Small Group Discussion Questions – October 30

1) Identify persons you know who have drive and single-mindedness in life and what you think of them.

2) To what goal does Jesus exhibit determination and a straightforward purpose?

One of our cultural heroes today is the person with drive and single-mindedness. All of us know people who seem to be driven by a single thing that drives them on. Their pursuit of it is tenacious. Often, these people are successful. We picture them with big chins and narrow eyes and just sort of undaunting as they head into life, pushing everything out of their way. They are people who have drive, stick-to-itiveness, who force their way through resistance to their goal. And we admire these people very much.

As we move on in our series today, we move into the latter period of Christ’s ministry and find Jesus with that same sort of undaunting determination. After the middle period of his ministry when he taught us how to relate to God by contrasting two kinds of religion and how we are to relate to others by teaching us that human greatness comes through serving one another, there comes a moment when Jesus starts toward Jerusalem to die. Scripture says Jesus set his face to go toward Jerusalem. We want to look today at his attitude during this last period as he starts toward Jerusalem, an attitude that should shape our own as we resolve to follow him.

One of the ways you see Jesus popularly treated today is that he was a dynamic leader and teacher with a very charismatic personality. He did all kinds of interesting and fascinating things that were rather mysterious. But finally he was killed prematurely and his early death marked the failure of what might have been the ministry of a promising man. The portrayal of Jesus in the musical “JC Superstar” heightens this picture. That musical portrays a Jesus that was absolutely bewildered and completely baffled at what was happening to him – a puzzled Jesus at what had gone wrong with his life and work – he died a bewildered prophet and healer.

But as we go to Scripture and encounter the Jesus of the Scriptures nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, we find a Jesus who from the start of his ministry taught that he was going to die. In John 8 he says, I know where I have come from and I know where I am going. Here is a picture of one with a clear, single-mindedness and determination, a straightforward purpose. We see someone with tremendous courage, resolutely going toward a situation that he knows would being his death.

3) In what form did Jesus experience resistance to his goal from his own disciples? In what ways do we try to fit Jesus into our lives?

But as he moves resolutely toward Jerusalem with this single-minded pursuit of what he knew he had to do, he encounters resistance from three quarters. First, he encountered resistance from the least likely quarter – his disciples. I’ll begin reading in Luke 9:51-55a___. They start their journey from Galilee in the north and begin moving south and rather than taking the route around Samaria as many Jews did because they felt the Samaritans were unclean and not to be associated with, Jesus goes through Samaria. He sends messengers to a village to see if they would receive them but the villagers say “No.” Then James and John come up with this extraordinary thing, V. 54b____. “We’ll teach them a thing or three – something they won’t forget!”

Can you imagine? Jesus has spent three years with them day and night teaching them, performing miracles, praying with them – and they come up with a response like that? “Let’s call fire down from heaven and burn them all up!” Had Jesus listened to them they would have left a swath of scorched earth almost 90 miles from Galilee to Jerusalem! If he had followed their advice, they would have left a trail of burned cities and homeless families and refugees all along the way. But this wasn’t what Jesus had come for. They had completely missed his vision and they were constantly – without perhaps being conscious of it - trying to divert his attention away from where he was actually headed. Why? Because they wanted him to go the direction they wanted to go. They wanted him to fit into their lives.

It was the same as we saw last Sunday. Jesus is talking to them about his coming death and they are arguing over who is the greatest, first in the Kingdom of Heaven. The disciples are completely blind as to what he was going through. They didn’t understand when he talked about going to the cross. There is no sympathy or encouragement from them – only petty jealousy and plans that counter His plan.

So resistance came first from his own disciples. They were no help to him at all in the direction God wanted him to go in. They wanted to push Jesus into their mold. Jesus had to resist their self-centeredness, their wanting glory for themselves.

4) Read Luke 9:57-62. What can we say about people who aren’t quite ready to follow Jesus?

Secondly, resistance came from would-be disciples. There were people who had toyed with the idea of following Jesus and being a disciple but weren’t quite ready yet. We read on – Luke 9:57-62____. There seemed to be a number of people saying “just wait a minute, Jesus, we want to be your disciples but we have a bit of business to take care of first. Let us have just a couple of weeks and we’ll be right there with you.” Yet Jesus’ timetable is very different. He is on a time-table of his own – God’s timetable. So Jesus just sets his face to go to Jerusalem and resists all these distractions.

5) Discuss the irony that the most religious people in the land where those that mounted the greatest opposition to Jesus.

But thirdly, and by far the most important opposition came from the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees – the Jewish establishment. Where his disciples would have perverted his mission and twisted it to their own benefit, where the would-be disciples would have distracted it redirected it, the scribes and Pharisees would have ended it, simply silenced it altogether.

They wanted to silence him altogether for a least two reasons. 1) First, as we have already talked about, because of the kind of religion Jesus believed in. Jesus had deliberately flouted all their rules and regulations, especially the Sabbath observance. He deliberately healed people on the Sabbath. These people could have waited one day more and been healed the following day. You almost get the impression he waited until the Sabbath to do the healing, that he intentionally provoked confrontation between himself and the Pharisees.

Also, the kind of people Jesus spent time with was a source of great aggravation to the Pharisees. Jesus spent time with and ate meals with tax-collectors and prostitutes. The Pharisees attitude was that of the oldest son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son and Jesus told that parable with them in mind, identifying them as the older son. So these religious people determined that Jesus couldn’t possibly be from God because it was such a different approach to religion.

The second reason the scribes and Pharisees wanted to silence Jesus was because of the claims he made for himself. In John 7 at the Feast of Tabernacles, on the last day of the feast, he stands up and calls the people to himself and says, If any one thirst, let him some to me and drink. Right there they tried to arrest him but the police officers sent to arrest him were so impressed by him that they went away scratching their heads and unable to do their job. In John 8 Jesus says Truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was I am. They immediately tried to stone him but weren’t able to.

At the Feast of Dedication in John 10:30 Jesus says, I and the Father are one. Again they tried to stone him and were unable. In John 11 the raising of Lazarus from the dead. All these claims Jesus makes in word and action. The establishment in Jerusalem heard about his and it was a real sore thing in their side. Jesus raising Lazarus provoked the Pharisees to hold a special council meeting to figure out how to get rid of him. This was an outrageous miracle. There was no use trying to deny that it happened but it really pushed them to swing into action against Jesus.

So in all this resistance from his own disciples, the would-be disciples and the Jewish establishment, Jesus kept right on going – plowing ahead in real single-mindedness.

6) What drives so many of our single-minded, successful cultural heroes today? What drove Jesus on to Jerusalem – and the cross?

That’s what makes Jesus single-mindedness and resolve so amazing. What drove Jesus on to the cross, what motivated him was LOVE. What a contrast! And what does love leave in its wake? Let’s listen to a section of Scripture that speaks of Jesus being the Good Shepherd. I’m reading from John 10:7-15___ v. 18___. Here clearly, we are the sheep, Jesus is the Shepherd. Jesus contrasts himself to the thief, the robber and the hireling. The thieves and robbers break in and steal and kill the sheep and use the dsheep for their own purposes. The hireling is the one happy to care for the sheep but only so long as there is no risk to his own life. When there is danger, he steps aside and lets the sheep get killed. The result you see is the same – thieves or robbers or hirelings – the result is dead sheep.

Then in contrast he says, “I am the good shepherd.” This is what is going on in this whole last section of Jesus’ life. He is calling the sheep to himself as their good shepherd. He’s good because he wants them to experience abundant life and not death. He lays down his life for them. In this last section he teaches, “Greater love has no man then this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” One of the best statements of the Gospel in the O.T. treats us as sheep in need of a shepherd. Isaiah 53:6____. You see the picture of the Lord laying on the shepherd the iniquity of us all. The shepherd who is willing to lay down his life for the sheep.

Hebrew 12 puts it a little differently, raising the question of what was in it for Jesus. What did he stand to gain by doing this. It says, “Jesus who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.” So he did it for the joy that was set before him – a single-mindedness, determined attitude, not able to be distracted. The joy was knowing us – knowing people he would redeem and bring into relationship with his father. This is what is going on as he sets his face to go to Jerusalem – ultimately to go to die for you and me who trust in him.

7) What does Jesus single-mindedness in going to Jerusalem have to say about our life of discipleship?

Now what is Jesus saying to us this morning? What is he saying to us who know him and love him and desire to serve him? I think what Jesus is saying to us is “I am Lord.” I am the Lord of your life. I came to do the will of my Father in heaven and so in obedience I deliberately chose to set my face like flint to go to Jerusalem to die for you. I turned my back on my own will and became obedient to death. Now I am your Lord and I call you to turn your back on your own will and to live a life of obedience to my will. You see our temptation - like Jesus’ early disciples - is to want to fit Jesus into our lives, to get Jesus to baptize our plans and desires. Jesus calls us to bend our wills to His will and live under his Lordship. Are we Christ followers? Then we have one Lord. And as our Lord he has the absolute right in the Christian’s life. “Lord, help us to desire to do your will.”

What is he saying to would-be disciples today? To those who say “I want to follow you BUT….I want to get through high school first. I want to follow you BUT….I have a family to raise first. I want to follow you BUT….I have these goals I want to reach first.” Jesus is saying to would-be disciples, “No, the things of the Kingdom come first. My Lordship is so total that all other things – your desires, normal family relationships, your goals in life – are to be totally second in the hierarchy of values under my Lordship.” No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God. As Jesus set his face to go toward Jerusalem, his Lordship is to be so pre0eminent that we too must not look back to other things. And so to the would-be follower Jesus says today, “Come, follow me.”

Why is Christ’s claim to Lordship over us so high? Jesus said to one of the would-be disciples, Leave the dead to bury the dead. Why is his claim so high? Because the gift to us is so great! With him is LIFE, the only LIFE in a world of the dead. In Him is life and this life is the light of men in a dark world. Through Christ’s death on the cross, Goid has made us alive with him, when we were dead in our sin. We now through repentance and faith share in the very life of God as we experience the freedom from guilt and peace deep inside.

What comes first in your life? Today is the day to choose to submit your will to his will. Today is the day to re-adjust your priorities. Today is the day to follow him.