Living Gathered

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

 LIVING GATHERED

Luke 13:34-35

34 "O 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! 35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" 

NIV

We know these words of Jesus are both historical and prophetic in nature. However, Jesus quotes from the 118^th Psalm, “Blessed is he comes in the name of the Lord”. The whole of that Psalm is about exalting the name of the Lord. The Psalmist also said, “His love endures forever”.  Jesus wants to gather his people together, and of course, he is directly speaking about Jerusalem which represents all of the Jewish people whom He came to. However, Because God so loved the whole world, which includes us Gentiles, that he sent his Son so that whosoever, which again, that includes us non-Jews, should not perish, but have everlasting life. “His love endures forever”. Therefore, we can say that we are blessed because we come in the name of the Lord. We could say rather than we come in the name of the lord that we live in the name of the Lord because “His love endures forever”. Our house is not desolate, because we have been gathered by the hand of the Lord when we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We live in the hand of the Lord. He continually blesses our lives, watching over us because we are his people and He is our Lord God. We can also be encouraged, in fact, to live with courageous endurance, and encouragement because we will see Him again. Isaiah said the same thing in another way, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation”. Blessed are those who live in the name of the Lord, who proclaim the good news because we have been gathered into the kingdom of God receiving all the blessings of eternal life and the provisions of the Lord in this life. Jesus has gathered us to Himself as we live in him and he in us. Our lives could not be any fuller because we have been gathered by Jesus and are known as the people of God and we live in the name of the Lord.