

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He flips everything upside down.

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And then he does. He doesn’t soften the ending. He doesn’t give this beautiful summary. Here’s your five points. 12 points that we covered today. He just brings it right to a decision.

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Right to a decision. He gives a command right out of the gate. And in verse 13 he just says, enter.

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Enter.

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Enter by the narrow gate.

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That is his command. That is the decision that he is bringing us to at the end of all of these instructions in the Passion Translation, that passage says, Come to God through the narrow gate, because the wide and broad path is the way that leads to destruction. Nearly everyone chooses the crowded road, but the narrow gate and the difficult way leads to eternal life, so even few find it.

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So Jesus, he starts out with this strong decision making command. Enter. Can I say enter is pretty strong? You don’t drift into a narrow way.

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You don’t drift into a decision to follow Christ. Now you can drift into compromise, can drift into comfort. We can drift into spiritual autopilot. Church on Sunday, prayer meeting on Tuesday. Engage on Wednesday. Worship team on Thursday, men’s breakfast on Saturday for the guys.

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But entering is a decision to surrender. Jesus presents these two roads with two destinies, one leading to destruction and one leading to life. But he says choose. You have to enter it.

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Deuteronomy 30 verse 19 says, I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life. Jesus is echoing a principle that the people around them knew that there is choice. There is life and death. You must choose.

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But let me be really clear. This is not a tyrant demanding compliance. Hear me? This is not a tyrant demanding compliance. This is a king inviting you into life.

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He’s not manipulating us in. He’s not trying to push his agenda. He’s saying choose. But I’m inviting you into this place of life. Please don’t choose the other path. It only leads to destruction.

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But the reality is, entering is intentional.

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It requires us saying this is the realm I submit to. This is the love that I will reorder under this is the life that I will enter. Augustine of Hippo helps us here in a way that is deeper than just behavior. He says that the narrow way is the way of righteousness, and righteousness is love rightly ordered. Oh, I loved that.

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Righteousness is love rightly ordered. Oh man. He’s arguing that sin is not simply doing bad things. Sin is disordered. Love.

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Sin is disordered love.

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So entering the narrow way is not merely changing behavior, it’s allowing God to reorder what you love. I think I have that to put up there. Marina again, entering the narrow way is not merely changing behavior. It’s allowing God to reorder what you love. When we love lesser things more than God, our soul becomes unrolled, becomes tangled up, becomes confused.

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It becomes tormented because when approval matters more than obedience, love is disordered.

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When comfort matters more than holiness, love is disordered. When control matters more than trust, love is disordered. When culture defines our identity more than Christ us love is disordered.

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The narrow way is not first about restriction. You guys. Entering means Lord, you come first again. That’s what the narrow way is. So not about restricting our lives.

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Coming into alignment with Lord, you come first. Again, it’s not about moral performance. It’s it’s about the allegiance of our heart.

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See, there’s a moment when we enter the kingdom.

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We’re saved or baptized.

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But then there are daily moments of alignment. Luke 923 says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. This is not earning salvation. It’s living under the reign that we confess.

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The next part of the Scripture.

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Says, enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many.

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But the for the gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. You say, Jesus says, that the gate that he is offering us that leads to life is narrow. That’s not terribly comfortable. So last night we did an escape room with Jeremy and Michelle. We had a ton of fun.

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We barely made it out. It’s the new one.

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And there’s this really narrow part of it that you can fit. Like you could fit two as a couple. You know, we went Jonathan and I went in and it’s this little room and you’re like, I have to turn this thing around. And then you walk through the next thing. But it’s narrow. It’s tight. Some people don’t like tight spaces.

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Mom.

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Narrow is a restricted space.

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There’s compression involved. And being narrow. But let me clarify. Narrow doesn’t mean cruel. Even if you don’t like small spaces.

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It just means that not everything fits.

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All four of us were there. We couldn’t all four go at the same time.

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Not everything fits. Pride doesn’t fit. Self-Rule doesn’t fit.

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Two thrones. They don’t fit. Matthew six tells us no one can serve two masters. Right? This isn’t legalism. It’s just reality.

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It’s narrow because it’s truth. Truth is specific. Gravity specific. Oxygen specific truth always excludes something false.

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So when we’re going and Jesus is asking us to come to the narrow way, he’s just asking us to leave the things behind that don’t fit.

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It’s no condemnation in that. Not like, oh, you did it wrong. You have to leave a pile of stuff in front of this kid. No. Who cares how much stuff we leave. I don’t care how much baggage you had. I care that we step through the narrow path to the narrow gate that leads to life. And we leave all the things that are heavy and burdensome behind.

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That we leave the pride, that we leave the sin. That we leave the things that will lead us to destructive lives here. Can I just say that there is so much destruction here now, when we choose the path of darkness, families are destroyed, lives are destroyed. People lose everything.

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Trauma after trauma after trauma. We live in a world that is full of trauma. Why? Because we choose the wide road.

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That leads only to destructive behavior and destructive lifestyle that brings damage that God can absolutely restore. But man, how much better would it have been if he didn’t have to restore that?

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John Chrysostom preached, he’s one of the early fathers, and he preached in a religious culture, and his warning was not primarily against paganism or idol worship. It was against comfortable Christianity. He warned that believers are tempted to widen what Christ made narrow.

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To keep Christ in name while softening obedience. And that’s sobering. That’s dangerous.

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Because isn’t isn’t always obvious. Darkness.

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Sometimes the danger is in the drift.

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So Jesus said, this path, this this path, this road ahead of us is narrow. It’s compressed that it’s hard.

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And that word hard just means pressed and compressed. So we have these two. It’s narrow, it’s tight. There’s compressed there. And it’s hard. It’s just repeating the same thing. I think we have this weird definition of hard like it’s unattainable. Like we can’t actually do it if it’s hard. That’s not what he’s saying, that the narrow way is not just this restricted life.

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It’s that there is resistance to the world.

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We’ll get there. Before our culture resists us, our ego resists. God reordered. Love squeezes. Our pride. Forgiveness, when you want to hold offense squeezes us for giving. When we want to control, squeezes us, puts pressure on us. Humbling ourselves when we want to win.

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Puts pressure. Pressure is not punishment. Pressure is transformation. Romans 12 be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Everybody knows the story of the butterfly right? It’s really it would be really easy when that cocoon is shaking, because they’re trying so hard to get out, to just break it open for them. It feels so bad that they come out bloody right.

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And we know this, right? The cocoon, as the transformation happens and before they can break through to become actually flying in a butterfly, they are literally bleeding as they’re flapping their wings against their cocoon. But if you broke it open for it, it would never be able to fly, because the pressure that comes in the cocoon gives it the strength to become who it was always meant to be.

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So often we resist hard places and we take ourselves out of difficult things. And God is saying, this is not a punishment. I’m trying to form in you something. I’m trying to give you wings so you can fly, but you keep taking yourself out of the cocoon, and if you take yourself out, you will never be able to fly to the heights that I’ve called you to fly.

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And he wants us to understand that hard and pressure is not a bad thing. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s something that he’s created to bring us into life. He’s created to bring us into all that we’ve been called to be, into the fullness of who he created us to be. Pressure is not a bad thing. It’s not punishment.

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When we have a view of God that is incorrect and we do not see God is the loving father that he is, then we view pressure as punishment because we think God is mad at us. This happened. I must have done something wrong. Probably not. Maybe. Who cares?

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Pressure is okay, right? We live in this world that glorifies comfort. And doesn’t know how to do hard things. Like show up to work every day. Sorry.

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Renewal feels like pressure before. It feels like freedom.

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Renewal feels like pressure before it feels like freedom.

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There’s also the external pressures. Ephesians six. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. There is a present darkness. There is spiritual forces. The world is not neutral, like I said earlier. But if we live like Matthew five teaches us in humility and in Matthew six we find devotion. In Matthew seven, we find the teaching on integrity and all these things.

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We will feel tension. But again, pressure is not proof that you’re failing. It’s probably proof that you’re aligned.

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If your faith costs nothing and it never presses your ego, if it never confronts your comfort, maybe we should ask what road we’re on.

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The pressure is not random. It’s the collision of the kingdoms. And like Peniel said, it’s not something to be afraid of. It’s just something to be aware of so that we don’t mislabel what is happening.

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Kenneth Bailey, a commentator, a contemporary commentator, notes that in Jesus’s cultural world, choosing a different path was public.

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And usually meant so a social cost. It meant stepping out of expectations meant friction. See, the narrow way is going to press our pride, press our habits, our assumptions, maybe our need for approval.

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Because being pressed is not merely about changing our behavior. It’s about realigning us under the love of the father. Jesus said the broad road is spacious, it’s roomy, it’s comfortable, it’s accommodating.

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It makes room for God and pride. It makes room for faith and compromise, for conviction and convenience. Space for all of it. Bring it all with you.

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But the broad road is not always this dramatic rebellion.

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It can be subtle. We can drift. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like a dangerous moment.

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We’re caught off guard. Sometimes we’re not focused. We’re not intentional.

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But the end of that wide road of the both. Leads to destruction.

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In our lives. Because let me tell you, those two will not share authority. You can try to bring them along for a while. Let me tell you, there will be a collision course.

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And you will have to choose.

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And let me tell you, if you’ve walked that road, the farther down that road, the harder, harder it gets. And destruction starts to creep in.

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Every road leads somewhere. Critic Craig Keener notes that Jesus echoes this Jewish two way tradition, the one I read earlier, Life and Death, and that it’s a covenant that he takes seriously.

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You see, every road has a question that must be answered who rules? Who rules? Colossians 113 says, he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. There are two dominions, two authorities, two systems. It’s kingdom versus kingdom. Before we misunderstand this morning, this is not an angry king. It’s a loving father.

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I keep saying it over and over again because we need to understand this. Hebrews 12 six for the Lord disciplines the one he loves. Warning is grace speaking before consequence arrives. Okay, warning is not condemnation. Warning is grace. Warning is love. It’s not about moral comparison. It’s about life. And this is where we have to, like, recalibrate things, recalibrate in our life.

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If we preach this simply as just this wrong versus right with it will produce comparison. We will produce judgment, we will produce performance anxiety. But Jesus is not inviting us into a moral comparison. He is inviting us into life.

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We have to understand this even though there’s two paths. He really wants us to choose life.

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And it’s not like, well, I’m taking the good path. Well, what are you doing over there? Why are you looking?

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Where are I supposed to be fixed?

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Verse 14 says the gate is narrow and the way is hard, but it leads to life, Zoe. Life. The life of God.

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John 17 three and this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus, whom you have sent. And I love that this is what life is. This is Jesus praying.

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That they know you.

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Fullness of life. Stepping into relationship with God.

00:37:44:25 – 00:38:14:07
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Life is relational. It’s all about knowing him. John 1010 says, I came that they might have life and have it abundantly. It’s the overflow we keep talking about. Abundance is what God has for us. Jesus ends this section with on one road leads to destruction and the other leads to life. But sometimes we reduce Christianity to a right and wrong system.

00:38:14:09 – 00:38:37:10
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But Jesus is not inviting us into this moral comparison. Like I said, he’s inviting us to life. Wrong and right matter. Yes, but they matter because life is at stake. Sin is not dangerous merely because it breaks a rule here. Me, sin is not dangerous because it breaks a rule. This is not a code of rules and regulations.

00:38:37:17 – 00:39:01:07
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It’s dangerous because it pulls us away from life here. Me, church here. Me holiness is not about superiority, it’s about life. Obedience is not about being correct or being right. It’s about remaining in life.

00:39:01:09 – 00:39:32:14
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Our enemy wants to steal life. Christ gives life. That is the difference. Flat out, flat out. The kingdom of God is not this rule book. It’s the reign of a living king who wants to give us abundance, wants us to walk in love, who wants us to walk in joy? Real joy? Who wants us to walk in peace?

00:39:32:16 – 00:39:45:25
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Real peace, not things that are based on circumstances surrounding us, but based on who he is and our alignment with him.

00:39:45:27 – 00:39:52:03
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If my Christianity is mostly about being right.

00:39:52:06 – 00:39:57:02
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Then I will eventually become rigid.

00:39:57:04 – 00:40:08:01
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But if it’s about living in Christ, I will become fully alive.

00:40:08:03 – 00:40:24:07
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We are not ignorant of our enemy. Darkness still seeks to steal and destroy, but our focus is not on obsessing over darkness. It’s walking in life.

00:40:24:10 – 00:40:28:12
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The narrow way is pressed.

00:40:28:15 – 00:40:39:27
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But it brings joy and righteousness, peace and life. The Broadway promise is freedom and it feels spacious.

00:40:40:00 – 00:40:44:21
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But it brings about ruin.

00:40:44:24 – 00:40:55:01
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Fragments. Pulls things apart. Uproots and ends.

00:40:55:03 – 00:41:38:09
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You see, this message here is not about barely avoiding hell. It’s about living and the abundance that Christ provided for us. See, darkness is not defined. Darkness is defined by what it destroys. The kingdom is defined by what it makes a life. I’ll say that again, darkness is defined by what it destroys. But the kingdom is defined by what it makes a life.

00:41:38:11 – 00:42:02:12
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I’m going to say it again, something we said earlier. The kingdom of God is not defined by what it resists. It’s defined by the life it produces. So the question is no longer am I right? The question is, is his life being formed in me?

00:42:02:14 – 00:42:24:13
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When we’re coming through hard things, the question shouldn’t be did I make the right choice? Am I making all the right decisions? Am I getting it right? Can I hold it all together? Who needs to be as my life in your hands?

00:42:24:15 – 00:42:35:00
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Am I surrendered to the one who loves me more and deeper than anybody ever could?

00:42:35:02 – 00:42:45:29
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Is my life being formed by God?

00:42:46:01 – 00:42:59:05
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So I want to challenge us as we close today. Are there places where spaciousness has crept in?

00:42:59:07 – 00:43:10:10
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Where Christ is confessed but not ruling. Where culture has shaped us more than Jesus has.

00:43:10:12 – 00:43:32:24
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Are there places where lesser love takes the highest place? Where there’s been allegiance shifts? We really must ask who rules? My reactions? Who rules my ambitions?

00:43:32:27 – 00:43:37:18
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Who rules and defines my identity?

00:43:37:21 – 00:43:44:13
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Who rules in my private time?

00:43:44:16 – 00:43:54:07
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He is not condemning. He is inviting us to enter.

00:43:54:10 – 00:44:14:19
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It’s narrow, it’s pressed, but it’s alive and it leads to life. Amen.

00:44:14:22 – 00:44:19:21
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Amen. Let’s pray.

00:44:19:23 – 00:44:47:19
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Father, we thank you, Lord, for a clear word, God. And it is the life that you’ve given. Oh, that we want to take hold of. God help us today to make another decision that brings us into that way. Lord of life, God, give us a strength. I pray blessing upon everyone here. God, I pray that families would be strengthened today.

00:44:47:22 – 00:45:14:24
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I pray that our church would be made alive God like never before. I pray that our lives would touch this community in new ways. Father, pour out your spirit. Give us wisdom in Jesus name. Amen. I wanted to make one last announcement. For those that are new here, we we do fellowship across the way, and and we would love to get to know you more.

00:45:14:26 – 00:45:23:03
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We have food prepared for you, so join us if you’re up for it. We would, be honored by that. Also.