Luke 13,22-end. March 16th. Second Sunday of Lent. 2025.
Prayer.
Three sections.
The Few – the saved! V22-30
Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. Luke has been describing this journey since Luke 10. And Jesus went through ‘’the towns and villages’’.
Now on that journey someone asks him ‘’Lord are only a few people going to be saved.’’
Jesus refocuses the question.
You could say he changes the question from ‘will the saved be few’ to ‘will the saved be you.’’
He says ‘’make every effort to get through the narrow door’’. He changes the focus.
He says – do not focus on others but make sure you yourself are saved, make sure that you yourself have entered the kingdom of God. The question is not ‘’are a few going to be saved?’’ , but ‘’are you going to be saved?’’ He says – you cannot know about everyone else but you can be sure about yourself.
‘’Make every effort to get through the narrow door.’’
I was tempted to ask all of you to squeeze into our aisle and walk forward. It is narrow.
You’d have to make effort to get into that narrow way
Make effort can be translated ‘’do all you can.’’ Or ‘’strive’’ – the word makes us think of great labour, struggle, it is used elsewhere in Paul to describe an athlete in training.
Make every effort – Jesus is already suggesting that so much can stop us coming to Christ.
When we remember the words about Herod – Jesus says Herod will not stop him, despite the threats – Jesus will not let anything stop him – we are to imitate Christ – make every effort.
He tells a story – a parable. He compares it to a house. It is also striking when we read it further along, v29 – how the house is a place of feasting, a banqueting hall. That is a striking image isn’t it. An image of the kingdom is a banqueting hall. What does that stir inside us?
Imagine Jesus said the kingdom is an endless French class?
Or the kingdom is like a kindergarten class? Or the kingdom is like a football stadium?
Or it is like an Opera?
How would those image feed your thoughts.
But Jesus says – one image of the kingdom, a house where there is feasting…
Back to the house. Jesus says – there is a house, you arrive, you try to enter and the door is locked. The owner of the house has closed the door. You stand outside, you knock, your plead. ‘’Sir, open the door.’’ ‘’I don’t know you or where you come from…’’ We dined with you and you taught in our streets.’’
‘’I don’t know you or where you come from…’’
Narrow door. Not wide. Not open. Closed. They cannot enter. The house represents the kingdom of God. Why cannot they not enter. They lack a personal relationship with the owner – and the owner represents Jesus.
Twice we heard – I don’t know you.
The response of the door knockers shows it is Jesus they mean and so the I is Jesus.
We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.
Jesus has been teaching in the villages and towns. He has been teaching in the streets.
They have ate and drank with him.
Tim Chesters points how that there are three ways the NT completes the sentence ‘’the Son of Man came’’.
Mark 10:45- ‘The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’;
Luke 19:10 ‘The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost’
Luke 7:34 ‘The Son of Man came eating and drinking . . . ‘.
When we read through Luke’s Gospel, it is full of stories where Jesus is eating with people.
Luke 5, he eats with tax collectors and sinners, at the home of Levi / Matthew.
Luke 7, Jesus anointed in the home of Simon the Pharisee, during a meal.
Luke 9, Jesus feeds the 5000.
Luke 10, Jesus eats in the home of Martha and Mary.
Luke 11 Jesus condemns Pharisees and teachers of the law – during a meal.
Luke 14 – the verses after today – at a meal, where he urges people to invite the poor to the meals and not just their friends.
Luke 19, Jesus invites himself to have a meal with Zaccheus
Luke 22 – we have the account of the meal we remember today – the Last Supper.
And in Luke 24 – two meals – the meal with the disciples at Emmaus, and the spontaneous fish snack with the disciples that same evening.
Tim Chester quotes Robert Karris who says: ‘In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.’” (p. 13)
You noticed that in those meals, there are different things going on, different relationships with Jesus. Some were in relationship with him. Others were not.
The people outside the door say – they ate with him.
It is not enough.
They heard him teach. Not enough.
They were there yes. But it was not enough.
Exposure to Jesus is not enough Jesus says – when they say they ate and listened – he says again ‘’I don’t know you.’’ Outward contact with Jesus means nothing, inward reception means everything.
John 1:12 – to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become a child of God.
My own past. I attended Sunday School for an hour each week on a Sunday (during school terms times), from age 4 to 16; I was confirmed. Yet I only became a Christian – I was born again – at University aged 19. Before that date in September 1993, I was exposed to Jesus; I had heard teaching, I had outward contact but no inner reception, I had not received him, I had not believed in him.
If this is you, can I invite you read the booklets we have on our table – Journey into Life and Why Jesus to understand what a relationship with Jesus is really all about?
Or to watch the first two talks on the Alpha Course:
Who is Jesus – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtTnSMNtE44&t=1341s
Why did Jesus die?
Jesus says – outside – those, we assume those who tried to get in – weeping, grinding of teeth – those inside, there will be all sorts- the patriarchs, the prophets, all people from all corners of the world – not only Jews but Gentiles. All sorts, all backgrounds, all nationalities. Jesus says.
The key thing – all who have been let in, the have come personally through that door, each has personally received what Jesus offered. To put it simply – to know Jesus is the issue – repent – we declare our need of him – and we receive and believe in him.
In a dream, a man was told where there was treasure, hidden in a nearby castle under a blue stone. The dream was quite clear and the man could remember every bit of it. Yet he did not even bother to see if the blue stone was there in the castle. He told his dream to a friend. His friend went immediately and found a great treasure under the blue stone. He became very rich. He was generous to his friend, but his friend realised that because he had not bothered when an opportunity was offered to him, he had missed out in a big way.
Jesus turned the question around: ‘’will the saved be few’’ to ask ‘’will the saved be you?’’
The Threat / The Plan. V31-33.
Pharisees came to Jesus. We often see the Pharisees as the bad guys. Yet there is no suggestion, in this example, that this is a trick or for wrong motives. It is a genuine warning.
‘Leave this place, Herod wants to kill you’. Now this is not an idle threat. Herod had had John the Baptist first arrested and then beheaded. This was Herod Antipas. His father – was Herod the Great – who had already tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby – as recorded in Matthew 2. Like Father like Son.
Herod was a genuine danger.
Jesus did not fear Herod. He says in fact ‘’I will keep on driving out demons and healing people, today, tomorrow and on the third day I reach my goal.’’ He then repeats the same phrasing ‘’today, tomorrow, on the third day’’ – this is not an allusion to the resurrection. More likely it is a Semitic way of expressing ‘’in a short time’’ . Jesus says his days are short, but he will continue doing what he is doing.
His plan – that he goes to Jerusalem. He must go there. He will reach there.
He says ‘no prophet’ can die outside Jerusalem.
Jesus says he is immortal until that day, til he reaches the city.
He says that he knows the plan of God is to be completed in Jerusalem. The Greek word used here for ‘’my goal’’ is very similar to what Jesus shouts on the cross ‘’it is finished’’ – finished, not meaning – I’m done – rather what you shout when you have completed that PhD thesis, or you have paid off the mortgage etc – it is completed!
Yet he is not being paranoid when he says he will die. In Luke 9 he predicted his death twice: ‘’the Son of Man will suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.’’ Jesus knows he goes to the city to die; he knows it is the plan of God. And that is how we get into that house Jesus mentioned.
How do we get into that house – through the death, through the cross of Jesus, through his blood. It is like, to use the image of the Passover. On the evening of the Passover, the blood of a lamb was spread on the sides and tops of the door frames (Exodus 12). You went into that house through a door with blood on it.
Jesus is committed to God’s course, and plan. Herod will not distract him or intimidate him. The devil as we heard last week, could not knock Jesus off course; and neither could this tyrant / dictator. Spiritual opposition did not stop Jesus from following God’s plan, and neither did human opposition.
V34-35 – the emotion / the heart of God.
That phrase ‘’no prophet can die outside Jerusalem’’ triggers a lament from Jesus ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem’’. The fact it is twice shows the emotion behind it.
The tragedy here is not that Jesus will die. The tragedy is that Jerusalem, in general, will not welcome and receive all God is doing through Jesus. He cries out for the nation. He laments how its history has been too much of rejecting God’s ways and God’s messengers. Paul echoes such passion and love and grief for the Jews in his own words in Romans 9 – ‘’I speak the truth in Christ … I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel.’’
Jesus compassion and love. ‘’I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.’’ Jesus uses mothering language to describe the care God wanted to give to his people. Jesus uses the first person – I – to declare how God longed to gather and protect – that image of the hen with the chicks under her wings.
We think again about the house. The owner of the house – longs for you to enter the house. He longs for you to gather with others in the safety of that house. He loves you and everyone of us. We can hear the emotion in these verses. He longs for you to be born again, to become a child of God, to be in the kingdom of God, to be spiritually alive, to be righteous by faith.
But Jesus says – the tragedy is not the past – what Jerusalem did – but what it is doing ‘’but you were not willing.’’
He will not force it. It is up to them. It is up to you, to seek to enter that house, to enter the kingdom, to make that effort. He will not kidnap you, through a bag over your head and take you away like in the Recruit or 24 or something. It is up to you…
The result ‘’your house is left desolate.’’ Jesus warns that judgement will come on the city for that rejection. And yet that suffering is limited in time. ‘’You will not see me again’’ – until you say ‘’blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’’’. This is not Palm Sunday – Jesus does not disappear before that – not see me again – points to his return. There is hope for Israel. Acts 3 talks about repentance and the Messiah being sent. Romans 9-11 teaches us that even if the natural branches have been broken off, they can be grafted in and all Israel will be saved. Jesus points to hope for Israel…
Conclusion.
There are many things to take away.
But perhaps three ideas – one in each section.
Will the saved be few? Rather, will the saved be you.
Jesus knows he must go to Jerusalem and there die – the cross through which you are saved.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem – the emotion, the love, the desire to draw
them and you to him;
But are you willing…
Silence to reflect.