Great Sorrow for the Lost

Luke 13:22-30

^22 Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. ^23 Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

He said to them, ^24 “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. ^25 Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’

“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

^26 “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

^27 “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

^28 “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. ^29 People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. ^30 Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

A certain lady died stood at the Gates of Heaven. She could look and see a beautiful banquet table set, with all her family members who had died before sitting and enjoying the feast. They all saw her and started waving and motioning her to come in. A saint appeared and said, “Hello. We’ve been waiting for you.” And she said, "This is such a wonderful place, how do I get in?" The gatekeeper smiled and said, “All you have to do is correctly spell one word.” “What is it?” She anxiously asked. “Spell love,” he said. The woman smiled and spelled: l-o-v-e, and she was welcomed into heaven. About a year later, the same woman was on gate duty when her husband arrived unexpectedly. She said, “I am surprised to see you! How have you been doing?” He said, “Actually, I’ve been doing really well since you died. Do you remember that pretty nurse that took care of you? We fell in love and married a few weeks after you died. Then I won the lottery so we sold our little house and moved into a huge mansion. My new wife and I have been very happy and have been traveling all over the world. In fact we were just on a skiing trip to the Swiss Alps when I was caught in an avalanche, and that’s why I’m here. By the way, how do I get in?” His ex-wife said, “All you have to do is spell one word correctly and you can enter heaven.” He said, “OK, what’s the word?” She smiled wryly and said, “Czechoslovakia.”

Thankfully there is no spelling test to get into heaven or many of us would be in trouble, but it is the right question to ask. During one of his preaching journeys, one man approached Jesus and asked, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” We do not know what was behind this man’s question. He was obviously a Jew and may have expected Jesus to wrap his arm around him and say: “Of course only a few will be saved—only good Jews like you who obey the whole law will gain entrance into heaven.” We cannot know what he was thinking other than his question, “will many be saved?”

Have you ever heard Jesus give a one-word answer to a question? True to form, Jesus answers this question by giving the man much more than he asked for. I summarize Jesus’ response this way. Instead of asking, “How many will be saved? you should instead ask, “Will I be among the saved?” Jesus started his answer by saying, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door.” The original word for ‘effort’ is agonizomai. Can you see what English word that looks like? Agonize. This word shows the eternal significance of the matter at hand. Jesus did not say, “Give it your best shot and you’ll be OK.” As parents, when we send our kids off to play soccer or work on a school project, we usually say something like, “Do your best.” This is not the tone of Jesus’ words, rather he said that the door to heaven is narrow and you need to make every effort—you need to agonize to enter that narrow door.

Now if this was the only teaching about eternal life from Jesus, we would rightly assume that we have to amass a large amount of good works to be saved. We need to be in agony to be saved. But we know from the rest of Jesus’ teaching and the rest of the N.T. that good works cannot save. Jesus did not tell the man to amass good works, but rather he told him to make sure he was entering through the narrow door. The parallel passage in Matthew 7 helps here. Jesus said, “Enter thought the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

How many people expect to find the narrow door? According to a survey done by George Barna, two-thirds of Americans expect to go to Heaven and only 1% expects to go to Hell. The rest expect to be reincarnated, cease to exist or just don’t know where they’ll go. (The Barna Report, October 21, 2003) Now you decide—if only 1% go to hell and two-thirds go to Heaven, it sounds like hell is the narrow door and heaven is the wide door. I wish that were the case. I wish that many were saved. I wish that all were saved, but in order to turn my wish into a belief, I would have to ignore Jesus and bury my head in the sand. This is precisely what most people do. I take no pleasure in preaching about a narrow door knowing that most people will not find it, but I must preach about it because I am compelled by the truth of Jesus’ teaching.

Most people expect to go to Heaven, but why do they have this expectation? The characters in Jesus’ story had their reasons. Verse 26, “We ate and drank with you and you taught in our streets.” If a robber points a gun at you and demands all your money, you would be frightened and shocked. But if I invited you over for dinner and then right before dessert I pointed a gun at you and demanded all your money, your level of shock would be even greater. This was the logic of these people. “Lord, we shared a meal with you. We sat and listened to your teaching. How can you reject us?” Despite their familiarity with Jesus, he will say to them, “I don’t know you or where you come from.”

There is an even stronger argument in Matthew 7. “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.’” The people in Luke were merely familiar with Jesus, but those in Matthew were actually doing ministry in Jesus’ name! If you call yourself a Christian, then this passage should stop you dead in your tracks. How many of you have cast out a demon from another person in Jesus’ name? How many of you have performed miracles in the name of Jesus? If one of you actually performed a genuine miracle in front of us, I would be very impressed. Moreover, I would not be inclined to doubt your salvation. But it is possible to do ministry in Jesus’ name and still not know Jesus.

What will you say to Jesus? “Lord, I taught Sunday School for 35 years. Jesus, did you know I tithed my money to the church since I was a little girl? Lord, I spent years in seminary learning about you and every Sunday I preached about you.” These are all good things, but are they the same as entering through the narrow door? How do you like this response? “Lord, I confessed my sins and accepted Jesus Christ as my savior.” Would that kind of response get a person into Heaven? From our evangelical viewpoint, it certainly sounds like the right answer, doesn’t it? According to that Barna survey, it is the same answer that almost half of Americans gave. A full 43% of people expect to go to Heaven because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as Savior. Do you think 43% of our nation has entered through the narrow door?

Familiarity with Jesus is not the narrow door. Ministry in Jesus’ name is not the narrow door. Praying a prayer of forgiveness is not the narrow door. If you call yourself a Christian then this passage should stop you dead in your tracks. You can be doing all of the right things and saying all of the right things and still not have entered through the narrow door. The right question is not, “Will only a few be saved?” but rather, “Will I be among the saved?” Jesus said, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door.”

This raises the issue of why I don’t give a gospel invitation at the end of every sermon. Most of you have either attended or visited churches that do this. Some of you have no doubt thought, “I wonder why Rich doesn’t give an invitation every Sunday.” Two reasons primarily. The first reason is because Jesus said that we must teach disciples “to obey everything” he has commanded. The gospel saves but the gospel also has implications and standards for all of life for the rest of our lives. I should not get stuck on only one part of the gospel. The second reason, which is related to the first, is that I never want to give the impression that salvation is a one-time decision. Barna’s survey tells us that 43% of Americans have confessed their sin and accepted Christ as Savior. About 60% call themselves “born again”. I do not want to participate in creating more people who think they are saved because they raised their hand in church twenty years ago. This does not mean that I think everyone who walks through those doors is saved. Now God doesn’t whisper in my ear and tell me that Billy is saved and Timmy isn’t, so I can’t point fingers at anyone, but I would never assume that everyone who listens to me is a Christian. Therefore, as I preach the whole counsel of God, I often warn you to examine your life to see if it matches up to what the Bible says Christians should look like.

Let me illustrate two different ways to preach the gospel. I could say something like this. “Before you go home today, make sure that you have confessed your sin and accepted Christ as your Savior. You need to do this today because you don’t know how short your life may be. You could get killed in a car wreck on the way home, and then where would you spend eternity?” I could offer a weekly invitation like that, or instead I could say something like this if I was preaching on forgiveness. “The Bible tells us that a true follower of Christ will forgive those who have hurt him. If you refuse to forgive someone, either you have failed to grasp the depth of Christ’s forgiveness toward you, or else you are not forgiven. I am not saying it is ever easy to forgive others, but if you flat out refuse to forgive, then you should consider the possibility that you do not know Christ as Savior.” Do you see the difference? The first way is Biblically accurate to a point, but week after week it could give the impression that that is all there is to the Christian life. The result would be that irtually everyone who left here would be able to say that they had received Christ as Savior at some point in their life. But the second way is actually a better Biblical warning. If week after week I lay out the picture of what it means to be a follower of Christ, those who are saved will know better how to live like Christ, and those who are not saved can see that the one-time decision they made fifteen years ago was not enough.

Let’s remind us what the narrow door is not. Familiarity with Jesus and his teaching is not the narrow door. Great ministry done in Jesus’ name is not the narrow door. Praying a prayer of forgiveness is not the narrow door. Jesus warned us to agonize to enter through the narrow door. He told his listeners that those who do not enter through the narrow door are outside the door are in a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That is a place no one wants to be. Jesus said those outside will see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom feasting with God. Imagine that scene. The unsaved will get a single glimpse into Heaven, and then be swept away to a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. For all eternity they will have a reminder of what could have been. You do not want to be on the outside looking into that last glimpse of Heaven.

Some say that it is not fair that people are excluded from heaven. Someone recently said to me, “the concept of hell makes God sound like a real jerk.” The answer to the fairness question for many is to claim that all religions lead to God. This is not an option for Bible-believing Christians, so some people come up with other creative solutions. Here is one solution offered by Tony Campolo. “I used to think that pagans in far-off countries were lost—were going to hell—if they did not have the Gospel of Jesus Christ preached to them. I no longer believe that. ... I believe there are other ways of recognizing the existence of God—through nature, for instance—and plenty of other opportunities, therefore, of saying yes to God.”  http://www.letusreason.org/Current34.htm This is often called the ‘wider hope’ or ‘inclusivism’. It sounds compassionate, but is it Biblical? If we are honest, we have all wrestled with this question at some point. We want to believe in a wider hope. We want to believe that heaven is inclusive and no one will be left out. No one wants to believe in eternal punishment, but is it Biblical?

There is one more enormous question before us. In this passage Jesus gives us all these warnings about entering through the narrow door, yet he does not explicitly state what the narrow door is. Did you notice that? In the next five verses, Jesus presents one of the most beautiful pictures of what it means to enter through the narrow door. We will look at the rest of this passage next week when we try to answer the question, Is God Fair? In the meantime, remember that the best question to ask is not, “Will only a few be saved?” but “Will I be among the saved?”

Alistair Begg of the radio ministry called Truth for Life, was on the campus of Harvard University preparing a sermon to be given at a conference of fellow preachers. He got up early to go over his message and found an all-night coffee shop. As he was studying, he looked over at a nearby table and noticed a young Asian woman reading her Bible. He walked over to her table and said, “Excuse me miss, I see that you are reading your Bible. Are you a Christian?” She said, “Oh, yes I am. I have found the narrow way.” What about you? Could you give the same answer with as much confidence as this young woman? This afternoon we have a special privilege. During the baptism service we get to hear the stories of six people who have walked through the narrow door and seek to walk the narrow road with Jesus. I hope you can join us for the service and potluck to follow.

Rich Maurer

January 15, 2006