https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+9%3A51%2C+57-62&version=NRSVCE (Luke 9:51, 57-62) It’s a new chapter! I recently retired after serving 38 years in pastoral ministry! People have made this statement to me: “This is the beginning of a new chapter, a new phase of life for you.” They also ask questions such as, “What are you going to do now, Steve?” “Do you have plans?” “What do you think God has in store for you?” A fellow pastor recently reminded me there’s no such thing as retirement in the kingdom of God. He is absolutely right! I still consider myself on call for the Lord. I don’t know the answers to these questions yet. But what I do know is this: I am excited about this new chapter and what God has in store for my wife, Julie, and me. In today’s passage, we see Jesus entering a new chapter of His life. He knows what God has planned out for Him. The cross lay ahead where He will suffer and die for the forgiveness of our sins. For the first 8½ chapters of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has been busy revealing himself as the Son of God, the Messiah of God, sent from above with power and authority to carry out God’s plans to rescue a sinful world for Himself. Jesus has done this revealing through His preaching and His miracles. God affirmed it to Peter, James, and John at Christ’s Transfiguration on the mountaintop. In today’s reading, we see Jesus setting His face to go to Jerusalem. This is a biblical way of saying He resolved, He was focused. He was determined to go to Jerusalem and accomplish that for which He had come. Luke’s Gospel narrative says it marked the beginning of a new chapter, a new phase in our Lord’s life. The days had drawn near for Him to be taken up by sinful and rejecting men, nailed to a cross in Jerusalem, and suffer and die as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He would pay the debt for my sin and your sin, which could not be repaid by us. But He would also be taken up from death, raised, and then exalted by God as the Lord over all things. This is Good News to build our lives upon. This is Good News. Trusting in what He has done for us, we share in His victory over sin, death, and the devil. We thank God He set His face to go to Jerusalem and we’ve been rescued. This is the context from which we will be working for the next few weeks of Lent in this series I’m entitling “Encounters.” Jesus is resolutely on His way to Jerusalem to be taken up. He is doing it to rescue us from our sin and the consequences of sin. On His Way, Jesus and His disciples will have encounters with various types of people to whom He will speak important truths about important things in life. These conversations hold valuable insights for you and me to discover and then apply to our own lives. Today we see the first encounter – three people who say they desire to follow Him. For some reason they were moved by Jesus. They admired Him. Maybe they had observed His miracles. Perhaps they had seen Him change the lives of those around them for the better. They had listened to His Good News about the kingdom of God being at hand. They were inspired, moved to say, I want to follow you, Jesus. This scene is repeated often, even in today’s world. A person is moved emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually in some way and says, I want and need to be with Jesus. Maybe she is at a worship service where Jesus is portrayed as the Savior she needs, so she says to herself, I need someone like that in my life. I need a Savior. I want Jesus. Perhaps someone has observed how Christianity has enriched a friend’s life. In an hour of need, they tell their friend, I think I need what you have. Maybe you are attending a large event. The speaker moves you to come forward for the altar call. Perhaps a light has gone on for you after reading or studying about Jesus on your own. Any number of circumstances can move people toward Jesus. It appears these three men in our text don’t quite understand