This is John at Bible Projects. I like to picture Jesus as kind, gentle, peaceful.

To love your enemy, careful to pour Jesus. And yes, Jesus is those things.

What tends to happen though, for people who are really excited about that,

aspective as message and teething, we tend to overlook or under-emphasize

a consistent drumbeat alongside that good news, which was warnings.

Warnings of that separation act of judgment that was ahead for the Israel of his day.

Like this warning, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them

will be like a foolish man who has built his house on the sand.

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house,

and it fell and great was its fall.

Jesus thinks there's a flood coming, and another saw it in a Gomorrah type thing coming.

You see, God made a covenant relationship with Israel, and Israel has not held up their end of the covenant.

In the past, this led to the Babylonian exile. Israel overtaken by an enemy nation, a flood of God's anger.

But now in Jesus' day, the same problem persists. Will Israel finally become the faithful covenant partner,

or will another flood come this time by loan?

So this has taken me years to process that Jesus' warnings aren't about heaven or hell the way I was taught to think about it

in a more individualistic package of the Christian message.

He was a prophet to Israel just like Jeremiah and Zekiel, warning of a flood in the form of a pagan oppressor.

And that God was still angry, but he sent Jesus as this ultimate act of favor and good news to announce good news,

to form this new covenant family, but said, listen, if you don't follow me, Rome's going to take us out.

So there's a whole thread of passages where he continues on this theme.

When he rides in as a triumphant entry on the donkey in Luke 19, he's weeping over the city.

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