This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host Brent Billings. Today we finish our exploration of the Sermon of the Mount, talking about gates, trees, fools, and houses.

Sounds like a blockbuster to me. I don't know, blockbusters that work with podcasts? What am I looking for here? Sure. It's a wingedinger.

Alright, our goal here today, excuse me. Our goal here today is to finish up Sermon of the Mount. That is our goal. We're going to get to the end of chapter 7.

And I got no notes today. There will be no reading, no manuscripts. We're going to talk. We're going to talk. Brent, you're going to read. I'm going to talk. You're going to ask me questions.

I'm going to throw some answers out. We'll see how long it takes us. It could be a new record, short or long. This is uncharted.

Yeah, we'll see what happens. I'm guessing not short. I'm guessing not a record in shortness. But this comes from experience.

Alright, Matthew 7. Matthew 7. Jump right in. We're definitely where we at, verse 13. Alright.

So, let's just do that real quick. Let's make some observations. We always use this to talk about things like eternal destinations. And just notice there's no reference to that.

Even in just the original, like Jesus language, like forget all the wrestling matches we've been doing about what hell is and Gehanna and the usages of the word and all that.

Take all the contextual nuances and debatable material away. Just look at what's being said, even just in the English. Jesus isn't making any comments about eternal, eternal damnation or eternal salvation.

Inner through the narrow gate for why does the gate broad as the road that leads to destruction doesn't say eternal destruction doesn't say hell doesn't say any of that. We're just we project all that because of our theology on here.

And Jesus does use the word eternal at other points. Absolutely. He uses word hell. He's the only one that uses word hell outside of James. So I mean, he knows how to use the words in the sermon on the Mount. He's used it two or three times.

So definitely just not not what he's referencing. He's referencing this larger idea that life and destruction. I think a Jewish listener would think back to like the book of Deuteronomy. I said before you the way of life and the way of death Moses said choose life.

All kinds of conversations and Torah and even the rest of to knock about life and death and choosing life and those kind of things destruction and life the way that say what says I kind of quote in there. Let's see here.

Smalls the gate and narrow the road that leads to life. Yeah, the word life and only a few find it one. Make sure you know what word their life and destruction. And I think this is similar to at the back end of the of the be attitudes.

In fact, we saved what I would even say it isn't even the last be attitude, but there were two there was a be attitude and the following statement were on which we posted not too long ago.

A few episodes back. I think it was a hope of the world. We had that episode just a few weeks ago. What was the double there was a double proclamation. Blessed are you.

Blessed are those who are blank. What was that Brent persecuted persecuted right and we talked about the pronouns being different the last be attitude are blessed are those who are persecuted.

And then after that Jesus followed up with blessed are you when you are persecuted exactly and we suggested in that podcast that Jesus is making these proclamations about who's in and who's out remember that theme of mums or listen Matthew.

Who's in and who's out and God's favor being on all those that we assume God isn't in favor of and then at the end of this he turns his attention specifically to the disciples and says.

And if you actually believe this this is not going to be easy to walk out. So blessed are you when you end up being persecuted because you believe these things when you believe in this kind of gospel when you go to bring people this kind of kingdom.

I think this is a similar kind of idea now on the backside and we suggested that maybe there's a chiasm here and appropriately the right spot here the same idea on the backside of the chiasm which or the backside of the sermons on the mount.

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