The Journey to Jerusalem: Lessons in Rejection and Redemption

We really reach a major transition point here today in Luke's gospel.

Jesus has twice told his disciples that he's gonna die.

Think back to chapter nine, verse 22 and verse 44. And he has discussed his

upcoming exodus, if you remember, in Jerusalem with Moses and Elijah on the

mountain, remember that?

In verse 31, but now the time is approached, it says in scripture,

for him to be taken up to heaven And so Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem,

the verse we started with today, verse 51.

And from this point on, we're going to see fewer miracles,

fewer extended blocks of public teaching and fewer crowds, by the way,

as this narrative of Luke's gospel is driving toward a climax of Jesus's crucifixion, right?

His resurrection, and ultimately his ascension into heaven.

And in order to understand the events that are about to take place in Jerusalem,

we must firmly have firmly fixed in our mind, I should say, that Jesus understood,

don't miss this, he understood that he had been sent by who? His heavenly father.

We see that in chapter 10, a little bit later, we'll see this in verse 16,

though we'd already been, you know, we've already been alerted to that fact

back in chapter four, but it's been a while since we've been there.

He was not some rogue agent. In other words, he was not making up the terms

of his mission as he went along. Jesus was not.

Instead, what was he doing? He had been sent to accomplish, Eastwood,

a specific task, namely what?

Dying on the cross and rising from the dead for the salvation of his people. Amen.

And this is why Jesus spoke in terms of his suffering as something that must

take place. We looked at that in chapter 9, verse 22, a few weeks back.

It was necessary because the Father had sent him to do it.

And for that reason, it's significant, y'all, that Jesus chooses to send his followers out,

repeatedly in this passage. And by the way, how many of you sitting here today

know that you have been, as followers of Christ, sent out? Amen?

Sent out. We're not here to warm a pew. We're out here to go, right?

To go into all the world. And we'll talk about that more.

But I'll tell you what, the first thing I see in this passage today is what

not to do in the face of rejection. what not to do in the face of rejection, because guess what?

Sometimes the world is not going to like the message of the gospel, right?

But up until this point, most of the action has taken place in the region of

Galilee, up in the north, for Jesus to head from Galilee to Jerusalem in the

south without a long detour.

He would be required, guess what? To pass through the land of the Samaritans.

And relations, if you remember, between Jews and Samaritans were frosty at best.

And Jewish travelers were often harassed as they passed through on their way to or from Jerusalem.

And so when Jesus actually sent his disciples ahead, get this church,

to a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival,

it's not surprising, is it, that they did not warmly receive a Jewish rabbi on his way to Jerusalem.

We saw that in verse 52 and 53 that we read earlier.

James and John, guess what? They did not take this insult to their master lightly, did they?

The brothers, if you remember, whom Jesus had nicknamed, anybody remember?

Sons of Thunder, right? Sounds like a motorcycle gang. I don't know, but Sons of Thunder.

That's in Mark 3, 17. You can see that, But they offered to show off their newfound

spiritual authority by what?

Calling down fire on the offending village from heaven, right? In verse 54.

Now, I don't know about y'all, but when you're trying to spread the word,

the gospel, the kingdom has come, all this.

I don't know in your life, have you ever been tempted to call down fire on somebody?

I don't know. I'm just saying the disciples here certainly show their humanity, right?

And they're just like, hey, we got all this power, we're giving all this authority.

Lord, they're not doing this right. Let's just call down fire.

But I want you to think for a minute. Well, that might not seem,

you know, or that might seem to us, I should say, harsh, obviously.

It certainly was harsh, but it was not without, I want you all to see this today,

an Old Testament precedent.

Because if you remember in the book of 2 Kings, we read about a time when the

prophet Elijah proved that he was a legitimate prophet by calling down fire from heaven.

Do you remember that? on a group of Samaritan soldiers, by the way,

in 2 Kings 1 verses 1 through 12. We read about that account.

2 Kings 1:1–12

The disciples' offer may well have been rooted in an assumption that Jesus would

want to make a similar demonstration here of his legitimacy in the face of this

Samaritan rejection that he was getting.

But it's clear, is it not, in verse 55, it's clear from Jesus's rebuke that

the two brothers have badly misunderstood the nature of Jesus's mission.

Y'all think we misunderstand sometimes the nature of Jesus's mission?

Church, he has come to save those who reject him by what? By dying in their place.

A fact that's driven home by Luke in the book of Acts when the Samaritans became

some of the first people to embrace the gospel in Acts 8.

You know, in the face of rejection here. We see verse 56, Jesus and his disciples,

what do they do? What does Jesus have them do?

Not call down fire from heaven. They just simply what? They move on to the next village.

Pretty simple, right? They bring the good news of the kingdom,

but if it's rejected and not well received at all and all this harsh rejection, they just move on.

They move on. That's not to say that judgment has no place in Jesus's ministry.

His instructions actually to his disciples, as we'll see in chapter 10,

verses 10 through 12, make it clear that rejecting the message of the kingdom

has terrible consequences, right?

I mean, wiping dust from one's feet was a custom that Jesus employed to communicate

their disdain when leaving a Gentile region.

And it was a warning sign, if you will, of rejection and condemnation.

As we see back in verse 11, when a town rejected the disciples that Jesus had

sent, they were rejecting what?

Both him and the father who sent him. We saw back in verse 16,

an action church that would surely have consequences in the long term, right?

But Jesus actually, at this point, he enters into a series of shocking statements,

actually, about the final day of judgment.

We see that in verses 12 through 15, saying that on that day,

famous Old Testament objects of wrath.

You remember, we saw in the verse this morning, Sodom, Tyre.

And Sidon, right? will fare better

than the Jewish town where Jesus had performed many of his miracles.

The kingdom had come near, in other words, he says in scripture, to these cities.

And so rejecting such a message was worse than even the worst Gentile perversion.

The important lesson here for us today is that judgment will most certainly

come to all who reject Jesus, but it's not the disciples' responsibility to

make that judgment happen. nor is it ours, right?

The sent ones take the news of the kingdom around, right?

Go everywhere, right? Start at home, go everywhere. But judgment is left to

God in his timing, and it certainly will come.

But we're called to spread the good news.

And that's a helpful reminder, I think, to Christians, all of us.

We still live in the air before the final judgment, don't we?

Right? And we're going to have a lot of rejection. And do you not think that

with all the advances we have today, all the copies of the Bible,

all the translations, all the opportunities to hear the gospel that's out there.

Do you not think those of us that live here in America will have a harsher judgment if we reject Jesus?

Because today we hear it everywhere, right?

And I think about this today. Now is the time for us to be sent around the world

with the good news that God's salvation has come in the person of who? Jesus.

And so while we might be rightly upset when we see the ever-increasing hostility

of the world around us to Jesus, we're not authorized.

I want y'all to know that. We're not authorized to execute judgment.

We are sent to preach the gospel message, including the warning that a day of

reckoning is coming, and we leave the judgment up to God for when he sees fit.

You know, we've been studying the Word of God in our Sunday school class and

our Answers Bible curriculum.

And we saw today that God's word has stood the test of time.

We were doing a review today and how that the book itself, it's God breathed.

It's God's breath on a page, right?

And also we realized today that people have the reactions they do against God's

word because you either have one or two responses to his word.

You're either going to reject, try to destroy it, which the Bible has been tried

to be destroyed, burned up, right?

Survives the best-selling book of all time, or you obey it. That's only two

choices, destroy it or obey it.

Because it is truly, if people just dismiss the Bible, if it didn't have that

ring of being from God, if it didn't have the authority that's behind it,

people wouldn't get all bent out of shape about God's Word.

The reason they get bent out of shape is because it's true. And they know it.

God has written the law upon their hearts. And so he sends out 72.

Some manuscripts say 70, but others say 72 here sent. That's the common 72 sent,

as we see on this next slide.

So after the experience in Samaria, Jesus sends ahead a group of 72 disciples.

Their job, get this today, is to heal the sick, declare the nearness of the kingdom.

We see that verse 9, to people in light of Jesus's imminent arrival in their

town. He's coming, in other words.

Jesus is coming to their town. And even this larger workforce is not nearly sufficient, is it?

We see in the text today, to the task of spreading the message.

And so the disciples are encouraged to what? Look back in verse two there,

ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out what?

Laborers, workers, laborers into his harvest field.

Man, why do we come to church? Do we come to check off a box?

Do we come just to be social with people? All those things, man,

as far as just being in God's word, all that's great.

But that's not what we're here for, is it? We're here to worship God and we're

here to serve and obey our Lord and King that we sang about earlier. You're my King.

And all about you, you don't argue with the King.

You don't argue with the King of the universe.

And it's like our purpose here, Eastwood, let's don't let go of our purpose.

If we're a church that is not sin, if we're a church that stops going,

we will certainly be a church that stops growing.

Certainly. And we don't want to have the glory of the Lord depart from this place, do we?

We want to obey God's word. Well, next, Jesus gives them instructions on how to go about the mission.

With the day of judgment looming in the future. Let me ask you,

is the day of judgment not looming in the future?

The task of spreading the message is extremely urgent.

It's not time to be lazy. It's time to be workers in God's field. Amen?

It's time to put the hand to the plow and not look back. That's what it's time for.

The sent ones cannot afford here in this passage to carry extra luggage.

They'll have to rely on the Lord's provision. Wow, there's no time for the sent

ones to stop and chat along the road. This is urgent.

To receive a messenger of the kingdom is akin to receiving the king himself, as we see in verse 16.

The disciple comes as an ambassador of peace. If you remember,

we are ambassadors of Christ, amen?

So if he receives a peaceful welcome in the house, it says here,

peace will rest on that household in verse 6 of Luke 10.

They can stay in one home and eat and drink with a clear conscience,

he's telling them, for the blessing that they bring is far more valuable than

the cost of their support.

In verse 7 and 8, that's what he tells them.

Jesus's instructions here, they're not simply just a step-by-step manual for

an approach to modern missions, but these are instructions. I want y'all to

see this today for a specific place and a specific time.

So we can't conclude, in other words, that it is disobedient for a missionary

to bring a bag with her on the mission field.

She's not required to find somebody who promotes peace and stay with that person.

This was for this specific time and place and instance in Jesus's ministry.

Instead, what do we do? We must take to heart the urgency, there's that word

again, of the task of spreading the message of salvation.

Salvation from what? You ever thought about it? Yeah, Romans 1, right?

Salvation is the power of God to save us from the wrath of God.

That's what we're saved from, church, ultimately, is the wrath of Almighty God.

In fact, we got to take to heart the urgency

of spreading the message of salvation whether we're vocational missionaries

to a foreign culture or merely missionaries to our workplaces and our children

the task i want you to get this today eastwood is urgent can you say that word urgent it's urgent.

Far too long we've been so lazy about i mean is the good news or is it just

a good suggestion Did Jesus mean what he said, or are we just here going through the motions?

You see, I think we've got far too many country clubs that call themselves churches

than we do real churches today.

And so as we look at this today, it should lead us to pray to proclaim the good news of the gospel.

And I want to say this, the cause of our joys we see in this next slide,

you know, the disciples we saw here, they were joyful, but Jesus kind of guided

them away from where their joy rested to start with, didn't he?

Given the difficult circumstances into which these few lambs here had been sent

in verse 3, we might expect that they would have come back battered and bruised, right?

I mean, with their tails between their legs, maybe. But instead of encountering

defeat, church, and discouragement, they had experienced an unanticipated provision of power.

Look back in verse 17, Luke 10.

Even the demons submit to us in your name, they said. And as a result,

guess what? They returned with what?

Joy. They were excited over all this. Jesus had just warned Capernaum that instead

of being exalted into heaven, they would be cast down into Hades. in verse 15.

And an image that calls to mind, if you remember, the judgment on the king of

Babylon that was celebrated in Isaiah verse, actually chapter 14, I should say.

Now Jesus applies, in this passage we read, the picture to Satan, doesn't he?

Whom Jesus saw, look at the text in verse 18, like lightning,

he falls like lightning from heaven when the kingdom of God invaded the world.

And so unbeknown to the disciples, their ministry of proclamation of healing

and casting out demons, guess what it did?

It sent shockwaves through the unseen spiritual realm.

Talking about spiritual warfare, right?

None of this is to be attributed to the power of the disciples, is it?

Jesus, I don't want you to miss this. Jesus is the one who has given them,

as you look back on the text the authority in verse 19 to overcome some of the power of the enemy.

All of the power of the enemy. Come on. He gave them authority to overcome all the power of the enemy.

The joy of the disciples is easy to understand, I think.

Who would not be excited to see a display of God's power like that?

Jesus encourages their joy, but like I said earlier, he actually locates it

on a different foundation.

What does he tell them to rejoice in instead? verse 20, rejoice that your names

are what? Written in heaven.

You know, it's a tremendous blessing to see the Lord working through you, right?

Growth and holiness and fruitfulness in ministry even are good reasons to be

thankful for God, to God.

But God has an even greater blessing for his people, for he's written their names where?

In heaven. And it wasn't just last week or when you prayed the prayer.

You know when he wrote them?

Before the foundation of the world, scripture tells us.

Wow. That's to say he has brought us into an unshakable relationship with himself

that will be fully realized where? In the joy of heaven.

And that's a great reminder, I think, to all believers not to put our hope,

don't miss this, in our service to God and the way that he may choose to use us.

Seasons of fruitfulness may come and go, Brother Ronnie.

And in any case, the Lord is going to raise up other laborers after we're dead and gone, right?

If our identity and happiness is wrapped up in those things, we will despair.

But we have a better source of joy, don't we?

The promise of heaven has no peaks or valleys, does it? And the joy of actually

belonging to the Lord has no season.

Talk about real joy, right? These disciples here were truly most blessed, Eastwood.

They had an incredible cause for joy.

They were seeing and hearing things to which even verses 23 and 24,

Jesus said prophets and kings did not have access to it, but they wish they had. Wow.

Well, let's briefly look at the cause of Jesus's joy.

What follows next here in this passage says Edwards, he's one of the commentators, theologian.

He wrote this, and I wrote this down. He said, the most exultant description

of Jesus in all of scripture is when it says here in this passage that Jesus

was full of joy through the Holy Spirit.

Wow. I mean, another theologian, B.B.

Warfield, commented on that. He said, that word is a strong one and conveys

the idea of exuberant gladness, a gladness which fills the heart.

Wow. In other words, here in verse 21, Jesus is overflowingly joyful at the

reality of his disciples' salvation.

Wow. I mean, he's excited. He's joyful. He's filled with the Spirit.

And not only were their names written in heaven, but their Father was accomplishing

their salvation in a way that confounded who?

The wise and the learned, right? And instead, it gave the blessings to the simple and the meek.

Instead of showering his grace on the religious leaders and respectable people, right?

God was bringing his kingdom and into his kingdom, the spiritual equivalent,

wait for it, little children.

The immoral tax collectors, in other words, the uneducated fishermen.

All of that was due to the sovereign pleasure

of the father and the son to whom he has committed it says in verse 22 all things

wow the only way to come to know the father in a saving and joy producing way

is to have him revealed to you by the choice of the son it says in this passage,

the joy of the kingdom comes with a cost though doesn't it while on the road

guess what we see in this passage quickly.

Jesus had three interactions with people who expressed the desire to follow

him, didn't he? That's in verses 57 through 62.

And instead of being grateful for their interest and warmly just saying,

come on, come into the fold, Jesus warned them that what?

Membership in the kingdom must not take precedence even over important social customs.

You saw it in the text, like performing burial rites for the dead or other family

obligations even, right?

In a sense, Jesus here is putting flesh on what it means to pick up one's cross

and follow him. That's what he's doing.

And even though there is a cost, how many of you know there is a cost to following, right?

The kingdom of God, it's not ultimately about struggle and difficulty, is it?

While we can speak of Jesus as a man of suffering, as we see in scripture,

and familiar with pain as he is, he was not a dour, if you will,

or an unpleasant person.

He didn't go around with a frown on his face, did he?

Honoring his father by accomplishing our salvation, Eastwood,

brought him, I want you to see in this text, exceeding joy.

The salvation that he brings is a matter of

great joy for us too right and for him and for the father well we've been reminded

here in luke's gospel over and over again following christ is costly we got

to remember that this one thing today don't as we look at this and i and i believe

that this next slide i think we got one more here.

100 of the cost are incurred in the temporal

realm which is where we are right now none are

born in the eternal one now that

just hey y'all our joy is found

in heaven and it's not just a place it's

being in the presence and with god almighty amen it's being in his presence

the one we love the one who has brought salvation to us so the costs are far

outstripped by the never-ending joy that belong to those who's what whose names

are written where? In heaven.

I want you just for a moment to bow your heads and close your eyes.

And I want you to reflect just for a minute.

First of all, the obvious question is, is your name written in heaven?

Does God know you?

Have you come to a place in your life where you have truly seen yourself in

truth, where you've repented of your sin and put your faith and trust in Christ alone?

Is your name written in heaven? If not today, it can be.

In fact, it already has been, if you're coming to faith in Him,

today can be your day of salvation.

The choice is up to you.

You see, we're responsible for God's choice.

We're responsible to say, yes, Lord. Yes, Lord.

If that's you today, I encourage you to step out in faith in just a few moments

and come down this aisle.

I encourage you right where you are even to say, Lord, forgive me a sinner.

I need you in my life, Lord.

I also want you to reflect today. Would you say that you're too quick to wish

God's judgment on those who treat you or him badly or too slow to speak about

his judgment at all or both?

You've probably experienced both the ups and downs of Christian ministry.

How do you respond to that? Where is your identity found?

Is it found in the joy of heaven or is it found in your accomplishments?

What's your greatest source of joy today?

Is it that your name's written in heaven?

Maybe you need to relocate your joy source today.

I want to invite you as your heads bowed eyes are closed to just

stand with us right now if you would and if

God's moving on your heart I invite you to step out

in faith whatever he's calling you to do whether it's to come to him whether

it's to repent to surrender to him something in your life whether it's to join

this church whatever it is to follow the Lord and believers baptism whatever

it may be I encourage you to come forward right now and obey the Lord in these moments as Ms.

Sharon plays, you just obey what God has for you.