Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The sermon text is from Luke 13:31-35. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
In their pompous pride, the Pharisees despised Jesus’ willingness to associate with “sinners”. Worse, they hated Jesus, because He taught that the repentant, “lowlife tax collectors and sinners” were better off than the prideful Pharisees were. So when I hear the Pharisees warning Jesus – I’m wondering what’s going on! Are they for real or are they just trying to get Jesus to leave town? I don’t know! So I’m confused… and when I’m confused I like to follow this one easy rule of Biblical interpretation… I like to ask, “When you boil it all down what’s the point?” Since I don’t know whether or not to trust the Pharisees in this text, what’s real point that God the Holy Spirit doesn’t want me to miss?
A good way to boil it all down and get the point that the Holy Spirit is making when you read the Bible isn’t just reading the text, but also the context. In the verses just before our text Jesus says, “Strive to enter [heaven] through the narrow door. For many… will seek to enter and will not be able.” He tells the story of a man… It’s about bedtime, the man rises for bed and locks the door securely. He tucks himself into bed and shortly hears a knocking outside: “Let us in. Open the door to us.” The master of the house answers: “I don’t know you or where you came from. Depart from me you workers of evil!” Jesus tags His parable with these words: “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see [the saved] in the Kingdom of God, but you yourselves cast out. Behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”
In our text, Jesus is urgently calling His Jewish hearers to recognize Him as the Messiah – not to damn themselves through unbelief. But Jesus’ reference to the final judgment shows us it’s not only addressed to the Jews, many of whom rejected Jesus’ ministry during His lifetime, but our text is a call for all of us to repent before the door is shut and locked, because there are no second chances.
Two things are emphatically true in our text… Fact 1: Jesus desires that every single person be saved. His love is universal. It embraces all people. He died for every sin and every sinner. It is the heart of God that aches to gather every last man, woman and child into His arms. 2 Corinthians 5 says, “Christ died for all, the righteous for the unrighteous.” Jesus said, “How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.” God’s grace is universal. Just as Jesus died for the sins of the world, 1 Timothy 2 says, “God would have all people to be saved.”
Fact 2 in our text… On the Day of Judgment there will be many who will be damned in the fires of hell, because they reject God the Father’s heaven-sent Savior. Matthew 25 says hell itself was prepared for the devil and evil angels – not people. It’s an unspeakable horror that so many will suffer the eternal, conscious agony of God’s judgment, when God doesn’t want it that way… when He died to save all.
It does no one any favors to pretend no one will be in hell or at least only really “bad” people. The nation’s largest Christian denomination, and some Protestant denominations, teaches pagans may be saved without faith by following the light within them. That’s a false hope. It seems nice, but it’s not helpful. For Jesus’ sake, don’t be misled by the devil’s lies. Galatians 2 says, “If righteousness could be gained through the Law, Christ died for nothing.” There is no other way of salvation but through faith in Christ. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem in our text precisely because they refuse to be gathered under God’s gracious wings through faith.
This is one of those strange paradoxes that Scripture doesn’t resolve for us. Salvation is 100% God’s grace and gift. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him.” Faith is always and only a work of God’s grace as the Holy Spirit works through the Word, but it is within our power to reject, closing our hearts to God’s truth. Refusing to receive Christ through faith is to demand God judge us – not washed in the blood of Christ – but on our own “merits”, and that’s not a good place to be.
In this Lenten season of repentance, we do well to pray… Dear God help us to know the time in which we live. Help us to be ready when you lock the door, that none be found in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Luke 13 reads: “Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many will seek to enter and will not be able.” So that’s it our text is a call to repentance, and that’s something even we believers need to hear. The whole of the Christian life is to be lived in a daily sorrow for our sins and daily trusting that Jesus died and rose to conquer sin and death for us.
But if you are Christian in name only or you don’t yet have a living and lively confidence in Jesus… If church is a duty to you or a family tradition and not part of a living relationship with God in Christ… If your real confidence is in you and you don’t think much about God because you’re your own god. Listen up!
When God’s Word is proclaimed do not doubt that 100% the Holy Spirit wants to create faith or strengthen our trust and love of Jesus our Savior. The Savior “wants to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.” That means today as you hear my voice, and we hear God’s Word, the Holy Spirit is knocking on the door of your heart. Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with Me.”
If you don’t have a living confidence in Jesus… if being a Christian for you is just going through the motions… looking the right way or saying the right things… if you know in your heart that when the door of opportunity is locked for the final time, you’ll be shut outside in the agony of eternal damnation… now is the time. Don’t let this moment pass. Don’t imagine that you will have tomorrow much less a lifetime to hear God’s voice and open the door. Today, you may hear your Savior knocking softly, and God can certainly create the circumstances in your life in which He pounds at the door, but do not doubt with all His heart Jesus “desires to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.” Hebrews 3 says, “Today, if you hear God’s voice do not harden your hearts.” Don’t lose this moment of God’s grace. Today, the door stands open to receive you as the Holy Spirit calls you to repent… but it won’t be open forever. Repent, God’s Kingdom is at hand!
Dear friends, let the very fact that you can hear my voice confirm in your heart that God loves you. God doesn’t lie – never has and never will. A few moments ago, I stood up and did what Jesus commanded when I told you God’s truth – your sins are forgiven, your guilt is paid, Jesus died and rose for you. Like Maxwell received into God’s grace today, you and I were named and claimed into God’s family – you are His. Shortly, you and I will receive Christ’s very body and blood in His Sacrament and with it the forgiveness of our sins. God doesn’t lie. In all these ways, your Lord Jesus is like the hen gathering her chicks under her wings. In all these ways, Jesus is reaching out to embrace you in His perfect promises. In all these ways, you and I who don’t belong are being lovingly clutched and swaddled in Jesus’ cross won forgiveness.
Today, the God who calls you and me to repentance is also the God who promises you that Jesus His Son did it all. He died and rose for you. You are part of His family. Believe it and rejoice in it. Through faith in Jesus, you pass through the door and already belong to God’s heavenly home and family. Philippians 3 says, “Our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, our Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables Him to bring all things under His control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.”
Jesus was rejected by Jerusalem, and by you and me. But Jesus allowed Himself to be rejected, to die and rise from the dead – so that you would never be rejected… so that God the Father would see you and me as His own sons and daughters, forgiven in Christ’s blood through faith. Amen.
And now may the peace of God which surpasses human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.