“How can I help you understand?” “Do I need to draw you a picture?” As parents, we have probably said this more than once on more than one occasion. As teachers, these questions drive our curriculum to be taught. In training sessions for new employees, these questions drive the thoughts of the trainer who want to pass on their knowledge. As trainers of volunteers in our churches, we want people to be motivated by God’s leading as they serve to welcome and help others find and follow Jesus, so we help them understand who God is and what God says about hospitality from His Word.
After not hearing from God for 400 years, God intervenes and steps into a misguided world. Jesus, God’s Son, was sent to earth to walk around the neighborhood of humanity and enter into the lives of people God created with ways to explain how God thinks. Kingdom of God thinking and doing will not match what most humans think. In fact, Kingdom-led motivations of God have been put aside and almost lost over the past centuries. There will be push back. Quite frankly, it has become easier to follow a rule you can see than build a relationship with Who you cannot see. Therein lies the problem. But God does not give up on us. Instead, He created a Plan to save us.
The prophets told of Jesus’ coming with explanations of why Jesus, Messiah was sent. But many still didn’t get it or acknowledge Him. People believe only in what they see, hear, touch, and feel for the moment. So this prompts Jesus to help them (and us) to understand—“How can I picture God’s Kingdom for you?” Hence the many stories that would relate listeners from what they already knew to Who they needed to know most of all.
Luke 13, The Message
The Way to God
18-19 Then he said, “How can I picture God’s kingdom for you? What kind of story can I use? It’s like an acorn that a man plants in his front yard. It grows into a huge oak tree with thick branches, and eagles build nests in it.”
20-21 He tried again. “How can I picture God’s kingdom? It’s like yeast that a woman works into enough dough for three loaves of bread—and waits while the dough rises.”
22 He went on teaching from town to village, village to town, but keeping on a steady course toward Jerusalem.
23-25 A bystander said, “Master, will only a few be saved?”
He said, “Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires your total attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you’ll sit down to God’s salvation banquet just because you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood all your lives. Well, one day you’re going to be banging on the door, wanting to get in, but you’ll find the door locked and the Master saying, ‘Sorry, you’re not on my guest list.’
26-27 “You’ll protest, ‘But we’ve known you all our lives!’ only to be interrupted with his abrupt, ‘Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing. You don’t know the first thing about me.’
28-30 “That’s when you’ll find yourselves out in the cold, strangers to grace. You’ll watch Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets march into God’s kingdom. You’ll watch outsiders stream in from east, west, north, and south and sit down at the table of God’s kingdom. And all the time you’ll be outside looking in—and wondering what happened. This is the Great Reversal: the last in line put at the head of the line, and the so-called first ending up last.”
* * *
31 Just then some Pharisees came up and said, “Run for your life! Herod’s got your number. He’s out to kill you!”
32-35 Jesus said, “Tell that fox that I’ve no time for him right now. Today and tomorrow I’m busy clearing out the demons and healing the sick; the third day I’m wrapping things up. Besides, it’s not proper for a prophet to come to a bad end outside Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets,
abuser of the messengers of God!
How often I’ve longed to gather your children,
gather your children like a hen,
Her brood safe under her wings—
but you refused and turned away!
And now it’s too late: You won’t see me again
until the day you say,
‘Blessed is he
who comes in
the name of God.’”
WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?
“How can I picture God’s Kingdom for you?”
How awesome is our God to send a part of Himself to earth to explain His good intentions and plan for us that goes beyond our wildest dreams of what is best for us?
God could have said, “If you don’t get it now, you never will—off with your heads”—but He didn’t. He could have said, “If you don’t love me now, you never will.”—but He didn’t. God could have sent Jesus to judge, condemn and destroy the world and its inhabitants forever—but He did not.
Instead, God sent His Son to seek and to save lost people without Him. God sent His Son to help people on their level of understanding with relatable stories that introduced them to the Truth of who God is while leading people to know how much He loves all people. God gave His Son, born Son of Man, the power to heal and forgive. God gave His Son power to clear the humans’ hearts, minds, and souls overtaken by the Enemy’s demons.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” –Jesus, John 3:16
Our compassion Master Teacher, Son of God, Savior, and Lord, who never gives up on us said, “How can I picture God’s Kingdom for you?”
According to Jesus, the Kingdom of God is…
Growing a faith that is strong and healthy with purpose. A member of God’s Kingdom begins with faith in Him. Our faith beings the size of an “acorn” or mustard seed but then grows providing us with purpose in His Kingdom. “It grows into a huge oak tree with thick branches, and eagles build nests in it.”
Waiting. We wait as God does His work in us to mold and shape us into who He created us to be. God is the yeast who works His ways into us to change us from mere dough into rising to be like Jesus who is the Bread of Life! It is in the waiting that we are being prepared to do the work He has called us to be and do. It is in the waiting that we let go of who we were to be all He created us to be! No doubt about it, we will be changed! Jesus in us changes everything about us when we invite him to lead us.
Knowing. “The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires your total attention.” The way to know Him is to be still daily before Him and listen to Him. “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10) Jesus warns all of us of our lack of relationship with God that is only judged by how we think. Just because we grew up in church, related to others who grew up in church, with focus on “being good” by becoming like those in the church does not mean our relationship with God is solid and growing intimately. To be related to believers is not the same as believing in the One who save us.
So, we must pause daily to answer, “Do I really believe what God says really real?”
“Do I really know God and commune with Him in all the details of life?”
Giving. “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2 NLT
Lord,
There is so much to think about as we strive to understand your Kingdom ways of thinking, growing, knowing, waiting, and giving. Thank for teaching me this morning and reminding me to let go, for there is so much more I need to learn. Help me to understand more and more each day as I lean into your wisdom for today. Show the way to go with what I know for now by your leading. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
In Jesus Name, Amen
“Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.”
“Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.”
Daily Manna (Coffee with Jesus) 