A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on February 8, 2026.
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Luke 13:31–35).[1]
As Jesus strategically worked his way toward Jerusalem, we learn in our passage today that he had not yet left the Galilean region. The reason we know this is because, “at that every hour,” Jesus received a death threat from the governor of Galilee, Herod Antipas. This was Herod the tetrarch, son of Herod the Great, who shared regional governance with his two brothers. As the ruler of Galilee, the death threat was real, as witnessed in Herod’s unjust execution of John the Baptist. The admonition of the message-carrying Pharisees was clear: “Get away from here” (Luke 13:31).
But why would Herod want an impoverished, itinerant preacher dead? It would seem that a Nazarene of such socio-political insignificance would be the least of Herod’s concerns. But his concern likely had less to do with Jesus the man and more to do with his massive following. In the Roman Empire, under Caesar Augustus, empire-wide peace and stability, known as the Pax Romana, led to a thriving civilization, and so anything that could be considered a threat to this peace, would be considered a national threat. You may recall in the nineteenth chapter of Acts when Paul’s presence led to a riot in Ephesus and thousands of people assembled in the outdoor theater to defend their goddess Artemis, the town clerk warned the assembly, “we really are in danger of being charged with rioting today, since there is no cause that we can give to justify this commotion” (Acts 19:40). The Ephesian crowd understood the danger and dispersed. In comparison, we don’t know the size of the crowd following Jesus, but it was enough of a following to start a riot, and if a riot, then a threat to the empire. One wonders if there was not just caution but desperation in the Pharisees’ admonition, “Get away from here.”
How does Jesus respond to the real and present danger of this threat? He responds with boldness: “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course’” (Luke 13:32). Whether the message was delivered verbatim or not at all, we don’t know. But Jesus’s response reveals an unthwarted resolve that a so-called king would not interfere with the divine mission of the King of kings.
Christ’s Course Unthwarted
The curious Hebrew epithet that Jesus uses to address Herod, “fox,” connotes deception. Whether this was a veiled reference to John the Baptist’s murder or a general opinion of the regional ruler’s ethics, we don’t know. Whatever the case, it wasn’t flattering. But it is what follows this epithet that tells us of Jesus’s resolve. “At that very hour,” Luke tells us, when Jesus received the message, he was faithfully ministering among the people, revealing his divine identity through the miraculous, providing glimpses of his kingdom to come. And from there, he would go on to Jerusalem, continuing his course to its conclusion at the cross.
But let us pause here and consider the hypothetical: What if Jesus had cowered at Herod’s threat and sought to preserve his life rather than give it? If Jesus had not accomplished our redemption in his death and resurrection, our faith would be futile. We would still be in our sin, still under the wrath of God, still destined for hell, without hope. Praise God we have a strong and courageous Savior, “the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).
Now, let me also ask you: Do you think that he who cast out demons with a word feared the threatening words of Herod? Do you think that he who healed the people’s diseases worried about this life and its longevity? Do you think that if Herod had shown up with his legions that he could have kept Jesus from Calvary? Let me remind you that the police of the Sanhedrin fell powerless to the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus revealingly said, “I am.”[2] No, nothing could thwart our Lord Jesus Christ on his course to the cross!
As this is true, do you not know that the Spirit of him who stood in divine confidence against the threat of death also dwells in all who believe on him? Do not dismiss the reality of the assurance and confidence we enjoy in Christ, not because life is without threats but because God has given us “a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim. 1:7). And neither the days of your life nor mine are in the hands of anyone else but our sovereign God, as Psalm 139 beautifully declares, our days were written in God’s book and formed personally for us.[3] Therefore, we can, as Jesus did, go about our days, today and tomorrow and the day following, without fear of death or threats of it. What sweet peace this brings to the child of God, knowing that whatever be falls us, everything proceeds according to God’s sovereign decree and gracious providence.
When the world looks at us then, they should not see the remnants of our anxious flesh, consumed with the artifacts of the unregenerate, but instead a calm and unshaken spirit, quiet, steady, and trusting in the Lord.[4] “Happy is that man,” J.C. Ryle says, “who can walk in our Lord’s steps and say,
I shall have what is good for me. I shall live on earth till my work is done, and not a moment longer. I shall be taken when I am ripe for heaven, and not a minute before. All the powers of the world cannot take away my life, till God permits. All the physicians on earth cannot preserve it, when God calls me away.”[5]
Christian, rest in this truth. Go about your living for Christ, because he lived, and died, and lives for you.
Christ’s Course Followed
While Jesus did not fear Herod’s threat, he had no intention of staying in Galilee any longer than necessary. Jerusalem was his destination, confessing to those who warned him, “I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33). By repeating “today,” “tomorrow,” and “the third day,” or “the day following,” Jesus was specifying the brevity of his remaining time. But though his time was short, he would stay the course, all the way to the cross. And there, as he would cry out, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he would not merely mean his ministry, or his life, but the completion of his propitiation and the end of our enmity with God. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). And, following his course, it would be on “the third day” that he would resurrect from the dead, conquering sin and death, securing eternal life for all who believe on him.
But all of this was to come. In that moment he was pressing on to Jerusalem, where he told them he would die. But why Jerusalem? Why would Jerusalem be the place of the conclusion of ministry?
Just as there are people who define a movement, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Civil Rights, just as there are things that define an event, such as the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, so there are places that define a people and nation. Jerusalem was that place for ancient Israel. It was a place chosen by God for the throne of Israel’s king and kingdom. It was the place where the temple was located, the central locale of national worship. And it was the seat of national authority that saw Jesus of Nazareth not as the nation’s Messiah but as a threat to national security. While Herod hurled his threats from Tiberias, Jerusalem was the most dangerous place Jesus could go, and so he went.
He was following the course his heavenly Father had given him, knowing precisely what awaited him. He knew his future but also Jerusalem’s past. He knew upon her throne there had been more wicked kings than good. He knew many of God’s faithful had seen their few days end there. He knew that he too must go to Jerusalem to suffer and die.
And yet, knowing all of this, Jesus lamented, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (13:34). He is broken-hearted for his people, for the nation, for the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Though they hated him, he loved them. But his words are not merely human sympathy but divine identity: “How often would I have gathered your children.” He who laments is the eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, the Lord God almighty. He who is, and was, and always will be looks back beyond his incarnation to the sins of a nation and people, past and present, and laments.
How often do we read in Old Testament history of Israel’s unfaithfulness? How many hundreds of years was he patient with them? How gracious was he to them even in their captivity? How quickly did he restore them to their land? As a hen watches over and protects her chicks, so God had protected and provided for his people. And even as their transgressions and sins were upon them, as they rotted away in their iniquity, God told them, through Ezekiel for example, that he takes no “pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezek. 18:23) but desires that they turn from their way and live, saying, “turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. 33:11). God was ready and willing to forgive, for he is faithful and just, but they were not willing and so spurned the Lord’s favor.
“Time and again,” Phil Ryken says, “[Jesus] had told people to repent of their sins and warned them to find safety from the judgment to come. Time and again, he had invited them to receive him by faith. Time and again, they had refused his gracious invitation. They would not repent; they would not believe; they would not be saved. In the end, they would have no one to blame but themselves.”[6] God’s sovereign grace and mercy do not negate human responsibility, and there is no salvation apart from Christ. In judgment then, Jesus says, “Behold, your house is forsaken” (13:35). Just as in 1 Sameul, when the son of Phineas the priest was given the disparaging name of “Ichabod,” meaning “the glory of the Lord has departed Israel” (1 Sam. 4:21), so the glory of the Lord had departed Jerusalem’s temple and the nation with it. In AD 70 Jerusalem would be destroyed and the temple demolished to the ground. Ichabod, indeed!
Christ’s Course Triumphant
In the fifteenth chapter of Romans, the apostle Paul writes, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15:4). But when we hear Jesus’s lament and consider Jerusalem forsaken, we may wonder what instruction or encouragement this is for us. But let us remember what Jesus said to the woman at the well:
the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. . . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:21-24).
If these were words of hope for that Samaritan woman, who could not have fathomed the destruction of Israel’s temple in AD 70, consider what they are for us two thousand years later.
Yes, Jerusalem was forsaken and her temple destroyed, but in Christ we have become God’s temple and his Spirit dwells in our midst.[7] Yes, Israel was not willing to repent and turn to her Messiah, but in Christ, the apostle Peter explains, we have become “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9). Christ’s course then ends not in lament over Jerusalem but triumph in the salvation of his people.
But there is even more here than meets the eye, as the apostle Paul explains in the eleventh chapter of Romans, saying,
So I ask, did [Israel] stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!” (Rom. 11:11-12).
In other words, we hear Jesus say to Israel, “you were not willing,” and yet through their unwillingness, God has bestowed his grace upon a lost and dying world: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 NKJV). Salvation has come to you and to me in Christ Jesus through Israel’s “trespass,” but even then, as God’s mercy will be known to every tribe, tongue, and nation, he will show his mercy again to Israel, grafting them back in through faith in Christ. And as an enormous crowd of Jesus-followers, we will enter the kingdom of heaven together.
When Christ returns, the words of the psalmist will be heard loud and clear throughout the world, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Luke 13:35). It will be sung as a worldwide anthem, blessing the One who was faithful to complete his course and live and reign victorious. And Jew and Gentile, reconciled to God in one body through the cross, will rejoice in Christ’s course victorious, confessing, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! . . . For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:33, 36).
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] John 18:1-6
[3] Ps. 139:16
[4] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 104.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 60.
[7] 1 Cor. 3:16
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 