Which Way Is Your Face Set?
June 21, 2026
Luke 9:51–53
Luke 9:51 records one of the most decisive moments in the life of Jesus. His Galilean ministry was over. The crowds, the healings, the long days beside the sea — all of it now behind Him. Luke tells us that when the time came for Jesus to be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. That phrase “set his face” is not accidental. Jesus was not drifting toward Jerusalem. He was not moving in that general direction hoping things would work out. With His gaze fixed and His mission clear, He set His face toward the Cross and did not look away.
The people in a Samaritan village up the road picked up on it immediately. No sense preparing a room for Him here, they said. His face is turned toward Jerusalem. He is not stopping. You could see it in His eyes. The direction of His gaze told them everything they needed to know about where He was going.
That principle holds for every one of us. The direction you set your face reveals the course of your life.
Before you ever drew your first breath, God had something in mind for you. He told Jeremiah: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). Jeremiah was not the exception. That is how God operates. He creates nothing without purpose. Every life He breathes into existence carries a divine assignment, and the key to lasting joy is surrendering to the plan He already has for you.
Paul understood this. Writing from a prison cell, he said he had not yet arrived, but “this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14). Notice his language: pressing. You cannot press in a direction you are not facing. You must set your face toward the mark before your feet can move toward it.
Isaiah put it this way: “For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (Isaiah 50:7). Like a flint. Firm. Resolute. Immovable. That is the posture God calls us to. Set your face toward Him and toward the calling He has placed on your life. Do not be distracted. Do not be sidetracked.
The Samaritans understood something that we sometimes miss. The direction a person is facing sets the path for their feet. What your eyes are fixed upon has enormous power to shape your course. This is not a metaphor. It is a spiritual reality. Where your attention goes, your life tends to follow.
The writer of Hebrews gives us the solution: “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). The Greek verb here means more than a casual glance. It means to look away from everything else and fix your vision on one thing alone. A concentrated, singular gaze. Away from distractions, away from competing voices. Eyes on Jesus.
Look where you are going, because you will inevitably go where you are looking.
The story of Lot is one of the most sobering warnings in the Bible about the power of the gaze. When Abraham gave his nephew first choice of the land, Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld the plain of Jordan. Lush, well-watered, prosperous. He looked in the direction of Sodom. And that look set his course.
Lot did not announce that he was abandoning his faith or his family’s future. He simply pitched his tent toward Sodom. One step. One glance in the wrong direction. One seemingly small decision about which way to face.
But Genesis traces the progression with chilling detail. In chapter 13, he pitches his tent toward Sodom. By chapter 14, he lives in Sodom. By chapter 19, the moral rot of that city has so warped his judgment that he offers his own daughters to a violent mob. His wife, still drawn back to what they left behind, looks back and turns to a pillar of salt. His daughters, wrecked by years in that environment, devise a plan so unthinkable that the consequences ripple through scripture for fourteen hundred years.
All of it traces back to one moment. The moment Lot set his face toward Sodom.
Here is the question you need to sit with: the issue is not only where you are standing today. The more important question is which direction you are trending. Where is your face turned? A slow drift in the wrong direction will take you somewhere you never intended to go. Lot never imagined where he would end up. But the direction of his gaze became the compass heading of his feet, and that heading cost him everything.
Be careful what direction you are looking. Be careful what you are letting capture your gaze.
On this Father’s Day, I want to speak directly to every dad reading this. The direction you set your face does not affect only you. It affects every person following behind you. Your children are watching where you look. Your family moves in the direction you lead them. That is not a pressure meant to paralyze you. It is a call to take it seriously.
Abraham walked by faith. Lot walked by sight. Abraham did not choose his land based on how it looked. He followed God. And scripture calls Abraham the friend of God, the father of faith, the one through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Lot’s legacy is a cautionary tale.
When Israel camped in the wilderness, God gave specific instructions for how to arrange their tents. Every tribe set up camp with the tabernacle at the center. The tent doors all faced the tabernacle. When a family opened their tent flap each morning, the first thing they saw was the glory of God. The pillar of cloud. The pillar of fire. The presence of the Lord. God arranged things so His people would wake up looking at Him, not at the landscape of the world around them.
My father has been gone for nearly thirty years, but his impact on my life has not faded. He set our faces toward the Kingdom. Education mattered to him. He was an attorney. Recreation mattered. He loved basketball. But he did not pitch our tent toward those things. He did not point our family’s compass toward success or sport or the accumulation of things. When we opened our eyes each morning, what we saw was the glory of God. His face was set toward Jerusalem. And he led his family in that same direction.
Fathers, where have you set your face? Where are you leading your family? Our temptations are rarely as obvious as Sodom. The things pulling at our gaze are usually more subtle. But the question stands. Is what you are consistently looking at, what you are giving your attention and energy to, what you are pitching your tent toward, moving you and your family closer to God’s purpose or further from it? Consider the destination, not just today’s position. If you follow this heading, where will your family be in five years? In ten?
Proverbs 23:7 says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Not in his head. In his heart. The direction you set your face is ultimately a heart issue. When God truly has your heart, the world loses its pull. The things of this world grow strangely dim when you are looking full into His wonderful face.
Peter wrote that we should be “looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:12). Looking for His return. Leaning toward that day. Pressing in that direction. When the Kingdom of God has captured your gaze, this world simply cannot compete.
Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem. He would not be distracted, detained, or delayed. The cross was in view and He did not look away. He did it for you. He did it for me. Now the question He puts back to us is simple and searching.
Set your face. Fix your gaze. Press toward the mark.
Which way is your face set?
Pastor Matthew Ball serves as lead pastor of Faith Apostolic Church in Carmel, Indiana. This post is adapted from his message “Which Way Is Your Face Set?,” preached June 21, 2026.
