Teaching in Passion Week

Introduction

Continuing from Mr. Greer’s message yesterday

Moving into Mark 12 where Jesus in the week of His crucifixion taught in the temple.

Jesus’s teaching all build and integrate in such a way to communicate key facets about his person, character, identity, and mission.

Reference

Jesus’s Mission

Mark 10:45 - The Son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.

God’s Requirement and Heart

Psalm 51:16-17 - God does not despise the sacrifice of a contrite heart; it is what He desires

Micah 6:6-8 - What does God require? Seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God

Deut. 10:12-13 - What does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?

How to do this?

Joel 2:12-13 - Rend your heart and not your garments

The Condition of God’s People

Mark 7:6-7 | Isa. 29:13 - This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me

KEY OBSERVATIONS OF THE PARABLE OF THE TENANTS AND THE QUESTION OF TAXES

God is the master

The Jews are the Tenants

God (i.e. the master) comes for what is due to Him

The people of Israel (tenants) rebel

God sends servants, then God sends His son

NOTE: When the first servants are persecuted, mistreated, and killed, the master does not respond with force. We see the repeated, lavish, superabundant mercy of God. The question is plain: Why won’t you render unto the master the thing which so clearly belongs to Him?

CONNECT

What do you owe to Caesar? Measly money.

What do you owe to God? Your very life.

RESPOND

Even as Jesus is being challenged in the temple, He continually calls His hearers back to repentance.

There is a temptation to blame the Jews in these scenes for what they did to Christ. The truth is that there is not a single person who walks the face of the earth that doesn’t come to God with blood on their hands. Yet, if you give yourself to Christ, He can and will make you clean. Give to God your very life. He is the only one who is worthy of such an offering.

Acts 7:52 - Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.