10/08/2026
R.C. Sproul brings the heat…literally. What are your thoughts?
“Will those who are saved be few?”
Someone asked Jesus that on His way to Jerusalem. How would you answer?
Our culture already has an answer. Go to almost any funeral and you’ll hear it: justification by death. All you have to do to get to heaven is die. Hell is for Hi**er and Stalin, and nearly everyone else gets in.
Jesus answered differently: “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:24).
This message traces how we got here. In 1781, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason placed God beyond the reach of human knowledge. The philosophies that followed (Marxism, positivism, existentialism, relativism, pluralism) all shared one thing: skepticism toward the supernatural. Take God out of the equation and you’re left with truths but no truth, purposes but no purpose, humans but no humanity.
So broad-mindedness became the highest virtue and narrowness the worst sin, even in the church. But if you believe and think as a Christian, you are by definition narrow, because Truth itself became flesh.
Jesus warns of a day when the door is shut. Many will knock and say, “Lord, we ate and drank in your presence.” He will answer, “I do not know where you come from.”
That isn’t cruelty or injustice. It’s perfect justice. Every sin is cosmic treason against a holy God who owes us nothing.
The message doesn’t end at the door, though. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed. It’s almost invisible at first, but it grows into a tree where birds of every kind build their nests. We are mustard seeds in a dying world. We don’t need to measure how strong the world is. We only need to know who the King is.
“Strive” comes from the Greek agon, the root of “agonize.” Your works will never get you in. Once you’re in, though, run the narrow way with all your might. The first Christians were called the people of the Way.
Tonight, as your head hits the pillow, ask yourself: am I numbered among the few, or the many?
