Respond to the Good News

Determination: What does it mean for a Christian to be determined? The word determined means to be decided, resolved, and settled. To be a determined Christian is to be resolved and settled as a Christ-like believer of God. Now Jesus is determined in this story. "I must be on my way" (Lk. 13:33). There is a sense of determination and certainty in Jesus' view of his journey toward Jerusalem.

I admire people who have this kind of determination. I sometimes think that if I had known what I was getting into, I wouldn't have gotten into it. You can apply that to whatever situations in your life you like. At the first sign of discomfort, I think why I made this commitment to . . . It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I can't remember why . . . This is harder than I thought it would be . . . I didn't sign on for this . . . No one told me about this . . .

Nobody likes discomfort along the journey of life. That's why we coin little sayings to help us along the way like, "I can stand anything as long as I can whine about it," or "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Neither of these sayings, however, fits our Savior's situation in Luke 13. He has signed on willingly for a journey whose path he knows will be littered with resistance, rejection, and death. He is not whining. He is lamenting.

The context is an intense conflict of wills: the intention of Jesus' adversaries, the determination of the Messiah, the unwillingness of Jerusalem, and the determination of God to fulfill the divine will. Who signs up for this kind of drama?

The pharisees comes to Jesus and tells him he should leave because Herod wants to kill him.

Little children are notorious for accidentally telling on themselves. If you have multiple children, you know this is true. One of them will run to the parents and complain about the other hitting them. It’s always shocking to the little boy when his mom asks what he did to his sister. Parents know that all too often the child telling on a sibling share some of the guilt. When the Pharisees tell Jesus that Herod will kill him, Jesus responds with grief over the spiritual state of Jerusalem.

Jesus was not afraid of Herod and his so-called power that sought to eliminate him, but he was grieved by the spiritual state of Jerusalem, whose leaders would not accept God’s messengers. This holy city stood as a symbol for Israel as a whole. Jerusalem is the city that “kills the prophet and stones those who are sent to it" (Lk. 13:34). How could it be anything other than the end of the road for Jesus?

Friends we must be bold as well and stand against the powers, rulers, and authorities of this dark world and put on the whole armor of God. We must weep with Jesus over the same spiritual state that we find ourselves in. We can sit here and say hindsight 20/20 the Israelites should have known this and that, but we are in the same spiritual state as they were in.

Jesus was confronting the institutions with the Truth. It is the same with us today. When we try to show someone the error of their way, by using facts and scripture they cannot understand why they are wrong. It is because we have been programed to listen to our feelings and take our experiences and place them above the truth.

When we try to lead others to Christ and let them know that they must repent of their sin, oftentimes they begin to explain that their sin isn’t that bad. That maybe we are the ones who is wrong, for judging, for condemning. That we need a little more grace and liberty and then God would be okay with it. But a little sin is still a sin in God’s eyes.

What that means is that as Jesus shared with many of the people he encounters, he tells them to go and sin no more. The message of reconciliation is to come back to God. For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. Thus there must be a response to the Good News.

God offers this salvation to all people. Yet, many people put off a decision for Christ, thinking that there will be a better time—but they could easily miss their opportunity altogether. There is no time like the present to receive God’s forgiveness. What we find in this story is an urgency and a determination from Christ for Jerusalem. He hoped they would repent and respond to His Good News! The Messiah went to the one place they were expecting Him, yet He was ignored, rejected, beaten, and crucified.

Ignoring God brings disastrous results: Israel is abandoned once again as it was in exile six hundred years earlier. Their opportunity is gone. Never again will they see him until it is too late. Then he will be clearly recognized as Messiah, coming again, this time as judge of the world. Then they will sing the words of Psalm 118:26 and welcome Jesus as he comes in God’s name to deliver his people. But the song of praise will be too late for those to whom Jesus is speaking.

Jerusalem is the site of great evil, but also of great things. Jerusalem is where human sinfulness and divine intervention meet. Our sinfulness meets a crucified prophet. Jerusalem is the end for Jesus’ earthly life, but is the beginning of something else, the body of Christ represented as the Church.

For Jesus, God’s passionate dream, compassionate desire, and bold determination is to gather God’s human children closer and closer in God’s embrace and love. That mission and commitment is at the center of Jesus’ work. Like a mother hen, God seeks to draw, embrace, include, and welcome God’s children into the family of God that He has intended from the dawn of Eden itself.

There is a study called “lostology” which is the study of being lost and what that experience can teach Christians about evangelism.

Too often the church has claimed to be rescuing the perishing when what we have really been doing is protecting the dying. Jesus spoke to people who were proud and secure in their religion—a people who had become experts in God. They had made the rules, so God had to accept them into heaven. Jesus tried to shock them into realizing that only God can make kingdom rules.

Religion, whether it is the legalistic Judaism of Jesus’ day or the anemic, seeker-friendly Protestantism of today, cannot assure people a place in God’s kingdom. Those who think they are ahead of the religious herd often find themselves shocked and in last place when Jesus calls. The kingdom is growing steadily and unobtrusively. It may be growing without you. Have you repented of sin, trusted Jesus for salvation, practiced his Word, cared more for the needy than for yourself and your religious repetitions? The Bible calls for dedication to Jesus, not dedication to the ongoing security of your church’s or denomination practices.

I invite you all to study lostology. It might describe you.

Father, you are the ruler of heaven and earth, I want to be part of your kingdom. Deliver me from my religion of self-satisfaction, practiced by people in a mutual admiration society. Deliver me from the tame repetitions of hymns and sermons and prayers that I have substituted for dedication to you and your kingdom. I repent of my sins. I give myself to follow you to the cross. I surrender my religious security for a pure relationship with you. Only then can I be sure I belong to your kingdom. In the name of my king, Jesus Christ. Amen.