Welcome to our Together on Mission podcast, where we seek to be with and like Jesus, as we begin a conversation with Jesus in the morning, through scripture, prayer, and meditation, and then continue that conversation with him throughout your day. Your host is Travis Twyman, the pastor at the Inland Vineyard Church in Corona, California. In this season of the podcast, we will be journeying through the Gospel of Luke, specifically looking for moments in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Together on Mission podcast.
This is Travis, and it is wonderful to be with all of you this morning. Grab a Bible, grab a cup of coffee, find a spot, go on a walk. Let's start our morning, let's start our day with Jesus, and we're going to continue to enjoy Jesus and adventure with him throughout the rest of the day, because that's what it means to be disciples, apprentices, and friends of Jesus. And you can turn in the Gospel of Luke to Luke chapter 13, we're going to be there in just a moment, and we're going to look at a moment in the life of Jesus.
Sometimes we just look for stories or teachings, and those are wonderful, but there are these moments. And throughout the Gospel stories, throughout the life of Jesus, there are these moments. And these moments tell us quite a bit about who Jesus was and who Jesus is, and these moments invite us into being the kind of people that we indeed are called to be. And so the title of the podcast this morning is Whose Script?
In other words, whose script are you living out of? Whose agenda are you following? Whose philosophy or ideas or the way it should be are you bending to? And often we're unaware that we've even been handed a script.
It's so prevalent in our lives, and it's been so prevalent in our lives that we can be completely unaware that we've been handed this script that we're following, that we're bending to, these ideas, these philosophies, these rules that people are seeking to use to exert control over our lives, and possibly more control than is appropriate. And, of course, if you work for a company, you know, your boss should have shaping power over the culture, and that's appropriate. And if you're, you know, living in your parents' home and you're not yet an adult, then your parents should have shaping power over how the home works. I'm not talking about that.
But I think it's crucial that we ponder the scripts that we have been handed, not only for our lives and how our lives should be, but even moment-to-moment, you know, daily behavior, how we should behave, what we should do, what we should not do. And the question is, are there people, is there someone that is exerting more control or more shaping power over you than is appropriate? And if we're college students, we want to be thinking about the environments that we're in with other people. If we've been married for 30 years, we want to think about our marriage.
If we've been married for two years, we want to think about our marriage. We want to think about how we act as coaches or siblings or leaders. And, of course, if we're parenting children, we want to think, we must think about the scripts that we have been handed. And so the title again, whose script are you living out of?
And are we sometimes just waiting for approval or waiting for a green light or making sure that so-and-so is okay with what we're doing? You know, are we often thinking other people's thoughts and always making sure that they're happy or pleased? Or whatever, are we being pushed and pulled this way or that way? What script are we living out of?
So we get to Luke chapter 13, beginning in verse 31. At that time, some Pharisees came to Jesus and they said to him, Leave this place and go somewhere else because Herod wants to kill you. And Jesus replied, You go tell that fox, I will be driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow. And on the third day, I will reach my goal.
In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day, For surely no prophet can die outside of Jerusalem, exclamation point. Now, that is a bit of an obscure passage, I grant you that. Some of us have probably never heard that read. I'm sure we've never heard that taught.
But it is a moment. It's a very powerful moment in the life of Jesus. You see, not only were the Pharisees powerful people that were always handing out scripts of what should be done and shouldn't be done and telling other people what to do like they're telling Jesus what to do here, but also Herod was threatening to kill Jesus. And so Jesus in this passage is certainly being handed a script that every other Jew was already living out of.
And the Pharisees were trying to push and to pull Jesus, you know, and who knows whether what the Pharisees told Jesus about Herod was even true. Because so often, people that are trying to control us or hand us scripts will say things that are not even true. And so Jesus responds with his script. He responds with his agenda.
He responds with who he is. He says, this is who I am. This is my plan. This is what my father has called me to do.
And Jesus didn't need to yell. You know, he didn't need to scream. He didn't need to prove. He didn't need to over talk.
And neither do we. And the reason why Jesus didn't need to do that is because he knew what his script was. He knew what kind of a man he was going to be. And so he was just able to lay it out there.
This is what I'm going to do. And this is where I'm going to do it. And this is how long I'm going to do it. And he just laid it right out.
And then he said, I love this part. He says, and then I will have reached my goal. And I love this moment because Jesus' goal was not to make the Pharisees happy. His goal was not to make Herod happy.
In fact, when our goal is to make someone else happy, we actually can no longer be who we are. And we can't love them because we need something from them. And we can't love when we need something from them. And then what we need from them is for them to be happy with who we are or what we're doing.
And Jesus did not live in that kind of bondage. He wasn't trying to make the Pharisees happy. He was living out of his script. And if they were happy, great.
And if they weren't, well, that was on them because he was going to do what he was called to do. And the world doesn't know what to do with these kinds of people. They didn't know what to do with Jesus. And I think if we reflect on this for a moment, we might discover that we are often handed scripts.
We're often trying to make people happy with us. And that can be kind of the driving goal of our lives because we certainly live in a world where scripts are provided for everyone. And so what we find in this moment is that essential to Christianity is receiving a fresh script, a script that fits you uniquely and that you can settle into. And it's going to make some people happy and it's going to make some people sad.
But this is freedom. And this is a passage, a moment in the life of Jesus where we get to see just how free he is. And then he says, and I love this, he says, there's no way a prophet is going to be able to die outside of Jerusalem. And by the way, that's a joke.
That's clearly a dig at the Jerusalem leaders. And it's funny. It's a joke. All prophets die in Jerusalem.
And one of the things I love about this is that Jesus was not overly intense about his plan or his script. He was just living it. He was committed to it. He was serious about his mission, but he didn't take himself too seriously.
And so he didn't have to defend. He didn't have to guard. He didn't have to yell. He didn't have to scream.
He didn't have to think other people's thoughts. He didn't have to go around grinding. He was simply doing and living the way he believed that he was called to live. His script was the one that he had worked out with his father.
And he was unwilling to be handed any other script as a man, as a friend, as a leader, as a prophet, and as a person. So as we ponder this passage this morning, the question that presses is, which script are you living out of? We'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Together on Mission podcast.
We truly hope that you were blessed and encouraged by it today. If you had any questions about the Inland Vineyard Church, our ministries, or our Sunday services, feel free to connect with us on our brand new app, which you can find in the Google Play and the App Store. And check out our social media pages like Facebook and Instagram. Or even check out our website at inlandvineyard.org.
Inland Vineyard Church, we'll see you next time.