My feet are turned with me to the book of Luke. Chapter 13. Luke chapter 13, I'll begin reading with verse 22 and Read through verse 30.
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 Maridor. Because many I tell you, we'll try to enter and we'll not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside, knocking, pleading. Third, open the door for us. But he will answer, I don't know you. Or where you come from. Then you will say, we ate and drank with you. And you taught in our street. But he will reply, I don't know you or where you come from. Away from the all you evil doers, there will be weathing there and gnashing of teeth. When you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourself 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 last, who will be first and further, who will be last. The question that Jesus received was the question in its content of asking how many people would be saved. Or only a few going to be saved. Then said that Jesus gave, was not one really relating to the number that would be saved. But the character of those who are saved.
And the one character trait that he gives in this particular place is the character trait of struggle. Making every effort. All the words could be transliterated, agonized.
Agonized to enter through the narrow door.
And the point that he makes is that I'm not saying how many will be saved, but I know there are many who will be lost. There are many who will find to get in, but won't be able to get in. I don't know them.
And when we come to the time where the door is closed, everything else upon which we have placed our affection will pale into insignificance and will be nothing and less than nothing, compared to the necessity of being with the master of the house. The door has been shut against us. And everything else upon which we focus our attention is worse than nothing. In fact, it drags us down to hell. And what Jesus is saying, it is better for you to agonize here and now than to agonize there in this.
Because only those who agonize here and now will find the ease and bliss and joy of heaven. And those who seek pleasure and seek joy and seek ease now and seek to avoid agony now will have agony in eternity.
You see, in one way, it is very easy to be saved. And the reason is, it's easy because we can't do a thing about it. We can't do it. If we think that faith arises out of ourselves and try to exercise the faith that is characteristic of the natural man, the man that naturally rebels against God and hates God and hates his law and will not be conformed to the law, then that is a face of devil. That is a face of Simon Major. That is a face that is temporary. It is a face that will perish. So you can't do it.
But it is easy because God engrades. Yes, God engrades, says, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he has saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. So that you being justified by grace might become errors according to the hope of eternal life. Praise be to God who has qualified us to be made for takers of the intercessor of faith in the light. He has transferred us or translated us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the sun of his law. He moves upon us with such maxless love and power and whews us with such greatness. He whews us with such a glory and a grandeur that I will her change even as Wesley himself wrote that I diffuse a quickening ray. My king fell off. My heart was free. I rose with forth and followed thee. Sobbing grace makes it easy to be saved. And it keeps us safe and first to last. Paul wrote the philithians, I am confident that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus all the way. And so why does Jesus say agonize because Sobbing grace makes you agonize? It diminishes not one's will of responsibility. In fact, it is that grace that makes you sense keen responsibility and sense the keen desire to be on the inside of that door when it is closed, to be in the place where end well at righteousness. And so I can say it is hard to be saved because it involves all the mental, emotional, and spiritual energy of those that God saved. Now there are several different areas where we can say it's hard. I've isolated just three because that's what priests are supposed to deal with. I'm sure there are more but I think this pretty well does capture the areas in which great responsibility and tenacity is required in those that God is saving. First of all, there's a necessity of right belief and continuing to have right belief. You know, it doesn't do any good just to believe the right things all the way from them. There are people in the apostolic churches who were taught by the apostles and learned from the apostles and gave good evidence of having been saved under the apostolic ministers who fell away and even under apostolic censure received the verdict, a document, unapproved, reprobated, law. Never of us, the apostle John, the great apostle of law, then his first epistle in the second chapter described some people like that when he says that it's the last hour and a Christ has come. They went out from us but they did not really belong to us or they had belonged to us. They would have remained with us but their going shows that none of them belonged to us. Now why do those who believe right continue to believe right? Because they have an anointing from the Holy One. You see, if you believe right and you continue to believe right and you grow in that belief and your mind becomes more and more subjected to the word of God and more and more aware of the holiness and the attributes of God and your character becomes more conform to him, it is because you have an anointing from the Holy One as John says. But this anointing from the Holy One does manifest itself in individual responsibility. So that after John has given that kind of assurance that indeed those who are trying to deceive you cannot deceive those of you who are saved because you have an anointing from the Holy One. He comes back with this admonition. See to it that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. See to it. If it does, if it does, you also remain in the sun and in the Father. I wonder if one day, 15 years from now, in the back of the meeting, Dr. Demon will pick up a record on paper and read, so and so, Middle-American graduates, dismiss and discern as denied the death of Christ, so and so, Middle-American graduates, dismiss from position in college as denied the inspiration of truth. If you do that, I hope we will read that, but I place a God that you will see to it that what you have heard remains in you. Even when you are not in congenial company, even when you are not around those who will say amen to your word, I believe the Bible. I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe men are justified by faith without works and we say amen, but when you are confronting those who will look through you with glassy eyes and wonder how you can be so stupid, still to hold on to a first and review of God, still hold on to some sort of antiquated ideas about divine revelation and that kind of pressure is put upon you to conform to the world. I wonder, is your belief, especially out of convenience at this point, you are being conformed to your surroundings or do you have an anointing from the Holy One, so that you know the truth? Paul had the same thing happen in the church there at times. There were those who had denied such fundamental doctrines as the resurrection and in that chapter before he goes into his truth of the resurrection in which he tells syllogism, the fun syllogism, demonstrating the absurdity of rejecting the doctrine of the resurrection. He says, now brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand by this gospel you are saying, if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you otherwise you have believed in vain. You see those who believe the resurrection will continue believing the resurrection and those who believe it for a while and then reject it for something more popular never believed it. It simply seemed convincing at the time but those who fall away, the verdict of Scripture always is, they were never of us, you have believed in vain. Agony, the inner end, at the straight gate, the narrow gate. So there's another area perhaps is not quite as obvious that none of the last has just as severe consequences, right reactions to suffering. God's people will have right reactions to suffering. It doesn't mean they'll never question, it doesn't mean that they will not go through turmoil but they will have right reactions to suffering. This is what Peter teaches and I believe in the book of 1st Peter and the 4th chapter, verse 18, where he is describing the kind of suffering that the believers are undergoing, he's warning to admonish them to make sure that their suffering is indeed for being a Christian and not for their own evil and for their own boreheadedness but for being a Christian if you suffer as a Christian don't be ashamed but praise God if you bear that name, for it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God. And if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly in the sinner? So then those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful creator and continue to do good. So I don't know exactly what Peter means but judgment has begun as a house of God but I do know it means at least this that God is just in whatever affliction he brings us into because his purpose is to mold us in accordance with the image of Christ. Christ himself suffered and Paul rejoiced and that he was able to complete the suffering of Christ. That means that we are his body and even if Christ suffered in this world we too suffer if we are his body. And so judgment begins with the house of God it is just for God to bring affliction upon us and in the bringing of affliction upon us we learn those who shrink back and those who persevere those who commit themselves to a faithful creator and those who curse God and die. Proper reaction to affliction. This is the same thing the lighter to the Hebrews called in the 10th chapter in verses 32 through 39. Remember those earlier days after you had received the light when you stood your ground in a great content in the face of suffering. Sometimes you are publicly exposed to insult and persecution. At other times you stood side by side with those who are so treated. You sympathize with those in prison and you are sexually accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you yourself had better in lasting possession. So do not throw away your confidence. It will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while the quote from Habakkuk, he who is coming will come and will not delay but my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back I will not be pleased with him but we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who believe and are saved. God brings affliction into the lives of His saints and of the professed saints to shall we say divide the men from the boys. To divide that which is approved from that which is unapproved. To make more genuine or to demonstrate the genuineness of rather the face of those who have been converted and to break into pieces of hypocrisy of those who simply for personal convenience and personal pleasure walk in the flippers of religion while it is pleasure. But there is another area and I must finish quickly here the area of personal sanctification. You know many preachers fall into the trap of thinking that their ministry is their sanctification, that because they are a preacher they are doing what God wants them to do. And they become very careless about becoming conformed to the image of Christ themselves. They think that because they get up and proclaim the word of God that their ministry is so exalted and so great and so wonderful that that is the content of their own sanctification. It is not so. In fact the apostle Paul is in the book of 1 Corinthians that even the apostles though granted a powerful external ministry and though blessed of God in that if the apostles themselves granted the highest of all ministries to which a human being has been called if the apostles were not to run the race themselves and be engaged in personal sanctification they would come to the end and be found disapproved. This qualified for the prize not just losing some of their reward but our docking must the same word that is used those in 2 Timothy 3, 8 who reject the truth who are disapproved concerning the faith who are ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. You see your ministry is not your sanctification. It may age you in it. It may make you go before God and plead with Him for personal righteousness so you'll be able to preach as you should. It may make you study the word in a deeper way than you would normally but itself is not your sanctification. All says therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly. I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. Well, we read in the paper one day so and so, Mid-American graduate, resigns his church, runs off with his secretary because you've not taken seriously what it means to be sanctified personally. You've substituted your ministry or personal involvement to the image of Christ, agonizing the inner hand at the narrow gate.