Jesus
Set His Face Like Flint
Recently I’ve been pondering the following: “Jesus
set His face like flint to Jerusalem.”
The original thought comes from Isaiah 50:4-5, 10.
The Lord
God has given Me the tongue of disciples, that I may know how to sustain the
weary one with a word…The Lord God has opened My ear; and I was not disobedient
nor did I turn back. I gave My back to those who strike Me, and my cheeks to
those who pluck out the beard; I did not cover My face from humiliation and
spitting. For the Lord God helps Me, therefore, I am not disgraced. Therefore,
I have set My face like flint, and I know that I will not be ashamed. Who is among you that fears the LORD, that
obeys the voice of His servant, that walks in darkness and has no light? Let
him trust in the name of the Lord and rely on His God.
Jesus is obviously the fulfillment of this passage. By His example, I learn what it means to be
perfected through obedience and suffering.
In Luke 9:51 it says, “When the
days were approaching for His ascension (still before His death), He was determined to go to Jerusalem.”
The literal translation is that He - “set
His face” - to go to Jerusalem.
Just prior to this passage, Jesus spells out the true cost of
discipleship in Luke 9:23-25.
And He was
saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself,
and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will
save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or
forfeits himself?”
I want more of God and less of me.
I want more of God’s Kingdom and less of my own.
This past summer, Miss Brielle and I were standing at the back of
the Tapawingo chapel while the CITs (Counselors -in-Training) led the camp in
worship at Vespers. The singing was full
and vibrant; the music was excellent and well-ordered; and I have to believe that
it was honoring to the Lord. Tears were
streaming down Miss Brielle’s face and I thought I knew why but I asked her
about it later. Her words were more
profound than I was expecting:
“I was just thinking about all the summers that we and our friends
spent here. I was thinking of how the
world would scoff at how they spent their summers. The world would say they wasted them. They would scoff at the fact that they weren’t
getting the internships they should have.
But those summers were the farthest
thing from wasted. I was thinking of how
blessed we are that we’re getting to see the result with our very own eyes.”
I get choked up just writing this.
I felt as though the scene was similar to this one: “Turning to the disciples, He (Jesus) said
privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to
you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and
did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear
them.’”
There are many summers that I have cried knowing what was coming
ahead (It’s funny how the fear of laying your life down is actually worse than
the action of laying it down. It’s funny
how joy-filled you can actually be when you are strengthened and humbled by 29
other women who for some crazy reason are doing the same thing. It’s funny how full you can be when you’re
running on empty).
If this is a flippant metaphor, please forgive me, but I tend to
think of Luke 9:51 in modern words as, “Jesus got His game face on.” He set out, with purpose and conviction, to
do what He was called to do. He had done
the “suicides.” He had spent His life
training. And now, with every fiber in
His being, He was determined to set in motion the final leg of His mission, to
fulfill His ministry to the very end.
I want to be like Jesus – to lay my life and my agenda down, not begrudgingly,
but with joy and game-faced conviction.
If you’re looking for a summer with purpose – what greater purpose
than this?
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