Full Transcript

Thank you for joining us for this edition of Share the Word, the podcast that explains the big ideas in the New Testament chapter by chapter. Whether you’re just beginning to explore the Bible or have been a Christian for years, we believe that you’ll get some great insight from our podcast as our teachers unpack the big ideas of the New Testament in a down-to-earth language. So let’s listen in to today’s lesson and go a little deeper. And the door was shut. Luke chapter 13. There’s been a very famous and influential talk show host in the USA for a long time named Oprah Winfrey.

You might be familiar with her. She made a lot of lists of ten most influential voices in America or other such accolades. On her program, she’s often had not just usual actors and musicians and celebrities, but also different religious teachers and authors who wrote about spirituality, which obviously interests her. Since she left that show, she’s moved on to other projects. One recent television project of hers is simply called Belief, and in it she explores various world religions and spiritual viewpoints from around the globe. On one episode, she expressed a view that, and these are her words, There are a million ways to get to God.

She believes that everyone will get there on their own, following their own path. Everyone will ultimately be saved, to use a term that comes up in our chapter today. Theologians refer to Oprah’s view as universalism. Her view of God and salvation is very broad, but I think you’ll see before we’re through today that it’s starkly different from what Jesus taught when he was here. Oprah has influenced, unfortunately, a whole generation of especially younger women, the demographic her show most appealed to. She’s influenced them to accept her version of spiritual reality rather than to believe what the Bible clearly says.

By the time we’re through today, I think you’ll have to agree that you can trust Oprah or you can trust Jesus, but they can’t both be right. We come to chapter 13 in Luke. We’ve come to the point where Jesus has finished his Galilean ministry, that is, the northern part of Israel where he and his disciples were from, and they are now headed south to Judea and Perea. In Luke’s Gospel, from this point on, Jesus is actually on a trek toward his ultimate appointment with the cross, his final passion in Jerusalem where he would lay down his life as an atonement for our sin and become our Savior. Although Jesus’ Galilean ministry was extremely popular, as we’ve noted, the number of serious followers was never large. Most people were attracted to him out of curiosity over what he would say or do next.

People followed him around hoping to see a miracle, and many, I’m sure, were attracted to the fact he spoke out against the hypocrisy of too many of their religious leaders, as it happens here again in chapter 13. Beginning at verse 10, Luke tells how Jesus healed a deformed woman at a synagogue service. The poor woman had suffered with this affliction for 18 years, yet the synagogue leader certainly knew that, called Jesus out over this because the healing occurred on a Sabbath day. That sounds familiar. Jesus sharply rebutted that man, saying, Some of you Pharisees care more about your animals than you do for the people you’re supposed to be spiritually caring for. Crowd loved that zinger.

But it’s the kind of thing that caused the religious leaders to hate him. The fact that many of the common people cheered him on doesn’t mean that Jesus had a large following of true believers. Those who accepted him for who he claimed to be and would follow him as true disciples, those were few. Remember, best we can ascertain from the Gospels, at the time Jesus finished his earthly ministry, there were perhaps 500 or so true believers and followers, and that’s after three years of public ministry in Israel. As we’ve noted, one thing that Luke records more than any of the other gospel writers is Jesus’ parables. His parables were illustrations using things in our world that would be familiar to explain things in the spiritual world that we need to understand.

Someone has defined the parables as earthly stories with heavenly meanings. They didn’t need to be long or involved stories either. Often they were just brief metaphors. We have a couple of those today in this chapter, starting at verse 18. Listen. What is the kingdom of God like?

Jesus asked. To what should I compare it? It’s like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches. And then again he said, To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened. His first spiritual metaphor is about a man who planted a mustard seed in his garden.

Mustard seeds, you may know, are extremely tiny, but they can grow into rather large bushes in the right environment, 12 to 15 feet high, in fact. In Jesus’ parable, that’s what happened. And then birds of the air came and made nests in its branches. Sure, the people who heard this wondered, what in the world Jesus intended them to take away from that. These were religious Jews, remember, who heard him on this occasion, so remember, their idea of the kingdom of God meant the messianic kingdom, the political kingdom they expected to come into being when their Messiah, the Son of David, appeared in Israel. This was the fervent hope of all religious Jews, the reestablishment of the Davidic dynasty by a direct descendant of Israel’s historically greatest king.

The expectation was he would suddenly appear on the scene, free their nation from oppression, and reestablish Israel as the kingdom of God. This was their messianic hope. But Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a tiny mustard seed, which would grow into a large bush that birds of the air would come and nest in. What could he mean by that? I’m pretty sure he was referring to his followers, not a national political movement, but a spiritual movement that started very small, but would grow and grow as it was joined by people from all over the earth, like the birds that came from all over the place to nest in the tree. Remember, one of the themes of Luke’s Gospel is that Jesus came to be the Savior of the whole world, not just the Jews.

That line about the birds of the air nesting in the tree’s branches probably was taken from Ezekiel chapter 17, which talks about how in the future, people from all of the earth’s nations will be a part of the kingdom of God. Jesus’ parables were often enigmatic, that is, not real obvious in their meaning. I believe he was foretelling here by this metaphor how his movement, that is Christianity, although starting out very tiny, would one day be large and involve people from all over the earth. Starting with a few hundred people in Israel in the first century, it in fact grew to now include millions of believers across the globe. That’s not to say that the kingdom of God will not have a literal political manifestation in the future. After Jesus returns, it will.

And at that time, Jesus will literally reign as king from Israel, and the nations of the earth will recognize him as such. That’s part of biblical prophecy, and we’ll get to that in days ahead. But that’s not what Jesus was referring to here. The second metaphor about leaven is a parallel thought. A woman put a little bit of leaven, that is yeast, into her flour dough. If you’ve ever made bread, you know that a very little bit of yeast can affect a lot of flour dough.

It works slowly, but permeates the dough, and the yeast is what causes the dough to rise, or we would say expand. Jesus is again comparing the growth of his spiritual kingdom, his movement, we would say Christianity, to how yeast affects dough. Christianity would permeate societies and continually grow throughout history. I’m pretty sure his listeners didn’t make that interpretation at the time. In fact, I’m pretty sure they were scratching their heads and thinking, What in the world is he talking about? But like many things Jesus taught, people understood them better over time.

As he predicted, what started in Israel with himself and a handful of disciples became the fledgling Christian movement with about 500 or so believers by the time his earthly ministry ended. But it grew rapidly after the resurrection, with thousands of believers coming to faith in Christ. By the end of the first century, the estimate is there were at least 10,000 Christians in the early churches, and that number grew exponentially during the second and third centuries, and has continued to grow through the centuries since. Till God only knows how many believers and followers of Christ are in the world today. If you’re a believer and a follower of Christ, no matter where you are listening, Jesus was envisioning you in these parables about the growing kingdom of God. And we trust Share the Word is part of the leaven that God is using to cause His kingdom to expand even today.

The verses that interest me the most in chapter 13 begin at verse 23, when someone asked Jesus, How many people would be saved? What exactly prompted that question, we’re not told. Maybe it was because although the great crowds of people wanted to see and hear Jesus, it seemed like few of them became true believers and committed followers. The rabbis at that time taught that pretty much all religious Jews would be saved, and by saved is meant found to be right with God at the final judgment and so welcomed into heaven. Only the worst of sinners, they said, only the openly immoral and those disgusting tax collectors who collaborated with Rome, they would be excluded, but pretty much everybody else will get in. So I’m sure Jesus’ response to this question surprised those who heard it, and probably will surprise many today if they take the time to listen to Him and ponder what He’s saying.

Why do I say that? Because there’s still a pretty strong strain of universalism around today, like Oprah preaches, the kind of thinking that concludes, Well, if there is an afterlife, there is a judgment, there is a heaven or a hell, I feel reasonably confident that I’ll be accepted by a gracious and loving God, right? I mean, I’m certainly not that bad compared to others, and if anyone really goes to hell, it’s only the very worst of mankind that would deserve that. Most of us are decent, sincere people in what we believe, so how could God not accept that? But how did Jesus respond to this important question about how many would be saved? He said it, verse 24 in this chapter, 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’ve come from.’ Then he will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ And he will reply again, ‘I don’t know you or where you’ve come from. Away from me, all of you evildoers!’ And Jesus said, Then there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and you will see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves will be thrown out.

The people will come then from the east and the west and the north and the south, and they will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Then those who are last will be first, and those who are first will be last. Wow. This goes directly against the popular view of who will enter heaven one day, doesn’t it? Completely against universalism. Oprah, how can you square this with your limitless pathways to God and we will all ultimately get there rhetoric?

I can only conclude that she, an awful lot of other people like her, presume to make announcements about things they are actually clueless about. Either they haven’t listened to Jesus on this most crucial question. Or somehow, they imagine they know better than he does the answers. Jesus said, Strive to enter through the narrow door. That doesn’t suggest to me necessarily that only a few people will be saved, as the questioner was suggesting, but it does suggest that those who are saved will come one at a time because the door is narrow, that salvation is an individual thing. In the Gospel of John, we learn that Jesus himself claimed, I am the door.

Remember that? No one will come to the heavenly Father except through me. That was a very straightforward claim. Right now, that door is open. Let’s call it the gospel door. Whoever hears the gospel, the message about who Jesus is, how he atoned for our sins, can enter into a relationship with God by faith and be saved.

That’s the invitation. But we must come the way God has made possible, and it requires an individual decision, a serious choice for Jesus. I hope you’ve all made it. So why would Jesus say, Strive to enter through the narrow door, or as the translation I read said, Make every effort? The answer is, I think, because to turn away from sin and self, to accept Christ as our Savior and leader, takes humility. We have to admit that we are sinful and lost and that we need a Savior, that we deserve God’s judgment.

That’s called repentance in the Bible, and it also takes a willingness to follow Christ, a readiness to see our lives changed as we turn away from things God is offended by toward a life of pursuing things he is pleased by. If you’re not willing to, with God’s help, make that course correction, you’re not really ready to enter through the narrow door. Of course, we can’t effect the changes God wants to see in our lives by ourselves. We can never be good enough or holy enough for God to say, Okay, you there, you’ve earned it. Come on in. We need what Jesus did for us on the cross, and we need the new power and desire the Holy Spirit puts in our lives when we accept Him as our Savior and Leader.

But we have got to be humble enough to admit we need Him, and we’ve got to be ready to change course and follow Him, as the Holy Spirit shows us the way and empowers us to go that way. In verses 24 to 28, Jesus makes a serious warning. The gospel door is open now, but Jesus said the time is coming when it will be shut. The head of the house, He said, will at some point shut the door. I can’t read that without thinking of the story of Noah way back in the book of Genesis. He built that huge ark of safety, if you remember.

It took him decades, and all the while he was building it, he was warning his generation that judgment was coming. However, the people who saw him at work on it and heard his warnings scoffed, did not take him or his message seriously. But one day, the door of the ark was shut, and the judgment that Noah warned about in the form of the flood, which destroyed his generation, fell. When the day finally came, Genesis 7:16 actually says, God shut the door. At that point, as you can imagine, people who had rejected Noah’s warnings desperately wanted into the safety of the ark. But their opportunity had passed.

The door was shut. There’s coming a day, a time certain in the future, when the gospel door will be shut. No matter what people’s story will be after that, it will be too late to enter, Jesus said. The head of the house, in his metaphor, clearly referring to God. In the future, at some specific time, when people are finally called into judgment, the door will be shut. If they have not repented of sin and received the Savior that God sent, it will be too late then to make that decision.

That’s unmistakably what Jesus is saying here. There’s no other way we can read him. The time to respond to the invitation of the gospel is now, while the door is open. Those who reason, Hey, I’ll get around to dealing with God sometime down the road, may not get that opportunity. I can think of people who I’ve dealt with over the years who’ve said almost that exact thing, like, You know, I’m young. I’m doing my own thing right now.

I’ll think about Jesus and eternity and all of that stuff later. Wow, what a crazy gamble to make. The words in verse 27 are ominous. At the judgment, those who made excuses, Jesus said, will be told, Depart from me, you evildoers. I don’t know you. And then there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

That’s a scene of the final tragic day of judgment told about in Revelation chapter 20. Do not miss this. Jesus was talking to religious people throughout this section because he went on to say to them about how they would see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs of Judaism, all the prophets entering into the kingdom of God, but they themselves would be thrown out. That has to tell us that even being a practitioner of a religion, whatever religion, is not the answer, because the Pharisees were nothing if not religious. Yet Jesus is quite clear that unless something drastically changed in their attitude toward Him, they would never be a part of the future kingdom of God. Instead, He said, people from the east and the west and the north and the south, from all over the globe, will be there enjoying the kingdom of God rather than you.

Who was He referring to? Again, as earlier, Jesus is referring to Gentiles from all nations on the earth who would hear Him and respond to the gospel and become a part of God’s family through faith in Him. People like me, and I hope people like you. His listeners in Judea that day bristled at that thought. But that is what Jesus warned them will be the case, and He underscored that with the line, Those who are first then will be last, and those who are last will be first, which is to say, many of you who imagine you will be first in line to enter the kingdom of heaven will not make it there, and many who you assume would be the last possible ones will in fact be the first to enter. These stern warnings did not give Jesus any pleasure to deliver, I can tell you.

But He was telling it like it is, like it will be. He was telling the truth He knew will be the case. Some of His disciples remembered Him saying on that occasion, maybe more to Himself than to anybody listening, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who have stoned the prophets and killed those God has sent to you, how often I wanted to gather you to Myself, like a hen would gather her brood of chicks under her wings. But you will not have it. Have you ever seen that when danger is coming or a storm is kicking up, how little chicks will run for protection under their mother’s wings? It’s a striking image because Jesus says judgment is coming, and he is the Savior that can protect us if we will only come to him and only believe in him.

But most who heard him that day would not, and sadly, most still will not. People don’t take the warning seriously. They’ve accepted the lie that judgment will never happen. This is a very somber passage. When we hear Jesus’ words, we have a choice of who and what to believe about the existentially important questions regarding judgment, heaven, hell, and regardless of whether it’s Oprah or any other self-proclaimed spiritual teacher, are you really willing to take their word over Jesus? His message was and is very clear.

The door is open now, but it’s narrow. He’s the only way. Individually, we each have the opportunity to humble ourselves before God, confess we need Jesus as our Savior, and by faith enter in through that narrow door. If you never have before, I’d urge you to make that decision by faith right now, right now, wherever you are. Listen to and trust Jesus Christ rather than the self-appointed spiritual gurus who contradict him. The promise is, the good news is, whoever comes through that narrow door, God has made leads to his kingdom.

Whoever comes the way Christ has made possible, whoever we are, wherever we are from, from the east, the west, the north, the south, we will be welcomed into God’s eternal family. And when the door is finally shut, and the future day of judgment arrives, and it will, we will have nothing to fear because we are Christ’s. Our sins are covered. Our place in heaven is secure in the eternal kingdom of God. Thanks, Paul. You know, our mission at Share the Word is simply to communicate the big ideas of the New Testament in a down-to-earth language with as many people around the world.

And we hope that you will take a few minutes to check out the archives of all the programs and offerings at ShareTheWord.org. And as always, from all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.