170 - The Big Reveal!

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together as we learn how to explore it on our own as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. You know, when the president comes into town, he comes in in this big motorcade of big black cars with flags on the bumpers. Well, and in history, when a king came into town, he came on a big white horse with his armies all around him. Yeah, but Jesus is the King of Kings and he comes into town today and he doesn't do it that way.

No, he comes in on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden. Let's watch it today on More Than Ink. Hey, hey, you found us.

This is More Than Ink. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we are here waiting for you to join us. Where have you been?

Oh, we're hoping you're here already. Yeah, we've been reading our way through Matthew and we finally come to the day, what I call the big day, the big reveal. And up to this point in Jesus' ministry, he's been wandering around mostly in the north for like three years and kept telling people over and over again who he was, the Messiah, the Son of God, said, shh, don't tell anybody.

But today, that's all reversed. Today, he's going to come in and make the biggest proclamation he possibly can. Big splash. This is the big day. This is the big arrival into Jerusalem after those years of ministry. Well, it's kind of interesting that while he does this very deliberately, enters on this day, there's a lot of events that he really did not, he didn't control, didn't manipulate.

It just kind of erupted around him. And so that's, yeah, we'll get into that in a minute. We'll get into that. I've got a couple of observations regarding that. But this is, boy, this is the big public day.

This is where everything just, it's just there. And of course, you know, if you've read the Bible before, you know that at this point as we come into Jerusalem, it starts, it lights a fuse burning in a way that, you know, in a handful of days ends in his crucifixion. So, and a week from this moment, a week from this moment, not only will he be crucified, but he'll be buried and he'll be risen again.

So just a fascinating, but that's the problem. That's why he kept telling people, don't say anything because it'll start the persecution against him way too soon. Well, now we're ready to go. The time is right.

Well, and with this entry, he literally serves notice on the religious authorities. The king is here. Here we go.

Your response is called for. So if you're ready for it, here's the big day right here, the big reveal. Chapter 21 of Matthew, follow with us. We're starting into verse one, the big entry. Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, go into the village in front of you and immediately you'll find a donkey tied and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, the Lord needs them and he will send them at once. This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet saying, say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the full of a beast of burden. Should we stop there? Sure.

Yeah. So here we come to Jerusalem. Finally, we've been aiming towards Jerusalem for quite some time and he comes just short of Jerusalem. In fact, it says they came to Bethphage in Mark's gospel.

It also adds Bethany and that's a nice tip because we know in the accounts that Bethany is just a little under two miles from town. So two miles from town, if you go toward the east, puts you on the other side of the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is actually a ridge on the eastern side of Jerusalem that faces the temple area.

So we're on the back side of that. We're on the east side of that. So we're out of town, but we're in some small villages that are on the eastern side of the Mount of Olives. And we know from the other gospels that Jesus spent some time in Bethany. That was the home of Lazarus, whom he called out of the tomb, raised from the dead. That's where we get the two-mile clue, by the way. And Mary and Martha.

That's right. And that had happened not too far in the past from this because it was that that really set the clock ticking on the conspiracy to do away with him. It put a price on Lazarus' head. They said, we've got to kill him too because he's a walking testimony.

You've never really noticed that. Go and look in John 11 because sometimes we stop reading after the resurrection of Lazarus and we didn't realize that that was when the leaders said, oh, we've got to do away with this guy. We've got to kill Lazarus too. Yeah, put a price on his head. Yeah, that poor Lazarus.

Yeah. So they come to this village on the east side of the Sea of Galilee, the Mount of Olives. And he tells his apostles really curiously, you'll find some animals tied out in the street. Just take them. Just take them. And if someone challenges you, say that the Lord needs them and they'll let you take them. So somehow Jesus had prearranged this or the Lord had clued them in, but they're not really stealing this.

They're actually borrowing. And one of the other gospels, they actually say, we'll bring it immediately back afterwards. So there's two really interesting things here, don't you think? One is that Matthew, Mark and Luke both mentioned this also, but they only refer to the cult. Whereas Matthew includes the fact that its mother was with it.

He says that two or three times. So it's important in Matthew's view for some reason. And then in verse three, there's Jesus saying, tell him the Lord needs them.

Right, right. That's a pretty bold statement on his part. If you were to go to somebody and say the Lord needs this, they would give it to you or they would say you were crazy.

It sounds like an oxymoron in a way. You say the Lord, who's most powerful and owns a cattle on a thousand hills, says I need your donkeys. Well as it turns out, Matthew tells us that this took place to fulfill Zechariah's prophecy and you can find that. Cross referencing is really important.

It should be in the center column here by the bowl. It should be in your cross references to Zechariah 9, 9, which is then quoted here. Look, your king is coming, humble, mounted on a donkey, right, on a servant of a beast, not on a victorious horse. Yeah, because horses were how you came into town. Or a beast of burden. Yeah, if you were like a big toot, if you were a general or a king, you'd be on a horse. And this is the king of kings and he does not come in on a horse.

He comes in on a lowly pack animal in a sense. In fact, what the other gospels tell us in this one doesn't, which may give you an idea why, you know, the colt's mother is with him, is the fact that this colt has never been ridden on, and it says it in the other gospels. So maybe the, I don't know, comforting presence of the mother with him, I don't know, but you know, but there you go, it's the two of them. So I, you know, I don't want to linger here very long because it's not in the text, but I was contemplating this little donkey never been ridden with its mother alongside it. And we find out much later in the gospel accounts that Jesus' mother Mary was with him on this journey and seems to have been with him through that week in Jerusalem. And it just kind of set me thinking about Zechariah's prophecy emphasizes on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden, right, the foal of a servant animal. And that's exactly how Mary described herself when the Lord said, you know, the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and the child will be, who will be born to you, will be conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she says, behold, the bond slave of the Lord, I'm the Lord's servant. And so, while that's not in the text, and I've never read anybody commenting on it, it just seemed a very personal touch to me to have an unwritten colt with its mother calming it.

And Jesus as a firstborn son, had his mother with him throughout these events of this week. It's just an interesting parallel to me. Yeah, it is. Well, let's push on. Okay. Where do we stop? Oh, we're ready to read in verse six. There we go.

That's what I thought. Okay. Well, I'll do it.

Okay. So the disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put them and put on them their cloaks and he sat on them.

And most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road and others put cut branches from the trees, spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up saying, who is this? And the crowd said, this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. Which is an interesting identification considering that they've been calling him the son of David coming up the hill.

That's right. It's like, uh oh, now we're in the presence of the religious authorities, maybe we better use that title. Yeah, yeah. But this is such a big public entry into Jerusalem.

Yeah, yeah. And if you don't know the geography of Jerusalem, like I mentioned, the Mount of Olives, which we hear a lot about, is really a ridge. It's a ridge that runs north, south, just east of Jerusalem.

In between the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem is the Kidron Valley, which you read about in other parts of the narrative. But because of this, they are likely coming down the face, the western face of this ridge, which from that face you look to the west and you see all Jerusalem and all Jerusalem can see you. So it's a wonderful place to make a huge entrance that can be in full view of all of Jerusalem.

They can look at it and see you coming from a mile away. And since we know, we talked about this last time, that Jesus has a lot of people with him. Not just because they followed him from Galilee because they're following Jesus, that's part of it. But also because it's Passover. So people have to come into Jerusalem. It's one of the three festivals you come into Jerusalem for.

It's mandatory. So they're also traveling for that very purpose. So there's a huge crowd of people that are coming down this flank western side of the Mount of Olives and making such a big stink and a big deal and palm fronds going and lots of singing and lots of proclaiming. And it's like a parade coming down that side. Well, it's probably helpful to remember too that this was a continuous stream of people coming into Jerusalem. This wasn't just a big bubble of people around Jesus.

Right, right. But where Jesus is moving in the crowd, there's this additional flurry of excitement around the people who've identified him. Well, yeah, and you'd see all the palm branches waving around. There would be a lot of stuff going on. And by the way, the palm branch thing is not new here.

No. I found a couple places in the rest of the Bible where it shows up where they use them to worship a king basically. It shows up in Revelation too. And a celebration, yeah. Yeah, and a celebration of the king.

So that's really not that unusual, but it really is a standard kind of welcome for either a conquering hero or a king who's been gone or whatever. And it's interesting that then what they shout out to him, which comes from Psalm 118, is about being saved. Yeah, that's actually the meaning of the word hosanna. That's hosanna. Oh, save.

Yeah. And I wonder if this wasn't a Psalm that they were accustomed to singing when they were going up for a celebration of Passover. Oh, that could be. Because Passover is a celebration of God's salvation, bringing the nation out of Egypt. So it's real possible that this is a Psalm that they would have sung anyway.

Yes, yes. But in the presence of Jesus and the crowd singing and the fervor going on, it just suddenly takes on a whole new depth, a whole new meaning. And it's very specific because they call him the son of David.

Right. That's the Messiah king that's promised from the Old Testament. And blessed he who comes in the name of the Lord. I mean, this is like, this is the beginning of the kingdom. This is the king coming in. This is the promised king that for thousands of years was supposed to come and bring great justice and order and everything will be great and it'll be a whole new era of life. And that's not a lie. That's in the Old Testament. That's what the Messiah will do when he comes in.

So this is what they're proclaiming as he comes in very specifically. So if you go and look at that Psalm, and if they were indeed singing the whole Psalm, there's some very interesting stuff. You're talking 118?

118. Yeah. There's some very interesting things right before the Hosanna verse.

If you look at verse 22 of Psalm 118, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. That sounds familiar. This is the Lord stewing and it's marvelous in our eyes. Isn't that interesting?

Yes. And then if you back up a couple of verses before that. Verse 19 of Psalm 118, open to me the gates of righteousness. I shall enter through them.

I shall give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous will enter through it.

Yeah. So you know, Jesus had already said earlier in his teaching, I am the gate. I am the door of the sheep.

I am the way. And later on, on that last night of the Passover, he will say it very specifically, I am the way, the truth, and the life. But you know, if they're singing the whole Psalm, they are literally singing, here comes the one who is the way, but the chief builders are going to reject him and the Lord is going to save anyway.

Yeah, it's a fascinating song. It's very prophetic. It's very prophetic and totally suitable for this. Well, and it even has inklings of the crucifixion in it. So I would encourage you listeners, go and sit with Psalm 118.

Read the whole thing. It's about 29, 30 verses. And see if the Lord doesn't draw your attention. Yeah, it's a very important verse that's in your center reference.

If you're looking at either center reference or side reference on your Bible, you'll see Psalm 118 pegged several times right here. So they're speaking this out. Well, the whole city is stirred.

I mean, it's just a big deal. So much so that they ask, who is this guy? And they say, well, this is the prophet Jesus of Nazareth of Galilee, which kind of pins them down more specifically. The man you've heard about from Nazareth, who is causing all that stir up in Galilee, you've probably heard about, this is the guy. And it might be for some people in town, the first time that they've connected that guy that they heard about with these accolades of him being the son of David. It's interesting because he had been in Jerusalem before. That's right. But never in this kind of a crowd hailing environment.

Not so public. Yeah, exactly. And before we go on to the next section, it's interesting to point out that Luke includes a really touching scene in Luke 19, whereas Jesus sees the city before he comes down, he weeps over it because he knows what's going to happen. He knows that even though they're in the midst of this huge celebration and shouting and singing and excitement as they're coming down that flank of the mount, he knows that it's not going to end well at the end of the week. He knows that, in fact, he laments about the fact, it's a real lament, he says, but would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace, what it makes for peace, but you didn't know the time of your visitation.

And so take a look at that. It's a really touching scene in Luke's Gospel, Luke 19. And Jesus isn't fooled. He knows where this is going. He knows the persecution is going to escalate until it's the crucifixion.

And I mean, he knows what this is going to go and he just weeps for the people because they're missing it. They're missing it. Well, let's push on. What do you say? Okay. Oh, I have some things I want to say about that, but we need to go on. Well, that's all right. Let's save it for another time. Okay.

Okay. So, and Jesus entered the temple, this is verse 12, and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. Oh boy, let's stop there.

Oh boy. Yeah, crazy stuff. So Matthew presents this like it happened immediately, like he came right in and went in and did it. But isn't it Mark's Gospel that that says it really that happened actually the next morning?

Yeah, the next day back again. So this is where reading the parallel accounts can be helpful because Matthew groups some of the events of this week a little differently than Mark does. So if you kind of put those together, you can tease out the timeline a little better.

Yeah. But what I like to point out too is that if you are convinced that Jesus is who you think he is, and he is, he's the Messiah, and he's the King of Kings who's coming in to establish the new kingdom, you would expect him to go toward the temple. You would expect him to go right toward the temple and kick out the bad guys. You know, we know that the religious leaders were corrupt at the time. You would expect him to really take control and he does head to the temple. But instead of turning the world upside down for religious leaders, he turns it upside down for the guys who are doing money changing and selling for sacrificial animals in the front. Well, that is essentially turning it upside down for the religious leaders because it was their side business. Yeah.

But it's not really changing the entire structure that's to bring order and law. But you can imagine how shocking this must have been. Oh yeah. And this becomes clear if you read the accounts in all the gospels that this is the second time he did this. He did it once before, very early in his ministry that John records. Yeah, in John's second chapter. So it's very, very early.

So this is the second time. There at the beginning of his ministry here at the end of his ministry. So nothing changed over those three years you notice.

They're still doing what they're doing. But I really like what Jesus says. He says, it's written, my house shall be called a house of prayer or in Mark a house of prayer for all the nations. And that's the primary role in terms of people's relationship to the temple. A place to come and seek God's face and appeal to him for their needs. And instead of making it a place of where God can meet our needs, it's a place where people are making money. And Jesus says, that's just totally backwards.

That's wrong. And if you put those two Old Testament references together, let me read for you Isaiah 56.7 because that's the house of prayer quotation. The Lord says, even those I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer. And he's talking about the Gentiles. The Gentiles. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.

And that's quite a statement. And that's the prophet Isaiah speaking way back in the time of the first temple of Solomon's temple saying, this house is intended to be for all peoples to come to pray and their sacrifices will be acceptable. So we know by the time of Jesus that there was this highly regulated, only the most healthy and good and able people were acceptable to the religious leaders. And then if you look in Jeremiah 7, which is the second part of that quotation that Jesus says, you're making it a den of robbers. I would encourage you listeners to look not only at Jeremiah 7, 11, which is the part Jesus quotes here, but look at really the first 10 or 11 verses of Jeremiah 7, because he talks about how corrupt the spiritual leadership was under the time of Jeremiah. And he says in verse nine of Jeremiah 11, will you steal, murder, commit adultery and swear falsely and offer sacrifices to bail and walk after other gods that you have not known and then come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name. So we know that by this time the religious leaders were already hatching a plot to do away with Jesus.

They already had said we have to murder him. So Jeremiah's words are literally being fulfilled. They are. And I bet you got those two references out of the center reference on your Bible. So don't ignore those.

Those are great places to kind of chase down. But it is an astonishing thing, even though he's quoting out of Isaiah, to look at that temple and call it a house of prayer for all the nations, not just Israel. And not just the best of Israel, not just the leaders or the religiously pure. Well let's push on a little bit here.

Where are we, 14? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, and the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. And they said to him, do you hear what these are saying? And Jesus said to them, yes, yes. Have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies?

You have prepared praise. And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. So in Matthew's Gospel here, it's the first entanglement in this week between the Pharisees and Jesus. And the Pharisees want him to shut down the children who are saying the true things. Don't you hear what they're saying? Don't you hear what they're saying? That's an error. You need to correct them. And again, Jesus quotes from the Psalms.

Yes, he does. A Messianic Psalm. So again, you'll have the reference for that in your Bible, in your columns.

Look in that column reference. Look in that column and read not just the verse, but the whole Psalm. Yeah, yeah. And you know, to this day, we use that as a figure of speech, you know, out of the mouth of babies, which basically says truth comes from even the most innocent sources. And here, that's exactly what Jesus is saying, out of this innocent source, out of the mouth of babies. They're actually saying the truth, guys. They're saying the truth.

I am not going to shut them down. The guileless children often see things more clearly. Yeah. So I had an interesting thought here about the proximity of Jesus saying my house of prayer and you make it a den of robbers. And then the blind and the lame came to him there. It's almost, it just read to me like, oh, he got the religious authorities out of the way. And suddenly the blind and the lame were free to come.

Yeah, yeah. And there actually might be some precedent for that. And I had to look a little deeper for this. But back in Leviticus, the Lord had said to Aaron now, among your sons who serve me, there should be no blind or lame or any who are disfigured, right? Because they are representing the whole perfect priesthood, the priest of God. But by the time of David, David had so disliked the blind and the lame that he had said that they're not allowed to come in. Yeah. And so you can track those down in Leviticus 21 and second Samuel five and look at that.

So I'm wondering if by the time of Jesus, there was just this aura of unwelcome in the temple proper for anyone who wasn't perfect, the blind and the lame are not welcome here. So you know, I don't have a strong textual support for that. But, but it's an interesting idea to me.

Yeah. And because he's, he's been identified as the son of David. And yet we're told back there in second Samuel that David disliked and did not want to be in the presence of the blind. You're saying like, Jesus, Jesus, very obvious authority, right, an opening for them to come in.

And suddenly they were free because the people who would have chased them out were not there. Could be. I just wonder about that.

Yeah, you never know. Well, we end this particular day with him going back to Bethany on the other side of the mountain, just about a two mile walk. And next time we'll come back, we continue this whole passion week and the interactions that go on in and around the temple as Jesus not only spars with the Pharisees, but does some healing and does some really great teaching, great teaching doing this week. So you're not going to want to miss that as we come back. Next week, we're going to pick it up around verse 18. And Jesus does a very curious thing. He curses a fig tree. What in the world is that about?

Why would you want to do that? And what does it mean? What is it? Yeah. What's the significance of it?

Well, it's actually profoundly significant. We'll see that when we come back. So, so I hope you're reading with us.

Like I said, again, you can pick up with us. You can read ahead for us in verse 18. And take a look at more that transpires in that general temple area as Jesus goes very public and engages people in a very public way. And the persecution and the charges against him start to build.

And the Pharisees start to make their case for how they can grab this guy. And that's going to come next time. So anyway, I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad you're with us. And we're glad that you're looking at this Passion Week with us. And we'll see more next time on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you're there, take a moment to drop us a note. Remember the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself and you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.