I am covering in a summary fashion 3 chapters in the book of Luke this morning so I won’t be reading a lot of Scripture and there is no outline, but I will be referring to several passages. I encourage you to read Luke chapters 19-23 on your own this week to prepare for Easter weekend. I want us to focus on experience today not so much knowledge.
What is religion? So many people when they talk about Christianity call it religion. They say I got religion, or I’m a religious person. Or I don’t want to hear about Jesus because I don’t like religion.
Religion is the conscientious following of rules that are primarily man-made or man’s interpretation of what a deity has said, and that is not really what Christianity is. Jesus hated the religion of his day and his ultimate goal is to destroy it and replace it with relationship, the willing following of a person. The great commandment he himself confirms is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love others as he has loved us. Organized religion may be one of the biggest barriers to this as we focus on the rules and rituals, and structures.
Religion becomes an idol rather than our idol being God himself and desiring to do his will, so that his will can be done on earth as it is in heaven. And let me tell you, earth is nothing like heaven yet, and sometimes I wonder if we really want it to be. Loving God and loving other people is what Christianity is all about, nothing else, and if you have any misconceptions about that, I hope your time in Scripture can help you with that. Is that what we want, a world in which we sacrificially love each other?
Have you noticed how important it was for Jesus to fulfill prophecy, and the Law? Why did he ride into town on a donkey? To fulfill Zechariah 9:9. Why did he cleanse the temple and say those words about the temple being a house of prayer that has become a den of robbers? To use the exact words from Isaiah 56:7, and Jer 7:11. In all, Jesus fulfilled over 300 Old Testament prophecies and quoted many OT scriptures. This of course was not by chance, and it was done so that God’s people who knew the Scriptures very well, would recognize him as the Messiah.
Yet in spite of all that, the vast majority of God’s chosen people did not accept that he was who he said he was. They thought he was a fraud. Why is that? It’s because they were so immersed in their religion and rituals and expectations, and making money, that they were blinded to the truth of their own Scriptures and its prophecies. They had turned the living word of God into something that wasn’t really real anymore to them.
They were so concerned with doing their religion, their version of church, that they missed the person, the very God that they claimed to worship. Fortunately through his death and resurrection the people of God have been given a second chance to realize that their Messiah has come.
Now the point of this series is to experience ourselves in the grand story of the Bible because we are actually in it. 27% of the Bible is prophecy, and to this point it has been completely flawless. There is much prophecy yet to be fulfilled and it is in many ways very clear and relates to us. I believe God is showing me that we must take prophecy more seriously because we have become like the people in Jerusalem and Israel at the time of Jesus first coming.
Why was the Passover so important to the religious leaders? Because thousands of people came to Jerusalem and it was the biggest money making occasion in the temple. But Jesus at the last supper redeemed Passover and made it what it was supposed to be.
Has our focus become centered on our religion? Our church rules and habits? Do we believe we know the truth and so disregard any teaching from the Bible that might correct us? Our doing things the way the church and the people and leaders of our religion has told us to do it. Are we focussed on church more than we are focussed on Jesus and doing his will? Have we neglected the obvious teachings of the word of God and Jesus commands, in favour of our own desires and beliefs about how Christianity should be and church should be done?
Let me tell you why this is so important. Because prophecy clearly tells us that Jesus is coming again and this time there will be no second chance. If you miss him, you miss him, and you will never have another opportunity. As we look back most of us can’t believe that the religious people of God back then could have missed that this Jesus was indeed the Messiah, many still today don’t believe it. We think with their knowledge of the Scriptures and the great detail with which Jesus fulfilled the prophecies, there is no way they could have missed that this was their Messiah. Yet most did.
It’s reasonable then to assume that the prophecies that are still future, while they may be somewhat confusing to us now, will be as clear as the ones about his first coming were when we look back on it. And Scripture is pretty clear about the fact that many will miss him the second time as well, and they will look back and say I should have known. I should have listened.
So this year I am devoted to helping us understand the prophecies of the future. I have been under the impression as many of you probably have, that the details of prophecy are not as important as just knowing the basic end result. But there is a danger in that. These people knew the end result as well. They knew their Scriptures promised a Messiah to come. But because they didn’t pay attention to the details they missed it. They thought he was a false Messiah.
The NT makes it very clear that we too will experience false prophets and antichrists, which are simply false imitations of him. So to know the details of the prophecies will help us identify the true Christ.
Jesus himself warns us in his Olivet discourse in Matthew 24, that “Many will come in my name, saying, I am the Messiah/the Christ, and they will lead many astray”.
He continues, “No one knows when he is coming back, therefore we must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect, like a thief in the night”. “Therefore stay awake”.
Now if He is actually talking about his final coming and the judgment. And if all we need to be ready for this is to be saved, why does he warn us to stay awake? I think he explains it at the end of chapter 24. He tells a story about a wise and a wicked servant and the gist of that story is that the one who is found doing what the master says will be rewarded, but the one who says, “Oh the master is delayed” and does not do the Master’s will, is going to be cut to pieces, and put with the hypocrites where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
What did he call the unbelieving religious leaders of that time? Hypocrites. Do you think they thought they would be rejected by God, do you think they thought they were being hypocrites? Maybe some of them, but I think most of them thought they were doing what God wanted. Jesus came to correct them so they could be saved and they rejected his teaching because of their greed and pride.
If we combine Jesus teaching here with James and John’s letters, we find that it is not people who say they have faith. It is not people who do what their religion tells them to do. It is those people who do the will of God that are saved. But our religion has told us that all we need to do is say a prayer accepting Jesus forgiveness and we are saved.
That disregards Jesus teaching that only those who do the will of my Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Peter and Jesus teaching that repentance is required. Just about every book of the New Testament, never mind the Old, has warnings about what is required for us to be saved and to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Do we realize that these calls to obey Jesus teachings are actually prophecy? Because they are telling us what will happen to those who do and don’t do the will of God. Just like in the Old Testament, where all of the judgments came true after a time of warning.
So, is it important to know whether or not there is going to be a seven year tribulation? A literal rapture before, after, or in the middle of a literal tribulation period? Or whether there’s a literal 1000 year reign of Jesus on the earth? Or a literal mark of the beast? Or literal signs of the end of the age. And what is the age that is being talked about?
I think it’s important because these will greatly determine our preparation. If there is for instance a literal rapture of believers before a tribulation period, then as long as we’re believers we have nothing to stay awake for – nothing to worry about. We will be zapped to heaven before anything happens. If there is a literal 1000 year reign of Jesus on the earth, people will have a 1000 years to come to a saving belief in Jesus while he is here ruling a perfect world. That wouldn’t be too hard, you just wait until the last day of year 999 to get your act together.
But if there is no warning, if believers will go through a tribulation period, and Jesus is only coming back once and then the end. That changes things doesn’t it? I want you to know the truth and I believe Jesus wants us to know the truth, and I believe if it is in the Bible, it can be known. But we need to let the Bible speak for itself, interpret itself, and not throw our biases and hopes, and human wisdom into the mix.
That is what I intend to do in our Wednesday night study after Easter. I am going to spend 10 weeks pouring over prophecy in both the Old and New Testaments. I will present what my 100s of hours of prayer and study have revealed. And I will ask you to participate in helping us all get it right. Isn’t it true that most of what we believe about prophecy is what someone we think knows more than us told us? That goes for me too. Have we ever really dug in and studied it for ourselves, looking at all the possible interpretations and check them all against what all of Scripture teaches?
So based on our passage today what is Jesus trying to tell us? What is God’s primary goal in relation to us created humans? In the beginning he walked and talked with humans, who until they disobeyed had eternal life in paradise with Him. At the end we again see that his people will live in paradise with him for eternity. I think we can surmise simply from that, that he wants to have a real living relationship with us as a Father with his children.
Humans chose to leave home and try to do it on their own, and this caused death and all the problems we see in the world today. He gave us many opportunities to come home, he made a final way through Jesus to come home. But humans still decide to make up their own religion and forsake the relationship with God.
Why didn’t God want us to know good and evil? Perhaps it’s what we hear in Genesis 6. “When man began to multiply on the face of the earth, lust took over and God said he would reduce the lifespan of man to about 120 years. He said that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Many decades later he brought the flood.
You see God knew that he could not create God, he could only create humans in his image. He knew what would happen if humans came to know good and evil. They would be inclined to choose evil. But he wanted to provide a creation that had everything, including the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he said to us, trust me I have given you everything, but it would be best for you, my children, to avoid that tree. Because there is a consequence that I cannot stop if you eat from it. That consequence is death or a severing of my relationship with you, because you will see that you are naked and focus on yourself.
It’s basically the dad saying to his destructive child, I have no choice but to kick you out if you continue what you’re doing. But that is not what I want so please listen to me and do what I say for your own good. You think the grass is going to be greener without me, where you are free to do whatever you want? Well then you have to find out the hard way.
Several thousand years later we see the results and we still for the most part want to do it our way. And the outcome of sin and disobedience is still death and separation from God. That tree in the garden became the first idol, which is simply something we choose over and above God. … Let’s watch our clip for today.
Could you see the idols in that video? In the next chapter we see the famous episode where the scribes and chief priests attempt to catch Jesus with a question. They ask if it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. He knows they’re being crafty so he says, “Show me a denarius”, which was a coin. He asks, “Whose image and inscription is on the coin?”
They respond that Caesar’s image and inscription is on the coin. Then Jesus’ answer is very important and I think a lot deeper than most of us realize. He says, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s”. Now on the surface we see this as a simple lesson that we are to submit to our rulers as long as it doesn’t go directly against God’s will.
We may also say that according to their laws, we are to pay taxes, and we are to pay a tithe to God. But I want to throw something at you that you may not have thought about before. The question becomes who is Caesar, and who is God, and therefore what rightfully belongs to each of them? Caesar is a false god that people are to worship.
I’ll get back to that in a while. First, have you ever noticed that Jesus talks about money more than any other thing, including heaven? And also notice that the primary theme in Luke chapter’s 19-21 is money? The other main themes that are there are his triumphal entry, his authority, and the destruction of Jerusalem. In these three chapters we see the stories of Zachaeus, the 10 minas, cleansing the temple and overturning the money tables, the parable of the vineyard owner, which is a story about greed, the story about the denarius, and the widow’s little gift.
In three chapters, 6 stories about money and greed with little intermissions about the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, and the authority of Jesus as the Messiah. All of it finished off with the prophecies of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, the end of the age, and the second coming of Christ. Now in those chapters where have we as the church traditionally focussed our attention? Do we have a temple cleansing Sunday? A giving away of half my possessions Sunday? A greed Sunday? A destruction and end of the age Sunday? A second coming Sunday?
No, we have a Palm Sunday where our friend Jesus rides gently into town on a Donkey amidst the multitude praising and celebrating a completely false notion of the Messiah. You saw it on Jesus’ face as he rode in. Certainly Jesus was doing anything but celebrating that day. He was a dead man riding, and he knew it. This was a day of absolute opposites, of the demonstration of light and darkness. That week was going to culminate in Christ’s crucifixion, but the people who didn’t know were having a party.
It’s a day of sadness for Jesus while everyone is celebrating. It’s a day where Jesus is deeply hurt, and he weeps over Jerusalem, because he was coming in judgment. The people are deceived. He saw the hopelessness of the situation and the fact that he had to go through with what he was sent to do because it was too far gone. He saw that people had been consumed by the things of this world, especially money, and there was no turning back. And he even asked rhetorically to us when he was to come back again, if he would find faith on the earth.
Notice he didn’t even talk about his death. Nobody including his disciples knew about that, yet in chapter 21 he talks about his coming back as if he’s already gone. Many people are happy to see Jesus ride in, but they are terribly misled thinking he is coming to conquer in an earthly manner, that his Kingdom is of this world when he is very clear that it isn’t.
So how does all of this relate to Palm Sunday, Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Well Jesus was riding into Jerusalem as the King of Kings and the high priest. Ideally the priests and kings and emperors would have simply handed everything over to him the moment he rode into town as God the Messiah.
But what Jesus found was that the people, rather than having a relationship with God and following his greatest law to love God above all and to love others. They were living by their own made up political and economic structures represented by the empire they were living under. And they had a man made religion bound by laws rather than love.
Really the religion the Jewish people had was no different than any other pagan religion other than the symbolic God that they worshipped. But they worshipped him the same way the pagan cultures did. It was idolatry and making sacrifices to a god that was not real to them. They worshipped the law, the temple, the Ark of the covenant. They worshipped their burnt offerings and had turned even the sacrifices into a money making business. And Jesus was appalled and saddened. And I believe it was at this very time that he knew he had to go through with his sacrifice. That there was no hope for repentance.
They like us had not heard from or seen God for many generations, and they got way off track.
The people went out of the city to meet Jesus and throw their cloaks and palm branches down in front of him and his donkey. They thought they were going out to accompany the new everlasting King. But this was not his time to reign, this was his time to save, so that there could be someone to reign over and with, when he finally does set up his eternal kingdom.
But the book of Revelation actually says it will happen exactly the same way when he does come to reign forever on the earth. It says that we will rise to meet him in the air and will then accompany him into the New Jerusalem that comes down to earth after the final judgment. The word used to meet him is the same one that represents this going out to meet royalty and accompany them into the city.
The next time we do that as believers who have conquered the world and its idols, will be with new eternal bodies and we will live with Jesus forever in His Kingdom that will have no end. We know this because though he was crucified at the end of that week, he also rose from the dead at Easter, and ascended to the Father to prepare this eternal kingdom.
And just as he left behind the early disciples to reach and teach people about Him. To repent and turn from the ways of the world. To come out of Babylon and Rome, and turn to Him. He leaves us here after we are saved to do the same. Because Jesus must have a relationship with us before we can enter his kingdom. This is proved in Luke 13 by him saying to the people left outside who ate and drank with Him, and were taught by him in the streets, “Depart from me you workers of evil, I don’t know where you came from”.
Still not convinced it’s about relationship? How about I close with these famous words from Matthew 7: “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons and do mighty deeds in your name? And I will declare to them, I never knew you: depart from me, you workers of lawlessness”.
We better know His will accurately. We better know what he says about the future. Because one day He is going to look for a mark on us that may or may not be visible to anyone but Him. And that mark is going to determine which family we belong to. We need to know what that mark is and what causes it to be on us.
Have you ever found it interesting that two of the three major Christian holidays celebrate what were the absolute worse times in Jesus life, but they were great for us? Easter is great for Jesus, but Christmas and Good Friday were awful for Him. He had to leave heaven and become an earthbound human at Christmas, and well Good Friday was anything but good for Him.
Then there’s Palm Sunday which isn’t a holiday but you get my point. Christians are pretty self-centered, what Jesus has done for me. And that’s wonderful that he did those things for us. But would we be happy fro our friend if they had to leave home and go be homeless, humiliated, tortured people in a strange place.
I’m going to ask you to be sad this week. I want us to put ourselves in Jesus shoes so that we can see the reality of this week from his perspective. Let’s relate to the God that has called us friends. Let’s worship him, let’s do what he says so that all he went through isn’t in vain. We can celebrate next weekend, but how about this week we try to relate to Jesus and experience what this week must have been like for Him. Are you willing to do that for the God and Saviour who calls us his friends?
