Luke 13:18-35 - The Unexpected Kingdom

What a gift to be able to open the Word of God with you guys here today.

Again, it's gonna be a while before I get to do it again because I'm not preaching next Sunday.

So, uh, when Joni and I got married, we immediately started to get houseplants.

And that means we were serial houseplant killers.

It's like more like manslaughter because it wasn't intentional.

But bottom line is it wasn't going well.

The stakes were low.

It was like herb gardens and things like that.

But basically, as time went on, my wife got better.

Eventually, we got our first house, like in the early 30s, started to practice in gardens and lawns and things like this.

And so when we got this house, recently my wife took a class that basically teaches you how to plant native Colorado plants that don't take a lot of water.

They fit our arid climate.

So she's like, hey, I want to do this, these garden beds.

And you know, it's not cheap, but it's gonna like they don't need hardly any water, they just sort of self-establish.

It's really amazing.

So I was like, okay, let's do it.

And so here's a pick of the baby plants that we put in last May.

So as you can see, they're dinky, they're native little plants.

Some of them were so small it felt like if a bee landed on it, it would like crush and you'd be out all the money.

But basically, um what they say is supposedly in the third year it becomes established.

In the third year, it really starts to take off.

So we weren't really expecting much this year, because they don't, you know, they don't take much water, you don't really do much to them.

And we expected some growth, but not what it ended up being.

So here's a picture of what it is a few days ago or a handful of weeks ago.

It went absolutely nuts.

And you know, I keep thinking after when I look at this, like, this is not fully established?

Like, what's it gonna look like in 2029?

It's gonna be the literal Amazon.

Like, we're gonna have to have a machete to let people come into our house.

So it did something that we went way beyond our expectations.

And now all these amazing like pollinators land on it, these bees, these gigantic butterflies.

Even some mice started running in and out of it.

My wife saw that, she was like, burn it down.

I was like, no, no, no.

Mice get to hang in the garden too, babe.

It's okay.

And so it caught us both by surprise.

It started small and became big over just a handful of months.

You can kind of see those two chairs behind it.

You know, you don't really realize it as it grows.

You just kind of day by day, week by week, you kind of sit in those chairs and it just starts to change kind of right under your nose, but not in a way that you could observe when you're looking at it.

You don't realize it.

It's so slow, so unexpected.

And so today in Luke, we're back into the Gospel of Luke, our bread and butter, preaching through books of the Bible, verse by verse.

This is called expositional preaching, where we do our very best to have the main idea of the text be the main idea of the sermon.

And this is what Jesus wants to talk about today.

He wants to talk about the ways in which his kingdom is unexpected.

There's aspects about Jesus' kingdom that are unexpected.

And he wants to fix our expectations.

He wants to align us with him.

He wants to, if you're looking at your sermon sheet, this is what I think the main idea is.

He wants to prepare our hearts for the kingdom's unexpected principles.

To realign us.

The reason for this is sometimes the reason that God's kingdom is called the upside down kingdom is because that's kind of how we experience it.

Jesus will say something about what it's like in his kingdom, and it kind of hits us like, oh, what the heck?

The humble inherit the earth, the meek inherit the earth?

It doesn't look like that here.

Part of the reason the kingdom is experienced as upside down for us is because sin has flipped us over.

And what Jesus is doing is bringing things the right side up, but it seems upside down to us, it seems unexpected to us because of the way that sin has messed us up.

So, this is what we're gonna see Jesus.

He's gonna show us some things about the kingdom today that are unexpected.

And there are three questions I think open up this text for us.

Um, first is, what is the kingdom like?

The second is, who will make it into the kingdom?

And the third is why is the king downcast?

So, first, what is the kingdom like?

I'm gonna be in Luke 13.

Uh verses 18 through 35.

We're just gonna do the first four four verses here.

Luke 13, ESV version, verses 18 through 21, says this.

He said, therefore, what is the kingdom of God like?

And to what shall I compare it?

It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.

And again he said, To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?

It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until it was all leavened.

Interesting.

He's telling us about what the kingdom is like.

And if you look at the very first verse, he says, it says, Therefore, in other words, what's coming now in the verses we just read is in light of what came before.

And if you remember, this was actually several weeks ago when Calder, the church planner and boulder, preached the previous passage for us.

What just came before is a significant demonstration of the power of God.

There was a woman who was bound by Satan, is what the author Luke says.

For 18 years, she was hunched over, she had that disability, a disease that was caused directly by demonic influence, and Jesus set her free.

An incredible moment where the power of the kingdom of God exploded into her life, and so many people around witnessed it and rejoiced.

That is what just came before.

And Jesus wants to talk more.

He wants to talk more about a kingdom.

And so he raises a question in verse 18.

What is the kingdom of God like?

To what shall I compare it?

He wants people to understand more what the kingdom is like in light of what just happened.

In verse 18, he prompts the question.

He basically says two things.

It's like two things.

The first thing that it's like is a mustard seed.

Now, I was given a mustard seed recently by someone in our church as a like an encouragement, because the mustard seed gets used sometimes to for faith in the New Testament.

If you have the faith, even the grain of a mustard seed, something so small, then God can do amazing things with that.

I wanted to bring it, but I forgot it.

And the funny thing about it was she handed it to me in this jar, but I didn't see it.

I thought it was just a jar of air.

I was like, are you saying like I'm empty and I need to be like, what are we saying here?

And then she's like, So the mustard seed, I was like, what?

And I looked inside, and sure enough, literally, barely visible, is this tiny little rolling black thing.

And I was like, oh, is that a mustard seed?

That is quite literally tiny.

Like, you don't even see it.

It's literally, you have to find it.

It's that small.

And Jesus is like, you know, the kingdom of God, it's kind of like a mustard seed.

How is it like a mustard seed?

Because it starts small and then over time becomes big.

Back then, if we read through Mark's version of this story, Mark, Jesus will literally say in the Gospel of Mark, the mustard seed is the smallest seed in the garden for them.

It was the smallest one that they kind of saw and even knew about.

And so what he's saying is the kingdom starts small but grows big, eventually providing blessing, protection, safety.

Because he's like, the mustard seed becomes a big plant.

And you know, prop, depending on what kind of species of mustard seed he's kind of talking about, the plant probably becomes anywhere between 10 and 25 feet tall.

So it's technically like a shrub, but it's, I mean, that's like tree-like, right?

Becomes gigantic, and not only does it become gigantic, it becomes a blessing to things, like the birds of the air, this place of safety, this place of shade.

The kingdom of God is like that.

Starts small, slowly, grows big, becomes this incredible thing that blesses people.

And you know, Jesus' life was this way.

If you read uh about him in Isaiah, I want to say it's chapter 52, 53, where it says that the one who's coming, the servant of God, the suffering servant, talking in the future about Jesus, had no form or majesty that we should behold him.

He wasn't sticking out just like this mustard.

See, he wasn't sticking out to me when I first saw it.

But then, of course, now he's sticking out, isn't he?

Now the crowds are following him and rejoicing him and calling him Messiah because of how distinct, how powerful, how kind.

Who is this?

He's doing things that no one ever expected, and it took time.

He's in his early 30s now, and this is happening.

His life is like this.

Our lives, uh, we experience the kingdom of God this way, like the mustard seed.

If you're like me, there's something incredibly frustrating about this metaphor.

What is the kingdom of God like, Jesus?

Well, it's like a mustard seed.

It starts small and grows huge over time.

The reason this is so frustrating, maybe you're not like me.

I literally hate this metaphor.

The reason that I hate it is because it's slow.

In the day of microwaves and AI and jet travel and web page refresh.

I mean, dude, literally, there's companies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make your web page refresh from 0.6 seconds to 0.3.

And the executives are like, this is cataclysmic for our business.

300 milliseconds of our page.

This is the world we live in of microwaves, of frozen burritos that two minutes later are edible.

This is the world that we live in, and so it just inculcates us, it disciples us into this expectation.

It's a cultural expectation, it's a worldly expectation.

But Jesus is like, nah.

The kingdom of God is not like that.

And look, we have a category for this.

Like you go to a nice restaurant and you're like, yo, I'm gonna have this nice thing.

And then 60 seconds later, they bring out the food.

You're like, did you warm this up?

We have a category that amazing things take time, but in Jesus is saying the kingdom's like that.

Starts small, grows big.

And you know, so often when we're talking about the speed here, there's so many things that can be frustrating.

I want to be free of this sin now, though.

I want the answer of the thing that I asked you, God, now though.

I want to be healed now.

I want to be mature in this way that I picture in my mind now.

I want this hard thing to be over now, right?

So many areas in which we want it to be different now, but the kingdom is just not like this.

It's more like a mustard seed than a microwave.

Is what Jesus is saying.

This is this is huge for our expectations.

And I want you to, like, he'sn't teaching this randomly, arbitrarily, for no reason.

He's teaching it because he wants us to align.

He wants us to go from upside down vision that sins created to right side up in God's world, in God's reality, the kingdom, when things are working well the way he wanted it, it's more like a mustard seed than it is a microwave.

He wants to align our vision with the kingdom.

His ways are higher, his ways are better.

But then he gives another example.

It's kind of like a mustard seed.

You know what else it's like though?

It's like leaven.

Give it up for the bakers in the house.

What is leaven?

It's like a microbial yeast.

What does it do?

It spreads through dough and basically causes the whole bread to rise.

And the way it works with the bakers is they basically have a piece of dough that's leavened, another piece of dough that's not.

You mix the tiny piece in with the big piece, give it some time, and it spreads all the way through.

All the way through it.

And interestingly, three measures of flour is like 50 pounds of flour.

Imagine, this is only gonna appeal to some people, the audience.

When you when you bench press and you pick up a 45-pound plate and put it on the bench press, imagine that much dough.

How much dough you would need.

It's a gigantic amount, okay?

And and so, like, if you're a baker, like that's kind of hard to deal with, but the point is, it even spreads through something that big.

Three measures of flour, 50 pounds of dough, it spreads through like that.

But there's a kind of a difference too.

Like, in one sense, it's similar in that it starts with the small thing and then it spreads.

But in another sense, it's different, right?

Like the plant, you saw the plant, like I'm sitting in that chair, I know it's changing.

I can look at it every day.

Even if it's not obvious, I know it is.

I remember kind of what it used to be.

But with leaven, you don't see it.

With leaven, you just have no idea.

And all of a sudden, all of the bread changes and it can rise in the oven, and you never saw anything different about it.

And so, Jesus' kingdom is like this, in this, like the mustard seed, in that it starts small and it spreads, but also in this kind of unique way in that it spreads everywhere.

Also in this unique way in that it spreads oftentimes without you seeing in hidden ways.

You put a church in a neighborhood, I mean people don't see it really for a long time when it starts, but inside the apartments, inside the buildings, inside the homes, things start to change.

You put a family or a group of friends in a house or in an apartment, in an area.

You drive past it, it doesn't look that different.

But as the months pass, as the years pass, what that presence of those people do, it begins to impact things.

And it over time begins to impact everything.

It's not to say everyone enters the kingdom of God, but it is to say everyone is impacted by it in one way or another.

And so for us, how do we apply this for us, this first piece, this idea of what is the kingdom like, Jesus?

He says it's like these two things.

It's like a mustard seed and leaven.

The first thing is expectation.

This is the first clear application for us.

Jesus wants you to think the way he does.

And so if you have this thing in your life that you want to be different, and it's not different tomorrow, remember this text.

He explained to you why it's not.

And it's not to say nothing in the kingdom of God happens fast, it does.

But generally, it's more like a mustard seed than a microwave.

Generally, it's more like leaven than, you know, a frozen burrito.

So expectations is one huge piece of application.

The second is don't be discouraged at size and pace.

So, like some of us have different, we have a thing in our life.

It could be all kinds of stuff, right?

Something in a relationship, something with your personal holiness.

It could be all kinds of stuff.

And it's it's new, it's kind of at a seed stage.

So some of us have kingdom things in our life that are at this brand new seed stage.

And so what we need to do if something is in that stage is not be discouraged.

Not be discouraged if it's not gigantic providing shade for the birds of the field and having all this impact and influence in our life.

This is God's design.

This is how he intended for it to work.

Now, others of us, we have certain kingdom things in our life that are no longer at the seed stage.

The plant has begun to grow.

The plant has begun to bear fruit.

And you want it to be bigger, but yo, it's already something.

Like that, my wife's garden.

It's all you walk up, you see this.

Alright, the mice are pumped, dude.

Things, it's impacting life.

And for those of you with kingdom things in your life, at that stage where it's already providing some shade, some peace, some safety, I want you to acknowledge it.

I want you to think back to when it was a seed and acknowledge it.

Acknowledge God that He did this.

There's another text that says, hey, you plant a seed in the field, it grows.

You don't know how.

You just water it, and it's just out there and it grows.

You didn't do anything about that.

But God did it.

But when you look at some of these things in your life, whether it's a sin struggle, whether it's uh a conflict in a relationship, whether it's a certain skill set, whether it's um the ability to do a certain thing, a capacity, and things have changed, this deserves acknowledgement from us, worship from us, delight, rejoicing.

And you know what else it means?

Keep watering.

Number two, first, what is the kingdom like?

It's like a mustard seed, it's kind of like leaven.

It grows, it starts really small, but it grows and it gets gigantic and it goes everywhere.

Number two, who will make it into the kingdom of God?

Who will make it into the kingdom?

This is verses 22 through 30.

This is what Jesus says next.

He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem.

And someone said to him, Lord, will those who are saved be few?

And he said to them, Strive to enter through the narrow door.

For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us, then he will answer you, I do not know where you come from.

Then you will begin to say, we ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.

But he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you come from.

Depart from me, all you workers of evil.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves cast out.

And people will come from the east and the west and the north and from the north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God.

And behold, some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last.

Who will make it into the kingdom?

First segment, Jesus prompted the question.

Well, what is the kingdom like?

To what shall I compare it?

But here someone else asked a question.

And it's a question you know you've asked.

It's a question you know you've asked before.

Lord, are those who make it into the kingdom, will they be few?

Is there only gonna be a handful of people that are saved, or is it gonna be like tons and like way more, like most, like 90%?

This is the question that the man asks.

It's an unnamed man.

We don't know who it is if it was a disciple of someone else.

And maybe you noticed, you know, sometimes when people ask Jesus questions directly, he answers directly.

But here, he doesn't really.

He doesn't give the guy a direct answer.

He gives some things that kind of do touch adjacently on the answer.

But basically what he says is, you know, the guy asks, Q, who's gonna be saved?

A.

Enter the door yourself.

That's what he wants to talk about.

Enter the door yourself lest you be left outside.

That's his A to the Q.

And it makes sense, of course, right?

Like, who, how many, why will people be saved?

It's not really our purview.

Like, we can't judge hearts the way that God judges hearts.

Like, you can't, your first impression is miles off.

Like, how are you ever gonna sit on the judgment throne of God and rightly discern and rightly divine what was actually behind that action?

What was the true motivation behind what this person did and why?

Only God can do that.

So why on earth would we concern ourselves with the crowds?

Like you do in one sense, you have to be you have to discern if they need the gospel.

But in the sense of this guy's question, like, is there gonna be tons of people?

Is it gonna be don't worry about the crowds.

Worry about you.

This is Jesus' focus.

And he's talking about responding, right?

He's like, you worry about responding to the master of the who has the door open, right?

When we're talking about responding, we're in chapter 13 of Luke.

We've already seen what responding means in this gospel, in the way that Luke would describe it.

You remember the parable of the sower, where the word of God comes, like a seed, ironically, to a bunch of different people.

Satan snatches it out of the hearts of some, others it grows up and then it shrivels because the roots aren't deep, and so on and so forth.

What is responding to the gospel in that regard?

It's faith.

So when Jesus is saying, work to enter through the narrow door yourself, he's talking about responding to the message of the gospel in faith.

What else does it mean?

We've also we've seen Jesus say repentance.

Faith in repentance.

That's what responding to the gospel is.

And so he's trying to redirect these people's focus away from trying to do some kind of equation on the crowds and how many people are getting in and how, to their own path, their own response to the gospel.

Because as we see in verse 25 and 26, the master eventually shuts the door.

The end of the age, this is judgment.

This is that moment in the era when Jesus comes back to judge the living and the dead, and people are no longer let in.

And, you know, there's some unexpected things about this.

In this theme of the unexpected principles of the kingdom.

Thing number one, the people outside the door did not expect it.

They're outside the door and they didn't expect it, and they basically say, they give some reasons.

Like, yo, we ate and drank with you.

You taught in our streets, in proximity to us.

You were around us.

And Jesus, in his metaphor, is like, and still, I do not know where you come from.

He's talking about his real their relationship to God.

And so for him, you know, at the time, the immediate what this means is there's all kinds of Jews seeing the powerful works of God through the Messiah, through Jesus.

And some of them just aren't really responding to it.

Some are, but some aren't.

So the immediate, like what he means immediately is them hearing that.

But of course, it has application for us too today.

The application for us too today, you might translate it to today by saying there's going to be a lot of people in the proximity of the teaching of Jesus.

There's going to be a lot of people in the proximity of the work of the church and the work of the kingdom.

They know the lingo, they know how to do the motions, but they're not actually a part of it.

They know how to serve, they know how to do good, they know how to learn about God, but they still don't know him personally.

This is the warning that Jesus gives to all those who are hearing his teaching.

Hearing is not the same thing as believing.

The Bible goes over this over and over and over again.

And I'll tell you what, one of it's it's unexpected.

They're outside the door in an unexpected.

Unexpected way.

And I'll tell you what, one of the most powerful things to guard against this ever happening to you is having close friends in the church.

If you have close friends in the church, if you're known and you know other people, the idea, the Bible's vision of biblical community, if you have this, man, it is next to impossible to ever find yourself in this situation.

If you're actually allowing yourself to be known in a way that that you share your life, as Paul would say in 1 Thessalonians, then what happens is people start to ask you stuff.

And if you start to act like you're a person who knows about Jesus rather than who knows him personally, people will ask you about it.

Because you you start to have to apply the Bible to your life, and the way that you talk about things, the way you respond to things to begins to reveal that you're kind of still in the outside of the door.

But then because other people love you, things start to change.

And you start to be forced to think about things in ways that you didn't, because God loves you and his people love you.

One of the most powerful ways to guard against this ever happening is biblical community.

It doesn't just mean friendship generally.

The Bible gives a vision for friendship.

One characterized by vulnerability, one characterized by a willingness to speak the truth in love, by unconditional love.

These are the things, one of some of many ways that the Bible describes biblical community.

If you allow yourself to come close to his church, this kind of thing comes up.

And look, I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that that anyone who keeps like the church at an arm's length away won't be saved.

I obviously couldn't say that, right?

But what I am saying is that being on the outside in a way you didn't expect, that kind of thing can flourish when you have the church at arm's length away.

And the parable ends, ironically, by Jesus actually talking a little bit about the actual direct answer to the question.

He starts to kind of give some answers around it.

The first thing he kind of says is he talks about the impartiality of the kingdom.

He's like, look, people are gonna come from the north, from the south, from the east, and from the west and recline at the table in the kingdom along with the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the prophets of old.

In other words, people are gonna come from all over the world.

The way the Revelation says this is every tribe, nation, and tongue will be present when Jesus comes back.

The gospel, the kingdom of God, is impartial.

It's not prejudiced.

Every tribe, nation, and tongue will have representatives that come through the door.

So that's a little bit unexpected, I think.

It was especially unexpected for the Jews back then.

But even more so with us.

But then the second thing that he says, and also by the way, there's this unexpected way that justice meets itself out.

Some who are first will be last.

And some who are last will be first.

Now, a couple important things I want you to notice about this.

You this text does not allow you to just look at someone who's first.

By first I mean power, influence, wealth, respect, gifts, right?

Let's just say that's a good encapsulation of being first in the world.

What this text does not allow you to do is look at someone and immediately conclude, last in heaven.

Because what does he say?

Some who are first here will be last in heaven.

And then he says, some who are last will be first.

Again, you can't just look at someone with no power, regularly oppressed, you know, with no influence.

You can't just say that person's necessarily going to be first in heaven.

But there will be this idea of a great reversal, the theologians have called it.

Because why?

God can judge hearts perfectly and he rewards everyone perfectly.

We talked about this in previous weeks, the idea that there's different degrees of honor in heaven.

This is adjacent to that.

And basically, he's saying, look, the way that you judge the world, the way that you judge people in this life, what they're doing, you're gonna have some unexpected surprises in heaven based on how God judges.

This is part of what he's saying.

And so what that means is our mission, according to this little brief passage, what Jesus is telling us to focus on is entering the door first ourselves, okay?

And you can have assurance that that's happened.

The Bible talks all about assurance, the idea that God doesn't want you to float in this netherverse.

I'm not sure.

I'm just gonna constantly be manipulated by God in the Bible by fear that I haven't done enough good things.

Has my scale tipped over the heaven line?

No, no, no, not at all.

The Bible says you can be sure.

Any fruit in your life is one of the many things that God gives you to tell you that you can be sure.

So what he is saying is focus first on entering yourself and then move in love towards those who you don't think have yet.

I think that's one of the key takeaways from this segment.

So, what we see, what are we seeing?

We're seeing the way that Jesus is preparing our hearts for the kingdom's unexpected principles.

What is the kingdom like?

It's more like a mustard seed than a microwave.

Who will make it into the kingdom?

Let's work on you getting through the door first, and then you will be shocked in the ways that the justice and generosity of God plays itself out.

Finally, why is the king downcast?

Verse 31.

At that very hour, some Pharisees came to him and said to him, Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.

And he said to them, Go and tell that fox, behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today, and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.

Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.

How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers a brood under her wings?

And you were not willing.

Behold, your house is forsaken, and I tell you, you will not see me until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Why is the king downcast?

This text begins by saying that very hour.

So he just he just mentioned the narrow door thing, and focus on yourself, don't worry about the crowds.

He just finished saying that, and then Pharisees come to him and are like, yo, Herod wants to kill.

Pharisees know.

These are like the mortal enemies of Jesus so far in the Gospel of Luke.

So apparently, not all of them are in that bucket.

They're like, you need to get out of here.

Herod is going to kill you.

Who's Herod?

Remember, Rome rules the sort of known world at this point, Mediterranean sort of world.

And they have appointed, you know, basically kings and regents in the different provinces.

That one that rules Judea, where modern-day Israel is, is Herod.

He's the king there.

And the Pharisees are like, yo, Herod wants to kill you.

And Jesus is like, tell that fox, in other words, that cunning, wily person, tell that fox, healings are done, those enslaved by demons are set free.

I'm working, I'm walking my path, and soon it's going to be over.

That's what he wants them to tell Herod.

Interesting.

And then he basically says, uh, again, we're kind of into the unexpected category here because Jesus is saying that I'm going to Jerusalem.

Remember that moment?

I think it was in like chapter 11 or 12 where it says Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem.

He's going to do the thing that he came to do.

He has a very specific mission.

And then he says something unexpected again.

He's like, consider how the prophets were treated in the Old Testament.

So many of them rejected, a number of them killed.

Consider how Jesus is going to be treated when he gets to Jerusalem.

He knows how he's going to be treated.

Torture, and then death.

In such a moment like this, you might expect just vengeance, rightful, wrathful anger towards those who want to actually kill him.

A moment like this, you might expect that.

But instead, quite unexpectedly, what you find him, what we see emotionally with him instead is longing.

Instead is pain.

Instead it's lament, which is like mourning.

Mourning a loss.

He's mourning over them.

And Jesus is like, look, how often I would have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers your chicks.

That's like a parent-child metaphor.

He's saying that about the people that are going to kill him.

In this moment, we have this incredible, beautiful insight into the heart of God for sinners.

Ezekiel 33,11 will say of God the Father, God the Father will say of himself, rather, I do not delight in the death of the wicked.

Judgment will come for the unrepentant, but I do not delight in the death of the wicked.

Jesus is saying the same thing.

He longs for those who forsake him and reject him.

He seeks to give them as much time as humanly possible, the way a mother feels about kids.

This is what he's saying he's like.

Such an incredible insight, unexpected insight into what the king of the kingdom is like.

So what should this do for us?

I mean, I'll tell you what it does for me.

The idea that Jesus is like this towards the people who want to kill him, he longs to bring them back under his wings, it crushes for me any fear of ever bringing my sin out.

If this is what the king is like when it gets brought out, to people who literally want to kill him, well, I can certainly bring before him all the things that I've done.

No fear of bringing your sin to light.

The other day I was at lunch with my kids at the table.

Brooklyn had been melting down all day.

She's melting down yet again at lunch.

I'm like, Brooklyn, come with dad into your room.

You're gonna get a consequence.

No! She starts to melt down even further.

Go into the room.

Right as I start to explain what her consequence is gonna be, her brother comes running in.

Dad, don't give her a consequence.

It was me.

And I was like, it was you?

And he's like, yeah, I was copying her.

I was like, okay.

Copying it.

It led to a meltdown, alright.

And in that moment, I one, one, it's kind of nuts because the rational thing is whatever consequence is about to go on her is now gonna go on him.

I didn't end up doing that because I was so proud of him.

But that's the rational thing to expect.

And still he comes running in to protect his sister from whatever consequence was gonna happen.

And in that moment, I just see this exact kind of principle at play here.

By God's grace, for whatever reason, my son didn't have fear of bringing his sin to light.

And it coincidentally led to neither of them getting a consequence.

I was very proud of him.

And look, we all know that sin just carries consequence.

Whether it's hidden, whether it's in the light, there is no escaping the consequence of sin.

Different degrees, for sure, it's just a part of life, but how different is it to face your sin knowing that this is what Jesus is like?

How different is it to face your sin knowing that he longs?

We're gonna see later in chapter 15, Jesus is like, you want to know what my father's like?

It's like a prodigal son that runs away, spends the whole inheritance, then comes back, and the dad is watching for him to come over the hill.

The dad lets him leave.

But that doesn't mean the dad has to like it.

That doesn't mean the dad doesn't sit on his porch every day, watch the horizon, beg for him to come home.

This is what Jesus is like towards sinners.

This is why the gospel is good news.

The good news that Jesus Christ came to earth to die for sinners who didn't seek him, to die the death that they should have died in the name of justice, to bring them home and give them a new life in a new heavens, in a new earth, where their desire to sin eventually gets removed, every tear gets wiped away, and there's people from every tribe, nation, and tongue sitting at the table of Abraham, the one who founded the nation of Israel, coming from the north, the south, the east, and the west.

This is what the Father is like towards sinners.

And what Jesus wants to do with these three passages is prepare our hearts for the kingdom's unexpected principles.

It's more like mustard seed than a microwave, so be patient.

And when it grows, recognize it, delight in it.

The king is downcast because his heart longs for sinners.

Don't worry about the crowds making it into the kingdom.

Let's talk about you first.

Let's humble ourselves.

This is the unexpected ways in which Jesus shapes what the kingdom is like.

And slowly but surely, the upside-down vision that we have, where everything that Jesus does sometimes just seems weird, begins to turn right side up as reality becomes aligned with the love of God.

Amen.

Let's pray.

God.

Oh Jesus, how incredible your heart for sinners, especially those who want to kill you, nonetheless.

Lord, I pray just for all of us who regularly show hesitancy to bring our sin to light, that you would comfort us with the sweet safety knowing that you describe yourself literally as a hen bringing her chicks under her wings.

Just the beautiful nurturing instinct of a mother, God.

Lord Jesus, I pray that you would shape our expectations.

I pray, God, now for peace for any of us who are deeply frustrated with your timing.

I pray now for peace for any of us who are deeply frustrated with how big and influential something that we are, that we're that we're driven to see succeed has become.

I pray, Lord, that in your timing, in your glorious kingdom reality, that you shape our humility, that you shape our patience.

God, align our expectations with you.

Help us to lay down this frustration that we can sometimes develop towards you when these things don't align.

We love you, God.

We bless you.

Jesus' name, amen.

All right.

An ancient practice that Jesus handed to the church the night when he was betrayed.

Whenever you eat and drink of the bread and the wine, I want you to remember me, is what he says.

And so, if you're here today and you call yourself a Christian, I invite you to come up and take of the elements.

If you're not sure, rather than feeling any kind of peer pressure to do the same, I would just instead invite you to sit where you are and consider what the king of the kingdom is like.

What he's like towards sinners and why that's good news.

So please come up and take of the elements.

I'll come back up and we'll take them together.

If you could just bow your heads with me, I want you to consider where your expectations have been missed.

Have in fact grown a lot.