Message Info:
- Text: Luke 13:31-35, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), No. 51
- Date: Sunday morning, April 5, 2026
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Transcript:
⟦Transcript⟧ To make a long story short is not my spiritual gift, as you all are probably aware by now. My kids are even more aware of this because they’ve learned that if they can get me talking about certain topics, then they can delay chores or they can delay bedtime. They will, as a matter of fact, I have a running joke with my older two kids that everything started, where Benjamin? Everything, okay, if you couldn’t hear him, everything started, it all started outside a sandwich shop in Sarajevo, okay? What that means is they will ask me questions about history or current events.
Just as an example, a couple weeks ago in the vehicle, one of them asked me something about why we were attacking Iran, and so I tried to explain that. I said, But, you know, to understand that, you’ve got to understand the revolution in 79 and the embassy seizure.
But that doesn’t make sense unless you understand the CIA operation in the 50s to overthrow Mosaddegh and put the Shah back in place. But, of course, that was part of the broader Cold War. And to understand that, you’ve got to go back through World War II, which was started with World War I that led to the communists taking over Russia, the Ottoman Empire falling apart. And all of that started with a gunshot outside a sandwich shop in Sarajevo. Okay?
But that happens all the time. Okay? Why can’t we stay up late tonight? It all started outside a sandwich shop in Sarajevo. They have even tried that with Mama.
When there’s something long and involved, they don’t necessarily want to get into the details, but it’s a long story. Why is your room not clean? It all started outside a sandwich shop in Sarajevo. That is not the right answer to give to Mama. I laugh, she does not.
But it’s become shorthand, it’s become shorthand in our house for there’s more to the story and you’ve got to go further back to understand. And that’s where we are this morning with our discussions of the resurrection and with Easter and what it means. We are here this morning to celebrate the empty tomb. By the way, we don’t just do that on Easter. That’s the reason we as Christians worship on Sunday.
That’s why the early church, and it was the early church recorded in the book of Acts, they started meeting on Sundays in recognition of that’s the day that Jesus walked out of the tomb. One little girl said he walked away. I love that. And they found the tomb empty. That happened on Sunday.
And so we gather on Sunday, every Sunday, to commemorate the resurrection. But this story of Easter and this story of the hope that we have didn’t just begin at the empty tomb. it didn’t just suddenly one day in a vacuum there was an empty tomb and suddenly everything changed the story goes back further it goes back even further than the sandwich shop in Sarajevo by about 1900 years but we’re going to look at that today and it just so happens to coincide with where we are in our study of the book of Luke so if you want to turn with me today to Luke chapter 13 we’re going to look at the next passage where we left off a couple weeks ago before our living Lord’s Supper last week.
And we’re going to see where this story of Easter really begins. The empty tomb is the focus of it, but the story actually begins much, much earlier. Luke chapter 13. If you’ve already turned there with me, great. If you would, if you’d stand as we read together from God’s Word.
If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke 13, it’s all right. It’ll be on the screen for you to be able to follow along.
But we’re going to start in verse 31 and go through verse 35 today. And here’s what Luke records.
He says, just at that time, some Pharisees approached saying to him, go away, leave here for Herod wants to kill you. And he said to them, go and tell that fox, behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow. And the third day I reached my goal. Nevertheless, I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her.
How often I wanted to gather your children together just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you would not have it. Behold, your house is left to you desolate. And I say to you that you will not see me until the time comes when you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And you may be seated.
So we’re going to see in this passage from Luke 13, one of the earliest times, it may not be the earliest time, but one of the earliest times that Jesus points, certainly those outside of His immediate circle, to the reality of His death and resurrection. At this point, Jesus expresses His determination about where His story is going to end. It’s with His first coming, it’s going to end with a cross and an empty tomb. That’s where He’s headed. He’s not trying to overthrow Pilate and become the ruler of Judea.
He is fulfilling the mission that the Father has given Him as God’s Son, Israel’s Messiah, and mankind’s Savior. And that’s what he’s determined to do.
And we see this at the beginning of this passage. He’s just been preaching, he’s just been giving parables, he’s been explaining to them how some of them were, despite their belief that they were going to be in the kingdom, just because of where they came from and who they were related to, they thought they were going to be in the kingdom. And Jesus explained that they were going to miss it because they’d missed God’s provision, they’d missed him. And he is God’s provision for our salvation and for us being in the kingdom. And immediately, he goes on and some people come to him and say, you’ve got to stop what you’re doing.
They try to change Jesus’ plans. They try to get him to do something other than what he’s doing.
We see that in the first couple of verses here, 31 and 32. Those Pharisees came and said, go away, leave here, for Herod wants to kill you. And he said, go tell that fox. Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow. We read it.
Those Pharisees warned Jesus of Herod’s plot because they were trying to get him to do something other than what he came to do. And Jesus’s answer was not, oh, thank you for warning me, I better run away and hide. Oh, thank you for warning me, I better keep my mouth shut. Instead, Jesus says, I’m going to continue to do what I came to do. And it shows us that Jesus is not controlled by our agenda.
We have certain plans and we have certain things that are how we would like the world to work, that we would like Jesus to do, and Jesus is not controlled by that. Have you ever had plans of what you thought ought to be, and you were determined, and Jesus said, no, we’re not doing that? I’m not asking, did He physically appear to you and say, no, we’re not doing that.
But the circumstances let you know, or God’s Word lets you know, we’re not doing that. We’re doing my thing. We’re doing His thing. These Pharisees, they warned Him of Herod’s plot. I don’t think it was out of concern for Jesus, but it was out of an attempt to control Him.
They’re either trying to silence Him. Hey, you know what? Herod wants to kill you. And Herod has already shown that He’s a brutal man. he’s already beheaded John the Baptist which is brutal enough but he beheaded John the Baptist so that he could offer the head on a plate to his family members that is not a guy that most of us want to tangle with we don’t we don’t want to poke that particular beehive and so maybe they think if we come and tell Jesus Herod wants to kill you maybe he’ll be quiet maybe he’ll just lay low and honestly, that was great for the Pharisees.
If they could get Jesus to be quiet and lay low, then they could go back to the way things were, where the people looked to them, and they listened to them, and they were able to control the people. Another possibility is that Jesus would leave and go back across the Jordan River to get out of Herod’s jurisdiction from where he was now, where Herod can’t get him.
But across the Jordan River, the Sanhedrin has jurisdiction. So not only do they get him out of the area, but also they’ve got him in a place where they can decide his fate And it’s possible the pharisees knew both of these options And said either way we want him to stop preaching his message here We want to shut him down one way or another and just like so many other times They think that they have backed jesus into a corner they wanted to put an end to his ministry but Jesus responded by saying he had plans for today tomorrow and the third day now we could look at that and say but we’re supposed to take that literally and he wasn’t crucified that day so how does this work for them to say today tomorrow and the third day was a common figure of speech at that time and if you said I had this today tomorrow and the third day, you were telling some people, not literally, that you had plans the next three days, but basically you’re telling them, I’m working on my own timetable, not yours.
Because sometimes people want you on their schedule, and you’re on your own. So Jesus said, I have plans, I have things I’m doing today, tomorrow, and the third day. That was a response to them that they would have understood that says, I don’t change what I’m doing just for you, because God had sent him to do something.
Jesus would do what he came to do regardless of what Herod thought or the Pharisees or how they sought to control him. And that raises the question for us, well, if he says, I’m going to do what I came to do, what did he come to do? He tells us he came to heal the sick, he came to cast out demons, and he came to save the lost. That was his purpose. His purpose wasn’t to entertain the crowds.
And there were people who were following him just because they wanted to see the show. The miracles, they wanted to see him mix it up with the Pharisees. They wanted the show. There were other people that said, hey, they’re serving food over there. That wasn’t his main purpose.
His purpose wasn’t to become popular. His purpose wasn’t to become the king of Judea. His purpose was to do the work of his father. and to save sinners. And when Jesus lays out for us who He is and what He’s about, we cannot make Him be about something else.
And we’re going to frustrate ourselves if we try. We can do the same thing today if we try to make Jesus about our agenda, whatever that may be. If it’s not what He spelled out that He came to do, it’s not going to work because it’s not who He is. He did not come. He did not come to be a self-help guru.
He did not come to make everything wonderful and rosy in our lives. I used to hear testimonies when I was in the youth group, and these kids would get up and say, and then I came to Jesus, and everything’s been wonderful ever since. And it was like contagious. One kid said it, and they all said it at the end of their testimony, and I thought, where was that plan? That’s not what I signed up for.
I missed out on that one. As a matter of fact, sometimes you come to Christ and life starts getting complicated from there. He didn’t come to be an addition to our lives. He came to be our Savior and our Lord, our Master.
And we can’t make Him be about something that He’s not. So what is His agenda? If He’s not being driven by our agenda, what is His agenda? He’s committed to the cross. That was His agenda.
He said in verse 30, and the third day I reach my goal, nevertheless I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day, for it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside Jerusalem. Now when he says this, Jesus reiterates that he has a plan he’s committed to today, tomorrow, the next day.
We see that formula in there twice, today, tomorrow, the next day. He phrases it a little bit differently, but it’s the idea, I have plans, I have something I’m working on, and what is his plan? He tells us in verse 33, it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem. And if we could be a fly on the wall, I’m sure his disciples were confused, if not panicked. Wait, did he just say die?
Going to Jerusalem to die? He said it several times throughout his ministry, and they never seemed to grasp it.
But when he says it cannot be that a prophet would die outside Jerusalem, he’s saying there’s nothing that Herod can do to me here. There’s nothing you can do to me here because it cannot be that a prophet would die outside Jerusalem. He’s not saying that it’s an impossibility that one of the prophets would die outside Jerusalem because there were several Old Testament prophets who had died outside Jerusalem. What he’s saying is it’s not fitting, it’s not appropriate.
This is not God’s plan for me to die outside Jerusalem. As we’ve gone through the book of Luke, piece by piece, we’ve seen already there have been several times that there were these near misses. And from a human standpoint, you look at it and say, how is it possible that Jesus escaped this crowd and escaped this group and escaped this plot? Well, number one, He’s God, so there’s that. He can see around corners.
He can see into the future. He can see into our hearts.
But that wasn’t the Father’s plan. The Father’s plan was not for him to be stoned to death in Galilee. The Father’s plan was for him to be crucified in Jerusalem.
So Jesus is saying, no matter what happens, there’s nothing Herod can do to me here because the Father’s plan is that I will go to Jerusalem and die there. Jesus is the one that Deuteronomy calls the prophet greater than Moses.
Because if you’re like me, you read this and think he called himself a prophet. Jesus is not a prophet. He’s at least a prophet, but He’s more than that. And that kind of jumps out at me because there are people today that say, oh, we believe Jesus is a prophet or a good moral teacher. And what they mean by that is, that’s all He is.
Jesus is a prophet. As I said, Deuteronomy 18, 15 through 18 talks about a prophet who would be greater than Moses.
Jesus is at least a prophet, but don’t ever think he’s only a prophet. He’s the greatest of all the prophets who ever lived because he’s God in human flesh. He’s God’s son. He’s our savior. He’s the Lord of all creation.
And so when he says a prophet, he’s talking about himself. It’s not fitting. It’s not appropriate. It’s not God’s plan that he would die outside of Jerusalem. The Old Testament pattern shows Jerusalem was a place that would kill the prophets.
Not every prophet died in Jerusalem, but Jerusalem had a habit that when God would send messengers to carry his word to the people, to rebuke the people, to challenge, to convict the people, and call them to repentance, Jerusalem, instead of repenting, this place that was the center of the worship of God and should have been filled with people who understood God and wanted to repent when they were called to it, instead would turn on the prophet and would persecute them and put them to death. That’s why in the next verse he calls it Jerusalem, which kills the prophets.
Jesus knows he’s going to go there and die on the cross, but he says he must journey on. I tell you what, for any one of us, if we knew, you know, next time I go to such and such town, they’re going to hang me on a cross. I’m not going to that town. How about you? We don’t have Jerusalem nearby, but we’ve got Geronimo.
If I knew next time I go to Geronimo, they’re going to crucify me. I am not going to Geronimo.
But Jesus said, I must journey on. Jesus knew what awaited him in Jerusalem. He knew that the cross was waiting there. He knew that death was waiting for him.
And so he was all the more committed to go. He wasn’t going to be dissuaded because this is what he came to do.
But there was more than the cross waiting in Jerusalem. He said at the end of verse 32, the third day I reach my goal. Now this has a double meaning. Again, when he says today, tomorrow, and the next day, he’s talking about his time frame.
But once he goes to Jerusalem and these plans begin to fall into place, the third day he reaches his goal. That word there for reaching his goal is tied to the word telos that I’ve used several times on Sunday mornings or Sunday nights or Wednesday nights as it’s come up in different scriptures. And it talks about meeting your goal, being the fulfillment of plans, Everything coming together and being perfected, reaching its end.
Jesus says the third day, that’s what was going to happen. That everything was going to come together. That God’s plans were going to be fulfilled. Try this sometime. Try this sometime with Bible software, or you can even get on websites that have the biblical text, Bible Gateway, Blue Letter Bible.
Try this sometime. Search for the phrase third day throughout Scripture. And you’ll be amazed not only how many times there are Jesus says something like this that we can see in hindsight. He’s pointing to the resurrection, but also see how many times God steps in and brings life from death on the third day. There’s a pattern all throughout Scripture, and it all points forward to what was going to happen to Jesus.
Jesus was committed to the cross because it was necessary for us and our salvation. But even in His humanity, Jesus was able to be committed to the cross because He knew what was coming on the other side. This phrase, the third day I reach my goal, it has a double meaning pointing to the resurrection. And the fact that Jesus says it here, and it’s one of several places in the Gospels beforehand where Jesus predicts His own death, burial, and resurrection before He accomplishes it, it tells us that the crucifixion wasn’t an accident of history. That’s become kind of a common view in our world today.
Oh, Jesus was crucified, but that happens when you upset the Jews and the Romans. No, that was the plan. It wasn’t, oops, I got myself crucified. It was the plan. It was not an accident of history.
It tells us the resurrection was not an incidental detail. I grew up as a kid believing in the resurrection, but it was just one of the Bible stories. It’s one we really talked about around Easter time. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t realize until I was in high school or college how central the resurrection is to everything. If there’s no resurrection, there’s no any of this.
The Apostle Paul said, if Christ is not raised, your faith is vain. In other words, He said, what we’re preaching, what we’re believing, what we’re doing is all worthless if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. It’s the center of everything. And Jesus tells us ahead of time that it’s there. The crucifixion and the resurrection didn’t just happen.
They were the eternal plan of God. And so we can go back months and months in the story before we get to the empty tomb. and it begins to become clear to us, at least in hindsight, where Jesus was heading and where He knew He was heading. And think about this, He had all these opportunities. At any time, He had the opportunity to do something else.
He’s God. He can do what He wants.
But every step of the way, He was determined, I’m going to that cross. And then that tomb’s going to be empty. And the reason He did this, the reason Jesus went to the cross and endured everything that He went through, all the agony, all the beating, all of the mocking, the reason He did that is because He is compassionate towards sinners. Look with me at verse 34.
He says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her. Don’t overlook that. God cares enough to send people to talk to Jerusalem and call them to repentance because He loves the people. He loves them enough to correct them. If you’ve ever been a parent, you’ve ever worked with a child, you realize that if you love them, sometimes you have to correct them.
The most unloving thing you can do is let them run amok and leave them to their own devices. God cares enough that He was sending people to Jerusalem and they were being rejected. He said, how often I wanted to gather your children together. That doesn’t just mean small children. and that means Jerusalem and its descendants, all the people that were from there.
I wanted to gather them together just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it. And this passage means more to me than it did a few years ago. If you’ve been here any length of time, you’ve heard us talk about our chickens. And I kind of understand this. Madeline, when you go to collect eggs, are the chickens happy that you’re taking their eggs?
No, they try to peck at you, right? Because they want to protect their eggs. We don’t let them, we don’t have a rooster anyway, so nothing comes from those eggs but breakfast.
But they think there are chicks in there and they want to protect them. Anytime they sense danger, they want to protect their eggs. We even put ping pong balls out to try to keep the ducks out of the stock tank. they all ended up blowing into the run.
And sometimes those chickens will try to protect the ping pong balls. I never said they were smart. They’re just funny.
But a mother hen will gather her chicks. And if they see danger, they’ll try to protect them.
Because it’s how they love their young. It’s how they nurture them. It’s how they try to protect the eggs. They’re going to gather them. They see any danger.
They don’t run away. We follow chicken groups on Facebook. You can see how the rooster will give his life to protect the rest of the flock. They can be very loving, nurturing animals. And Jesus says to the people of Jerusalem, I wanted to take you under my wing like a mother hen.
I wanted to shelter you there. I wanted to protect you from the danger that’s to come.
But you would not. You were not willing.
Jesus here expresses a desire to protect Jerusalem. And in this context, not the city, but the people. And in this context, he’s talking about protecting them from judgment. As we go through this part of the Gospels, this part of the life of Jesus, there’s a lot of talk about things that are going to come to pass in the future.
And some of them were fulfilled in A.D. 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem. And a lot of the, okay, sandwich shop in Sarajevo, all of that goes back to this time in the ministry of Jesus when Jerusalem was given the opportunity to repent and would not.
And so it set them on a course for the judgment of God. And Jesus says, all I wanted to do was protect you. All I wanted to do was keep you safe like a mother hen brooding over her chicks. but the thing that’s hardest for us to come to terms with is the fact that Jesus knew they were going to reject him he knew that they were going to crucify him they knew that they were going to mock him and turn their back on him they knew he knew all of this was going to happen and he still went to them anyway and still desired to shield them from God’s judgment. No matter what they’d done, no matter how wayward they had been, if they would only just turn to him, Jesus was willing to go to the cross and endure everything that he endured there because he is compassionate towards sinners.
came and He went to the cross to be our place of refuge from the judgment of God. Our place to escape the judgment that we deserve for our sin. And you think, how can you talk about the compassion of God in the same breath that you talk about the judgment of God?
Because the judgment of God is what we deserve for our sins. Let’s not sugarcoat it. I have tried my whole life to live a moral and upstanding life. I’ve lived a boring life, some people would say. I’ve told you the story before of going to buy a firearm, and the guy said, all right, I’m running the background check.
This may take as long as eight minutes. You’re done, okay? There’s no rap sheet there.
But no matter how moral and upstanding a life I’ve tried to live, I’m still a sinner. there have been times that in the dark recesses of my heart I’ve said no Lord I want what I want not what you want and that seems like a little thing to us but to a holy God it is an enormous offense it’s rebellion it’s treason it’s idolatry so the fact that God we deserve his judgment and the fact that he would make a way of refuge and escape at all, is enormously compassionate. And Jesus saw what we deserved and loved us anyway and came to pay what we owed and came to bear the punishment for us.
But for Jerusalem, he said, but you would not. My hope and my prayer is that today Jesus would not look at anyone in this room and say, but you would not. My prayer is that we understand what it is that we deserve when we stand before a holy God for him to pass judgment on us. but that we understand that He’s also compassionate and that Jesus Christ came and was determined to go to the cross so that we could be forgiven. And that three days later that tomb was empty, proving that He was able to do it.
And verse 35 tells us that He is our only hope. If we want that compassion, if we want that refuge, he’s our only hope he tells them behold your house is left desolate and I say to you you will not see me until the time comes when you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord for Jerusalem there was no plan b when they rejected Jesus there was no other means of escape from the judgment of God but notice in that last little bit he says there’s a time where you will see me and you will say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord not those same people who rejected him but talking about the nation of Israel as a whole there is a time when he’ll extend that grace but the bottom line is whether we have hope or not depends entirely on our response to Jesus it’s not oh Israel if you’ll just get it together try a little harder, be a little better no they were doing all the religious things and he still told them their house was left desolate Because when He came to them, they would not.
Jesus is our only hope. If we reject Him, there is no refuge from the judgment.
But whether it’s first century or some future fulfillment, Jesus is our only hope. He’s the only hope for any sinner.
Because whether we’re talking about the people He was addressing directly, or we talk about ourselves or people that we encounter today, we all share the same problem, and that’s sin. We all share that same problem where we’ve looked at God and said, no, we don’t want what you want, we want what we want. We’re all guilty. And for that sin, there’s only one solution. And that’s for an infinite Savior to come and pay the price for all of that sin.
See, we think that we can be right with God by just working harder and doing better. But if we work harder and we do better and we try to live a moral life, all we’re doing is what He asked us to do, what He told us to do. We don’t get extra credit for that. It doesn’t change what we’ve done wrong. The example I give of this every time is that if I stood before a judge accused of murder and he said, what do you have to say for yourself?
And I said, but look at all the other people I didn’t kill. I don’t get extra credit for that, do I? I’m just following the law.
If we stand before a holy God and he says, how do you answer for these sins? And we say, look at all the other sins I didn’t commit. That doesn’t erase these. Those sins have to be paid for. And Jesus, with one single act of sacrifice, paid for all of our sins for all time.
And how do we know He was able to do it? Because three days later, that tomb was empty. Three days later, that tomb was empty, and Jesus was seen by dozens and dozens of people, up to 500 at one time, Paul says.
Jesus was seen by people whose lives were changed as a result, people who then went on to die horrific deaths rather than deny that they’d ever seen him. Folks, when you look at it, the resurrection of Jesus is one of the best, if not the best, attested events in all of ancient history. It’s not a fairy tale. It’s not a religious story. It’s a fact.
And if Jesus rose from the dead, it proves that that crucifixion accomplished exactly what he said it did. And gives you and me a place of refuge. As a Savior, he’s willing to shelter you under his wing from the judgment you deserve.
But the question is, will you accept him or will you reject him?
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