Luke 19:41-44 The Results of Rejecting God
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: November 2, 2018 Luke 19:41-44
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
(Understanding the Text / Revelation of God) Jesus was riding the donkey up the hill to Jerusalem surrounded by people shouting out his praise, knowing that He was fulfilling His destiny that He had been born for. He came to a point with a view of the city on the hill, and He was overcome. His words show His understanding of His mission. “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” He knew that He was bringing peace and not a sword. “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Zechariah 9:10). God’s plan was for peace, but the Jewish nation rejected peace. They did not want to hear submission to Rome and give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. They wanted to hear “Jerusalem is the best!” They wanted to follow King David’s methods and fight for their victories. They wanted to feel pride in their accomplishments. They wanted to conquer Rome and the Hellenistic idolatry that surrounded them by force rather than in God’s way. They wanted full frontal attack rather than an arrow of fire shot into the midst of the Greeks that would spread as wildfire throughout the culture bringing them into the fold of spiritual Israel at a phenomenal rate. They wanted to control the Greeks like the Romans had, not realizing that the Romans had never controlled the Greeks. Instead, the Greeks had transformed the Romans into Greeks. God was fighting that kind of enemy by using Spirit-filled Jews who flooded the Greeks with hope and love. Against that arrow, there was no effective counteragent.
Jesus knew the plan and that it would succeed, but He also saw all the Jews who rebelled against God’s plan. He saw that in challenging Rome for power, the Jews would be crushed and Jerusalem destroyed. He wept for the loss that He could not prevent. He could not force the people to turn back from their martial ways to peace, and so He collected the few that He could salvage from the nation and the plan went forward. The Jews had been given plenty of warning and guidance, yet they refused to follow and twisted everything to fit their own narrative rather than the reality of the kingdom of heaven. The prophets’ predictions were coming to pass one by one, and rather than going back to the scriptures to understand what was happening, the Jewish nation as a whole refused to adapt to the ways of the kingdom of heaven, and so they became victims of their own refusal to change. They lived by the sword and died by the sword. They wanted to be a big fish without God, so they were swallowed by the godless bigger fish.
(Application / Prayer) My application for myself is that we are still doing the same thing today. In the world, Christians are trying to use political force rather than spiritual force to conquer the world. They don’t understand that it is peace that conquers, not war. In the church, they are also trying to use coercion and force rather than conversion and peace to conquer. It’s wrong. I can see it’s wrong, but, like Jesus, I can only try to gather together the few that I can to follow the way of peace. Even then, I am tempted to use force to overpower the controllers. I have to constantly remind myself that God’s way is not about conflict and fighting. His way conquers through peace and love. Give me patience, faith, wisdom, and love to follow Your ways and not the ways of the world that were bred into me.