Jesus set his face to journey toward Jerusalem. He is going to the city in order to seek and save the lost by dying at Calvary. That is the trajectory of Luke’s Gospel. Last week, we saw Jesus coming down the Mount of Olives riding on a donkey.
The people celebrate him as the King of Israel. And now, the moment has come. Jesus finally enters Jerusalem. But celebration turns into lamentation. When Jesus sees the city, he bursts into tears. The city is consumed with war and corru...
Jesus set his face to journey toward Jerusalem. He is going to the city in order to seek and save the lost by dying at Calvary. That is the trajectory of Luke’s Gospel. Last week, we saw Jesus coming down the Mount of Olives riding on a donkey.
The people celebrate him as the King of Israel. And now, the moment has come. Jesus finally enters Jerusalem. But celebration turns into lamentation. When Jesus sees the city, he bursts into tears. The city is consumed with war and corruption. The temple is profaned by ritualism, discrimination, and idolatry. And Israel’s religious leaders are consumed with power and pride. As a result, Jesus predicts the city’s near-future destruction because they are blind to the things that make for peace and because they reject Jesus as their King of Peace.
How did it come to this? Israel was supposed to be a beacon of peace and light before the Lord and among all the nations. But any serious reader of the Bible knows that Israel fails the Lord by turning after idols again and again. And when Jesus enters Jerusalem, Israel is still caught in a cycle of self-dependence, idolatry, and pride.
But we are no different.
All of us seek to live independently of God—either by rebelling against him or by trusting in our goodness to earn us acceptance with God. All of us have our own version of a self-salvation project. But if we are honest, when we try to run our own life, our biggest fear is losing control. It is exhausting to always wonder if our best is good enough. We are devastated when we fail to keep the standards on our own. A self-salvation project always leads to misery, not joy. Resentment towards God and others, not love. A judgmental spirit, not encouragement. Jealousy, not kindness. Pride, not humility. Chaos, not peace.
But Jesus is our King of Peace. And he came to bring peace on earth through his death on the cross. He came to reconcile us to God and to one another. He came to tear the temple curtain in two that stood between us and God. He came to teach us the gospel and his mission to spread his saving peace from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Even now, Jesus weeps over Victoria, pleading with all who have eyes to see that it is time to repent before it’s too late. If you reject him as King, you’ll know destruction and misery. But if you embrace him as King, you’ll know peace and joy.
In Christ,
Gabe Zepeda, Pastor of Worship and Gospel Formation
www.waterbrooke.church
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