Will Those Who are Saved Be Few?

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Gospel Reading from Luke 13:22–30

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, chapter 13, verses 22 through 30. Jesus went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. Someone said to him, Lord, will those who are saved be few?

He said to them, strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door saying, Lord, open to us, then he will answer you, I do not know where you come from.

Then you will begin to say, well, we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets. But he will say, I tell you, I don't know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. When you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves cast out, and people will come from the east and from the north and the south and recline at the table in the kingdom of God.

And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last. In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Why Jesus Answers a Vexing Question with a Call to Repentance

All right, I'm going to date myself again. All right, some of you remember these. Years ago, there used to be a stock brokerage company named E .F. Hutton. Yeah, Janet, yeah, you remember, right? E .F. Hutton.

The E .F. Hutton commercials were quite memorable. In one of those commercials, there were two men walking through a crowded airport baggage claim area. As they were walking, one fellow was talking about an investment opportunity.

And so he asked the other fellow, what does your broker think? And the man replies, well, my broker is E .F. Hutton. And E .F. Hutton says, and as soon as he says that, everyone in the airport stops what they're doing.

The airport goes completely silent as everyone strains to hear what E .F. Hutton said. And then the commercial announcer says this, when E .F. Hutton talks, people listen. No, they did not pay me to say that.

I'm just saying. I'm not on their dole. So our gospel text is sort of like those old E .F. Hutton commercials. Jesus is asked a question by an unnamed fellow, and you could practically hear a pin drop.

And this is an important question. And how Jesus and how Scripture answers this is of vital importance. In fact, I'm going to make the claim that our gospel text combined with our epistle text today are going to help us kind of understand the answer to a vexing question.

And this is something that we've all struggled with. Have any of you come to church and just gone through the motions?

I've done it. I've done it.

And from time to time, you get that kind of vexing question, especially regarding the Lord's Supper. If we were to have it more often, how are we going to keep it special? And the underlying question behind that is everybody knows that although God has instituted these good things, we as sinners can somehow get into autopilot mode.

Where we just come in, we stand up, we sit down, we pray the prayer, we do this, we do that, we sing a hymn, we leave. And you go home and you ask yourself, did I go to church today? If you're honest, you've done this.

So this text, again, with our epistle text, we're going to be looking at what's the solution to this problem. So let's return to our gospel text. I'm going to be preaching from my translation. Again, it's not because my translation's great.

It's because I've taken the finished job on it and kept it at the primer stage because there's some things going on. And here's what it says. And he, that's Jesus, he was journeying through, according to cities and villages, teaching and making the journey to Jerusalem.

A little bit of a note there. That's our context. That's the important part. Because remember, a few weeks ago, the text said that Jesus had set his face like flint, heading to Jerusalem, heading to the cross.

So Luke is very kind here to remind us, Jesus is heading to Jerusalem to die for your sins and mine. To fulfill all righteousness and become the sacrifice so that we can be forgiven of our sins. There's your context.

Verse 23. So someone said to him, we don't know who this fellow is. He kind of shows up out of nowhere. And then he asks a question. Master, are few the ones being saved? Now, I've kind of kept it in the order it shows up in the Greek because there's a little bit of a play in the Greek on the word ones.

All right.

I'll explain it as we go. Are few the ones being saved? Now, it seems on the surface like this is a great question, right? I mean, everybody wants to know at the end of the world, on the day of judgment, how's the pie chart going to be split?

Is it 50 -50, 30 -70? I'm not good at math. Start working out your pie charts, right? We all want to know kind of the end. And you'll notice that that's quite an abstract question, right? Because the guy asking the question kind of is hinting at, well, he thinks he's on the good side of that pie chart.

All right.

So Jesus isn't interested really in answering abstract theological questions. In fact, two really good Lutheran theologians that I love, Arthur Just and Martin Fransman, both of them have noted that theoretical theological questions that are framed in the third person, they often have this effect of putting off repentance, and they do not actually lead to faith in Christ.

So Jesus doesn't answer the question. And that's the important part. Read through the text. At the end, does Jesus sit there and go, okay, it's going to be like 50 -40, 60 -40, something.

He doesn't answer the question.

Watch what he does. And so here's where the Greek gets, again, interesting. Literally, here's how it reads, and then I'll kind of fill it in. And the said to them.

I know! You read it in the Greek, you go.

And then you have to think back to first-year Greek grammar. The sentence literally reads, and the said to them. When this construction shows up, Greek grammar demands that you insert a word. And the word is one.

So let me do this using proper Greek grammar. And the one said to them. And now you can start to see what's going on. Are few the ones being saved? And the one, Jesus, now said to them. Here's what he said.

Be struggling to enter through the narrow door. Because many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. Forget the pie chart. Forget what the percentage is going to be on the day of judgment.

You, you be struggling to enter through the narrow door. None of this abstract theology nonsense. We're not talking about them. We're talking about you. That's how Jesus just turns on them right here.

He says, so, be struggling to enter through the narrow door. Many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. From whatever time the housemaster rises and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and to be knocking on the door saying, Master, open for us.

And having responded, he will say to you, I do not know you, where you are from. And then you will begin to say, well, we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught on our wide roads. Think religious activity here, right?

Where do you go to hear the words of Jesus?

Come to church.

Where do you come to eat and drink in his presence?

Church.

Back then, those who were following Jesus around, they were following him around for religious purposes. They were hearing his teaching. They were eating and feasting with him.

All right?

Keep that in mind. So he will speak to them saying, I don't know you, where you're from. Depart from me, all you workers of unrighteousness. In that place there will be weeping and the grinding of teeth, and you will see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you being thrown outside.

And yes, that is a literal reference to hell itself. Jesus was one of these guys who taught about hell, and by the way, he's God in human flesh. So if you have a difference of opinion regarding Jesus when it comes to the doctrine of hell, you might want to check your theology.

Jesus has better credentials than you. So then he goes on. They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and they will recline in the kingdom of God, and behold, there are, and watch what he does with the words here, there are last ones who will be first, and there are first ones who will be last.

All right?

And now you can kind of see the word play on the word one. The one says this. Now, let's kind of unpack this, see what we can do with this so we can kind of get this all sorted out in our minds correctly.

I mean, it all seems clear as mud right now, right?

Okay.

Me too.

I'm with you there.

All right?

So let's work with this. Jesus said strive or be struggling to enter through the narrow door. Now, here is how we often intuitively understand what Jesus is saying, and you need to get this. Our intuition is dead wrong.

Okay?

When Jesus says strive to be entering through the narrow door, here's what we think. Clean up your act.

Put away your sin.

Get rid of your cigarettes, your booze, your secular music, your playing cards. Cover up your tattoos and be a good person so that you can merit and earn God's forgiveness. That's how we think.

All right?

I mean, after all, when we stand before Jesus, there's going to be one of those old-fashioned pan scales, right? You ever seen the scales of justice, the statue where she's got the blindfold over her eyes and she's got the pan scale, so that way she can just give an objective judgment, right?

We think oftentimes the way the judgment is going to work is like that. There on the one side, God places all of our sins and all the bad things that we've done, and then on the other side, all of our good works, our righteous deeds, our religious things that we've done, and then if our good outweighs the bad, oh, right?

Then Jesus will go, oh, that was close. Well done, right?

You're in.

That's how we think. Strive to be entering through the narrow door. Duh, try harder. No, that's not what Jesus is saying, and the fact that he references people who are doing these religious activities of listening to Jesus' religious preaching and teaching, eating in his presence, shows that that's not what he's talking about.

You see it, right?

Let me give you a cross-reference. Let me give you a cross-reference. Matthew 21, 28 through 32, and I want you to hear Jesus' words on this because Scripture throughout teaches that we are saved by grace through faith,.

Not by our works.

Now, this is not to knock works. Works are a great thing, but as soon as you're holding them up to God and say, look what I did, I get to go to heaven, God says, oh, that's cute, that's precious, go to hell.

Right?

You can't get to heaven that way. So here's our cross-reference. Matthew 21, 28 through 32. Jesus talking to the Pharisees. He says, what do you think? A man had two sons, and he went to the first one and said, son, go and work in the vineyard today.

I've done this with my son.

I didn't have a vineyard, but I've told him to go and do work. Somehow it never gets done, but that's a different story. I'm still in therapy about this. Anyway, son, go in the vineyard and work today.

And he answered, I will not. But afterward, and here's what the text says, he repented. The translation says he changed his mind, but the Greek says he repented and he went. And then he went to the other son and said the same.

And he answered, sir, I'm going to go. But he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father? And they said, well, the first. And Jesus said to them, watch who he's talking to, Pharisees, very religious people.

Truly I say to you, and here comes the real stinging words, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God before you. Yeah, that's right. Those dirty, rotten tax collectors and the hookers are getting into the kingdom of heaven.

How on earth is that possible, right? Well, here's the reason why. For John, that's John the Baptist, came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him. But the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him.

They believed. You mean to tell me that some blee-bitten, STD-written hooker is going to make it into the kingdom because she just believed?

Uh-huh. Yeah, exactly.

That's kind of the point, right? And then he says to them, and even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds. You didn't repent and believe. So this is what's going on. When Jesus is talking about, well, hey, people are going to come and say, we ate in your presence.

We heard you preaching in the streets. We've done all these religious things, right? In other passages, Jesus, on the day of judgment, says to people, say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

Right? You see, your religious activity doesn't save you. But that doesn't mean that religious activity isn't important. And this is where you have to make a distinction. So kind of think of it this way.

Jesus, right now, is here at 470th Avenue Northwest in rural Oslo.

Right?

He's here right now.

And do you think for a second that you're going to be saved because you heard Jesus' words preached here today? Just by hearing?

No.

So you think for a second that because you can say that you ate and drank in Christ's presence when we've had the Lord's Supper, does that save you?

No.

Or how about because you went through some kind of religious motions or performed some religious ceremony or prayed some really cool religious prayer. Is that going to save you?

No.

Now, again, don't get me wrong. It is truly God's will that you come to church and you hear Christ's words and that you pray and that you feast in Christ's presence. But no one, not one person, is saved by these religious activities.

You see it?

Why Sacrifices Without Faith Are Vain

Now, let me give you another cross-reference. Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 1. I'd like you to be there with me while I'm reading. Isaiah 1. In the opening chapters of the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah lays out, if you would, the picture.

He paints for us the picture of just how wicked Israel was in the time that he prophesied. But if you want to understand how wicked they are, you have to understand it through kind of this lens. Here's the issue.

Here's what he says, starting at verse 2. Hear, O heavens, give ear, O earth, Yahweh has spoken. Now here's what Yahweh says. Children I have reared up and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.

The ox knows its owner, the donkey its master's crib, but Israel doesn't know. My people do not understand. Sounds bad, right? Well, it gets worse. He says, ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly.

They have forsaken the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are utterly estranged. You're thinking, what are these people up to?

Right?

What are they doing? Verse 10. So hear the word of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom. Yeah, God is calling Israel, Sodom, and Gomorrah here. That's how wicked they are. But watch what he says. Hear the word of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom.

Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord? I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and of the fat of well-fed beasts.

I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats. Pause there for a second. Notice, these people are coming to the temple, and they're doing what? They're sacrificing. Who told them to do that?

God did.

Where?

In the Old Testament. You can find this in Exodus. You can find this in Deuteronomy. You can find this in Leviticus. It's all spelled out in black and white.

Right?

Any little Jewish schoolboy who knows his alphabets and can read can see that God commands these sacrifices. And you know what these people are doing? They're doing exactly what God said to do.

You want to sacrifice, God?

No problemo.

Which one of my flock do you want? You want that one?

No big deal. I'll go grab that one. We'll just slit its throat. There you go, God. What's missing?

Faith.

And this is where it gets really dangerous. God commands certain things of us, but He does not command them apart from faith in Christ. As soon as you start going through the motions, you're thinking that your religious activity is the thing that makes you have a right standing with God.

And it's Christ who gives you a right standing with God, and He has you pray, has you take the Lord's Supper, has you come to church to hear His Word, not to be saved because you are saved. And you do these things apart from faith.

What does God say about you? You're absolutely wicked. I'll explain why more in a minute.

He continues.

So when you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? It's a rhetorical question. God has, right? So He says, bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me.

The new moon and the Sabbath are the calling and the calling of convocations. I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates them. They've become a burden to me.

I'm weary of bearing them. But you're the one who commanded them, God, right? So you see there's something wrong here. The idea of religious activity apart from faith is totally vain.

It's empty.

Yet, had they had faith?

Had they truly trusted in the promise of the forgiveness of sins? Trusted in God alone? Would God have despised the things He commanded them to do?

No, He wouldn't.

And so the idea here then is this, is that what is it that makes a religious function unspecial? Is not the doing of it, it's the doing of it apart from faith. Does that make sense? So don't come here and pray the Lord's prayer.

On autopilot.

Come here believing that God hears your prayer and that when you're praying, you're praying as Christ has told you to pray. You see the difference? When you come to the Lord's Supper, don't think of it as some kind of just vain religious ceremony.

Believe what Jesus says it is. Christ is here present feeding you with His body and His blood for the forgiveness of your sins. He's truly there present serving you. To keep it special, you believe and hang on those words.

And then when you're hanging on those words, then it is always precious and you're never walking through the motions turning it into something vain. Turning it into something that God hates.

You see?

Faith, Not Mere Religious Motion, Pleases God

Now, our epistle text deals with this also. And I'm not going to have time. I'm going to save you from a 90-minute long sermon. But the idea here is this. When you go back and you read the epistle text, and I'll pick up a part of it, keep in mind that this epistle, Hebrews, was written to Jewish Christians who were abandoning the Christian faith.

Tempted to go back to Judaism, to the types and shadows. They were really, really tempted in a bad way. And the context of what we heard said in our pericope, consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Him.

To raise up your flagging hands and strengthen your weak knees. All of that is in the context of having first gone through Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11, verses 1 -6 says this,. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for.

It is the conviction of things that are not seen. By faith, the people of old receive their commendation. By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of the things that are visible.

By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. And notice here, did Cain not offer a sacrifice to God? Go back in your Bible. Read the opening chapters of Genesis. You want to talk about dysfunctional family.

It begins with family number one.

Right?

Family number one. Things go so badly, there's a murder.

Right?

And the setting for the murder is this. Cain and Abel, with the rest of their family, they offer sacrifices to God. Abel is a shepherd and he offers the best of his flock. Cain, he's a farmer. He offers sugar beets and corn and wheat.

Right?

And there's nothing wrong with what it is that was offered. But the Lord does not look on Cain's offering. He looks on Abel. And he accepts his offering.

Why?

Scripture says right here.

Abel had faith.

Cain didn't.

Right?

So there's your religious activity. Cain had all kinds of religious activity. But he had no faith. He despised and hated his brother. And it ends in a murder.

Right?

But by faith, Abel accepted, or offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous. God commending him by accepting his gift. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

By faith, Enoch was taken so that he should not see death. And he was not found because God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. And here's your important verse.

And without faith, it is impossible to please God. It doesn't say that it's difficult. It doesn't say it's tricky. Somewhat challenging. But here's how you can still pull it off.

No, without faith,.

It's absolutely impossible to please God. So with that kind of ringing in your ears, kind of return again to our Gospel text. And I'll maybe in our Sunday school today kind of tease out a little bit from the Epistle.

I really want to drive some of these things home. But we'll pick up the Epistle text in our Sunday school. So here again, then, the one. Remember the text says, and the said to them. So here's what the one, the one who journeyed to Jerusalem for you said.

From whatever time the housemaster rises and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and to be knocking on the door, Master, open for us. And having responded, he will say to you, I don't know where you are from.

Then he will begin to say, we ate and we drank in your presence. You taught in our wide roads. What's missing?

Faith.

They heard but never believed. So he will speak to them, saying, I don't know you, where you're from, depart from me, you workers of unrighteousness. And he sends them to hell.

He sends them to hell.

Terrible outcome, is it not? It's utter foolishness. It's utter foolishness. But see, you've got to understand this, that the one, Jesus, the one, he was made to be the lowest of the low in all of humanity.

Christ Made Sin for Us and Became the Last One

I want you to think about this. 2 Corinthians 5, starting at verse 17, says this. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Can't wait until I get rid of the old one, totally. But if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

And brothers and sisters, are you not in Christ? If you're baptized, if you've been to this font or any other place and been baptized, you've been baptized into Christ. You are already a new creation.

The old has passed away. The new has come. All of this is from God. It's not from you. It's from God, who through Christ, God has reconciled us to himself. And he's given us, listen to this, the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation. We're familiar with this concept.

Watch where it goes. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, and God is making his appeal through us, so we implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. Here's the important words. For our sake, God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

There it is.

You see, the one became the last one. The least among us. How so? Well, God literally lifted our sins off of us and placed them all on Christ. The one who was sinless was made to be the one and only sinner in all of the world.

And he bled and he died for you. And this calls for faith.

Plain and simple.

Because salvation is a gift received, not a wage that is earned. So God made Jesus to be sin for you. So someone said to Jesus, Master, are the ones being saved few? And the one said to them, So be striving to enter through the narrow door.

Brothers and sisters, are you striving to enter through the narrow door? Keep in mind, in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, I am the door. So how does one strive? How does one struggle to enter through the narrow door?

Jesus is that narrow door. One strives and struggles by faith.

Period.

It's all for you. Those who strive to earn their salvation through their religious activities or going through their religious motions, or through their own righteousness, well, they're striving and struggling to enter eternal life through a different door rather than Christ.

But keep this in mind, there are no secret passages, no underground tunnels into the heavenly Jerusalem. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.

So to struggle, to enter through the narrow door, is to believe. Trust the one who became the last for you. And the one whom God has exalted above all of us so that the name of Jesus every knee would bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord.

He's done this all for you by grace through faith. This calls for belief. So repent of your sins. Repent of your wickedness. That's slavery. And trust in the one who reconciled you to God by becoming sin for you.

In the name of Jesus,.

Amen.

567 -44. And again, that address is Kungsvinger Lutheran Church 15950 470th Avenue NW Oslo, MN 567 -44. We thank you for your support. All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message.

And again, thank you for listening.