Luke's Gospel

Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him Lord, only a few people going to be saved. He said to them, make every effort to enter through the narrow door because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, so open the door for us. But he will answer, I don't know you, or where do you come from?

Then you will say, we ate and drank with you, and you talked in our streets but he will reply, I don't know you or where you come from, away from me you evil doers. There will be weeping there and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of god, but you yourselves are thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of god. Indeed, there are those who are last, who will be first, and first who will be last. At this time, some pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, leave this place and go somewhere else, herod wants to kill you.

He replied, go and tell that fox, I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I'll reach my goal. In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stone those were sent to you. How often have I longed to gather your children together? As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you are not willing.

Look, your house is left desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord. Good evening. Let me add my welcome. My name is Ben.

I'm a member here at Cornerstone Church. And we are carrying on in our series going through the book of Luke. We started it this time last year. I can't remember if we're coming up to a year now, but it was around this time last year that we started it. And, last week, we had the the beginning of the passage that Olegus read, and we're gonna be looking at verses 31 to 35 tonight.

I'm I'm gonna pray, and then we'll jump into it. Our father in heaven, we thank you for the things that we've seen the time that we spent in Luke so far this year. Thank you for the lord Jesus and how we've seen him more clearly. We've learned many things. I pray that you would be teaching us again tonight.

Please give us parts that are humble, that are soft, that are willing and ready to hear and to be changed by you. So we pray for your help in Jesus' name, amen. Okay. Great. So this week, I've been looking at the obituaries of of famous and influential people.

In preparation for this, it's not just a pastime. And they're almost always a a tribute to how loved how beloved and adored that person was by the whole world. Obviously, if if if if they were terrible person, they did lots of bad stuff, then it's not gonna be that. But by and large, famous and influential people, their obituaries are crammed with with how much people love them. So princess Diana, Her 1, for example, talks about, though she was troubled by the crown.

She was beloved by many people all around the world. And Louis Armstrong, funnily enough rooted were listening to him this morning, in rooted with school. Louis Armstrong is a bitchery describes him as the world's most beloved entertainer and the single most important musician in the history of jazz. He's got a gray voice, isn't he? Michael Jackson is the king of pot, and his New York Times obituary reads long May he reign.

And it's funny. We we were hearing about him this morning, but I don't mean to jinx anything either, but, I'm pretty sure that when because they 1 day soon, but it won't be long before we wake up to the news that David Attenborough has has left us, in this world. And you can guarantee that, well, I can guarantee my Facebook wall is gonna be full of, kind of, kind of obituary of, tribute Tribute after tribute after tribute is gonna come in about him and his life, isn't it? And it's funny because this morning we heard, that he misses out on an awful lot, but nevertheless, there will be tribute after tribute. So all these people get these amazing, loving, embracing obituaries when they die.

But what about Jesus? What does his obituary say? Because he's he's the most famous person who's ever lived. Because today's date is the 20 seventh of the tenth 2019 because it's 2019 years since he was born. The whole world runs from his birthday.

His name is said countless times every day by people in my office as I swear with. Which is, really sad. And he but his sacrifice and his story, what happened to him and what he did has framed our society's worldview and the way that we perceive everything, right down to the very scripting of our favorite Hollywood blockbusters and our favorite best selling novels and stories. His story has has scripted those. So how would you describe Jesus, the most influential person, the the most famous person in the world?

Well, Isaiah 53 has this as a kind of obituary. He was despised and rejected by mankind. A man of suffering and familiar with pain, like 1 from whom people hide their faces, he was despised. And we held him in low esteem. Now that's that's not that's not the description you'd give to someone, you'd think, that famous really, who altered the course of human history completely.

But actually, when you look at Jesus' life, as we've been doing here, every Sunday night for the last year, We see this rejection of him time and time again, don't we? Again, and again, it seems like every time we come up here and we read about what he did, we see this rejection of him. So his ministry even began with rejection. So after he comes, he's been tempted in the wilderness. He comes back to Nazareth, his hometown, he goes to the synagogue, He opens up Isaiah and reads from it and says, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

And then pretty soon after that, he's driven out of town and they take him up to the top of a hill with the intention of throwing him off it because they wanna kill him. So his ministries just began, and there's this rejection of him. And then throughout his ministry, he's heckled. He's questioned. He's he's they tried to trap him.

He's accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. He's even accused of working for the devil. There's this constant, constant background noise of rejection over and over again. And then we come to this passage tonight. And we see the pharisees come to him, and say, leave this place and go somewhere go somewhere else.

Basically, get out of town. We don't want you here. Yeah. So just just leave, please. We reject you.

That's interesting. This this rejection in this passage comes after some quite difficult teaching, which we heard last week, on how many will try to enter the kingdom of heaven, but not be able to. Because the owner of the house as Jesus puts it doesn't know the people. He says, I don't know you. I don't know where you've come from.

I don't know you. The door is narrow. And as Tom preached on those verses last Sunday, We saw that this was shocking to the Jews who were hearing it because the Jews were brought up believing that if you're a Jew, you're saved. You're part of god's people. It's it's your birthright.

You will be saved. You know, by and large, it doesn't matter what you do. If you're really bad, maybe not, but actually, you know, if you're if you're just a normal Jew, then you're fine. You'll be saved. But here Jesus is warning that you, as a Jew, may be on the outside, looking in at the great fathers of your faith, Abraham Isaac and Jacob.

And the gentiles are in there, and you're on the outside. So he was warning them that, and that was that was a hard pill to swallow for these varices. So there's rejection in verse 31 here in this passage. It reads this. At that time, some pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, leave this place and go somewhere else.

Yeah. Leave and take your offensive message Jesus with you. We don't want you here. And I I I don't think much has changed to be honest. I think that's it's probably the same reaction we get nowadays, isn't it?

There are lots of things that Jesus says that unsettles us. And require difficult things from us, harsh truths, and we struggle in the same way. So in this passage tonight, we're gonna see 3 things. We're gonna see the different ways Jesus has rejected. We're gonna see how Jesus deals with this rejection.

How does he respond to this rejection? And then lastly, we're going to see the consequences of ultimately rejecting Jesus in the end. So those 3 things, different ways Jesus rejected, how Jesus deals rejection, and the consequences have ultimately rejected him. So first of all, different ways Jesus is rejected. So there's there's lots of ways that Jesus rejected.

It it takes many forms. Doesn't always look the same way. It doesn't actually always look like rejection. So here we see the blatant rejection of the pharisees where Jesus has just asked to leave. You can't really get much more blatant than that.

They're like, go away. But secondly, we're gonna see herod's reaction, his rejection, which is a guy's setting aside the bit about wanting to kill Jesus for 1 moment, we'll get to that. Actually, herod's response to Jesus, it doesn't look like reject at first. It actually looks like acceptance. It looks like herod wants Jesus, but in the end, we'll see it's the same as blatant rejection.

So first of all, the pharisees rejection asking for a friend. Do you know the expression asking for a friend? Yeah. When you There's there's 1, going around on Facebook at the moment that Kerry's really, like, relates to, which is, like, which says something about Excel spreadsheets. And it's like, do you ever do something really clever in Excel and get really excited about it and then realize no 1 cares?

Ask him for a friend. Yeah. Ask him for a friend. It's kind of a tongue in cheek way of saying something, that you wanna say, but like putting it on someone else. So you're sort of hiding behind what they wanna say.

So if you're if you're really comedically scared of clowns. You might say, are there any scary clowns in the new Joker film? I'm asking for a friend. Yeah. I I'm not scared of clowns, I'm asking for my mate who is.

Yeah. You basically pass the thing off that you're saying as being said by someone else. So that you can hide behind them as a shield. So all the really cured embarrassment gets put on them, but you still get to ask the question and you still get to hear the response. Asking for a friend.

And that's a little bit like what's going on here in verse 31. So at that time, some pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, leave this place and go somewhere else Herrod wants to kill you. Now, on first appearance, there seems to be concern here for Jesus from the pharisees. Wasn't it? If this was a movie and this was act 1, scene 1, and we saw the pharisees coming up to Jesus at Jesus.

This is a guy called herod. He wants to kill you, run run away now. Get away before he he can catch you. Then, you know, we think, wow, this herod guy is really evil. And these viruses, wow, they they, you know, they wanna help Jesus.

But this is not act 1 scene 1. We've been in this for a year now. And we know that actually, this is the pharisee saying, Jesus, leave this place and go somewhere else. Asking for a friend. They are the ones who want Jesus to leave.

In fact, we we know that their concern for Jesus life complete baloney because they themselves are trying to kill Jesus. They've been looking for a way to kill him for ages now. Look look look your eyes back to verse 17 of this chapter. Which says, when he said this, all his opponents were humiliated. Now this is just this is an example that Jesus has been doing this over and over again.

This is an example of how Jesus has been exposing the pharisees in their hypocrisy, their ungodly man made laws. And he's been exposing them to the people And as a result of being humiliated again and again and again instead of having a soft heart and coming to Jesus and saying, you know what? We've misread this. We've misinterpreted this. Please forgive us.

Instead of that, they've been looking for a way to kill him. They've been looking. They've utterly rejected Jesus and his teaching. So that's the first kind of rejection. It's really obvious.

They wanna kill him. It doesn't really get much more obvious than that. The second type of rejection is is is less obvious. It's horrored. Hurried the fox.

And it's not as obvious because it actually looks like acceptance. It actually looks like they're engaging with him. But really, it's just it's just a fascination that he's got. It's almost like herod's using him as entertainment. And the end result is is is the same as blatant rejection.

Now what I not what I don't know is is whether the pharisees had latched on to an actual rumor about herod wanting to kill Jesus or whether they just made it up completely as a fabrication to hide behind, you know, asking for a friend. But I think it was probably the latter. I think I think it was probably largely made up because they wanted to kill Jesus So if they heard of someone else wanting to kill Jesus, they wouldn't come and warn Jesus, would they? Herrod would be doing them a favor if, he was he wanted to kill Jesus as well. So Partly for that reason, I think they were making it up.

But also, what we do know about herod is that he was fascinated by Jesus in the same way that he was fascinated by John the Baptist. So we know in Mark's gospel that herod liked John the Baptist. He liked him. He liked to hear him preach. He liked it when he talked and spoke.

He found it really confusing. He didn't really understand what you were saying, but he liked it nonetheless. And he was gripped by him. He knew he was a righteous and holy man. He was like, there's something about this that I really like.

You're obviously a holy man and righteous. But good old John, he he had the same message. He preached the same message to everyone. It didn't matter whether you were king herod or whether you were servant. He he just went out all out and said the same sort of stuff.

So he, publicly condemned herod, for marrying his brother's wife, herodias. And Herrodius didn't like this at all. So she wanted to kill John. That's weird. I think in those days, if you didn't like someone, you just wanted to kill them.

See if like everyone wants to kill each other. That's how you dealt with a problem. So herodias wants to kill, John. So to protect John, herod had him bound and put in prison. So there's kind of this mixed bag of things going on between herod and John.

On the 1 hand, herod really likes to listen to him. He's like, your words man, your words are so good. But then he puts them in prison because of the things that he's saying. So there's this really mixed bag. And in the end, he he he rejects everything he's teaching because he gives the order to have him killed.

So he he he rejects him. He never actually intended to listen to the substance of what John was saying. You just kind of had this, like, impotent intrigue about it. He was like, oh, it's just interesting, but I'm not gonna do anything with it. And it's the the same pointless fascination is kindled in him again when he hears about Jesus.

So chapter 9 verse 7 says, Now, herod, the Tetrock, heard about all that was going on, about what Jesus was doing, walking around teaching, healing people, and he was perplexed because some were saying that John had been raised from the dead. Others that Elijah had appeared, and still others that 1 of the prophets of long ago had come back to life. But herod said, I beheaded John. Who then is this that I hear such things about? And he tried to see him.

So we're told that herod wants to see Jesus. And in chapter 23, when Jesus is on trial, he sent to herod and verse 8 says this. When herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased because for a long time he'd been wanting to see him From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave no answer. So herod is greatly pleased when he sees Jesus.

Yeah. That's not the response of someone who wants to kill Jesus, is it? And on the face of this, this looks really promising. You'd get excited by this as a Christian because Jesus walks into the room and this guy's face lights up. Yes.

I've been wanting to see you I've been wanting to hear more about you. It looks really promising, but he doesn't wanna listen to Jesus. Doesn't wanna listen to what he's got to say. He doesn't wanna humble himself, actually, to the message that Jesus really has. That's why Jesus doesn't say anything.

He just wants Jesus to perform a sign for him. It's almost like, right, bring me some entertainment. I wanna see what you can do. Now, go, perform a sign for me. Or or answer his questions, you know, maybe he's got these big questions about life that he just doesn't understand.

It's like Jesus, sage, tell me the answer. I just wanna know. Maybe he's got like a kind of spiritual curiosity that he wants to tap into. I don't know what it is. It looks like he's accepting Jesus.

But in the end, he doesn't. He totally rejects him. And Jesus knows this. So back here in, verse chapter 13 verse 32, Jesus replies, go and all that fox. Yeah.

He's a fox. He's crafty. He's slippery. He's not to be trusted. And he actually rejects and mocks Jesus in the end because when Jesus is sent to him for his sentencing, Herrod ends up putting a robe on him.

He's saying, do you're a king? Well, dress like a king then, but it's like mocking him. So he's totally and utterly rejected in the end. So it's possible to reject Jesus in kind of different ways. It's not always obvious.

And because of that, I think we need to check ourselves. We might not think, oh, I, I'm like, I'm not like the pharisee. I don't tell Jesus to go away, but we might be a little bit more like herod, and that's why we need to check ourselves. But first of all, are we like the pharisees? Do we walk away completely from particular teachings or commands that Jesus wants us to entail?

You know, we might say, oh, Jesus, I'm on board with most of the stuff that you say, but actually my love life No. You can't say anything about that. I'm gonna make decisions about my love life. Thank you very much. Or my free time, yeah, I I'm on board with everything Jesus.

I'll come to church I'll give you 2 hours on a Sunday, but the rest of the time is up to me. Do we say Jesus, leave this specific place and go somewhere else? You you're welcome over there, you're welcome over there, but this zone here, you can't touch. We like the pharisees. Or have we got a kind of fascination like herod did where we want Jesus?

We do. But we want him to just do stuff for us. We want him to perform a miracle when we need it in our lives. We need something fixed in our lives. We want Jesus then to do it.

Or maybe there's just a spiritual curiosity that we have like herod had. We just like wanna tap into whatever this spiritual thing is. But in the end, there's no real impact on your life. Are we like herod? And I actually think that we all of us find ourselves somewhere in between those things.

Maybe not to the extremes. But definitely, we've been there some some time, haven't we? Because is there anyone in this room now who's rejected Jesus at some point in their life in some way. Is there anyone who's right now, myself included, living a life that completely honors and glorifies the lord Jesus. I know we try to, but we fail, don't we?

So the important question is not whether we have rejected Jesus or not because the answer is obvious. We all have rejected Jesus at some point in some way. The important question then is how does Jesus deal with our rejection? What is his response to it? After he's just been talking about the narrow door and how many are gonna try and enter but not be able to, what is our hope that the door is gonna be open to us?

Even though we deserve to have it slammed in our faces. So how does Jesus deal with our rejection? Well, in a nutshell, The good news of the gospel is this. Though we've rejected Jesus, Jesus has not rejected us. That we've rejected him, he has not rejected us.

Look at verse 34. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, You who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you are not willing. That is Jesus's response to our rejection. And do you see the affection that he's got here for those who reject him?

Jerusalem. He says, Jerusalem. He repeats. These are his people who he's named. His beloved children, he calls them by their name, but do you see his sorrow as well?

Jerusalem. Jerusalem. He's he's sorrowful that we would reject him. Why would we do that? Why do we do that?

He's the 1 who made us and loves loves us, and he's affectionate towards us. And, you know, he knows our rejection. Jesus isn't still affectionate to us because he's turned a blind eye to our rejection. Just look what he says about Jerusalem, to their faces. You who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.

There's no sugar coating that is there. It's not, oh, you have messed up. He's saying you have killed the prophets, and they're sent to you. But he's he's still affectionate to them, even though he knows the full extent of what they've done their rejection. He knows our rejection better than we know our rejection, and he's still affectionate to us.

So he knows to these guys that not only did Jerusalem reject god originally, but then they rejected the messengers and the message that he sent to them warning them about their original rejection. And that message was was filled with the father's love for them and the desire that they should repent. So what what would you expect Jesus to go on and say after he's just said this line. He's just said to them, you who killed the prophets. You who killed the prophets.

And the and stoned those sent to you. You have turned your back on me, so I've turned my back on you. You deserve to be cast out of my presence forever. You're monsters, and I can't believe I ever loved you. Isn't that what you'd expect him to say?

But he doesn't. Look at what he says. You who kill the prophets and stone though sent to you How often I have longed to gather your children together? As the hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you are not willing. Even though you have rejected me, I have longed to gather you together.

As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. That is an amazing illustration that Jesus uses here to show us the tenderness and the love that he has from us. You know, in preparation for the sermon, I had to go on YouTube to watch some videos of the of the hen gathering her chicks under her wings. Because I've I've heard this passage a hundred times, but I've never actually seen it happen for real city life, you know. And I found this really funny video which I wanna share with you.

So there's this man, this American man, and he he he wants to he wants to show this happening in real life whilst quoting the passage. So he's holding this old camcorder walking up towards a chick, some chicks in the hem. And he's reading it quite serenely. But you can tell, even though the camera's pointing at them, so you can't see him. But you can tell that he's flapping around walking.

You try to walk aggressively towards these chicks to create a sense of danger so that the chicks would run under the the hen's, wings, but it's not working, and the chicks just are screaming and running around. I got like the fear of god in their eyes, and he's like, really serenely saying, how I've long do they go? It is amazing. You should go and find that afterwards. It's really funny.

But I did find some other ones that were less crazy. And what I noticed from watching these videos is that when the threat first appears, The hen, first of all, tries to shepherd her chicks to safety. So if I'm approaching this way, in the hen's here, she will shepherd her chicks over there. That's the first thing she does. But if the danger is imminent or they refuse to be shepherded, then she stops running, She like stands her ground, and then she sort of fluffs her wings up like this.

And when I'd read this verse before, I kind of I'd imagined it differently in my head, which is why I'm glad I went to go and watch the videos because I imagined the hen speeding around, like, collecting these chicks like a hungry hippo, like, what? Gotta get you? I've gotta go get you, but it doesn't really make any sense because if the if the hem went over here got this 1, and then there was another 1 over there, she would have to, like, leave this 1 behind. So of course, it doesn't work like that. Instead, what she does is she stops, she fluffs up her wings, and then the chicks, I guess, have this instinctive, like, reaction just to just to dive in underneath her wings.

It must be instinct because she does that and then they they all dog pile in straight away. And they all disappear from view. It's amazing. There's like 8 chicks, and this hen does this, and then suddenly there's no chicks. It's really cool.

Go on YouTube afterwards. I should put that link out. But anyway, what this means, this technique of the, what this means is that it's actually possible for 1 or 2 of the chicks to refuse to come in. Because the hen's not gonna go and get them. It's kind of the the chick's responsibility to go in.

They they they can refuse to go in. The the invite is there. The hen is like, get in, buddy. Yeah? There's room for you inside.

There's room for you. They could probably get a hundred chicks in there, and they'd all disappear. She raises her wings and she has this room for you inside, but as Jesus says here in verse 34, you were not willing. And that's what Jesus has been doing with Jerusalem. They've rejected Jesus.

You know, they're in danger. They're just little chicks. They can't see the danger that it's coming, but it is there. And Jesus has tried to shepherd them. He sent them prophets and messengers over the years, but they refused to listen and now the danger is imminent.

So he's raised his wings, and the invite is to come in. And Jesus longs for them to come in. Belongs for them. Even though they rejected him originally, they rejected the prophets, Jesus says how often I have longed to gather your children together. This is something that Jesus often longs for.

It's not a 1 time only invitation, and if you mess up the office off the table, he goes, woah, the wings are down now. That's it. You missed your chance. Sorry. It's on offer again and again.

The wings are still up today. He's often longed for it. And that's why we don't give up preaching the gospel. You know, to ourselves, to perhaps family members who don't believe, to our friends, to our colleagues. Maybe for years we've been going at it, And we think, what's the point?

Well, the point is that the wings are still up today so we keep going. You know, I'm part of the football ministry that we run on Saturday mornings. And we get 20 to 30 guys, some girls now turning up to play football. And every week at halftime, in between the 2 halves, we do a gospel presentation. We invite the guys to come to know Jesus, and we tell them about what he's done for them every week, week in, week out.

And I think I wonder whether they think we're mental. But I mean, they think we're mental because we're Christians, obviously. But I I wonder if they're thinking, why on earth are they persisting? With this message. Clearly, none of them are coming to church.

Why are we after years and years still banging away with the same invite? Well, it's because Jesus, week in, week out longs for them to come to him. Just because they've rejected him once doesn't mean that he's rejected them. He keeps longing for them. And we can't force them in.

This is not how this works. We can't on a Saturday, just coordinate all of us. We maybe we should do this. We should coordinate all of us with like massive bin bags and just grab them and like bring them in and then put them in the corner, staple them to the ground and preach the gospel to them. Let's not do that.

We can't it's it's not hungry hippo salvation, this. We can't just grab people and bring them in against their will. These people, they have to see the danger that they're in. They have to see that danger is coming. It's imminent.

We've rejected the living god danger is imminent, but do you see Jesus' invitation to come in? And then you come in And that's the gospel, that we rejected Jesus. He has not rejected us. He longs for us again and again to come to him. So what's the proof of this?

How can we know that we've not run out of chances with Jesus? How can we know that his wings are up at all? What's here in this passage? So immediately after being told to go away by the pharisees, Jesus replies in verse 32 I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow. And on the third day, I will reach my goal.

So in the face of abject rejection, it's just been told to go away. Jesus says, I'm gonna press on with my goal. I'm gonna keep on going till I've completed it. He's gonna heal people along the way. He's gonna drive out demons.

He's gonna make people healthy and he's gonna set them free. From the bondage to demonic power, but they are just pictures of what he's ultimately gonna achieve on the third day, which is his goal. And you can see what Jesus is saying here, can't you? The third day? Yeah?

He's marching towards his goal, which is the cross and the empty 2. So in Luke 18, Jesus says this is disciples. We are going up to Jerusalem and everything that is written by the prophet about the son of man will be fulfilled. He will be delivered over to the gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, and spit on him.

They will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again. So on the third day, Jesus says, when he has risen, then he will have reached his goal. He will have paid for the rejection of mankind. He will have made a way for me and for you to come back to him with confidence that the door is open because of the cross, the door to heaven is open.

It's not slammed in our faces. We can go in because our rejection is not counted against us anymore. Jesus took our rejection on himself, on the cross. The wings are up. Jesus is inviting us in now.

And nothing was gonna stop Jesus from completing this goal as well. I love this. So, you know, his eyes were fixed on it, herod can stop him, even if herod had wanted to kill him. Herrod could not have stopped him doing what he wanted. The Faracies tried to stop him again and again.

They were running out of ideas. They had to come up with fake stories about people trying to kill him. You know, Jesus walks around completely unhindered wherever he wants, which is the thing that you notice. When when you read through the book of Luke and all the gospels. So at the start of his ministry, like I said, he's taken up to the top of the hill because the town people wanna throw him off.

He's like, this is not my goal. This is not what I'm here to do. So he just walks through the crowd. This crowd that wanted to I don't know, dragged in, took him. I don't know what.

They took him up to the top of this hill. They were trying to do something, and they couldn't because that was not Jesus' goal. But now he's walking willingly towards his goal. The only way you can kill god is if he willingly walks towards his death. And that's where he's heading.

That's his goal, the cross and the empty tomb. 2 Corinthians says this. Now is the time of god's favor. Now is the day of salvation. And that's the reason why we could stand up yesterday and Fairfield Park with those football guys and tell them to come to Jesus.

And that's why we can do this right now and say come to Jesus because we are in the time of god's favor. We are in the day of salvation. Now is the time to do it. He's willing, and he's longing that we would. But look, a hen only raises her wings when danger is approaching.

And if the chick refuses to go in, then even though the hen is willing, when the danger arrives, it will be too late for the chick and the hen can't protect. The chick. We need salvation because we have rejected the living god and we have despised him. We've broken his good laws, We've, lived to serve ourselves. We've neglected others.

And the time is coming soon when Jesus is coming back to this world in judgment. And on that day, what we've done in our lives is not gonna be a secret anymore. It's gonna be out in the open. And we're not gonna have a lawyer defending us because there will be nothing to defend. It's gonna be undeniable.

We will be pronounced guilty and we will face the justified and good wrath of the 1 who made us. That is the danger that is approaching us. And that is the shield. That is the thing which Jesus shields us from when we run under his wings. But to those who do not come, to those who are ultimately unwilling, Jesus says in verse 35 of the chapter we're in, look.

Your house is left to you desolate. I tell you you will not see me again until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord. So your house or your life However, well adorned and furnished that you've made it in this world, whatever it is that you've invested in, whatever stuff that you've done, it's gonna be empty of the most important thing if you don't have god in it ultimately. It's gonna be desolate. It will be desolate.

You're gonna be missing god who is he was love and light and life. So whatever it is that you think is more important than running to Jesus. I don't know. Have you run to Jesus? If you haven't, then what is it that's more important?

There's nothing that is more important than running to Jesus. If you think that is now, on that day, on judgment day, you will see it's just desolate. So will you see that it's desolate now before it's too late? Your love life, your job, I don't know what it is. Whatever it is, there's no comparison between between a mansion you can build in this world versus eternity with god.

Think of this is this is who I thought of. Think of Hugh Hefner. Yeah? He had playboy mansion in this world. That was his house.

He had the all the worldly pleasures he could afford. And now his house is completely desolate. There's no comparison between anything we can build in this life. And what we can have with Jesus. So my question, in summary, in summary, have you rejected Jesus?

Yes. The answer is we all have to some extent. Has Jesus rejected you? No. He hasn't.

He longs often for you to come to him. His goal was the cross and the empty tomb where he gave his life for us. So that our rejection would be put on him and now we can come back to him. So the only question that's left really is have you come to him? And if you have them, what a joy?

Because you are under the wing of the 1 who made you and loves you and will protect you on that day. But the challenge for us who who are under the wing is to consider how then we ought to deal with people who reject us. Those people in our lives that we've been going out with the gospel for years and years, just rejection, rejection, all those people who are enemies in our lives. How do we respond to them? We respond as Christ did.

He longs often that they come to him. And if you haven't come to him, then will you see the danger that you're in? Whatever it is that you're building in this life, your house will be desolate, Jesus says. It's not gonna be it's not gonna stand up on that day. Nothing is better than knowing Jesus.

So will you come to him? Finished with this, John 5 says, truly, truly, I say to you. Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. It's amazing how little we need to do to to accept this salvation.

We don't have to work to earn it. The chick doesn't have to fight off the danger itself. The chick just has to run under the wing of the hen who is, who is willingly, willing that the chick comes in. So will you do that tonight? There is space for you under Jesus wing.

There is a space for you. It's not just ace. It's not just space there. It's specifically for you. So will you come in to that space for you under Jesus' wing?

Let me pray. My father in heaven, we thank you that we are currently in the day of the lord's favor. We are right now in the day of salvation because of the lord Jesus who's whose goal was the cross and the empty tomb. Please forgive us further for for rejecting you in the many ways that we have done and that we do. Please forgive us, change us, help us to hear your invite to come under the shelter of your wings, and help us not to give up preaching this message to others.

You are longing that people would come to you, so help us to have the same longing. In Jesus name, my men.