“Strive to Enter in by the Narrow Door” (Luke 13:24)

In this part of the sermon: Martin introduces the sermon's text, Luke 13:22-30, and establishes the historical context of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem. He emphasizes that Jesus was going to Jerusalem…

Martin shares how he receives standing invitations for R&R from friends, contrasting this with Jesus' purpose in going to Jerusalem, which was not for rest but for sacrifice.

Was he going to seek some R&R with some friends he had made in his earlier Judean ministry and who perhaps left him with standing invitations that any time he came to Jerusalem he could be sure of a bed for himself and some of his intimate followers? There are places all over the world where I have such standing invitations. Pastor Martin, if you can ever come here, there, be assured. A telephone call.

4:35 - 5:01 Read in full sermon

The point: Marshal all of your faculties and concentrate all of your attention not on the speculative question, are there few or many that be saved? But on this burning personal question, am I saved in the only way that anyone can …

A scenario of people trapped in a burning building asking the fire captain how many will be rescued is used to illustrate Jesus' redirection from a speculative question to the urgent personal need for rescue.

He does answer the question, but he addresses a far more crucial issue as he does give his response. It's as though, we're standing outside a tenement house, an apartment house, and for some reason it is now a raging inferno, and there are dozens of people trapped inside, and the fire department has come, and the extension ladders are making their way up to the upper windows. The hoses are trained on this inferno. Ladders are being run up the side of the building.

18:51 - 19:29 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin elaborates on the 'narrow door' of true conversion, explaining it requires stripping away native pride and self-sufficiency, bending stubborn self-will, repudiating sin…

The medical term 'stenosis' (narrowing of a normal structure) is used to explain the meaning of the 'narrow door' and 'narrow gate.'

Someone has stenosis of the spine. That's a very real issue with us now. One of the problems my wife has been struggling with along with the cancer for three years. It's a narrowing of the normal structure.

22:03 - 22:16 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin elaborates on the 'narrow door' of true conversion, explaining it requires stripping away native pride and self-sufficiency, bending stubborn self-will, repudiating sin…

The idea that humans are born with 'thick down padded jackets and coveralls filled with native pride and deception and self-will' illustrates the spiritual baggage that must be stripped to enter the narrow door.

It is that door and that gate where we natively proud, self-sufficient sinners not born naked spiritually. When the scripture says, naked came I out of my mother's womb, naked I'll return to the earth, that's true physically but not spiritually. You know we are born with thick down padded jackets and coveralls filled with native pride and deception and self-will. They go astray from the womb speaking lies.

23:24 - 24:03 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin elaborates on the 'narrow door' of true conversion, explaining it requires stripping away native pride and self-sufficiency, bending stubborn self-will, repudiating sin…

The publican's prayer in Luke 18, 'Oh God, be propitious, be merciful to me, not a sinner, but the sinner,' is given as the model disposition for entering the narrow door.

Only those who've come to that narrow door and by God's law and by God's gospel, we are stripped of all of our self-sufficiency and all of our pride and we stand naked and undone and we enter in without any reservation to the cry of that publican recorded in Luke 18 and we say, Oh God, be propitious, be merciful to me, not a sinner, but the sinner. We come to the place where our sinfulness is not a theological concept and just like kids will say, Oh yeah, I had the measles. The whole household got them. Yeah, I'm a sinner.

24:35 - 25:18 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin elaborates on the 'narrow door' of true conversion, explaining it requires stripping away native pride and self-sufficiency, bending stubborn self-will, repudiating sin…

Kids saying 'Oh yeah, I had the measles. The whole household got them. Yeah, I'm a sinner. Everybody's a sinner' is used to illustrate a superficial understanding of sin versus a deep, personal conviction.

Only those who've come to that narrow door and by God's law and by God's gospel, we are stripped of all of our self-sufficiency and all of our pride and we stand naked and undone and we enter in without any reservation to the cry of that publican recorded in Luke 18 and we say, Oh God, be propitious, be merciful to me, not a sinner, but the sinner. We come to the place where our sinfulness is not a theological concept and just like kids will say, Oh yeah, I had the measles. The whole household got them. Yeah, I'm a sinner.

24:35 - 25:18 Read in full sermon

The point: Have you been stripped? I mean stripped.

The 'long, stiff neck of stubborn self-will' is used to describe humanity's natural inclination to do its own thing, which must be bent to enter the narrow door.

Strive to enter the narrow door. It's narrow because we must be stripped of this padded, down-filled clothing of native pride and self-sufficiency. But further, we must know what it is to bend the long, stiff neck of stubborn self-will. Each of us comes up to that door in the description of Isaiah the prophet.

26:53 - 27:16 Read in full sermon

Driving home: This whole idea that we can believingly embrace Christ and His finished work on behalf of sinners while not fundamentally, irrevocably repudiating sin, as the purposeful pursuit of life is a travesty upon the biblical do…

The sight of a man carrying a crossbeam in first-century Palestine is used to illustrate the meaning of 'taking up the cross' – rejection by society and utter loss of dignity.

And Jesus said, if you're going to come after me, you must say no to yourself, take up the cross. Now what did that mean for a first century Palestinian? It meant only one thing. When you got up in the morning and you made out your shopping list and you were going to the local bazaar, to the local market to get your food for the day, you didn't have a refrigerator and a freezer, and a microwave, and you had to go down every morning and buy the commodities for the day.

31:19 - 31:46 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin elaborates on the 'narrow door' of true conversion, explaining it requires stripping away native pride and self-sufficiency, bending stubborn self-will, repudiating sin…

A wedding ring symbolizing identification with one's spouse is used to illustrate how believers must be unashamedly identified with Christ and divorced from the world.

The Lamb kissed the world goodbye. Take the ring off and throw it in the deepest part of the lake. Wherever I go, that ring says, there's one woman in my life, and I'm unashamedly identified with her. If I'm on a plane and a woman's sitting next to me and I'm praying for an opportunity to witness, first thing I do is make sure before I start talking to her that I have an itch over on this arm.

33:55 - 34:21 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin elaborates on the 'narrow door' of true conversion, explaining it requires stripping away native pride and self-sufficiency, bending stubborn self-will, repudiating sin…

Paul's statement about being crucified to the world by the cross is quoted and expounded to show how the cross severs believers from the world's affections and values.

God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which I have been crucified to the world and the world unto me. What is he saying? He's saying the cross on which Jesus and I marveled reading yesterday morning in 2 Timothy chapter 1 for Paul as a Jew who thought Jesus was a blasphemer, for him to say, Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ, of Yeshua Messiah, what that must have meant for him every time he wrote the words. He must have thrilled with the wonder of it

35:33 - 36:18 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin elaborates on the 'narrow door' of true conversion, explaining it requires stripping away native pride and self-sufficiency, bending stubborn self-will, repudiating sin…

The image of a 'cadaver hanging on a cross with the birds plucking out its eyes' is used to illustrate how unattractive a believer becomes to the world once crucified to it.

and he said that cross on which my Messiah died is the cross by which I have become as attractive to the world as a cadaver hanging on a cross with the birds plucking out its eyes. That's what he said. The cross on which Jesus died in which I pin all my hopes for forgiveness in the embrace of faith has not only been the door of forgiveness but it's been the declaration of the divorce through which I am crucified to the world. You know what the world thinks of me when they see me?

36:18 - 36:56 Read in full sermon

The point: If you have any hope of entering the narrow door, you, not somebody else, you must make this issue a matter of conscious concern and concerted spiritual effort.

The conscious awareness of a sliver in one's backside or a toothache is used to illustrate how the issue of salvation must become a matter of inescapable, conscious concern.

That is, something that you are thinking about. Right now, if you had picked up a sliver sitting on a log and it was embedded in your backside, you would be conscious of the sliver in your backside while you're trying to sit on the chair. You couldn't forget it. And finally, you'd nudge your mom or dad and say, I've got a sliver in my backside.

40:40 - 41:02 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: This section emphasizes the individual's responsibility to 'strive' (agonize) to enter the narrow door. Martin addresses potential Reformed objections about spiritual inability…

Examples of Greco-Roman wrestlers, Roman legionaries in combat, and marathon runners are used to illustrate the intense, sustained effort implied by the Greek word 'agonizomai' (strive).

It is the standard word you would use in the Greco-Roman world if you were to see two wrestlers at one of the Grecian games, all their body hair shaved, lathered with olive oil, and they're in the ring, grappling bone and sinews, and muscle and brain, pitted one against the other. And if you were to see them and describe what they were doing, you'd say they were agonizomizing. They were striving. They were wrestling.

41:51 - 42:19 Read in full sermon

The point: We're not to sit still in sin and worldliness waiting for the grace of God. We're not to go on still in our wickedness, sheltering ourselves under the vain plea. We can do nothing till God draws us. We're to draw near to…

A lengthy quotation from Bishop Ryle is used to reinforce the principle that believers are responsible for exertion in seeking salvation and should not wait passively for God's grace.

Again, listen to the wise old Bishop of Liverpool, Bishop Ryle. Whatever others may do in religion, the Lord Jesus would have us know that our duty is clear. The gate is narrow. The work is great.

45:24 - 45:37 Read in full sermon

Driving home: I know it is not popular in our day for respectable preachers to talk about the torments of hell. But when we become more respectable than the Son of God, may God have mercy on us.

The gnashing of teeth by those who hated Stephen during his martyrdom is referenced as an expression of intense frustration and anger, illustrating the meaning of 'gnashing of teeth' in hell.

When Stephen's being martyred, those who hated him and hated his Christ had said they gnashed with their teeth the expression of intense frustration and anger. Revelation 16 speaks of those who gnaw their tongues for pain. You'll never forget the first time I traced through in the Gospel of Matthew alone how many times Jesus used this very construction the weeping and the gnashing of teeth six times alone in the Gospel of Matthew. Think of it.

55:07 - 55:41 Read in full sermon

Driving home: I know it is not popular in our day for respectable preachers to talk about the torments of hell. But when we become more respectable than the Son of God, may God have mercy on us.

The description of Jesus as 'all steel and velvet' is used to convey his fearless commitment to his Father combined with his meekness and gentleness, highlighting the gravity of his words about hell.

Our gracious Lord whom the common people heard gladly. The Son of God who was so at home with children that when he needed an illustration he'd say, Hey, Sonny, come over here. The little kid popped right up on his knee and he uses him. There was nothing intimidating about him.

55:41 - 55:57 Read in full sermon