Is your mission worthy of Dying for?

Luke 13:31-35

How important is your mission, or maybe the question should be, do you have a mission?  And if you have a mission is it the correct mission, is your mission worthy of dying for?  Before Jesus created the world He understood that at a point His Father would ask Him to step out of glory, that’s hard for me to grasp! The Creator knowing before His creation that the only fix to restore mankind was going to be the act on His part of leaving heaven where He is worshipped every moment, and to take on the form of His creation.  But the mission was so much greater than just leaving and taking on the form of man, Jesus’ mission was to come and live among us as both man and God, but to not once depend on His Godhood, but to look to His Father for all His actions and needs.  And all missions have an end goal, and this was His end goal, to take your sins and mine, the sins of all mankind to a cross.  He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.  The apostle Paul in his letter to the Hebrews made it very clear for a Jew knew this; “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.  (Hebrews 9:22)

Remember Jesus is traveling toward Jerusalem and some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”  You are going to see the warrior in our Lord, you also will see an all knowing Jesus who before coming to earth lived outside of time and had been to what we call the beginning and the end of time as He had created it for mankind.  Listen to Jesus’ reply; “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.” (Luke 13:32-33 ESV)

But after saying this, we have Jesus’ lament over 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 her 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!’”  (Luke 13:34-35 ESV)  What a price the Jewish people have paid for rejecting the Messiah, all that would happen had been seen by the all knowing and all seeing Christ, as He wept that day, over His chosen. 

The rejection is still going on with many Jewish people, and it is also going on in the hearts and minds of many who go by the name of Christian, as if being born in the United States makes you Christ like.   But I must tell you as a watchman on the wall, John the Baptist’s message is the message for America and the world, repent, confess, and bow your knee to the risen Christ.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice