Luke 13:22-29

ARE THE SAVED FEW?

Luke 13:22-29. Our Savior answers the above question in the affirmative i.e., that the saved are few certainly a very alarming affirmation of our Infallible Lord. Shall you and I be numbered with those favored few? “ And He was journeying through cities and villages, teaching and making his way toward Jerusalem.” He is over in Perea, the country of the two and a half tribes east of the Jordan, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing the sick. “And one said to Him, Lord, are the saved few?” (That is, “Are those who are saved many or few?) The answer is a decisive affirmation that the saved are few. This awful result is not because the people do not desire to be saved, but stupefied by the enemy, they take too much risk. They are willing to walk as near-hell as possible, just so as not to fall into it. When an English nobleman advertised for a carriage- driver, three young men report in his office, candidates for the position. Turning to Number One, he says: “Sir, there is an awful precipice, five hundred feet sudden fall, along one of my carriage roads; how near can you run to it with perfect security?” Dropping his head a moment, looking up, he says, “Sir, I can run within eighteen inches of: it with perfect safety.” Then turning to Number Two, he said,' “Sir; What have you to say for yourself?” “O, I can run within a foot of it with the utmost safety,” thinking he had to beat the other one or miss the job. Finally, turning to Number Three, who by this time is much excited, and in response to the nobleman's question, “How near can you run?” throws up both hands and exclaims, “Sir, if I drive your carriage, I shall run as far from it as I can every time.” “Well,” says the nobleman, “you are the very man I want to drive it. I would not, for a bushel of money, risk my wife and children in the hands of one of these other fellows.” While nobody is willing to go to hell, they take the risk of going too nigh the brink. Consequently devils lasso them, trip them up, and tumble them in by millions, the only way to escape hell being to go as far from it as you can.

“ And He said to them, Agonize to enter in through the narrow door, because many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in and shall not be able.” The pearly gate through which we enter the celestial metropolis is not narrow, but amply capacious for the ingress and egress of the sainted millions and angelic billions. This is the door of admission into the kingdom of grace, which we pass through in regeneration, so narrow, contracted, and difficult of entrance that the soul must give up everything, and squeeze naked through that strait gate. The E. V. “strive” is too weak for the Greek agonidzesthe; i.e., “agonize.” This verb is from agona, the gladiatorial combat in which the gladiator fought for his life, doomed to die on the spot or conquer his antagonist. Hence this word means to put forth all the power of soul, mind, body, home, estate, influence, and everything we can possibly command, subsidize, or utilize. I have seen so much of this in our revivals, people agonizing as in the throes of death, fainting away, and losing the power of their bodies, lying for hours as if they were dead. We do not attach spiritual moment to physical demonstrations, but merely mention the latter by way of illustrating the soul-agony, without which, Jesus says, no one shall enter. We live in an age of superficialism, and, sad to say, it is pre-eminent in religion as well as everything else appertaining to this life. Many seek; but Jesus says they shall not enter in without this soul-agony. The Civil War over slavery deluged the land with blood and heaped it with the slain. Terrible was the suffering of the Nation while that deep-rooted, eating cancer was being torn loose by cannon-balls and cut out with the sword. Sin has so interwoven the warp and woof of the spiritual, mental, and physical constitution, that it is like drawing eye- teeth, cutting off right hands, and plucking out right eyes to get rid of it and enter the kingdom of God.

“ When the landlord may rise up and close the door, and you will begin to stand without and knock at the door, saying, Lord, open unto us; and, responding, He will say to you, I know not whence you are; then you will begin to say, We were accustomed to eat and drink in your presence, and You taught in our streets; and He will say, I say unto you, I know not whence you are; depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity.” Our Lord is here addressing the preachers and members of the popular Churches. What a scene in the judgment-day, when these Church members come up from every land and clime, and knock for admission into heaven, having spent their lives in certain anticipation of getting there! When Jesus tells them He knows them not, they remind Him of the sacrament which they had participated in, in the house of God on the holy Sabbath, thus eating and drinking in His presence, when His Word was read and expounded in their Churches. How awful the final issue, “ Depart from Me, all ye workers of unrighteousness!” The truth of the matter is, they were strangers to the righteousness of Christ by which we are justified, having spent their lives in the delusion, finally to wake up in hell. Now these people were all, in a sense, seeking to enter; yet they were strangers to that soul-agony peculiar to the spiritual birth. Everything is born into the world with excruciating pain and agony, thus vividly symbolizing the birth of the soul.

“And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves cast out.” They verily believed that they were in the unbroken succession of the patriarchs and prophets, and avowedly and pertinaciously claimed to have the same religion which had cheered their holy ancestry in a dying hour. But you see they were egregiously mistaken. How history repeats itself! Good Lord, send down awakening power to the Church of the present day, and alarm the slumbering millions in the track of fallen Judaism! If the followers of Luther, Bunyan, Knox, Fox, and Wesley only had the religion which filled and thrilled these heroic spirits, qualifying them to light up the world in their day and generation, and kindle the signal fires on the summits of evangelistic mountains, which brightly glow today and will shine on till Jesus comes, they would certainly be all right; but O what a weeping and wailing when they shall see these sainted prophets, as well as those of the old dispensation, along with the apostles and martyrs, safe in the kingdom of God, and they themselves cast out!

“And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.” This is a beautiful prophecy relating to the call of the Gentiles, which our Lord gave in the Great Commission, just before He left the world. The kingdom of God, as you see here, both in the olden times and the Gospel Age, is the Divine administration, in contradistinction to Satan's government, with which all the wicked are identified. Hence we see that the saints of all ages have been citizens of the kingdom of God. That kingdom, however, like everything else in the Divine economy, is wonderfully evolutionary in its character, symbolized by the starlight in antediluvian times; the moon approaching the horizon in the patriarchal ages, and shining in her beauty amid the glittering constellations in the Mosaic dispensation; day dawning with John the Baptist, and the sun rising when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, who shone upon the earth till He reached the celestial zenith, then ascending into glory; the noonday culminating at Pentecost, the sun going not down, like the diurnal orb, but, as in the days of Joshua, standing still amid the heavens, evolving floods of hallowed light, bursting forth on heathen nations, thus expediting our Lord's return, in glory to reign, when that blessed kingdom, which has been the light and glory of all the saints, from Abel down to the latest generations, shall no longer be restricted to the souls of men, but reach out and girdle the whole world, every monarch doffing his crown at the feet of King Jesus, who shall be coronated and sceptered King of kings and Lord of lords;

“For He shall have dominion over river, sea, and shore, Far as the eagle's pinion or dove's light wing can soar;”

Satan having been arrested as a common criminal and locked up in hell, no longer on earth to mar the beauty and glory of the Lord's triumphant kingdom, in millennial victories girdling the globe, and bringing back the bright memories of an unfallen Eden.