Narrow Doors, Wide-Open Future (Luke 13)

Raise your hand if you want to go to heaven when you die. How do you get there? The Bible teaches that we are saved by God’s grace, through faith, apart from “works of the law.” Yet the Bible also talks about seeking the kingdom, striving and straining, obeying the commandments, and entering through something called the narrow door. Just how does it work, anyway?Today we’re going to talk about salvation, narrow doors, and knowing Jesus. Today’s podcast is called “Narrow Doors, Open Futures,” and is based on a reading from the gospel of Luke 13:22-30. We are also going to hear later from Philippians 3:4-14, but we start here with Luke 13, beginning at the 22nd verse.Luke 13:22-30 Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. 23 Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”He said to them, 24 “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 25 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.’26 “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’27 “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’28 “There will 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. 29 People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. 30 Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”Philippians 3:4b-14If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.Support the show