25 Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’
I hate it when my cell phone goes off in the middle of the night. I love a good sleep, and a phone call in the middle of the night can’t be good news! I hate it even more when someone is knocking at my door in the middle of the night. Since no one is supposed to be knocking, it is either REALLY bad news or really scary. But Jesus is telling a story within his cultural context. There are no hotels for strangers to stay. If the travelers arrive after sunset they must find some place to bed down for the night. The cultural norm was that if you were traveling, you planned your journey so that you arrived at a village soon enough in the day to be invited to stay at the house. This gave the people with the house a chance to see you and determine your character before having you enter their home and share a meal with them. So when this man arrives so late, the owner is right in questioning the person’s motives. The owner of the house tells the man that he doesn’t know the man. They don’t have any relationship. Even some of the most basic knowledge, like where he is from, the owner does not know. You see the introductory questions are cross cultural. One of the first questions we ask a new person is their name and then where they come from. You didn’t have to have a lot of knowledge of the person to invite them into your house, but you had to have some at least. The person on the outside claims he was one of the many in the crowd who observed and benefited from Jesus’ ministry. But being part of the crowd is not enough. You must know and be known by the Lord. There must be relationship. He must know that we know where we are from. The Lord must know that we know and acknowledge our sinful past and that we currently stand because of His grace. It is not enough to have just been a spectator at some event when God showed up, you must have been an active participant. So when someone knocks on your door in the middle of the night, you can bet you are not going to let them in unless they answer at least two questions to your satisfaction: who are they and where are they from!
The Arnold Journey 