Father Stephen De Young: And when we get started, we’re going to be in Luke, chapter 13, verse 10, which I know now looks like a weird place to have stopped, but you remember way back in the long ago time before Palm Sunday and Pascha when we last met, we got there and that’s really a break in the text. All the way up through verse 9 of chapter 13, there had been sort of a continuous, ongoing dialogue by Christ on his way to Jerusalem. And so, we sort of left off at the text break, which didn’t happen to be at the chapter break, and that’s why we were at such an odd place.

So before we get started, I’ll say my usual, that if you want to go back and listen to the introduction to Luke, go to the website, listen to the first Bible study on Luke and hear that all over again. Refresh yourself, and I’ll do a catch-up introduction here in just a minute.

But as is my wont, I wanted to comment on something real quick and hopefully real briefly as it pertains, because it’s about Scripture in the Orthodox Church. So this is sort of an overarching thing for what we’ve been doing here for the last several years and where we’re going in the future. I don’t know how many of you have heard or how many of you. If you had heard of this, meant anything to you. But a fellow Dutchman named Hank Hannegraaff, also known as the Bible Answer Man. Who has a radio show that’s syndicated on. Well, a few less stations than it used to be. But was indicated on hundreds of Evangelical radio stations across the country on Palm Sunday. So just a couple of weeks ago was received into the Orthodox Church. And this has caused a flap among Evangelical folks, and because he was Dutch and because of his background, his father was actually pastor in the same Dutch Reformed denomination in which I once served, a flap amongst Reformed folks.

And in the midst of that flap, because he is the “Bible Answer Man”, One of the big issues that has come up is how Scripture works in the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox view of the Scriptures. The Bible as a whole.

Of course, our Protestant friends hold to sola scriptura. Which is basically the idea that and this is in response, of course, To the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching and the Roman Catholic way of looking at things. At least the classical Roman Catholic way of looking at things. There are three sources of authority in the church. There’s the Scriptures, there’s the unwritten tradition that’s been handed down from generation to generation, and there’s the teaching magisterium, which is headed by the Pope, the Papal Curia and then the cardinals and bishops underneath him.

Essentially, although I don’t want to go too in-depth on this, in the Roman Catholic Church, the teaching magisterium, the Pope. His authority sort of trumps the other two because he’s the one who decides what is tradition and what isn’t. And he’s the one who decides how to interpret Scripture and how not to interpret Scripture. So, you have one of those three that is supreme. In response to that, in the Protestant Reformation, they argued for sola scriptura, which is essentially taking that and sort of flipping it, wanting to put scripture at the top. And then tradition and the teaching of the church, the church leadership, beneath Scripture. So that Scripture is what decides what is and isn’t correct tradition. And Scripture is what decides whether or not a leader is teaching the right thing or not teaching the right thing. And I say that way very deliberately because one of the problems with a lot of criticisms of the idea of sola scriptura is actually not critiquing sola scriptura. It’s critiquing something like sola scripture. It’s like, “Oh, you just say just the Bible.” Well, no, educated Protestants did not say just the Bible. They just say that the Bible is the one that’s on top of the three.

So, part of the problem in this whole discussion and part of the problem is now with Hank Hannegraaff converting, a lot of Reform folks looking at the Orthodox Church is they’re trying to understand the Orthodox Church’s teaching about Scripture within that paradigm. And so, to them, mostly we sort of look like Roman Catholics, right? Or sometimes they’ll say, well, in the Orthodox Church, you’ve got tradition on top and then the Scriptures underneath it. Or, sometimes you get a little more nuanced view where they’ll say, well, the Orthodox Church says scripture is part of tradition.

And the reason I’m taking this time is that having the correct Orthodox understanding is important for everything we do in terms of reading and understanding and interpreting the Scriptures. The correct actual Orthodox view, when we talk about Holy Tradition in the Orthodox Church, holy Tradition is defined as the life of the Holy Spirit in the church.

The Holy Spirit lives within the church and has for coming up on 2000 years. And that means in every generation, in every generation, the Holy Spirit is active. The Holy Spirit is bringing people to Christ. People are coming to know Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

When we talk about Scripture, we are also ultimately talking about Christ. It was buried inside the huge, long Gospel reading we did on Holy Thursday that I did first. So I’ll understand if by the middle of it you were a little hazy, not focused. But Christ says that there are two witnesses that attest to him. The two witnesses that attest to him. And you may recall from back when we were talking about the book of Deuteronomy. How did you establish the truth? According to the law in the Old Testament, you had to have two witnesses. Jesus says the two witnesses to him are the Holy Spirit. Whom he is about to send is witness one. Witness two are the apostles themselves, because they have been with him from the beginning.

And the apostolic fathers, in the first century, who are the first fathers in the church to write about scriptures. They refer to the New Testament as the memoirs of the apostles. What the New Testament is, is the memoirs of them recording what they saw when they were with Jesus from the beginning. For two witnesses to be valid, they have to give what? Identical testimony, right? They have to say the same thing. If they don’t say the same thing, well, then they’re thrown out of court, right, because they’re not two valid witnesses. Which means that from an Orthodox perspective, Holy Tradition and the Scriptures are identical. They are the same thing. You cannot separate them to make one judge the other. They are the same thing. They say the same thing because both of them are witnesses to what? They’re witnesses to Christ. And there’s only one Christ who has risen from the dead and who is still alive. So we can’t separate these things out. So to say, as some of our Reformed friends want to say, that you could understand the Scripture without holy tradition is to say you can understand the Scriptures without the Holy Spirit, which is preposterous. It’s preposterous. You can’t understand the Scriptures without the Holy Spirit.

And vice versa. This is one of our issues with our Roman Catholic friends. It’s to argue that you can have a proclamation from a human being that trumps or nuances or that he stands as judge over the testimony of the Scriptures, of the testimony of the Holy Spirit in the Church, is preposterous.

So the reason I wanted to make this point so strongly is that as we’re studying the scriptures and I tried to do this through the whole Old Testament I don’t know how well I did, but I tried, right? And I at least rhetorically made this point when we were in the Old Testament that, as Jesus says at the end of the Gospel of Luke, that we’ll get to eventually all of the law and the prophets speak concerning him. The Old Testament is about Christ, sometimes in shadowy ways, we had to do a lot of spade work sometimes, right? Leviticus says, don’t eat the owl or the nighthawk or the sparrow. That’s a little tricky to get to Jesus from there, right? You got to do a little work.

But very clearly, the New Testament is about Christ, directly. And so, when we’re reading the Scriptures, we’re not reading the Scriptures to sort of extract bits of data, to make arguments. We’re not trying to extract ethical principles for how to live our life. Our goal in reading the Scriptures is to come to know Christ more and more deeply. That’s our goal and only the Holy Spirit can accomplish that. So it all goes together. We can’t sort of pull these things apart. So if somebody asks you if you believe in sola scriptura, the correct answer is they’re trying to play baseball and all you’ve got is a football, right? They’re on a different field playing a different game,

It doesn’t transfer over. So I just wanted to say that briefly because you know how I am, I read the Internet, I watch documentaries on the History Channel and then I feel the need to comment. But hopefully that’s helpful in terms of sort of refocusing terms of what we’re doing as we go through the Scriptures, that all of this should be drawing us closer to the knowledge of Christ, not just things about Christ or doctrinal principles about Christ, but Christ himself who has risen and who is still alive.

Okay, so that said, before we get started in chapter 13, verse 10 of the Gospel according to St. Luke, remember, because it’s been a few weeks. Christ has begun his journey and has actually now drawn quite close to Jerusalem. After his ministry in Galilee, he’s traveled through Samaria, down to Judea and is now approaching Jerusalem. As he’s been approaching Jerusalem, conflict has been intensifying with Pharisees and religious authorities. Christ has tried to make it clear, Jesus has tried to make it very clear to his disciples that he is going there to die. As we’ve seen, they still do not get it. I was going to say do not really get it, but that’s probably giving them too much credit at this point. They still don’t get it at all, as we’ve seen from their responses to things. And Christ just finished a rather lengthy discussion about repentance and discernment, and it all began with, as you may recall him being invited to eat at a Pharisee house and the Pharisee questioning him about washing his hands, and Jesus then launched into a rather lengthy condemnation, cursing the Pharisees, the teachers of law said, “Well hey, when you talk bad about them, you’re talking bad about us too.” And so then he cursed them for a while and proceeded to sort of move on from there. So now we arrived and last night sort of the end of that discourse and now we’re at the beginning of a new section, although as we’re about to see, things are not changing for the better as we draw closer to Jerusalem. So unless anybody has any questions or anything left over, we’ll go ahead… Yes?

Interlocutor: The fear that the disciples had following the crucifixion of Christ, where they feared for their own life, because they were known to be disciples of Christ. And after or during the crucifixion, prior to Christ giving up his life, there were the earthquakes, there were the dead that were resurrected, many seen in the streets. And the witnesses to this were Jewish, and were still fearful of the Jews. With all that being witnessed, why would there still have been all this great animosity and fear towards Christ and his disciples knowing what had just happened?

Fr. Stephen: Well, there’s a few things. We see that it’s only sort of later in Jesus’s resurrection appearances where he sort of explains the Scriptures, meaning the Old Testament, to them and the disciples sort of get it. I think also the bigger part is we underestimate people’s ability to believe what they want to believe. There’s a movie, which I won’t name because I cannot and would not recommend it, but there’s a scene where this person is inclined to do something pretty horrible for money. He’s kind of wrestling with whether he should do it. And so he sits down and he prays and he says, lord, if you don’t want me to do this, give me a sign, Give me some kind of sign that I should not do this and I will not do it. And all of a sudden his house starts shaking, the cupboards come open and the dishes fall out and break and things tip over and everything’s… The earthquake stops. And he says, “Any sign at all, Lord, just show me something and I won’t do it.”

And we laugh at that because it’s an extreme example, but we’re kind of that way. We’re kind of that way. We have a grid of what we want to believe and anything that doesn’t fit with that, we sort of ignore or twist it around to make it fit.

So, the understanding that the disciples and pretty much all of the Judean people at the time had of who the Messiah was and what he was going to do was not, come to Jerusalem and be tortured to death by the Romans. It was pretty much the opposite of that. Maybe he was going to torture some Romans to death. He was going to come and take over and give them what they deserve and then bless everyone else. And so this was so 180 degrees, that even with the sort of signs and those signs, the darkness, the earthquakes, all that were signs that, as we saw when we read the prophets were associated with the end of the world, were associated with God’s judgment.

So, the idea of the resurrection wasn’t really in their heads. They may have seen that and said, “Oh my gosh, he was the Messiah and they murdered him. And now God’s judgment is on all of us,” on the one hand. Or they may have explained it away as a coincidence. “There was an eclipse. Yeah, there’s earthquakes in this part of the world, his disciples stole the body after the resurrection.”

So until after Christ’s resurrection, and then even as we saw today, until St. Thomas, “Until I actually put my finger in there and see that it’s really him, I’m not going to buy it. I think you guys are just wishful thinking. You’re hallucinating.” Because that’s not an unknown phenomenon today, and it wasn’t an unknown phenomenon in the ancient world that people would see dead loved ones. People would have a vision or think they saw a ghost of their dead loved one in their grief. That was accepted as a phenomenon. So if the disciples came to somebody who wasn’t a believer and said, “Oh, we saw them, they’d be like, okay, yeah, we know you were upset, you followed him. He was killed in a horrible way. We get it”. So that’s part of where St. Thomas is coming from. You’re telling me he’s not dead anymore. I want to actually see, I want to actually touch, because this is something that’s completely outside of human experience, the resurrection.

And sometimes we’ll get atheists who will say, “Oh, well, they were primitive, they weren’t scientific.” They knew people didn’t rise from the dead, okay? When someone was dead, they were dead. The Greeks and the Romans were relatively sophisticated, actually, in terms of science and medicine. They understood that much. When somebody dies, they’re dead. They don’t get up and walk around.

And from the perspective of the Greeks and the Romans, that wasn’t even something they wanted, because the Greco-Roman philosophical system was all that your body is the prison of the soul, as Plato said. Why would you want to come back and be in your body? Your soul is now free to go. So it was something no one could have fully understood and anticipated until it happened, even though Christ kept telling them that was going to happen, it was so far out of their realm. “Well, he must be being figurative. He must be saying, we’re going to have a hard time for a little while, but then we’re going to overcome the odds. That’s what he means by dying, rising or something.”

So, that’s a lot of it. And the Romans executed Jesus, they’re about to execute the disciples until they had the confidence in the resurrection, until you have the confidence in the resurrection, dying is something to be avoided. That’s sort of the testimony of the martyrs. St. George’s Day too, so the testimonies of the martyrs is that they weren’t afraid to die, but that was because they knew that Christ had risen from the dead. Before that, the best you do, as we saw in Second Maccabees in the Book of Wisdom, you get these sort of vague things where the righteous will shine like stars in the heavens, or they’ll run to and fro like sparks through the stubble. Well, what does that mean? The idea of bodily resurrection, of a new heavens and a new earth until Christ rose, they didn’t have a grasp on that. That was something beyond their wildest imagining. So I think that’s really what’s going on is that even then they still didn’t understand.

Even after they see Christ, they don’t fully understand it’s, really not until the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, that it all sort of comes together and they begin to preach and proclaim it.

Interlocutor: Did they pack the court?

Fr. Stephen: Well, the Pharisees did. The Pharisees did pack the court. The pharisees rabbinic Judaism that we know today is Pharisaism. The only two Jewish groups that survived the destruction of Jerusalem at the end of the Bar Kokhba rebellion were the Pharisees, which became rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. And shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, rabbinic Judaism expelled all of the Christians from the synagogue.

So, this is why, as we’re reading in the Gospels, remember we talked about how Luke has two contexts, right? There’s what Jesus said when he was alive, and then there’s Luke recording it later and why Luke thought this and that was important. The reason why we see so much about the Pharisees in the Gospels, and we see very little about the Sadducees, for example, we see almost nothing about the Essenes. We see nothing about the Theraputae, which is another group of Jewish group from Egypt. We don’t see anything about them because they were gone as soon as the Temple was destroyed. Sadducees are gone. The only thing they had going for them was the high priesthood. Well, there’s no Temple, there’s no high priest, no more Sadducees. The Pharisees were still around, and there was still this tension between the Pharisees and the early Church and the Christians. And so, Christ’s interactions with the Pharisees were still relevant decades later.

It’s the same group. What we know today as rabbinic Judaism came out of the school of the Pharisees. It was the one that survived. And the reason it was able to survive is basically that because the Sadducees were so corrupt, the Pharisees had already rejected the Temple largely, and their religion was based around the Torah itself. So when the Temple gets destroyed, the Torah was their focus anyway, they still have the Torah, so they can continue. Their religion was based around living a certain way of life in purity according to a strict interpretation of the Torah. So they could still do that, whereas the other groups that were based around the sacrifices in the Temple, they were done. There’s nothing more they could do. And we’re going to run into some more Pharisees here very shortly.

Okay, So Luke, chapter 13, verse 10:

Now He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.

So Christ is continuing… we saw him doing this in Gallolie. I remember he was sort of staying in Capernaum and Galilee and then going out to the villages and teaching in the synagogues. As he’s traveling to Jerusalem, he’s continuing to do this, when the Sabbath comes around, Christ goes to the local synagogues and he stands up and speaks and teaches.

And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.”

And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.

So this woman comes in, she’s stooped over, she’s got a hunchback. She’s been this way for 18 years. Christ walks over and he heals her. This is a wonderful thing, right? We should all be happy, right? For this poor woman, we should all rejoice.

But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd,

Notice he says it to them and not to Jesus:

“There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day.”

Come next week, Tuesday, for healing. Don’t come now.

The Lord then answered him and said, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it?”

Som he says your livestock, right? You got to feed and water the animals even on the Sabbath day, right? Now, what’s he referring to here? We’ve talked before about how there’s the Torah, there’s the law, right? And then there are commentaries. These commentaries end up becoming a big, thick book. I’ve got one in my office if you ever want to see it called the Mishnah, which are Pharisaic commentaries on the law, which are all the detailed rules, because questions come up, says we have to honor the Sabbath day because we’re not allowed to do any work. Okay, well, what constitutes work? How much do I have to do? How much effort do I have to exert? How much do I have to sweat before I’m working, right? Obviously, getting out of bed isn’t work, right? Might be for some of us some days, but obviously, in terms of the law, it doesn’t constitute work because I got to get out of bed and go to the synagogue. Obviously, I can get dressed. But I’m not allowed to kindle a fire because that’s in the law.

So there are all these little cases, right? How far can you walk before it becomes work? How much of this can you do before it becomes work? You can’t cook food, but you can serve food, so you have to cook the day before, then serve it the next day. So all of these picayune little rules,

Interlocutor: What if you’re a waiter?

Fr. Stephen: Well, you couldn’t be a waiter because you’d be working, because you’d be getting paid. So that was right out. So they had this whole list of rules. Well, one of these rules was, okay, you’re allowed to feed and water your livestock. Christ isn’t just referring to, “Hey, you guys bend the rules about the Sabbath for your livestock.” He said, “No, look, here’s your rules, you can do this.”

“So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has boundóthink of itófor eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?”

Now, Jesus here is playing with the word loosed. He says, you loose your livestock, right? You go and untie your livestock to do this. So you’re allowed to untie an animal, right? But this woman, who, by the way, is a child of Abraham, he makes the point, who’s a Jew like you, right? Much more valuable than an animal. Sorry, PETA. But much more valuable than an animal. I shouldn’t set her loose from this infirmity she’s been bound with?

And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame; and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him.

So it’s pretty obvious, right, in the original context, why Jesus would do this. Why is this still important for St. Luke? We’ve talked before about the fact that St. Luke is writing to a primarily gentile audience with people who have converted to Christianity decades later. So why is he telling us about the Sabbath rules? Well, as we’re going to see here in a while, maybe a year or two, when we get into Galatians, there were Pharisees wandering about in these Gentile churches, trying to come and impose, this is sometimes misinterpreted. We’ll talk a lot about this when we get to the Book of Acts, because sometimes this is misinterpreted as they were trying to impose the law, they weren’t trying to impose the law. There’s not a problem with the law. They were trying to impose their interpretations and these additional rules and guidelines on the Gentile converts.

And the point Jesus is making here is not just your silly rules are silly, right? As if you need to come up with better ones, or to say you need to add an asterisk and put down at the bottom of the page, oh, but it’s okay to heal on the Sabbath, right? That’s not what he’s saying either. The point he’s trying to make is, what is the purpose of the Sabbath? Why did God create the Sabbath? You guys are experts on the Torah. You’ve read it, he’s saying to them, go back and look. God finished his work of creation, finishes his work and rests on the Sabbath.

So, the Sabbath is this gift of peace, of rest that comes at the end, the end of work and striving. And once we get further into the law, remember, there’s not only the Sabbath day, there were Sabbath years every 7th year. And what happened in the 7th year? You didn’t go out and work your field. Why? So that the poor, the unfortunate, they could come and glean from your fields, rest for you, providing for them, for those in need. That’s what’s in the law. This isn’t an interpretation. This is what’s there.

So, if you read it and understand what’s there, the Sabbath is a gift. The Sabbath is about freedom. And by the way, remember, every seventh, seventh year, every 50th year was a jubilee year where you had to free all your slaves and where all deaths were canceled. So this is about at the end of the period, we have freedom, we have rest. So what Christ is saying here is that healing this woman is the most appropriate thing to do on the Sabbath day. This is what the Sabbath day is all about, is about people being set free, about people finding rest. Sabbath day was not given by God to be a burden on people, right? To be a list of rules that you hang over somebody’s head, either to declare them to be a sinner or to declare yourself to be righteous because you keep all the rules. That’s not the purpose. St Paul is going to talk about the letter of the law and the spirit of the Law. The spirit of the Law, of course, being the Holy Spirit, who we saw in Jeremiah, writes the law in our hearts.

So, this is the point Jesus is making. Jesus is making the point that they’ve taken this good gift of God and twisted it around into something else. This is the level of darkness and misunderstanding… This is one of those themes we’ve been seeing all through St Luke, is that the people just do not understand their understanding of just about everything from who the Messiah is going to be, to the law, to current events, as we saw with the reference to the Tower of Siloam, the understanding of current events and what’s going on in the world. All of it is exactly upside down and backward. Their understanding of what’s important, they think all the things in this world are important, spiritual things are not, which is exactly opposite. So this is one of those things where Christ is taking those things and setting them back right, the way they’re supposed to be.

“Then He said,” notice this is a conjunction, we’re continuing.

Then He said, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden; and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.”

And again He said, “To what shall I liken the kingdom of God?  It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened”

So both of these examples you have something small you talk about in Matthew, in St Matthew’s gospel, unlike St Luke refers, he says, the mustard seeds, the smallest of all seeds, which has caused all kinds of people to go off on a weird tangent of “Well, is it really?” Which misses the point, right? St Luke doesn’t even mention that part. He just says like a mustard seed. Because if you’ve ever seen a mustard seed, you can go to Kroger and see a little thing of mustard seed. They’re very small. But if you ever seen a mustard tree, it is very big. And that’s the point Jesus is making when he talks about the birds of the air nesting in its branches. You go from something this tiny to something where you’ve got birds living in it, right? It’s full of life. It’s huge and full of life. What has to happen to that seed in order for that to happen? It has to die, has to get buried in the ground. And then this new life comes from it.

Second example, it’s like leaven, it’s like yeast, right? It’s a packet of Fleischman’s yeast, not a lot of yeast in there. You pour it out in your hand at all, right? But you take that and you work it into some dough. It fills the whole dough. The dough rises, you get loaves and loaves of bread out of it. Something small. What? Gets buried, get buried in the ground. All this life comes out of it.

These are the two examples he’s giving. Again, you see a theme of this reversal. The things that are small become the things that are great. The things that are small, the things you throw aside, the things you don’t think are important, end up being the source of life. Notice both of these are analogies. For what? Kingdom of heaven. Kingdom of God. How are they thinking about the kingdom of God? They’re thinking the kingdom of God is going to come when the Messiah rides in on a white horse, right? Kills Caesar, takes over the world, makes all the Jews princes, makes all the Gentiles their slaves, and then happily ever after. That’s what they’re thinking.

What is it actually like? Something small, something neglected, something that seems unimportant. Christ Himself, who ends up buried in the ground from which life grows, and the kingdom of heaven, grows and gives life. Why is that here? Why does he say it here? Because you notice what it says? The multitudes rejoiced. The multitudes rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him. Look, he’s healing people. Look, he’s doing these miracles. Look at these amazing things. He’s the Messiah. He’s about to go kick some Roman rear end, right?

And so Christ is slowing their roll. “Back up a step here. That’s not what you should be rejoicing in.” Remember what he said to the disciples when they came back and were all excited? They said, even the demons, we cast out demons in your name. Even the demons had heard about your name. Jesus says, that’s not why you should be rejoicing. You should be rejoicing because your name is written in the book of life. This is the same kind of thing, right? This isn’t what you should be excited about. What you should be excited about is eternal life in the kingdom. And that’s not going to be the glory train rolling through. That’s going to involve the small things, the unimportant things. It’s going to involve suffering, death, burial, but then coming through the other side.

And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.  Then one said to Him, “Lord, are there few who are saved?”

So, he’s continuing on his way to Jerusalem. He’s continuing to stop at the cities and preach and teach, right? We have another little transition here, as has been his habit. And so this person says to him, are there few? Literally, what it says to the Greek is, “Are the saved few?” Are the saved just a few? Why would someone ask that question? To make sure you’re part of them? But also, who’s been teaching these people before Jesus showed up? Pharisees. What’s the Pharisees’ attitude? “We are the righteous. You people are not. We’re this elite class of holy, spiritual people to stand above everyone else.”

So part of this question is, is there just this elite group, just this elite group that’s going to be part of your kingdom, that’s going to experience salvation? And now, as usual, Jesus is going to give them an answer that answers their question, but not in the way they were wanting to have their question answered.

And He said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”

Well, that sounds pretty rough, right? Basically, his response, it sounds like, at least from this sentence, it sounds like he’s saying yes. Right? Sounds like he’s saying yes. You say a whole bunch of people are going to try to be saved, and most of them aren’t going to make the cut. That should terrify you. It terrifies me. If there’s a cut that has to be made, I’m probably not making it. But notice that’s not where he ends.

It’s His first sentence.

When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,’ and He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know you, where you are from,’

So pause for a second. Is the reason they can’t make it through the narrow door that they just didn’t try hard enough? Is the reason that they didn’t make it through the narrow door that they just didn’t quite make the cut, right? Cut off was 60%, under that you’re failing, and they had a 59. Just not quite enough good deeds, right? One too many sins. No. No, they’re not able to make it through the door because they waited until the door was closed. That’s why they’re not able to enter. So when Christ says, “Strive to enter through the narrow door,” he’s saying, what? He’s saying, “Enter now. You need to enter now, because the door is not going to be open forever.” It’s what he’s saying. He’s not talking about a cut. He’s talking about if you don’t enter now, it will eventually be too late.

And then when it’s too late, you’ll come and say, “Oh, Lord, Lord, let me in now. Notice they call him Lord. They call Him Lord, and they go further because his response is, “I don’t know you, I don’t know where you’re from.” Right? Doors closed, too late.

then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’

So these aren’t just people who call him Lord. That eat and drink in your presence. What’s that a reference to?

Originally, when Christ is saying it was probably immediately a reference to the Passover meal, which is described in Deuteronomy as you go and you buy food and drink and you eat it in the presence of the Lord, right? So in the immediate context, it was, hey, we celebrated the Passover, right? But what happens, as we saw Holy Thursday, is that Christ fulfills the Passover in the Eucharist, right? So as Saint Luke is writing, he’s talking about the Eucharist, he’s talking about communion. “Hey, we’re calling you Lord. Hey, we went to church, we had communion. It was nice.” You taught in our streets, right? We heard preaching.

“But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’ 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, and yourselves thrust out. They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God. And indeed there are last who will be first, and there are first who will be last.”

So notice again one St. Luke’s there here, that it’s not just the prophets, it’s not just Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their physical descendants, but it’s people from the north and the south and the east, people all over the world are going to be there in the kingdom. So again, he’s not saying, “Yeah, there’s only a few who are going to make the cut.” He’s saying, “No, there’s going to be people from all over. But what you need to be concerned about is that you’re inside and not on the outside. You’re on the inside and not on the outside.”

And then, of course, there are many who are last, will be first, who are first, will be last. What’s that a reference to? Well, that’s a reference to the Pharisees who are teaching that in the first place. Many of the people now who think they’re the spiritual elite who are going to be in, they’re going to be out on the outside. And many of the people who have been told their whole lives that they’re on the outside, be they Gentiles, be they quote unquote “sinners”, they’re going to end up inside.

So Christ does answer the question. The answer to the question is you shouldn’t be worried about what the number is going to be of how many people are going to be saved. You should just be worried about whether you’re going to be one of them, whether there’s five or 5 billion. You want one of those to be you. That should be your focus, and that needs to be your focus, that strive, right? It’s a good old present imperative, present tense. You need to be concerned about that right now. You need to be concerned about entering the kingdom right now, not down the road somewhere.

So then what’s the relationship between that and these Eucharistic images and the images of the church? Well, we’re going to see later on, eventually, years from now, in the Book of Revelation, one of the letters of the seven churches, Christ is going to say to people, would that you were cold or hot, right? But because you’re lukewarm, I’m going to spit you out of my mouth. What was the cold or hot meaning? Well, hot is what we’re hoping for. Hot is what we’re going for, right? Hot means you’re on fire with the spirit of God, right? Hot means you’re striving to enter the kingdom, you’re striving to follow Christ. That’s what we hope for. But if you’re not going to be that, if you’re not going to be that, then you’re better off being cold. Well, in terms of this passage, what that means is if you’re not serious about following Christ, you’re better off not coming to church.

Because every time you come and hear a sermon, every time you come and hear a Bible study, every time you receive a sacrament, if you’re not following Christ, not only is it not helping you, but you’re piling up condemnation for yourself on the Day of Judgment. If you’re not going to be hot, you’re better off being cold. Because as he said “To him has been given, much will be required.” You’re better off not receiving. If you’re not going to receive worthy, if you’re not going to end up to do anything with it, you’re better off not receiving it in the first place. That’s what he’s saying. These people who are on the outside who are now saying, Lord, Lord, hey, you notice you preached in our streets? Doesn’t say, I heard and listened and did anything about it, but I heard you preaching, and I ate and drank in your presence, and I’m calling you Lord. That’s enough, right? It’s not. That’s why we have that imperative, strive.

You need to be hot. If you’re not going to be hot, be cold. Walk away. This is one of the themes Jesus has been telling them all along. That’s the problem with the Pharisees, the core of the problem with the Pharisees spent their whole lives reading the Torah. They have all this that they’re going to be held responsible for, and they’ve not only not lived it out themselves, but they’ve distorted it and twisted it, used it against people, stopped other people from following it, and they’re going to be held accountable for that. And that’s why there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth. That’s eternal condemnation. That’s what that is.

Again, I always hesitate to say things like this because I always figure I’ll show up for Bible study and nobody will be here.

But that’s the honest truth. That’s the honest truth. We need to be serious about it, or we need to forget it. We need to be serious about Christianity. We need to be serious about following Christ. Or we need to just stop calling ourselves Christians. Stay home and watch football on your underpants.