Recognise God • Luke 13:31-35

1:15:14 Teaching begins

Notes

It’s possible to resist God because you don’t recognise Him.

Jacob wrestled with a stranger all night. When the stranger saw He wasn’t getting anywhere He popped Jacob’s hip out of joint.

Then Jacob recognised that he was resisting the Lord!

You really need to recognise who you are fighting against, and let Him bless you.

I’m reading in Luke 13 from verse 31.

1. Jesus receives a death threat.

A. Pharisees come up to Jesus. They don’t like Him and want to get rid of Him.

B. So they threaten Him, to get Him to move on. Herod wants to kill you, better get lost.

2. Jesus remains calm and composed while He’s being rejected.

A. The thought of Herod threatening Him doesn’t impress Jesus.

B. He calls Herod a fox. You threaten a fox and it runs away. Sly, cunning, and cowardly. Insignificant.

C. Go tell that fox that I’m going to keep on casting out demons and curing people. Imagine them complaining to Herod, “He’s casting out demons and healing people!” Herod would say, “You want me to kill this guy because He’s doing good things?”

D. Anyway, says Jesus, I’m not going to die here and now. I’m going to die in Jerusalem. That’s the traditional place for a prophet to die.

1. You know what irony is, saying one thing while meaning the opposite.

2. Pretty ironic for Jesus to say that the test of a true prophet is that he gets killed in Jerusalem.

E. But it’s also true. Jerusalem is the one place on earth where God put His name forever. It’s the city of the great king. And yet, it’s the city of God’s people that reject God and kill His prophets who speak God’s word.

F. That word calls people back to the Lord.

1. It’s pleading, threatening, patient, resigned, because the people will not believe and they won’t turn.

2. It’s especially loving and compassionate because that’s who God is, that’s why He’s calling at all. He doesn’t want anyone to perish. He says, Ezekiel 33:11 Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’

3. Even as Jesus is rejected here, He shows compassion—He’s always wanted to do His people good.

A. He’s travelling to Jerusalem in the face of threats, knowing that He is journeying to certain death because He really is from God and He’s really going to die in Jerusalem.

B. Yet, He isn’t bitter. He’s compassionate.

C. How often I wanted to gather your children together.

1. He uses the figure of a hen with her chicks. Put her wings around them, she warms them, she defends them as a living shield. You have to get through me to get to them.

2. Safety, peace, provision, anything the chicks need, that hen is going to give them.

3. Jesus says, “How often I wanted to gather you together.” How often? Myself, I think it’s the heart of God. How often over the centuries did God want to comfort and strengthen and provide for His people!

D. But you were not willing!

1. They wanted peace, protection, good economy, good government, no enemies to attack them. They were willing to have these things. Who wouldn’t want them?

2. They were not willing to submit to God from whom all these blessings flow.

3. This is most of the history of Israel. God chose them but most of them don’t choose Him. It’s half a relationship, hardly ever a whole relationship.

E. It’s really hard to love someone who doesn’t love you back. But that’s the position that God is in. How often I wanted to gather you together, but you were not willing.

4. Rejecting God affects your life profoundly.

A. Jesus says, “See, your house is left to you desolate.”

1. You can have the house. It’s one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There’s millions in the very structure of the house, a fortune in gold, silver, precious stones. It’s priceless.

2. But, empty of God, it has no value. God is not going to answer your prayers for protection. You’re going to get yourself in a mess and seek Me and I will not listen to you. This house is not going to save you.

B. Ezekiel wrote in chapters 12-14 seeing God leave His temple. His glory goes above the living creatures called cherubim and He leaves the temple to go over to mountains.

C. That’s the beginning of seventy years of exile.

1. Israel was in God’s presence, where He set His name forever, and yet Israel ignored Him, wouldn’t listen to the prophets, killed them. That’s not fitting in the presence of God.

2. So God moved them far to the other end of the scale of relationship with Him.

3. They’re not under the Lord, they’re under the Babylonians. They’re brutal, they’re darkened in their understanding. Everyone lives badly with his neighbour. And they all pick on foreigners because they’re weak and helpless. Jews stay foreigners because they can’t stop being God’s people. Babylon plays with God’s people and annoys, teases, mistreats and punishes and kills them, because they can.

D. When Jesus says now your house is left desolate to you, it’s going to last longer than seventy years. It has lasted from 70 A.D., when the temple was destroyed, until now. There still isn’t a temple where the Jews can draw near to the Lord. 1,954 years and counting.

5. How long will the Jews be oppressed and far from God? Until they know and understand who God is.

A. Jesus says you shall not see Me until you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”

B. God has always, in every generation, preserved a remnant of believing Jews for Himself. But for the most part the Jews rejected Jesus and won’t consider Him. They’re still waiting for the Messiah to come.

C. Many believe that the one who will enable them to build their temple is the Messiah. He will be a man of peace, he will make peace so that the temple can be built. He’ll have to make peace with 25 Arab nations, the United Nations, Russia, the United States, and Iran. With all the nations of the world he will make peace. He will make a peace treaty that will guarantee peace forever.

D. Daniel 9 says the peace treaty will last three and a half years. 2 Thessalonians chapter two says the man of peace will go into the temple of God and declare that he is God and that everyone should worship him. That’s when the Jews realise that he has deceived them and betrayed them. He’s not the Messiah, he’s the anti-Christ.

E. The next three and a half years will be the most extreme, confused, twisted, deadly time the world has ever known.

1. In Jeremiah 30:7 it’s called the time of Jacob’s trouble, there is none like it. Jesus said about this time that if the Lord had not shortened the days there would be no flesh left alive.

2. Daniel 12:6-7 And one said to the man dressed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, “How long will it be until the end of these wonders?” I heard the man dressed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, as he raised his right hand and his left toward heaven, and swore by Him who lives forever that it would be for a time, times, and half a time; and as soon as they finish shattering the power of the holy people, all these events will be completed. The purpose of that time is to shatter the power of the holy people to resist God. When they are helpless they will cry out to the Messiah to save them.

3. And He will save them when they first recognise Him. Zechariah 12:9-10 And in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.

4. The Jews will say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” And Jesus will return to the earth to save His people Israel. Zechariah 14:3-5 Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south. You will flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; yes, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him!

F. All that is contained in this one phrase, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” It’s the culmination of all history, the end of this dark age, the beginning of the kingdom of God on earth.

6. So what?

A. Do you recognise God? God is good and wants to bless but we are not willing because we don’t recognise Him.

B. Jesus shows us who God is. He gave His only begotten Son to die for sinners. That’s beyond good. That is merciful, compassionate, gracious.

C. Whatever good things you want in your life, Jesus wants better because He is completely good.

D. He is so good He even allows difficult situations in our lives because He loves us and wants to shatter our power to resist Him so He can bless us.

E. Are you fighting and resisting God on some point? I would say instead, decide that God is good. Recognise Jesus loves you. Allow Him to bless you.

Let’s pray.