Well, my name is Britton Brewer. I'm the associate pastor here at Reformation Covenant Church. If you're visiting with us today, it is a pleasure to have you here with us. This morning's passage, considering Luke chapter 13, that passage we read about the narrow door, about how to enter it. Francis Schaeffer once said that in the kingdom of heaven, there are no little people. And according to our passage here, there are no little people perhaps, but there are some very skinny people. Let's go to the Lord and ask for his help. As we consider this passage together. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you how, in it, you comfort us, you encourage us, you convict us, you exhort us, you admonish us, you teach us, and you train us. We pray, Father, that as we now attend to the words of Christ in these pages, we pray that the Holy Spirit himself would be teaching, teaching us how to love Christ, how to follow after him, how to find ourselves in his kingdom, not on our own merits, not because, Lord, we were worth saving, but because we heard the word, when we were convicted and we believed on the Lord Jesus. Father, help us, we pray, as we know that we are hard of hearing. We need your help. We need your help to open our ears, to soften our hearts, to be convicted of sin and to turn to Christ. We pray this in the name of Jesus, amen. Well, this morning, the passage that we have to consider today, it begins with a note of where Jesus is going. Those first verses right there, he went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. If you remember back in Luke chapter nine, after there are a lot of questions about who Jesus was, and finally in the transfiguration, he reveals himself and his identity as the eternal glorious son of God. It then says in Luke 9, 51, that he turned his face toward Jerusalem. Since then, we've been following Jesus on the path to the cross. And if you recall, that sermon, several months ago now, one of the things I said was, one of the main questions that this entire passage, from Luke chapter nine, verse 50, to about 1944 or so, one of the main questions that makes up this entire section of Luke, it's called the Luke Travelog, is the question of what does it mean to follow Jesus? What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? One of the themes that we've seen the past few Sundays that Jesus hammers home again and again and again is that if you're going to follow him, If you're going to be with him, if you're going to be one of his disciples, the main thing you have to hear from his message is the very simple command to repent. That's one of the most important things that makes up the life of a disciple. It's to hear the word of Christ, to be convicted of sin, and instead of hardening your heart, instead of turning from Christ, instead of trying to justify yourself, instead of trying to make excuses, you repent. and you follow after him. This passage, he's hitting on that similar theme, but he's now coming at it from a different way. He's now going to address this question of how to follow him, not in terms of the life lived necessarily, but actually in terms of the destination. Where are we going? What's the end game here? And if you wanna meet me there, what does it mean to come there? How do you find yourself among those who at the end of time will be seated around my heavenly banquet? Similar question, different emphasis. And the way we get into it is someone asks Jesus what seems to be a very innocent question. Lord, will those who are saved be few? Now it seems like an innocent question. Seems like a question that many of us might ask, and in fact, this question was asked pretty commonly amongst the Jews of the day. There's evidence in some writings that people thought that maybe only one sect of Judaism would be saved, so therefore it would be few, and the rest of the Jews, the rest of Israel might fall away. There were some, and we have evidence from this in what's called the Mishnah, or a collection of rabbinic writings, that people thought that all of Israel would be saved. Regardless of what sect you're part of, all of Israel would be saved as long as you didn't do a few things. You didn't say the holy name was one of them. You didn't cavort with unbelievers and Gentiles, those sorts of things. Nevertheless, Two kind of popular conceptions, almost antithetical to each other. Very few will be saved, or on the other hand, all Israel will be saved because of the covenant that God has made with Abraham. Okay, innocent question, and yet. If you think about it, if you slow down and you really consider it, and you try to discern the spirit behind the question, you can almost hear a certain implication of this. Lord, those who will be saved, are they gonna be few? And I'm glad I'm not part of them. I'm just wondering. I know I'm not one of those who's not gonna be saved. I know, I'm clear. But what's the number? I know I'm not gonna be in the number, but just curious to know. This person asking would be almost from the beginning suggesting their concern was not so much with how to get into the kingdom, was not concerned with their personal appropriation of the kingdom, whether or not the reality of the kingdom had invaded their lives. Their question was simply, basically an abstraction, a way of distancing from themselves what the kingdom demanded of them. Now it's not wrong to ask these sorts of questions. We in the reformed camp love to ask questions about scripture, things that aren't clear. We love to talk about things like the election and God and eternity past. We love talking about the perseverance of the saints, all these things. But there is a way to ask these questions that puts this up, this sort of intellectual speculation as a facade, as a mask for true holiness. We can ask questions, we can talk wholly, we can ask sort of sanctimonious questions, and our concern really is not whether we understand them, whether they've penetrated into our hearts, whether they've gripped our minds, but whether or not we can divide the right fraction, whether we can carry the why. Whether we have all the information right in our head and we completely forget that the point is not for us to, with our minds alone, understand, but with our hearts to understand, perceive, and obey the one who meets us. That's what this question is doing. It's trying to push away the immediate demands of Jesus' preaching, and it's trying to push them out into the abstract, lest they become too close, too personal, too uncomfortable. Perhaps all of us, if we've come through sort of a Christian maturity, we know this sort of spirit. We know what this is like, and maybe it took something for us to wake us up and to realize that the things we're discussing are not simply intellectual conversation starters. They're realities. Realities that confront us every moment of our lives, that confront us every second of our day, and the question that becomes is not, What about those people out there? The question is always, what about me, right now, in my life, and what am I doing? And when Jesus answers this question, it's interesting, he does something that we've seen him do before in the Gospel of Luke, and we actually see him do this several other times in the other Gospels. Someone will ask a question, or they'll make a statement, and Jesus' response seems completely dislocated from, not related to the thing that's been posed to him. Question will be asked and then he'll start going off of rabbit trail and you can't understand what he's trying to say. And what he's doing is he's not asking, he's not answering the question that they did ask. He's answering the question that he knows they should have asked. When I was in seminary, I had a professor, and he was very, very infamous for, someone would ask a question, and we were silly, naive seminary students, and we would ramble on, trying to sound smart, and my professor would say, I think what you're trying to ask is, and he'd restate the question and answer it, and you sort of have to bite your tongue, because you weren't asking that question, but it was a better question than the one you were trying to ask. When Jesus answers this question here, he's answering the question that he knows they should have asked, not the question that they did ask. The question they asked was, will those who are saved be few? The question he's answering is, what must I do to be saved? What must I do to be in that number when they're finally gathered around the table? Ironically, no one's going to ask that question in Luke's writings until a Philippian jailer in Acts 16, a Gentile who is completely unfamiliar with the promises, the covenant, the oracles of God, these great blessings that Paul says has been gifted to the old covenant people, and yet no one asks that question until an ignorant Philippian jailer and asks, what must I do to be saved? And that's the question that Jesus answers here. And I want us to see three things about his answer, okay? I want us to see first, the door. The main point of his answer is that there's a door and you need to get through it. If you want to come and be amongst the number who are saved, there's a door and you need to find it. That's the first part I want us to see. I want us to see second, those who fail to enter. Those who fail to enter. Most of this passage, It's actually not about how to enter, it's actually how not to enter. Most of this passage is about the people who failed to come in, and so it gives us a wonderful example. If we don't wanna be these people, what do we need to be like? And finally, third, I want us to see the people who do enter. The door, the means by which we come into this kingdom, this banquet that God has prepared, those who fail to enter, and third, those who succeed in entering. And I wanted to note, I know this sermon's text extends into verse 35, the end of the chapter. We're gonna be looking primarily at verses 22 through 30. So if you have questions about 31 through 35, feel free to save those for Q and A. When Jesus first answers these people, he turns to them and says, strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able? That's the answer, right? So again, the question he's asking is, what must I do to be saved? He says, there's a door, a narrow door, and you need to strive to enter it, because there are a lot of people who seek it, who look for it, and they're not able to find it. They're not able to enter it. Now there's a few things, two things specifically, that I want us to see about this door, okay? There's two things that are of absolute importance for us to understand. If we want to find ourselves amongst that number, what does this mean? Here's the first thing, and this is very simple. It's narrow. It's a narrow door. That seems odd. Most of us, we might think more in terms of a short or high door. It's a narrow door. What does that mean? It means obviously that it's not easy to enter. It's not something that you can just walk through. Here's the implication though that I think maybe we often don't think about. It actually requires us to do something unnatural with our bodies. If we're walking through a narrow door, we can't just go in ourselves like this. We have to contort ourselves. We have to change ourselves. We have to respond to what the door is doing. We have to match our posture with what the door allows. When I was younger, we went spelunking, which is my nightmare. And there was this section where you had to get on your stomach and crawl. And all the while, even a guy like me, and I was 12, so much skinnier than I am now, believe it or not, I could feel the rocks scraping my skin as I belly-crawled through this tunnel. And if I wanted to move, I had to contort my chest, flatten myself against the floor, and move forward. I had to respond to what was around me and make it through. Thankfully, I made it through, but there were a few moments where a panic attack was not far away. Or another example, when I walk, I'm 6'8", just right around the standard height for most doors. If I'm not careful, I will concuss myself. I actually have a scar right here from jumping off of a two-step ledge and literally knocking myself out from hitting the wall. But it's a reality that I have to deal with every day. But I have to respond. My body can't just go through this door. I have to respond to what the door is like, lest I injure myself. With a narrow door, with the door that Jesus is talking about that gets us into this kingdom, we have to change our posture. We have to change ourselves. And the only thing that prohibits us let's say hypothetically here, the only thing that prohibits us from making it through that door is not that we have less opportunity, but actually that we're unwilling to do what needs to be done to get in. Maybe we don't want to stoop that low. Maybe we don't want to look ridiculous going through. Maybe we don't want to get some of the scratches. We don't want to mess up our clothes. We're unwilling to do what it takes to enter in through this door. And here in the context, in the broader context of this passage, what Jesus is talking about, this door is, you know, John will use the door as a metaphor for Jesus, we go through Jesus and we have access to the Father. In Luke, in this passage, the door is faith and repentance. It's faith and repentance, it's hearing the word of Christ, It's hearing what he says, it's understanding its implications in your life, in your heart, and responding appropriately in repentance. And the way that we do that is no different than the way that they did it. It requires of us an unnatural posture. If we want to enter through that door, if we want to enter by repentance, that does not come naturally to us. It doesn't come easily to us to be convicted of sin and to confess it and to repent. And in fact, the older you get, the longer you go on, it's just like muscles. The less you'll be able to do. You'll think that you're spiritually healthy and you'll, metaphorically speaking, try to touch your toes and you realize you can't do it. Because over time, if you've not practiced that, if you've not done it, your muscles, your spiritual muscles are just going to tighten and tighten and tighten. Until because of neglect and contempt for yourself, you won't be able to do it. That's why they're unable to enter. Not because they weren't given opportunity. but because they, by their own neglect, were unable to enter. You see, in this passage, if we think back to some parallel passages in the Gospel of Matthew, the easy way, the wide way, the way that it doesn't require anything of us, is hell. Hell's the easy way. All you have to do to go to hell is do nothing. Pretend in your normal life Just go on being as you are. That's the road to hell. The road to life, the road to Christ's feast is one that hurts. It's one that demands something of you. It's one that you have to stoop pretty low to get in. Okay, two smaller things I want us to see about the fact that this door is narrow. First of all, there's only one door. There's nothing more contrary to the spirit of our age right now than the thought that there is only one way to heaven. Now, I know many of us don't struggle with the temptation to universalism or to pluralism like so many of the rest of our culture, but it is something that surrounds us, that we're just, it's in our water. And very few of us, I think, stop to understand the implications of what we're saying when we believe that there is only one door. That means that regardless of how nice your neighbor is, if they are not a believer in Christ, they are outside the kingdom. Regardless of how virtuous your friends are, if they are outside of Christ, they are outside of the kingdom. There's only one door. But the second thing about this door, if it's narrow, it's exclusive and also it's objective. The thing we hate the most as modern people is the thought that we have to be accountable to something else. We spent a whole Sunday School series talking about Truman's book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. The whole point of that book was a study of how we as modern people today want the freedom to express ourselves and the reality that we want rather than allowing ourselves to conform to reality. What this door is saying here is that there is a reality, the highest reality is the fact that you are a sinner against a holy God. And if that fact, that fundamental fact does not shape the rest of your life, then you will be excluded at the end of the day. It's a narrow door, it's exclusive, and it doesn't conform to your desires. You don't get to choose what's sin and what's not, what's repentance and what's not. There is a simple message, repent of your sin and turn to Christ and if you do not heed that, you'll be outside the kingdom. Okay, so the first thing about this door is it's a narrow door. Here's the second thing, this will be a shorter one. Jesus tells us not just to walk through the door, this narrow door. Jesus doesn't tell us just to come through at once. He actually says this, strive to enter this door. Strive to enter this door. The word used here is literally the word agonize. It's the word used when people were training for the Olympics or were fighting each other in athletic competition or in any competition. It's a struggle, Jesus is saying, and you have to struggle to enter in. Now if it's a struggle, that means, just on the face of it, that it's not easy. Like I said, hell is the easy way. It's very clear that in Jesus' mind, the way through this door is not an easy one. It's very simple. It's very simple. Repent and believe. Anyone can do it. But it's not easy. My kids have learned, we've been teaching them how to play Uno. And Uno is a very simple game, right? But it's not easy to win when your five-year-old is an Uno prodigy, apparently. And he has all sorts of strategies that he's already worked up, right? It should be, it's simple. The rules are literally written on the cards. And my son beats me all the time. Something can be very simple, very straightforward and very, very difficult. If you've been watching the Olympics, right? There's complexity there, but ultimately a lot of it is very simple. For instance, the a hundred yard dash run faster than the other guy. It's not that hard. Now, when you get down to it, obviously there's more complexity, but the main directive is simple. Run faster than the other guy, but it's hardly an easy task. With this door, it's the same. It's not easy to enter. It doesn't come naturally. It's not something that we can just pick up. There are no virtuosos, there are no prodigies. You have to respond by recognizing that the plight you are in is the plight that you yourself have created. And you have to do the most unnatural thing in the world, and that's to turn against yourself. Martin Luther said that sin is being curved in on yourself. If that's what sin is, then repentance is the uncurling so that you can direct yourself to something else. And that's the last thing that we want. That's the last thing that we want to do, and yet it's the very thing that Jesus demands. If we want to come into this kingdom, if we want to find ourself among the many that will be saved, There's a door, it's narrow, and we have to do what it takes to strive to enter it, that door of faith and repentance, believing in Christ and turning from our sin. Very simple and also very, very, very difficult. In fact, it demands a new heart. It demands something beyond yourself for you to do that level of repentance. So that's the door. Here's our second point that I want us to see. I want us to see now those who fail to enter this door. Now, like I said, most of this passage concerns those people. Most of Jesus' words are directed towards those who fail to enter. If we continue on with his words to the person who asks the question beginning in verse 25, when once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door saying, Lord, open to us, then he will answer you, I do not know where you come from. Then he will begin to say, we ate and we drank in your presence and you taught in our streets. But he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil. So in order to get at this more, he tells a parable, it seems, and most commentators agree on this, that the master of a feast, the lord of a feast, lord of a banquet, is throwing a party. And when the party is full, he's closed the door. There's no more room. The door has been open, apparently, or I suppose implicitly for a very long period of time, and now that the door has closed, there are some who want to straggle in and say, Lord, we're ready for the party now. Do you notice just how blunt their words are? It's not, will you open to us? It's not, may we come in? It's, Lord, open to us. It's a command. It's a presumption that they deserve or have a right to this place that the door has been closed to them for. They come with no humility, they come with no deference, they come with no recognition of their tardiness, of their neglect, and they simply say, open to us. A spirit of presumption. They might be simply by virtue of their race or by virtue of their religious association entitled to this banquet. And what does the Lord respond with? He says, I do not know where you come from. Interestingly, he doesn't respond with you're not invited or you're not welcome. It's I do not know where you come from. I don't know you, I don't know your people. I don't know your home. And of course, the immediate audience, they're Jews. Who do they come from? They come from Abraham. What's their homeland? The promised land is their homeland. That's where they come from. And Jesus is saying, I don't recognize you. There's no family resemblance. You don't come from the place that you think you do. when I'm an identical twin, and whenever I go back home or whenever I go to where my brother lives, there's always somebody who I don't know who waves at me as I'm walking by, and I sort of awkwardly wave and turn around and go on, or someone will walk by and wave, I just go on without knowing who they are, and several times, my brother has come to me and said, yeah, that person got upset at me because they had no idea who, or you didn't have any idea who they were, you didn't respond, and I would have to apologize. If I was sitting in my apartment, let's say I was sitting in Christian's apartment, some stranger comes up and knocks on the door. They think they know me, but I don't know them. I'm not going to let them in. I'm not going to take them at their word. Now, Jesus is not an identical twin, and so the analogy fails. But there is a case of mistaken identity. Although in this case, the mistaken identity is of themselves. They thought something of themselves that was not true. They thought that they had a place and they didn't. They thought that they knew this person and were invited, but they did not. In fact, they were unknown by this person. And like our previous point, I want us to see two things about these people. Two traits that are primary about why it is that they fail to enter. The first one has to do with the way they respond to the Lord, and then the second one is how the Lord actually describes them. Notice, after they've been denied, what do they say? It says, then you will begin to say, we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets. Jesus, come on. We were right there with you. You were in the streets preaching, we had you over to our house. We went to church every Sunday. We fellowshiped with you. We saw the miracles you did. Isn't that enough? Isn't it enough that we did the things that we were supposed to do? Of course, the thing that they failed to do is that even as they're listening to Jesus preach, even as they're fellowshipping with him around the table, they are failing to understand his basic message. Again, we've seen it from the very beginning. The basic message is the kingdom of God is at hand, repent. And they thought that they could just enjoy the benefits of being there. They thought they could enjoy the fellowship and the friendship and the joy without doing the very thing that the kingdom of God demanded of them. At the end of our passage, Jesus is going to describe the people around the table as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the prophets. Later in the passage, he's going to condemn Jerusalem for their unwillingness to come to Christ, and that's really one of the main points of those last five verses is it so perfectly illustrates what Jesus is trying to get at. These were the people who were there who heard Jesus's words, who heard his preaching, who saw his miracles. And they thought that because of association, because they knew his name, because they recognized him in the street, that they had a place. Bo's from Texas, I'm from Nashville, everyone you meet's a Christian. Everyone you meet knows Jesus. Everyone you meet has an opinion on what Jesus is like. And yet so few of them actually seem to understand that the very thing Jesus demands of them is the very thing that they're unwilling to give themselves. In the South, in Texas, I know too, it's Baptist land just because you're a Baptist. you're a part of God's people. For the Jews of the day, it was simply because I'm a member of this sect or I'm a member of the people of Israel and that's enough. For us, maybe it's simply the fact that we come to church on Sunday, that we do family worship, which is a good thing, that we try our best. Let me go to a Bible study. Again, all those are really good things, but if you miss the whole point of it, then actually it's going to serve as a testimony against you. You can have as much access as you want to Jesus, and if you actually don't take him at his word, then you actually have never had Jesus. That's the first failure of these people. The next failure is even more incisive, even more biting, because this is what the Lord calls them. When they say that, hey, we ate and drank in your presence, you taught in our streets, we were around you, we were part of it, we were involved. He says this, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil. You workers of evil. Imagine, imagine. Being a Jew, being someone who apparently, according to Paul, has the promises of God, the covenant of circumcision, you have the revelation of God's oracles, you have all these blessings, and some Jewish prophet comes preaching, repenting, the kingdom is at hand, and he calls you a worker of unrighteousness, a worker of evil. What would your response be? Probably what the response of the Jews of the day were. Who does this guy think he is? Who does this guy think he is calling me a worker of evil? And that's exactly what Jesus is saying. You've done all these things. You tithe, and you strive to obey the commandments of men, and the thing you lack is faith and repentance in what God has actually offered you in Christ, in the preaching of his gospel. Because you lack that, everything else is evil. Everything else is unrighteous. If you don't have that basic response of repentance and faith, everything that is done is a work of unrighteousness, because you fundamentally are unrighteous. But there's another way to be a worker of unrighteousness too, and that's to pretend like you've repented, to feign repentance, or to have a really strong emotional feeling once, but repentance never to follow through. The rest of your life, maybe you repented 30 years ago, and yet, you're still in your sin. It doesn't mean, don't hear me say that Christians can never sin. Don't hear me say that Christians are perfect. But what I am saying is that repentance, real repentance, means turning from your sin with grief and hatred. Turning from it with grief and hatred. It does not mean saying you're sorry, and then going right back to it. Repentance is not, I'll try better next time. Repentance is doing anything and everything to get that sin out of your life and away from you. If you fail to repent, you're a worker of evil. If repentance is simply a half-hearted excuse not to feel bad, you're a worker of evil. And these are the people that, for Jesus' sake, you have no place in my kingdom. These are the people who fail to come in to God's kingdom. And finally, I want us to conclude with a brief look at those who do find their way. And what's really interesting, like I said, is that this parable doesn't actually tell us much positively about what these people are like. We've been able to piece it together from the teaching of the other parts of this passage, repentance and faith. In terms of the specifics of these people who come in, we're not given a lot. We're really only given two things. We're given first that whoever comes into the kingdom, they come from the north and the south and the east and the west. They come from all over. This door is very narrow, but its expanse and its invitation actually extends over the entire globe. And the important part here is not just, as we read in Isaiah 43, the bringing back of God's people, But actually, the implication of being North, South, East, and West is that these are the people who the Jews of the day thought weren't going to be there. These are the Gentiles. These are the people who are outside of God's covenant. There's a very famous rabbinic writing that says, thank God that I am not a woman or a Gentile. I don't know which one is more offensive. the thought that a Gentile ahead of and even at the exclusion of God's covenant people would be in the banquet, not just present, but actually at the table with the patriarchs, with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, with the prophets, these people who were of so crucial importance to the history of the people of Israel such that these, an Israelite could claim direct descendants from Abraham, direct descendants from Isaac. It's not just that Gentiles are there, it's that Gentiles are at the table with the patriarchs and the Jews aren't. The most unexpected, the people who had no portion, who had no claim, who had no right, and these are the people whom God has brought in. These are the people whom God, by Christ, through the preaching of his gospel, goes out and gathers, as is the work that we're going to see when we go to Acts, as the gospel goes from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the outermost parts of the world. The reason you're here right now is because of this. People from all over coming, people who are outside of God's covenant, people who are outside of the expected, people who are outside of the demands of the moment, politically, nationally, ecclesiologically for the people of Jews. These are the people that God brings in. Not because this is some social gospel where the up is down and down is up, but it's because these are the people who actually know what it means to be separated from God. And the preaching comes to them and they're convicted, they know what it means for God to come to them because they've been, they've had nothing. This is how many of us know people who did not grow up in church, who grew up away from Christ, who grew up outside of Christian families, and when they come to Christ, the conversion is so dramatic, so real, that they are very much a new person. And we compare them to people who grow up in church. And sometimes the differences are stark. This person knows what they have because they've never had it before. And this person has no idea what they have because they've never actually experienced it. They know it too well. Familiarity for them has bred contempt. Of course, we're gonna see this again and again in Luke. and in Acts, and of course for us, that's the reason we're here, is because the gospel has called in a bunch of people that are outside of God, aliens to the promise, and now we've been made one. The next thing that we see about these people who are in, and this is just a small one, but an important one. Verse 30, behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last. Not only are these people, the ones who are there, the ones that nobody thought would be there, but even their order, even their sequence, even the guest list is arranged in a way that we probably wouldn't do it. When we go to a party, there are often guests of honor or various, if you go to a gala or something like that, they'll have the high-ranking people come in and the officials there come in and they announce them, et cetera. But in this kingdom, actually it's the opposite of what the world tells us is valuable. It's not the prominent, it's not the esteemed, it's not the successful who are first. It's the downcast, it's the poor, it's the oppressed. Now, the important thing to note is not that all, every last person will be first and every first person will be last. That's not what the text says. It says some who are last will be first and some who are first will be last. But what it does mean is that the kingdom of God, when we come in, when we sit around the banquet table, when we'll be there in the presence of Jesus, the metric that gauges where we are, the metric that gauges our standing is not anything that we can do for ourselves. In fact, over and over again in the Gospel of Luke, the very thing that makes someone the most qualified for the kingdom of heaven is the fact that they lack everything, and they know it, and they still obey. And they still do the faithful thing. Think about the widow and her offering. What does Jesus say? She out of her lack has given everything and has actually given more than you in your abundance. Objectively, the rich people gave more. The widow gave a fraction, hardly a fraction of what they gave and yet in the eyes of God, her contribution far outweighed and far outvalued what came by means of human achievement, came by means of human might. The people that come into this banquet are people whose order of glory is given to them, not because they have succeeded in something, but because they have looked to God, they have known their sin, they have repented, and they have relied on Him even in their lack. That's what makes you great in the kingdom of heaven. That's what makes you a guest at the banquet hall of Jesus. Believing in him, repenting of your sin, and knowing that even in your lack, you can obey. Even in destitution, even in oppression, even in poverty, obedience is the richness of God given to you. and serving him in delight. So what's the final word? Here's the final word. There is a door. Strive to enter it. It's not open forever. And the way through it is to realize You're a sinner and Jesus has died for you. And when you realize those things and you realize that all of your life is now completely redefined by that basic fact that the Lord of the universe would die for someone like you, then whether you're in poverty or whether you're in richness, whether you're in want or whether you're in plenty, whether you're in sickness or you're in health, whether you're in misery or you're in joy, Everything is now directed towards service to and obedience to the one who saved you and brought you into his kingdom. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. And we thank you, again, that in it we find many great and precious promises, that you are our Lord, the one who has saved us and who has called us and in fact ushers us in to the heavenly feast. We pray, Father, that we would respond with faith and repentance, that we would hear your call. and that as we strive to enter the narrow door, that you would help us, prevent us from succumbing to pride, to entitlement, to arrogance, and instead let us seek after Christ, that we might be found in him. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen. Our communion homily text comes from prophet Isaiah chapter 55. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And he who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me. Hear that your soul may live, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. 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. There's a short story by a woman named Flannery O'Connor. Many of you might have known her. She's from Milledgeville, Georgia, down the south. She wrote a story called Revelation. It's about a woman named Mrs. Turpin who has all the right things. She's prim, she's proper, she has all the etiquette. And at the end of the story, she has a revelation of what it means to be in the church, to be a member of God's people. And here's what Flannery O'Connor writes. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it, a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claude, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. The point of this story was that despite all the outside veneer, despite the externals, what Mrs. Turpin realized was the thing that she's been invited to, the feast that she has a seat at, is full of people. that in her eyes and in the eyes of the world have no place there. They have no claim, they have no right, they smell funny, they look funny, they sing off key, they clap like frogs apparently, whatever that means. In order for her to realize it, she had to see that her own virtue, quote unquote, not good virtue, not real virtue, but the kind of virtue that keeps people at arm's length, the kind of virtue that thinks that because you have it all together that you are somehow separate from everyone else. Those had to be stripped from her. The thing that she'd relied on, the thing that she trusted in. This vision is very much like what we've come to today. You've come to a meal, a banquet, already set for you, and it's full of people all over the world that look nothing like us, that sound nothing like us, that might smell funny, might look funny, that might have some odds and ends, that might not do the things that we think they should do or do it the way that we think they should do it, and yet, the thing that brings us all together. The thing that brings us to this table, the thing that unites us in this meal is not the fact that we sing on key, or the fact that we're members of the communion of reformed evangelical churches, or that we vote Republican, or that we homeschool our kids. That's not what unites us. What unites us is the fact that Jesus has called us And the way we get in is by hearing that call and by repenting. This table is for sinners. It's for sinners. It's for sinners who trust in Christ, but it's for sinners, and so all are welcome, who would hear the word of Jesus and respond in faith. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. Let us give thanks for the bread. We give you thanks, Father, for the life and the knowledge which you have revealed to us through Jesus, your servant. To you be glory forever and ever. As this broken bread scattered on the mountains was gathered and became one, so too may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. For glory and power are yours through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.