The Official Presentation of The King
Notes
Transcript
(Mt 21:1-22)
Scene 1: Have you ever been on a journey where the excitement just keeps building as you anticipate arriving at your destination.
Perhaps it was your first trip to the snow, or your first train journey.
That big overseas trip.
Moving to a new country.
Perhaps it was your wedding day.
Or a school reunion.
Or your first rock concert.
Now I am showing my age here.
But I remember my first really big concert.
I had been doing PA jobs for years.
Christian concerts.
Christian Surfers,
Christmas Carols and Church musicals with a cast of nearly a hundred.
Some of these were big shows.
But the first big rock concert that I got to go to was in Festival Hall in Brisbane, I think it was in 1986.
It was a Petra concert, the hottest Christian rock band in the world at the time.
Critically acclaimed as on a par with the best secular bands and with a sound similar to the Eagles and Aerosmith.
They sold nearly 10 million copies while being nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, winning four, and winning 10 Dove Awards.
Its biggest hit, "The Colouring Song," reached the top position on three Christian radio charts simultaneously, and at its peak, the band's tours rivalled Amy Grant's in popularity among Christian audiences.
Petra was the first rock band inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and the first Christian band whose memorabilia was included in the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain.
I went with my best mate.
No care, no responsibilities, just two young blokes listening to a live world class band.
It was awesome.
Jesus was the rock star of his day.
As Jesus’ disciples journeyed towards Jerusalem I expect they had similar feelings of excitement.
A huge crowd of pilgrims was travelling with them on the long journey from Jericho to Jerusalem.
It was the time of the Passover feast the holiest date on the Jewish calendar and as crowds approached Jerusalem they would often break into songs of praise from the psalms.
But this was no ordinary feast; Jesus was coming to Jerusalem and the expectation of the disciples and the pilgrims from country areas to the north was high.
Was Jesus the Messiah?
Would he take his place as king?
The disciples certainly thought he would.
As we pick the story up in Matthew 21 we find Jesus doing something really interesting.
He deliberately sets out to fulfil prophecy.
Taking his lead from Isaiah 62:11 and Zechariah 9:9 Jesus prophetically tells his disciples to go ahead into the village of Bethpage and there they will find a donkey and its colt.
9 Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey— riding on a donkey’s colt.
As the disciples did so, I think we can safely say that their sense of excitement was building.
It is possible they recalled the scriptures that this event spoke off.
They knew Jesus to be the Messiah.
Was this an indication that he would claim the title?
Now it was common for crowds to sing psalms 113 to 118 as they approached Jerusalem for this feast and in accordance with Psalm 118 they would often also wave palm branches.
But the disciples heard and saw them add something to this tradition.
They declared Jesus to be the Son of David and they laid they cloaks across the road for him.
Their level of celebration was far in excess of normal.
This crowd of pilgrims from the country regions were certainly anticipating that Jesus was the promised Messiah.
Amazingly prior to this time Jesus had avoided such a display (Matt. 8:4; 9:30; 12:16; 17:9).
Now He openly rides into Jerusalem as king!
The point is obvious: He is presenting Himself to Israel as its Messiah and king.
But the people of the city don’t accept what they see.
It causes a huge controversy.
What right does this person have to do these things?
They don’t know Jesus like the pilgrims from the country regions do.
After all he has avoided Jerusalem and a Messiah should come to the seat of power, their city, in order to be validated.
Scene 2: Jesus was bitterly disappointed by what he saw.
The temple being used as a place of greed.
So he sought to restore it to what it should be, a place of worship.
Mark tells us that this happened on the next day.
Herod’s temple, which was the replacement for the original temple, had taken Jewish ceremonial law and applied it to the temple courts.
Now the women were divided into their own courtyard separate from the inner court of the Jewish men.
The Gentiles, the non Jewish people had been moved even further out into an outer court.
It was in this outer court that the traders exchanged the ordinary money for the temple money and then temple money for animals for sacrifice.
It had become a corrupt system designed to enrich the chief priests.
Taking up valuable room which should have been kept for people.
The temple had also become a no go area for the lame and blind.
For the disciples the events of verse 12 would have been quite distressing.
Jesus went on a rampage turning over the traders tables in the temple courts.
He quoted Isaiah 56:7 telling them that it is meant to be a house of prayer for all peoples.
He then quoted Jeremiah 7:11 a passage which describes another time when the leaders turned the temple into a den of thieves.
11 Don’t you yourselves admit that this Temple, which bears my name, has become a den of thieves? Surely I see all the evil going on there. I, the Lord, have spoken!
All of a sudden the disciples were looking at their plan beginning to unfold.
This wasn’t going to win over the authorities.
Not only were they upset about Jesus’ Messianic claims.
Now he was wreaking their profits and focussing attention on the lame and blind, aligning himself with the weak rather than the strong.
And accepting the title Son of David from children.
He wasn’t showing any restraint.
What’s more when they challenged him about all this, he quoted Psalm 8 verse 2 to them, basically saying that God caused the children to praise him in order to silence his enemies.
Obviously they could see that he saw them as his enemies.
Scene 3: This dramatic contrast between the excitement and joy of the triumphal entry into the city and Jesus’ despair and disappointment at the state of the temple is reflected in the attitudes of the different people.
For the common pilgrims from outside the city there was great joy at the healings in the temple and exuberant singing as they entered Jerusalem.
But for the chief priests and teachers we see indignation in verse 15
In their sense of self righteousness they were thinking how dare he do this?
How dare he claim to be Messiah and overturn our way of doing things?
If you are going to overthrow the hierarchy you better have a good plan and the power to do it.
Because if you don’t win they will make sure you really loose.
The disciples were watching this and their expectation and excitement would have been beginning to ebb away.
Maybe they had a sense that they were seeing their chance at power slip away.
Instead of welcoming their Messiah, the religious authorities had rejected and opposed Him.[1]
And as we read in verse 17 Jesus then just got up and left the teachers and chief priests.
The idea here is that Jesus abandoned the chief priests and scribes, the temple, and the city of Jerusalem.
They had rejected him, now he turned his back on them.
He simply walked away.
Scene 4: God has an exciting journey for us, what will be our response?
As we sense the Lord approaching our lives with a challenge to join him on that journey will we celebrate with him in great expectation?
Or will we get indignant when he wants to turn our nice way of doing things upside down?
G. B Stern a significant British writer said, “Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.”
We can just go along on our journey, undisturbed by the claims of Christ as Messiah.
Just thinking that all is nice with our life and we don’t want things upset.
Or we can realise that God always has another challenge for us.
We can look forward with anticipation and excitement at that challenge, even when we don’t yet know what it is!
Because that is the response that God wants from us.
Jesus is here.
He has something exciting, challenging and probably a little disturbing that he wants us to do.
Let’s run with him, even though we don’t know where the journey will lead us.
Scene 5: Jerusalem did not accept her Messiah’s invitation.
The city had been given so much, but when the time came it failed to deliver the fruit of a faithful and joyous acceptance of her Messiah.
So Jesus illustrated the coming judgement upon the city when he came across a fig tree in verse 18.
It was Passover so it was spring time.
Jesus would have known that it was not the season for figs.
But fig trees do have a small, edible fruit that appears in the spring before the sprouting of the leaves.
This tree was full of leaves but had no fruit.
It looked full of promise, but it was empty; just like the city of Jerusalem and its beautiful temple.
The other gospels tell us that when the disciples returned past the tree later that day, it was dead.
The coming judgment upon Jerusalem for her rejection of the Messiah was illustrated right before the disciple’s eyes.
Luke’s account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (19:42) clearly portrays that Jesus saw this as the exact day that Daniel had prophesied in Daniel 9:25
173,880 days from the day that the Persian King Artaxerxes (Dan. 9:25) declared that Jerusalem would be rebuilt the anointed one would come. [2]
And he would be cut off, killed, and the city destroyed soon after.
Exactly what happened.
Anticipation, joy and acceptance of the Messiah, or rejection of his challenge and calling.
Life eternal or death.
That was the choice before Jerusalem.
It is the choice before us!
[1] Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible commentary (Mt 21:17). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
[2] Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible commentary (Mt 21:8). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
