Clear words can still sail right past us when they aren’t the news we want. In Luke 18, Jesus tells the Twelve exactly what’s about to happen to Him, yet they were just like us: they didn’t want to hear.
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\n1. The disciples heard Jesus clearly describe his coming humiliation and death, yet “understood none of these things.” Where in your own life might you be hearing God’s Word but resisting what it actually costs or requires?\n2. Jason and Tim emphasize that we often don’t heed warnings when they don’t match the story we want. What “Messiah” or outcome are you still hoping God will give you instead of the path of following a crucified Savior?\n3. Paul writes that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted.” How does that reshape your expectations of discipleship, and where have you been tempted to pursue an easier “gospel”?\n4. The sermon insists our problem is deeper than we admit—so deep that only Jesus’ precious blood, not our efforts or sacrifices, can save us. What are you still tempted to trust in besides the cross?\n5. Jesus never drives away those who come to him, and he gives mercy “seventy times seven.” How does that patience free you to turn back again this week, even if you’ve been slow to grasp what he’s saying?
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\nSo, we’ve been meeting with Jesus the last few weeks. Hopefully, we meet with Jesus all the weeks, but Jesus is talking to us about humility, and humility is the ongoing theme that we’ve seen week after week as we go through Luke 18.\n\nWe started on prayer and began several weeks ago with the unjust judge, which challenged us with the idea that even if an unjust judge will only do the right thing because the woman keeps banging on the door, how much greater is our Father who wants to answer our prayers, who waits to hear our prayers and listen? One of the things that challenges us is how we see the Lord—how do we see Him? How do we recognize what He’s doing? What is He doing in our hearts? What does He need to do in our hearts so that we can receive all that He wants to give us?\n\nThen we went forward a little bit and talked about the rich young ruler. He said he obeyed all the commandments all his life, which by the way is highly unlikely, if not downright impossible. But Jesus said one thing you still lack: “Go and sell all that you have and give everything to the poor; then come follow me,” because Jesus knew that the thing holding him back was his wealth. So I asked us that week: What do we have that may be holding us back? What is our Lord asking us to surrender, to give up?\n\nAs we come to it this week, we’re going to keep going, and I think we have some more lessons in humility from Jesus, which is pretty much everything Jesus says to us. Let’s take a look at verse 31 then:\n\n”And taking the twelve, He said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.’”\n\nAnd we’ll do verse 32 as well if we can:\n\n”For He will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging Him, they will kill Him, and on the third day He will rise.”\n\nWe can get hooked on that word “prophets,” and I think we should for just a second because the Old Testament prophets predicted this, notably Isaiah. I’m going to draw us to Isaiah 53, the servant song in Isaiah 53, where it says in part, “By His wounds we are healed.” And “We all, like sheep, have gone astray.” Somehow we know this.\n\nIf you look back in verse 4 of Isaiah 53, it says, “We considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted.” So we can see with our human eyes, look at things with our human eyes, and see, “Oh, this Jesus, He didn’t meet with a good end at all. This is terrible. Wouldn’t want to be Him.” But in the Lord’s way of doing things, as we’ve seen, it has a deeper meaning, a greater meaning, and He can take a shameful death at the hands of the Romans and turn it into the thing that brings us into the kingdom.\n\nSo that verse 4 back in Isaiah 53 shows us the contrast between sometimes how we see what the Lord is doing with our ordinary eyes and what we can see with our eyes of faith once He has enlivened us and given us His grace to respond. We need to always go back to the cross because the cross is everything that we could need, everything we could want, and it is the place where we have been drawn near to the Father by the blood of Christ.\n\nOver in Philippians 2, this is very exciting stuff. St. Paul says, “Your attitude should be like that of Christ Jesus, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but instead made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant and being found in human likeness. He was obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted Him to the name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”\n\nIf you study this carefully, this is interesting because in Isaiah, that part of the Godhead is the Father; it’s Yahweh. What St. Paul is doing there is saying Jesus is God. Jesus has been exalted; Jesus is the name above every name, and it’s the only name by which we are going to be saved.\n\nIn another prophet, Jeremiah tells us in chapter 31: “The days are coming,” says the Lord, “when no longer will men say to his neighbor, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least to the greatest.” Because it is the Lord that has done this, the new covenant prophesied in Jeremiah.\n\nOne of the things you see is on the one hand, Paul gives us the current—this is what’s happening right now. When you read that passage of Philippians, right there, he’s giving you this is what it means right now, this is what the cross means for you, Philippians, right now.\n\nBut if we look at the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, it’s the future. That’s one thing that we can get hung up on sometimes as we think, “Oh, a prophecy is future.” No. A prophet can give you God’s eye view anytime—whether it be the present, past, or future.\n\nSo when He says here in our passage, “I’m going to Jerusalem and the things that are prophesied about the Son of Man must occur,” He knows what those prophets prophesied before. He knows what will be the current meaning and what will be the future meaning.\n\nThis break in the sermon brought to you by CNN, apparently. And so He knows what’s going to happen.\n\nEarlier in Luke, back in chapter 9 and some translations in verse 51, it says, “And He set His face like a flint toward Jerusalem.” He knows that the heart of everything is in Jerusalem, and that means the heart of everything is that cross.\n\nAnd we know from Ephesians that by that cross, by that blood, the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile has been taken down. That’s the dividing wall that separated so many people from each other.\n\nThis, in Jesus, and also in Isaiah 45 that we mentioned before: everybody is going to come from the ends of the earth and be reconciled to God through this Jesus.\n\nThat is the person whom we worship this evening. That is the person we trust in for our salvation. And if we’re trusting in anything else right now, bad news—it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work.\n\nMaybe you have found that already; you’ve maybe tried to trust in yourself, tried to trust in your own wisdom, tried to trust in your career. I know a guy; he was a programmer for 10 years with Monsanto, of all things. You go to the same workplace for 10 years, eat lunch with the same guys and gals, do the same thing, and then somebody says, “All right, well, no more of that,” and you can’t trust in that anymore.\n\nOr maybe your health goes bad and you can’t trust in that anymore.\n\nThere are so many things we face where we have to decide what’s the most important thing, what drives me, what is the center of my heart. If we’ve been wrong about that, the good news is we can always turn back.\n\nHe says in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “He who comes to me I will never drive away,” and those who come to me will not be snatched out of my hand, a few chapters later.\n\nSo it doesn’t matter how many times we have to ask Him for that mercy to start again; He’s there to give it.\n\nThat’s why when they asked Him—I’m going all over the Bible again, Tim—but when the apostles asked Him, “Well, how many times must I forgive my brother? Seven times?” And He says, “Seventy times seven,” which I can’t even do that math right now, but it’s a figure of speech. It means as many times as necessary. You can never be beyond the mercy of God. Ever.\n\nThe only thing that is beyond the reach of God is if you’re so stuck in your sin that you have no ability to be reached by His mercy—when you close yourself off completely to that mercy, then you can’t even hear it. Can’t even hear the voice of God. So as long as we can still hear the still small voice and respond to it, we’re not lost. As long as we’re living, we’re not lost. We have an opportunity to turn back and go toward Jesus.\n\nJesus is going toward Jerusalem to give His life on that cross to shed His blood.\n\nIt’s a great mystery because He died. He was shamed. He was humiliated on that cross. And yet by His wounds, we are healed. That’s the words in Isaiah from the prophecy 700 years before Jesus came to us.\n\nThat’s a mystery. We can’t unpack that.\n\nThen later in Scripture, it says, “If we have been saved by His death, how much more will we be saved by His life? How much more will we be saved by His life?”\n\nThat’s why St. John says in one of his letters, “I write this to you little children, I write this to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one.”\n\nWhy does He say that? Because He doesn’t just die on the cross and then say, “Oh, my ministry is over.” No. He will go into that temple made without hands in the heavenly kingdom, and He will intercede for you by name. You by name, me by name, Melanie obviously.\n\nSo He doesn’t stop. We’re the ones—remember we’re fickle, the ones who go back and forth. That’s why He gives us so many chances.\n\nHave you ever wondered—this is a little bit speculation—but you have the good angels and the bad angels. Well, they knew everything perfectly.\n\nOne of the reasons that opens us up to mercy is that we are foolish. That’s why we don’t know everything. That’s why it says in Isaiah, “We like sheep have gone astray,” because sheep are dumb.\n\nThey’re so dumb.\n\nI had an Australian shepherd once. Okay, he’s not a sheep, but they chase sheep, and those Australian shepherds, they’re dumb as a box of rocks. It was cubby. His name was Cubby because he looked like a bear. It wasn’t in his sympathy for the cubs, so relax. But he really did look like a bear.\n\nYou could come up to him and say, “Oh, Cubby, you’re so stupid,” and he would just smile at you like “Just pet me, pet me. I love you so much.” Like I just insulted you. You don’t care.\n\nWe’re sheep. We hear the word. We hear the truth. And sometimes we go right back to doing the dumb things that we were doing before. We’re so weak.\n\nBut didn’t you know Jesus knows that? He knows that.\n\nTim’s only got one verse. I hope I don’t use this whole time. That would be a disaster.\n\nHe knows.\n\nHe knows who we are.\n\nHe gave His life for you and for me because He knows who we are. He knows exactly who we are.\n\nGod shows His own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Christ did not wait for us to clean ourselves up. He knew us at our worst and said, “I’ll die for him, I’ll die for her.” And even if you were the only one—I know, I just repeat myself week to week—but it’s the Word of God. That’s what it says.\n\nIf you’re the only one, He died for all of us, and yet He died for you personally by name.\n\n”It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” from one of Paul’s letters as well.\n\nSo what we need to understand is that it was predicted that Jesus would do this. People became aware even at the time.\n\nThe centurion understood, “Surely this man was the Son of God,” at the time, at the cross and then afterward. He will.\n\nJesus, in Psalm 22, says, “He will proclaim the Lord’s name to a generation yet unborn.”\n\nSo what He did on the cross would go forward, and it still does go forward every time people are sent out in the name of Jesus.\n\nRemember when He sent us out with the Great Commission?\n\nI’m going all over the Bible again.\n\nRemember when He sent us out with the Great Commission in Matthew 28? He says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.”\n\nHe starts with that, and then He says, “Go therefore. Go therefore. I will make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”\n\nHe tells us that He has the power first, and then He sends us out.\n\nGet that?\n\nHe tells us that He has the power first, and then He sends us out.\n\nSo anything that we’re doing here, all these ministries—they come from because Jesus has been given all the power in heaven and on earth.\n\nIsn’t that a comforting thought? That whatever He’s asking me to do, whatever mission He gives me or the works prepared in advance that we should walk in, at the end of Ephesians 2, or at least verse 10, He’s got the power, and He gives us His power.\n\nWhat are we trying to do with no power?\n\nIt’s not for us to think we’ve got to have it all together, we’ve got to make this happen.\n\nWe’ve been praying and hoping and praying some more, and that’s why this church, this ministry, has gone forward the way it has. And it’s the same with JGM out there in Kenya.\n\nPrayer, trust in the Lord, and now I’ll hand you off to Tim for verse 33.\n\nWell, so that all sounds amazing, doesn’t it? I mean, the gospel is amazing. God’s grace is amazing.\n\nSo then why is it that we have such a hard time with it?\n\nI thought about the disciples as they were hearing what Jesus is describing, and He’s describing to them that He is going to do all this for them—for you and for me.\n\nWhat Jason has been walking us through, He’s describing all that.\n\nAnd what are we told in verse 34? But they understood none of these things.\n\nSo everything Jason has been mentioning, they didn’t understand it.\n\nAnd we look at them and we think, how could they be so foolish?\n\nThey didn’t understand it.\n\nOne thing that Jason said that’s really, really key is that we are dumb, and we’re blinded by sin.\n\nSo even when God’s trying to help us out, and we’ve probably had this experience… I’m not sure if you’ve had this experience with Cubby, but we probably all at some point have had this experience with a pet. You’re trying to help that pet; it has a burr stuck in its paw or something, and you can’t convince the pet to let you help.\n\nAnd that’s how we are with God. We’re covered in burrs of sin, so many that it’s killing us. It is actually killing us.\n\nAnd we say, “But God, it sounds too painful the way you’re talking about dealing with that. It sounds just too hard. I don’t want to go through all that. I don’t want to have interference on my radio.”\n\nAs Jesus is describing this, part of it, I think we have to back up, is not just that we don’t want to go through it. The disciples couldn’t understand that He was going to go through it.\n\nPeople have debated, well, what is it when it says they didn’t understand? What is it that it was saying that they didn’t understand?\n\nWell, it doesn’t seem like it’s that they couldn’t understand the words. They were speaking the same language.\n\nThey’re all speaking probably Aramaic in this moment. They’re speaking it to each other maybe Greek, one of those two. They’re speaking this to each other.\n\nThey understood what Jesus was saying words, right? The words, they went into their ears. Their ears recognized the sounds to mean certain words they’d learned over the years; they understood it in that sense.\n\nBut they didn’t understand how it could be about Him.\n\nNow, God’s word, and this is if you haven’t already guessed, the reason I said Jason has to cover this first part—if you’ve hung around Jason at all, you know he is the human cross-reference. He can cross-reference the Scriptures like nobody’s business.\n\nWhenever he’s been in Bible study, I love when he’s in Bible study because we’ll be talking and he’ll say, “Well, let’s talk about these two other verses, another one in the Old Testament, another one in the New Testament.” We’ll jump over here and connect it all.\n\nAnd I thought, I think that’s a little taste of what the disciples are often getting there: they’re listening, and Jesus is connecting all these Scriptures. He’s saying, “Here, look, look, Genesis, let’s look over in the Prophets, let’s look over here in the Law of Moses, let’s look throughout and look how God has been building this picture. He’s been preparing you for this moment that I’m going to be here and I’m going to say these things to you.”\n\nSo they should get it, right? But they don’t.\n\nI was reading last month right before our friends down south in Mexico had their presidential election and there was a big campaign rally for one of the candidates, third-place candidate. His name is Jorge Menez. I believe I’m saying that right.\n\nHe didn’t win; he was a third-place candidate. But he had this big rally, and they were doing rallies much like we do here for political candidates—big temporary stage put up, big banners, loud music, big lights, everything.\n\nIt made news not because a politician decided to have a campaign rally. If that were news, they could never get to anything else in the news, right? There’s always a politician having a campaign rally.\n\nIt became news because a giant storm came in right as they were having this, 70-mile-an-hour winds. It knocked over the stage, killed people, injured almost 200 people.\n\nI thought about that and how much it’s like what’s happening to the disciples here.\n\nNow, why? Jesus isn’t campaigning. He’s outlining how everything was being foretold.\n\nAnd the thing I didn’t mention about this rally is that six hours before it happened, the Mexican National Weather Service said, “There’s going to be this huge storm that may be able to knock over large structures like billboards and platforms; take cover.”\n\nAn hour before the rally, they’d warned that there could be tornadoes, and people should shelter.\n\nA concert nearby had shut down.\n\nBut as people were analyzing this, the people involved in this rally said, “Well, how could we have known this could happen?”\n\nWell, they didn’t want to know, right? They planned this rally; they had the music, they had the band, they had the banners and the signs, and they’re trying to get traction as the third-place team, trying to somehow win that election.\n\nThey did not want to hear that they needed to cancel the rally.\n\nSo you have the Weather Service saying, “This is a really bad idea,” and they say, “Well, how could we know that this would collapse?”\n\nFunny thing is that hasn’t happened just once; it happens over and over again.\n\nAs I was reading about that story, then I found a story from Indiana a few years ago at the state fair. Same basic thing: National Weather Service warns, they ignore it, people die as the building collapses.\n\nWe don’t heed warnings when we don’t want to hear them.\n\nWe don’t heed news that doesn’t sound like the way we want it to be.\n\nFor the disciples and for the people of God in general at that time, they were anticipating a Messiah. They wanted a Messiah. They were excited about those prophecies about a Messiah that spoke about how the Messiah was going to come and rescue them.\n\nWhat they didn’t want to hear is how the Messiah was going to be humiliated and put to death, because that wasn’t the kind of thing they were looking for.\n\nThey didn’t want a dead Messiah; they wanted a Messiah who made their enemies dead.\n\nSo here you have all these prophecies, everything going back to Genesis 3 when God first foretold to Adam and Eve that God would send rescue from sin.\n\nAs He developed that, it became clearer and clearer, the very things Jason was mentioning: that it would take this incredible humiliation, this incredible death, for us to receive life.\n\nThey liked the part about it helping us, but they didn’t like the part that came before that.\n\nAgain, verse 34: “But they understood none of these things. The saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.”\n\nWe can kind of imagine there’s… I like that image of grasping, right? Because these words are going into their ears, but it’s sort of like if you’re pouring sand and you stick out your open hand and try to catch it, it’s just going to go right through your hand.\n\nThat’s how those words are going.\n\n”Jesus, we hear these words, but you must be speaking metaphorically. You can’t really be speaking that you’re going to be humiliated, spit upon, and put to death; that you’re going to go to the cross, because…”\n\nWell, they didn’t have the hymn “Lift High the Cross.” They didn’t think of the cross as triumphant. They thought of the cross as the punctuation mark on a failed campaign.\n\nIf you’re on the cross, you didn’t do it right; it didn’t work.\n\nSo here Jesus is saying this, “Well… maybe somehow metaphorically you’re going to be humiliated. Maybe humiliation is the fact that people haven’t already caught on. Maybe humiliation is the fact that you have to walk by the cross as intended for the really bad people. It can’t really be, though, Jesus, that you mean that you’re going to go to the cross.”\n\nI think it took actually seeing it happen, seeing Jesus go to the cross, seeing the tomb with the stone rolled and it’s shut, seeing the tomb rolled open and there being no body in it, seeing the risen Lord, and they said, “Wait a second. When He was talking about all this stuff, maybe… maybe His humiliation really was what it took for us to be restored. And maybe a Messiah that goes to the grave isn’t a failed Messiah but the successful Messiah.”\n\nWe have to see it actually in action.\n\nIt’s like if you go and you buy a card game not like a deck of cards for… well, actually, if you’re like me you always forget the rules, so maybe you need it for that even.\n\nBut especially, you go and you get one of those new, bizarre, crowdfunded card games with all kinds of bizarre cards in it, and you open the instructions and they roll out and they’re this long, and you start reading through it, and it says, “Well, if the player gets the card with green polka dots on it, then the player two to their left has to pull out the card from the other deck and do this,” and you’re thinking, “I have no idea how this is going to work. It doesn’t make any sense.”\n\nWhat do we need to do? We need to see it, right? We say, “Well, finally, I’ve read through this. We’ve been reading the instructions for an hour now. Maybe we should try playing it. It said it only takes ten minutes to play a hand. Let’s try it, right?”\n\nSo you deal the cards, you play it, and you think, “Oh, now I see. There’s the green polka dot card; there’s the other deck. Here’s how it works,” and it suddenly starts to make sense.\n\nI think God, knowing our limitations, laid the groundwork. Because when you’re playing that card game, then you go back and you read the rules. You say, “Well, okay, now exactly what happens next after the green polka dotted card?” And you can handle it now because you’ve started to see something you can grasp.\n\nFor the disciples, they needed to see something they could grasp. They needed that experience of seeing the inconceivable, seeing the Messiah come to earth, God incarnate in the flesh.\n\nAre you sliding down, kind of red? I’m good.\n\nThey needed to see that before they could understand.\n\nWe’re on a roll here, comrade. Let’s put you here. We don’t want you to become a holy roller here.\n\nThat wasn’t bad, was it?\n\nThey needed to see it. So many things in life, we need to actually experience it before it starts to make sense.\n\nI think about those poor people who experienced that collapsing stage in Mexico or a few years before that, the families that were terrified at the Indiana State Fair, or the many other times severe weather has done something like that.\n\nWe see those sorts of things happen here, unfortunately, as well.\n\nHow much more careful do you think the people are that survive and experience it and see it?\n\nWell, now they understand. When the Weather Service says it might get really bad, it might get really bad.\n\nI’d imagine all of us— I don’t mean to bring up a painful subject for some here—but all of us are probably a little more careful after the hailstorms of this spring.\n\nBecause, yeah, oh, hailstorm, well, that’s kind of unfortunate. Oh, hailstorm, right?\n\nWe’ve seen the destruction of some of these really bad storms.\n\nWell, maybe this is a big deal.\n\nWe have to experience it, and when we experience it, we start to be able to understand it.\n\nThe disciples understood sin, but they were focused on, “We’re oppressed by the Romans, we’re oppressed by this and that; things aren’t right; we don’t have enough funds, we don’t have enough food, we don’t have enough freedom. We want these things.”\n\nThey couldn’t come to understand this much bigger picture of what Jesus was doing until they actually experienced it.\n\nNow, where does that put us though?\n\nBecause we have the benefit—we can look back and we can do what Jason did. He didn’t just talk about the Old Testament; he went into the New Testament too, and talked about, for example, Philippians 2, where it says what did happen to Jesus, how He went and was humiliated, that He took on the form of a servant, that He went through all that. And why did He do that? He said someday every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God.\n\nAnd because of that, now what? Now we have salvation.\n\nWell, I think the challenge for us—we might have the benefit of being able to read all that—but we still don’t know if it applies to us. And I think a key part of it being that it’s uncomfortable to think that God had to do that for us. God had to go that far for us.\n\nWhat does that imply?\n\nIt’s the very thing that we’ve been seeing over the past few weeks—what Jason preached on two weeks ago and what we continued on last week. We have to be willing to say, “I’m that bad that I need that. I’m that broken that I need that.”\n\nThe disciples, sure, they knew they had problems, but what they really wanted to hear is how everybody else had problems, and God was going to take care of those.\n\nTo get their heads around, no, our problems are so bad that we’re going to drive our teacher, our friend—eventually as they understood who He was more and more, our Lord and our Savior and our God— we’re going to drive Him to the cross to die for us.\n\nThey had to get to the point where they could understand that.\n\nPeter later in life, reflecting, what does he say in 1 Peter?\n\nPeter oftentimes was trying to elevate himself in his time around Jesus. He may not have been elevating himself with silver or gold.\n\nBut as we talked about last week, what was he doing? He was saying, “Look at all the things we’ve given up, Jesus. We’ve done all this. Look, Jesus.”\n\nWhat does Peter later in life, after he’s experienced this and understood it, after the rules in the rule book no longer seem like this massive, constantly unfolding thing he can’t understand, but there’s one rule: follow Jesus. That’s the rule that sets you on the right path. That’s the rule that saves you.\n\nWhat does he say? It’s not the silver and gold. I think he’d echo—anything else you could insert that you think you have value—any possession you have, any deed you could do.\n\nCertainly, the disciples say that elsewhere, but I think it’s Peter saying, “Not with silver and gold.” He’s saying whatever you think is most valuable—it’s not with that, but it’s with Jesus’ precious blood. That’s where we find salvation.\n\nOur sins are so much more than we think. So the efforts that we attempt to use to somehow right ourselves don’t cut the mustard. They don’t ever get us to where we need to be.\n\nPeter, at the time that Jesus is saying this and hearing about what Jesus is going to go through, is saying, “But we’re basically good. We’re following You, Jesus. We’ve given up so much. You shouldn’t be talking about more suffering and destruction and death that You, the teacher, are going to go to the cross. We’re following You, so You’re going to give us prosperity and peace.”\n\nBut that’s not what He’s talking about here.\n\nWhat does Peter later on understand? What he was seeking wasn’t prosperity and peace in his life, but restoration to God.\n\nIn the moment, he couldn’t fully understand that, but God was going to do that for him.\n\nThe key thing there, I think, is we understand that that’s what God has done for us.\n\nIt then allows us to think, “Well, how are we going to go, and how are we going to serve, and how do we expect to be treated in this world?”\n\nTake a look at 2 Timothy 3. Paul writes:\n\n”You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch and at Conium and at Lystra, which persecutions I have endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me.”\n\n”Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted.”\n\nImagine if we put that up on a billboard: “Hey, come to Little Hills Church. We follow the God who says if you follow Him, you will be persecuted.”\n\nRun an ad on Facebook, right? “Feeling down tonight? Doomscrolling? Feeling down? Guess what? You too can follow the God who will ensure that you will be persecuted. Then you’ll have a reason to feel even more down.” Right?\n\nNo one wants to hear that. We don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to hear that, right? I don’t want to be persecuted. I don’t want to go through suffering.\n\nHow many times do I ask God, “Why is this happening?”\n\nAsked Him that this week. Asked Him that this week multiple times that I’m preparing to serve in the gods. Why is this happening? I don’t learn very quickly.\n\nBut the gospel that is focused on getting stuff for us, on an easy path for us, well, it’s not the gospel.\n\nBecause Jesus calls us to follow Him, and following Jesus is hard.\n\nNot hard in the sense that we have to work hard to earn salvation. That part is beautifully easy. Jesus paid the ultimate price for us that we can receive that simply by asking Him to forgive us of our sins.\n\nBut then He calls us to actually follow Him and do what’s hard.\n\nThe key thing that we don’t want to understand, just like the disciples didn’t want to understand in these words, is if all these things are literally true—if Jesus really is going to be mocked and spit upon and suffer.\n\nIf we look back now in the 21st century and say, Jesus was mocked and spit upon and suffered and died.\n\nIf we say all those things and we really believe He’s calling us to follow Him, what does that say about us?\n\nJust what Paul says: those who confess Jesus, they’re going to be persecuted. We are going to suffer.\n\nIf we’re doing it right, it’s not going to be easy.\n\nAnd yes, sometimes we’re going to bring that on ourselves, and we deserve every bit of that suffering because it’s just us being idiots, and we’re just being stupid, and we’re just making ourselves hurt.\n\nWe shouldn’t say, “Oh, look how holy I am. I’m suffering,” in those cases.\n\nBut we should also understand when we’re following Him, it’s going to be hard.\n\nWhat do we need to do? We need to ask God, “Help me to understand. Help me to understand the path that You’ve chosen for me.”\n\nBecause too often we’re like that rich young ruler. Too often we’re like the tax collector and the Pharisee there.\n\nWe’re in that place with them, but we’re leaning towards the Pharisee who’s saying, “Look how great I am,” and not leaning towards the tax collector who’s saying, “Look how horrible I am.”\n\nWhen we understand, “Wait, I don’t deserve any of this. I deserved all the humiliation, the suffering that Jesus experienced. But He invites me into the easiness of His salvation, the goodness and the peace of His salvation,” then whatever I face in this life as I stand and I love people and I serve people and I do what’s right—even when it’s going to cost me—no matter how much I do that, well, I’m not even getting the beginnings of what I genuinely deserve in my state of failure.\n\nBecause at the end of the day and at the end of life—in eternal life—what did I experience? I experienced the goodness of God that He says to me and to you: if you trust in Him, that all of us as we trust in Him, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Not because I am so faithful all the time, but because Jesus is faithful and His grace is sufficient for us.\n\nGod’s path is different than the one that you envision and that I envision so often.\n\nThere are disciples who don’t understand, even though it happens. We see over and over again just like Jason said, he mentioned just a moment ago how you say the same thing every time you preach. Why? Because as we go to Scripture, it’s there over and over and over again and yet we still don’t get it.\n\nBut thankfully, we have a God who is patient.\n\nAnd you can say even tonight, “God, I don’t get what’s going on in my life right now. I don’t get where You’re leading me right now. I don’t understand why things are breaking right now.”\n\nBut I understand that You love me and I need You.\n\nAnd what happens? God is faithful to respond to that.\n\nWill you pray with me, please?\n\nFather, thank You for the grace that we find in Your word.\n\nWhat a hard-to-wrap-our-minds-around thing it is that You, O Lord, are the one who calls us into very, very difficult circumstances—that You want us to stand for truth in a world that often doesn’t care about truth, that You want us to stand loving people faithfully, serving people faithfully, even when they don’t love us and even when they have no interest in doing anything but harm to us.\n\nYou call us to that, Lord.\n\nWe say, “I don’t know how to process this.”\n\nYou say, “But look at Me. Look what I have done for you.”\n\nAnd Lord, would You help us to be stronger in being able to pursue what You’ve called us to because we know that we’re not the ones fixing everything. We’re not the ones saving ourselves, but rather we’re simply the ones who are following the one who has led us and will lead us.\n\nWe pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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