Sunday, August 24, 2025, Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
“How Jesus Opens Doors”
Psalm 50:1-15; Isaiah 66:18-23; Hebrews 12:4-29; Luke 13:22-30
Hymns: #901 “Open Now Thy Gates of Beauty”; #688 “Come Follow Me, the Savior Spake”; #940 “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”; #526 “You Are the Way; Through You Alone”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
So what do we know about Heaven? Scripture describes Heaven as a real place; not some ethereal sit-on-a-cloud world you can stick your hand through, but a real, solid-ground place, more beautiful than our minds can imagine. St. John, in the Book of Revelation, says Heaven is a Holy City, with protecting walls and twelve gates, with each gate made of a single pearl. And we’re also told that Heaven is a perfect place, a place without flaws or imperfections, and a place where nothing unholy, evil, or sinful can exist, and where God’s creatures – including us - also have to be holy and sinless and perfect in order to enter through the holy gates and dwell there. God’s standard, His criteria, for entering His Heaven, has always been utter and complete holiness and perfection. All of which, for sinners like us, seems to be quite problematic.
Let me ask you the old front-door-knocking, evangelism call question: If you died tonight, are you sure you’re going to heaven? So many times, even from good Lutheran folks who should know better, the answer comes back, “Oh, I hope so,” or “Oh, I like to think so,” or “If God is good…” IF? Really? Should Heaven ever be an if or a maybe? How does the old song go? “Jesus loves me, this I…”
Did Jesus die for you? Are you sorry for your sins, and have your sins been forgiven by His blood? Was His cross enough? Has Jesus been raised up from the dead? Is His promise to give life to all who believe in Him still reliable and true? Have you been washed in baptismal water, made God’s precious child in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? So, where is the maybe in that? If you have faith in Christ, there are no ifs or maybes when it comes to the Heaven question. “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
A man in our Gospel today from Luke 13 asks Jesus a “Heaven question,” one that shows he’s not quite sure about how all of this works. St. Luke writes: “Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as He made His way to Jerusalem. And someone asked him, ‘Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” So, “faith saves;” we know that. But how much faith? Do we need a lot of faith or a little? Scripture never puts a number on it; faith is a matter of substance, not of size, a matter not of how much faith we have, but of who our faith is in. So, is “a little faith” still saving faith? We have to believe it is, because we haven’t been told otherwise. I can’t tell you if you need a tiny drop of faith, or a five-gallon bucket, or a 55-gallon drum; all I know is that you need in some way to have it. If just a little faith is still saving faith, though, that makes me much more hopeful for a whole lot of people.
Jesus, though, does say to the people in our Gospel, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” The Greek word for “make every effort” is agonidze, a word that means strive, struggle, fight, or agonize. The fact that Jesus says the door to Heaven is narrow, and we have to fight, struggle, and agonize to get through it (like the proverbial “camel through the eye of a needle) means we can’t afford to be half-hearted about our faith or take it for granted, because where we’ll spend our eternity depends on it. So, “being saved” still calls for effort on our part. The writer of Hebrews says, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”
So, how do you know your faith is real? How do I know MY faith is real? Or how do I know if the faith I have will be enough to open Heaven’s door for me? I sure don’t want to be one of those left outside, pounding on that door and not able to get in. Jesus says in our Gospel, “Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' But He will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.'” So, salvation isn’t an open-ended offer. The time and opportunity to be saved isn’t endless or unlimited. There WILL come a time when the doors to Heaven will swing shut forever. And Heaven’s door won’t open for everyone; “All dogs go to heaven” just isn’t true. The same God who is love, grace, and mercy for those who love Him, will also be a “consuming fire” for those who do not.
There are two ways to look at this: One is that you have until the day you die to come to faith. “It is destined for each man to die but once and then to face the judgment,” God’s Word says. And then there will also come Judgment Day, that “sheep and goats” day when Jesus comes again to judge us all. And the presence of faith in Christ on that day (or the lack thereof) will determine the eternal destination of every human being. When that day comes, there will be no more bargaining, no more pleading, no more knocking on Heaven’s door. That’s why St. Paul said, “Now is the day of salvation.” To put off faith or wait until you’re older or until you have more time is playing Russian roulette with your soul.
Jesus goes on in our Gospel, “Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with You, and You taught in our streets.'” The percentage of people in the United States who identify as Christians, in the latest polls and surveys, is around 65% these days. But the number of people who actually attend church on a regular basis and actively practice their faith is less than 30% and falling. So, is there a difference between knowing who Jesus is and having faith in Him? (Even the devil knows who Jesus is, after all). So, should faith be producing… something? Like love, worship, praise, and obedience, and service to God and to one’s neighbor? Is faith that produces nothing… anything? What is the measure of faith that makes it real?
That Man behind Heaven’s closed door, says Jesus, will reply, “I don't know you or where you come from. Away from Me, all you workers of unrighteousness!” When Jesus announced to His disciples that He was going to Jerusalem, there to be crucified, Peter, horrified, tried to turn Jesus away; he said, “No, Lord, no, this shall never happen to You.” And Jesus said to him, “Get thee behind Me, Satan; you have in mind not the things of God but the things of men.” If a Church on earth claims to be Christian, but doesn’t preach a crucified and truly risen Christ – and a real Heaven and a real hell -then “Christian” there is nothing but a name. “Everything that does not come from faith is sin” St. Paul says.
So, how can “we who are evil” ever hope to become righteous in God’s eyes? St. Peter wrote to us, “Do everything you can to make your calling and your election sure.” So do we play around the edges of faith, hope for the best, and try to get by on “I hope so” or a maybe? Or should our attitude be, “wash me Savior or I die?” Which way is the only safe bet? Many people are willing to believe there’s someplace called heaven, or something equivalent to it, some paradise or Valhalla or happy afterlife where everyone gets to go when they die; but they won’t believe there’s a real place called hell, because “a loving God wouldn’t send people there.” But Jesus Himself is clear enough about it here. As far as hell is concerned, He says, “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.”
But Jesus also says here, thanks be to God, “People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.” This is the heavenly wedding banquet, that great feast we’re told about in prophet Isaiah. And the Book of Revelation, “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.” How does one come to be invited to the heavenly feast? By believing in Jesus - in who He was and what He did, and in who He is and what He’s doing, and in what He’s about to do. Faith, in the end, comes down to a very personal thing. I can’t believe for you, and you can’t believe for me; but still we can encourage and help one another along the way, which is what we Christians are here on earth for, and why God made us a Church.
Jesus ends our Gospel with that very curious statement, “Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last." Doesn’t that just turn the whole world on its ear? In this world, people judge one another by what they have, or by how much they own, or by what they look like. We so often make our judgements based on what we see on the outside; but God sees through to our inside - and what’s He’s looking for there is just a little faith.
God’s Holy Mountain, His perfect heaven, that place where the “banquet of the blessed” is going to take place, still has walls, gates, and doors that have to open for us, if our hope is to be saved. The Holy City we’d all like to live in one day allows for no sin or uncleanness of imperfections; and if we had no way to open those “mighty gates,” we’d be left on the outside looking in, in that place of terrible darkness Jesus warns us about. Thanks be to God, our Lord Jesus Christ has given Himself for us on a cross, to hand us the blessed, holy, Key of forgiveness that opens Heaven! Who gets in and who doesn’t, who gets to be first or last, in the end is up to God. (And thanks be to Him forever for that. I wouldn’t want the awful responsibility of having to decide).
You and I, so long as we have faith in Christ, don’t have to fret or worry over our own salvation. “Trust and believe,” Jesus says, “and that will be enough,” for “My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” And it’s not up to us to judge others either (thanks be to God for that, too!), because only God knows the true measure of faith and whether or not a person’s faith is “really real.” In the end, “Each man must stand on his own before God.” We can only take each other at our word. If you say you believe, I believe you do.
What we can do, though, and what we ought to be doing, and what we must do, is do whatever we can do for the sake of keeping faith alive in this world for as long as the Lord keeps us here. That means guarding and keeping our own precious faith, by being faithful in the Word and in worship and in the Sacrament; and it also means putting the “Word that brings faith” into the ears of the people around us, and especially into the ears of our loved ones and dear ones who aren’t walking as close to the Lord as they ought to be – in the hope that God will take some little Word of encouragement from us, and take it by His good Spirit from the ear to the heart of someone we love, and light that little spark in them that will save them.
Because faith is everything. It’s faith in Jesus that opens those blessed gates and wonderful doors. Jesus hold the Key! Faith in Him is what gets you in – to Mt. Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the City of the Living God, where thousands upon thousands of angels rejoice and sing over every sinner who repents and comes home to God, and where everyone whose name is written in God’s Book gets to join in the heavenly chorus and sing along. “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty! Heaven and earth are full of Your glory!” There’s a joyful resurrection coming, and I want everyone I love, everyone I know, and everyone I meet to be there, too. Lord Jesus, come and bring faith, and open the doors of Heaven. for us all. In Jesus’ name; Amen.