The New Testament reading this morning will be in the book of Luke, chapter 13, verses 22 through 30. Luke 13, chapter 22, excuse me, chapter, Luke 13, verses 22 through 30. He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, Lord, will those who are saved be few? And he said to them, strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When 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. Then you will begin to say, we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets. But he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil. In 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. And people will come from east and west and from north and south and recline at the table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last. Let's pray and ask God's blessing on the reading of his word. We do confess, O Lord, that this that has been read in the hearing of our ears is your holy and precious word. It is to us food. May you allow us to receive it into our souls. May the Word of God nourish us. May it make us more like Christ. And as we delve into this passage this morning, that you would continue to feed us from the bounty that is before us, that the Word of God would Demonstrate itself again to be alive and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. May it pierce into our hearts, may it transform us, may it remind us of what a privilege it is to be in Christ, in whose name we ask these things, amen. The text we have before us this morning opens with a question, and it's interesting because as you start to look at the question, right away you see that Jesus doesn't answer the question. And it's probably because it was the wrong question. When I was in seminary, I went to the master's seminary and John MacArthur, who's the president of the seminary, he somehow periodically ends up in the news. In my opinion, he doesn't try to get into the news, he just ends up there. And he gave us a bit of advice for when we're interviewed by people at a television station, which, you know, happens to me all the time. But he said, he said, when you know you have an interview coming up, decide what you're going to say, and then ignore the question. He said, there's really no other way to do it, because they're always trying to ask gotcha questions, or, or if they're not believers, they really don't know what's important. And so he said, one thing you should always do is have something prepared to say that has to do with the gospel. And then when they ask you some question about whatever county ordinance is being talked about, then you say this. Well, thank you, Don, for that question. But really, that's not the question. The question is this. And then you just say what you had prepared to say anyway. In some ways, it looks like that. When we see this passage, they literally ask Jesus, whoever's asking the question, literally ask Jesus, are those who are gonna be saved just be a few? Now there's two possible answers to that question if it's the right question, and it's yes, they will be few, or no, they will not be few, and that is exactly what Jesus doesn't say. Now, I think it's interesting that historical philosophers or philosophical historians have divided our history into three categories, that it all centers around the modern era. And I've mentioned these before, but let me just review for a second. Modernity is known as the era from about 1500 to sometime in the early 20th century, maybe to the mid-20th century. And what comes before the modern era is what these historians refer to as the pre-modern era. And what comes after the modern era is what is known by these historians as the post-modern era. Some have postulated that we are no longer in the post-modern era, we're in the post-post-modern era. And I guess that's a pretty good way to determine it because that could go on forever. We could, who knows, in another century be in the post-post-post-modern era. But the pre-modern era, they say, is usually characterized by people adhering to authority. The modern era, they say, truth was in general determined through scientific inquiry. And then the post-modern era, they say, is basically that truth is determined by personal experience or by your feelings. In order to determine truth in the pre-modern era, some historians suggest that the right question, the question that would have been asked by a general pre-modernist in the era before the 1500s was, what should I believe? and that would determine truth. Whatever the authority told you to believe is what determined what the truth was. In the modern era, the question in determining truth was what is reasonable? What can be proven empirically? What can be proven through data? And for the postmodern, the question that deals most with truth is what fulfills me? what fulfills me because I don't care if it's factually true or not. Because if it's factually true and I live in misery the rest of my life, then why should I care whether it's true or not? I'd rather live a fantasy. One of the novels that embodies the post-modern era, even though it's kind of in the middle there, is that novel written by the Spanish novelist Cervantes, that novel called Don Quixote. Or if you read it in English class, because it was translated Don Quixote. Where this guy would rather follow his ideals and fulfill the longing of his heart than to deal with the reality that that dragon is not a dragon, it's just a windmill. And your beautiful Dulcinea is not the picture of beauty that you think she is. She's a scraggly old prostitute. But the question for the postmodern isn't, what is true? It's, what fulfills me? As it relates to theology or the Bible, maybe a modern might ask the question like this. Did the Ninevites really exist? Did the Ninevites really exist? And if they did exist, The book of Jonah tells us that it took him three days to walk across the city of Nineveh. Was there really an ancient city named Nineveh that was so grand and so grand in scale that it would have taken a normal man three days to walk across? And by the way, is it true, is it factually accurate that Jonah was swallowed by a whale? or a great fish or something else. These are all modernist questions. Postmodern question wouldn't be about whether it's true that these facts happened. The postmodern question would be something more like this. Was it fair that God commanded the Canaanites, the Israelites to kill the Canaanites? Was that fair? Because the postmodern would come to that question and say, well, if it's not fair, I don't care who God is and I don't care what he's done, I don't wanna serve a God like that. And whether it's true or not would be completely irrelevant. Now, I want you to understand when it comes to these kinds of questions, I think they're actually two separate questions of the same kind. because the questions are not there in order to determine how it is. I'm so excited, I wanna follow Christ. Now, I will follow Christ if you can just tell me, was Jonah actually swallowed by a whale? Because you tell me this, how many factual data points need to be proved in the Bible before you believe that Jesus is who Jesus is? Because what if there was a whale? Now do you believe? No, because what about Nineveh? Okay, what if there was a Nineveh? We've proved that there's a Nineveh and it took three days for someone to walk across Nineveh. Now do you believe? Well, but did he actually walk to Nineveh after getting spit out by a whale? And I don't know if you understand what I'm saying now, but what I'm saying is that when a modern man wants to find a reason to resist the truth of God, he'll keep looking for some other factual point to debate. Nothing will ever be enough because it's not about facts. It's about faith. And the fact is that all men inherently, naturally, by birth, are at enmity with God. Now, it's no different for the postmodern. The postmodern will sit there and say, is it fair that the Canaanites had to be killed? Or how about this question? We've all heard this question. What happens to those who've never heard? Because if you can't answer that question right, then I'm not gonna accept you're Jesus. Well, guess what? You think that sending people to hell is the scariest thing that Jesus ever did? Because if we resolve that and find out that all of those people who've never heard, or if there are actually people who have never heard, if that actually exists, if we find that that is absolutely righteous, you know what the postmodern will do? He'll go find something else. I don't like that God does this. I don't like that God doesn't let me do that. Sometimes the categories of modern, pre-modern, post-modern are not all that helpful because we get modern thinking in pre-modern times, right? Modern thinkers in pre-modern times. Or, excuse me, modern thinkers in post-modern times. That would be someone like Richard Dawkins, if you've ever heard Richard Dawkins. His objections to Christianity are all modernist. objections to Christianity, yet he writes in a postmodern era. You have a modern thinker in pre-modern times. You have someone like Socrates, who would have been a pre-modern, and yet when you read what Socrates says about determining truth, Socrates very much tries to follow the path of inquiry, right? And the Socratic method, and asking questions until you've kind of completely done through the whole issue and now you've come to truth through, he wouldn't have called it scientific inquiry, but he would have called it inquiry nonetheless. And he was a pre-modern modernist. So sometimes it doesn't help. The question that introduces our text this morning is very much in the mode of post-modernity. It's very much in the mode of post-modernity because the question doesn't have to do with whether Jesus is the Christ or not. Did you notice that? He doesn't say, Jesus, are you really the Christ? The question is, how many people are really gonna be saved? And why the question? It seems that the question arises because of the decline of the following of Jesus. There is a decline in Jesus's following and those who followed seem to be hanging on for all kinds of crass reasons. Like Jesus breaks bread and he feeds thousands of people. He breaks fish and feeds thousands of people. I mean, who wouldn't want to be a part of that? And I don't know, but there's bread and then there's bread and then there's fish and then there's fish, right? What if it was really ono? Not ono, like the fish ono, but ono like delicious, which is ono the fish is ono, so I guess that's all the same thing. It's delicious. Look at that, we can get something for nothing by following Jesus. What a horrible reason to follow Jesus. We can fill our bellies. I don't know, maybe we can take some of the bread that he multiplies and sell it to our neighbors and get rich. It doesn't say that in the text, but I'm thinking like a human being. The benefit of the stuff they can get from Jesus seems to be what's keeping a handful of people latched onto him somehow. This very promising movement then seems to be fizzling out. And what we learned last week and the week before is that the best and brightest, those who were supposed to know most about when the Messiah was coming and what the Messiah was about, all those people have completely turned their back. The Pharisees and the Sanhedrin have declared Jesus to be a blasphemer. They've even declared and made it the official position of the Religious Institute of Israel that Jesus was an agent of Satan. By the way, if you want to demoralize people and if you want to attack someone's character, figure out who the worst person in the world is and then accuse someone of being an agent of that guy, whoever that may be. Jesus Where is this movement going? How many people are really gonna be saved? Just a few? I mean, I thought we were taking over Israel and then we were gonna conquer Rome. Is it just a couple people who are gonna be saved? I thought this was going to be something different. I'm going to go ahead and go home now. And folks, we've been there, right? You go down and someone says, oh, you should come to this meeting. This meeting is awesome. They're going to talk to you about how you can get free vacations for life, right? We've probably all been to those meetings. I did one of those on our honeymoon 28 years ago. Some guy said, you come down and I'll show you how you can have free vacations for life, and I'll give you a $50 bill. And we were poor as dirt. And I thought, $50, I can take my wife out, my brand new wife, I can take her out to the local steakhouse for that. I said, yeah, it's going to be awesome. And we sat there, and the guy railed on me for like 10 or 15 minutes on what a horrible husband I would be if I didn't sign up for this vacation package that basically paid for itself in two years. And I just sat there going, nope, nope, nope. He said, what are you doing here? I said, I don't know. I didn't come here to sit here and have you tell me that I'm a bad husband. I don't know that much. And my poor brand new wife is like, I didn't know this guy was so cantankerous. And I said, too late. And we did. We ate steak that night. There was a point to all of this. I know what it was. You think you're getting something. You think you're going for a reason, right? And then when you get there, it completely shifts. This is exactly, I think, what the followers of Jesus were feeling at that moment. Wait a minute, we signed up for kingdom. We signed up for this mass movement. We signed up for stadium full of people. And now all we have is this little straggling group. Lord, Is this it? Is it just a few people going to be saved? And Jesus sees right through their question. The specific aspect of the kingdom that Jesus refers to is the part of the eternal aspect of the kingdom. And within that eternal aspect of the kingdom, there's going to be a massive feast. It's going to be great. By the way, when the Bible talks about a feast in the kingdom, in the eternal kingdom, do you know what that means? That means that there's going to be a feast in the eternal kingdom. There are certain historical figures in theology that say, no, that's just a metaphor to kind of trick people into thinking. But it's going to be better than a feast. It's going to be realms of light that we dwell in for eternity. Like, realms of light? You know, I want lamb. I don't know. There's gonna be a festival. There's gonna be a feast. This is something that has always been a part of Jewish eschatology. They've been looking for it. And Jesus reveals here three things about this to his primarily Jewish audience. Three things that ought to sober them up when it comes to the issue of the eternal kingdom. The first thing is this, that it is difficult to get in. It's difficult to get in. The second thing is that it's only open for a while. Entrance is only open for a while. And third, it's filled with all the wrong people. filled with all the wrong people. Let's look at the first thing. Verse 24, he talks about the fact that it's difficult to get in. He says, Notice he uses the word strive. It's the word from which we get the word to agonize. to agonize, and it indicates a fight, a struggle, a competition. That means that it's something that's hard that you're having to push through. It's not just easy. You don't just get this by birthright, as many of the Jews thought, that this was just their birthright. By virtue of me being a Jew, I'm going to be a part of the eternal kingdom. And he says, no, it requires strife. You need to struggle to get in. And it says not in the sense of doing something good that nobody else will do. If you do enough good things, then somehow you'll make it into the kingdom. But it's in the sense that you better take this really, really, really seriously. When you're in a struggle, you take it seriously or you will be destroyed by the struggle, right? I remember years ago watching a boxing match and this guy was really short and really pudgy. Back then I didn't think much of short and pudgy. Now they're like my favorite people. I'm, you know, I'm one of the club now. So I remember this guy and I was just like, he doesn't look like much of a boxer. And you could see this tall, lean, just the perfect build for boxing, was dancing around the ring. And he would stick a jab and kind of smirk as he hit this guy in the face over. and over, and over, and over again. And he just circled around, and over, and over, and over. He hit the guy, and he smiled as he did it. Then all of a sudden, with one lunge, this chubby little fella threw this arm over the top and caught this other boxer with something, and it was over. What happens when you don't take the struggle seriously is that the struggle will eat you up. When you don't take the dilemma seriously, the dilemma will get the best of you. In previous verses, we learned last week that the kingdom of God is like this tree that spreads out and has all of its influence, and the influence of the gospel makes the world cushy for a lot of people, doesn't it? Where the gospel has spread, life gets better. People become more honest. Commerce becomes more meaningful. The rules are more clearly defined. Good people can get ahead because the foundation of the gospel is holding together a society. But because the gospel is holding together that society, because that tree has spread its branches out, and because Gentiles are resting in the comfort of that tree, it might give somebody the impression that, well, I don't know. I was, you know, I'm an American. We're all Christians, right? Maybe if my good outweighs my bad. I'll just live for me, but then I'll sprinkle a little Jesus into my life. See how that works? If it works for me, I'll go with Jesus. If it doesn't work for me, then you know, whatever. The answer to all of that is no. It's not a very easy thing. It's a very difficult thing to follow Christ. The struggle is agonizing. How many of you have ever looked at those ethical tests? If you were in a life raft with five people, there was only room and provisions for four, what would you do? Which person would you kick out? Horrible, right? And you would say, no, I couldn't. I would find another way. You know what Jesus says in the very next chapter of this book? You want to talk about ethical? In Luke 14, verse 26, he says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. You want to agonize over that for a little bit? You want to think that through, what that means? Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? You have to count the cost. It's agonizing. It takes you away from loved ones sometimes. It puts you at odds with people you respect all the time. And that's why he says if you're going to build a tower, you first stop and think about what you need to build the tower. You don't just go at it. You agonize over it. Is it worth it to me to build this tower? Am I willing to make the due sacrifice and time and labor and finances to build this tower? And you agonize. And so it is, folks, with those who follow Christ, you agonize, you agonize, and you agonize. One of our family's favorite movies to quote is Napoleon Dynamite. Don't take it as a completely whatever endorsement. Watch it at your own risk. Napoleon Dynamite is one of those movies where some people are sitting there in tears, laughing so hard, while the other half the room is going, huh? Yes, like that. One of my favorite lines is when the young Mexican Pedro, who has no personal charisma at all, decides he's going to run for student body president. And he goes before the student body, and he says, vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true. Folks, some people look at Jesus Christ, and they pitch Jesus like that. You know who doesn't pitch Christianity like that? Jesus. Jesus probably has the worst marketing strategy in the history of Christian religion. Follow me and all your dreams can come true. No, that's not what Jesus says. Jesus says follow me and take up your cross. I'll give you one. Follow me and I'll bring enmity between you and everyone you love. Follow me, and not all your dreams will come true, but what you will do is surrender every single dream that you have to me. And you will now pursue my dreams for you. This is why, back to the end of Chapter 13 verse 24, this is why at the end it says that many will seek to enter and they will not be able to. Folks, there is no physical barrier. Anyone can trust, but understand this, when you trust Christ, you need to count the cost and understand what it is that you're giving up. This is why Luke later on in chapter 18 records a story that's also recorded in Mark chapter 10 of the rich young ruler who asked Jesus, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says to him, did you follow all the commandments? He said, yes, I've done everything. I've done all of the mitzvahs of the Old Testament. Says, I've kept them ever since my youth. And Jesus says, then sell everything that you have, distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Come and follow me. The Mark passage in Mark 10 says that that young man went away sorrowful, implying that he went away unrepentant because he had a lot of stuff. That guy needed to go back and strive more. What is a million dollars worth to you? Is it worth your soul? What is a billion dollars worth to you? Is it worth your soul? Think of all the good stuff you could do with a billion dollars. Is it worth your soul? What does it profit a man if he gains the entire world but loses his soul? So, the first thing that Jesus reveals is that it's difficult to get in, so strive. Agonize. It's worth the agony. You need to agonize over this and you need to make sure that nothing gets in your way. No family, no cross, nothing. No wealth, no riches. Your own pride doesn't get in your way, it's difficult. If you are not a follower of Jesus, excuse me, if you are a casual follower of Jesus, it seems to be indicating then that you are no follower at all. The second thing that Jesus reveals is that The door to the banquet is only open for a little while. The fact is that one day it will be too late to enter the gate. Look at verse 25. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and to knock on the door saying, Lord, open to us, then he will answer to you, I do not know where you come from. Who are you? The fact is that one day it will be too late to enter that gate. The doors to the feast will be shut. You will be outside looking in and the deciding factor in all of this is this. Not do you know who the Lord is? But does the Lord know you? The Lord comes to the door and sees you and says. Who are you? He'll say to many, I don't know you. I don't know where you come from. And then they lay out their credentials. Look at verse 26. They lay out their credentials. Hey, we ate and drank with you in your presence. You taught in our streets. Yeah, we cross paths every day. I know who you are. Look, it's me. Verse 27, he's gonna say, I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil. The days were drawing to an end for these people. Jerusalem would be destroyed in a horrific way because of their unbelief in just a matter of a few decades. But it was also true in a broader scale that for many of them they rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ and it's true for us as well to sit at the feast in the eternal kingdom. Today is the day of salvation. Today. John W. Peterson is a guy who was, he wrote a lot of songs between like in the 1950s to the 1970s. He wrote a lot of hymns, a lot of hymns that will show up in our hymnals even today, even modern hymns. I guess though, a lot of hymns that will show up on our wall, I guess we should say, because hymns are now on the wall instead of, I don't know how that works. One of the lesser-known songs that John W. Peterson wrote kind of captures just a temporal reality that just seemed to strike him one day, and he began to write about it. And the song goes like this. It goes, someday you'll hear God's final call to you. Please understand this, folks. Everyone will have a moment temporally that will be the very last time that they ever hear the call of God to them. Someday you'll hear God's final call to you to take his offer of salvation true. Peterson writes, this could be it, my friend, if you but knew God's final call. It is just a simple temporal verity that everyone is going to have a last experience of everything they did. There is going to be in your life sometimes a last bite of cheesecake that you ever take. I know, tragedy. But the temporal reality that points to the call of God to repentance in your life, is this, that one day, that burning in your heart that says, I need to turn to Christ, one day you'll hear it for the last time. And folks, then God will be done with you, and you will have no part in His kingdom. Please understand, folks, that the invitation to this banquet, this feast, this eternal feast, this literal eternal feast, the presence of God, it's only open for a little while. Third, this feast is filled with all the wrong people. Notice that in verse 26, we already listed them out, but look at their bona fides here. They're proof that we belong with you. Listen, we ate and drank in your presence. You taught in our streets. I mean, we grew up together. I know you. But notice in verse 27 that the Lord doesn't merely represent a response, but he actually quotes from an Old Testament passage. Verse 27 says, he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you come from. And then he quotes from Psalm 6. Depart from me, all you workers of evil. That's actually from Psalm 6. Why does he quote from Psalm 6? It's kind of a strange thing to do. And you look back at Psalm 6, and Psalm 6 is this prayer to God for deliverance. In the middle of Psalm 6, you have this statement, depart from me all you who work iniquity. What is the Jewish interpretation of this passage? Remember, Jesus is talking to Jews. So I looked it up, and Rashi, who lived right around 1000 AD, somewhere around there, Rashi is kind of the pivotal person in Jewish interpretive history. Everything that Rashi says, people tend to believe. And Rashi doesn't just quote himself in this passage. In his commentary on Psalm 6, he actually looks back to previous commentators, indicating that this is what we've always believed about this text. This is what he says. That they will be ashamed and frightened. What is the meaning of, quote, they shall return and be ashamed, unquote, a second time? Said Rabbi Yohanan, in the future, the Holy One, blessed be He, will judge the wicked of the nations of the world. What does that mean? The word nations is the same word that we get the word heathen from. It's the same word that we get the idea of Gentiles from. It's the goyim. So he will judge the wicked of the nations of the world and sentence them to Gehinnom. That's the place of the dead. Because they will complain to Him. He will take them back and again show them their records. And He returns them to Gehenna. In other words, He's going to put them in hell. And they're going to say, we don't deserve to be in hell. And He's going to pull them out of hell. And He's saying, look at what you did to my people. And then He's going to throw them right back in hell. This is a double embarrassment. Rabbi Shmuel Bar Nachmani says, in the future, every nation will call to its God, but it will not answer. Consequently, when they call to the Holy One, blessed be He, He will say to them, had you called to me first, I would have answered you. Now you have made the idols of primary importance and me of secondary import. Therefore, I will not answer. For it is stated, They pray, but no one saves them. This refers to idols and afterward to the Lord, but he answered them not. Therefore, it is said they shall return and be ashamed. Now, why did I read all of this to you? Because according to the Jewish interpretation, when it says here in Psalm 6, depart from me all you workers of iniquity. Who are the workers of iniquity? As far as the Jews were concerned, the workers of iniquity were Gentiles. But notice what this story brings to mind. The master of the feast, the Lord himself looks out and sees the Jews who have refused to come in through the narrow door. The Jews who tried to make their own way through a broad door. They went down the wrong path. They got lost somewhere out over there. The door's still opening. He's beckoning them, come into the feast, come into the feast, come into the feast. He closed the doors to the feast and all the Jews rush up and say, oh wait, we want in now. And he said, you're the workers of iniquity. Not the Gentiles. Verse 28, he goes on to say, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Listen to this. When you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves cast out. And people from east and west, from north and south, recline at the table of the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last." What is he bringing to their minds? What he's bringing to this Jewish audience, when Jesus is speaking these words, he's bringing to these Jewish audiences' minds this truth. The gospel was given to you first, and yet you're going to be last because you've rejected the gospel and you've rejected the Messiah, the Christ of the gospel. Now folks think about the mountain of history and tradition that goes through all of these Jewish people's daily lives. They long to see the prophets. They leave a little space at their table for one of the prophets to come back every year at Passover. They love the prophets. The prophets are their favorite. They love their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These are the ones that identify them as the children of Israel or of Jacob. And they so long for generation after generation after generation to see Abraham at the feast. What will I do when I see Father Abraham? What will I do when I see Itzhak, Father Yaakov? How I will revel in being in the presence of Abraham, Itzhak, Yaakov. Ah, what a day it's going to be to sit at this feast. And Jesus says that you will be sitting outside looking at these men you've longed to know for generations and watching as these newcomers who have just stumbled into the feast through the narrow door and are sitting in your spot, with your name, eating your food, and you pound on the door, and the master of the feast says, no, you are the worker of iniquity, depart from me. All the wrong people that got in here, these are my beloved children. Folks, can you put yourself in the mindset of one of those Jewish people whose entire culture was built on the premise and with the purpose of getting into that one feast only to find out you walked into the wrong door, you missed it, And it's gone forever? It's brutal. Except for one fact. You see, Jesus spoke this parable to Jewish people, didn't he? He was right outside of Jerusalem when he spoke this parable. But Luke recorded it in a book. Who is the book written to? It's written to the Gentiles. The book was written to the Gentiles. Theophilus. You remember him? And Theophilus is looking at this Jewish faith from the outside and he looks into the feast and he sees the master and the lord of the feast and he walks to that narrow door Can I come in? And the master of the feast beckons him to come in, grabs him and drags him in through the narrow door. You see, this wasn't a means of sorrow and despair. This was written to the Gentiles. You know what that means? By faith. not by blood, not by genetics, not by Jewish heritage, but by faith, Theophilus, you're in. Let's pray. Father, may you draw each one of us to faith in Jesus Christ. May we not be as those who find themselves walking down the wrong path, walking through the wrong gate, going to the wrong feast, insisting on their own religion. But may we pass each one of us through that gate. From unbelief to faith. from enmity to love with Christ. May each one of us pass through that gate. And may we enjoy for eternity the beauty of our Lord. In his name we ask these things. Amen.