- Aug 31
- 5 min read
[Luke 14:12-14] He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
The Example of His Humility
Knowledge of our Lord’s humility – what He did for us – teaches us to look at our neighbors, and ourselves, from a heavenly perspective instead of an earthly one.
The story I told to the children a minute ago was based on Scripture in James 2:1-5. Here it is: My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? [James 2:1-4]
So much of how we perceive others is based on self-benefit, without even realizing it. That well-dressed visitor, or that good-seeming family, how good would it be for us to have them here! But that man or woman who look another way, do we notice that they haven’t come back? Do we ask?
Are we chummy with those whose resources or connections we imagine could somehow benefit us, while being quick to dismiss those who look like they could only need something from us?
In your own life, as a Christian – and in your life together as a congregation – are you looking to the benefit you could receive from others or are you seeking how you could be a benefit to others? Which of those motives will God bless?
From an earthly perspective, that man in fine clothing may be of greater benefit to you. But from a heavenly perspective, both he and the shabby looking man are equally sinners for whom their Savior has shed His blood to redeem them.
From heaven’s perspective, both poor and rich are in poor condition – and you and me – physically and spiritually. Therefore, you and I are called not to be benefited by others but to be of benefit to them. Individually and as a congregation, this is Christ’s mission in us – “Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve…” [Matthew 20:28].
However, in ways we may not notice about ourselves, the natural tendency of our sin-fallen nature is to look to our self-benefit in various situations.
Self-benefit is sometimes the hidden motive behind both giving and receiving hospitality. “I don’t like that person, but I better go to their party – because of how it might benefit me someday.” “I better invite so-and-so – to avoid the drama that would come it I didn’t.”
Sometimes that’s just the way life works – and it is how the world operates. Fine. But Jesus is telling us to have another motive. Go and invite out of sincere desire to be a good friend, a good family member, a good colleague to those not easily liked.
Self-benefit is the true reason behind the excuses for not being generous toward others – though God has been generous and patient with us.
Very strangely, self-benefit is so engrained into our nature that it even becomes our excuse for doing good to others. “I give to that charity because it makes me feel better –like I’m part of something bigger than myself.” “I believe it will come back around to me.”
We feel the need to justify charitable behavior, or treating another well, by saying how it benefits us. But what should my real reason be? “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”
Let it not be self-benefit but a true perspective of what our Savior has done for us which determines what we do for others [Philippians 2:3]. And “whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” [Matthew 7:12].
Some of us may succeed at outwardly presenting ourselves as being dressed “in fine clothing” – but inwardly, we are in that “shabby clothing” of sin.
What Jesus has done for us is that He has humbled Himself to become our Savior on the cross: “…Christ Jesus, 6 who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.8 And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” [Philippians 2:5-8]
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich” [2 Corinthians 8:9]. “God made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” [2 Corinthians 5:21].
Jesus emptied Himself to become the poor man on the cross – making your poverty of unrighteousness His own, to die in your sins — In order to fill you with His richness, to make His righteousness yours, to make you alive in His resurrection. He made your true poverty His to make His true riches yours.
“Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” [Philippians 2:9-11]
To finish the verse I started earlier, “Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” [Matthew 20:28]
Jesus has not acted for self-benefit, but for your benefit – to make the poor rich. He gets nothing from us that was not already His own – instead He gave Himself for us.
He has “chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom” [James 2:5]. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” [1 Timothy 1:15]
This is the heavenly perspective from which we look at both our rich and poor neighbor. We are here for how Jesus will benefit them, as He has benefited poor us.
So, into your life – and into your church – don’t just invite those who can give you a return that “you be repaid” [Luke 14:12]. Invite and work for those who can give you no benefit whatsoever [Luke 14:13] – and “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” [Luke 14:14] as you gather there with those whom you welcomed here. Amen.
- Aug 24
- 6 min read
[Luke 13:22-30] He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. 23And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, 24“Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 25When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ 26Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ 28In that place 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 but you yourselves cast out. 29And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. 30And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”
Faith’s Narrow Door and a Full House
I.
As Jesus was going from town to town, on His way to Jerusalem, and was teaching along the way, a man came up to Jesus and finally asked the question that was gnawing at him: “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”
In passages leading up to this reading, Jesus had given severe warnings to the teachers and experts in God’s Law about their own eternal destination [Luke 11:39-46]. Jesus warned those who trusted in money about the cost to their soul [Luke 12:13-21].
Jesus condemned the hypocrites who kept up good appearances on the outside but inside were full of wrongs [Luke 12:1-2]. And when some saw in the news a tragedy that had befallen others, Jesus said, “Do you think they were worse sinners than all the others? Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” [Luke 13:1-5].
Jesus said that those who acknowledged Him would be acknowledged in heaven, but those who denied Him would be denied by heaven [Luke 12:8-9]. Yet so many of the teachers and the people were indeed denying Him. Jesus warned about division over His name even in families, which we read about last week [Luke 12:52-53], and which perhaps this man was seeing.
There were what seemed to be so many “No’s”, and where were the “Yes’s”? “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” “And,” perhaps the man was thinking, “what about myself?”
II.
Jesus answers, “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” “For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” What does Jesus mean?
Well, first of all, Jesus’ message of the narrow door does not mean, “Make yourself better and better, and if you’re finally good enough you’ll fit through the door. So be really good, because it’s really narrow.”
Nothing detestable, nothing false, no hidden wrong, no darkness, no uncleanness – nothing that isn’t completely pure, nothing less than completely holy can be in heaven. Efforts at your own moral improvement don’t get you through that door.
The narrow door to heaven is as narrow as One Man – the only man who could enter. For you, the door to heaven is the cross of Jesus. He alone is perfect. He alone is holy. He alone is your doorway.
Jesus, who is perfect and holy, carried your unholiness and sin for you to the cross – your sin was put away forever in Him in His death. He Himself became your sin-offering, a sacrifice which atoned for your sins of body and soul. By the sacrifice Jesus made, you are now holy to God. That is your entrance in the door.
“None is righteousness, no, not one… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified – deemed righteous, holy to God – by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation (a sacrifice that takes away God’s anger) by His blood, to be received by faith.” [Romans 3:11,23-25]
III.
That last part, “received by faith”, is part of the narrowness of that door, not by God’s restriction but because of man’s resistance. The free righteousness by faith in Jesus is narrow to human pride. Human pride won’t admit, “I need a Savior” – or that my way of thinking or living could be wrong. Pride objects to the idea that I’m not enough and need to be saved by faith alone.
Faith is a narrow door to the one who says, “I can do it myself!” Faith in Christ was a narrow door to the Pharisees who “Trusted in themselves that they were righteous and therefore treated others with contempt” [Luke 18:9]. Those who don’t want others to have such free entry.
And Jesus isn’t telling us this so we can point our finger at others about how much they reject the narrow door. Jesus is telling us this because our our own sinful nature still has these dangerous tendencies clinging in us.
Those, in today’s Gospel, who Jesus said would knock but not enter appealed to their mere acquaintance with Jesus as fellow Israelites as their basis for entry – “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets” – as if they were members of the same club, entitled to all its rights and privileges. That way of thinking can certainty infect the Church too.
In every case, those “who seek to enter and will not be able” are those who seek entrance, not by faith, but as their due [Romans 4:3-5] – “They did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone…” [Romans 9:32]
— Yet others “who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith” [Romans 9:30]. “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” [Romans 3:22] – by which you are counted righteous right now – and through which you will finally be righteous in heaven, as a gift.
IV.
The door is narrow – “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” [John 14:6].
So, back to the man’s question: Does this narrow door mean that those who are saved will be few? Not at all. Instead, “God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts!” [Isaiah 55:8-9]. God shows His power in that this narrowest way is the way that fills heaven abundantly:
“A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes” [Revelation 7:9] – Many coming “from east and west, and from north and south” who will “recline at table in the kingdom of God.” [Luke 13:29; Matthew 8:11]
Elsewhere, Jesus calls it a sixtyfold and hundredfold harvest [Matthew 13:8] – and like a small mustard seed which grows into an entire tree [Luke 13:18-19].
The door to heaven is as narrow as One Savior – and that Savior’s love for the world, and His ability to save, are not small: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” [John 1:29] – “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” [1 John 2:2].
What we see around us in the world, or in ourselves, might cause us, sometimes, to ask that man’s question, “Will few be saved?” But faith in Jesus’ words, and faith in Jesus’ cross, give us confidence in a big salvation and a large heaven – more than we can number – from every place. Thanks be to God. Amen.
- Aug 17
- 6 min read
[Hebrews 11:17 – 12:3] “…Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God…”
So Great a Cloud of Witnesses
I.
To sell a product successfully, you need to offer a product people like at a low enough price. In the days of Jeremiah the prophet, many other prophets were selling a message – a message people liked to hear and which came at little cost to them.
“They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’” [Jeremiah 23:17]
These prophets did not stand in the council of the Lord. They did not hear or pay attention to God’s Word. They preached the message of their day. They were well received in the world, and their preaching was in step with the prevailing thinkers of their day and with the prevailing leaders.
As these prophets preached, they felt good about it – they felt a little elevated, up among the more enlightened thinkers of their day. Respected. And a respected message. It told the leading minds, the leaders, and the people, “You are right. Keep on course. ‘It shall be well with you.’ ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’”
In our day, the leading minds and the leaders might not always be the same crowd. But each crowd has their own preachers preaching them a message pleasing for them to hear and easy for them to buy – one which affirms for them what they want to hear.
But God’s preachers, including Jeremiah and all His prophets – and including that long list of people in our reading from Hebrews chapter eleven – they lived as “strangers and exiles on earth” [Hebrews 11:13] and believed and confessed the truth of God’s Word at great cost —
— “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release” – which they could’ve had by compromising the truth of God’s Word – “Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated” – men and women “of whom the world was not worthy” [Hebrews 11:35-38].
These remained true to God by faith, willing to suffer loss in this world because they believed His promise that they would “rise again to a better life” [Hebrews 11:35]. These are the “great cloud of witnesses” [Hebrews 12:1]. Their example is meant to strengthen us – because you and I are not immune to that desire to hear what we already want to believe or to be in step with this or that crowd in the world.
II.
The prophet Jeremiah, in chapter twenty-three, was living and preaching at the time when Judah – the southern kingdom of a divided Israel – was soon to be destroyed and taken captive by the new world power on the map, the growing Babylonian empire.
Jeremiah’s message was one of Law and Gospel. It was God’s Word. Jeremiah did stand in God’s council and “spoke from God” as he was “carried along by the Holy Spirit” [2 Peter 1:21].
Jeremiah proclaimed God’s warning to His people that this destruction and captivity would indeed fall upon them because they did not repent. The Judahites put their fear, love, and trust in the false idol Baal – in whom their leaders trusted – and lived in the immorality, lusts, and covetousness that such a faith permitted and celebrated.
(They were happy to know that those despised, northern kingdom Israelites from Samaria were destroyed and taken captive a century and a half prior for their own versions of the same sins – but they did not believe such punishment would fall upon them.)
Jeremiah preached the warning of God’s Law, that those who continued in their sins would not escape punishment — and also the promise of God’s Gospel, that the day would come when God would send a Savior who would bring the forgiveness of their sins and the renewal of their hearts to be an obedient people.
The message did not sell. The people bought the lie instead. And we are warned not to buy the easy lies of this world but to accept the greater truth of God’s Word – which corrects our wrongs and gives the forgiveness of our sins, from which we are called to repent.
That great cloud of witnesses – all of whom were also sinners, who struggled with their flesh in every way you do – and who also were tempted to seek acceptance in this world – that cloud of witnesses died in faith, choosing the truth of God’s Law and Gospel over this world’s favor —
— they believed that Savior would come who would forgive their wrongs and make them new people, even if it wouldn’t be until the resurrection of the body. They did not trade such a great promise for anything. They sought, in faith, to walk in the newness of life for which they waited.
III.
What that cloud of witnesses waited for the apostles and disciples of the New Testament saw – and we believe it by faith, not as something unknown, but as something which has happened – the death and resurrection of Jesus, our Savior.
The One for whom that great cloud of witnesses waited – at great cost, and only knowing Him from afar, never seeing Him – has come to you. With Him has come both Salvation and division:
“For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” [Luke 12:52-53] —
— not divided over the usual family disagreements but divided over faith in Jesus Christ and the truth of His Word, both His Law and His Gospel.
What you might suffer in your day is the same as what that cloud of witnesses suffered in theirs. But you have this great advantage – that the fullness of that promised salvation has already come into the world and has come into your life, in fact, in a greater and fuller way than in theirs.
“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised (in their own day), since God had provided something better for us” — What they were waiting for you have more fully now because Jesus has come.
Jesus has now already given His life to atone for the sins of the world. He has now already come to His cross and endured. He has now already accomplished your redemption, the forgiveness of sins. His resurrection has now already happened. He has already poured out His Spirit on Pentecost.
And, Scripture says, you have already been buried into His death in your Baptism and are already being raised by His resurrection in your Baptism [Romans 6:3-5]. What your Savior has come and done is already yours and in you. You live in a greater time and have His greater work in you.
IV.
Because of this, let’s not sell what we’ve been given for some cheaper message, preached falsely in His name, for the sake of being in step with – or receiving the respect of – this world. Not for the lead thinkers nor for the leaders, whoever they ever are.
And lets never lose Jesus on account of those much more difficult divisions of family, if those we love are, for now, rejecting the name or truth of Jesus and God’s Word. It will not help them, nor you, if you give up on Christ and the Word. He remains the only hope for you and them.
If they will never believe, it still doesn’t help them for you to go their way. It only hurts you. And, in truth, “Lord” and, especially, “Savior” are greater to you than “Father and mother”, “son or daughter”, “wife or husband”. He is our Lord, Savior, and Creator.
And let no sin or temptation become of greater value to you than your Savior from sin and temptation. There is nothing He’s not able to forgive. And there is nothing He won’t deliver you from. Even if some deliverance must wait until the resurrection, you are still now fully justified by faith in Him.
Finally, let’s always look to Jesus as our example and, especially, for our strength, since He Himself was rejected, suffered all our temptations, endured all our injuries, and overcame these all in our place and for our sake.
“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter – the finisher – of our faith” [Hebrews 12:1-2]. Amen.
