SPEAKER_00: Would you turn with me in your Bible to Luke chapter 9?
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: If you have ever had the good fortune, and I hope you have, of approaching the Rocky Mountain Range from a distance, you're going to have a little bit of a leg up on my approach to today's message.
SPEAKER_00: You see, a long time ago when I was in fifth grade, my parents surprised me and my sister by picking us up from elementary school at 10 o'clock in the morning, the day before Christmas vacation was supposed to start.
SPEAKER_00: We piled into an old Plymouth station wagon and off we went on what for us was a trip of a lifetime to visit relatives in Colorado Springs.
SPEAKER_00: I can remember vividly for the first time in my life seeing the Rocky Mountain range come into view.
SPEAKER_00: And at 50 miles an hour, right, we drove for hours while it just stood there, occupying the entire horizon.
SPEAKER_00: Magnificent, unchanging, almost seemingly eternal.
SPEAKER_00: You may have had a similar experience, but in reverse.
SPEAKER_00: You walk an ocean beach, and out of the corner of your eye you see a seashell.
SPEAKER_00: You walk over, you bend down, perhaps you get on one knee, but you stoop down and you pick up that seashell and you begin to examine its detail.
SPEAKER_00: And then as you rise, your eyes once again see the beach and then the waves and then the vast ocean behind it.
SPEAKER_00: When we got to Colorado Springs, there was detail within that mountain range.
SPEAKER_00: Man, we visited the Garden of the Gods, we saw rocks and trees and blades of winter grass, things that we could see and feel and touch that were not far away.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember that because there's benefit in seeing the big picture, but there's benefit in understanding the detail also.
SPEAKER_00: Both complement each other, both are true, both are real, and we gain deeper understanding if we see and understand them both.
SPEAKER_00: I'm very well aware of the danger in taking a few words out of Scripture and launching into a sermon of one's own choosing that may just be related to yesterday's newspaper headline.
SPEAKER_00: Far too much of that kind of preaching goes on in this country today.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm also aware that sometimes we can get so buried in detail that we lose sight of the big picture.
SPEAKER_00: And I would like to try to avoid both errors this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So we come to our text.
SPEAKER_00: It's very brief.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 9, verse 51.
SPEAKER_00: The New International Version translates as follows: As a time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: I will admit to favoring an older translation that reads this way.
SPEAKER_00: And it came about that when the days were approaching for his ascension, that he resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: So it's Easter season, it's upon us.
SPEAKER_00: And we are in that period of time when we focus on Jesus the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we will in three short weeks celebrate that day in which he rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Arguably the focal point of human history and scripture.
SPEAKER_00: We know the Apostle Paul, how he felt about it.
SPEAKER_00: He said, if Christ is not risen from the dead, then we are of all men most miserable, most to be pitied.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, if Christ is not raised from the dead, fellas, we ain't got nothing.
SPEAKER_00: We might as well live for today, live for ourselves, pursue every earthly pleasure, and then die.
SPEAKER_00: That's all there is.
SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, we know that's not the case.
SPEAKER_00: But even though the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important event in history, it happened in a sliver of time within the context of eternity, like a seashell with the ocean behind it, or that blade of winter grass in the mountain range.
SPEAKER_00: This past fall, we spent some time with the youth group in church, and I mentioned the first service that I heard some groans.
SPEAKER_00: We tried to see the birth of Jesus Christ in the context of eternity.
SPEAKER_00: In eternity past, we saw that one there was nothing.
SPEAKER_00: There was God and nothing else.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
SPEAKER_00: We tried to wrap our minds around the concept of nothing.
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not even a proper question to ask because there is no it.
SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, joked with Webb, we couldn't remember, and he finally found it, who it was that said, it was Aristotle, that said, nothing is what rocks dream about.
SPEAKER_00: Same thing my mind went through when I took calculus tests in college.
SPEAKER_00: But we took a look beginning to end.
SPEAKER_00: We looked in Genesis and we saw that it was out of nothing that God spoke.
SPEAKER_00: And the universe came into being, time and space, and then humankind, us in his image, meant to be in loving fellowship with him.
SPEAKER_00: But of course, we sinned.
SPEAKER_00: We absolutely failed miserably, and God in his love found it necessary to rescue us.
SPEAKER_00: Hence the promise of Messiah to save us from our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And then Advent, which we were talking about, the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And then we skipped ahead and we touched on Easter and we looked briefly at Revelation 22, where John writes that someday there's not even going to be a curse.
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be the throne and the Lamb will be in it.
SPEAKER_00: There won't even be any night, because God will illumine them and they will reign forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: So our notion was that look, we can read the book cover to cover.
SPEAKER_00: We know how this movie begins.
SPEAKER_00: We know how it ends.
SPEAKER_00: But man, there was a benefit in seeing both the big picture and the detail up close.
SPEAKER_00: They complement each other.
SPEAKER_00: They are both true and both should be appreciated.
SPEAKER_00: So I belabor the point, but back to today's text.
SPEAKER_00: What I'd like to do is, if my analogy is making any sense, I'd like to start with that seashell.
SPEAKER_00: The life of Jesus the Christ, and look cursorily at some detail and then expand our view.
SPEAKER_00: Thirty years he was with us.
SPEAKER_00: And while he was one of us, he experienced the same things we do.
SPEAKER_00: He was an infant, he experienced childhood, youth, teen years.
SPEAKER_00: He learned the trade.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that he grew in favor with both God and man.
SPEAKER_00: Sinless.
SPEAKER_00: He was and he is God.
SPEAKER_00: And he was and he is man.
SPEAKER_00: Completely both, unmixed.
SPEAKER_00: You know, today's society has great difficulty, doesn't it, understanding and believing that Jesus Christ was and is God.
SPEAKER_00: I find it so interesting that the early church dealt often with detractors who refused to believe that Jesus was a man.
SPEAKER_00: That was actually part of what convinced me that he's God.
SPEAKER_00: But he is man, and he was man.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: That means some things.
SPEAKER_00: That means that he had emotions, he had aspirations.
SPEAKER_00: He knew hunger.
SPEAKER_00: He felt pain.
SPEAKER_00: He was tempted to sin in every point, like as we are.
SPEAKER_00: But never once did he succumb.
SPEAKER_00: I'd venture to bet that there was a time or two the hammer hit the thumb instead of the nail.
SPEAKER_00: But never once did he fail in any moral regard.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Bible says that when Joseph and Mary, I'm not telling you anything you don't know this morning, by the way, when Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus the Christ was born.
SPEAKER_00: God became incarnate.
SPEAKER_00: God took upon flesh.
SPEAKER_00: God became also man.
SPEAKER_00: And in much the same way, after thirty odd years, if I may steal the language, the days were accomplished that he should begin his public ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And one day out in the wilderness, a scruffy prophet named John the Baptist spotted him in the crowd and he said, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was dutifully baptized.
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
SPEAKER_00: Then things got busy.
SPEAKER_00: Because he was on a mission.
SPEAKER_00: He called disciples.
SPEAKER_00: He taught about the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: He confronted and exposed religious leaders of the day.
SPEAKER_00: Water into wine, lame healed, sight restored to blind, demons cast out, dead raised to life.
SPEAKER_00: Thousands fed with five loaves and two fish.
SPEAKER_00: Preaching from a boat, teaching the parables, time with his disciples, time alone early in the morning with his father in prayer, cleansing the temple for crying out loud.
SPEAKER_00: Back and forth across the countryside, teaching the people, up and down between Galilee and Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: But if we read through the Gospels, it seems there is a time, a couple of years in to his public ministry, when his ministry transitions a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And he just doesn't do the signs and the miracles with as great a regularity.
SPEAKER_00: It seems that he focuses more and more on the primary reason that he came, and that was to save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that had been his primary objective all along.
SPEAKER_00: And he hinted about it on more than one occasion, did more than just hint about it.
SPEAKER_00: Think with me of the episode in Mark chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is in a house.
SPEAKER_00: He's preaching and teaching the word.
SPEAKER_00: And the house became so crowded that no one could get in or out.
SPEAKER_00: But there were some fellows that were convinced that Jesus could heal their paralyzed friends.
SPEAKER_00: So what did they do?
SPEAKER_00: They climbed up on the roof of the house, they dug a hole in it, and they let the man down on a pallet in front of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What did our Savior do?
SPEAKER_00: He looked at the man and he said, Son, your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Now, parenthetically, think of those guys laying on their bellies up on the roof of the house, looking through the hole, and they'd say, that's not where we brought him.
SPEAKER_00: We brought him to get healed.
SPEAKER_00: But more to the point of the text, there were teachers of the law in the audience that day, and they were not impressed.
SPEAKER_00: They took great umbrage at what Jesus had said, and they muttered to themselves and thought to themselves, this is blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: Only God can forgive sins.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And I would love to have been a mouse in the corner and watched as Jesus turned and met their eyes as if to say, hey guys, we all know talk is cheap.
SPEAKER_00: Let's play a little game of chess here.
SPEAKER_00: And then he asked aloud, guys, what's easier for me to say?
SPEAKER_00: Your sins are forgiven?
SPEAKER_00: Or get up, take up your bed and walk.
SPEAKER_00: And these guys think, well, he can't possibly heal this guy, so he might as well say your sins are forgiven, because who's ever gonna know?
SPEAKER_00: How can he prove it?
SPEAKER_00: Check.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus spoke again, and he said, But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.
SPEAKER_00: And he turned back to the paralytic and he said, Get up, take up your bed and go home.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, the man did.
SPEAKER_00: Checkmate.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus the Christ came to save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: So from the beginning, the signs that Jesus did and the miracles that he did were meant to establish him and his authority.
SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, they served their purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Else, why did he only save some?
SPEAKER_00: Surely there were plenty more lame and blind and demon-possessed that could have used his touch.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus was more interested in teaching the people about true righteousness and about the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you read through Luke and you get to chapter 11 or Matthew and you get to chapter 16, our Lord pointedly says, it's a wicked generation that continues to seek after a sign.
SPEAKER_00: More and more his intent, his focus, was on his coming, death, and burial and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Where?
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus had been to Jerusalem before.
SPEAKER_00: Man, he was there when he was 12 years old, amazing the teachers in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And I would venture to say over his 30-odd years he'd been there again a time or two.
SPEAKER_00: We know, reading the Gospels, that he'd been there at least twice more during his public ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what has always made this verse so intriguing to me.
SPEAKER_00: When the days were approaching for his ascension, he resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: What was it about this trip to the city that compelled Luke to comment?
SPEAKER_00: In particular, about Jesus' resolve.
SPEAKER_00: Well, as usual, Scripture is its own best commentary.
SPEAKER_00: And virtually every reliable commentator sees the link between Luke 9.51 and Isaiah chapter 50.
SPEAKER_00: Just listen to what Isaiah wrote.
SPEAKER_00: I gave my back to those who strike me, and my cheeks to those who tore out my beard.
SPEAKER_00: I did not cover my face from humiliation and spitting, for the Lord God helps me, and therefore I will not be disgraced.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ set his face resolutely to go to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: But why did Jesus need to refocus?
SPEAKER_00: Why did he, as we say today, find it necessary to dig down so deep?
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you why.
SPEAKER_00: It's because our Messiah knew what lay ahead of him.
SPEAKER_00: And don't ever, ever forget that Jesus the Christ was fully man.
SPEAKER_00: And the Son of Man knew what lay ahead of him.
SPEAKER_00: It was daunting.
SPEAKER_00: It was overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: It was downright frightening.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that he would soon be welcomed into Jerusalem by an adoring mob that was so deluded.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that after all the time he spent with his disciples, they would just end up in a bicker about who was going to sit next to him and what they perceived to be his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that Judas was going to betray him.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that in the middle of the night an armed cohort of soldiers was going to arrest him without cause and bind him and lead him away while his disciples fled the scene.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that Peter was going to deny him three times.
SPEAKER_00: He knew about Annas and Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate.
SPEAKER_00: He knew about the cat of nine tails that was going to rip his back to bloody ribbons.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that soon he would be shouldered with all the sin of all mankind.
SPEAKER_00: And more than that, he would be shouldered with the true moral guilt of every one of those sins.
SPEAKER_00: He knew, in fact, that he was going to be for a time forsaken by his father.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that he was going to descend into hell for me and you.
SPEAKER_00: Hint, hint, incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: With burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.
SPEAKER_00: Then I said, Here I am.
SPEAKER_00: It is written about me in the scroll.
SPEAKER_00: I have come to do your will, my God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus went to Jerusalem out of obedience to his Father.
SPEAKER_00: We will never understand everything about the Trinity, that perfect, harmonious relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through all eternity.
SPEAKER_00: But here, in this little sliver of time within eternity, God the Son is being uniquely obedient to God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Because from the beginning, it was God's plan to redeem his lost creation.
SPEAKER_00: And the only course of redemption was to inflict the punishment upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: That is, upon Jesus the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In that sliver of time within eternity, and Jesus knew that.
SPEAKER_00: And so as an obedient servant, he set his face.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, why did Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_00: Because he loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Understand love.
SPEAKER_00: We write books about it.
SPEAKER_00: We read books about it.
SPEAKER_00: We go to seminars on it.
SPEAKER_00: How often don't we hear someone say or even say ourselves, boy, I'd do anything for so and so.
SPEAKER_00: I love them so much.
SPEAKER_00: Anything?
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: Would you?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus said, I have come to do your will, my God.
SPEAKER_00: I love them so much.
SPEAKER_00: I'll go to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He went to Jerusalem and set his face in that direction because he loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever, ever forget that fact.
SPEAKER_00: John 3.16, for God what?
SPEAKER_00: So loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ, and it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
SPEAKER_00: And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by what?
SPEAKER_00: Faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 5.2.
SPEAKER_00: Walk in love just as Christ loved you and gave himself up as an offering and a sacrifice to God.
SPEAKER_00: Or 1 John 3.16.
SPEAKER_00: We know love by this.
SPEAKER_00: By what?
SPEAKER_00: That he laid down his life for us.
SPEAKER_00: So we've stood up halfway and we ask this question why, and bam, we get hit frontal in the face, broadside with the great love of our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
SPEAKER_00: We've got to stand up all the way.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's more.
SPEAKER_00: When we stand up fully and we see the entire horizon, eventually we get to Revelation chapter 13, verse 8, which says, John wrote, written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, in the mind of God, Jesus the Christ had been slain from the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: From the beginning through eternity, there has never been a time when we have been outside of his love.
SPEAKER_00: He set his face resolutely to go to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Passing comment that we could easily overlook.
SPEAKER_00: A seashell we could just walk on by.
SPEAKER_00: But when we see the detail in the context of God's plan for the ages, we come upon a God.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: We come upon our God.
SPEAKER_00: Who has loved us so much that from eternity He planned to die for us to save us from our sins?
SPEAKER_00: Oh my.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't the question just beg itself, how should I respond to this great love?
SPEAKER_00: A couple of thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: The first is we know that it was the collective sin of all mankind, including mine and yours, that put Jesus on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't get saved collectively.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus saves sinners one by one by one.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't save this congregation or that congregation or this membership.
SPEAKER_00: He told a parable about a good shepherd that went out into the mountains and looked for one lost sheep.
SPEAKER_00: And he seeks us out one by one by one.
SPEAKER_00: Which means that each of us need to come to that point where we admit that it was my sin that put Christ on the cross, and I need to believe on him and trust him to save me from my sin.
SPEAKER_00: Look, if you're here this morning and you've never come to that point, that's what should be your response.
SPEAKER_00: That should be your first order of business before you leave this building.
SPEAKER_00: Then you know what?
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing that would please the Savior more.
SPEAKER_00: Because that is exactly why he set his face to go to Jerusalem, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: There's also a very proper and continuing response that's in order for those of us who have been saved and are being saved.
SPEAKER_00: John wrote, We love because why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus himself said, You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
SPEAKER_00: Well, come on, how do you love God?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered that question too.
SPEAKER_00: He said, He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.
SPEAKER_00: So we ought to love him.
SPEAKER_00: We ought to love him in return, and we show our love for him by our obedience to him.
SPEAKER_00: Folks, this is not rocket science.
SPEAKER_00: There's no secret code necessary.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to know how to parse the Hebrew and Greek to find this application.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus the Christ's great love drove him to Jerusalem and onto the cross, and he offers what he did there in that sliver of time as the only means for our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: What does he ask in return?
SPEAKER_00: That we admit it and that we trust him to save us from our sin and then just love him and obey him.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, not in our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible's very clear that there is an adversary out there.
SPEAKER_00: He prowls the earth like a roaring lion, and he will devour us if we think we can love God in our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: We need the Holy Spirit, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: Who was given to us, who lives in us to be our strength and our guide.
SPEAKER_00: But that's a topic for another day.
SPEAKER_00: So Easter season.
SPEAKER_00: Boy, there are so many things that we could talk about, contemplate, study about Jesus the Christ, about sacrifice, about God's redemptive plan, all of this.
SPEAKER_00: But just for this morning, let's concentrate on this one thing, this resolve and great love of our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: It's a love that was so fierce that despite the fact that he knew it was coming, he set his face and he continued on to Jerusalem for me and for you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there are folks that have said this so much better than I ever could.
SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful, I'm grateful for being as old as I am.
SPEAKER_00: Because I got to grow up in a period of time when we sang the old hymns with great regularity.
SPEAKER_00: Trevor Francis wrote of this great love.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free, rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me.
SPEAKER_00: Underneath me, all around me is the current of thy love, leading onward, leading homeward to my glorious rest above.
SPEAKER_00: Or Isaac Watts, man, alas, and did my Savior bleed and did my sovereign die?
SPEAKER_00: Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?
SPEAKER_00: Was it for sins that I had done he groaned upon the tree?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was.
SPEAKER_00: Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree.
SPEAKER_00: Were of course Wesley.
SPEAKER_00: And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood?
SPEAKER_00: Died he for me, who caused his pain?
SPEAKER_00: For me, who him to death pursued?
SPEAKER_00: Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
SPEAKER_00: Or, with respect to our response, back to Isaac Watts again, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small.
SPEAKER_00: Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
SPEAKER_00: So let us believe in him, trust him to save us from our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And let us love him in return with obedient hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he resolutely set his face and he went on to Jerusalem for you and for me out of his great love for us.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.