Make every effort!
Imagine you are taking a class, and your teacher gives you homework. The teacher explained his full expectations and the details of the assignment. Lastly, the teacher tells you that the assignment will be due at an unknown time and day in the future. Additionally, no one will have any notification of when the assignment is due, nor will anyone have an opportunity to make it up at a later date. How would you proceed in accomplishing that assignment? Would you do it immediately? Would you plan to have it done halfway through the class and schedule out your work over time? Or would you put more effort into figuring out when it is due than into actually completing the assignment?
In the book of Luke, we see Jesus presenting a similar scenario to that of our classroom. As Jesus was traveling toward Jerusalem, someone came to him and asked a question: “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” This person is kind of asking if everyone passes the class or if it will be hard. Is this a participation-award type of sports game, or is it one where only one lone team wins? So how does Jesus answer this question?
Luke 13:24-25
“Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 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 you will begin to say, ‘We ate and 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!’ 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 you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”
This man asked Jesus how many would be getting into the kingdom, and Jesus answered by saying, “You should really try to get into the kingdom, because you don’t know when the gates will close.”
Jesus’ answer is dynamic. It challenges any assumption one could have about their status of being "in" or "out." It puts the expectation that salvation is for one group alone into question. His response shows that one cannot wait until the last call because there may not be one. It reveals that the way into the kingdom is a difficult and obscure one — he calls the road “narrow.” He reveals that passivity is not a neutral act. He refers to those who waited as “workers of evil.” Those who are not striving to enter, who have not made a point to complete the assignment as soon as they could, are seen as actively doing evil.
How is this?
Jesus consistently refers to his work on the earth and the movement he was beginning as “the kingdom.” If Jesus is establishing a kingdom, which has an authority structure, a distinct culture, and a set of laws designed to foster a certain kind of civil life, then non-participation is a form of rebellion — a stance of opposition not just against a government, but against a monarch. An act against a kingdom is an act against the king.
So if a kingdom pronounces that it has a statute where citizens are required to forgive a fellow citizen who has broken a statute that negatively affected you, and you do not forgive but actively resist the statute, then you are in open rebellion against the kingdom and the king. Now, what is interesting is that both the offender and the offended are in rebellion when the offended one does not forgive.
The very uncomfortable part of this aspect of Jesus' teaching is that those who seek to enter his kingdom still live in a world that is in rebellion against that very kingdom. When we walk according to the statutes of the kingdom of God, we are vulnerable. Those who forgive when wronged are easily taken advantage of, aren’t they? Those who give to the needy without making the needy prove themselves can also be taken advantage of. And those who associate with the poor and outcast have a difficult time networking with the successful and prominent members of society. All of these teachings of Jesus can seem highly impractical at best and personally damaging at worst.
So what do we do about them?
Hebrews 3:7 - 4:11
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,
“As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’”
although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. (ESV)
We are told to trust God, just as the Israelites who came out of Egypt should have trusted God. God had brought them out with a mighty hand and told them to put themselves in the dangerous situation of making the inhabitants of the land leave. They saw the might of some of these people and cities and did not trust God's plans and purposes. Then in the wilderness, God told them not to gather manna on the seventh day. But what if the manna never came again? What if there wouldn’t be enough? Again, they did not trust God to provide and protect; they disobeyed, they rebelled. Again and again, they did not follow the statutes of God; they did it their own way and rebelled against God.
If you claim to be a Christian, then likewise, “Strive to enter through the narrow door” and “Strive to enter that rest.” Do not make the assumption that you are already in the kingdom — even the writer of Hebrews didn’t make that assumption, for he says, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest.” Be intentional to learn the values and statutes of God’s kingdom. Read the teachings of Jesus, the rebukes of the prophets, the instructions of the apostles. Begin working on your assignment today — do not wait!
Matthew 7:21-27
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”