Well, good morning, Blacksburg Christian Fellowship. It's great to see you this morning, whether you're here in the auditorium or next door in the Fellowship Hall or Room 160, or whether you're outside in your car or at home watching online. It's just a joy to be with your people, with God's people. And so we continue today in our study of the gospel of Luke. And today we're reading from Luke chapter 13. A little background here in the previous chapter, Jesus has been teaching both his disciples and the crowds that followed him. He warns his disciples to be watchful in waiting for his return. He tells them he will bring division between those who trust and obey him and those who do not. And he calls many in the crowd hypocrites because they were blind to the signs of healing and miracles that he did among them. Then right in the middle of this teaching, in chapter 12, verses 49 and 50, he has these things to say. He says, I have come to bring fire on the earth. And he will bring, so how I wish it were already kindled. but I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed. As Chris Faith taught us last week, the baptism Jesus is referring to is his death on the cross. Just as a person is immersed in water at his baptism, so Jesus will be immersed in death on the cross as our sin-bearer. And only after Jesus' death and resurrection will he then send the fire of the Holy Spirit on his people. So our passage today is in this whole background of Jesus. He's on his way to Jerusalem. He's anticipating his death. He is giving pointed warnings to people, and he's assuring them, not in so many words, but by his reference to baptism, and on his way to Jerusalem, he's putting the whole thing in the context of his coming death on the cross. And so as we read this chapter, keep that in mind, because that's the framework in which Jesus is speaking. If we read now from Luke chapter 13, it's a long chapter, So I will omit some of it, but let's begin at verse one. Now there was some president at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? I tell you, no. But unless you repent, You too will all perish. All those 18 who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no. Unless you repent, you too will perish. Then he told this parable. A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he went to look for fruit on it, but it did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, for three years now, I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any, cut it down. Why should it use up the soil? Sir, the man replied, leave it alone for one more year. I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine. If not, then cut it down. Then moving to verse 22, then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, Lord, are only a few people going to be saved? He said to them, make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, sir, open the door for us. But he will answer, I don't know you or where you come from. Then you will say, but we ate and drank with you and you taught in our streets. But he will reply, I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers. There'll be weeping there and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed, there are those who are lost who will be first and first who will be lost. At that time, some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you. He replied, go tell that fox. I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow. And on the third day, I'll reach my goal. In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day, for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. How often I've longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Let's pray for God's blessing on his word as we continue. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you most especially for your son, Jesus, for his courage, his faithfulness, his humility, and above all things, Lord, for his willingness to die for us and for our sins on the cross. And so, Lord, as we seek to understand this passage from your word, we pray that you would open our hearts to understand, open my lips to speak your truth, through your Holy Spirit, and we commit this time to you in Jesus' name, amen. So this passage contains some hard sayings. One of the problems with preaching systematically through a gospel is you come to bits and pieces you probably want to skip if you could. We can't skip this one, it's right here in front of us. And so it begins with Jesus responding to a comment made about a massacre by the Roman governor Pilate. And Jesus says, unless you repent, you too will perish. And then later on, he says, make every effort to enter through the narrow door because I tell you, many will try to enter, will not be able to. These are serious statements and they demand that we ask some hard questions. So I've suggested we look at it in a variety of ways. The first way you look at it is under repentance as a requirement for salvation. Repentance as a requirement for salvation. So in this first section, we see Jesus continue his teaching to the crowd. Some people then talk about a tragic instance, the brutality of the Roman governor Pilate. This incident, by the way, is only recorded here. It's the only incident recorded. It's not in the Josephus or other recordings of that time. But Josephus, a Jewish historian, does record a similar incident in which Pilate spent money from the temple funds to build an aqueduct in Jerusalem. And the Jews came to protest this misuse of the temple funds. And Pilate had soldiers disguised as Jewish people hidden in the crowd. And when they were protesting him, he gave the signal and the soldiers took out their daggers and killed a bunch of people and many people died as a result of that. Not quite the same incident recorded here, but it shows what a brutal man Pilate was. And incidentally, this description of Pilate's brutality must have run rather difficultly in Jesus' ears. The reminder that the man, he was gonna face, he knew he was headed to Jerusalem, he knew he'll be standing before Pilate in a month or two, we don't know quite the time schedule, and just a reminder of Pilate's brutality must have been hard for Jesus to hear. But his response, he doesn't address that. His response is focused on the good of his hearers. not on his own impending death. So he asks, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? I tell you, no, he says, but unless you repent, you too will perish. I'll come back to that first thing he says about I tell you no, I'll come back to that in a minute or two, but for now, let's focus on the other thing he said, which is unless you repent, you too will perish. What did Jesus mean by saying that? So first thing we need to figure out, what does he mean by perish? What's he talking about there? And I'm going to suggest that what he's talking about is eternal perishing, eternal judgment, not normal death. The reason I say that is because Jesus says, unless you repent, you will perish, implying if you do repent, you will not perish. Now, everybody in that crowd was going to die. So it must be that Jesus was talking about a different death, the eternal death of separation from God and consignment to hell. So not just physical death, but spiritual death is in mind here. And that reminds us then that there is such a thing as life after death. Jesus clearly taught that, the whole Bible teaches that, and we need to recognize then that we are here this morning on a very short timeframe. We're here a blink of an eye, ultimately, a few years. 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years, maybe 90, who knows? But it's a short timeframe compared with eternity. C.S. Lewis, an English writer you may have heard of, wrote in his book, The Weight of Glory, an interesting understanding of this eternal life. He says, and I quote, it is hardly possible for us to think too often or too deeply about the glory of our neighbor. He goes on, is it a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses? To remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, political parties, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit. immortal horrors, or everlasting splendors." End of quote. So we're not mere mortals. We are eternal beings with an eternal destiny. So everyone in this room, everyone online, everyone who hears this message will one day either be a creature of joy and holiness and light, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now need, if at all, only a nightmare. But not only are we not mere mortals, we're also by nature, by built in from our birth nature, spiritual beings at enmity with God. As Isaiah puts it in chapter 64 in verse six, all of us have become like one who is unclean and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. The Apostle Paul summarizes two chapters where he goes into this in great detail. In Romans chapter three and verses 22 and 24, he says, there is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And then in Romans chapter six and verse 23, he reminds us for the wages of sin is death. There's an eternal destiny, but we, by nature, are headed to death. That's what Isaiah's saying, that's what Paul is saying. That's really what Jesus is saying. And this is why he called his hearers to repentance. It was to save them from the awful fate awaiting those who reject him and his offer of eternal life. So the second question is, what does repentance look like? What does it mean to repent? Well, that could be a whole sermon, but it won't be, but let's look briefly at what Jesus says. And this in Luke chapter 11, just the previous couple of chapters back, he said, the men of Nineveh will stand up at this judgment, at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. And how did the men of Nineveh repent? Well, go back to Book of Jonah, and this is what it reads in chapter three. The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. The king of Nineveh issued a proclamation by the decree of the king and his nobles. Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. And to repent is to agree with God that you are wrong and to turn from evil and to God. And this goes against every natural instinct that we have. So it's only by the grace of God that we can do this. OK, now many of you sitting here this morning or hearing me online are saying to yourselves, yes, I know all that. I repented of my sin. I turned to Jesus months or years ago. Why do I need to hear about repentance again? Well, first of all, good. Praise God that this is the case with you, if it is. But I'm not going to let you off the hook that easily. because Jesus uses two different tenses of the Greek word repent in those first few verses. And this is according to Leon Morris, a scholar who wrote a commentary on Luke. And he said in verse three, Jesus uses the present imperative tense of the word for repentance. The word is metanoia, by the way, in Greek. And the present imperative carries the meaning of a continuous action. It's not a once-for-all thing, it's a continuous process. But then in verse 5, Jesus uses a different tense, it's called the aorist tense in Greek, and that implies a once-for-all action. So what Jesus is saying here, I believe, is repentance is both a once-for-all thing, where we turn from sin and turn to God, but also a day-by-day thing, where we keep needing to repent of the sins that so easily cling to us. A continuous, if you like, day-by-day affair of putting away sin in our lives. Many churches have a prayer of repentance in their liturgies. Let me just read one that's probably familiar to some of you. Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much as the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have broken your holy laws. We have left undone. what we ought to have done, and we have done what we ought not to have done. O Lord, have mercy on us, pitiful sinners. Spare those, O God, who confess their faults. Restore those who are truly penitent, as you have promised through Jesus Christ our Lord." So that's not saying we should use that prayer, but A daily reminder of confession, repentance to God is something that I believe Jesus is teaching us by the subtle way he used the Greek tenses there. Now, I need to go back to what Jesus said about, were they worse sinners? I tell you, no. So this is kind of a sidebar, but Jesus disposes in these words of the mistaken notion that suffering in this life is always the result of your own sin. There are sadly people who believe this. We had a member of our house group many years ago who believed this very strongly, that suffering was always a result of sin. Jesus clearly says, no, it's not. These Galileans didn't suffer because they were worse sinners than others. And I don't have the time to go on into the whole doctrine of suffering. That would require a whole sermon, but just a few brief thoughts about it. And first of all, obviously some suffering is the direct result of sin. A drunken driver goes off the road and flips his car and is badly injured. That's a result of his own sin. So somebody who robs a bank and spends time in jail as a result, that's a result of his own sin. He's suffering because of sin. So there are clearly instances where suffering is a result of sin. But some suffering is the result of somebody else's sin. A woman who's hit by the drunken driver and seriously injured, she suffers because of his sin. Or a woman who's raped is somebody who's suffering because of somebody else's sin. And in some suffering, it's just because we live in a fallen world. The hurricane in Louisiana a few weeks, a few days ago, where many people were killed. Then the earthquake in Turkey just on Friday, where over 50 people were killed. Those are examples of suffering as a result of living in a fallen and broken world. But then ultimately, ultimate suffering is the result of rejection of God and failure to accept his loving offer of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. And that suffering is the result of sin, the result of the sin of rejection of God. The writer of the Hebrews puts it this way in Hebrews chapter 10. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? me in with a little story that might amuse you. It's a story of a former BCFO who was a member of our house group, Harry Criss, some of you may know him. He retired from tech and now lives in Richmond. And he sent me an email a few days ago about the best or the most memorable sermon he's ever heard. most memorable sermon he's ever heard. It went like this. He was 13 years old at the time. His family was Catholic. He was sending a small Catholic church, which was packed to the gills. It was a Sunday morning in July. It was hot as anything. People were sweating and perspiring. And they had fans, but they turned the fans off, and the preacher got out to preach. No air conditioning, of course. They turned the fans off and the preacher got up to preach because they couldn't hear him with the fans going. It was that sort of crowded, intense, hot place. The preacher got up and this is what he said. He said, it's very hot in here today. Hell is a lot hotter. Don't go there. That was the end of the sermon. So I thought you'd enjoy that. But it's not a bad sermon when you think about it. Hell's a lot hotter, don't go there. Secondly, Jesus talks about the door to salvation. We talked about the need for repentance. Now he talks about the door to salvation. So we see Jesus now, he's on the road, he's finished the section of instruction that ended with that story about the fig tree. And now he's on the road again, going towards Jerusalem. He's headed to his death. And as he went, he taught in one of the villages or towns he stopped at, someone in the crowd asked him, Lord, are only a few people going to be saved? And this was the sort of question that Jews like to debate, you know, how many people will actually be saved? But Jesus doesn't answer it directly, but he uses it as a jumping off point for a teaching opportunity. He tells his hearers that rather than worrying about details or how many people are saved, they need to take care about themselves. He says, make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. So what does Jesus mean by saying, make every effort to enter through the narrow door? So first of all, what's the door he's talking about? Well actually, we should be asking not what is the door, but who is the door? Because Jesus tells us that he is the door. In John 10, he's telling his disciples that he is the good shepherd who cares for his sheep. And from verse seven, this is the New King James Version, by the way, Jesus said to them, most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, will go in and out and find pasture. So this passage, there's a lot there, but just to focus on the simple statement, Jesus says, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved. So entering the narrow door means entering through Jesus. In the same passage, John also says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And in John 14 and verse six, He says, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So Jesus is the narrow door through whom we enter into the kingdom of God. So what does he then mean by this? Make every effort to enter through the narrow door. Does that mean we enter through doing good works? It can't mean that because the Bible is very clear that our salvation is through faith in Jesus alone, not by doing good works. Ephesians chapter two and verses eight through 10 say, it is by grace you've been saved, through faith and not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. God is not to have anyone in heaven going around and walking around saying, I got here on my own good works. That won't cut it. So it seems that when Jesus talks about making every effort to enter this narrow door, he's saying repentance is difficult. Repentance is not easy. It's not automatic. There are obstacles in our way. The world is an obstacle. The temptation of money and worldly success. The devil is an obstacle. He hates to lose anybody to God's kingdom. And our flesh is an obstacle. Our desire to keep doing the sinful things that are oh so easy to justify, the internet with its easily accessible temptations, pervasive culture of this country of self-indulgence, all these things represent obstacles to repentance and entering through the narrow door. So Jesus is not saying that entering God's family comes through hard work. What he is saying is that salvation is all of grace, but the grace that saves us is also a grace that enables striving for fruit bearing and perseverance. An example of a woman who made every effort is actually in the story of the crippled woman that we skipped over. In chapter 13, verse 10, on a Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman who was there had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, Woman, you are set free from your infirmity. Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. The only thought there is this was a woman who suffered from this crippling disease, whatever it was, for 18 years, and yet She was in the synagogue that day and presumably can infer every Sunday, every Sabbath day, she'd be in the synagogue. She was obviously in a regular habit of going there. That wasn't easy for a crippled woman bent over like that to make it to the synagogue every Sabbath. And by God's grace, this particular Sabbath, Jesus was there and healed her. So she's an example of a person who used the means at her disposal to honor God, to be in a place where God could meet her. So Jesus talks about entering this narrow door. He also talks about doing it with urgency. Each time Jesus talks about being saved from being shut out of his kingdom, he stresses the urgency of taking action. So in verse five, unless you repent, you too will perish, he says, then he goes on till this parable of the fig tree. The man comes and has a fig tree in his vineyard. He has no figs on it, so he says, cut it up and throw it away. And the vineyard keeper says, hold on, let me give it another year. I did a little research on fig trees, by the way, and the green upside says a fig tree will produce fruit one to two years after planting. So this fig tree should have been producing fruit, but it wasn't. It was given one more year. And so just as So a couple of thoughts from this, first of all, bearing figs is the nature of a fig tree, right? If you're not bearing figs, if you're a fig tree, you're not bearing figs, you're not a very good fig tree, you're gonna be cut down. I think there's a lesson for us as Christians, our job as Christians is to bear fruit, the fruit of the spirit. If we're not bearing fruit, we need to watch out. So we are called to be fruit bearers. But also, The second message is that time is limited. This figure was given one year to shape up or ship out, basically. And if it didn't do that, it was going to be cut down and thrown away. So Jesus is telling us here is in effect, yes, you need to repent. Don't put it off. You need to do it. The time is short. You don't have the luxury of waiting to repent until you decide it's convenient to do it. Unless you repent, you will perish and you need to repent now. Then he gives the same message in the crowd in one of the towns on his way to Jerusalem. He says, make every effort to enter through the narrow door because I tell you, many will try to enter or not be able to. He tells a sad story of people left outside the door. Once the owner of a house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and saying, sir, please open the door. And he replied, I don't know you or where you're from. So Jesus is saying, this door is not open, gonna be open all the time. There'll be a time when the door is closed. I think that refers primarily to time either when we die or when Jesus returns, if he comes back before we die, which I'm personally hoping for. And at that time, that's the end of the open period for salvation. And so what happens when the door is closed forever is that those who are left outside, those who have not become believers in Jesus Christ, those who have not committed their lives to Christ, will be shut out. Matthew 24, Jesus says, no one knows about the day when I return, implicit there. As in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. From the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving a marriage, going on their normal lives, up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. And that's how it'll be, he says, at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field. One will be taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill. One will be taken, and the other left. So there's a warning for all of us here, because when the door is shut, many of those left outside will think they should have been inside. They say, we ate and drank with you. You taught in our streets. We knew you. How come we're not inside? He says, I don't know you. I think that applies to us here as Christian believers to make sure that we are truly believers. You've put it in Christian terms, when Christ said, if you're not yet a believer, you might say, well, we attended church, we listened to sermons, we heard about you. Let me in, I should be inside. But Jesus will say, if we're not committed to him in faith and in trust, and we're not committed our lives to him, he'll say, I don't know you or where you come from. Go away, depart from me. So there's a warning to anyone here who you think you're a Christian because you're coming to church. Believe me, sitting in church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in your garage makes you a car. So how did Jesus become the door? It was through his death on the cross. Through his death on the cross. Because our passage, I said at the beginning, our passage in Luke 13 comes in the middle of his journey to Jerusalem and In Luke 9, as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. Luke 13, then Jesus went through the towns and villages teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the key to his life. It was the political capital of Israel, but of course also the spiritual capital. It played an oversized role in Jewish thought. So when some Pharisees come to warn Jesus to avoid Jerusalem, go away, go somewhere else. Jesus recognizes as a temptation and dismisses it and dismisses them. And he talks about getting there on the third day. He replied, go tell that fox, I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow. On the third day, I will reach my goal. I think the reference to the third day is kind of a bleak reference to Jesus' death and resurrection on the third day. But ultimately he's saying that God and not Herod would determine his schedule. He also knew that he's going to Jerusalem to die there, because he says, surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem. He goes on to lament Jerusalem and they're moving and tender saying, how would you feel about saying about New York or some city like that? Would you love New York the way Jesus loved Jerusalem, even though he knew he was going to die there and it was the place where the prophets were killed? Oh, Jerusalem, he says, you who kill the prophets and those sent to you, how often I've longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. How sad, how sad. So though Jesus does not specifically link entering the door with his death, that's implicit in everything he's saying. This whole part of Luke is suffused with the light from the cross, where Jesus, the Son of God, paid the ultimate price for you and for me and for our salvation. It's a wonderful illustration of this in the book of Exodus. You remember the story there in the book of Exodus is where Jesus takes the Jewish nation, the Israelites, out of Egypt. He does it by sending plagues on the Egyptians, who don't want to let them go because they're useful slaves. And God sends 10 plagues. The first nine produce no effect, ultimately. So God then sends the 10th plague, the plague where the firstborn of everyone in that land is going to be killed. Firstborn of people, the firstborn of animals. Every firstborn is going to die. But God made a way out for the Israelites living in Egypt. He said to take a lamb and kill it, and sprinkle the blood on the vertical doorpost of your house, on the cross lintel of your house, and then go inside the house and you'll be protected, you'll be saved from the avenging angel as it goes around. And Jesus, by his death on the cross, had blood on the vertical part of the cross, on the horizontal part of the cross, much like that door, so Jesus on the cross was, in a sense, symbolizing that door to that house in Egypt, where everybody inside the house was safe. Those outside the house, if they were firstborns, were going to die. He became the blood-sprinkled door for us, so that anyone who turns to him in repentance and faith enters into the safety and joy of God's kingdom. So to conclude, if you're a Christian believer, may these reminders of God's love for you, of our Lord's love for you and His death for you, deepen your love for Him, serve as reminder to live lives of humility and joyful service and regular repentance for our sins. If you're not a Christian believer yet, let me plead with you to turn to Jesus for your salvation and don't delay. He is the door. but it will not remain open forever. He died for you, will you live for him? May God bless us as Chris come to lead us in some more songs of worship.