Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Hammers are good, useful tools, aren’t they – until you hit your thumb with one.

Guns – handguns, rifles, shotguns – come in handy when you’re dealing with pesky, destructive prairie dogs on the Wyoming frontier, as I got the chance to do when I lived in Wyoming. Guns are not so good or beneficial to the health and welfare of everyone when you live in South Central Los Angeles or in Northwest Pasadena.

Rocks – well, they can be great decorations in a landscaped garden. Rocks are not always a blessing, though, as I have discovered in a couple of projects at my cabin. When one’s trying to widen a dirt driveway and level that driveway to a little lower elevation and your shovel hits a boulder, you’re not too pleased with that rock. When you’re digging holes to set a foundation for a new deck and you hit a rock right where you’re trying to set a cement pylon, you’re not too happy. Trust me.

Doors – they’re wonderful inventions. They keep light out of rooms where you’re trying to sleep. They also keep noise and dirt out of rooms. When you’re trying to fit a 48 inch wide couch through an 36 inch wide door, though, you learn what Jesus meant when He spoke about the narrow door and how many will try to enter through that narrow door but will not be able to.

That’s really the story of the entire Old Testament – people trying to enter through the narrow door. You see, you had this set or rules to follow. They were initially called “The Ten Commandments.” Remember that number – 10! Originally, the Children of Israel received those Ten Commandments from Moses and received them joyfully, shouting together with one united voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do” [Exodus 24:3]. That didn’t last too long. Questions began to surface, questions like what is really considered work on the Sabbath Day, questions like who is my neighbor. Over time, the Ten Commandments grew to more than 600 laws as well-intentioned leaders tried to explain and make clearer the Ten Commandments. That set of rules became heavily burdensome because along with those rules came a whole bunch of penalties if you broke those rules. Those penalties were called sacrifices and they were often costly. For example, to forgive an unintentional sin, depending on your financial status in life, a sacrifice ranging in cost from a tenth of an ephah of fine flour to a young bull was mandated [Deuteronomy 4].

Think about that in the course of your own daily life. If, every time you committed a sin or broke any law, an automatic deduction was taken out of our checking or savings accounts, who among us would have any financial resources? Drive over 65 on the L.A. freeways? You lose $25. Gossip – even just a little? Well, that will cost you $35. Kill someone? That’s a big one – a million dollars.

You see where I am going with this. Laws became burdensome. They were no longer a joyful response to the overwhelming grace and mercy of God. Penalties became burdensome – not just something you’d do once in a while, but if you’re any sinner like I am, you’d be constantly running back to the temple to offer yet another sacrifice. That would become time consuming and expensive. Soon people were discovering ways to hide their sin, to creatively re-label sin as something else. Soon people were finding excuses to reduce their sacrifices, much like people find loopholes to reduce their taxes. That all sounds like a good idea until you hear the words of God Himself – “Be holy because I, the Lord, your God, am holy” [Leviticus 19:2].

As creative as the people could get in the eyes of each other, there was no avoiding the All-Seeing, All-Knowing Eye of God. While you might be able to pull one over on the priest, sooner or later you’d be standing face-to-face with God, Who would demand that you pay up. And before the Old Testament God, sacrifices were the narrow door, the only way to keep yourself out of hell and in the Kingdom of God.

You can see what a heavy burden the law and sacrifices became upon people. They were terribly awful. They were enough to make people wander away from their Creator-God and cut a deal with less restrictive, less demanding gods. And, honestly, you can’t blame them. You and I, if we lived under that same system, would probably do no less.

Then broke into the world, at just the right time [Galatians 4:4], a little Baby born in Bethlehem. We all love babies, don’t we, but this was no ordinary baby. This was the God Himself – Immanuel – God with us, God clothed in our human flesh. Being God, He had a kryptonite-type of aversion to sin. Being not born in the usual way, He had no original sin, inherited from His parents. Being God, being the Creator of the devil, He knew better than to fall for the devices of the devil. Thus He lived His life perfectly, sinlessly. Those Ten Commandments and all those 600+ explanations? He kept them all perfectly. Those mandated temple sacrifices for sin? He never had to make even one, not for Himself. Then, 33 years after His Bethlehem birth, as He hung on a Cross on a rocky mount called Calvary, He did so solely for you and for me so that the ultimate sacrifice of His perfectly sinless body would wonderfully and permanently suffice for you and for me and for all people for all time. Jesus Christ has become our “Narrow Door,” our “Rock of Ages.”

Sadly, to this very day, very few enter through the “Narrow Door” of Jesus Christ. That’s the most deceptive scheme of the devil. To this day, he convinces people that it’s better and even that it’s easier to do it themselves, to themselves accept the heavy burden of the law, the heavy burden of making themselves holy before God as He Himself is holy. The devil fools many people into believing that it all depends on how you live your life here on earth. He diverts the eyes of many from the sinlessly caring Christ of Calvary to the dirt of their own inner beings. And not only does the devil divert their eyes. He also clouds their minds into believing that they’ve made enough changes, that they’ve driven out enough dirt to dare to stand face-to-face with the sinless, holy God Who created them and that He will agree with their estimation of themselves, that He will agree that they have cracked the centuries old code of how to access Him and convince Him that Heaven rightfully belongs to them.

But you and I know better, don’t we?

Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to Thy Cross I cling. Naked? I come to Thee for dress. Helpless? We all are. Look to Him for grace. Foul? Fly to the fountain. There we find a Savior Who washes us so we don’t die.

Not by design, but by choice, the “Narrow Door” of Jesus Christ keeps many out, many who want to do it themselves, many who don’t want to surrender to Jesus Christ. But for those of us who have honestly come face-to-face with our sin and start tabulating the true cost of that sin, the “Narrow Door” of Jesus Christ, our “Rock of Ages,” becomes the only Door for us to walk through.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena