"O Jerusalem!"

Read Luke 13:22-16, 17:20-8:14, Matthew 20:1-16
 
Luke 13:34-35 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. 35 And now, look, your house is abandoned. And you will never see me again until you say, ‘Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the LORD!’”
 
A wayward child who has rejected his parents’ instructions, a Christ-centered life and God’s loving care, is perhaps a Christian father’s and mother’s greatest grief. At a child’s birth, no parent says, “I hope my daughter grows up to be negligent and disobedient.” Our hope and expectation is we will love our children; they will love us; and each one in our family will love God. How sorrowful to look upon a resistant child and say, “I long to gather you to our household again.”
   Here is Jesus at the crest of his ministry. He has spoken his purpose repeatedly, “We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came.” (Mark 1:38) He longed for the Jews, the children of the LORD, to know, “The work I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me” to “save the world.” (Scriptures from Deuteronomy and John)
   The world is very different than God’s will for his children. At the birth of man and woman into the world, the Living Word declared to God’s newborn couple, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28) God gave his children a blessed purpose to minister heaven’s glory in the perfect home, the Garden of Eden!
   But even as God had blessed and instructed his children, he also created them with a mind to decide their own direction – even to go away from him. Their self-determined disobedience deeply grieved him. The Father passionately acted to restore his “family blessing” to mankind. He came to us through the law, the prophets and his incarnation to welcome the faithful men and women into his blessed household once again. With longing in his heart, the incarnate God spoke once more to the Jews, “And now, look, your house is abandoned.” There was no sign of God in Israel’s heart.
   The Jews continued to choose Satan’s curse. They missed God’s blessed love, even as he personally pursued them to come home. About 40 years after Jesus’ lament, the LORD God sent Rome to destroy Jerusalem, the city created to be God’s “house” on earth for his people.
   Are you in God’s house spiritually, dwelling in his blessing? Are you in God’s house physically each week to dwell with his people? Who is your Father? Does he dwell in your heart? Is he in heaven awaiting you?