Jesus is Essential
Luke 10:13–16: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades. He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.”
Chorazin is a small village whose location is uncertain, possibly two or three miles north of Capernaum. Nothing special happened in these cities for history to remember. But one major thing did not happen. They did not accept Christ’s demands. Thus they received horrible condemnation. Tyre and Sidon, the great cities of Phoenicia, heard Isaiah’s woes against them. Cities that once had heard God’s woes would repent and follow Jesus if they had the chance that the two cities near his Capernaum headquarters had. But those two cities stubbornly rejected Jesus and thus invited destruction. Sackcloth and ashes represented mourning rituals associated with funerals and penitence. 1
Walking with Jesus
Salvation implies being saved from something. That something is hell. Christ desires for no one to perish, but the devil wants the whole world to follow him into eternal darkness. How much of your everyday life is actually influenced by the light of His Word?
As Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Jude 7
Toleration of unrepentant sin on earth is the devil’s way of populating hell.
Praying
Lord, please awaken our souls to the severity of sin and its eternal consequences.
1. Butler, T. C. (2000). Luke (Vol. 3). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
