I’ve got a question for you this morning, a quick opinion poll. How many of you believe that current technology makes certain tasks easier? For example, how many of you prefer a washing machine to a washboard when doing laundry? How many of you like keeping in touch with family and friends on Facebook or Instagram? But how many of you also believe that we can misuse technology in ways that the inventors of these various technologies did not even think about when they invented them?
For example, there was an article in Hemispheres magazine that told about all the websites out there that are dedicated to helping you get online friends and followers for your social media accounts. These companies will create fake user names or pay real account holders to follow you and like you on various social media sites.
For instance, on the site Socialyup.com you can buy 500 likes for $30 or 20,000 likes for $699. For $10, a company called FanMeNow will find you 1,000 Twitter followers and for $1,750 you can buy a million followers. Think of that--a million followers for only $1,750! That sounds like a bargain if you are seeking to become a celebrity. But that’s not all.
If you need to beef up views for your YouTube video, for $150 you can buy 30,000 views from a site called 500views.com. For $3,100 they’ll make your video go “viral” by getting you a million views. The article concludes with the following advice: “No matter what social network you’re on, you can buy your way to popularity.” (1)
It’s a shame Jesus didn’t have this technology in his day. In this passage in Luke 9, it looks like Jesus couldn’t even buy followers for his ministry. And the few followers he had didn’t understand his ministry at all.
In verse 51, we read that Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” A literal translation of this verse reads he “set his face towards Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jews, was the place where religious and political power met in ancient times. Jesus’ disciples thought he was going to Jerusalem to establish his earthly kingdom there. They were excited. In fact, in verse 46 just before this, they had been discussing which of them would be greatest in Jesus’ kingdom. To them, Jerusalem meant power and status. But Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem knowing that this is the place where he would suffer and die.
A BBC sports announcer commented on the hiring of a new soccer coach for a troubled team: “He was hired to take them in a new direction, and he did. Unfortunately, [the direction] was backwards.” (2)
The disciples did not understand where Jesus was leading them. If they had known, they would have thought he was leading them backwards. “What do you mean you’re going to Jerusalem to suffer and die?” But Jesus was moving forward by obeying God’s will and fulfilling God’s plan for the salvation of humanity and the redemption of creation. That’s why this opening verse about setting his face toward Jerusalem is so important to understand.
CBS News journalist Scott Pelley once interviewed a man named Dean Chabot, a former neo-Nazi. Chabot had spent years preaching hatred and violence against Jewish people and people of color. He gloried in the idea of a race war. But through the intervention of another former white supremacist, he began to change his beliefs. He finally realized that he had to get out of the white supremacist organization, to cut off all contact with them.
Pelley asked Chabot, “Dean, do you consider yourself to be out, or do you consider yourself to be in the process?
Chabot said, “I am completely out. Actually, doing this interview is the final step.”
Pelley asked, “How so?”
Chabot said, “Once this airs there’s no going back. If you try to go back in, someone’s gonna kill you.” (3)
“. . . There’s no going back. If you try to go back in, someone’s gonna kill you.” There’s a man who has set his face toward Jerusalem. He has given up his old life completely to claim a new life that’s free from hate.
Resolve of purpose like that is hard to find these days. We live in a 24-hour buffet of choices. And so many of our choices are shaped by the next thing that goes viral on social media. We’re bombarded with messages that make us think we might be missing out on something newer, something better. How do we discover what’s most important in life? And once we discover it, how do we commit our lives to it? Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem.
Motivational speaker Tony Robbins loves racing cars. He says the most important lesson his race car instructor taught him was how to recover from a skid. The race car instructor said, “What most people do when they start to go into a skid is focus on what they fear--the wall. Instead, you must focus on where you want to go . . . The reality is that whatever you focus on you move toward.”
The instructor even had a “skid car,” a training car that was specially designed to go into a skid at the push of a button. He used it to give his clients real-world experience in the split-second decision necessary to save themselves from a skid.
Tony was driving at high speed around the track when his instructor pushed the button. As Tony went into the skid, he stared at the wall and his car began skidding toward that wall. The instructor grabbed Tony’s head and jerked his face to look in the opposite direction. He began pulling the wheel in the direction he was facing, and his car came out of the skid. (4)
Don’t you wish sometimes that God would grab your head and turn your focus back toward Him? Remember what the race car instructor said to Tony: “. . . you must focus on where you want to go.”
I think that’s what Jesus was doing in this passage in Luke 9. He was trying to help people refocus their lives on the things that really count. It’s a fascinating story. Luke tells us that as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.
When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” It’s amazing how “out of sync” his disciples are sometimes with Jesus’ plans for the world. Luke tells us Jesus turned and rebuked James and John. Then he and his disciples went to another village.
As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
He said to another man, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”
Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
Look at all the players in this passage. They were all focused on their own agenda to the extent that they either misunderstood or rejected Jesus completely. What a contrast to Jesus’ resolute determination to complete the work God had given him, no matter what it cost him.
Jesus never hid the demands of the Kingdom from those who wanted to follow him. That’s why he had such trouble getting followers. Unlike in social media, you can’t just follow Jesus by buying 500 likes for $30. Following Jesus means setting your face toward Jerusalem. No other priorities. No going back. So, what does that kind of resolve look like for Jesus-followers today?
Setting your face toward Jerusalem means wanting God’s will more than your own plans.
Gladys Aylward was a young housemaid in London whose life was changed when she heard an evangelist preach on serving God with your whole life. That day, Gladys developed a passion for international missions. She began reading about China, and took on extra jobs to save up money to travel there. Gladys was a small, shy, poorly-educated woman, but she trusted that if God was calling her to the mission field, then He would equip her for the work.
By 1932, she finally saved enough money to go to China. The safest route involved traveling by ship, but Gladys couldn’t afford that. Most of her trip took her by train through dangerous war zones. Humble Gladys Aylward set to work spreading the message of Jesus in Yangcheng, China. In 1938, when Japan invaded her region, Gladys led 100 Chinese orphans through the mountains of Yangcheng to safety. She cared for many of them through the war. She worked at the Chinese orphanage she founded until her death. Her ministry was so powerful and effective that she was invited to speak in major churches in Europe, she met the Queen of England, and her life story was made into a movie, “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.”
But you know what Gladys Aylward said about her ministry? “I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China. There was somebody else . . . I don’t know who it was--God’s first choice. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing. And God looked down . . . and saw Gladys Aylward.” (5)
Gladys Aylward felt like she had so little to offer God. But when she sensed God calling her to give her life to mission work in China, she resolved to go no matter what it cost her. She set her face toward Jerusalem. She wanted to follow God’s plan for her life rather than her own.
Setting your face toward Jerusalem also means submitting to God’s will fearlessly.
Kenneth Bailey tells the story of teaching some short courses at the Lutheran Church of Latvia. While there, he observed the interviewing of prospective students for the ministry. The interviewers told Bailey that the most important question they could ask a prospective student is, “When were you baptized?” Why is that so important?
Latvia was taken over by the Soviets in 1940. Under Soviet rule, Latvia was officially an atheist country until 1991, when it regained its independence from Russia. The interviewers answered, “If they were baptized during the period of Soviet rule, they risked their lives and compromised their futures by being baptized. But if they were baptized after liberation from the Soviets, we have many further questions to ask about why they want to become a pastor.”
In other words, while they lived under the communists, it really meant something to be baptized. There was no question about their commitment.
Bailey writes, “The Master challenges his servants to live boldly and publicly as his servants, using his resources and unafraid of his enemies, confident in the future as His future.” (6)
Would you live differently if you were confident in the future as God’s future? Would anything change about your life? Setting your face toward Jerusalem means submitting to God’s will fearlessly.
Finally, setting your face toward Jerusalem means sharing your faith in Jesus confidently, so that others can come to know God. You never know the impact your faith story can have on others. You never know whose life will be changed because you were faithful and unafraid in sharing the love of Jesus.
Tony Campolo is an author, evangelist and a professor of sociology at Eastern College in Pennsylvania. He preaches all over the country.
A few years ago a middle-aged couple came to thank Campolo for his preaching. A few years earlier, their daughter had been caught up in a life of wild rebellion. She had become estranged from her parents. After hearing Campolo preach, this young woman gave her life to Christ. She went back to her dorm room and wrote them a long letter of reconciliation.
Unfortunately, on her way back from mailing that letter, the young woman was hit by a truck. She died instantly. A few days after her death, her parents received the letter. It spoke of the hope and joy she had found in giving her life to Jesus. (7)
I can only imagine the pain of those parents at losing their daughter, but I can also imagine the hope and joy they had in knowing that their daughter made that decision to give her life to Jesus. When she chose Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, she died to her old life and discovered eternal life through him.
Setting your face toward Jerusalem isn’t easy. It means giving up your own agenda and comfort to follow God’s will. For Jesus, Jerusalem meant humiliation, and defeat and death. But for the human race, for you and me, Jerusalem meant reconciliation with God and eternal life. “For God so loved the world. . . ”
Do you believe in that love enough to set your face toward Jerusalem too?
1. Eric Steuer, “Best Friend$” Hemispheres magazine (April 2013). Cited in Barry L. Davis, 52 Topical Sermons Volume 1 (GodSpeed Publishing. Kindle Edition).
2. The Jokesmith.
3. Produced by Michael Radutzky. Associate Producer, Lucy Boyd. © 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Scott Pelley, Correspondent, “60 Minutes.”
4. Anthony Robbins, Notes from a Friend (New York, N.Y.: Fireside, 1995, pp. 52-54).
5. http://www.thewordheardroundtheworld.com/2013/08/here-i-am-lord-send-me.html.
6. Tim Smith, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/the-call-to-faithfulness-tim-smith-sermon-on-faithfulness-204253?page=2.
7. Contributed. Source: Tony Campolo in Ten Great Preachers, edited by Bill Turpie (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), pp. 27-28.