Luke gathers all of the hardest teachings and moments of Jesus’ ministry to support the movement of: Jesus is God, what does it look like to follow him, and he is determined to get to Jerusalem for his death.

Jesus weeps over the stubbornness, hard heartedness, and self-righteousness of God’s own people.

Luke specifies which things happened next in actual chronology when he says things like, “at that very hour.”

It is a dangerous and anti-Gospel posture to have a view of an entire group of people and assess their actions as bad because they are part of group “bad” and vise versa. Although many Pharisees were bad, but to be a Pharisee did not automatically mean bad. Some Pharisees really seemed to be warning Jesus that if he entered Jerusalem he would die.

Culturally calling someone a fox had no good connotation. It meant cowardly, devious, slanderous, treacherous, insignificant, and impotent. Herod is the only person that Jesus treats with open contempt in the Gospels.

Jesus is not intimidated at all by Herod and he will continue to do the work he was sent to do. Jesus is saying his work will continue, but for not much longer. He is also pointing them to the importance of the 3 day.

Ex 19:10-11 God is preparing the people with consecration to be in God’s presence. What he is doing will sanctify and reunite people with God. God, not Herod, will determine when he is to die.

Jesus contrasts the hen protecting with the danger of the fox.

Jerusalem being called the center of martyrdom is symbolic of all Israel, but it was considered the center of Jewish piety and identity. It would be shocking to hear that prophets are killed there.

Jesus is more than a prophet, but he is not less than a prophet. He identifies himself with the prophets being killed here. He is accepting their fate there.

We miss what prophecy means today. We think it means hyper individualized predictive, future telling. 99.08% of prophecy was God sending someone to tell where God’s people have gotten off track and a call to repentance.

Do I appreciate God’s love when it comes in the form of discipline?