Luke 9:51 Commentary and Bible Study

(Synoptics: Luke 9:51-56)The Lord knew the timetable his heavenly Father had appointed for his life, and he lived according to that timetable – ‘when the time was come’. Previously, at the time of the feast of Tabernacles in AD 29 six months before the crucifixion, he had told his brothers, ‘I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come (John 7:8). But now the time was right. None of his earlier avoidance of persecution was out of cowardice or desire to avoid death or the work the Father had given to him. The opposite was the case – it was to ensure that all things were fulfilled according to Scripture. It was to stick precisely to the plan revealed in Scripture, which had been made before the foundation of the world, that he avoided being killed before all things were in place and the right time had come.He alone knew what would happen in Jerusalem, and he told his disciples repeatedly (Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19; 26:2), but they could not take it in. He was to carry out the work of redemption single-handed, without even the consolation of his closest earthly companions, for they all forsook him in his final hour. Jerusalem was to be the place – that special city appointed by God as the location of the temple, where God in symbolic form met with his people, and where all the paraphernalia representing the atoning work of Christ were present in that temple. ‘He stedfastly set his face.’ Hard works for the Lord require us to pray much, but then to set our faces not to flinch from what he has called us to do. But who ever faced a work as hard as this? How could he go forward and not be crushed by the prospect of what would happen there? Only because he was the God man whose will of steel would not deviate from this awful appointment. He looked beyond to the suffering to the glory that lay beyond it. He knew he would be received up into heaven – the Greek word means ‘ascension’. On completion of his work he would be glorified by the Father as a reward for his perfect obedience. He would be received up by the Father, in acknowledgement that his work had been perfectly completed, not leaving his people behind, but going to prepare a way for them, and coming again to bring them to be where he is, being received as the victor over Satan, death, hell.