Luke 13:22-30 - Strain Every Nerve

Welcome to Shirt Foundation Lutheran Church's podcast channel.

The following sermon was preached on August 24th on the basis of Luke chapter

Luke 13:22–30

13 verses 22 to 30. piano plays softly.

Music.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our sermon text is the same as our gospel

reading for today from Luke chapter 13 starting at verse 22.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem.

Someone asked him, Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?

Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?

He 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're 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 are 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.

People will come from the 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. This is God's word.

I think you maybe probably know what it means to deflect from something else,

right? Or the process of deflection.

That if somebody comes to you with a question that maybe makes you uncomfortable,

or you don't really want to answer the question, or they come and they say something

that you don't really want to respond to directly, you might deflect.

And you could do it a lot of different ways. You could do your best to try to

change the subject. You could maybe ask a question in return to try to divert

their attention somewhere else.

You could maybe sort of kind of answer, but not really, and kind of move on to something else.

What you're doing is really, if something's coming at you with a question or

a statement, you're kind of verbally moving around that subject to avoid it,

right? And you might do that for a lot of different reasons.

We got a good example of that in our text for today, but I want to give you

a little background before we jump in.

So Jesus has been traveling through these cities and towns on his way to Jerusalem.

And of course, you know what's going to happen in Jerusalem.

Jesus is going to go through pain and suffering.

He's going to be on the cross. And Jesus knew that too.

That's the whole reason he came in the first place, to live and to die for the

salvation of the entire world.

He knew that that was his destination. And he sort of takes a meandering route there,

not because he's putting off Jerusalem, but because these are some of the last

times during his ministry here on earth that he would have the opportunity to teach people.

Now, at this point in Jesus' ministry, his fame was well known and people were

coming to see him from all over.

And in this particular case, a guy comes up to him, presumably while he's teaching

a bunch of other people too, and says, Lord, will only a few people be saved?

Now, you might be able to accuse Jesus of deflecting a little bit here,

too, because he does not answer the question.

But perhaps the reason for him not answering the question is more,

the answer to the question is a distraction.

In some strange way, the question is a deflection itself.

It's a theoretical question that is putting off the important matter at hand.

I was reading a Bible commentary where the guy who wrote the Bible commentary

said theoretical questions, they

put off repentance and they don't lead to faith. And that's pretty true.

This theoretical question, how many people, will there only be a few people

in heaven? The answer to it doesn't really matter.

What the population of heaven is makes no, it doesn't matter at all for you and for your soul.

The more important question is, will I be in heaven?

Will you be in heaven? How do we make sure that we're in heaven with Jesus?

And that's the question that Jesus is going to answer here instead of the question

that the guy brought to him.

And so at this point, crowds and crowds of people are coming to see Jesus.

The cat's been let out of the bag about Jesus.

People know about him. When Jesus shows up to a town, most of the town knows

that he's going to be there.

And so people come from all over to listen to Jesus speak.

And as you can imagine, the people in those crowds probably came for all different kinds of reasons.

Sure, there are people in the crowd that believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

He was the one that was promised from the Old Testament and that he had come to save his people.

And those people had put their trust and faith in him. And that's why they're coming to hear Jesus.

But you can imagine there's lots of other people there too.

There's a lot of excitement around Jesus at this point.

And so it'd be reasonable to think that there were some people there that kind

of got swept up in the excitement. They're going because everybody else was

going. This is a cultural experience. This is an event. So we're going to go

check out what Jesus has to say.

Still others, they had heard about his miracles. They either maybe wanted him

to heal somebody that they knew or themselves, or maybe they just wanted to

see something miraculous for themselves.

That could be a reason they were there. They could have been there because Jesus

was kind of the counterculture at the time.

He was speaking a message that was vastly different than the message coming

from the Pharisees' mouths.

And still others, I imagine, were there because their friend invited them.

They maybe hadn't heard about Jesus, but their friend said, hey,

we should go check this out.

Many and varied reasons, perhaps, for those crowds coming to see Jesus were.

And it shouldn't surprise us, I guess, because that hasn't really changed too much today, too.

In the church in general, people come to church for lots of different reasons.

I'm speaking about in general, but also our church here, too.

People come to church for a lot of different reasons. We pray that people come

to church to hear about Jesus, to grow in their faith, to be connected to this

source of life, to hear the forgiveness of Jesus, to get reprieved for their soul.

But people come to church for all kinds of reasons. They come to church because

it's a good place to meet people and network and to socialize.

They come to church because they find emotional support at church.

They come to church because this is where their friends go to church.

They come to church because it kind of looks good to the people in the community around them.

Maybe they come for the free coffee and the snacks.

Maybe they come for all kinds of different reasons.

And if you said, yeah, nobody comes to church for the first time for the right

reasons, absolutely, right?

If somebody is truly coming as an unbeliever to church, they can't come for

the right reasons, but the hope is that they stay for the right reasons.

The problem comes when people keep coming to church for the wrong reasons.

The problem is when people keep coming to church for those ancillary things.

If coming to hear about Jesus, if coming to receive forgiveness,

if coming to be built up in the word of God is not the reason for coming to church,

I'd lovingly say to you that maybe things are maybe a little mixed up in your

heart or the priorities switched up somewhere along the way.

And that can happen. It can happen for the newcomer.

It can happen for the longtime churchgoer too. Right?

Somewhere along the way, they had believed, they had come to church to hear

about Jesus, but somewhere along

the way, the ancillary things became more important than the main thing.

Somewhere along the way, the style of music, the quality of coffee,

the programs that were being run, the aesthetic, the whatever,

became more important than the main reason for being here about hearing about Jesus.

Somewhere along the way, someone got the idea that they could come to church

and as long as they kept a solid church attendance, they could keep that unrepentant

sin over in this corner in their life.

And as long as their church attendance was good, they'd be good too.

Somewhere along the way, they came to believe that they could,

as long as they were in church, it didn't matter if they were paying attention

or if they were apathetic or they could be kind of cold in their love towards others.

As long as they were here, that would be okay.

Or somewhere along the way, they became content, not with faith in Jesus,

but with their mere association with Jesus. And that's true. You could see that.

Maybe some of these will relate to you. Maybe you can see that in people in your life too.

But that's true for the person who started coming and, and they just rejoiced in the gospel message.

It was like a cool drink of water for them.

And it was, they were so built up and so excited about that,

that they started coming and they came weekly and they just drank in everything

that came from, from the word of God.

But, but then somewhere along the way, the excitement wore off and sort of this,

this sort of apathy and, And the sort of apathy sunk in where,

okay, it wasn't as exciting anymore.

So every other week became more of the pattern. And then once a month,

and then a couple times a year, and then after a while, they weren't coming

to be around God's word or built up by God's people anymore at all.

It's true for the person who grew up coming to church. Their parents brought them to be baptized.

They went through Sunday school. They maybe attended a Christian day school,

a Christian high school.

And then they moved off and they tried to go to church and they tried to connect

a little bit, but they never made the effort to do that.

And after a while, they hadn't been. And their parents lovingly called them

and encouraged them. You need to get connected to church.

You need to be connected to God's word. And it's okay. He assured his parents,

I can be a Christian without going to church.

But then it had been five years, and the only time he'd been to church is when

he went to visit his parents. He can't remember the last time he opened his Bible.

Yeah, he still thinks positively about Christianity. He doesn't think badly about it.

He'll still like Christian content on social media, but that's about the level

of engagement that he has with Jesus.

But don't think that this can just happen for somebody that's eventually outside

of the church or doesn't come.

Because that can be true also for the person who came and just,

again, they rejoiced in the forgiveness that they received because they had

lived a life of guilt that had weighed them down. But now they're free in the gospel.

They come and rejoiced in that. And they come to church for a long,

long time. but somewhere along the way, those volunteering tasks became the thing for them.

They owned that thing. That was the thing they came to church for.

They found themselves coming to church not to hear the message of the gospel.

In fact, most of the time in worship, they were thinking about all of the different

things they had to do anyways with that volunteering task.

But that became the thing that they thought about, the reason they came to church.

Somewhere along the way, those priorities got, got mixed around.

Jesus' words here are sort of meant to kind of shock us, to wake us up,

to say, if you're feeling so comfortable in this, just be careful.

His warning is for those who are complacent, apathetic even.

His warning is for those who are content to be merely associated with Jesus

rather than actually have faith in Jesus.

And the wake-up call comes when he brings us into this picture of judgment day.

On judgment day, there's going to be people that are kind of trying to reason

with Jesus after his judgment's already been rendered.

When it's too late, they're going to be reasoning with Jesus.

Hey, Jesus, we were close to you.

You taught in our streets. I was just a couple blocks down from you when you

were teaching in the streets.

Hey, Jesus, we ate with you. We drank with you. Come on, let us into heaven.

We could substitute a few things in there, right? Hey, Jesus,

I know I never really connected with you for the rest of my life, but I was baptized.

Hey, Jesus, I went to Lutheran day school and Lutheran high school.

Yeah, I didn't go for the rest of my life, but you know what? I was there.

Hey, Jesus, my membership is at that church. Hey, Jesus, I gave an offering

once. I volunteered for that thing.

Hey, Jesus, I wear cross necklaces a lot. I engage with Christian content on TikTok.

And to those, Jesus will say, I don't know you or where you come from.

They'll have been so close.

Maybe at one point in their life, they did believe, but they'll have been so close.

They maybe heard the message of the gospel. They had friends who were Christians

who were inviting them to church. They were so close.

And yet, mere association with Jesus, casual association with Jesus is not the same thing as faith.

Jesus says, you must enter through

the narrow door. There's not a bunch of different ways to get to heaven.

There's one way and it's through Jesus. He came to be the way to heaven because

he came to do what no one else could do.

He came to do exactly what we needed him to do.

We couldn't be perfect and we deserve punishment for our sins.

Those two things are true.

Jesus came to be our substitute and be perfect on our behalf. And he was.

And he came to take the punishment that we deserved on the cross so that through

faith in him, he could give us his perfection. So that when he looked at you,

he didn't see all the ways that you've sinned and messed up.

He saw perfection because you were covered and clothed with Jesus because Jesus

is the door, the way to get to heaven.

And it's only through faith in him that you are in heaven someday.

And just because the door is narrow doesn't mean a lot of people won't come through, right?

The guy asked the question at the beginning, will only a few people be saved?

And Jesus doesn't answer that question, but he kind of does in other parts of scripture.

People will come from the north, the south, the east, the west.

They will come and they will rejoice in their savior. They will come to believe

in Jesus as their savior.

That belief will exist in people from all different nations, tribes, and languages.

But the reason they'll be in heaven is all exactly the same because of their

faith in Jesus as their savior.

So Jesus gives a warning that kind of wakes us up a little bit, right?

But there's comfort in this too, that this rests in Jesus for me.

It's not in my outward striving, but he also gives you an encouragement,

okay? He says, make every effort to enter through the narrow door.

Make every effort to enter through the narrow door. Now, I feel the Lutheran

impulse to be abundantly clear here that it is not our effort that gets us into heaven, okay?

Jesus isn't unwriting what he said before, okay? But he says,

make every effort to enter through the narrow door.

Do everything within your power to remain glued to Jesus throughout your lifetime.

Which you hear it encouraged again and again. And this is why we encourage people

to come to church, not because your church attendance means something to God.

We invite you to come to church and be around where God has promised that that

glue will become stronger and stronger.

Where God has promised he will connect with you. And he has promised to do that

through his word and through his sacraments.

That's why this is important. That's why we gather together.

We also gather together to encourage one another in the faith as well.

Because part of our making every effort is putting ourselves around where God

has promised to work. God still gets the credit for that.

He's still strengthening our faith through baptism, through the Lord's Supper,

through the word. He's strengthening that. He gets the credit for that.

But he's saying, make every effort.

That can be translated, strain every nerve. I kind of like that one better.

Strain every nerve with great tenacity.

Do everything that you can to be around the word and the sacraments regularly,

and to avoid those things that would seek to steal your faith.

So what does it mean to strain every nerve?

We've kind of talked about it a little bit, but I don't think there's a better

way I can say it than live a life of repentance.

Now, maybe just a quick review for you.

Repentance is feeling sorry for your sins, confessing your sins to the Lord. That's part one.

Part two of repentance is believing that Jesus has forgiven those sins. It's both and.

It's not just staying in sorrow and feeling so bad about my sins and staying here.

Repentance is both. Sorrow over my sin, confessing my sin, but then hearing

the words of absolution. You're forgiven.

Believing that, trusting that, trusting in what Jesus, that Jesus' sacrifice

counted for those sins too. And so a life of.

Is coming back in that cycle often, confessing my sins, hearing the words of forgiveness.

I need to do that and do it often. It's the heartbeat of the Christian to be

able to confess and to hear those words of absolution.

Because when I don't confess, when I don't examine my own heart,

I tend to think of myself as kind of a small sinner.

Yeah, I'm not perfect, but I do the best I can. and if I'm a small sinner,

I don't need a very big savior or a savior at all.

But as I live that life of repentance, as I continually confess my sins to the

Lord and examine my heart in that way, I'll know how much I need the savior

and that gospel will be ever more sweet for me.

And so in connection with the life of repentance is finding a place like a church,

like Bible studies, like your own personal reading of the word where I engage

with the word, with the law and with the gospel, the law that convicts me as a sinner,

the law that convinces me that there is nothing good in me.

But that leads me to be wholly reliant on Jesus as my Savior,

the gospel, the sweet relief of the gospel.

If I were to ask you to sit down from week to week and just journal for yourself your own confession,

the sins that you want to confess to the Lord, I would venture to guess that

those confessions would look very similar from week to week.

Would you agree with me? that you'd find yourself maybe guilty of some of the

same sins, same patterns that you bring to the Lord and that you would confess

some of those same sins because those are the ones that make you feel the most guilty, right?

So you bring those sins to the Lord.

But what the law does is the law teaches you that actually you're a sinner in other ways too.

And that sounds bad at first, but remember, this is the scalpel.

This is what cuts us so that we can be healed too. The law can lead us to recognize,

I'm not just a sinner in these ways that I know about, but I'm a sinner in these

ways that I've never considered.

But it leads me to repent, to confess those sins, but then to hear the sweet

relief from the gospel, maybe even from a little different angle than I had heard about it before.

That I might hear the gospel that doesn't change.

But it's maybe received in my heart in even just a little different way because

my faith has been strengthened and grown through this process of confessing

my sin and receiving the forgiveness of sins.

Last encouragement for you. I think I've even used in a sermon before,

but you've undoubtedly heard the phrase, you only live once,

right? That's inspired many a vacation or memorable evening, right?

You only live once, make the most of the life that you have here, right?

I got one better for you, though. You only have one time of grace.

You only have one time period that matters for the eternal salvation of your soul.

Make the most of it. Make the most of it. Strain every nerve to enter through the narrow gate.

With great tenacity, hold on to Jesus. Amen.

Hey, Pastor Wilkie here. Thanks for listening to this week's sermon.

Hey, if you can find yourself coming back to this podcast again and again to

listen to sermons, could you do us a big favor?

Could you subscribe wherever you're listening to this?

That tells the algorithms to push our podcast up a little bit higher so that

other people might get the chance to hear it and might get the chance to hear

about Jesus as their Savior.

Just a small thing that you can do to get the gospel message to more people.

Thanks for coming and listening to this week's sermon and come back again next

week for another sermon. God's blessings on your week.

Music.