Sermon 9-5-04

The Narrow Door of Perishing Pride
Rev. Richard A. Bolland

Luke 13:22-30
(Sept. 5, 2004 Sermon Transcript)

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Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We look at the gospel lesson this morning as the basis for our meditation, reading especially these words. (Jesus) said to them, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 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.'...People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last."

It is the often-stated stereotype that people hold of our Lord Jesus Christ, in which He is always smiling, always welcoming, and always saying nice things to just about everyone. This is a very popular conception of our Lord, but I must tell you that it is both inadequate and inaccurate. It must be remembered that, together with His long-suffering against sin, and His gracious will that all men be saved and come in to the knowledge of the truth, that our Lord is, in fact, fully God in every sense of the word. And that means that He is also, in addition to being long-suffering and gracious, also, perfectly just, perfectly holy, and perfectly righteous.

This gospel reading today places our Lord in His full Godliness, especially in His role as judge of all. He is the one who, on the last day, will sit on the judgment throne, and will exercise judgment against the entire population of the world. And He will do so rightly and justly.

In this gospel lesson there is a clear warning. A warning to all nations and to all individuals, that indeed there is an end to the grace of God to those who disbelieve in Him. There is a question that is asked. It is asked by an anonymous person who approaches Him as He is preaching. And he says, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" But I would suggest that we make that a bit more personal this morning. Let us examine this text and ask, "Shall I enter this narrow door? Shall I be saved?"

May I suggest to you that human pride leads an awful lot of people to ignore the narrow door of God’s grace. Each of us wants to have something to do with our having been saved. Indeed, we find religion after religion walking through, not the narrow door of grace, but rather right to the high and wide door of pride, ego, and good works. We all desperately want to believe that we human beings are, after all, "basically good", and capable of pleasing God. But that would be a terrible mistake.

Indeed, that mistaken belief is necessary for any plan of self-rescue invented by men. The idea, of course, behind it is to demonstrate to God, to prove to God, that we are basically decent people, and thereby, by our good works, earn some merit, some measure of grace, that God might therefore give to us, that that He might find us pleasing in His eyes, by virtue of being decent enough.

It seems that the high wide door of human merit is needed so that our human egos and expanded head-sizes might just get through!

This high wide door ultimately finds no need of a savior whatsoever! We can take care of it ourselves, since it all depends literally on merit and on human work. The door of human pride expands, it seems, to fit any grandiose scheme of human attainment for the favor of God.

And so, Jews continue to seek salvation through the keeping of the law of Moses. Buddhists and Hindus continue to seek after good karma to better their circumstances in the next cycle of life. Mormons continue to strive toward worthiness, so they too may share in the deity of God. And Secular Humanists abandon all hope of heaven whatsoever and strive to create a heaven on earth here, leaving the place a little better than we found it. Although so far, the record is not that good in having accomplished that.

And so, a lot of people want to take all the credit. And yet, some want to give some credit to God, but want to contribute none-the-less at least some measure to their own salvation. But in order to do this, it is necessary to deny the reality of the fallen estate of sinful human beings. It is to deny the total corruption of original sin against human nature. For it is reasoned that man’s nature has some kind of redeeming nature to it. And therefore, he must have human will, some free will, to make the choice, and to make the decision to come to God.

In the end, then, man ends up cooperating in his acquisition of faith. And then, and then, the focus comes on the obedience, using the scripture that says, By their fruits you shall know them. Everyone wants to focus on the fruit! But the fruit, of course, is a byproduct of faith. It is an additional gift of grace, which God acts and gives through His people, rather than the thing on which the validity of one’s faith is based.

Suddenly, while talking about God’s grace in Christ, and the beauty of the gospel, such folks are, in fact, wandering again in the desert of the law, seeking in vain to prove their faithfulness by their behavior. In so doing, once again, they are walking through the high, wide door of human pride, and ignoring the narrow door of God’s grace in Christ Jesus.

No, these many do not struggle to even get in the narrow door into heaven. Rather, they turn a deaf ear to Jesus, and let the grace of time come to an end. And miss the opening entirely.

Jesus also warns us, in this text, that the door will not be always open. Listen again to the words of our Lord. 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.' "Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.' But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!'" 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.

And we might remember that, as kind and gracious and long-suffering as our Lord is, that, for instance, for His own chosen people, the nation of Israel, there was finally a day of reckoning. Please remember that Christianity is about where you will spend eternity. The Bible is about, "How will men escape the ravages and condemnation of sin?" And escape the judgment of hell. Yes, the Bible has a lot to say about how we live, but that is a side effect of faith, not the object of Christianity.

The shutting of the narrow door represents the judgment of God as it comes, now in this age, and then again in the last day. And then, my friends, will come the knocking, and the pounding, and the pleading, according to this text. By those who previously had no interest in that narrow door of God’s grace.

When the last day finally comes, then all will be surely repentant. And realize the foolishness of their prideful seeking after that high and wide door of human ego. It will be as though, then, the Lord will say to those locked out, "Where were you during the time when the door was always open?" For you see, it is not a struggle to get the door open. The door has always been open! Rather, we find ourselves attracted to the self-advancement which we so easily buy into, and instead scorn the door of grace.

Listen to the words of my favorite commentator, R.C.H. Lenski. He writes on this text, "The sole idea, unless we into the kingdom while we may, we shall be barred out forever. The door will, of course, be shut at the last day. But it closes also when the patience and long-suffering of God comes to an end for any nation or for any individual. The shutting of the door belongs to the secret council of God, to His inscrutable judgment upon the unbelief and obduracy of men. God either removes the gospel entirely from those who despise it, or it’s presence only plunges them more deeply into guilt."

I would suggest, dear friends, that those who head for the high, wide door of pride, the high, wide door..

..in any way to contribute or replace the grace of God through human acts will have an eternity to remember these words. I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!

For those of you who read great literature, perhaps you have read Dante’s "Inferno". And you will note that in that particular literary work, the sign over the gateway to hell reads as follows, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". That is precisely the lesson this gospel brings to us.

But it is not the only lesson that it brings to us. There is more here than hopelessness, to be sure. The narrow door of God’s grace is indeed open to all who bear the name of Jesus Christ, and who trust solely and only in His grace, and in His merit for salvation.

St. Luke, in writing this text, exhorts all to struggle. It doesn’t really catch it in the English. It says, "Make every effort". But the Greek word there is "to struggle, to agonize". To make it through the narrow door, well, that tends to make us think of human effort and human merit. But that’s not it! The struggle here is what happens to us when we hear the law, in it’s unrelenting, unreachable demands. And then, and here comes the struggle, to discard every notion that we have any chance of making it by means of obeying the law.

To discard human effort to please God is, in fact, to discard our prideful egos, and indeed, that is a painful struggle for the fallen, sinful old Adam within us all. Instead, the narrow door requires a broken spirit and a contrite heart. Once again we read, from the book of Psalms, the great Psalm of repentance from King David, who, following his terrible fall into sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Urriah the Hittite, says, Sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

The narrow door is a door entered by true repentance in the fullest sense of the word. Only bent quite low, only made utterly small, only indeed having been disrobed of all our self-righteousness, having the last rag of the clothing of self-righteousness stripped away from us, can we enter the portal of grace. Were it not so, it could not be called a portal of grace.

It is the cross. It is the cross and the one who gives His life on that cross that destroys any pretense of pride. It must become the place where all vain human attempts to earn the merit and grace of God are deposited. And to recognize the nature of the true struggle that has gone on there on our behalf. For our sakes! For it is the full and complete payment which our Lord Jesus Christ renders for our sins that is indeed the mark of that door. He accomplishes that on our behalf. The struggle of monumental proportions that He undergoes is His struggle, not ours. But He graciously gives us the fruit of that struggle, the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of our arrogant pride. The forgiveness of our vain attempts to offer good works to please God, and to say "Father, we have nothing here to bring, save the stains of the blood of Christ on our lives."

How can anyone even dare to claim even partial credit for His struggle?

At His death and interment in a stone-cold tomb, we find indeed that there is the gracious giving to us of His death, a death which should have been our own. And then the absolute certain knowledge by His resurrection that the casket that will enclose us cannot keep us. But rather, we have the gift of life, the victory over death, victory over the grave, and citizenship in the eternal kingdom, the kingdom of God.

His resurrection from the dead lets us know that we too have life beyond the grave. And indeed, most of life, the huge part of life, the enormous, incomparable part of life, is that life which is ours beyond the grave, rather than this fleeting moment of human existence on this sad and fallen planet.

No, dear friends, the high wide gate of human pride and ego is only a pathway to sin, death, and hell. But the narrow gate of grace, entered by those who have no merit of their own, leads to life eternal because of Christ Jesus our Lord.

And so, with the anonymous person of this text, we too need to daily ask the Lord, "Are only a few people going to be saved", and more personally, "Am I going to be saved?"

And we listen to the honest and perhaps harsh, and yet gracious, answer of our Lord Jesus Christ, that indeed many will be lost, crashing on the enticement of human pride on the entrance to the high, wide door of human ego. But, many are also redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Let us remember then, by God’s grace, to stoop low through the entrance of the narrow door. And with humility and thanksgiving for all that Jesus has accomplished for us, know that we are citizens of God’s kingdom forever. And that the last words of this text, apply to us. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last."

In the name of the Lamb of God, who is the Christ of God, Amen.