Luke 9:51-62, Journey

Journey

Have you ever been on a journey? Was it a good or bad journey? Did you stop off along the way? Do you enjoy journeys?

Everyone takes a journey but not everyone enjoys the journey or sometimes we don’t allow ourselves to enjoy the journey because we have done this journey before & didn’t enjoy it & all we want is to get to the destination.

When i say journey, maybe it is something you are going through or have been through, maybe an experience but it was necessary to complete to get to the other side. The Isrealites had a 40 year journey to get to the promised land when it was right there in front of them, but because of poor decisions at the beginning of the journey they stayed at the stopping off point longer, a whole generation missed out on the promise.

Are you all about getting to the destination?

When there is so much on the journey, we need to learn to enjoy the journey, live in the journey, it’s not just a passing through place.

So many have talked about this pandemic & say wait until we get to the other side of it. Initially we locked down for 13 weeks, wait till it ends we will do something then, some freedoms came. Iv’e said this before, it’s like being in a house & 1 room is your living room but at the end of the hallway there’s another room that is going to become your living room but you need to pass through the hallway to get there, that’s where we are, how we are in this pandemic, we are in the hallway, but it can’t just be a passing through, it’s a stop off point & it’s OK i know we have been at the stop off point longer than we wanted to be & we want everything to go back to normal & people have spoken of a new normal to come, but that means that this is just a passing through point, a hallway on the way to another room, which means we don’t live in the hallway, the journey to the new room, a new normal but this is a new normal, the hallway is a room, it,s where we are living at the moment. We are created to thrive not survive, if we don’t keep focus on the destination & just stay in the stop off point or live in the stop off points on our journey to the destination, if we just hold our breathe & not breathe then we won’t thrive we will survive. We need to learn to live in the moment, i keep saying life is made up of moments, grasp the moment, live in the moment, enjoy the journey.

When our family go to Tams mum’s house in Wales we have to make a journey, it’s 4 hours of our lives but we enjoy the journey because we love the destination. We always have a stop off point along the way, sometimes it has been a national trust place, if we have left early. most times it is Tamworth services toilet break, sometimes depending on the time of day it’s coffee & chocolate break added to the first, sometimes it’s burger-king sometimes it’s all three, but we make something of the journey. But lets be clear it’s just a stopping off point not our destination.

As followers of Jesus we have a destination, eternity with Jesus & so we are all on a journey, it’s called life & depending on how you set your mind for the journey will determine if you enjoy the journey or not & whether the will reach your destiny, your destination or not.

Last February crazy snow storm travelling in the dark, went the wrong way, although the journey was a little fraught & sometimes i held my breath as i realised how close we were to crashing into something, it was an enjoyable journey because the destination was always in sight, even if it was only in our minds.

Luke 9:51-62 lets read

Jesus is on the physical journey to Jerusalem His physical destination at another stop off point on His way to give us a Spiritual destination, Heaven with Jesus. H e is focused as it says. “His face was set toward Jerusalem”. Isaiah 50:

Isaiah 50:7 ESV

But the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.

Speaks Prophetically of the Messiah, this is Jesus who steadfastly set His face to go suffer & die in our place. Jesus hardened His face, not in the sense of being angry but in the sense of having focus & having focus through a difficult time.

The Samaritan village rejected Jesus because He was focused on Jerusalem, you see there is a long history of hatred between Jews & Samaritans. The Samaritans believe that the books of Moses, that’s the first 5 books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy are the only true scriptures, they regard Mount Gerezim to be the site of the true Temple, they believe that is where Heaven & Earth meet. the Jews believe that the Temple in Jerusalem is where Heaven & Earth meet. But actually it’s in Jesus where heaven & Earth meet & Jesus is in us.

The Samaritans were put of by His physical destination, but there understanding of where Heaven meets Earth had become a destination for them, the same with the Jews, thinking about Nicodemus in John 3 the first 15 verses where Jesus says to him “you must be born again”

For the Jews this was a stop off point, what they know isn’t the final word of God, Jesus is the word, Jesus is God, you must be born again of the Spirit, what we know at the beginning of the journey isn’t the full picture, what happens to us along the journey isn’t the full picture, we are still learning.

We have a choice stay at the stop off point, maybe that thing that happened, those unkind words, that thing we once learnt, maybe we don’t continue our journey we get stuck. some stop off points are nice, that’s enough for you, that’s all i need to know, i’m comfortable with that.

The Jews journeying to the promised land, Nicodemus with being born again. Past experience, past teaching not letting them see what is right in front of them.

To learn something new, we have to unlearn something, we can’t just plonk it on top.

Life is a journey, the best way to do the journey is to follow Jesus, it’s very simple.

The word follower suggests you are going somewhere, to follow, the verb is to move or travel behind, go after someone in order to observe or monitor them so that you can do what they do.

Jesus calls us to follow Him, not to the physical destination Jerusalem but to Heaven, He calls us everyday to focus on Him.

So as we finish

1. Our focus needs to be on Him, He is our destination, He is our example of who we are to be, how to live, how to love & as i said a couple of weeks ago. To be able to focus we need to breathe, spend time with Him.

2. When we focus on Jesus we can enjoy the journey, good things will happen, bad things may happen. Laughter, upset, anger, joy, All of them come in life, all of them are way points, stopping off points on our journey, there exactly that stop off points you may stay there a while but it’s not to be your destination, your identity your not called to a stop off point, your called to a destiny to come into your destination.