O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Luke 13:31-35
Introduction
Although Charles Wesley had been engaged in preaching the gospel with much diligence and earnestness, he did not know what it was to enjoy peace with God until he was in his thirtieth year. Being laid low by an alarming illness, and seeming as if he were going to die, a young Moravian named Peter Bohler, who was undergoing a course of preparation by him to go out as a missionary, asked him, “Do you hope to be saved?” Charles answered, “Yes.” “For what reason do you hope it?”
“Because I have used my best endeavors to serve God.” The Moravian shook his head and said no more. That sad, silent, significant shake of the head shattered all Charles Wesley’s false foundation of salvation by endeavors. He was afterwards taught by Peter Bohler the way of the Lord more perfectly, and brought to see that by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ men are justified. And now in his sick-room he was able to write for the first time in his life, “I now find myself at peace with God”; and it was on this occasion he composed that beautiful hymn, “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise!”
Transition
The great devotional author, Oswald Chambers once wrote that “God does not tell us what he is going to do, he reveals who he is.” As I enter my text this morning, it is likewise my great desire to shine a light on the nature of who God is; specifically, who God is in salvation.
Exposition
The overreaching themes of this section of Scripture are chiefly twofold and their implications are vast. They speak to the very nature of God’s love for His creation.
(1) First, there is the matter of divine sovereignty. Herod’s desire to kill Jesus did not worry Him in the least. Nothing could hinder the divine plan of God. Nothing could thwart God’s plan for redemption to be found in Jesus Christ.
(2) Second, there is the issue of Israel’s rejection of their Messiah, which is represented by His rejection by the people of Jerusalem. Jesus ministry was one of a constant invitation to the people to repent and enter the Kingdom of God.
Just as their fathers had done in previous generations, stoning and killing those whom God sent to express His will to His chosen covenant people, they not only rejected Jesus, but handed Him over to the Romans to be crucified.
Here we have two seemingly juxtaposed, out of sync, even contradictory ideas. On the one hand God is sovereign and nothing can thwart His plans. On the other hand the Bible plainly teaches that there are those who reject Christ.
Even our own experience of reality corresponds to these truths. God is sovereign over His creation and there are many who reject even His offer of free grace.
These concepts, though, are not mutually exclusive, they do not contradict. They are part of one biblical picture of the story of redemption in Christ.
God loves His creation: All of it. John 3:16-17 tells us that God loves the world, Kosmos, in the Greek. For God so loved all of His [created order, arrangement of the stars and heavens, all that inhabit therein] that He gave His only begotten Son to suffer and die to ransom us back from sin and destroy the works of the Devil. He did so in order that we who were once alienated, estranged, foreigners, might become the sons and daughters of the Most High.
But there are some who reject His love. Here are five ways that this is evident from this passage of Scripture: “(1) It is evident that our blessed Lord seriously and earnestly wished the salvation of the Jews.
(2) That he did everything that could be done, consistently with his own perfections, and the liberty of his creatures, to effect this. (3) That his tears over the city, Luke 19:41, sufficiently evince his sincerity. (4) That these persons nevertheless perished. And (5) That the reason was, they would not be gathered together under his protection: therefore wrath, i.e. punishment, came upon them to the uttermost.”
God in His infinite wisdom and the wonder of His love has granted a measure of freedom to His creatures, within the boundaries of His sovereign will. The truth is that all of us, if left to our own devices would choose just as the people of Jerusalem did; we would abandon His love.
Was it not for God awakening our sin-slumbered soul to new life in Christ, were it not for the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts regenerating us unto new life, which among us would choose to abandon their life for the sake of the Cross?
Was it not for the immensity of His love for us, which of us would take up our cross and follow after Christ? There is a love with which God broadly loves His creation and all of His creatures. The offer of salvation to humanity is real.
There is a love with which God loves His creation. There is also a love which moves beyond His love for the Kosmos and places its holy affections directly upon, squarely upon, steadfastly upon, unwaveringly with great sovereign and divine conviction upon you… and upon me.
In Romans 11:5 the Apostle Paul says, “So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.” In verse 29 of the same chapter he writes, “For God's gifts and his call are irrevocable.” (NIV) What does the biblical doctrine of election teach us? Is the sovereignty of God, even in our salvation, an esoteric doctrine which should be reserved for the halls of academia?
In the second chapter of Ephesians, the Apostle writes, “…Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”
There is a love with which God loves His creation. There is also a love which moves beyond the general, broad, love of God for His creation which breaks into the frozen hearts of sinners awakening them to the glory of God in Christ!
There are those who would have you to believe that you had something to do with your own salvation in Christ and consequently that the keeping of it is somehow predicated upon the same factors as its receipt; that the be saved in Christ is in part my own doing and to remain in Christ is likewise contingent upon things that I do, that I might remain in Christ.
O, that we would recognize the nature of salvation according to the Scriptures, the same God who hardened Pharaohs’ heart has awakened ours! The same God who is sovereign over His creation has miraculously awakened our sin-hardened hearts to the truth and granted according to His sovereign mercy that we might receive the gift of faith and be awakened to new life!
Nothing can thwart His plans, some reject Him. They are those who He allows simply to continue upon the path of their own destruction; the same path that you and I were on until the great and glorious light of Christ shined into our darkened souls, awakening us to new life!
Precious Saints of God, don’t add anything to salvation. It is the work of Christ on the Cross, according to the Father’s will, manifest in us by the work of the Holy Spirit alone. Save for the grace of God there go I!
That no man should boast! That God alone should receive the glory! That Christ alone, the author and finisher of our faith, should rein victorious over sin.
You were saved with an uncommon grace. Our salvation was bought at a high price and our assurance of it rests squarely upon the reality that it is was God in Christ, who was reconciling the world unto Himself, who secured salvation for the elect, those who chose Christ on the basis of His having first chosen us according to His free and sovereign will. Do not add to salvation.
It was not we who chose Him, but He who called us.
Let us repent of our boasting. Let us turn from our working to please Him and instead merely respond to Grace by sharing His love, let us worship Him wholeheartedly and unashamedly in all areas of our lives.
Let us strive for Christ, not legalistically to get or to retain salvation, but because our hearts are filled with the blessed assurance that comes in knowing that I was the reason that He died; that I was the reason that He suffered; that I might be redeemed to God in Jesus Christ, not because of any good in me, that I should boast, but because of His sovereign mercy alone, His glorious love, alone!
Conclusion
A magician will put a coin in a man’s palm, and shut his hand upon it and say, “Are you sure it is there? Open your hand.” It is not there. That is how many people lose their assurance of God’s salvation. They thought they had it: the last time they looked at it, it was there. Why is it not there now? Because they do not brace up mind, heart, and will to think about God and Christ continually, every day of their life, and so the truths we believe, slip away, before we know they are gone. It is not without reason that even to a preacher Paul should say, “Fight the good fight, lay hold on eternal life” (I Timothy 6:12).
Albert Einstein once wrote that “God casts the die, not the dice.”
In the eight chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans he writes, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies… Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? … For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:29-39 NIV)
There is a love with which God loves the world and then there is a love which moves beyond this love to the perfect, prevenient, love of God who cannot love us any more that He does, who loves us in spite, not because of ourselves, who gave His son to offer salvation to the world, yes, but to secure it for you, personally, whom He foreknew, whom He predestined.
Dear child of God, your salvation rests not in your emotions, but in Him, the vast nature of the knowledge of which consumes the mind until there not room for doubt. Faith is not the absence of doubt; it is the presence of God! Amen.
