As we have been looking at the last few chapters, we have noticed a steady downward progression in the attitude of the scribes and Pharisees towards Jesus and His gospel which He has been preaching.  At first, there was a curiosity on the part of the Pharisees towards Jesus.  They heard great crowds were following Him.  They heard that He was supposed to be a great teacher.  They heard about some of the miracles that He was doing.  And so they had a certain curiosity to see what He was doing.

Then that curiosity progressed to the point of becoming offended by Him.  When they got past the novelty of Him and His preaching they began to understand that often He was condemning them as well.  That was an uncomfortable position to be in. They were used to having people compliment them because of how religious they were.  They were used to people noticing their good works.  And so when Jesus lumps them into the same territory as all the rest of the sinners they were offended.

In this case, it says in verse 14 that they were offended because they were lovers of money.  That means that they loved the currency of the world.  They were living to satisfy their carnal desires with the things that money could buy and yet putting up a religious veneer of self righteousness before men.

Soon that offended attitude morphed into an attitude of finding fault.  They began to try to pick at His message.  They found fault with His disciples.  They tried to find something that He was doing wrong so that they could justify themselves.  His message made them feel guilty, so they tried to find fault with Him so they could feel better about themselves.

And then by the time we get to the last chapter, 15:2, you read that they began to grumble about Him.  That means they began to vocalize their irritation.  They began to complain, to talk about Him behind His back.  They tried to tear down His reputation.  They tried to influence others to turn away from Him by speaking ill of Him.

Now today, as we look at this passage, we see that their grumbling has turned to scorn.  They began to scoff at Him.   That means they began to openly ridicule Him.  Their attitude towards Him was worsening.  It was a growing hatred that began to come out in open, public ridicule.  The Pharisees had rejected His message, they had rejected that He was the Messiah, and they are on the way to full blown hatred.

And as we continue in this gospel, we will see their hatred worsen until they reach the point of plotting His murder.  And as you know, that culminates in actually carrying out the plan to murder the Son of God by having Rome hang Him on a cross.

Listen, this should illustrate the danger of rejecting the gospel.  The danger is that as Jesus Himself said, “you are either for Me or against Me.”  It says in 1 Samuel 15 that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.  Jesus also recognized rebellion as a manifestation of the works of Satan.  That’s why He said to the Pharisees in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.”  The rejection of the truth and believing a lie results in the attitude of a murderer.  And in the case of the Pharisees, they eventually act on that murderous attitude.

What a warning that should be for all of us.  In today’s relativistic society, we don’t want to believe in absolute truth.  Nothing makes the agnostic or atheist more mad than to be told that there is a God in heaven that has given us His word and that His word is absolute truth.  The world hates Christians because we believe that there is absolute truth and that truth condemns their sin.

But listen, there is another danger, and that is to put this attitude at arms length and see it as a fault of others, or see it as something that really only applies in a historical context to an extinct type of religious zealots called Pharisees, and so therefore find ourselves excused.  The danger is in thinking that this doesn’t apply to you.  But let me assure you that there are still Pharisees today in the spiritual sense of the word.  The Pharisees were much more like you and I than we would care to admit.  They believed in God.  They went to the temple regularly.  They tithed.  They fasted.  They prayed a lot, especially in public.  They read the scriptures regularly.  They even memorized large sections of it.  They were very moral people.  They kept the ten commandments.  And they participated in philanthropic events.   They did good deeds.

And yet they rejected God’s word and that rebellion grew into a hatred that eventually conspired to kill the Son of God.  Now I’m telling you that there are spiritual Pharisees alive and well in the church today.  Even in so called evangelical Christianity there is a large cross section of the church that fits the description of a Pharisee.  They believe in God.  They go to church regularly.  They tithe occasionally.  They fast on Lent.  They like to pray in public.  They even read the scriptures now and then.  They love to champion a particular religious themed book or movie.  They are considered good moral people in the community.  They appear to keep the ten commandments.  They participate in philanthropic events.  They do good deeds.  And yet I tell you that they are as rebellious Pharisees.  They are carnal and love the mammon of this world.  And in order to satisfy their desires they have rejected the complete truth of the gospel for a partial gospel, and they are in danger of having that rebellion against the truth escalate into grumbling, into scorn, and even outright hatred for the absolute truth of God’s word and His messengers.

Listen folks, you cannot separate God from His word.  You cannot pick and choose the character attributes of God that you prefer and discard the rest.  You cannot carve out a God of your own design without resulting in idol worship.  To reject the truth of God is to reject God Himself and by extension to crucify Jesus Christ.

Please understand the truth of the gospel. The truth of the gospel starts with the law.  You cannot separate the God of justice from the God of love.  Everyone wants the God of love.  But as modern day evangelicals we recoil at the thought of the God of justice, of holiness and of righteousness that cannot tolerate sin. But when we reject the God of justice and extract those passages from scripture that sustain our doctrine of love, then actually we are rejecting the God of the Bible.

I know that it seems as though the doctrine of justice and the doctrine of love are polar opposites.  We would like to discard God’s justice and just focus on love.  But God cannot and will not be divided.  God’s love and God’s justice were met together at the cross.  That is where the justice and the wrath of God was poured out upon His only Son, so that we might be shown the love of God which results in salvation.  But one cannot exist without the other.  And any so called gospel which denies the one in favor of the other is to hold to the standards of the Pharisees.  And there are many today that are spiritual Pharisees.  Holding to a form of religion, but denying the power of it.  Denying the truth of the gospel while trying to hold on to part of it.

And that is why a lot of people have come to this church for a while, curious, intrigued by the novelty of being on the beach, having some interest in worshipping God.  But having that interest tempered by their own image of God which they have formed according to their own desires, that they might satisfy the lusts of the flesh without guilt.  And that is why so many have come and gone.  That is why some people’s attitudes have progressed from curiosity to becoming offended by my preaching concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.  And that is why their attitude has degenerated to the point of grumbling and outright scorn and ridicule and even hatred.

So there is still today a type of spiritual Pharisee in the church.  And in addressing this attitude of the Pharisees which has progressed to open scoffing and derision of the gospel,  Jesus presents a couple of principles and then an illustration which characterize spiritual Pharisees.

The first principle is spiritual Pharisees justify themselves to men, but  not to God. Vs. 15, “And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.”  Paul spoke of this same principle in 2Cor. 10:12 “For we are not bold to class or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves; but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding.”

The problem is that spiritual Pharisees have a wrong standard; they measure themselves by themselves.  They compare themselves to one another, to the guy down the street.  They see themselves as better than others because they are using the wrong standard.  That is the standard  of relativism.  That’s the standard of the culture.  It’s the standard of what seems right in their own eyes.  The standard of what they think should be important or not important to God.

This standard is not based on the word of God, it’s not based on God’s standard, but it’s based on what they collectively have extracted or redacted from the word of God to produce their own version of the truth.  Paul says such people lack understanding.  He says in Romans 10:3 “For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.”

God established the standard of righteousness in the Law.  That is where the attributes of a holy God are established.  The law is where the standards of righteousness are established.  The law is the beginning of the gospel.  It shows us our sinfulness and causes the repentant to fly unto Christ as His Savior.  But the spiritual Pharisee has either eliminated the law altogether or altered it to meet his own specifications.  He refuses to accept God’s standard, and so he is without understanding of who God is, and actually ends up rebelling against God, scoffing at God’s standards.

Such an attitude may justify you in the sight of men.  People may think you are really religious as they observe your rituals.  They may think you are really spiritual as they witness your external veneer of religion.  But Jesus says, “But God knows your hearts.”  God knows if you have really repented or not.  He knows when you refuse to bow the knee to God because you want to hold on to your sin.  Such was the case with the Pharisees.  They had altered the law.  They had lawyers work out the extent of the law so that they could appear to be keeping it, but in fact work it to their advantage.  But God knows the hearts.  He knows the motivation.  As Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount, if you hate your brother you are guilty of murder.  If you lust for a woman in your heart you are guilty of adultery.  God knows your heart.  He knows your motives.  He knows your thoughts.

Jesus condemns this kind of self justification in Matt. 23:25.  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.  You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.”  This is where spiritual Pharisees go wrong.  They  seek justification from men before justification before God.  And so they go about cleaning the exterior, doing good works, cleaning up their act, turning over a new leaf, quitting drinking, etc., but they have never been cleansed from within.  Jesus said clean the inside first, and then the outside may become clean also.  And the only way to be clean on the inside is by repentance of your sins and completely humbling yourself before God by faith in Christ, resulting in forgiveness.  Then when the inside is clean, the outside can become clean.  That is the process of sanctification where by the Spirit of God working in you conforms you to the image of Jesus Christ.  Don’t be deceived, God desires good works.  That is why we are saved. Eph. 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  But good deeds is a result of working out your salvation, not the means of working for your salvation.  The inside must be  supernaturally cleaned first.

The second principle of a spiritual Pharisee is they are unwilling to pay the price of becoming a disciple.  Now this principle is couched in a rather obscure statement that Jesus made concerning the law in vs. 16; “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.” Here is the way to understand this verse.  Remember He is addressing the Pharisees.  They believed they were accepted by God because of their nationality.  The Law and the Prophets refers to the Old Testament covenant which was given to the Jews.  It was given to the children of Abraham through Moses to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai.  And so there was a degree of entitlement that these Pharisees had because they traced their lineage back to Abraham. They thought they were born into the kingdom of God.  They were true Jews and everyone else was in their eyes considered a sinner.   Furthermore, they thought that they were entitled to the kingdom because they were circumcised.  This was probably the most important law of all in their minds.  You could not even enter the temple grounds unless you had been circumcised.  The rabbis actually taught that Father Abraham stood at the gates of Hades and checked to make sure that no circumcised Jews entered into hell.

So these were the two pillars of Judaism that the Pharisees rested upon. Their nationality and their circumcision.  Both of them outward, external signs of their self righteousness.  And thirdly, there was the keeping of the rest of the law.  However, they had added volumes to the law in writings called the Mishna which on the surface had the appearance of being fastidious in keeping the law, but in reality had limited the law, and provided ways of getting around the law of God.  But in their minds at least, and in the minds of others, they thought they were keeping the law.  The bottom line was that the Pharisees rejected the gospel, because they saw no need for repentance. They thought they were in the kingdom. It was theirs by right, by virtue of keeping certain requirements of the covenant.  That’s why Jesus tells a leader of the Pharisees named Nicodemus that in order to enter the kingdom of God he needed to born all over again.  His nationality counted for nothing.

So Jesus contrasts that attitude of entitlement with the gospel of repentance.  He says the old covenant was taught until John the Baptist, but since then the gospel of repentance has been preached, and those that heeded that call to repentance are rushing to it.  The idea is that while Pharisees rejected the gospel in their self righteousness, meanwhile sinners were forcing their way into the kingdom out of their desperation.

This principle is found in chapter 15 when Jesus gave three parables; the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son.  In each case, the one that was lost was accepted back into the house, in other words accepted into the kingdom with great celebration and rejoicing.  Jesus said that heaven rejoiced over one sinner that repents rather than those 9 or 99 or the one brother who needed no repentance.  Because the door to the kingdom of heaven is none other than Jesus Christ, and you enter that door by faith in His ability to pay for your sins and repentance from your sins.  That is why Jesus said He came to seek and to save those that were lost.  Quite simply, you cannot be saved unless you first realize you are lost.  It doesn’t matter what kind of external  actions you have done which justify you in the sight of other men.  What justifies you before God is a broken and contrite heart that throws oneself in desperation at the feet of Jesus and begs for forgiveness.  That person that is willing to count the cost of leaving the world, leaving the lusts of the world, forsaking the pride of life, the pursuit of money, the pursuit of career, in total surrender, in desperation coming to Christ for forgiveness.  That is who the kingdom of God belongs to.

The principle goes back even to chapter 14:27 when Jesus said, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”  It refers to vs. 33 when Jesus said, “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” It goes back to vs. 26 when Jesus said, “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.”  Those that are willing to do whatever it takes, to surrender everything, those are the ones that are forcing their way into the kingdom, while the self righteous, the complacent, and the self justified are unwilling to surrender everything and so are outside.

I’m afraid that spiritual Pharisees are still taking that attitude even today in the church.  They have an attitude of entitlement.  We have a version of the gospel that is prevalent today among many evangelicals which is that as Americans we are the recipients of God’s grace.  We call ourselves a Christian nation.  We think that God owes us an upper middle class version of the prosperity gospel.  It’s too bad for the poor Christians being martyred for their faith in other parts of the world like the Middle East or Far East.  But we are the favored ones.  We have an inside track with God and if you just claim some sort of relationship to God based on feelings or good works or whatever then God is obligated to make all your dreams come true.  It’s not that different than what the Pharisees believed.  Spiritual Pharisees are not willing to pay any price of carnality for the kingdom of God.  They want their heaven on earth and eternity too.  But Jesus makes it clear that you can’t have both, you can’t serve God and mammon.

Then Jesus adds the statement found in vs. 17 which is a segue to the following illustration.  He says in vs. 17, “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail.”  I heard one linguist expert say it like this;  not one little stroke (jot or tittle) of a letter refers to something like the difference between the capital letter F and the capital letter E.  That one little stroke that distinguishes a capital F from a capital E.  It would be easier in the sight of God for all the heavens, all the sun, moon and stars to be swept away into oblivion than to eliminate one little part of just one letter of the law.

Now that should give us a glimpse of how important God considers His law.  As I said earlier, the law presents the standard of God.  It’s unattainable.  It’s beyond our reach.  The law condemns us and shows us our need for a Savior.  Jesus said in Matt. 5:17, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

Listen, what Jesus is teaching in this passage is that yes, the old covenant taught the law and the prophets, and then since John the gospel of Christ is preached, but God hasn’t stopped counting sin.  God hasn’t stopped counting trespasses.  God just counts them against Jesus Christ.  For those that come to Him in repentance and faith, surrendering everything to follow Him, God counts our sins upon Jesus and transfers His righteousness upon us.  Jesus didn’t do away with the Law.  Jesus kept the law perfectly.  He was the only person to ever do so.  And He did it as a man, that we might be saved through faith in Him.  2Cor. 5: 21 says, “God made Him (that is Jesus) who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

Then finally, Jesus gives an illustration of the statement that He made concerning the law; that not even the smallest part of the law can be annulled or done away with.  And this illustration must have hit these Pharisees pretty hard, because it was an illustration of exactly the way that the Pharisees had adjusted the law to accommodate their lusts.

Jesus says in vs. 18, “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.”  Jesus is referencing the law concerning divorce found in Duet. 24.  And though the law had required that the penalty for adultery was to be death, yet the rabbis had used a contingency of Moses to change the law to say that you could divorce your wife for basically anything that you felt she had done wrong.  Literally the rabbis taught that if your wife burned your breakfast that was grounds for divorce.

In Matthew 19 some Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce.  They said, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?”  And Jesus quoted from Genesis which says, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.  And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

In Mal. Chapter 2 it says clearly that God hates divorce.  And yet they had changed the law to accommodate their carnal desires.  And still they claimed that they were keepers of the law.  In fact they were adulterers and were guilty of the punishment of death according to the law.

Spiritual Pharisees today change the law for the sake of accommodating their desires as well. Under the claim of grace they have thrown the moral laws of God under the bus. Divorce rates are as high in Christian churches as it is in the world. But please understand that God’s standard of sin hasn’t changed.  God’s standard of righteousness hasn’t changed.  And God’s standard of justice hasn’t changed either.  God will judge all unrighteousness.  God will hold everyone accountable for what he has done. 2Cor. 5:10 says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

Listen, the only hope for all of us is to throw ourselves before the throne of God and ask for forgiveness of our sins.  As it says in Isaiah 53, we need to recognize that all we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned everyone to his own way.  And that the only way for us to be made right before God is for  the LORD to cause the iniquity of us all to fall on Christ.  If we are going to be acceptable to God, to enter into the kingdom of God, then  Christ’s righteousness is the only way.  And the only way we can appropriate salvation is to turn from our sin in repentance and throw ourselves upon the mercy of God and ask for forgiveness.

I will close with Isaiah 55:6 which says, “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”

I remember as a boy growing up in North Carolina someone once showing me a stack of old money that they had found in their attic.  There was enough money  there to make a person rich.  There was only one problem.  Printed on the notes was the words the Confederate States of America.  It was money that was printed in the South during the Civil War.  A lot of people in the South were paid for goods and services or for serving in the Army of the Confederacy with those bank notes.  But when the  Civil War was over, those bank notes were worthless.  And so when I was growing up in the south you used to see them framed up and hanging on a wall, or stored away in an old chest.  You couldn’t buy anything with them anymore.  It was useless currency.

I believe that this parable that Jesus taught concerning the unrighteous manager is teaching us that investing in the things of this world is a bad deal.  Because in the next world, in the kingdom of heaven, this  world’s currency is worthless.  This money we work so hard for here on earth, is useless currency in heaven.  It’s not valid in that government.  This world is passing away.  One day all that we see here will be burned up and all that we worked so hard to build will be destroyed.  And only what is done for Christ will last.

That is why our Lord Jesus in Matthew 6: 19 said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt, where thieves do not break through and steal, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”   Here is what Jesus is saying;  you want to know where a person’s heart is?  Then see where their treasure is.  Look at what they treasure.  Look at what’s important to them.  Look at what they invest in.  That is indicative of their heart.

Now I’m not going to use this parable today to preach about money per se.  It seems that is the focus of most messages and commentaries on this parable.  I don’t necessarily think that was the focus of Jesus Christ.  Money in this case is only a symptom of the condition of the heart.  It’s an outward manifestation of one’s inward nature.

There is nothing wrong with money in and of itself.  We all like to point out all the rich people in the Bible that were godly men.  Abraham, for instance, was very rich.   But consider what Hebrews has to say about Abraham. Heb. 11:8,  “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.  By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;  for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”  And then in vs.13, “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth….they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”

The issue wasn’t how much money Abraham had.  The issue was that Abraham’s focus wasn’t about building an earthly kingdom.  He was concerned about building a heavenly kingdom.  And because he was faithful and obedient to God in the earthly matters of his life, he could look forward to receiving an inheritance in the heavenly kingdom, the city of God.

Now this parable comes in the middle of a long string of parables and teachings that Jesus has been given.  And the way Luke presents them is almost like a layering affect of certain truths concerning the kingdom of heaven.  Someone has said that Jesus spoke about 40 parables that we have record of.  And many of them I’m sure He used more than once to different audiences.  But what is special about the gospel of Luke is that Luke presents an historical narrative, but at the same time positions the events and teachings in such a way as to build one upon another.  So as I say each week, it’s important to remember the context as we consider these parables and remember that they are part of a greater message.

For instance, if you were here last week, we looked at the end of chapter 15 and the parable of the prodigal son.  And what became apparent out of that study was that both of the sons received their share of the estate.  One son went away and  squandered what had been entrusted to him, and the other son stayed home and used his share for his purposes.  But they both were given a share of the estate.  But Jesus made the point that the celebration belonged to the son who went away because he had eventually come to his senses and returned home to serve the father.  He realized that the father was the source of life and joy and sustenance and as a result the father welcomed him into the home and gave him a great party to celebrate his homecoming.  The point of the story wasn’t about the money the son had squandered, but it was about coming to the point of being willing to renounce the world and leave behind the pleasures of sin and return to the Father.  To come to the point of being willing to serve the father even as a slave.  And for that kind of commitment, the Father was willing to not only accept the son back as a servant, but as a son and restore his inheritance in the estate. So the parable of the prodigal taught that being in the kingdom required something.  It requires repentance.

If you go back another chapter to ch.14, Jesus tells another parable about counting the cost of becoming His disciple.  And He concludes the analogy by saying in vs.33,  “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”  The principle that Jesus was teaching is that entrance into the kingdom of heaven costs you something.  And what it costs is the world.  Giving up what is considered gain in this world for gaining the kingdom of heaven.

Just prior to that in 14:16, Jesus had given another parable to teach a similar principle.  He talked about a big feast which was a picture of the kingdom of heaven.  And when the invitation went out, everyone said they fully intended on coming to the feast on the appointed day.  But when the master sent his servant out to bring them in on the appointed day, everyone was busy doing something else.  They were all working or marrying or buying and selling and they did not have time to come to the feast.  The principle was clear, to enter the kingdom of heaven you need to make the kingdom of heaven your priority.  Your career or your family or your wife or your possessions cannot be first and the kingdom of heaven somewhere down on the bottom of the totem pole.  No, Jesus makes it clear that the kingdom of heaven must be the first priority.  The kingdom of heaven demands something.  And that which it demands is to be first place in our lives.

Jesus makes that principle really crystal clear in vs. 27, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”  He is talking about dying to your personal agenda, dying to the world’s agenda, dying to working for your personal fortune or fame or glory, and living instead for the glory of God.

We don’t have time to backtrack over the last several chapters, but the principle is pretty much the same in all the parables.  Jesus just keeps changing the story to give you a different perspective, but the principles never change.  He says in chapter 13:24, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”  He’s talking about entrance into the kingdom of heaven!  Not many will be able to enter.  Why not?  Because their priorities were wrong.  They may have sang the songs, they said they believed in God, they may have said they were Christians, but they never renounced the world.  They thought that Christianity was a means of worldly gain.  Being a Christian to them meant that God would bless your career, God would give you a big house, God would make it possible for you  to be wealthy, healthy and wise. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this folks, but God never promised you heaven on earth.  God promised you the kingdom of heaven, a future eternal home in which you will rule and reign with Christ.  But only as you are willing to suffer with Him here first.

Rom 8:16, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”  What we suffer is the loss of this world, to gain the glory of the next.  As Jesus said in Matt. 16:25, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

Here’s the deal folks.  Let me make this clear.  There are three stages to salvation.  Various elements of the evangelical community like to camp out on one extreme or the other, but you really need to realize that there are three stages to salvation and all of them are necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven.  First is justification.  This is where I come by faith to Christ and confess that I am a sinner, and I repent of my sins and I trust in the promise of God that He will transfer my sins to Jesus and transfer Jesus righteousness unto me.  That’s justification in a nutshell.  But that is not the end of the gospel.  A lot of us want to stop right there.  The next stage is sanctification.  And this stage is where the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in me, to rule over my spirit and soul and body, to conform me to the image of Jesus Christ.  This is where I day by day die to myself by taking up my cross and follow Him, doing as He did, living like He lived, for the will of the Father, to the glory of God.  And the third stage to salvation is glorification.  This is when one day Christ comes back for me as His bride, and either resurrects me if I am dead, or I join Him in the air if I am alive, but in either case I will be changed, in moment, in the twinkling of an eye.  And I shall be like Him for I shall see Him as He is.  And I will live with Him forever in the eternal city of God which He has prepared for those that love Him.

Unfortunately, most so called Christians today think that they can have stage one and stage three without stage two.  They think it is possible to be justified without being sanctified.  But God doesn’t see it that way.  If you are truly saved, then all three stages must happen and will happen.  They are irrevocably connected. Rom. 8:29, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son,[that’s sanctification] that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.  Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Hebrews 12:14 says that without sanctification, no one will see the Lord.

So the parable that we are looking at today is teaching some key principles of sanctification.  If you have become a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, then these are principles of that kingdom that you need to apply.  This is the sanctification process that characterizes those who are born of the Spirit.

First though let’s look at the parable.  It’s interesting that Jesus uses a rabbinical style of teaching here. He is teaching from the lesser to the greater.  He is basically saying, if a lessor principle is true, then it must be even more so that a greater principle is true.  And so to make that comparison He uses an illustration of an unrighteous person.  It’s important to note though that Jesus isn’t condoning the unrighteous manager for his wrong business practices.  No one should think from this parable that God winks at sin.  But Jesus is using this example of a worldly way of thinking and producing results as a comparison to what we should be doing in the spiritual realm.  In other words, if you do this in the worldly realm to achieve results, then so should you do this in the spiritual realm to produce results.

Now this unrighteous manager was squandering his master’s estate.  And you should note right there the parallel between the parable of the prodigal son and this parable.  In the parable of the prodigal son, the younger son squandered his share of his father’s estate.  In this case, the manager has squandered his master’s estate.    Now in this case, the rich master calls him and says he is going to fire him as manager because he has been mismanaging his funds.  And furthermore, he wants the manager to give an accounting of what he has done with the money.

Now it’s difficult for us to put this into a 21^st century perspective.  We don’t know exactly how this sort of business that Jesus was referring to operated.  But if I can conjecture a moment, I would suggest that the manager was more or less like a debt collector for the rich man.  Perhaps like a banker who  would arrange loans for people and then charge them a percentage as profit.  And the customary arrangement was for the one who collected to add his percentage on top of what was due to the master.  So somehow this manager had been playing fast and loose with the loans.  Maybe he was charging exorbitant rates.  Maybe he was taking all the money and spending it on himself and not paying back the rich man what was owed him.  Jesus doesn’t make it clear.

But the story progresses with the manager finding himself in a dilemma.  He has to give his boss an accounting.  That means that he has to show how badly he has mismanaged the funds and in those days that meant that he could be required to pay him back or be thrown into prison or both. And he doesn’t have the money to pay it back because he squandered it.  That means he spent it foolishly.   And there is an even greater predicament.  He is also out of a job.  He will be penniless and without a job.  Furthermore, debt collectors were hated people.  They were like loan sharks.  They added outrageous fees on top of your debt so that you could never pay it back.  So when he found himself penniless and without a job he wouldn’t be able to find another one because everyone in the community hated him for taking advantage of their indebtedness to his boss.

So this manager comes up with a brilliant plan to not only appease his boss but ingratiate himself with the community. He goes to the first debtor and says “How much do you owe my master?” And the guy looks at his bill which has all the interest and fees attached and says, “One hundred measures of oil.”  And the manager says, “Well here is a great deal for you.  Let’s do a cash settlement.  Pay me 50 measures of oil and we will consider it paid.”  He does the same to the next debtor.  That guy hasn’t had the loan as long, so the settlement is only a 20% discount instead of the 50% discount he gave the other guy.  But it’s still a good deal.  And the implication is that the manager does this with all the people that owe money to his rich master.

So then the day comes when he has to meet his master and give an accounting.  And because of all of his creative financing, he doesn’t look quite as bad.  He has actually done well at collecting the money for his master, and at the same time he has made friends for himself in the community because he took off so much interest on their debt.  And Jesus says in vs. 8 that the master praised the unrighteous steward because he acted shrewdly.  The master got his money back and the manager made friends in the community which would help him out in return when he didn’t have a job anymore.  He was a shrewd person and the master praised him for it.

But the principle Jesus is making is found in the second part of the verse.  “For the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light.”  First we need to understand who Jesus is talking about.  Sons of this age simply means sons of the world. And sons of light means those that have been born again into the kingdom of heaven.  So you can say it like this;  unsaved people are more shrewd in relation to earthly things than saved people are shrewd about heavenly things.

In other words, people of this world are great at investing for the future, planning for retirement, networking for the sake of commerce, building a business or using money to influence people.  Men are very shrewd in regards to worldly things.  Jesus doesn’t condone worldliness, but he recognizes it for what it is, and says that men are good at doing it. They are good at using their resources to further their means. But in contrast He says that the same can’t be said for the saved person.  Though we have been born again, a new creation, yet He is saying we aren’t shrewd in relation to the kingdom of heaven.  We fail to plan for eternity.  We fail to invest in the kingdom.  We don’t network for the sake of the kingdom.  We fail to use money or resources to influence people to enter the kingdom.  Now Jesus has already referenced in another parable many reasons why that happens.  We get sidetracked by careers, or families or possessions.  Jesus has made that clear in previous parables.

So Jesus gives three principles which are to be applied for those who are sons of light so that we might be wise stewards or righteous stewards.  Just as the manager was given a stewardship so we too are given a stewardship.  And we need to apply these principles if we are to be found good stewards.  Jesus said back in chapter 12 that to those who have been entrusted with much, much shall be required.  He said in the parable of the rich fool who died after building more and more barns to house more produce here on earth, that there will be a day of accounting. 2Cor. 5:10 says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

So then principle number one is found in vs. 9. “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings.” What Jesus is talking about is using earthly things, earthly resources for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.  There are a number of ways you can do that.  God has entrusted you with a stewardship of money, time, talents and resources to use at your disposal.  And if you are going to be a faithful, righteous steward of God’s resources, then first of all you recognize that they aren’t given to spend on yourselves, but they are tools to use for the kingdom of God.

Paul says it like this in 1Timothy 6:17; “As for the rich in this world, [or those that are rich in the things of this world] charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but on God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed.”  Whatever God has given you employ in the furtherance of the kingdom, so that when this world fails, those people that you have benefited will welcome you into heaven.  That’s how you invest in the kingdom of heaven. That’s how you employ earthly resources for heavenly gains.  You have resources that God has entrusted you with to build up the kingdom of God.  And when you do that, you will be laying up treasures for yourself in heaven by virtue of the souls that are in heaven whom you have helped.

The second principle is found in vs. 10-13; “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.  Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you? And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?”  You know, I really think that this is one of the most important principles in the life of a Christian.  To be found faithful in the little things.  Oh, we all want to receive the big important jobs in the kingdom.  We all desire the greater gifts.  And so we should.  But before we get the greater gifts, the greater responsibility, God often tests us with the little things to see if we will be found faithful.

So many people I’ve met want to be a teacher and yet can’t be faithful in the little things like prayer, attendance, personal devotions, or helping with the little things of ministry.  The humble things of ministry go before the exalted things of ministry. 1Pet. 5:6, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time.”  And Paul said in 1Cor. 4:2, “Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.”  When you look at all the great saints of God like Daniel and Abraham and Moses, the common characteristic of all of them was that they were found faithful in the little things.  Be faithful in the little things; be faithful with your money, be faithful to support your church, be faithful to attend church, be faithful to pray, be faithful in your devotions.  It takes a certain amount of discipline and committment to be faithful to the kingdom, but above all else, be faithful.

Finally, the last principle is in vs. 13; “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”  The point is simple.  You are either going to be employed in serving the interests of the world or serving the kingdom of God.  They are not compatible.  In fact, they are at odds with one another.  This passage if nothing else shows that the prosperity doctrine that is taught so often today is a lie from hell.  The devil knows that if he can occupy your interest in the things of the world then he can enslave you by the things of the world.  And you will not have time for the things of God.  You cannot serve God and the world.  You cannot serve the Almighty God and the almighty dollar.  One excludes the other.

When Joshua was about to lead the children of Israel into the promised land he called them together and said in Joshua 24:14, “Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.  If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”  Five times Joshua says serve the Lord.  Serve the Lord.

Listen, that is the same choice before you today.  You can either serve the god of this world, the things of this world, the money of this world, or you can serve the Lord.  The choice is yours, but you can’t serve both this world and the kingdom of God.  But like Bob Dylan sang, “it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”  I trust you will commit to serve the Lord with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.  That you marshal all your resources that God has entrusted to you and employ them faithfully in the furtherance of the kingdom of God.  One day soon He is coming back and He will demand an accounting.  I pray that you will be found faithful. Jesus said in Mark 8:36 “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

I pray you might lay up treasures in heaven and not on earth so that when one day you stand before God to give an accounting of your time and resources here on earth, that He might say, “well done, My good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master.”

Today’s passage is a parable commonly known as the parable of the prodigal son, which is part of a trilogy of parables that Jesus gave in this chapter.  They were given by Jesus in response to the attitude of the Pharisees who grumbled when sinners and tax collectors came to hear Him preach.  And particularly they thought it was inappropriate for Jesus to receive them and even eat with them.  So in response, Jesus tells them three parables, a trilogy; first a parable of the lost sheep, secondly the parable of the lost coin, and thirdly the parable of the lost son in order to illustrate that the ministry of God is to reclaim the lost.

Now a parable is a story told for illustration purposes.  It’s a fictitious story, the characters and the story line are made up for the purpose of illustrating a heavenly principle by means of an earthly story.  And in a nutshell, this trilogy is illustrating the nature of the lost, the need for repentance, the compassion of the Father and the joy of heaven at the lost being saved.

And so we will use those principles as an outline to look at this parable today. So first of all let’s consider the nature of the lost.  In the parable of the sheep, the one sheep wandered away from the flock and became lost.  In the second parable the coin was lost at home.  And in this third parable, the son is lost by deliberately leaving  the father’s house.

Now there are a few points that we can make that will help us understand the nature of the lost son.  First of all, it would have been evident to the hearers of this parable in that day that this was a particularly insolent and rebellious son.  Basically this younger son couldn’t wait for his father to die so that he could receive his inheritance.  He believes that he has gotten old enough to go his own way and make his own choices.  He thinks he is smarter than the old man.  And so rather than wait until his father dies and then receiving his share of the estate as was customary, this young man goes and brashly asks his father to give it to him now.

And interestingly, Jesus doesn’t detail any of the father’s deliberations or misgivings about this request, but He says the father accommodates his son’s defiance by splitting the estate between the two sons.   And after a few days, it says that the son gathered everything together.   We might understand that to mean that he liquidated his share of the estate and got all the money together and then he set off for a foreign land.  And while he was there he squandered it all in loose living.  That is where the word prodigal comes from by the way.  Jesus never used that word, but it means extravagant, wasteful.  And it describes the way this young man acted when he received the inheritance.

Now the application is clear.  The lost son is a picture of the sinner who has taken the life that God has given him, the health, the wealth, the wisdom and the resources of life, and decided that he can make his own choices as to how to use them best.  He thinks he is a better judge of right and wrong than God is.  He wants to control his life.  He doesn’t want to live under the rules of the kingdom of God.  He feels that it’s too controlling, too confining.  And so we too take what we think is ours, what is ours by right, and we use it for our own purposes.  We want to be the captain of our own destiny.  We forget that it was God who provided us with those resources.

And so to get away from this oppressive God who just wants to ruin our fun, we go as far away from God as possible.  We avoid thinking of Him at all costs.  We avoid church.  We actually come to hate all that He represents.  We want nothing to do with God.

And you can be sure that the devil is right there beside us every inch of the way, luring us on.  Tempting us to think that just over the next horizon there will be the freedom, the satisfaction, the happiness that we are looking for.  And so like the prodigal son we spend our lives in wastefulness, thinking one more drink will satisfy me.  Maybe this pill or that drug will provide the peace that I am looking for.  Or if I just get that high paying job I’ll be happy.  If I just get that girlfriend or wife I’ll be happy.  If I just let myself go sexually I’ll be satisfied.  Whatever it is, it is a lifestyle of wastefulness, extravagance; a desire for more, and more and more.  And yet rather than satisfying, it leaves you empty.

In the case of the prodigal, and in the case of perhaps some of you, you eventually reach bottom.  You squander your God given life on loose living.  Like the lost son, one day you eventually reach the bottom.  Your health is gone.  Your friends are gone.  Your money is gone.  And like the prodigal son who at the bottom had to hire himself out to feed pigs you find that the freedom you thought you were getting is actually slavery to sin.  Maybe you’re addicted to alcohol or drugs.  Maybe you’re caught up in a lifestyle that has become nothing but a rat race that is enslaving you.

This was the story of my life.  I grew up in a Christian home.  My father was a preacher.  And I grew up feeling that Christianity was oppressive.  It was restrictive.  I felt like all the other kids had freedom that I didn’t have.  I felt like I was viewing the world from outside of a window, and I desperately wanted to experience what it was like to be on the other side.  So like the prodigal, there came a day when I gathered everything up and left for California.  It didn’t take long until I found myself in a similar situation as the prodigal.  I remember realizing one day that I hadn’t gone to bed sober in over three years.  In my case, I wrestled with the thought of coming back to God for a couple of weeks or so. Eventually one night I reached the end of myself.  I reached a point where I was sick of being where I was and wanted to get things right with God.  And so after walking the beach all day, I went back home and my roommate was home playing the stereo really loud with some of his friends.  So I went downstairs to the garage and shut the door and began to call out in repentance to God.  And thankfully, God answered me.  God was ready and willing to forgive me and bring me back into the fold.  He restored the life that I had lost.

Now that is the picture that Jesus paints in this story.  In the case of the prodigal, to add injury to insult as he spends all his money on loose living a severe famine comes upon the land.  Things go from bad to worse.  And so this young man finds himself at this lowest place in his life.  For those Pharisees that were listening, they couldn’t have imagined a worse place for a Jew to end up than working in a pig pen.  But sometimes God sends a famine and allows us to end up in a pig pen to get us to realize how stinky our sin is.  One day this young man is so hungry he is thinking of eating the carob pods that they used to feed the pigs.  And then he thinks of how back home even the lowest of the hired hands ate pretty good at his father’s house.

Jesus said that the dire circumstances caused the young man to come to his senses.  Literally, it says he came to himself.  He came to a place where he had to examine himself and he saw himself for who he was.  There was an old country preacher that was once preaching on this parable. He was illustrating what happened to the prodigal son in the far country. He said, “As his money disappeared he had to sell his clothes in order to eat. He took off his shoes and sold those. Then he took off his coat and sold that. Then he took off his shirt and sold that. And then he came to himself!”  That’s what we all need to come to, when we finally bare our soul and examine ourselves.  This man came to that point and he came up with a plan.   Vs. 18, He said, “I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight;  I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”

Now that brings us to the second point, the nature of repentance.  This young man felt sorry for himself and the predicament that he found himself in.  But repentance is much more than simply being sorry.  Lots of people find themselves in unfortunate circumstances, maybe something of a crisis, and they call out to God for help.  They may sincerely want help.  They sincerely want God to answer them and get them out of the crisis.  They may become very emotional.  And even years later when recounting that situation they may become emotional in talking about it.  But when the crisis was over, they went back to the same things that they did before because they never really repented.  That is not repentance as described by Jesus here.

Notice how Jesus describes repentance.  And remember, this has been the theme of all the parables until now.  In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus concludes in vs. 7, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”  And in the parable of the lost coin, He says in vs. 10, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  What Jesus is making clear is that repentance is the only way back to the Father.

So let’s look at the characteristics of repentance.  First of all, he came to his senses.  He got so far down the only way he could look was up, and he realized how far he had fallen.  True repentance requires that you realize your absolute hopelessness.  Romans 3:23 says that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  We need to come to the point of realizing that between us and God’s standard of righteousness there is a great gulf fixed which we cannot possibly jump over.  We need to recognize the hopelessness of our situation.  Secondly, we need to confess our sins and our hopelessness.  We need to confess we are lost in order to be saved. 1John 1:8 says, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”

Thirdly, we need to be willing to turn away from our sin.  We need to be sick of our sin.  We need to realize how terrible it is.  Not just be sorry for the consequences of our sin, but be sick of the condition of our sinfulness and wanting to be freed from not only the guilt, but the power of sin over us.  That’s what Jesus was talking about in the sermon on the mount when He said “blessed are they that mourn.”  He was talking about the necessity of a sinner mourning over their sin as a characteristic of entering into the kingdom of God.  The prodigal son was willing to get up out of the pig pen and go back to his father’s house and beg for mercy.  He didn’t call his father up and ask him to send him some money so that he could continue living the life that he wanted to live. But he was willing to give up that life.  That is the characteristic of repentance.  It’s not seeking forgiveness but being unwilling to forsake sinfulness.  But it’s going the opposite direction.  Once he had chased after sin, now he is leaving that country and going back to his father’s house.  He turned around and went the other direction.  A lot of people today want forgiveness, they want grace, they want out of their crisis, but they want to hold onto their sin.  They aren’t willing to forsake the world or the things of the world.  This guy was willing to forsake everything.  That’s what repentance requires.

Fourthly, repentance requires renouncing your rights.  Notice he says I am going to say to my father, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”   This is so important.  When we repent we give up our right to our freedom.  We give up the right to make our own decisions as to what is right or wrong.  We give up the right to determine the course of our lives.  This man said I am not worthy to be called your son.  Repentance doesn’t come demanding.  It doesn’t come asking for favors.  It doesn’t come demanding what we think God owes us.  Listen, God owes us nothing.  If He gave us what we deserved it would be death.  This man had the right attitude.  He realized that he didn’t deserve to come back home as a son.  He didn’t even have the right to come back as a servant that would live under the care of the father.  He said he would just ask if he could come back as the lowest of hired men.  Not even living on the property.  This man humbled himself in true repentance.  And that repentance brought about reconciliation with the father.

That brings us to the next point; the compassion of the Father. This is my favorite part of the story.  Vs. 20 says, “So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”  First of all, it’s obvious from the story that this father had been looking for the young man to return for a long while.  He says later that he had been considered dead.  The young man had been gone so long that people thought he must have died.  But I can picture the father walking out of the estate down a long drive to the end of the  road and standing there looking  off in the distance and longing for his son.  He must have imagined on a daily basis what his son was doing that day.  He must have worried if he was ok.  I can imagine that the father prayed for him everyday and hoped that one day he would return.  His love for the boy never failed.  He never gave up on him.

What a picture of our heavenly Father.  He created us in love.  He created us to be the objects of His love.  But we sinned, we acted rebelliously, we thought we could decide between good and evil and we rebelled against His word.  And consequently we had to leave the Garden of Eden, we were shut off from the source of life and we squandered our lives in living for ourselves.  But God never stopped loving us.  He never stopped looking for us.  He never stopped seeking us.  The Bible says that God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son, to pay the penalty for our sins upon the cross that we might be reconciled to God.

So back to the parable, one day the father goes to the end of the road as usual, and peers at the horizon, longing for his son.  And suddenly he sees a distant figure on the horizon.  His heart must skip a beat as he watches ever more intently as it draws closer.  And then somehow even though the man is still a long ways off, he recognizes that it must be his son.  And it says the father ran to him while he was still a long ways off.  Now that doesn’t fully describe what happened.  In those days, men wore long robes that came down to their ankles.  And so this father would have done something that the Pharisees would have thought was absolutely unseemly.  Completely undignified.  Elder men in those days simply didn’t run.  But he would have reached down and gathered up his robe around his knees and started running down the road.  It must have been a ludicrous sight to see the old father, his hair and beard streaming out behind him, his robe pulled up over his lanky legs and knobby knees exposed, running down the road with tears streaming down his cheeks.  And then coming upon the young man, who undoubtedly still  smelled like a pig, must have looked terrible, wasted away, unshaven, dirty, disheveled. And yet the father could care less.   Before his son could say a word, he had thrown his arms around him and kissed him repeatedly.  Now that is compassion.  That is the love of the father.  That is the love of God towards repenting sinners.

Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  God loves us while we were yet sinners.  God doesn’t reserve his compassion until we fulfilled some sort of probation.  He doesn’t require us to do some sort of penance.  Jesus did the penance for us.  He paid the penalty that we could never pay so that we might be made righteous before God.

What this parable shows us is that God was willing to humiliate Himself in order to save us.  That shows the extent of His love. Phil. 2:5 says, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

The prodigal son hadn’t even had time to say the speech that he had prepared before his father had already welcomed him home and showered him with love.  But finally the young man blurts out his speech: vs. 21, “And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate;  for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.

Listen, God cares less about our prayer or our words than he does our heart.  He knew the heart of the young man when he returned was a heart of repentance.  And so the joy of the father calls for reconciliation and celebration.  By the way, I would have liked to save this message for a few more weeks until Father’s Day.  But it didn’t work out that way.  However, I hope that you dad’s out there consider as I do this parable as a template for how a godly father should treat a wayward child.  I think that sometimes we buy into a lot of the tough love philosophy that is out there.  And there may be a time when some of that is necessary.  But you don’t see that pictured here in this story.  If there is tough love here, it is self directed – directed by the father upon himself, not upon the boy.  And I think we should really consider this story when we deal with these situations as fathers.  We have no greater example of fatherhood than that of our heavenly Father.

Well back to our story.  We’ve seen the nature of the lost, the need for repentance, the compassion of the Father and now let’s look quickly at the joy of heaven at the lost being saved.   First we see the son’s reconciliation.  He doesn’t have to come back as a hired hand as he was willing to do.  The father reinstates him as a son.  That is the picture Jesus gives here of putting a robe on him and a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. First the robe is given.  That is a picture of the robe of righteousness which we have received by faith in  Christ.  I think Jesus had in mind the passage in Isaiah 61:10 which says, “I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, My soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness.”

And not only is the younger son reinstated as a son, but once again he is an heir of the father.  That is the significance of the ring, I believe.  It would be signet ring with the family crest that was a symbol of authority. Romans 8:16 says that we have not only been made children of God when we didn’t deserve it, but we are also made  heirs of God.   It says, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”

In the preceding parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, they both refer to the joy of heaven at the sinner who repents.  In this parable that is fleshed out a little bit more.  They kill the fattened calf.  That would have been saved for a great occasion such as a wedding feast.  It says later that the older son heard music and dancing.  So the picture is given of a full blown celebration.  I think there is an immediate response of celebration in heaven when a sinner repents, but I also think that this is picturing the celebration of the glorification of man when he is taken up to meet the Lord in the air.  This is a picture of when the kingdom of God is consummated at the end of the age, when all the redeemed sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb.  It is an illustration of the prophecy that Jesus made in Luke 12, when He said, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master will find on the alert when he comes; truly I say to you, that he will gird himself to serve, and have them recline at the table, and will come up and wait on them.”   This is speaking of the day when the bridegroom who is Christ will serve the bride who is the church at the marriage supper of the Lamb.  It will be a celebration that will never really end, when God will reveal all the wonderful things that He has prepared for those that love Him.

Well, I would like to just end right there on a high note, but Jesus doesn’t end it there.  Jesus adds a final element to the story.  And He does so to bring the application to the Pharisees who were listening to Him.  These men scorned the sinners and tax collectors who were coming in repentance to Jesus.  They didn’t think that they deserved any mercy from God.  They thought that they themselves however, were deserving of God’s favor.  After all, they kept the law, or so they claimed.  They were certainly moral people.  They believed in God.  They were fastidious in the outward signs that were perceived to be religious.  For instance, they tithed down to the mint and dill from their herb gardens. They publicly fasted regularly.  They attended all church services and functions.  They were really great at giving long prayers in public.  And they knew a lot of Bible verses.  They thought they were children of God.  They thought God owed them blessings in their lives.  They fully expected God to reward their diligence in serving Him.

And so Jesus adds the last part of the parable just for them.  He says as the party was going on in the house, the older son came home from the fields.  And he heard the music and the sound of the dancing and he asked a servant what was going on.  The servant told him, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.”  Now that should have been a cause for him to join the celebration.  He should have been thrilled that his brother came home safe.  But instead it revealed the bitterness of his heart.  He was angry that his brother had been restored.  He was angry that the father would restore his brother as a son again and hold a party in his honor.

And who he is angry at is not necessarily the brother, but the father.  He feels he has worked as a slave for his father and yet the father is willing to celebrate for the sinner.  He feels he has earned something and his brother is being given something he doesn’t deserve.  He feels he has been faithful and his brother has been unfaithful.  But what is apparent is that his heart is not right.  He doesn’t have a right relationship with his father.  If you look back at the beginning of the parable, the father divided the estate between both sons.  The oldest son had taken his share as well.  The youngest son took his share and left home and was lost.  The oldest son took his share and stayed home and lost out.  The point is that as I said earlier, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  The Pharisees needed a Savior as much as the sinners needed a Savior.  But the point Jesus is making is that without repentance there is no salvation.  And the oldest son’s attitude towards his brother and his father indicate a lack of humility, a lack of repentance, and a hostility towards those that are saved by grace.

Listen, this is the significance of the oldest son.  He represents the people who refuse to repent.  They think that they are good enough because of their morality.  They compare themselves with others and think that they are better and so therefore God owes them something.  The law abiding older brother complained that he had never been given a party like his younger brother the reprobate.  Yet in his heart he had never confessed his sin, he had never repented of his sin, and yet he had taken of the father’s estate and used it for himself as well.  Jesus said the Pharisees did what good they did to be seen of men, for men’s approval and for earthly rewards.  That was their motivation.  And because their hearts had never been humbled in repentance, they were outside of the celebration.  They would not come into the feast.  God loved them too.  That is clear in the parable.  The father loved both his sons.  He implored the older son to come inside.  But he would not come.  He was indignant that the only way into the kingdom was through repentance.

But that is the requirement of the kingdom of God. God is willing to go after us, to look for us, to seek us, to pick us up and carry us on His shoulders into the kingdom of God.  But we must first realize that we are lost. The Pharisees refused to believe that they were lost. They refused to identify with sinners.  They wanted to make a claim against God based on their righteousness. Titus 3:4 says, “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

Listen, today all of us here are represented by one of these two sons.  Perhaps you are represented by the prodigal son.  You have lived a life of wanton pleasure, wasting your life after things that in the end have not brought you the happiness and peace that you wanted.  I hope that today you will come to your senses and call out to the Father in humility and repentance.  Jesus said whoever comes to Me I will in no way cast out, but I will welcome him and come into him.

Or maybe you find yourself represented by the older son.  You stayed home.  You have tried to live a respectable life in the community.  You tried to be morally good.  You go to church.  You participate in religious ceremonies.  But if you honestly evaluate your life, you recognize that you don’t have a right relationship with God.  You have never confessed that you are a sinner.  You have never accepted that your righteousness is not enough.  And if you’re honest you must admit that your motives for serving God are self serving.  Listen, Jesus is making it clear that there is only one way to be reconciled to God and that is through repentance.  Being willing to forsake your pride, your dignity, your respectability, your plans, your self esteem and confess that you are a sinner and ask for God’s forgiveness.  The Father is willing to save.  He wants to bring you into the kingdom of God and give you all that He has for you.  Don’t hang on to your pride.  But humble yourselves in the sight of God and then He will exalt you.   Let’s pray.

If you’re a regular here at the Beach Fellowship, then you know that I don’t usually try to pander to the holidays with my messages.  As you know, we are going through the book of Luke, chapter by chapter and verse by verse, which is our custom.  But it just so happens that today my message does in some degree address mothers.  So for those of you that feel that I should attempt to recognize the holidays more in my messages, then you’re going to get your wish today.  However, as they say, be careful what you wish for.  If you have a seatbelt on your lawn chair, I advise you to buckle it, or if not, then hang on tight because it may be a bumpy ride, but hopefully the destination will make it all worthwhile.

Contrary to what some might think, I don’t deliberately try to be controversial, or even necessarily confrontational.  Though if the passage of scripture calls for either, I won’t avoid it.  But the issue with the message that we are looking at today is that it would not be controversial, or confrontational, if the tide of the popular culture was not going so hard against what the Bible teaches in regards to the God’s design for women, and particularly mothers.

Fifty years ago the women’s lib movement burst on the scene in this country with the burning of bras, the promise of freedom by joining the sexual revolution and the goal of financial equality with men.   But the question fifty years later is, are we better off today than we were then?  The popular culture then ridiculed the Ozzie and Harriett lifestyle depicted on “Leave It To Beaver” and said women needed to get out of the kitchen and become empowered.  So 50 years later we have exchanged Ozzie and Harriett for Ozzie Ozborne’s dysfunctional family as typical of the American family .  Instead of “I Love Lucy,” we have shows like “Desperate Housewives.”  I’m afraid that if the lineup on prime time TV is any indication of the state of our union then we are in serious trouble.

I’m afraid that women’s rush towards equality and empowerment has not had the beneficent effect on society that we all hoped that it would have.  Half of all marriages today end in divorce.  Today children are being raised strangers in child care facilities while they are still in their diapers.  Family dinners are a thing of the past.  Obesity is a national epidemic.  Women are now having health problems like heart disease that once was only the purview of men.  And children are increasingly  diagnosed as having psychiatric problems.  Statistics say that anti depressant prescriptions have risen 400% in the last two decades and is still climbing.

I was talking with a young mother the other day who recently had her first children, twins, and was back to work full time in three months, putting the kids in childcare.  Her husband has a good job, and she makes a lot of money in her job as well.  And so even though she doesn’t have to work, she said she wants to work because she likes the extra money and the social aspects of her job. When she told me that, outwardly I tried to be polite and smile, but inwardly I felt like screaming.  I wanted to cry out, “Who has deceived you?”  “What has indoctrinated you so that you place a higher value on a new car or the latest iphone than you do upon mothering and nurturing these two little babies?”  What would convince a mother to give up the most precious thing a woman can have over to strangers to raise, to strangers to teach to walk, to hear them say their first words, in exchange for some attempt at self fulfillment?

I am not saying that a mother cannot work outside the home.  I’m aware of the financial strain that many households are under and the necessity for two incomes in today’s economic climate.  I’m aware that many women are the sole providers in their homes.  But I am suggesting that the system as we know it is broken.  I am suggesting that the societal dogma  that has come to define women’s roles  needs to be examined afresh in the light of God’s word.

There is a well known passage in the Proverbs 31 that I’m sure most of you are familiar with.  “Who can find a virtuous woman, for her price is far above rubies.”  It’s not talking about sexual virtue.  It’s talking about her character.  And this woman of Proverbs is a working woman by the way. Scripture doesn’t say that a woman cannot work.  Now I’m not going to take the time to read that proverb for you today.  That can be your homework.  But I will give you the cliff notes on it.  The virtuous woman had her priorities right.  Her priorities were God and family, not her career.

On Wednesday evenings we have a mid week service at my home and we have been looking at the origins of man in the book of Genesis.  And what has come to light in our study is that men and women are different because they were designed to be different.  Though they are the same in so many ways, yet God designed them for different roles.  Men and women are different by design.  Women are physically different and psychologically different from men.  One is not better than the other. Just designed by God for different responsibilities.

In Genesis 2 Adam looked at all the animals that God had made in creation and did not find a mate suitable to him.  So the Bible says God took flesh and bone from his side and fashioned a woman to be a help mate for him.  And Adam said, “this is now flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone.”  The scripture goes on to characterize  marriage as being one flesh.  Vs. 24, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”  Now theologians can quibble about what it means to be one flesh, but I don’t think it’s talking about sex.  But let us just consider the first word.  One.  They were to become one.  They were to be united in purpose, united in everything that they did.  That is the spiritual definition of marriage. Adam didn’t have a prenuptial agreement.  Eve didn’t do her thing and Adam did his thing.  They became one.

Now in chapter 3 we are introduced to the devil.  And somehow the devil found a day when Eve was alone and he used that opportunity to take advantage of her.  At that moment she wasn’t one with her husband.  And because she was alone, she got into a conversation with the devil and acted independently of her husband.  Satan tempted her when she was alone. Then she acted independently on her own.  And that became her downfall.

Listen, that is still the way in which the devil works to destroy  marriages.  He separates what God said let no man separate. He tempts them to work against one another than together as one. But not only does Satan use that strategy to destroy marriages but also to destroy mankind.  He attempts to overthrow the very purpose of God’s creation.  He gets mankind to act and think independently of God.  We think that is our prerogative.  We think independence is our inalienable right as Americans.  But folks, that has never been the plan of God for mankind from the beginning.  Please understand, just as Eve was created to be the helpmate of Adam, so mankind was created to be the help mate of God.  God looked around all of the universe and He did not find anything that was suitable for Him.  There was nothing in existence in heaven or in the universe that was compatible for Him, that corresponded to Him.  And so God created the Earth and all that is in it to be the home of His bride, His companion.  And when all of this home was ready and good and perfect, then God got down on His hands and knees in the mud and fashioned out of the earth man in His own image, in His own likeness.  We were never created to be equal with God, but to be in the likeness of God, corresponding to God, made and conformed to His image. So God formed man out of the dirt to be like Him.  And then when He had lovingly shaped every feature, every inward part in wonderful ways, He bent over and placed His lips upon our lips and breathed the breath of life in us.  God created mankind for love, for His love, and that we might love Him.

But as we see in Genesis 3, mankind rebelled against the plan of God.  They acted independently.  Eating the fruit of the  tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn’t that the fruit itself was sin, but acting in independence from God was sin.  Man wanted to choose for himself what was right and what was wrong.  We wanted to be  like God in the sense that we can determine the parameters of our existence rather than live in accordance to God’s purposes.

Romans 1:21 tells us what happened as a result of that original sin, that original rebellion against the purpose of God.  It says, “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.  For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”

Then in vs. 28, we see the downward spiral of society as a result of that independence. It reads like a diagnosis of modern societies ills today.  “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”  Romans clearly is talking about people who have lost their way, who deviated from the plan and purpose of God to their own peril, rushing to their own destruction.

Crosby, Stills and Nash who were the travelling minstrels of my generation recorded a song called “Woodstock” which was written in 1969 by Joni Mitchell.  The first verse goes “Well I came across a child of God, he was walking along the road and I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me: Well, I’m going down to Yasgur’s farm, going to join in a rock and roll band.  Got to get back to the land, set my soul free. We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”  They actually had the right idea but the wrong plan.  Mankind does need to get back to the garden. We need to get back to the Garden of Eden.  We need to get back to the original plan of God for our lives.  Unfortunately, the devil sold the mother of all men a bill of goods then, that she would be better off deciding for himself what was right or wrong and what her purpose should be. And the results have been disastrous for mankind.  The devil is still deceiving men and women today with the same strategy today.

The last line of the song “Woodstock” seems to admit that man is deceived, it says; “We are stardust, we are golden, we caught in the devil’s bargain, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”  Unfortunately, they disregarded the plan of God and tried to find their own way back, and the result is we are more lost today than ever.

The Garden of Eden, by the way, was a real place here on Earth that existed before the fall of man.  But symbolically, the Garden of Eden is a picture of heaven.  When Jesus went throughout Israel He was preaching that men should repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  In other places it says the kingdom of God.  And so we know that the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God are both referring to the same thing.  It is the place where God is.  It is the spiritual kingdom of God.

In the Garden, mankind walked in the cool of the evening with God.  And when man fell through sin, that fellowship, communion with God was broken.  So God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ to be born as a man, that He might become one of us, that He might suffer the penalty of our sin upon Himself, that we might be saved.  So that we might be restored to the fellowship with God which man had in the beginning, in the original plan of God, the way we once were back in the Garden.  That is why Jesus came, to make it possible for us to be reconciled to God.  For man that has lost his way to come back to God.

Now that is the picture that Jesus presented in the first parable of Luke 15 which we looked at last week.  The parable of the lost sheep. Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  Jesus says this is the reason that I have come, to seek and to save those that were lost.  And so He tells a story about a sheep that is lost and a shepherd that goes looking for it.  And when He finds it, He binds it’s wounds and lays it upon His shoulders and carries it home, rejoicing.  He says there will be joy in heaven for one sinner that repents. Repentance is the path to restoration with God.  It’s the way to get back to the plan of God.

So what does that mean to repent?  It means to surrender to God’s purpose.  To surrender to God’s design for us.  God’s design for man was to be made in His image.  To reflect the image of God.  To be the bride of God.  To be in fellowship with God.  To be in service to God.  To be obedient to God.  So to be saved is to repent of doing things your way, deciding for yourself what is right and what is wrong.  To repent of being your own god, of deciding your own fate, and submit to the Lordship of Christ in every aspect of your life.

Now I am afraid that by that definition then not a lot of people are actually saved.  They may be religious.  They may be more moral than the guy living across the street.  They may pray to God. They may go to church. They may have been baptized.  But they have never realized that they were lost.  That the way that seemed right unto a man was actually the way of death.  And as a result of realizing that they were lost they have never completely surrendered to God and said, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.  I am lost.  I surrender all.  I want to be remade in your image and I realize that I am incapable of doing it on my own. Like the sheep that went astray I cannot find my way back to the Garden.  I have been caught in the devil’s bargain.  I thought I could find happiness in my own way.  I thought I could be wise like you and make my own decisions.  But I realize that I am lost and in need of a Savior or else I will be lost eternally.”

Now that is repentance and this is the message that Jesus is preaching, to repent and be saved in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. This is such an important message that Jesus gives us three illustrations or parables which reveal 3 different perspectives to being lost and then being saved.  And it’s the second parable that we are looking at today.  My introduction was extremely long, but thankfully the illustration is very short.  But it is the same message as number one and number three.  However it is from a woman’s perspective.  A mother’s perspective.

First of all, Jesus says this woman had 10 coins and she lost one of them.  Now that may not really seem like a major calamity to us today.  But in the Middle East at this time women used to have what was called a dowry.  It was a sum of money that belonged to the woman which served as an element of financial security in the case of widowhood or against a negligent husband, and could eventually go to provide for her sons and daughters.  The women would oftentimes sew the money inside a headdress which they would wear, so that the money was always with them.

And so at some point the woman discovers that one of the ten coins is missing.  She is distraught.  Who knows how long it was missing.  It must have fallen out of the headdress somehow. It is lost.  And so she begins to look for it.   Now there are a number of points that I think that are born out in the parable that I think are applicable to us.

First of all, notice that the coin is lost at home.  Unlike the parable of the sheep, this coin didn’t wander off.  But she lost it at home.  It was hers to keep, and now she lost it.  This is why I think that this parable has to do with mothers.  It could apply to anyone, but a mother is traditionally the keeper of the home.

I’m sure it is evident that the coin represents a person. And so the application to us today would be to ask the question, is there someone in your home that is lost?  Mom, is there someone in your home that is lost, that isn’t saved?   There is no greater stewardship given by God to parents than to raise their children in such a way as to bring them to faith in Christ.  There is nothing more important than to teach their children about God, about the importance of surrendering to follow Christ, and then to live out that Christ like example before your children.  That is job one for a mother or father.

So the question is, is there someone at home that you may have thought was ok, you thought that they were saved, but one day you realize that they must be lost.  There is no tangible evidence that this person in your home is really saved. Oh, they may know the major stories of the Bible. They may even have at your prompting said a prayer at some time when they supposedly received Christ.  Maybe there was a public experience at camp or at a church service which made you think that they were saved.  But as the years went on, it became apparent that there was no desire to live for God.  They have shown no love for the things of God.  There is no commitment, no unconditional surrender to the Lord.  Maybe it’s a reality that you as  mothers and fathers have been unwilling to face.  But lately things have happened that make you question whether or not your kids are saved.

So the second point we see from this parable is that realizing that she has lost this thing of great value, the woman goes into action.  She is a picture of God, who seeks and saves those that are lost.  She is a picture of the heart of God towards the lost world.

Now there are three things that she does.  The first thing Jesus says she does is light a lamp.  She needed light to find her coin.  It says in the Psalms, “your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”  We need the light of the scriptures to help us find the lost.  You know, when I deal with various people from all walks of life, I often find myself intimidated by the person.  Sometimes I’m talking to people that are much better educated than I am.  Some people are more sophisticated.  Some people are older, some are younger.  If I had to rely on my wisdom or my skill then I would be unable to reach anyone with the gospel.  In those situations I have to remember to turn to the scriptures and to let the word of God do the work.  It is the wisdom not of men, but of God.  Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  So the first thing we must do when confronted with a lost person is bring the light of God’s word to bear on them. We need to bring our children under the teaching of the word of God so it can shine into their hearts and reveal to them that they are lost.

Secondly, it says that she  swept the house.  Many  homes in those days had dirt floors.  And so to keep the dust down they spread straw on floor.  So in order to find the coin she took a broom and swept up the straw.  She swept out all the corners of every room.  She swept under the bed.  She swept out the closets.  What this indicates is laying bare every facet of your house. Searching every facet of our lives for error in the light of God’s word.  As a parent that calls for transparency.  We cannot be guilty as parents of saying do as I say, but not as I do.  We need to examine ourselves by the light of God’s word, and then we need to hold our children to the same standard.  We need to be an example of a surrendered heart to God.

Thirdly, Jesus says she searched diligently.  In other words she gave herself completely to the task.  Finding this lost coin became a priority.  Parents, I wonder how many other things have taken priority in your life.  Sure we say our kids are the most important thing in our lives, but many times our actions say otherwise. If you compared the time spent on your career, or your recreation, or your hobbies or your obsessions as opposed to the time spent bringing your children to a saving knowledge of Christ then I wonder what such a comparison would reveal?  I think the parable says it well.  The coin was lost at home.  And I’m afraid that kids today are lost at home as well.  Kids are left home alone to fend for themselves.  They are being raised by MTV.  So it’s no wonder they are lost.

Repentance requires that Jesus Christ must become the priority.  There is no shortcut to salvation.  You can’t hold onto the world and have Christ.  James 4:4 says that friendship with the world is hostility towards God.  Jesus said in Luke 16:14, “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”  Repentance calls for full surrender.  Completely giving yourself to God, to live no more for yourself, but to live your life for God’s purposes.

But Jesus concludes His parable with the coin being found.  What was lost has been restored.  And she calls her friends to celebrate. It’s a picture of the joy of heaven when man is brought back to God.  Jesus says, “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  In 2Peter 3:9, it says that the Lord “is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

Parents, mothers, fathers, if you’re a Christian here today, then the Bible tells us that we are made in God’s image, our purpose is to reflect the love of God to the world, by being conformed to the image of Christ.  Christ came to Earth to do the will of the Father, to offer Himself as a sacrifice for sin.  I wonder if we that claim to be Christians are also doing the will of the Father as our first priority?  Are you sacrificing your priorities, even as Christ did, so that your loved ones may be saved?  Are you willing to make the sacrifice that Christ made?  If not, then you can hardly say that you are being conformed to the image of Christ.

I hope that as the body of Christ we remember the purpose for which we were created.  That we put away all the weights that so easily distract us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

I would just close with one more thought.  And that is the woman pictured here is not just a picture of mothers, but as a picture of the bride of Christ, the church.  And so it is a picture of what all of us who say we are Christ’s should be doing.  There are lost people right here in this house here today.  They may have a form of religion, they may be good people, but they have never fully surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives.  They have never renounced their sin, renounced the world, and given themselves completely as a bride to Christ, forsaking all others, clinging only to Him.  Forsaking all that the world offers in exchange for communion with God the way it was intended in the creation.

Today the light of God’s word has been shed upon your lost heart.  In your heart, you know that something is missing.  The Holy Spirit is at work right now, convicting you of your sin and righteousness and the judgment to come.  He is sweeping in every corner of your house, in your closets, exposing your sin and your shortcomings.  Romans 3:23 says that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  But the good news is that having discovered that you are lost, you can be saved.  The problem with so many people is that they refuse to accept that they are lost and on the way to hell.  But the good news is that Jesus has come to seek and save the lost.  And if you recognize that you are lost today, then all that remains is to repent of your sins, confess to God that you need to be saved, and He will save you.  But Jesus said that they that follow Him must count the cost.  And the cost is your life.  Your will must become subservient to His will.  Your plans must become subservient to His plan.  Your purpose must become subservient to His purpose.  That is what repentance means.  To surrender everything. To become one with Christ.  I hope and trust that today is the day of your salvation.  I pray no one leaves here today lost.  Jesus has come to seek and to save those that were lost.  He died on the cross for our sins, that we might be reconciled to God.  That we might find our purpose, to find our way back to the Garden.  I pray that today is the day of your  surrender resulting in salvation.  Let’s pray.

Obviously from our scripture text this morning, I am not planning a typical Easter message.  We celebrate Easter every Sunday morning and we certainly celebrate Easter this morning, but I will not be preaching an Easter message, per se.

However, millions of people all over the world are celebrating Easter today.  And undoubtedly many people are attending services who rarely go to church at all except for on the major holidays like Easter and Christmas.  And I don’t want to disparage people that only come to church on major holidays.  I would always want to encourage people to come to church.

But I will say that merely observing and participating in religious ceremonies, holy days and rituals really have no bearing at all on the ultimate outcome of your soul.  Jesus makes it clear in His teaching that simply an external exercise of religion is not what God is interested in.  But God looks at the heart, and He wants a heart that is devoted totally to Him.

So today the world celebrates Easter, the resurrection of Christ. Yet it must be obvious that even though they know the story, the world has largely rejected the message.  And while I don’t want to discourage anyone from attending church on a holiday, I would hope that those that do so today are challenged to examine their hearts before God, and not just be duped into thinking that merely going through the motions of rituals and ceremonies, or giving lip service is going to please God.

Jesus said in Matt. 15:8 quoting from Isaiah that God isn’t interested in lip service, but in the heart; ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.” So God doesn’t honor lip service, and neither does He honor empty ceremonies or rituals as indicated in Heb. 10:6, “IN WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE TAKEN NO PLEASURE.”  Jesus went on to show in Luke 13:26 that going to church is not enough either; “Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’; and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; DEPART FROM ME, ALL YOU EVILDOERS.’ What these passages indicate is that God is more interested in the heart than He is in our words or even our actions.

Now that passage in Luke 13 was a reference to those who had an external form of religion but had an unregenerate heart. Their heart was still evil.  And Jesus says that they would be denied entrance to the kingdom of God.  Jesus added in 13:28, “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 yourselves being thrown out.  And they will come from east and west and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God.”  What Jesus is saying is that Abraham’s children, the children of Israel will not be in the kingdom of God, but others from outside of the nation of Israel will come in and recline at the table in the kingdom of God.

Now the Jewish religious leaders understood that the kingdom of God was often likened to a banquet, or a great wedding feast, and so when Jesus uses the idea of a great banquet as a metaphor for the kingdom of God  they understand exactly what He is referring to.  And they realize that He is referring to them being denied entrance to the banquet table in the kingdom of God.

Now when you come to the next chapter, chapter 14, you see that these same Pharisees had invited Jesus to a prominent Pharisee’s house for dinner, and He uses this as an opportunity to teach them further concerning the nature of the kingdom of God by means of a couple of parables about a banquet.

I’m sure most of you are probably familiar with the Pharisees.  They should need little introduction since it seems that Jesus is constantly dealing with the Pharisees.  But I’m afraid that we often caricaturize them as terrible people; we think of them in such a negative light that we lose sight of the reality of what they were really like.  So I want to make sure you understand something about these Pharisees.  Pharisees were the most God fearing, moral, law abiding citizens in the country.  These weren’t the moral delinquents of society – no, far from it.  They knew the Bible backwards and forwards.  They knew most of the Torah by heart.  They meticulously attended every temple service, every festival, every feast day, every Sabbath observance.  They were the religious elite of the 1^st century.  If you were to ask someone in that day who for certain was going to be in the kingdom of God, everyone without question would say if anyone gets in it will be the Pharisees.

In fact, Jesus Himself said in  Matt. 5:20, “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  That verse, by the way, was the verse that caused my dad to become saved.  He had been studying the Bible, and was convicted of how much of a sinner he was.  And when he found that verse, he realized that he could never be good enough to be saved.  And that is when he discovered that salvation is by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God.

But the point I want to emphasize is that when Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, when He tells them they will see Abraham and Isaac and the prophets in the kingdom, but they won’t be there, when they see people coming from all quarters of the globe but they won’t be at the table, He is speaking to the most religious, God fearing, law abiding citizens on the planet.  These people worshipped the one true God, they intensely studied the scriptures and they diligently fasted, tithed and attended services and they were more zealous about it that any of us can even imagine.  And yet over and over again, Jesus calls them hypocrites, and says they will not enter the kingdom.

Now this was shocking.  That would be equivalent today  to walking into a large evangelical church and announcing that none of the leadership, none of the pastors and deacons and elders would be entering the kingdom of heaven.  And then turning to the congregation and saying the same thing.  Then saying that God had declared their hypocrisy to be so offensive that the riffraff of the world would get in, but no one in that church would enter the kingdom of heaven.  That would be a shocking statement, to say the least.  It probably wouldn’t endear you to your audience.  In fact, you would probably be lucky to get out of there without being stoned to death.

So to attempt to apply Jesus message to us today should be troublesome.  It should give you reason to examine yourselves.  In fact, it should prompt you to ask, as one of the disciples asked him in the last chapter, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?” And Jesus answers in the affirmative, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” According to Jesus, not many of those that think that they are going to heaven will be there.  Now that is a troublesome thing and it should give us all a reason to examine ourselves.

Now with that context in mind, let us look at this parable that Jesus gives as He is having dinner with this prominent Pharisee.  I don’t think Jesus was a great dinner guest, by the way.  Contrary to Hollywood’s portrayal of Jesus as some sort of soft spoken, demure, retiring sort of character who wouldn’t hurt a flea, Jesus has no problem calling the host out on numerous occasions when He visited in various people’s house.  And this time is no exception.

If you remember, the Pharisees had invited Him to dinner on the Sabbath because they wanted to trap Him into healing on the Sabbath so they could discredit Him.  They had a person there with dropsy and they  were trying to set Him up.  Now Jesus knew that, but He went anyway and in spite of their duplicity he was compassionate and healed the man with dropsy.  But as He questions the Pharisees and lawyers present, they remain silent.  They  are speechless.  They are afraid to answer His questions.  And so first Jesus rebukes them for their hypocrisy, then He rebukes them for the way they tried to elbow their way to the head of the table which revealed their lack of humility, then He rebukes them for their guest list which revealed their selfish motives.  Like I said, Jesus wasn’t the kind of dinner guest you would invite back again.

So maybe that’s why eventually this guy in the group calls out ““Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”  I mean, up to now they didn’t know what to say.  By this point they are feeling pretty uncomfortable.  So maybe this guy recognizes that Jesus is preaching on the kingdom of heaven, and he is trying to patronize Jesus.  Maybe He says this thinking that it might get Jesus to think that they were all on the same side.

But what is evident about this statement is that this Pharisee is obviously inferring that he is going to be at the great dinner banquet in the kingdom of God.  And I’m sure that all his friends thought the same thing.  I’m sure there were a chorus of “Amen’s” directly following that statement.  It was an attempt to say, hey Jesus, we’re all going to be in the kingdom of God at the great banquet.  Like I said earlier, if anyone was going to be there, you would think that these guys were going to be there.  And they were convinced that they were in the kingdom.  After all, one of the doctrinal distinctives of the Pharisees was that they believed in the resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in the afterlife. But the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and of heaven.  And they fully expected that they were going to be there.

So this man, as the spokesman perhaps of the group says, “Blessed is he who eats bread in the kingdom of heaven.”  They take for granted that they are in.  Yet Jesus doesn’t answer him by confirming his assumption, but rather offers a story that rebukes them all, and confronts them in their self assurance.

So Jesus tells a story about a man who gave a big dinner and he invited many people.  Now as I said last week, a banquet was a big deal in those days.  It was the primary means of socializing and entertainment.  There weren’t a lot of other options in those days other than for someone to have a dinner party, or a wedding feast, something similar to what we might think of as a ball.  And the way this was arranged according to Middle Eastern custom was they would send out two invitations.  The first one was simply to let you know that you were invited to the dinner party on a general day and time.  And the invitees would rsvp to let the host know how many to prepare for.  Everyone who was invited was expected to be there, but it was a matter of courtesy for both parties.  And then there would be a second invitation.  That one would go out on the day of the event and the messenger would say, “Come now.  Everything is prepared.”  And the people would come immediately.  They too would have been preparing to come at a moment’s notice.

Now in the story that Jesus gives, the first message had already gone out.  All the people who would normally be expected were invited and the implication is that they all said that they would come.  But then the day and hour comes when the slave went out and said, “Come; for everything is ready now.”  Everything has been prepared for them.  The house is ready.  The banquet is ready.  The food has been prepared.  The entertainment has been made ready.  The guests have already been invited in advance, now they just need to come.

Now the Pharisees would have been familiar with this scenario.  But then Jesus inserts this next section which under normal circumstances would have been unthinkable in Jewish society.  Vs. 18, “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’

“And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’  And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room. “And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.  ‘For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.’”

So here is the situation.  This parable is yet another affirmation of what Jesus said back in chapter 13 vs. 29, “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 yourselves being thrown out.  And they will come from east and west and from north and south, and will recline at the table in the kingdom of God.”  In other words, the Jews were the first invitees to the banquet table of the kingdom of God, and yet they wouldn’t come.  They rejected the Son of God who had been sent to make it possible for them to enter the kingdom.  They insulted Him.  They ridiculed Him.

And though it’s a rebuke against the self righteousness of the Pharisees, it is also a picture of all who reject the gospel of salvation.  Oh yes, we all want to go to heaven when we die.  We all want to believe that somehow we are going to be included in the kingdom of heaven.  But when the invitation goes out to come now, to come today, we aren’t willing  to forsake our priorities for the kingdom.  We say we are going to be there, but in reality we are committed to our own agenda, our own priorities, and as such we reject what it takes to enter the kingdom of God.  See the invitation of God to enter the kingdom of heaven requires that we forsake the world for the sake of the kingdom.  But like these people in the parable, though we say we are believers, though we say we are in the kingdom, yet our lives reveal that we are not.  We are still committed to our own agenda.

Now as we examine the excuses these men gave in the parable they sound pretty flimsy, don’t they?  But what I think Jesus was doing here was giving us three general categories of excuses that we put before the Lord.  The first guy said I bought a piece of land and I must go look at it.  This man owns property.  It represents our possessions.  The funny thing about possessions is that a lot of times they end up owning us, don’t they?  We find ourselves enslaved to paying our mortgages, paying our car payments, paying our credit card bills.  We buy and we buy, hoping to buy satisfaction, hoping to find happiness, but we end up being enslaved to the bank so we can keep those possessions.  But those things never satisfy and they distract us from complete devotion to the Lord.

You know, if you go to Acts and look at the first church, those people were selling their property and giving it to the church.  That was the characteristic of the first revival.  The converts realized that Christianity required undivided loyalty to Christ and so they sold and gave away their possessions.  And the result was a great revival.  People in the community were in awe of what was going on in the first church.  Souls were being saved.  What a contrast there is from that attitude to the attitude of the church today that teaches that Christianity is the means by which we get more possessions.  The prosperity doctrine tells people that God wants you to have your dream house, He wants you to have a new car.  I’m sorry, but that is not the Christianity of the first century church and it wasn’t the message of Jesus.

Jesus said in Luke 12:33, “Sell your possessions and give to charity.”  He said ““For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  See, this man’s heart was for his possessions.  And God will not settle for second best.  The greatest commandment says we must love the Lord with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength.  We can’t love anything more than God and be accepted by God.  Listen, do you have a lot of possessions?  If you do then Jesus later in this very passage says something that should shake you to your core. Luke 14:33 “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”   Do you believe that?  Do you think Jesus was just kidding?  Maybe He was exaggerating.  Certainly we don’t really have to give up all of our possessions to be Jesus disciple.  I’m sure He was just kidding.  Let’s move on.

The next guy made the excuse that he had just bought five yoke of oxen and he had to go try them out.  This man had a job to do.  He had to go to work.  I think this category represents our careers, our employment, our jobs.  This man put his work ahead of attending the banquet.  He thought the job that he wanted to do was more important than attending the banquet.  I see this so much in the church today.  I believe that the devil has a field day with work more so than almost any other temptation.  Because on the one hand we are told that work is honorable, and it can be.  We are told that work is necessary, and it can be.  But I will also tell you that work can be egocentric.  It can be a means of self sufficiency, of selfishness,  it can be a means of pride.  Many a man abandons his wife and children under the guise that he has to provide for his family when in fact he is just building his ego.  But Jesus said in Mark 8:36, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Psalm 127:2 says, “It is vain for you to rise up early, To retire late, To eat the bread of painful labors; For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.”  Jesus said something similar in Luke 12:24, “Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds!”  And He went on to say in vs. 31, “But seek first His kingdom, and then these things will be added to you.”  This man in the parable exemplifies the person that forfeited the kingdom of heaven because of his work.

And the last category is that of the man whose excuse was that he had just married a wife.  Now I know a lot of men like that.  Their wife runs the house and keeps them on a short leash.  And maybe some men bring that sort of thing upon themselves.  Let me remind you of what Ephesians 5 teaches;  the husband is to be the head of the wife.  That means he is supposed to be the spiritual head of the house.  He is supposed to be the spiritual leader.  Paul said in 1 Timothy that headship was God’s design in creation and mankind fell because Adam abrogated his spiritual responsibility to his wife.

But I think this category extends further than just husband and wife.  I think Jesus is talking about anyone that puts relatives, or loved ones or friends before the kingdom of God.  He makes that clear in just a couple of verses later in this very passage, Luke 14:26, “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.”  Jesus is saying that God will not play second fiddle to someone else that you love more than Him, including yourself.

Listen, I can say without a doubt that there are millions of men who have fallen away from God because they loved a woman more than God. I can assure you that there are millions of women who have fallen away from the kingdom of God because they wanted a man more than they loved God.  I personally know of many men and women right here in this community that have fallen for that trap of Satan.  And I’m not necessarily talking about adultery; though there are great numbers who fall that way as well.  But I’m talking about a young woman who said she loved God and went to church regularly, and professed to be a godly woman, and she met a man who wasn’t a believer and married him and today she no longer is living for the Lord.  Oh, she may still be a member of a church somewhere, but it isn’t a church that teaches the truth, or teaches true discipleship.  And I’ve seen the same thing with men that married a woman who wasn’t a believer and their lives were destroyed.  One of my best friends in California is a mental and financial and spiritual wreck today because his wife left him and took his children and everything he owned and left his life in a shambles.

I know of young men and women that deserted the faith because of unbelieving parents that twisted their arm financially to stay in an apostate church.  Folks, this may be a parable Jesus is teaching, but the applications are very real and have tragic  consequences.  God will not take second place to your possessions, to your career, or to your relationships.  God demands first place.

So the Pharisees were excluded from the kingdom of heaven because their hearts were not humbled before God.  They thought that they were good people.  They thought they worshipped the true God and they belonged to the right church and everyone could see that they were model law abiding citizens.  But Jesus says the man who gave the banquet was angry with them and said none of those men that were invited shall taste of my dinner.

So if the most religious people around weren’t going to be allowed to taste the dinner, that prompts the question – what characterizes the people that were going to enter into the banquet?  Well, Jesus says they were poor and crippled and blind and lame.  First of all, these poor people represented those that knew they were outcasts from society.  The poor knew they were poor.  The crippled and lame and blind knew their condition.  These are people that realize their need.  These are people that realize that they are lost.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matt. 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.  Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  See, these poor and lame and blind are the kind of people that will be blessed.

Listen, when the Bible uses the word blessed what that means was that you would see God.  It doesn’t mean happy like some modern translations render it.  It means that blessed state that comes when you see the glory of God.  And Jesus is saying here that those that will be blessed in the kingdom of God will be the ones who are poor in spirit; they realize that they are spiritually bankrupt.  They know they are sinners, they know their righteousness doesn’t add up to more than the Pharisees.  They know they are lost.  They are poor, beggars seeking mercy from God.

And blessed are those that mourn because of their sin.  Listen, that is what repentance is;  it’s being sick of your sin.  It’s mourning over your sinful condition and being willing to do whatever it takes to be delivered from it.  Please understand, salvation isn’t adding a little church to your life, it’s not adding a little Jesus to your life.  If you have a pot of bad stew you can put all the ingredients in there you want and it will still be bad stew.  You need to start all over again.  You need to be born again.  That is what Jesus is saying.  The heart is desperately wicked the Bible says.  So the remedy is not religion.  It’s not going to an Easter service.  No the remedy is to get a new heart.  And the only way to do that is to come to God sick of your sin in repentance and beg Him to make you a new creature.  Like David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart O Lord and renew a right spirit within me.”  And David went on to say in response to that prayer that “a broken and contrite heart you will not despise O Lord.”

That’s what it means to be blessed, to be humble and to hunger and thirst for righteousness.  That’s the characteristic of these social outcasts Jesus was talking about.  All of us are outcasts from the kingdom of heaven.  None of us have a right to enter. Rom. 3:23 says we all have sinned and fallen short of the kingdom of God. But thank God for Rom. 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Listen, there is a banquet table that has been made ready in the kingdom of God.  God has been preparing it since the beginning of time for those that love Him.  He has prepared it for those that are willing to forsake all that the world has in exchange for eternal life with Him.  He has sent out His invitations.  Jesus said in Mat 11:28 “Come unto Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.”

I’m just the messenger that God has sent to tell you to come, everything is ready.  I hope you don’t refuse Him who is inviting you.  What shall it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your own soul?  What shall a man give in exchange for His soul?  The answer is everything.  God wants everything.  All of you.  All of your heart.  Let’s pray.

I’m sure many of you have heard the famous story concerning a young black musician that lived in the 1920’s and 30’s named Robert Johnson.  According to a mixture of actual history and  folklore, Robert Johnson was a Mississippi blues singer and songwriter, who according to legend, sold his soul to Satan “at the crossroads” in exchange for his remarkable talent on the guitar.

Robert Johnson was born and raised in Mississippi and started playing blues guitar in the late 1920s. His wife and child died in childbirth around 1930 and afterwards he is said to have become bitter towards God and devoted himself to the guitar, heavy drinking and a wanton lifestyle. The crossroads story emerged after he dropped out of sight for a while in the early 1930s and returned as a great guitarist, much to the surprise of many of his contemporaries.  His friend and fellow blues legend Son House once told the story of him selling his soul to the devil as an explanation of Johnson’s astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar.  As the story goes, Johnson went down to a lonely crossroads at midnight and made a deal with the devil, who tuned his guitar and showed him how to play.

Some people said that Robert’s deal with the devil came due and offered as  evidence that they had seen him on all fours, howling at the moon the night he died. Johnson died of mysterious causes at the young age of twenty-seven, and left a legacy of Delta Blues music that has influenced guitar players like Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones. In 1986 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His songs included “Crossroad Blues,” “Me and the Devil Blues” and “Hellhound on my Trail.” In 2003, Johnson ranked fifth in Rolling Stone′s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

I use such a dramatic illustration to bring to your attention the importance of the crossroads that we all come to at some point in our life.  Most people’s life’s journey is punctuated by a number of crossroads, where we have to choose a direction or choose a response.  And while most of  us would never knowingly make a deal with the devil as Robert Johnson was supposed to have done, yet I’m afraid that we routinely make decisions at these crossroads of our lives without fully appreciating how momentous an effect these decisions might have on our life and even potentially disastrous consequences.  Though most of us would never intentionally make  a deal with the devil, we often inadvertently or even deliberately make a choice to turn away from the truth of God’s word for the lie of the devil.

I’m afraid that most of us view these types of crossroad decisions in our lives like the famous Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken.”  We see two roads diverging in a yellow woods, and we cavalierly choose one above the other, and somehow though we know it makes a difference, yet we fail to understand the full significance and long reaching consequences of our decisions.

If you remember out study last week, you will recall that Jesus Himself warned in Matthew 7 that not all roads lead to heaven.  He warned that the road that seemed easier, that seemed more popular, the road everyone else seemed to be on, was actually the road to hell.  And He said that the way is narrow that leads to heaven, and few there be that find it.  Jesus referenced that narrow way in our text when He answered the question posed in vs. 23, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?” 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.”

I’m afraid that most people today don’t give proper consideration to the day to day decisions that we all make on a routine basis. I have been appalled at some of the conversations that I have had with people over the last few years regarding decisions they have made in regards to jobs, or where they would live, or where they wanted to go to church.  Often, they had heard the truth, they may have even recognized it as the truth, and yet they made decisions to reject the truth for another version that they liked better and they didn’t realize the consequences of what they are doing.  They didn’t understand that the decision that they made so glibly, so blindly, was really a diversionary tactic of the devil and will lead them eventually to destruction if they don’t repent.  Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” We don’t recognize the seriousness of decisions that we make.  We don’t really understand the consequences of our decisions as we come to crossroads in our lives.  We think we can accept a less narrow path, or a less stringent gospel, and we will still be ok.  But Satan knows that a series of little deviations from the straight path of God will add up to a big difference in destination. Proverbs 3:5 tells us to “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

Starting in chapter 12, Luke has been recording a running sermon that Jesus has been preaching, which is really a warning of just this very situation.  The Jews were making the wrong choice time after time, in decision after decision, and the underlying message that Jesus has been giving is that there will come a day when their opportunity will be finished.  They have consistently rejected His message, and John the Baptist’s message before Him.  In fact, He says in vs. 34 that this rejection has been the history of the Jews since the time of Moses, rejecting prophet after prophet, even to the point of killing the prophets.  And ultimately, they would even kill the Son of God Himself.

But what they failed to realize was that their time to repent was coming to an end. John the Baptist said that the axe was already laid at the root of the tree.  And in this chapter Jesus gave a parable about the fig tree which was about to be cut down because it failed to bring forth fruit.  They failed to realize that they were at a crossroads in history and they were making a disastrous decision.

In our Wednesday evening service we are studying Genesis, and we discovered in recent weeks that contrary to evolutionary theory, according to the genealogy given in the Bible, mankind is only about 6000 years old.  And the significance of that is born out by understanding God’s timeline.

If we break down this 6000 years, we find that from Adam to Abraham was 2000 years, and from Abraham to Jesus was 2000 years, and from Jesus to our day is 2000 years.  If we consider the first 2000 years, then you will notice that Abraham was a descendent of Noah’s son Shem, and Shem was still alive in the early years of Abraham’s life.  And of course, the flood was God’s act of judgment upon the sins of the world during this first 2000 years. God found one righteous man, Noah, and preserved this man during the flood from whom came Abraham.  And God made a covenant with Abraham that from his seed would come One through whom all the world would be blessed.  It was the promise of the Messiah.

So from Adam to Abraham was 2000 years during which time God judged the world by the flood.  Then from Abraham to the coming of the Messiah was another 2000 years.  During this time God raised up from Abraham’s family the nation of Israel, who would be His chosen people, to whom He gave His law, sent His prophets, and gave His presence in the temple.  This covenant was to be consummated  by the coming of the Messiah.

But we all know the history – the children of Israel disobeyed God continually.  They wanted self rule.  They worshipped pagan idols and lusted after the pleasures of the pagan world.  They rejected God again and again.  And so God brought calamity upon them.  And when they continued still in their rebellion He brought the Chaldeans to kill them and destroy their palaces and the temple and take them away into captivity.  Eventually there was only a remnant of the Jews left who returned to Palestine to rebuild the temple under Nehemiah.  But by the time Jesus comes as the Messiah, they have once again returned to an external form of religion, but denied the power of it to change their hearts.  Judaism has become a religion of self righteousness by performing religious rituals, but their hearts are far from God.

So this is the situation during the ministry of Christ.  Though great crowds accompany Him, they are looking for miracles and following Him for the free food and to see what He might do next.  But very few are being saved.  For the most part, the religious leaders reject Him and even hate Him.  Their hatred will eventually result in crucifying Him.

But Jesus is the Son of God, and He knows not only what is in their hearts, He also knows the Father’s plan and purpose for His coming is not subject to the whims of these rulers. Vs. 31 says at that time some Pharisees approached, saying to Him, “Go away, leave here, for Herod wants to kill You.” And He said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I reach My goal.  Nevertheless I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day; for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem.”

These Pharisees were not concerned about Jesus.  They didn’t care that Herod was seeking to kill Jesus.  They just wanted Him to go away.  They hated His message of sin and the need for repentance.   And perhaps they thought they could scare Him off and get rid of His annoying message.  You know, I have come to realize that people who are in rebellion towards God hate the message of repentance from sin.  They hate it.  It makes them feel uncomfortable.  It makes them feel convicted.  They want self rule, they love their sin and are proud in their self righteousness just like the Israelites were.  When I hear someone complain that they don’t like to hear about sin or the need for repentance than I know that person is either not saved or they are in serious rebellion against the gospel.  Because the gospel is the message of repentance from sin.

Even though Israel had routinely rejected God and was even now rejecting their Messiah, yet what Jesus said illustrates the compassion and mercy of God.  Jesus came to Earth, not to be their political savior, but to be their substitute, the sacrifice for their sins, their Savior.  And this is what He is referring to in that statement.  That today and tomorrow He will continue to perform cures and cast out demons, and on the third day He will reach His goal.  And what He means is that the third day He will rise from the dead, after procuring salvation for those that trust in Him.  He will be in the tomb for three days, and the third day will rise from the dead, after having triumphed over sin and the grave.  And it illustrates the compassion of God in that He is resolutely planning to offer Himself as a sacrifice even as they are planning to kill Him.

But there is also a final warning in this message.  Look at vs. 34; “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!  Behold, your house is left to you desolate; and I say to you, you will not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’”

Jesus reiterates the compassion and love of God – “How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…”  This is the love of God, the outstretched arms of God, beseeching the children of Israel who were supposed to be His children to come under His wings, to come under His protection, but they would not.

But there is a warning  there as well.  They didn’t realize that destruction and desolation was coming on Israel for their rejection of God.  In their lifetime, within their generation, there was coming a time of judgment.  In AD 70, Titus would destroy the temple, he would desecrate the altar, and he would destroy the nation of Israel.  They trusted in the temple of Jerusalem.  It was the foundation of their faith.  They believed that it was proof of the presence of God among them.

But what they failed to recognize that God does not dwell in temples made with hands.  They didn’t realize that at some point in their continual rejection of God the glory of God had left the building.  All they had was a relic of what once was the power and pride of Israel.  Now it was just an empty building, the object of empty rituals, a place of commerce and politically appointed priests who paid bribes to Rome for the seats of authority in the temple.  God was no longer there and instead, He was bringing judgment upon them to destroy it.

The Jews trusted in the temple, and when Titus eventually surrounded the city they would seek refuge in the temple, thinking that God would spare them, but thousands would be massacred inside the temple grounds and then it would be burned to the ground.  Their house would be left desolate.  They had made one decision after another to reject the counsel of God.  They were wise in their own estimation.  They thought they were self sufficient, safe in the external edifices of their religion and Jesus pronounces judgment upon them.  For most of them listening that day, they would be slaughtered during the coming desolation of the nation of Israel.

So in AD 70 the desolation of the house of Israel happened just as Jesus had warned them.  And the time of the Gentiles was ushered in.  We live in the church age which has characterized the last 2000 years.  We live in the light of the gospel.  A greater light than that which the Jews had because we have the complete word of God to reveal God’s finished work of Christ.  We live in a greater age than the Jews because we live under the new covenant, whereas they lived under the old covenant.  We are fortunate enough to live under grace, whereas they were under the law.  But in spite of our great advantages I’m afraid that there are many similarities between the church and the nation of Israel.

It’s been another 2000 years in the timeline of God.  6000 years now since creation.  The number 6, the Bible says, is the number of man.  And I’m afraid that our time is nearly up as well.  As Jesus said in chapter 12, we know how to ascertain the signs of the weather, but we don’t know how to ascertain the signs of the times.  In spite of God’s great compassionate gift to the world, we have turned the grace of God into licentiousness.  We have used the grace of God to say as in chapter 12 vs. 45, “my master is a long time coming…”  and we have begun to live in self indulgence and wickedness and accept evil.   We have sinned against God and said it doesn’t matter.  We have turned to another version of the gospel that doesn’t ask for righteousness, that doesn’t require purity, that doesn’t require sacrifice, and we have turned the church of God into a marketplace and a place of self righteous ritualistic religion that denies the power of a consecrated, holy life.

It’s been the church’s turn at 2000 years and what have we done in response to the gospel which Jesus Christ suffered and shed His precious blood to procure? Look at Hebrews 10:29 which was written to the church.  It contrasts the old covenant with the new covenant and says, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?  For we know Him who said, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY.” And again, “THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Hebrews says, “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.”

So with that in mind, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

Listen, the day is drawing near.  I believe that we may be in the very same situation that the Jews were in the day Jesus preached this message.  This tree is about to be cut down.  This church that has become bloated and monstrously overgrown so that rather than bringing forth fruit it is become the roosts for demons and the doctrines of demons, this church that has harbored sin and not repented that is corrupted and bloated is ready to be judged by God.  He is right at the door.  He is coming back.

1Pet. 4:17 says, “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”  Listen, don’t be deceived.  God is going to purify His church.  Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of God.  But those that do the will of God.  The Lord will judge His people.

Oh Christian, be careful the decisions you make.  Be careful when you come to a crossroads in your life.  Don’t lean on your own understanding.  Don’t make a decision based on appearance or what your mind says is a natural decision.  Don’t make a decision based on your desires or your lusts.  We need to stop serving the almighty dollar and start serving the Almighty God. We need to sacrifice our bodies on the altar to God as an acceptable sacrifice, which is our reasonable service. Listen, the time past is sufficient to have carried out the lusts of the Gentiles.  God is right at the door.  The decisions you make today will have lifelong consequences.  Fear God.  The problem with the church today is there is no fear of God before their eyes. These are like the times of Noah when every man did what was right in his own eyes.  I believe we are at a crossroads in history.  We are at the crossroads of the last days.  And I’m afraid most Christians are blithely going about their business, living for the moment, buying and selling as if things were going to continue this way forever, and we don’t realize that Christ is right at the door.

Jesus said earlier in chapter 12:5 in this same sermon; “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!”  He continues in vs. 45, “But if that slave says in his heart, ‘My master will be a long time in coming,’ and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk; the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers. “And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes,

but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.”  O listen church, we have been entrusted with much.  Much will be required of you.  God is at the door.  He is coming soon.

And for those of you that aren’t saved, remember what Jesus said in chapter 12 vs. 49, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!” Listen, at the end of the first 2000 years the world was destroyed by water.  But Peter says in the last days it will be destroyed by fire.  2 Peter 3:4, ““Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

Listen, there is coming a day of judgment upon all the world.  And salvation simply means being saved from the judgment that is coming upon the world.  Jesus said in Luke 13:34, “How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!”  When I was a little boy in Sunday School in North Carolina, I remember my mother teaching a story on what they used to call a flannelgraph; a board covered in flannel that you could put pictures on and they would stick to it.  And the story I remember best that she told was of a farmer who had livestock that he housed in a great big barn.  And a mother hen had just had her eggs hatch and she had three little chicks.  But that night a fire broke out and the barn burnt down.  The next morning the farmer was examining the ruins of the barn and he noticed a burnt carcass on the ground.  He walked over to it and pushed it over with his hoe and discovered three little chicks came running out from beneath.  The burnt carcass was the mother hen who had sacrificed herself for her chicks by covering them with her wings.

Jesus says in this passage that this is the purpose that He came into the world.  He came to offer us salvation for the judgment that is coming on the world for sin.  He stretches out His arms to you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.  Will you come under His wings?  Or will you be like the stiff necked Israelites who would not come? Who would not accept God’s Son?  I pray that you will humble yourself today and repent of your sins, and ask God to save you. God promises that in response to faith and repentance He will transfer your sins to Jesus and Jesus’ righteousness to you. Jesus is waiting with arms outstretched for you.  But He won’t wait forever.  One day the door will be closed and God will come in judgment.  I pray you won’t be found lacking in that day.  Today you stand at the crossroads, and the only way anyone will escape that day of judgment is by the cross of Christ: if we are under the wings of God’s grace, having repented of our sins, and trusted in the righteousness of Jesus Christ to cover our sins.  Let us pray.

I like the old Welsh hymn that we sung today.  It is a good hymn, teaching sound doctrine, and one that I find refreshing in a time when so much Christian music is favored not because of what it says, but because of the way the music sounds.  But though the origin of this hymn preceded the Welsh Revival by about 20 years, it found a certain measure of fame from it’s use in what became known as the Welsh Revival of 1904, 1905.

There were a number of revivals or spiritual awakenings that happened both in this country and abroad in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.   But I want to quote from Wikipedia about the distinction of some aspects of the Welsh Revival as opposed to previous revivals.  “Unlike earlier religious revivals based on powerful preaching, the revival of 1904-05 relied primarily on music and on alleged paranormal phenomena as exemplified by the visions of Evan Roberts.”

I am not qualified to speak authoritatively on the veracity of  the revival that happened in Wales during that year.  Undoubtedly, some people were saved.  There are many reports of lives being transformed, bars being closed, policemen not having anyone to arrest because entire towns were being transformed.  There seems to be ample evidence of true repentance in many cases, resulting in real conversion.

But at one point Evan Roberts claimed to have a vision in which he saw that he would be the means by which a 100,000 people would come to Christ.  And such was the effect of the revival throughout the countryside that many claimed that there were indeed 100,000 souls saved in a six month period.  However, this number was arrived at by arbitrary means, for there was no real way to confirm that number.  But the report of this number of conversions was in and of itself a sort of confirmation to many that this was a great new work of the Holy Spirit.

But at the same time, there was obviously a counterfeit work that was going on concurrently with the revival.  Several of the histories that I read emphasized that much of the paranormal phenomena was centered particularly upon young teenage girls who became a driving force in the revival.  As a consequence of the emphasis on the paranormal, much  of what was initially attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit was in fact eventually deemed to be not of God at all.  Evan Roberts himself had a nervous breakdown after the first year of the revival.  He began to suffer from serious depression.  He was taken in by a well known patron of the movement, a woman named Jessie Penn-Lewis, who was a prominent religious author.  As a result of this and other events, the revival declined as quickly as it had begun.

Together, Roberts and Penn-Lewis would author a book a few years later renouncing much of what went on during the revival.  The book was called “War on the Saints” and detailed the way in which Satan and his demons counterfeit the work of the Holy Spirit, made especially deceitful when naïve people readily accept all spiritual phenomena as being of God, without discernment of the fact that there are many deceitful spirits gone out in the world.

The main point that I wish to make from this illustration though is that great numbers are not necessarily an indication of true revival in the hearts of believers.  Undoubtedly, many people were saved.  But just as certainly, many more were simply swept along in the emotion and frenzy of the moment and when that had passed, they were no longer as zealous for the things of God as they once were.

Today we see much of the same thing happening in our culture.  Joel Olsteen’s church is held in an football stadium and they have supposedly 60,000 people in attendance on Sundays.  Tens of thousands of people regularly show up in stadiums around the country to hear him speak.

But this fascination with large crowds and great numbers isn’t just limited to Joel Olsteen.  Many evangelists such as Joseph Prince conduct services around the world to packed out audiences numbering in the tens of thousands.  On a national level, mega churches boast several thousands of members at multiple services and some even have multiple satellite church campuses around their cities.  As Americans, we tend to think that bigger is always better.  We think there is no greater testimony to a pastor’s success than the size of his congregation.  And I’m afraid there is no greater assurance to his congregation than the self confirming  knowledge that they are part of a huge congregation.

But great numbers or large churches have never been the credentials of a godly prophet or pastor or a work of God.  Though Jesus Himself had thousands of people following Him, only 500 were in attendance at His ascension, and only 120 in the upper room on the day of Pentecost.

I think there is going to be a great upset at heaven’s Bema seat judgment one day, when some of the preachers and evangelists that received the most accolades here on earth will be last, and those unknown faithful missionaries in foreign lands and pastors of tiny churches in the boondocks will be first.  Jesus says that very thing in vs. 30; “And behold, some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last.”

I think this seemingly contradictory element of ministry was the basis for the scenario that we see identified in this passage.  Jesus has this great crowd numbering in the thousands that is following Him around and waiting for Him to do a miracle or some great thing.  But yet there weren’t many that were actually getting saved.  And someone in the crowd recognizes this and questions Jesus by saying, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?”

It’s obvious that this  question was prompted by the two parables Jesus had just finished giving to that effect in vs. 18-21.  In both of them He showed that the kingdom of God was something that would have an unhealthy, unnatural, even monstrous element to it.  In the first parable Jesus relates the kingdom of God, which by the way is simply a way of speaking of the church, that the church becomes a large tree where the birds of the air nest in it’s branches.  As we said last week, mustard seeds produce mustard bushes, not trees.  And so this picture is of a monstrosity, a seed that produced a tree that instead of producing fruit, had birds of the air nesting in it’s branches.  And I showed you last week that in Jesus prior parable about the soils, that He identifies the birds of the air as being the devil and his angels.  So the devil and his angels (demons) nests in the branches of the church.

And the other parable is basically indicating the same thing.  In this case it’s leaven, always a picture of sin in the Bible, that is hidden in the three pecks of flour until it’s all leavened.  And we told you last week that the three pecks of flour, which are likened to the kingdom of God, the church, comes from the Old Testament idea of the grain offering which was offered to the Lord in worship.  And so the picture is of sin being in the worship of the church, and the entire church being corrupted by it.

Now that is the scenario then when someone from the crowd asks Jesus the question, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?”  Whoever it was, and I think it may have been the disciples, was kind of confused.  There were all these people following Jesus around, seeing His miracles and listening to Him preach.  There was all kinds of enthusiasm, and emotion, and expectations that surrounded His ministry.  And yet it was apparent from His teaching that the majority of those listening were not entering into the kingdom. And furthermore, Jesus is making it clear in His messages that not all that thought that they were of the kingdom were really in it.

And so Jesus gives an answer to this person that is instructive for us today as well as we consider the great tree that has become the church, and as we recognize that doctrines of demons have found residence in the church, and that sin has corrupted the church and it’s worship.  And many of us are left wondering at how the crowds rush to embrace the next new church trend, while those of us that try to be faithful to God’s original blueprint of the church are left feeling and looking like an archaic, out of touch relic of the Reformation.

It’s a question that gives rise to speculation that perhaps if we just adapted to what other churches were doing, perhaps if we just loosened up on some of the doctrines of the church, if we just followed some of the strategies that seem to be working so well for others, then perhaps we could enjoy some of the same success.  We might become more popular.  This thinking progresses along the lines of “it’s got to be our fault. We need to update.  Maybe we need different music, or a younger, hipper pastor.”  After all, whatever brings more people into the church can’t be a bad thing.

But notice that Jesus doesn’t really even answer those questions.  He doesn’t even directly answer the question that was posed to Him.  But what He does say is to present a version of salvation that is totally at odds with most evangelical’s approach to salvation.  Jesus presents salvation without a formula, without a sinner’s prayer, or even using the Roman’s Road.  He doesn’t give a method for invitations, or a method for church growth.  He doesn’t give the number of how many will be saved.  But what He does is present yet another picture of salvation, of entering in the kingdom that is at odds with most people’s understanding.

Note that first of all, Jesus says in vs. 24, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”  Strive is an interesting word.  It comes from the Greek word “agōnizomai”.    It means to contend, to fight, to struggle to endeavor.  It was used to depict the struggles of a sport or a fight.

And I dare say that it is a principle that I have never heard a preacher use in relation to salvation.  Salvation is presented as accepting a gift, of receiving a blessing, of being given something for nothing.  But Jesus is presenting it as something that you have to battle for.

Now what on earth does He mean?  I’ll tell you what He means.  He means that you have to battle with yourself, fight against your sin nature, your selfish nature, your desire for self rule, for self gratification, for self fulfillment.  Salvation means nothing less than being willing to give up your will for His will, your desires for His desires.  And the flesh doesn’t want that.  Satan doesn’t want that. The world doesn’t want that.  So there is a great conflict in coming to Christ.  Because most of us come to Christ wanting something, wanting deliverance from a crisis, or deliverance from hell, but unwilling to sacrifice anything to get it.  And yet salvation does not come without a cost.

Jesus said we must count the cost of following Him.  You say, “But Roy, I thought Jesus paid it all, and grace is free.”  You don’t understand grace.  Grace is Jesus paying a price you could never, ever pay.  But there is a cost for  you as well.  Jesus said in chapter 12 that it is the cost of division between mother and daughter, between father and son.  It is the cost of not having a place to lay your head.  It is the cost of giving up your possessions.  It is the cost of taking up your cross and following Him in the fellowship of His sufferings.  It is the cost of rejection by the world, it is the cost of losing business, it is the cost of being an outcast in society.  There is a cost to following Jesus which involves a battle between your natural inclinations and God’s will, your natural instincts and God’s commandments, your common sense and God’s wisdom.  It’s a struggle, and it’s an epic struggle.

Now look at the rest of the statement, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”  Note second of all that it is a narrow door.  It’s not necessarily easy to find, nor is it easy to go through.  It’s not a door that allows you to carry a bunch of baggage in with you.  You can’t enter into the kingdom of heaven with the world on your back.  You have to leave the world on the other side.  And it’s a door that you have to go through individually.  It’s not entered as part of a crowd, or a congregation, or by a race or nationality.

Jesus said in Matt.7:13, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Listen, there are many who seek to enter into the kingdom of heaven.  There are many that think that they are already in the kingdom of heaven, but if what Jesus says is true then most of them are not in the kingdom of heaven after all.  Many statistics have come out in recent years that show that about 80% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians.   And yet the percentage that believe in the inspiration of the Bible as God’s word is just a tiny fraction of that.  The percentage that believe in a literal hell is just a tiny fraction.  There is a great difference between those that think that they are on the road to heaven, and those that will find it.

Everyone wants to go to heaven.  Only a fool is an agnostic.  Only a fool is an atheist.  But merely believing to some extent in God does not bring about salvation.  Even just believing that Jesus existed and lived on the earth does not constitute salvation, otherwise Jesus would have just shown that everyone who was looking at Him in the flesh on that day would have been saved.  That He was alive was irrefutable.  And all Jews believed in the existence of God.  But yet He says that few there are that are saved. Obviously just believing in His existence did not save them.

I’m afraid that many people in churches today are not saved.  I fear that over zealous evangelists and preachers have used gimmickry to get people to make an emotional response to the gospel.  As I have studied some of these revivals and the men that led them, it’s apparent that many of them used theatrics, music, emotional appeals and every thing imaginable to get people to come forward in an invitation and say a prayer and then counted as having made a decision for Christ.  But even a cursory look at some of those results a year or two later and you will find very few of them living a Christian life.  But I’m afraid that vast numbers of people like that fill our pews on Sunday mornings, under the illusion that they are good with God.

This is a tragedy, that people are being deceived into thinking that they are in the kingdom of God, and yet one day they will find out that they are not.  Jesus presents an illustration of this point.  He says, “Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, ‘Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’

It’s possible to be caught up in the enthusiasm, to be a part of the congregation, to think that you have been accepted in the kingdom of God, and one day the door is closed and you find yourself on the outside.  What a horrible thought.

Vs. 26, “Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’;”.  These are people that think that they are in the kingdom.  They went to church.  They took communion.  They listened to sermons, participated in the worship. They were members on the rolls.  They may have even taught Sunday School.   They thought they were in.  But they are not.

Vs. 27, “and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; DEPART FROM ME, ALL YOU EVILDOERS.’”   Here is the distinction folks, don’t miss it.  There is a distinction between those that claim to be in the kingdom and are not, and those that are in the kingdom.  And the distinction is their fruit.  Now please understand something;  fruit is not the means of salvation, but it is the evidence of salvation.  Look once again to Matthew 7:16, “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?  So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.”  Twice Jesus says that you will know true believers by their fruits.

Now what are fruits?  The text makes it clear that fruit is simply doing the will of God, obeying the word of God.  The contrast is in the next verse; to not do the will of God is to practice lawlessness.  Vs. 21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.  Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

So salvation is not dependent upon saying “Lord, Lord.” Salvation isn’t dependent upon what comes out of the mouth, but what comes out of the heart.  But salvation is dependent upon doing the will of God.  This throws much of our contemporary theology right out of their stained glass windows, doesn’t it?  But they will say, “Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Didn’t we cast out demons? Didn’t we do miracles in your name?”

Hey, these guys had all the spiritual gifts going, didn’t they?  One of the problems of many charismatic churches is that the proof of their salvation is that they speak in tongues, they prophesy.  One of the proofs of their salvation is that they think that they are empowered by the Holy Spirit in all sorts of paranormal phenomena.  And naïve congregations clap and hoot and holler at the histrionics of their leaders, not knowing what spirit they are of.

Listen, I’m not hear to tell you today who is saved and who isn’t.  I don’t know.  I might make an educated guess by examining the fruit of someone that claims to be saved.  But I can’t know for sure.  But God knows.  He knows the hearts.  He knows the deeds that we do in secret.  He knows whether or not we have ever really repented of our sins and have in fact turned away from sin and the world.  Whether or not we have forsaken sin.

Listen, the only way to have fruit in your life is to first of all be a fruit tree.  In our natural state, we are not fruit trees. In our natural state we are unable to produce righteousness. But by repentance from sin and faith in Jesus Christ we are grafted into the body of Christ.  That is the first step.  It’s coming to Christ in desperation and poverty and bankruptcy, begging God for forgiveness and mercy. Begging God to be transformed and changed from a sinner to a child of God.  And God promises that whoever comes to Him like that will not be cast out, but will be adopted into the family of God.  And when we are grafted into this body, then we will bring forth fruit.  We will be in Christ and Christ will be in us.  We will be new creatures, living a new life in and through Christ who lives in and through us.  And then it is going to be evident to everyone that we are bearing fruit. We live righteously because we have been made righteous.

That invitation to be grafted into the body of Christ is universal.  The Jews thought that it was a physical thing, that their salvation depended on being sons of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.  They thought they could get in based on heredity.  Based on nationality.  Based on religion.  But in vs. 29 Jesus says that those that are going to be in the kingdom “will come from east and west and from north and south, and will 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.”

There is an invitation that is inherent in Christ’s message.  There is good news and that is that Jesus has paid the price you could never pay.  And for those that are willing to forsake sin and the world to follow Him there is salvation from the judgment to come.  But please understand what it means to follow Christ, to forsake the world.  It’s a battle of the will to let go of everything for this pearl of great price.  But it is a battle that has eternal reward.

I hope no one here has been deceived into thinking that somehow they have entered into the kingdom without the struggle of repentance and forsaking sin.  I hope no one thinks that they are in because of an association, or membership, or their relationship to someone who is in.  I hope that on that day when God shuts the door, you won’t find yourself on the outside wondering what happened.  There is going to be a terrible day of judgment that day is coming soon when the door will be closed.

I’m afraid that the point Jesus is making in this message is that most people lack true repentance. They lack the true contrition, true brokenness. They have never come  in desperation. They don’t have a true relationship to Jesus Christ. They just hang around the church and think that is enough. They don’t know what it means to bow to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  They want a gospel that doesn’t ask for repentance. They want a gospel that has no threat of condemnation or judgment. They want a gospel that allows them to have some superficial attachment to Jesus, but not a bowing to His absolute sovereignty at any cost. They want a gospel that fixes them in this world to make them more comfortable. But that’s not the gospel that Jesus is preaching. And that’s not what Jesus offers.

Listen, the word revival is not even in the Bible.  Don’t be deceived great movements, great signs and wonders. Jesus says that the church will be characterized by an unnatural growth, it will be the roost for doctrines of demons, it will be puffed up by the corruption of sin, but not all that think that they are part of the kingdom are actually known by God.  They thought that the way was easy, the road was broad, but in fact the road was narrow, and the gate was small.  It is with difficulty that people are saved.  It is by striving, by contending, and by struggling with sin and false doctrine.  The church of God is not going to be characterized in these last days by great revivals where thousands and tens of thousands are swept into the kingdom in a wave of emotion and ecstasy. But true revival is an individual process of repentance, and then bringing forth the fruit in keeping with repentance.