Have you ever applied for a job and then were told you weren’t qualified for that position? Maybe you tried out to make the school team, and you didn’t make it. Or maybe you did make the team, and you were in the game and then you did something that disqualified you, and you were kicked out of the game. Sometimes we try and follow the rules and yet we can still end up in the situation where you’re asked to sit out. When I was in high school I was quite a good trombonist; not bragging, just giving contextual background information. I made the district band, district orchestra, area band and area orchestra. But I never made it to the states. That was just beyond my ability. I never qualified for that elite group of talented musicians. Sometimes you reach your limit. In 7th grade I played linebacker for the school team. Then in 8th grade everyone grew a foot and 30 lbs and all of a sudden I was not qualified to make the team. Sometimes we are qualified, sometimes not, and sometimes we are disqualified. This is life. This also is true for spiritual life. Wouldn’t we all want to be qualified to go to heaven and not hell? But how do you qualify? And is it really something you can do on your own effort? Desire alone does not qualify you. We just remembered the anniversary of 9/11. There were many in that tragedy who desired to live, desired to escape, and yet perished. There’s more to qualifying for eternal life than mere desire. And there’s more to it than mere profession. Jesus was teaching and someone asked him, “And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.(DESIRE) When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ (CLAIMED TO KNOW HIM, CALLED HIM LORD) Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ (WE EVEN HUNG OUT WHERE YOU WERE, WE ATE AND DRANK IN YOUR PRESENCE, WE WENT TO CHURCH FROM TIME TO TIME) But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’” (Luke 13:23–27) You see they were disqualified, they were sinners, workers of iniquity, of sin. So it’s not desire, it’s not professing or proclaiming to be a Christian, and it’s not even doing things, Christian things. Jesus taught that many, MANY, would try to claim they did sufficient good deeds to get into heaven. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matt. 7:21–23) Even though they claimed to be doing God’s work, prophesying in the name of Jesus, casting out demons and lots of other powerful things, like feeding the poor, digging wells, volunteering in the soup kitchen, dropping some money into the red kettle, saying merry Christmas instead of happy holidays, all are good things, but none make you a Christian, none qualify you for the heavenly reward of eternal life and spending eternity with Jesus. You and I cannot qualify ourselves. And this can be unnerving, unsettling. Because if you think your life has been really good til now, you’ve been mostly a good person, mostly doing good instead of bad, then you might be lulled into thinking you are safe with the Big Man upstairs, when in reality you could be dangerously close to your final breath, being disqualified and spending an eternity in hell. If being qualified for the reward of eternal life is your aim, let’s get into the text and hear from God together this morning.