Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Isn’t Heaven for Everybody? (Matthew 7:13-23)
Date: November 19, 2023
Have you ever felt snubbed? There could have been a number of different things that left you feeling that way. Maybe you joined a club of some sort because it sounded really fun, but then you discovered that the really fun stuff you heard about was only available for the premium members, and you were just a regular member. Perhaps you flew on an airplane with a dedicated first class section and sat close enough that you could see what a great—not to mention comfortable—time they were all having up there. You know…when the curtain accidentally got left open. They don’t want all their secrets from up there getting out. Or it could be that you didn’t get invited to some big party that everyone was talking about afterwards. Right in front of you. Now, your defense mechanism might be to pretend that you didn’t really want to go in the first place and that you had plenty of fun sitting at home by yourself watching reruns and eating cold pizza in your underwear. But you know that’s not true. So does everyone else. Really, you’re hurt that you weren’t invited, and now you don’t want to hang out with those people anymore. You’re going to go find some friends to hang out with who aren’t so exclusive as those jerks are. Of course, once you feel like you’re part of the “in group,” you’re just fine with exclusivity—in fact, you prefer it so the riff raff doesn’t come in and mess up your group dynamic—but we’ll ignore that inconvenient little truth for the moment.
We don’t like feeling left out. We all want to feel included. So, when one group or another publicly declares that their biggest party isn’t for everyone, we tend to find reasons to not like them, and to make sure they know what big jerks everyone thinks they are. Well, in the minds of many of the folks asking the next hard question we’re going to tackle this morning, we are those jerks. This morning, we are in the fifth part of our series, Confident in the Face of Hard Questions. For the last several weeks, running parallel to the Bible study series many of our Sunday school groups are working through together, we have been taking on some of the biggest, hardest questions people ask about the Christian faith. These questions are asked by folks who don’t have anything to do with Jesus. They’re asked by folks who are faithfully following Him and have been doing so for years. These are questions that don’t have quick or easy or emotionally satisfying answers. The goal of this series has been to wrestle each one of them to the ground through the lens of the Scriptures in order to see what’s true and why the truth is better than what’s not.
So far, we have taken on questions of the relevance of truth, the purpose of Jesus’ miracles, the presence of suffering in the world, and just last week we talked about whether or not Jesus really is the only way to get to God. The short answers to these questions are that yes, truth really does matter, Jesus’ miracles prove who He is, God meets us in our suffering with grace and compassion, and yes, Jesus really is the only way to get to God. Of course, there is much, much more to say on each of those. If you want to hear some of that, you can go back and listen to them on the church’s website or on my blog. What I hope you are starting to see as we go, though, is that there are good answers to all of these questions. That’s not the same as saying there are easy answers to them, but there are good answers. In fact, there isn’t a question about the Christian faith you will ever be asked that hasn’t already been answered and answered well.
Well, the question we’re going to tackle this morning is doozy. It’s tough on two fronts in fact. It’s tough from an apologetic standpoint in that convincing someone who doesn’t follow Jesus and is at least a little bit skeptical of the whole Christianity thing that the answer to this question is not only true, but good is a pretty tall order. It’s also tough from an emotional standpoint. There are some times in life when we desperately don’t want what’s true on this matter to be true. Because if it is, that means that some seasons of life that are already hard, could potentially get a whole lot harder. And so we find ways to say things that aren’t true, but which we convince ourselves really are, or else we just embrace the affirmative answer to this question regardless of what the Scriptures actually have to say on the matter, and then set about constructing arguments for why that yes we so desperately desire must be right. So, what’s the question? It’s this: Won’t all people ultimately go to Heaven?
Serving as our guide this morning is going to be part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as recorded by His disciple, Matthew. This is from a section near the end of His famous sermon, and it is, honestly, one of the most disturbing things Jesus ever said. How’s that for a setup? If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you this morning, I hope you’ll open it to Matthew 7 to follow along with me. You are going to want to see this for yourself.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is easily His most well-known block of teaching. In it, Jesus lays out His ethical and moral vision for the kingdom of God. He talks about what it takes to get there (namely, a whole lot more than we have to give on our own), and why the rules and expectations for life there run pretty counter to everything we think about how life should work. It’s not just different from how we think, though, it’s better. The kingdom of God gives us the opportunity to live as God always intended for us to live, not merely as we construct for ourselves doing the best we can with what we have. It is the home of some pretty widely known teachings from Jesus as well as some that are pretty widely misunderstood and misapplied.
After spending two full chapters talking about the kingdom, Jesus finally comes around at the end of the sermon to talk about how to get there. That’s where we’re going to pick up in v. 13. Check this out with me: “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.”
So, right off the bat here, Jesus seems to make clear that not only is not everyone going to ultimately get into the kingdom of God—what we can think about as Heaven—but it’s not even going to be most people. Now, that’s a pretty unsettling thought. Doesn’t Jesus want everyone to go to Heaven? Of course He does. When He was talking to the Pharisee Nicodemus late one night when the latter came to Him to learn more about His message and mission (but secretly so his colleagues wouldn’t find out about it), Jesus told him that God sent Him to open the pathway to eternal life in His kingdom because He loved the world so much. Of course Jesus wants everyone there.
Okay, but then why would He say something like this? Well, this could be a bit of good salesmanship. Jesus was a really smart guy. He knew how to pitch a message so people wanted to hear it. Just like advertisers know today that if they tell people supplies are limited they’ll rush out to buy whatever it is even if they aren’t actually limited, Jesus could have been trying to create a sense of scarcity around God’s kingdom to get people to take an interest in it. That feels a little underhanded, though, and not very like Jesus.
We can see the other side of the coin here if we reflect a bit on the rest of the Sermon on the Mount that comes before this. What Jesus describes as the expectations of life in God’s kingdom are pretty much impossible to keep. Even getting close to meeting them would require immense levels of commitment and sacrifice. There’s a reason Olympic-caliber athletes are a rare thing. While, yes, they are all naturally talented in their sport, they are also the folks who work extraordinarily hard to take their raw skill and hone it into the expertise they put on display every four years. I suspect there would be a whole lot more Olympic athletes if there were just more people willing to work that hard. Most of us aren’t. We are really good at finding and taking the path of least resistance through this life. But the kingdom of God—Heaven—is not something we can access via the path of least resistance. It comes at the end of the path of most resistance. Jesus is just making a comment on the inherent laziness sin causes to take root in most of us.
Still, though, what Jesus said here is true. Think about it. If what we said last week about no one getting to God except through Jesus is true, when you consider the total number of people who have walked on the earth over the last 2,000 years, and compare that with the number of people who have put their trust in Jesus, the ratio tilts pretty heavily in the direction of the people who haven’t. So, a third way to understand what Jesus is saying here is that He is simply describing the world as it is. Most people aren’t going to get into God’s kingdom because most people aren’t willing to take the one path that actually gets you there.
Yet because we really like the promise of Heaven, we run into another problem here which Jesus addresses a couple of verses over. Jump down with me to v. 21 now. You see, because we like the promise of Heaven, and because we don’t like the limitations of its single-path access, we come up with all kinds of ways of arguing that we are going to get there and other people we know and love are going to get there in spite of our taking paths other than the one the Scriptures identify as getting us there successfully. As a result, Jesus says, when we get to the gates, there are going to be some surprises.
Listen to this: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!’”
Now, if Jesus’ saying that doesn’t make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you’re probably not paying close enough attention. Did you catch all that? Jesus said that when the end of this world arrives and who’s going where is getting all sorted out, there are going to be some folks clamoring to Him to be let into God’s kingdom. And they’re going to make a really compelling case. “Jesus, Jesus! Wasn’t I good? Didn’t I do good?”
Remember what we said last week? Every approach to getting into a right relationship with God other than the Christian approach boils down to two things: be good and do good. In the end, Jesus says, there are going to be a whole bunch of people who took a be-good-do-good path making a case to Him for why they should get into Heaven. And again, it’ll be a good case. Look at what Jesus said there. They prophesied in His name. They drove out demons in His name. They did miracles in His name. Those were the same kinds of things the disciples would be sent out to do on their mission trip in Matthew 10. These people doing those things probably resulted in some other people starting to genuinely follow Jesus. And yet they are going to get to the gates, make their case, and Jesus is going to say, “I never knew you.”
And it’s not like there will just be a few of these folks. Jesus says it’s going to be “many” who do this and experience this kind of a rejection from Him. On the weight of just these two passages, I think we can say rather definitively that the answer to our question today is no, not everybody is ultimately going to go to Heaven. There are some folks who are going to choose other than Jesus as a way to try to get themselves to God, and they’ll stick with that path no matter what we do or say. A lot of those folks will be strangers in whom we don’t have any kind of an emotional investment, but some of those folks are going to be people we know and love. And in the end, no, they won’t go to Heaven. And listen: If you don’t like that; if that makes you really uncomfortable, I agree with you. That sounds awful! But Jesus said it, and so it has to be true.
How can this be a good thing? Well, on its face it’s not. It’s a terrible thing. And Jesus agrees. A couple of years after this, when Jesus was in Jerusalem for the final time, His heart broke over this truth. Matthew was there when it happened and wrote down what He said for us: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her [something they had tried to do to Him more than once]. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”
No, it’s not good that not everyone ultimately goes to Heaven. But it is just. And, believe it or not, it’s loving. It’s just because God can’t just write off sin without consequence. If He were to do that, He would be rightly decried as a moral monster for putting Jesus through the ordeal of the cross for nothing. No, sin has to be dealt with. If we don’t accept the mechanism for dealing with sin God provided, we’ll be on the hook to deal with it on our own. That won’t go well. God can’t ultimately just let everyone into Heaven. And, contrary to how we naturally think on this matter, this is loving because these folks who choose other than Jesus as a way to get to God are actually choosing other than God for themselves. To put that another way, they are choosing to not be with God. They don’t want Him to be their Lord. And, as John’s vision of the end of the world in Revelation 20 makes clear, they’re not going to change their mind on this matter. For God to force them to live forever in His kingdom when they don’t want to do that would be terribly unloving of Him because love never forces itself on anyone who doesn’t want it.
The truth here is tough, but it is good. The only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus. Now, that means you can’t do it your own way. If you try to do it your own way, like we talked about last time, you won’t get there. Neither will anybody else. The only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus. If you or anyone else, though, is willing to receive that ticket (because it’s already been purchased for you), you can get into Heaven. Heaven is absolutely for everyone. Anyone can get there because Jesus has opened the doors. He’s blown them wide open. He ripped the gates entirely off their hinges and threw them away and is now standing permanently out front as the chief welcoming officer of the whole enterprise. Everyone has the opportunity to spend eternity in God’s heavenly kingdom. But not everybody is going to. Because, as Jesus said right here, not everybody is willing to use the ticket He has provided for us. And, the only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus.
Okay, so then, how do we know when someone has received that ticket? How do we know when we have received it? Do we have any kind of assurance here so that our eternal destiny is not simply left in a state of constant anxiety? Yes, as a matter of fact there is. Jesus gives that to us right here as well. Come back with me to the middle of the passage here. And, to let you in on a little secret, when an author wraps one central point up in two statements of a second point in the Scriptures, it’s because he really wants us to not miss the central point. Look with me starting in v. 15: “Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So you’ll recognize them by their fruit.”
Jesus here is talking about people who would pretend to be from God but who aren’t really. They might pretend to be coming with a message from Him or even simply to be following Him, but their real goal is to push people away from Him, whether that is to hog the attention for themselves, or to direct it toward someone else. He’s giving His audience and us through them a way to know who is really one of His people and who is not. Because He was a brilliant teacher, He used the easily understandable image of trees and their fruit. Each tree only produces one kind of fruit. If you are looking at a tree and wondering if it is an apple tree or a pear tree or a peach tree, you just have to wait for the fruit to come in. When it does, you’ll know. There won’t be even the slightest bit of question in your mind. When you see that nice, ripe, red apple, the tree it is growing on is indisputably an apple tree.
In the same sort of way, when someone has received Jesus’ ticket to Heaven by entering into a relationship with Him, eventually her life is going to reflect Jesus’ presence in her by way of the Holy Spirit dwelling in her heart. And what does that look like? The apostle Paul gave us that answer. The only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus. The person who has a relationship with Jesus will begin to be more joyful than she was before. She’ll love more freely and fully. She’ll be at peace even when her circumstances shouldn’t allow it. She’ll be more patient with the people around her. She’ll be kind to everyone, even her enemies. There will be a goodness to her spirit everywhere she goes. She’ll be more faithful in keeping her word and in her pursuit of the character of Christ. She’ll be gentler in the various situations she finds herself in. She’ll practice more self-control than anyone close to her manages to exhibit. Who she is will be known by the fruit her life produces.
If you want to be sure whether or not you or someone else has received Jesus’ ticket into Heaven, just look at the fruit your life is producing. Is it consistent with the life of Christ as we see displayed for us in the Scriptures? If so, then, yes, you’ve got. If not, then, no, you don’t. And listen: most people generally can’t fake this for long. I mean, you can for a while. You can put on a smile and be nice to someone you hate for a few minutes. But eventually the truth is going to come out. And then you’ll know. And then everyone will know.
But—and listen closely to this next part because it’s really important; maybe the most important thing of the day—this fruit has a source. And this source is Jesus. Don’t lose sight of this: the only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus. The fruit Jesus is talking about comes out of that relationship. You can make an apple out of plastic or wax that looks so much like the real thing that someone unsuspecting would be tempted to pick it up and try to take a bite. It won’t satisfy your hunger, though, and will probably wind up hurting you. The only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus. Someone without a relationship with Jesus, but who has “been good” all his life, isn’t going to Heaven because “being good” isn’t the ticket into Heaven. Trying to excuse someone whose life isn’t exhibiting the fruit of a relationship with Jesus as nonetheless bound for Heaven because he’s such a good person is a meaningless—not to mention dishonest—exercise. Don’t forget about the last part of our passage. Folks who were good people—even really, extraordinarily good people—but who nonetheless don’t have a relationship with Jesus, are going to get to the end and find out what the Scriptures had been saying all along. Our best goodness is worthless for gaining us access to God’s eternal kingdom. Only Jesus was ever good enough. No one else has come even close. As a result, the only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus.
There are three things you need to do with all of this. The first is that you need to have confidence. When the world attacks you for being such a judgmental, small-minded, bigot because you express agreement with what the various authors of the Scriptures were inspired by God to say on this matter, you don’t have to be afraid of their attacks. You can politely insist that you absolutely believe Heaven is for everyone. You just happen to believe that there’s only one way to get there. And, if not everybody gets there because of their refusal to take the way God has made available in Jesus, well, Jesus Himself said that was going to happen. He certainly wasn’t happy about it because it meant a rejection of Him, but He was honest enough to admit it. We shouldn’t dance a jig over this fact, but we can accept it and give God glory for making a way to get to Heaven that is available to everyone. The only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus.
Second, you need to consider where you are in terms of a relationship with Jesus. Do you have one? Does your life bear out the fruit of having one? Are you engaged intentionally and actively with Jesus’ body, the church as a healthily functioning member? Are you regularly engaging with God through the Scriptures and prayer? Are you serving others in Jesus’ name and practicing the discipline of sacrificial generosity? The only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus, and you need to make sure you have one.
Third, if you’ve got people within your sphere of influence who don’t have a relationship with Jesus, you need to be prayerfully considering what God is calling you to do about that. He’s put them within your sphere of influence on purpose. The only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus. What can you do to move them in the direction of embracing that relationship? Heaven is for everybody, but there’s only one way in. We need to do everything we can to love those around us onto that path. The only ticket into Heaven is a relationship with Jesus.