This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, December 6, 1981, at the Trinity Baptist Church in
Montville, New Jersey. Those of you who were with us
this morning will already know that We purpose to turn to the
passage that we began to consider this morning and look at it again
this evening, Luke chapter 13. And will you follow, please,
as I read again in your hearing, verses 22 through 30. Luke 13,
beginning with verse 22. Luke, writing of the activity
of our Lord, says, And he went on his way through cities and
villages, teaching and journeying on to Jerusalem. And one said
unto him, Are there few that are saved? They sit down in the
kingdom of God, so there is an identity between the place where
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets are found, and those
who will be gathered from the east and the west and the north
and the south. You do not find Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob and the prophets believers under the old dispensation, in
one part of the banquet hall separate from others, or in an
entirely different banquet hall. And what is clearly inferred
in this passage is explicitly asserted in the parallel passage
in Matthew 8 and verse 11. So you'll understand that I'm
not pressing more out of the text than is there. In Matthew
8 and verse 11, Jesus says, in a context in which faith is being
manifested by a Gentile, faith greater than that seen amongst
the Israelites, and I say unto you, Matthew 8, 11, that many,
not a few or some, many shall come from the east and the west
and shall sit down, not opposite to, above, but sit down with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. And so,
our Lord, in answering that initial question, are there few that
be saved? broadens out the vision by asserting
this dispensational unity of the people of God, indicating
that whatever differences have existed amongst God's true people
throughout the various dispensations or epochs of the unfolding of
His redemptive purposes, and differences there are, and some
of them are great, But in their fundamental spiritual standing
and privilege, they are one. Because there is but one Redeemer
who was on His way to die at Jerusalem, not just for the sins
of those who would yet be gathered from east and west and north
and south, but who is designated in Scripture as the Lamb who
is slain from the foundation of the world. whose death was
the foundation of Abraham's justification, of Isaac's justification, of
Jacob's justification, and the justification of all of the prophets
who was going to Jerusalem, not only to die for the sins of those
yet ungathered, but to die in human history for the sins of
those who had already gone to glory on the basis of the death
that He would die. It was an accomplished fact in
the reckoning and purpose of Almighty God. And so when we
understand that great principle, It's as though the Lord is saying,
furthermore, my inquiring friend, are they few who are saved? No, for not only is there to
be a great universal in-gathering in the future from north and
south and east and west, but looking back, all of those who
came to faith Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those great leaders
with whom God identifies Himself as the covenant God, the God
of grace, saying, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob,
the God of the prophets, the God of those who are described
in Hebrews 11 as believers, And though they had much less light
on many points than we have, and though they had more limited
privileges in many areas, the Word of God makes it plain that
the people of God are fundamentally and essentially one in every
dispensation one in their fallen atom, one in their gracious inclusion
in the sovereign electing mercy of God, one in being given to
the Lord Jesus, one in Christ as their head and surety and
representative, one in the basis of their acceptance with God,
and one in their ultimate destiny in the consummate glory of the
kingdom of God. And so the Lord does indeed answer
the initial inquiry, first of all by pointing to this universal
scope of the kingdom of God, secondly, pointing to the dispensational
unity of the kingdom of God, and then finally, by underscoring
in the conclusion of the passage the underlying principle by which
the kingdom is constituted. The underlying principle by which
the kingdom is constituted. And here we have this cryptic
saying found elsewhere in the Gospels, found in other contexts,
and also having differing shades of meaning in other contexts. Verse 30 of Luke chapter 13. Notice how our Lord concludes
the section. And behold, fix before your minds this great
principle. And here it is, there are last
who shall be first and there are first who shall be last. What is our Lord saying in this
particular setting? And don't assume that the same
emphasis is to be given wherever you find these words. Identity
of words does not mean identity of meaning. And there are other points of
emphasis in the use of this cryptic terminology. But in this setting,
and this is not a bizarre or unique position I have taken,
it's fundamentally the position of Hendrickson, of Lenski, of
old Bishop Riles, so I'm in good company in asserting that this
is what I believe to be the meaning. What our Lord is saying is this.
Are there few that be saved? Well, if the principle underlying
the establishment of the kingdom is a principle that where you
have great privilege that you will have great accessions to
the kingdom, then perhaps the relative number of the saved
will be few. But he says the principle upon
which the kingdom is built is this. Behold! Look at it! Think
upon this! And here is the principle. There
are last who shall be first. That is, there are those who
are last in privilege who shall be first in responsiveness to
the light and truth of the gospel. And there are those who are first
in opportunity and privilege, but who, because of their impenitence
and indifference to that privilege, even as we had in this context,
Lord, did you not eat in our streets, and were we not where
you were, and didn't we hear you teach? There are those who
are first in privilege who shall be last, that is, who will be
utterly bypassed in terms of the conferral of grace. Now this has been true all the
way through both Testaments. Were there not, Jesus says, many
widows in the days of the prophet? But unto none of them was God
sent. There was all the firstness of
the privileges of all the widows in Israel, and God bypassed them
all and went to a Gentile widow of Zarephath and revealed His
grace to her. Were there not many lepers in
the days of Naaman the Syrian? People who were first in privilege,
first in proximity to the prophet? But none of them was healed.
It was Naaman the Syrian. You see the great principle,
and Jesus enunciated that in the opening days of His ministry.
And you remember the Jews were so incensed that they tried to
murder Him early in His ministry. And we see it in the days of
our Lord. In the passage quoted in Matthew 8, He said, I have
not seen so great faith. No, not in all Israel. Here is
Israel, first in privilege, with the great heritage of the Law
and the Prophets. And yet, He says, here is a Gentile.
who is first in faith. You see it throughout the apostolic
ministry, and you see it right on through the history of the
Church. The principle by which God extends His kingdom is one
which is calculated to underscore both His grace and His sovereignty,
and to magnify, we may say, the sovereignty of His grace and
the graciousness of His sovereignty. And because that is true, Because
that's true, then the kingdom will be a vast kingdom, made
up of a multitude whom no man can number, out of every kindred,
tribe, and tongue, and nation. Now, notice he doesn't say all
of the last are first. He says, no, there are some last
ones who shall become first. There are some first who should
become the last ones. This is not an absolute rule. No, there were those within the
pale of privileged Israel who, in the language of Romans 9,
were Israel within Israel. They are not all Israel who are
Israel, but there is an election, a remnant according to the election
of grace. But you see, throughout all of
God's dealings in gathering His people, this is the underlying
principle. God remains free to be God in
the conferral of His grace and in bringing sinners into the
kingdom. And if we have the record of
some of those Gentiles in the Old Testament, and it's an amazing
record, what they knew of the mighty deeds of God and how they
responded in fear and awe to the God of Israel. How many,
how many did God bring through the gate? who were last in light
and privilege, even under the Old Testament. Occasionally God
pulls back the veil and you're amazed. I'm not talking about
a hope that men will be saved apart from saving truth. No,
no. I'm talking about the fact that
with a very minimal measure of truth, as in the case of Naaman,
As in the case of others recorded in the Old Testament, you look
at those sailors on that ship with Jonah. When they see the
mighty power of God and even have a testimony of a backslidden
prophet, they throw their gods overboard and they sacrifice
unto Jehovah and they make vows. There was a handful, a shipload
of pagan sailors, last in privilege, first in grace. Now, if that's the principle
by which God operates in gathering His people together, our Lord
is saying, in essence, to the man who asked the question, are
there few that be saved? Well, if God is to gather together
His people based upon the calculations of the latest whirring computers
at the church growth centers, then we may say, well, perhaps
only few will be saved. But God is free to be God. And
in the gathering out of his own, this great principle is operative. Now, having sought to open up
at least basically the meaning of the words of the passage,
our Lord's answer to that initial question, Are they few that are
saved? an answer that is a resounding
no, coming to us in these three dimensions, the emphasis upon
the universal scope of the kingdom, the dispensational unity, and
the underlying principle by which the kingdom is constituted, one
more question yet remains for us to answer. How could our Lord
speak with such certainty of these things? How could he say
they shall come? They shall sit down. There are those who are last
who shall be first, and there are those first who shall be
last. How can he speak with such certainty
about these matters? The answer to the question lies
in the fact that he was on his way to Jerusalem to die. And it is in the profound realities
involved in that death that the certainty lies. For you see,
that death was a death which would actually redeem a people. It was not a death calculated
simply to make a people redeemable or to make salvation possible. It was a death calculated to
redeem a people. Our Lord could say the Son of
Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to
give His life a ransom for many. And the Scripture tells us that
He gave Himself for us that He might redeem to Himself a people
of His very own. He died actually to redeem, to
rescue, to deliver a people. And that death will secure the
personal deliverance, the entrance through the narrow door of everyone
for whom that death was undertaken. Jesus could say in the language
of John 12, 32, And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me. This spake he, signifying by
what death he should die. He says, If I am lifted up to
die, the consequence of that death is the certainty of my
drawing all men Not every single individual, no, no, but the all
men upon whom my Father set His love in eternity, who were marked
out in the gracious decree of election, who were given to me
for whom I assumed all of the obligations with respect to the
unmet debts to my Father's law. On whose behalf I have lived
the perfect life, on whose behalf I will die a death under the
curse of a broken law, if I be lifted up in that capacity, I
will draw all men unto me. And so our Lord could say in
the language of John 6.37, All that the Father giveth me cometh
unto me, and him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast
out." Or in the language of Ephesians 5, he gave himself for the church
that he might not make it savable and might possibly make it presentable. No, he gave himself for the church
that he might sanctify, cleanse, and present it to himself, a
glorious church. It was a death undertaken in
the context of electing grace. It was undertaken in the context
of the pledge of the Father to the Son that he would see of
the travail of his soul and would be satisfied. And some of you
who may be a bit acquainted with what these issues are called
in terms of theological debate, this is not a mere preaching
of a theological viewpoint. It was this very reality, according
to Hebrews 12, which sustained our Lord in the agony of His
death. The writer to Hebrews says, Who
for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross? And what
was that joy? Is there any joy in going to
a death-beak with such certainty of these things? How could He
say, They shall come? they shall sit down. There are those who are last
who shall be first, and there are those first who shall be
last. How can he speak with such certainty
about these matters? The answer to the question lies
in the fact that he was on his way to Jerusalem to die. And it is in the profound realities
involved in that death that the certainty lies. For you see,
that death was a death which would actually redeem a people. It was not a death calculated
simply to make a people redeemable or to make salvation possible. It was this death! I'm going
to secure their redemption. I am going in the confidence
that if I die, my father's pledge to me will be fulfilled. That
I shall see the travail of my soul and be satisfied. I will not be a savior who travails
and brings forth a stillborn child. I'll bring forth all of
my elect as the new humanity, and they will sit down as one
in the kingdom of God. Oh, dear people of God, as we
come in a few minutes to the Lord's table, what a wonderful
expression of this very prophecy we are. Here we are tonight,
gathered where? From east, from west, from north,
from South. Many of us, we were last in privilege
as we have sat as elders and heard the testimony of some of
you from totally pagan backgrounds. The name of Christ was nothing
but a foul curse word. You never had a Bible verse taught
to you. You never memorized one as a
child. You were brought up a perfect,
the perfect example of American paganism. And what did God do?
Though you were last in privilege, He reached down and He laid hold
of you. And He has made you first in
the possession of His grace. You are living monuments of everything
Jesus said here. And He could say it with certainty
because He was on His way to Jerusalem to die, to redeem you,
to redeem me. He had us upon His heart. He
had us upon His heart. And as we come to the table,
surely it should be our great delight to remember such a Savior. And then when we rise from this
table to go out into a wicked world, seeking both by life and
by lip to bear witness to the gracious salvation of which we
have become partakers through no goodness of our own, but simply
because of God's free, sovereign grace in Christ, Oh, child of
God, don't be discouraged. You say, what hope is there?
I go to an office full of pagans who have no interest in the things
of God. They are last in privilege, in
apparent responsiveness, in sensitivity. But God, in a moment of time,
one word from God becomes in power, and God can turn them
You ought to go into that office with hope, into that school with
hope, into that neighborhood with hope. And then when we gather
on Wednesday to pray, perhaps there are times when you say,
when all these concerns of the kingdom of God from hither and
yon are laid upon us? It's just so oppressive at times.
There are such enemies to the gospel and such indifference.
How can we, a bunch of imperfectly sanctified saints who come many
times, bow down with the weight of our own failure and sin and
dullness? How can we pray with any confidence
and faith for such expansive visionary ideas as the spread
of the Kingdom to the ends of the earth? My friends, we can
do so because the Lord Jesus died to accomplish that. It does
not rest upon the warmth of your heart or upon the level of your
present spirituality. He died and they shall come. And therefore we can pray. And
we can plead with God, Thy Kingdom come! Why? Because Jesus died
to secure the reality described in this passage. Now, you men
going to preach the gospel when people tell you your theological
convictions are a tempest in a teapot, they have no practical
bearing. May God help you to see there
is all the practical bearing in the world to these things.
I think I would have packed it in long ago if I didn't have
the certain confidence that my Lord will not be robbed of one
bit of the fruit of His sufferings. In the face of blatant unbelief
and crippling indifference and discouraging dullness, what is
the thing that keeps us nerved and pressing on? It's the confidence
that He shall see of the travail of His And though we with him,
and it's interesting how balanced the scripture is, the chapter
closes with Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. And though we with
him must weep and say, how oft would I have gathered, but he
would not. And that's not playing games.
That's the broken heart of inward spiritual disappointment in the
pursuit of men's salvation. And that's a dimension of our
Lord's sanctified humanity in which we must be like Him. But don't you ever reason from
that to any notion that He is ultimately a disappointed Savior.
And we share with Him in the fellowship of His sufferings
the pain of wanting to bring all while only some come. I'll
never forget kneeling in prayer with a dear friend of mine who
has served God in another country for years and we met at a conference
and he was pleading with God for a number of young people.
It was in a young people's conference where we were gathered together
and with tears I remember him pleading, oh God, oh God, I know
that from eternity you've set your love upon the people, and
that your Son died for them, and that you will infallibly
draw them. But Lord, I can't help but want
to see them all come." I believe God smiled at that prayer, because
it reflects the heart of the Savior. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
I would have, but ye would not. No, no. This kind of theology,
it doesn't make cold-hearted preachers, but it helps warm-hearted
preachers to be kept from total despair. And the discouragement that would
paralyze them, and enables them as our Lord who went from weeping
over Jerusalem, steadfastly on to Jerusalem to die, knowing
that the Father's purposes would not be frustrated. Are there
few that be saved? My friend, the great question
is, are you saved? Are you saved? If you are, you've
come through the narrow door, and you've been willing to pay
any price to get through that door. If you're not saved, my
friend, take the command of our Lord to heart. Strive to enter. Count no cost too great to get
through. And if you are through, and by
the grace of God your agonies are not the agonies of getting
through, but the agonies of staying on the way, then my friend be
encouraged. You're in a great, vast company
of the fellowship of the agonizers. They shall come east and west,
north and south. As we gather to the Lord's table,
may it be with great joy, with great confidence with renewed
devotion to our blessed Savior who has drawn us to himself because
when he died he had us upon his heart and gave his life for us. Let us pray. Our Father What can we say when we gaze
even for a few minutes upon the mystery of your sovereign electing
love, upon the mystery of your ways, constituting that great
principle that of the many who are first in privilege, they
are last in experience, Many of us who were last in privilege
have become first in grace and in the experience of your forgiving
mercy. How we praise you for your ways,
so calculated to magnify your sovereignty and your grace. And
we bless you that when you passed by and revealed yourself to Moses,
it was as a gracious and a sovereign God. And so you have revealed
yourself in the Lord Jesus to us. We pray for any who sit under
the Word tonight, who yet have not entered that narrow door. Oh God, will you not have dealings
with them? Do not allow them to go on in
careless or smug indifference, or even, Lord, with a concern of true repentance and faith.
We ask for us, who are your people, help us to be encouraged from
the ministry of the Word tonight. Fill us with renewed confidence
in the ultimate triumphs of the grace and of the saving mercy
of our Lord Jesus. Give us a new zeal to witness,
a new zeal to be consistent in life and fervent in our testimony. And, O God, may our prayers reflect
a renewed confidence in the ultimate triumphs of your grace, knowing
that an hour is coming when the kingdoms of this world shall
become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. O, we pray,
hasten the day when the role of your elect is complete in
terms of all being gathered in that our ears may hear the voice
of the archangel and the trump of God. O Lord, hasten that day,
even so come, Lord Jesus. And as we gather to that table
of His appointment, remembering Him even until He come, O may
something of the Spirit's ministry through the Word be present upon
our hearts as we eat and drink in remembrance of our Lord Jesus. Hear us then in this our prayer
and answer us for the honor of your beloved Son. Amen.