In Matthew 21:1-11, we see Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the back of a young donkey that had never before been ridden. People were putting their cloaks in the pathway, as well as laying down palm branches, and that’s why we call the Sunday before Easter, “Palm Sunday.” Palm Sunday begins a section that is often called, “the last week of Jesus’ life.” More than one third of all the material of the gospels is designated to this last week of Jesus’ life, so it is very obvious that some very important things took place in these few days.
The first thing that Jesus did after arriving at Jerusalem, was to go into the temple and expel the people who were using it for purposes other than that which was pleasing to God. The church house application to that is that we’ve always got to be sure that the things we do are things that will please Him. Above anything else we might think we are about, we are to be God pleasers. Somewhere back down the line, this church adopted a mission statement that reads simply, “to please God.”
The church house is not the New Testament equivalent of the Old Testament temple. Our physical bodies are the New Testament equivalent. God has given you a physical body to house your soul and spirit, therefore, 1 Corinthians 6:20 says, “...glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
Matthew 21:14 says, “Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.” There is no indication here, or any other place in the Bible, that people came to Jesus for healing, only to be told that it wasn’t God’s will for them to be healed. Many people have accepted an idea that they are supposed to be sick, diseased, and afflicted. There are no Bible verses that say that. Many would point to Paul’s thorn in the flesh, but I am convinced that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was persecution, not sickness. Look at verse 14 again: “...He healed them!”
The Bible doesn’t tell us how He went about healing these people, but from other Bible verses that do tell us how He did it, I think we are perfectly safe to infer that He touched them and spoke to them. He always spoke to them. Perhaps, He simply said, “Be healed.”
Immediately, after healing these people, He was confronted by one skeptical group after another. First, there were the chief priests and scribes, who took issue with people calling Jesus the “Son Of David.”
The next morning, according to verses 18-22, He was spoke a curse on a fig tree, and it quickly withered away. He used that as object lesson to teach His disciples that they had the same kind of authority. In verses 21-22, He told them that they had authority to speak to obstacles and adversities, and by the working of their faith, those things would be removed out of their way. He also told them that they had authority to pray, by the working of their faith, and receive whatever they pray for. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t it amazing that the Lord would give that kind of authority to people?
In verse 23, the chief priests and elders confronted Him and demanded to know who gave Him such authority to do the things that He was doing. He wouldn’t tell them, but we know the answer, don’t we? That authority came from Almighty God, because Jesus wasn’t just representing God, He was God in flesh! So, if He wants to give people spiritual authority, it is His to give.
The big question that needs to be asked and answered is, “Did Jesus only give the authority for speaking to obstacles and hindrances, and praying and receiving, to the twelve immediate disciples, or did it include us, also? There is really no indication that this was only limited to the twelve. As a matter of fact, the Bible teaches that all born again people make up the body of Christ upon this earth, over which He, Himself, is the head. In every life form that I know anything about, the body carries out what the head determines. It would make no sense that the church should have less authority than these twelve. In Matthew 16, after Peter’s great confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son Of The Living God, Jesus said, “...I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Now whatever else all that might mean, it surely means that the church has tremendous authority. We are the church!
Could it be that we have been given great spiritual authority, and the devil has had a great measure of success in keeping us from finding out about it? I’m sure he doesn’t want us to know about it. Years ago, I had a billfold that had a “secret compartment.” After a long time went by, I opened that compartment one day, and I found that I had hidden a $20 bill in there and had forgot about it. I thought about the many times I had needed that money, but not knowing I had it, I was deprived of the benefits it could have given me. I think that’s the way all too many people are going to be when they get to heaven and realize that they had authority they never realized they had.
In John 15:5, Jesus said, “...without Me, you can do nothing.” That certainly applies to a Christian exercising spiritual authority. If a policeman steps out in traffic and raises his had for the traffic to stop, the traffic had better stop. The policeman is just a man, and the cars could run over him, or swerve around him, and keep going, but the drivers know that his raised hand is the raised hand of the government he represents.
The events of this text take place just a few days before Jesus was to go the Cross. He had spent three and a half years with His disciples, and He was bringing all of His teaching to a major conclusion that He wanted them to get, and that is that they were being given the very authority of heaven, and that they were to exercise it by the working of their faith.
I have been preaching to the saved, but I want to say a word to any who are not saved. In these next chapters, Jesus is constantly confronted by one kind of antagonist after another. Finally, He is nailed to the Cross, after being treated as badly as human beings knew how to treat Him. It all happened for one reason: so that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly. There is one verse that I want you to look at, and that’s Matthew 23:37, where Jesus lamented over Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” Some of you have never done what you know God would have you do, because you’ve never been willing. God has graciously brought you to another opportunity, today. Are you willing, now?
