This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day five of our look through chapter 23 of the book of
Matthew. It's interesting to me that this chapter that is so filled with these
woes against the Pharisees where you see the real passion of Jesus for them to
be warned, for them to be changed. At the end of this chapter, you get a
different look at the heart of Jesus.

You get to look at not just the passion of Jesus, but also the compassion of
Jesus. The real care that he has, the hurt that he feels when people don't
follow him. I want you to listen with me to verses 37 to 39.

Jesus said, "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those
sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen
gathers her chicks under her wings. But you were not willing. Look, your house
is left to you desolate.

For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who
comes in the name of the Lord. '" Now before we look at the heart of Jesus in
the earlier part of this passage, that last verse, "You will not see me again
until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. '" Jesus ends
with a note of hope here.

He leaves them with a word of promise. "You're going to see me again, and when
you see me again, you're going to say, 'Blessed, not cursed, not I'm going to
run away from you, but blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. '" When
Jesus returns, much of the house of Israel returned to him.

Paul talks about this in the book of Romans, and I don't understand how God's
going to do it in the broad sweep of history, but I understand that in the heart
of Jesus you hear this, in the teaching of Paul you hear this. There is this
promise that he ends with. At the end of all these woes, at the end of this cry
of hurt, you have this note of promise.

So with that in mind, the note of promise, let's hear the cry of Jesus' heart.
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I wanted to gather you like a hen that would gather her
chicks under her wing. That's my love for you.

That's my care for you," he says. But, and here is the phrase that just hits at
my heart, "You were not willing. " You were not willing.

This passage shows us the heart of Jesus towards those who are not willing. It
shows us God's heart towards those who are not willing, those who are not
willing to come to him, those who are not willing to listen to him. He wants
them to.

He desires them to. "I wanted to gather you, but you were not willing. " And it
speaks to us on two levels.

First it speaks to us towards those that we have compassion towards. A friend, a
family member, who has strayed away or never come to faith in Christ, and you
see the hurt that's in their life. You see the desolation Jesus talks about,
"Your house has left you desolate.

" You see the emptiness that's in their life, and your heart is breaking for
them. You want to gather them in, but the truth of the matter is they have to be
willing, and only they can make that choice. If Jesus can't force the house of
Israel to be willing, you can't force anyone to be willing.

So you just keep praying. You just keep praying that as God speaks to their
heart and works to make them willing, and he is, I can promise you that he is,
through his spirit, through their circumstances, through the word that they're
hearing, he's working. You pray that that would continue to happen.

You keep your heart open to that moment when they're going to be willing. You
don't become judgmental. You don't become condemning as a protection mechanism
because it's too hard to have compassion.

Let your heart keep hurting. Let your heart keep praying for that person who's
not yet willing. So this passage speaks to us about people that we love that
aren't yet willing, but on a deeper level it speaks to us about our own lives.

It speaks to us about God's heart towards you, towards me, when we're not
willing. And we need to hear his heart. You need to hear his heart right now.

Let the cry of his heart change the willingness of your heart. Maybe you're not
willing to change. It might have to do with the direction that your church is
going.

It might have to do with the changes that are happening in your family. It might
have to do with leaving a job to take up a new job. It might have to do with
needing to communicate in a different way to somebody you love, a new skill of
communication, a new skill of connection.

But you're not willing to change. You've always done it this way. It's always
worked this way.

You don't have the energy to change, you feel like, but the truth of the matter
is you're not willing. Hear the cry of Jesus' heart. He wants to gather you in.

He wants to get you to that place of warmth and comfort in his love so that he
can create that change in your heart, in your life. You're not in it alone.
Maybe you're not willing to change.

Maybe you're not willing to love. There's someone in your life that has hurt
you, maybe a family member, maybe somebody in office, maybe somebody, a good
friend at school. And you're not willing to love because of the hurt that's come
into your life.

There's a bitterness that came on the other side of that hurt, and you're just
not willing to love. Now, I'm not saying that your relationship has to be
restored to what it was before, but I am clear. God tells us clearly that we're
supposed to love everyone.

We love our brother and sister. We love our neighbor. And Jesus said even we
love our enemy.

So even the person who's your enemy, God make my heart willing to love even
them, to pray for even them, because I don't want a bitterness in my heart
towards that person to create a distance in my heart towards God. Maybe you're
not willing to give. Maybe right now you're scared of giving yourself, you're
scared of giving your finances, you're scared of giving your time, because you
feel like you don't have enough.

There's not enough of yourself to go around. There's not enough time. There's
not enough money.

And so fear is causing you to be unwilling. Instead of looking at Jesus'
challenge to give as a challenge that was designed to hurt you, see it as a
challenge that's designed to grow you. He doesn't want us to become selfish, and
so he challenges us to be giving in every circumstance of life.

And instead of running away from Jesus in that challenge, instead come to him as
the one who wants to gather you, as the hen gathers those chicks to love you to
that place of being willing to give. Maybe you're not willing to go. God's
called you to go somewhere different.

Maybe it means moving to a different town. Maybe it means going to a different
school than the school that you're going to. Maybe it means going to serve a
group of people that are in your community that no one else is willing to go and
serve.

Maybe people that are in rest care facilities. Maybe people that are in hospice
care. Maybe it has to do with people that are in some minority that nobody wants
to reach out to, a religious minority or a racial minority.

Maybe it has to do with going to another country. You've always been afraid to
do that, but God's calling you to do it. How do you get to the place of being
willing?

Well, you certainly don't do it by retreating from Jesus in fear. You only get
there by recognizing his heart towards you in this moment. He wants to gather
you in to what he wants to do in your life.

Maybe you're not willing to forgive. You're not willing to forgive because you
feel like it's going to let the other person off the hook, or you're not willing
to forgive because it feels like you would be a weak person if you did that, or
you're not willing to forgive because the hurt is so great, how in the world
could you forgive? But God forgave you.

He forgave me of every hurt that's in our lives, and the only way, the only
power to forgive another person is in that Jesus has forgiven us. If you're not
willing to forgive, you need to be gathered in by the love of Jesus. Let his
love capture your heart in a new way, and out of that compassion that he has for
you, he understands you're not willing to forgive, and sometimes when we're not
willing, we feel like, "Jesus, I know I'm supposed to forgive.

I'm not willing to forgive, so I'm just not going to talk to you about this one
because I know what you're going to say. " But the truth of the matter is you
don't know his heart sometimes. You think you know that he's going to say
something in judgment or say something that seems legalistic, but the truth of
the matter is when you honestly say, "I'm not willing to forgive," you're going
to hear his compassion.

You're going to hear his heart towards you, and that's what will call you to
change. Maybe you're not willing to trust. There's some place in your life
you're not willing to trust God with that thing.

Maybe you're not willing to trust God with your financial life. Maybe you're not
willing to trust God with your relational life. Maybe you're not willing to
trust God with your sexual life.

Maybe you're not willing to trust God with your emotional life. Maybe you're not
willing to trust God with your vocational life. You figure, "I've got to make
this work on my own or it's not going to work the way I want it to work.

" Jesus wants to gather you in, and in the warmth of his love to say, "You don't
have to make it work the way you want it to work because I've got a better life
for you. I've got the life that has to do with how I want it to work. For my
heart to be changed, for your heart to be changed, we have to experience that
in-gathering, that hen bringing the chicks in under the wing, that place of
warmth in his love, that place of compassion in the love of Jesus.

In order for my heart to be made willing, I have to understand how deeply Jesus
loves me, how much compassion he has for the struggles I have in my life. Bring
him to him today. Bring him to him right now.

Let's pray together. Jesus, I pray for my own heart. We pray for our hearts.

Those places where we're not willing, gather us in right now. Help us maybe like
never before to discover, to experience the comfort, the warmth of your love,
the fact, the truth. You're going to love us no matter what.

The fact, the truth, you're going to be with us through every step of this. And
out of that moment of sensing your compassion, your love, I pray that you'd melt
our hearts. Melt our hearts to be willing, to be wonderfully, joyously willing,
because when we're willing to do what you want, we know that's where the
greatest joy is.

So in your love, melt our hearts right now, we pray, Jesus. In your name, we
pray, amen. Well next week, we're going to be looking at chapter 24.

In chapter 24, Jesus talks about the signs of his return. If there's any chapter
in the book of Matthew that people have questions about and want to learn about
and see about, it is chapter 24. So I'm sure I'm going to see you next week or
hear with you next week.

Chapter 24 of the book of Matthew.