Luke 9:51,52. And it came to pass, when the time was come that He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before His face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for Him.
Jesus was leaving a people who had despised Him. The work of Jesus in Galilee was now over. It had been a time of merciful visitation to the people there. Alas, how very brief and how comparatively fruitless it was! In that region, the greatest of all teachers had spent most of His time in the world. He had rendered every spot of ground there illustrious by the miracles He wrought and by the words of everlasting wisdom which He had spoken. The Galileans were no more to see His face, and no further mighty work was to be performed in their villages or by the seashore. That land had not, on the whole, been blessed by His ministry. They did not know the time of their visitation; and when He departed from them He left behind Him the woe of a rejected gospel and a despised Saviour.
No territory had ever been more favoured, and none therefore had sinned against so many mercies. It had been exalted to heaven, and was to be cast down to hell. None of the people watched His departing footsteps or mourned their loss. The sun which had risen upon them for a brief day was about to set in endless night, and there was no one to weep at its setting. They did not know it and would not believe it when they were told. It appeared to them as if they could hear the voice of this Teacher whenever they chose and that, whenever they needed it, they could call in the aid of His miraculous power. He had appeared and re-appeared so often, traversing their country, presenting Himself in every village and leaving everywhere the traces of His gracious power, in binding up broken hearts and restoring the diseased to health, that they believed it was to be so with them always. Although this gracious season had come to an end, they did not realise this.
So the most wonderful epochs of human history pass away without people noticing. They do not know the crisis of their destiny and so they weep and gnash their teeth when the catastrophe comes. The same thing happens today. Jesus, by His gracious Word and in the power of His Spirit, has been and is in the midst of us. Our land has long resounded with the tread of His majestic footsteps. We have often heard, and have become familiar with, the tones of Jesus’ prophetic voice. Miracles of spiritual healing have been frequent within our borders. Many of the dead have been quickened into life; many blind eyes have been opened and many lepers have been cleansed. Such gracious works have become normal to us; and we say, Tomorrow shall be as this day and no different. The sun which is now shining shall surely rise upon us another day. Many of us have become vain and presumptuous and are dwelling at ease in Zion, in spite of the prophetic voice and in defiance of its warning.
Externally our expectation may be fulfilled. No mighty, violent revolution may be at hand which would destroy venerable institutions and silence the voice of those who preach the gospel. So it was in Galilee. The final departure of Jesus from its borders was accompanied with no loud warning. Everything continued apparently as it had been. No sign in heaven or on earth gave any sign of the change which had taken place. The face of nature presented the same aspects of loveliness or grandeur as before. The fishermen’s boats were still out on the sea. The business of life was not interrupted. The Sabbath rest and the synagogue service came round as before. And yet everything had been changed for them. They had lost their opportunity. Their day of grace had set in endless night. The teacher sent from God was no longer among them. Within their borders, the only prophetic sound was now one of woe.
We who now look back on that epoch can recognise it as the greatest and most lamentable change, fraught with unspeakable misery. But that was not how it appeared to them. And it is so even now. Jesus is indeed no longer visibly among us, but He is not therefore less truly and graciously present. At one time or another He has come very near to each one of us, in the earnest voice of His Word or in the manifest operations of His grace. He may have awakened some of us and excited our wonder and admiration. But alas if this is all! Have you submitted to the power of His grace? Have you not only heard His Word but become obedient to it? Have you really received Him and become His disciples?
Otherwise, the fact that He has come so near you will only seal your condemnation. Take heed lest you also continue to despise the Lord of glory. Do not think that you can consider these matters at any time and incline your hearts to hear Him. If the seed which has been already sown in your heart has fallen by the wayside, where is the good soil in which it is afterwards to take root and grow? Alas, always intermingling itself with the external history of religious ordinances and privileges, there is another and truer history recorded on an unseen page – a history which God is daily writing. It is the record of eternity, the true and everlasting book of history.
Because we live under the ministration of the Spirit which excels in glory, our human senses cannot perceive the facts of that history. That which is outward may remain unchanged when that which gives reality to the spiritual life has disappeared, just as the temple at Jerusalem long survived the Shekinah, which was no longer present. God is saying, “Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts”. He who is speaking graciously today may no longer press upon you His invitation. The Word, the ordinances and the sound of the outward services may remain, but the life-giving Spirit may have fled for ever.
For an unconverted man, the most critical of all positions is to be within the house of God – to be hearing the word of Jesus. It is to him life or death. Which of them will it be to you? You go far to determine this for yourselves if you now refuse to submit to Christ. To remain hardened today – to despise the Lord today – surely at least suggests that you will always assume the same attitude, that you will go on to exhaust His patience and longsuffering and will be finally abandoned in your impenitence and hardness of heart. And there may be no outward sign of this final desertion; it may be certified to you by nothing else than your continued indifference and growing hardness. Sabbath after Sabbath, it may be, there are souls here and elsewhere who are thus finally given up to the consequences of their sins, with whom the Lord will plead no more.
We cannot, it is true, read that unseen record which the Lord is writing; but if today you have been unmoved when hearing the Saviour’s beseeching voice – when He has bidden you come and you have refused to go – may it not be that, even now, you are sealing on your souls the record of your condemnation and that for you there will be no future awakening? The very possibility of such a thing should make you tremble. You are provoking the Spirit finally to desert you. Are you sure that it may not be, even now, taking place? This moment may be the very crisis of your eternal destiny and, when that is past, there will be to you no future awakening and no possibility of escape from the wrath to come. It was thus that the Galileans lost their opportunity and were left to perish in their unbelief.
Christ setting His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem.
In the personal history of Jesus, an eventful period was now approaching. The time was at hand when He was to be received up and therefore He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. It was there that the victim was to be offered. It was there that the Prophet must perish and bring upon that city the guilt of His blood. But the narrative makes it evident that His work in Galilee was finished before He departed on this final part of His labours. His last days there were not spent in preaching the gospel to the people or in working miracles, but in private conversation with His disciples. He had spoken to the Galileans the word of peace and they had not received it, and so His peace returned to Him again.
Now, however, when He finally left Galilee, it was with no feeling of overwhelming despondency. The time which is described as now near approaching is not spoken of as a time for suffering a cruel and accursed death, but as the time of His glorious ascension. This was the joy that was set before Him, the event that was most present to His mind when setting out on His last journey to Jerusalem. Overleaping the intervening time and the dark valley of the shadow of death, which was full of such manifold scenes of terror, He looked to the time of being received up. It is so recorded in the narrative, doubtless because it was so in fact. An apostle has told us that, for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising its shame, and it was in this frame of mind that He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem.
His eye was not so much on the death to be accomplished at Jerusalem as on the victory He was to achieve over death. He did not lose sight of the cross, but He looked more at the crown – at the end of all His humiliation and woe and at His welcome into heaven as the Prince of peace – when He would ascend up on high, leading captivity captive. His intermediate affliction was lightened by the eternal weight of glory which lay beyond it.
It is even thus that He would have His disciples to take up and to bear their cross: not to turn aside and shrink from the path of duty when it becomes dark and difficult to tread, but to look beyond the present distress, to the glory that is to be revealed – to wrestle on in the fight in anticipation of the crown. In this way the hardest battles of faith have been fought. When the eye of the Christian warrior has been fixed on the sure victory and its eternal results, he has endured hardness without shrinking. His present troubles have become to him only the heralds of a coming joy which is unspeakable and full of glory, and so they have been lightly borne. Faith is the victory that overcomes the world. It enters into that which is unseen and eternal, and its possessor remains invincible.
Thus Jesus set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem with noble courage and self-denial, without boasting and without wavering, in calm self-possession and confidence. He went to drink the cup of trembling, which His Father was to put into His hands, with unabated and invincible love for the souls of men, in spite of their blindness and hardened incredulity. Receiving from them no help or encouragement, He set Himself to do His appointed work. He was not driven to it, nor was He ignorant of what it was; yet willingly and devotedly, in fulfilment of His eternal purpose, He said, “Lo, I come . . . I delight to do Thy will, O My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart”.
Thus also in the day of His power, He makes His people willing. He strengthens them with His own might and endows them with His own patience to do and to endure, and so they set their faces steadfastly to accomplish the hardest and most self-denied work, for He is with them in it all. He is still the bearer of their burdens and walks beside them in the seven-times-heated furnace. If we would steadfastly do any work for Him, it is in this way that it must be done. And for our daily troubles and temptations we need this all-sufficient grace of the Lord. When forsaken by Him we waver and fall; when cleaving to Him we are invincible.
While the mind of Jesus was thus intent on heavenly things when He began this last journey, He was not for a moment inattentive to the immediate needs of His disciples. There was in Him nothing of excited enthusiasm. Going from Galilee to Jerusalem, His nearest and most direct course lay through Samaria, and by that route He accordingly purposed to go. But, travelling as He did with such a company, He would not go to any place without preparation being made for their reception. And therefore He sent messengers before Him for this purpose, to their first halting place on the journey. This fact has for us a twofold lesson.
1. It is remarkable that He should have made such preparation at all.
Could not He, who had more than once fed thousands in the wilderness by creating bread for them, have easily supplied the wants of His disciples, by miraculous agency during their brief journey? Undoubtedly He could, but He did not choose to do so. For He studiously guarded against training them to a habit of recklessness and presumption. He was at pains to teach them that nothing was to be accomplished by miracles which could be achieved in any other way. If He had acted otherwise, His example would have been of a very hurtful character. His purpose was to teach them that they were to find their way through the world just as other people do, by the exercise of prudence and forethought, by common diligence and common work.
In this respect they were not to be distinguished from the men of the world. They were not to become beggars, living on the bounty of others; nor were they to expect to be fed as Elijah was by the brook Cherith. They were to make provision in the ordinary way for their ordinary, everyday wants. This was a part of their discipline and trial, to do this in the spirit in which He did it. There is always a danger, amid the multifarious demands of this present life, that the needs of the soul and provision for it will be neglected. People indeed have always tended to one or other of two extremes: either, on the one hand, to an insane enthusiasm and the expectation of miraculous intervention, apart from ordinary diligence and prudence in doing their daily work; or, on the other hand, for their minds to become absorbed and entangled with the affairs of this life, to the neglect of the one thing needful.
Let us always look, for our guidance, to the bright example of Jesus. There never was a period in His history when His mind was more occupied in lofty contemplation. Before His eye was the time of His being received up, and His soul was in near communion with heaven, and so He set His face toward Jerusalem. Doubtless also there was present to His mind His terrible baptism of suffering. Yet, though His soul was preoccupied, and engaged with the most engrossing of subjects – the darkness of the fearful conflict and the radiant light beyond the field of battle – He was never more careful regarding the immediate temporal needs of His disciples.
Indeed this is the only occasion when it is on record that He made such provision for them. In His experience the highest spiritual exercises did not hinder His minute care for their temporal need. For Him, these were not conflicting states of mind. The one was merely subordinated to the other. The great work before Him was to make an eternal provision for the welfare of His people, but to provide for their immediate temporal wants came in as a subordinate part of that work.
Neither in our experience do the temporal and the eternal necessarily conflict. We make them conflict because a covetous and worldly spirit prevails within us. Every work and service is sanctified by faith, and the common labour of our hands need not withdraw us from fellowship with the Saviour. Paul the tentmaker was not less a Christian than Paul the preacher. There was nothing in the one occupation more than in the other which embarrassed his mind and diverted it from the sublime contemplations of faith. Christ was all to him, and so he found Christ in everything, in working with his hands as well as in speaking with his tongue. And so it may be with us also; so it ought to be. Prayer does not hinder work, and neither should work restrain prayer. It is the fruit of unbelief to set at variance the kingdoms of providence and of grace. It is faith that harmonises them; and in the exercise of faith, to provide for our daily needs becomes, as it were, a part also of that provision which we are making for our soul, just as the health of the body ministers to the vigour of the mind.
2. In making the provision which He did for His present journey, Jesus was presenting an example of what He is doing throughout all time.
He is the head over all things to the Church – the Lord of providence, as He is the Lord of grace, all power being given to Him in heaven and on earth. It is in this aspect that He would have us regard Him, and so recognise His hand and presence in everything. Our minds are always apt to drift away from this anchorage into a system of false spirituality, and hence arises that conflict between the things of time and of eternity which is so often and so painfully felt. Jesus begins to be regarded by us merely as One who supplies our spiritual health and nutriment and, so regarding Him, we can go to Him with our spiritual needs and ailments and solicit from Him the grace which we need. But we think of Him as one who is exclusively occupied with what belongs to the life to come, and not at all taking to do with the life that now is.
Thus we do what belongs to this life apart from Him. In what pertains to spiritual things we ask and expect His gracious aid; in what pertains to temporal things we do not. The one becomes to us the exclusive region of faith and the other merely the region of sense. But it is not thus that Jesus is set before us in the Bible. And the aspect in which He is presented to us in the text is the very reverse of this. We limit both His power and His grace by acting and thinking as we often do, which injures our souls manifestly and seriously. In this way, instead of religion laying hold on and sanctifying our whole life, it stands as something apart and becomes a matter of formal observances, of new moons and of Sabbath days.
Jesus has command of the whole sphere of human existence. He is the Redeemer of the whole man: body and soul. There is no domain in which He is not, and there is no work which cannot be converted into a sacred service. It is not merely the faculties of our soul, but the members of our body, that are to be yielded as instruments of righteousness unto Him. He gave the people of Israel manna and He is Himself the true bread. He is the same now as He has been in all past time. In giving us the true bread, He does not forget the bread that perishes. He enters into every occupation and service of His people, and blesses the work of their hands as surely as He answers their prayers. While He gives Himself as a ransom for their souls, He does not forget to spread a table for them on their journey heavenward.
If we were able so to recognise Christ and to realise His presence, the conflict between the things of time and the things of eternity would, for us, almost cease. They would become to us conspiring, and not contending, powers. The one would become the humble handmaid of the other, and, in learning to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, we would find a stimulus and aid to religion in every work of our hands. Such work becomes truly secular, profane and carnal, not because Christ is necessarily excluded from it, but because in our unbelief we banish Him from it. He gave the light of His gracious presence to the workshop of Joseph the carpenter, as well as to the consecrated temple. He gives us our daily bread as well as that which endures unto eternal life. All our needs are supplied out of His fulness, and the beauty and harmony of the Christian life consists in this, that Christ occupies and commands its whole sphere.
Reprinted with editing from Christ Setting His Face Towards Jerusalem. When the book was published, Wilson (1808-1888) had retired from St Paul’s Free Church, Dundee.