Let us turn our Bibles this morning again to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 13, as we return after Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday messages. We return to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 13, and we will begin at verses 18 through 30 and examine this passage of scripture. Our Lord Jesus Christ now is only months from his crucifixion. He is heading now to Jerusalem beginning in verse 10 of Luke chapter 13. and his message becomes more of a judgmental message. He has been traveling north and south and east and west in Israel preaching the gospel of God and the people have heard and their hearts are hard and unbelieving and now he heads to the cross would be the substitutionary sacrifice and incur the wrath of God upon himself for those who would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, his message becomes more judgmental. And he begins to preach the consequences of rejection, of repentance and faith alone in him. And we begin to see that in the passage that we're looking at today. Beginning in verse 18, I want to bring you the first installment of a message that I've entitled, The Agony to Enter God's Kingdom. The Agony to Enter God's Kingdom. Beginning in verse 18, then he said, This is Jesus. 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 it became a large tree. And the birds of the air nested in its branches. And again, he said, in verse 20, to what will I liken or compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and she hid it in three measures, two pecks or 50 pounds of meal till the entire two pecks were leavened. And the Bible says in verse 22, and he went through the cities and villages teaching and journeying towards Jerusalem. Then one said to him, Lord, are there few who are saved? Are there only going to be a few who are saved? And he said to them, strive to enter through the narrow gate. The word strive is agonized to enter through the narrow gate. For many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. Why Lord? Verse 25, when once the master of the house has risen up and shut the door and you began 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 are you from? Verse 26, 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 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 you yourselves, you Jews who rejected me, you will find yourselves thrown out, thrust out. Here a reference in verse 29 to Gentiles, that's you and I, they will come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and they will sit down in the kingdom of God. And indeed there are last who will be first and there are first who will be last. Dr. Luke gives us an account of a man coming to the Lord Jesus Christ and he's asking the right questions about the kingdom of God. This is the parallel passage at the end, near the end of the Lord Jesus Christ's ministry as he heads to Jerusalem to be crucified on the cross for our sins. But he's preached a similar message in Matthew 7 after his Sermon on the Mount at the beginning of his ministry. And he invited people after his just impeccable message in the Sermon on the Mount He gave an ultimatum that people were to enter the narrow gate, because wide was the gate and broad was the road that led to hell, which led to destruction. And he said many would go in there in. And at the end of his ministry, he gives another ultimatum, another warning that people must repent and believe in him. They must come through the narrow gate, and it is not easy. It is not the easy believism that we are presented with in our churches today. It is agonizing to go through this narrow gate. The gate is not only narrow, but the road is narrow. This is frightening. This is frightening and we're not gonna deal with it necessarily today, but in my next message we will, but this is frightening and it should cause consternation and concern and worry because in both passages the people are claiming to know him, to have some affiliation with him, to have some familiarity with him, and yet they are being thrown out. And the devil has confused them They are confused. He has turned them away from Jesus Christ. He has turned them from the narrow gate. And then Jesus here in a passage speaks of the consequences of that, which is weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is a reference to hell. Jesus here spoke more about hell than anyone. And here he references the consequences of not entering the narrow gate. And yet the preaching of today never points us to the narrow gate. It never tells us that it's agonizing to enter this narrow gate. It is easy believism, just say that you believe in Jesus Christ and you're saved. This is terrifying to me and it's caused me to examine myself to make sure that I'm in the faith. The only way that I can have comfort and satisfy my soul is to re-again investigate the word of God. Take the word of God and apply it to my concerns and to my doubts. To rehash and regurgitate and record what I have studied about the word of God and go to his promises to those who have faith in him. And we look at our passage today, we see that the kingdom of God was the persistent message taught throughout the three-year ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came to tell us about the kingdom that was coming, his kingdom. Here is the king, he is coming to the world and he is telling them, us, about the kingdom of heaven. This is what we don't know. We know about the world we live in and its wickedness. We can see things around us in the world and we can somewhat gauge what is in the world intellectually. But what we don't know is about God's kingdom that is coming. It is never preached about the kingdom of God. Your attention is always directed about things in this world. You're concerned personally about what you want and what the world has to offer. And you forget that you are actually in the kingdom of somebody else. Somebody else is running this kingdom and his name is Satan. So Jesus, God in his grace and his mercy and his love and his compassion has sent the ambassador, the prophet, his own son into the world to tell us about the kingdom of God. You see again in Luke chapter 18 and Luke chapter, I'm sorry, 13 verse 18 and Luke chapter 13 verse 20, Jesus says, what is the kingdom of God like? Verse 20, to what shall I liking the kingdom of God? This is comparative language. This is what we should know. What is the kingdom of God going to be like? And this was the message that Jesus preached for three years. In Luke chapter 4, you turn back to Luke chapter 4 and look at verse 42. We see the ministry of Christ and what his focus was. Please pay very close attention. One thing I'm learning in this day and time as we near the second coming of Christ is Paul's prophecy that people would have itching ears. We don't want to hear about the kingdom of God. We can't wait on it. We have been offered the kingdom of Satan and we bowed the knee and worshiped him and embraced his kingdom. But look at verse Luke, Dr. Luke writes in Luke chapter four and verse 42. Now when it was day, he departed and went into a deserted place, this is Christ, and the crowd sought him and came to him and tried to keep him from leaving them. They wanted him to stay. But look what Jesus says in verse 43, but he said to them, I must preach, what? the kingdom of God to other cities as well, because for this purpose I have been sent. He says his purpose was to come and, what? Declare to us the kingdom of God. In Matthew chapter 9, verse 35, we see this same language. Here we see the compassion of Christ in Matthew 9 in verse 35. Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues. Preaching what? The good news, the gospel of the kingdom. Gospel means good news. He is preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And to verify that he was indeed God's son, we see a, and he healed every sickness and every disease among the people. And it says in verse 36, when he saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion for them because they were what? Because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd. Jesus saws it as a plentiful harborous with few laborers. He came to preach the kingdom of heaven in Mark chapter 1. In verse 14 again Mark records the same ministry of Christ, the same emphasis We see, as a matter of fact, in verse 12, if I back up, he said, immediately the spirit drove Jesus, him into the wilderness, and he was there in the wilderness 40 days, tempted by Satan. He is in Satan's kingdom, he is being tempted by Satan. We know he was victorious because he obeyed the word of God. He said it was written and he obeyed his father. And they say it's here at the end, it was with wild beasts and the angels ministered unto him. And in verse 14, now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of what? The kingdom of God. And saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is here, it's at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. The phrase Kingdom of God and the synonymous phrase Kingdom of Heaven are used approximately 85 times in your Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The word kingdom, Basilia, appears 162 times in the New Testament, and most of these relate to either the Basilia Thalthia, is the kingdom of God, or the Basilia Thauronon, which is the kingdom of heaven. So suffice it to say that the essential imperative message of the Lord Jesus Christ was about the kingdom of God, God's kingdom. The critical message of the Bible is that God's kingdom is coming and we better be ready. We see even in our passage, once the master of the house, the household that gets up and closes the door, you can't open it. As I look at the landscape of our society today, we're in trouble. The signs of the times are clearly evident to the saved that the Lord Jesus Christ is about to rapture the church and he's about to open the first seal in Revelation 6 and unveil the most wicked human being that has ever lived. He is an act of judgment upon a society that does not want Jesus. They have denied Jesus. They became apostate. They rejected the gospel, the love of God, the compassion of God in salvation through Jesus Christ. And he is about to unleash unbelievable wrath. And it starts out with a leader who will be the composite of every wicked man that has ever lived. the most wicked man indwelt by Satan that we refer to as the Antichrist. The signs of God's judgment are clearly evident. This should not be novel or new because if you go back to the book of Daniel, God revealed that King Nebuchadnezzar dreamed the coming of God's kingdom. If you go back to Daniel chapter two in verse 28, we see God gives a dream to Nebuchadnezzar and Nebuchadnezzar does not understand the dream. So he asked all of his so-called spiritual advisors, we'll call them, to tell him what he dreamt and the meaning of it. So they would have to go into the mind of Nebuchadnezzar and try to figure out what he had dreamed and then give the interpretation. They asked Nebuchadnezzar, no, you need to tell us what the dream is. Then we will tell you the interpretation. No, he said no. This dream troubled Nebuchadnezzar so much that he said, no, you're going to tell me what I dream. And then you're going to tell me what it means. And if you don't, I'm going to kill every one of you. He said, because if I tell you, you're going to stall with so-called interpretations. until I've forgotten about what I dreamed but this dream was so pressing upon Nebuchadnezzar he couldn't sleep and he wanted to know what it was and he knew if they could tell him what the dream was then they clearly could tell him what the interpretation was so no one could tell Nebuchadnezzar what he dreamt so Nebuchadnezzar issued a edict kill them all kill all of these fake preachers All of these so-called religious men, kill them all. And Daniel and his three compadres would fall right in that too. So he got together and they counseled and they went to God and prayed that God would reveal to him and Hananiah and Mishael and Azariah in verse 17 of Daniel 2. Verse 18, that they might seek mercies from the God of heaven. concerning this secret so that Daniel and his companions might not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. Look at verse 19, then the secret was revealed to Daniel in a night vision, so Daniel blessed the God of heaven. The kingdom of God, the God of heaven, I wasn't going to read this, but I just can't go over it. I just can't get over his prayer because it gives us an idea of how we should pray. Not these selfish prayers where we're always looking for things, but hear a prayer that bestows honor on God and is graceful and thankful for God's mercies and compassions towards him, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And in verse 20, Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God forever and ever. Do you start out your prayers like that? Or do you start out begging? Or telling God how wonderful you are and what you deserve? It's blessed be the name of God forever and ever for wisdom and might are His. And he changes the times and the season. He removes kings and raises up kings. Hello? As distasteful as the President of the United States is to me, Biden, God raised him up. You don't gotta raise up kings to punish a nation, too. Wicked kings are God's judgment on a wicked nation. And if Trump wins, guess who raised him up? He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and secret things. He knows what is in the darkness and light dwells with him. Our wisdom of Christ comes from God. The only reason I know anything about the Word of God in this rightful context is because the Lord in heaven right now, looking down upon me, He has taught me these things. And I thank Him for that wisdom. And you know what? I pray for you too, all of y'all, that you might have wisdom because I know if God gives you the treasure of His immense wisdom, then everything else falls in the line. I won't have to worry about it because you will see how precious the Word of God really is. Verse 23, I thank you and praise you, O God of my fathers. You have given me wisdom and might and have now made known to me what we asked of you. For you have made known to us the king's demand. What a prayer. He honored the God, but I want, this is not, I wasn't particularly going to read there, but I want you to go to verse 28 because I'm talking about the coming kingdom of God. Look at verse 28. So he goes to Nebuchadnezzar, he begins to explain his dream to him. He says, but there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the last days. Your dream and the visions of your head upon your bed were these. As for you, O Cain, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed about what would come to pass after this. And he who reveals secrets hath made known to you what it will be." What's going to happen after me, Nebuchadnezzar thought? After my kingdom and after me? Verse 31. Now the verse 30. But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than any one living, but for our sakes who make known the interpretation to the king and that you may know the thoughts of your heart. You, O king, were watching and behold a great image. And this great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you, and its form was awesome, and this image's head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron, and partly of clay. You watch while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet, of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together and became like chaff from the summer threshing floor. The wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the entire earth, the whole earth. This is the dream you had, King Nebuchadnezzar. Now we will tell thee the interpretation. You see this? of it before the king, verse 37. You, O king, are the king of kings, for God, the God of heaven, has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory. And wherever the children of men dwell, or the beast of the field, and the birds of the heaven, he has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all. You are this head of gold. The statue, the head is gold, the arms and the chest are silver, the belly is bronze, the legs, the thighs are iron, and the feet are iron and clay. So he sees a statue composed of these differing elements. And so Daniel tells them, God has raised you up and you are the head of gold. But your kingdom will be displaced one day by another kingdom. And then it will be displaced by another kingdom. And it will be displaced by another kingdom. The final kingdom, the Fidar, the kingdom of the Antichrist, which is coming. And then finally, the kingdom of God will usurp all of those. This is future. This is Daniel writing some 500 years before Christ was born. Verse 39 again, But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours, then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which will rule over all the earth, and the fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron, and as much as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything, and like iron that crushes that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all others. Now, whereas you saw the feet and the toes partly of potter's clay, ceramic, and partly of iron, the kingdom will be divided, yet the strength of the iron will be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with the ceramic clay. Verse 42, and as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom will be partly strong and partly fragile. As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seeds of men, but they will not adhere to one another just as iron does not mix with clay. Now notice the verse 44 and 45. And in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed. and the kingdom will not be left to other people. It will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it will stand forever. And as much as you saw the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after his kingdom. The dream is certain, and the interpretation is sure. What he has given them is a chronology of the kingdom up to the coming of God's kingdom. And this is what Jesus Christ has come to preach. In Hebrews chapter 1. And I love to explore these other passages as well. The Lord Jesus is the final prophet and the prophet who has come into the world to warn its citizens that they must prepare for God's coming kingdom. In Hebrews chapter one, we introduce the Hebrew writer who is unknown, introduces us to Jesus Christ. Say, God who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophet has in these last days spoken to us by his son. It is this son he has appointed heir of all things. Through this very son he created, he made the worlds. That means Jesus is God. Verse three, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power. Jesus holds all things together. He'd have to be God. When he had, I love the King James and the New King James version, by himself purged our sins. He cleansed our sins by himself. He did not need our help. By himself he purged sin and once and for all he dies for sin and he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. We saw that in the book of Revelation as he approaches the throne, takes the scroll and now the son of God is in heaven sitting at the right hand of his father. All power and that son holds the universe together. He is indeed the creator now who has added humanity to his divinity. He is divine God and he is fully human. There's a human sitting at the right hand of God in heaven. And he has set himself apart, he said in his own prayer. He has sanctified himself for you and I. and he's going to carry out, and he's going to bring, and he's going to implement and consummate his kingdom, and it is coming. In chapter two. In chapter two. He gives us a warning about the gospel. He says, therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we start to slowly drift and imperceptibly drift away from the truth of the gospel, John. This is why it's so agonizing to enter the narrow gate. It is not easy as it has been preached to you. It requires much as we agonize to enter the narrow gate. He says in verse 2, fourth, the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, a just reward. How will we escape if we neglect so great salvation which at first began to be spoken by the Lord? If God condemned and rewarded you for your wickedness for lesser sins, how much more will he punish you and the consequences if you reject the message from the mouth of God the Son himself? This is important to remember this when we began to unpack Luke 13, because there are people who have sat and heard Jesus. I'm gonna show you who those people are. next week. And they sat and they listened to Jesus. And they ate with Jesus. He read where they invited Jesus into the house. They heard what he said. They ate with him. And yet he sends them to weeping and gnashing of teeth. In close proximity to the Lord Jesus Christ only to end up in hell. If you have heard the gospel message, now none of us see Jesus, none of us. But believe me, he has ambassadors. He has spokespersons. And you know what they're saying? The same thing he said. They don't skip Luke 13. They tell you, if you're coming to Christ, it is going to be agonizing. It will require maximum effort. It is fraught with trials and tribulations and persecutions and battles against your own inward sinfulness. It is not easy as you have been led to believe. This is how God weeds out fakes. I'll speak a little bit more about it next week. This is why you've got to count the costs. See, the church doesn't represent a cost now. You just come up and shake the pastor's hand and you're in heaven. Doesn't matter what your lifestyle's like. Doesn't matter what you believe. Just come in and shake his hand, you're good to go. Got three preachers here in Jacksonville. I call them the Three Stooges. And I think it was Channel 12 interviewed them about female pastors and gays in the church. And these are, I guess, the go-to pastors in Jacksonville. And these three reprobates did mention one scripture to defend that which is unbiblical. Not one scripture. And they were affirming things that are completely unbiblical. And they're arrogant, and I call them the Three Stooges, Larry, Curly, and Moe. Moe was the leader. He was supposed to be the smart one, but he was stupid too. Remember the Three Stooges, Moe was just as dumb as his two partners. But he was the one with the brains, supposedly. They're not preaching the gospel though. They're not preaching the kingdom of heaven. And this is a requirement. Here, the Hebrew writer is saying, if you neglect so great salvation. He doesn't just say it's salvation. He says it's great, and then he's so great. A salvation, not many salvations. a salvation. God has so loved the world he has sent his son to tell us of the kingdom that's coming and the reason he comes before his kingdom is consummated is to save you and me. You're not going in his kingdom because his kingdom is not like the gold kingdom, gold-headed kingdom. It's not like the silver and brass. It's not like the bronze. It's not like the iron. And it's not like the Antichrist kingdom. It is a kingdom of righteousness. And you're not going in there unless you are just as righteous as God. How can sinners be made right with God? Well, the king has come put on a human body, go to the cross and pay my debt and the debt of everyone who will put their faith in him, who will acknowledge that sin is sin and repent of that sin. They will say the same thing that God has said about what sin is and they will turn to him and they will cry out, God have mercy on me, the sinner. Christ has paid their debt. Now when his kingdom come, guess who goes in? Because it's coming. You heard what Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar? This is certain. It's happening. In Jesus, the Hebrew writer says, in verse 3, how will you escape? You won't. We have so many preachers that has corrupted and distorted the word of God that people can't even make a conscious decision because they're not given enough information. This is the core message right here. God has came to save us from our sins because his kingdom is coming He said it was spoken by the Lord first, and then it was confirmed by us, those who were his ambassadors. We heard him. Verse four, not only that, the testimony, the Lord's testimony, then those who preached and who he authorized and anointed to preach, and then in verse four, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders and various miracles. God testified of his son. Here we see the third person of the Trinity at the end of verse four, the Holy Spirit according to his own will. There's no way and no reason we should not believe who Jesus is and the consequences of not believing him. The Lord Jesus used the Genesis record of Noah as an example of the depraved state of the world when his kingdom comes. Let's go to Genesis. you get an idea of what is going to happen. As a matter of fact, Jesus uses Noah as an example of the prevailing attitude and conditions of mankind before he comes. So look what he says in Genesis chapter six, and again in verse three. He gave a timetable. And the Lord said, my spirit will not continue to strive with man forever. You see what he says? I'm not going to tolerate this sin forever. Now this was to the pre-flood people. But Jesus uses this as a parallel to his coming, second coming, and judgment. But see, you don't want to hear this, do you? No, what you want me and Mike to do is start moonwalking. jumping out the pews and flipping and wearing bozo outfits. Or we could come up here with some kind of props and trampolines and army tanks and airplanes and beds and all kinds of props. That's what the false teachers deceived Ahab with, props. See on television all the time, preachers got props. This guy in Tulsa, Todd, Todd, what's his name? Michael Todd, had a trampoline. And in the middle of the congregate, he gets up under there and said, those are the promises of God, but you can't really use them underneath it, so you gotta get on the top. See, now I can access the, whatever he said, the prayers of God, the promises of God. None of it was biblical. People love it. So he says, my spirit will not tolerate sin with man forever. For indeed, he is flesh. And he says, I'm giving them 120 years. That was the pre-flood. See, people think that God's saying you can live 120 years. So you actually have people walking around saying, well, I'm going to live to be 120 years. Well, this is where they get this from. But that's not what he's saying. He says to that pre-flood civilization, I'm not gonna deal with you forever. I'm giving you 120 years to repent. Look what he says in verse four, I mean verse five. Then the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. We don't even stop thinking evil. And God saw this. Imagine what he's seeing now. And it's many more people than back then. God is looking from heaven, the Bible tells us in the Psalms. God looks down from heaven in Psalm 14 and I believe it is Psalm 52. He looks down from heaven for anybody righteous. Guess how many he finds? Zero. He said, there's none righteous. No, not one. There's none who seek after me. They've all gone astray. They're wicked. There's none of them who does good. Not one. He looks from heaven and he sees the wickedness of man and that every intent of the thought of his heart was only evil continually. Verse six. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth. And he was grieved. Whoa. You mean sin grieves God? Hmm. Well, you profess to be a Christian. Are you grieved over the sin that you see in this world, the evil? Does it grieve you, the level of wickedness and malevolence we see in our society? Does that bother you? A man goes into a gym and into a woman's locker room and claims to be a woman while parading around naked in front of a young girl. And a woman takes a picture of him, and she loses her membership for complaining that he was in the lady's, the woman's locker room. And some professing Christians just totally ignore it. They don't laugh. They're like, oh, it's funny. No, it's not funny. Does it grieve you? Does you grieve, not only the wickedness we see in our society, does it grieve us of our own wickedness? Said Lot, grieved. over the wickedness he saw happening in Sodom and Gomorrah. And I'm seeing a bunch of professing Christians who have absolutely no concern of the level of malevolency and evil and debauchery and wickedness and licentiousness that we see in our society. It's not bothering them at all. But just what happened here in the pre-flood civilization is gonna happen again. Jesus says this. He's going to judge this world before his kingdom comes, before he consummates his kingdom. Look at verse seven. So the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. But fortunately, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Look at verse 11. The earth also was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth and indeed it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. This is what God has seen. And it evokes His wrath. The Apostle John, in contrast, in Revelation 21, 1-8, shows the consummation of the final state of the kingdom of God. If you go to Revelation chapter 21, and I'll read the first eight verses, this is the end. We're in the last book. This is what's coming. And in verse 21, verse one, now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth have passed away. That was what he says when the stone hits the feet. And remember he says it turns into chaff in Daniel 2. And then you see it no more. That's the elimination of this earth and this universe. And God gives a new heavens and a new earth because the old earth has passed away. Also, there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adored for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There will be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. Then he who sat on the throne said, behold, I make all things new. And he said, write, for these words are true and faithful. And he said to me, It is done. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes will inherit all things and I will be his God and he will be my child. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the abominable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars were held apart in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Our sins are forgiven. We're not going into this new kingdom. Now that it is certain that the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven is coming, What must I do? That brings us back to Luke 13. Are there few who are going to be saved, Lord? Master, teacher, strive to enter through the narrow gate. The kingdom is coming. Matthew chapter 7 verse 13 and 14. Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction. This is hell. This is the Lord Jesus Christ. After preaching his masterful sermon on the mount, gives an ultimatum of entering the narrow gate. Verse 14, he says, back in verse 13 again, he leads the destruction and there are many who go in by it. Why, Lord? Verse 14, why? The because tells you why, because the gate is narrow. Narrow is the gate, notice what he says, and difficult is the way which leads to life and there are few who find it. Many are called, but few are chosen. In Genesis 6, out of the entire population of the earth, how many people were saved? Few, eight. When God incinerated Sodom and Gomorrah, how many were saved? Three. And Jesus says it's going to be the same at the end of time. Compared to the number of people who are living today, only a few of us are going into the kingdom of heaven. It would be an innumerable number, but still in comparison to the number of people who are living, only a few of us are going to go through that narrow gate. And you know why? Because Jesus says it's hard. It's difficult. We must by faith believe solely in the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself is the gate. He is the door into the kingdom of God. No one goes in except through him. He is a true and living way. The Philippian jailer, one of my favorite stories in the book of Acts, has heard a testimony in the songs of Silas and the Apostle Paul singing. There's an earthquake, a massive earthquake, and him believing that the prisoners had escaped was about to commit suicide. Pastor Paul cries out to him, tells him not to hurt himself, not to harm himself. And in verse 29 of Acts 16, he called for a light and ran in and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. And he brought them out of their cell and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? So they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. In verse 32, then they spoke the word of the Lord the message of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. What must I do to be saved? The kingdom of God is coming. What must I do to be saved? It sounds easy. But Jesus says, It's agony. Jesus said in Matthew 7, it's difficult. Now ask yourself a question. I'm not gonna tell you to raise your hands. Examine your heart. What do you think about the gospel? What do you think about the kingdom of heaven? Is it of great concern to you? Have you ever sat down and thought, Lord, am I going to perish? Have you ever examined, have we ever examined our lives and saw that we were sinners against God and cried out in desperation, God have mercy on me, the sinner. The kingdom of God is coming and only those who are righteous will enter it. And the only way to become as righteous as God is to have the righteousness of God. Well, this is the gospel. And I remind you, the Lord preached this for three years, and at the end, you know how many he had? Few. This is out of the mouth of God himself, the message from the Father verbatim. The Lord added nothing to his father's message, nor did he take anything from his father's message. And do you know that the people at the end of his three years of ministry and testimony to them and an invitation to the kingdom of heaven, they said, we want Barabbas. Three years. of seeing a human being like no other human being that has ever lived. It's no different today. If they rejected God's voice, they'll reject mine. If I say the same thing that he says, you come to Word of Life, you're not coming to hear nonsense. You're gonna hear the gospel. And it's agony, believe me. I've been preaching now for 22 years. Mike's been here most of that time. He knows the battles. He knows the satanic representative that has tried to take us down. And we're still here. The persecution, the lies. And we're still here, John. We're still here. And with a handful of people, we got a building better than people who have larger memberships. To be honest, this is a miracle. This ministry is a miracle. It shouldn't be here. If people look at the numbers, they say, well, how can they maintain this place? God is maintaining it. With a handful of Gideon Knights, people who believe in the word of God. We've never sold a fish dinner, never sold a chicken dinner, never sold any kind of dinner, never went out and begged anybody. And yet, we have our own place. Everybody's got their own pew. We got 20 pews and we got room. And our little savings still going up. Our meager savings are still going up, and we have not begged anybody. And we will, Brother Mike and I, will not, never, ever, ever compromise the Word of God. If you don't want to hear it, you just don't want to hear it. You know, the Apostle Paul, we're telling you the gospel. This is all. When you come to me, this is what you should get from every preacher. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. I don't want anybody to think it's easy to enter, because it's not. From the time your faith is in Christ, it is a battle. It is contention. It is a struggle. Matter of fact, the word agony there speaks of a competition. You're in a race the Apostle Paul speaks of. You're in a race. And at the end of his life, what did the Apostle Paul say? I fought a good fight. I finished the race. And at the end of my life, I have kept faith. That's the only way I knew you were a true believer. At the end of your life, tell me what you believe. Is it still Christ and him crucified? Is it still the grace of God? For I've been saved by grace, through faith, and not of myself. It is God's gift, not of works, so I can't boast. Is it still Christ? Have you agonized? We'll talk about that a little bit next week, because you're going to find out what it cost to follow Christ. The agony, it's not easy. And I see in this last days as we approach the second coming of Christ, I'm seeing Christians, professing Christians, really fall left and right. People claiming to believe in Jesus Christ, claiming to have been in church, claiming to be affiliated in children of God, fall by the wayside. Next week when we unpack this passage, I'm going to show you. Here's the gate. Who's sitting and watching? Who's heard what the Lord said? Who sat among the people of God? Who's watching this gate and don't enter? I'm going to show you next week who they are. I'm going to show you their characteristics. So I appeal to you. There's somebody telling you to reject the gospel. There's somebody telling you it's not important. The Hebrew writer said, if you hear his voice, harden not your heart. The more you resist, the harder your heart becomes and the more difficult it is to believe. And finally, God himself will That's the gospel. It's gone. Now you no longer even understand it. Nor do you care. This is serious. This is serious. The agony of entering the kingdom of God. Here's about.