Speaker 1: 0:15

I know Happy 21,. Everybody, I'm so thankful that you're with us and joining us. I'd actually give you an invitation, a personal one, to check us out in the room. Join us here. If you're, just, like I said, checking us out taking a peek through the window, we'd love to have you.

Speaker 1: 0:35

As we are going through this journey through the book according the gospel, according to Matthew, who's one of Jesus' disciples, we've been just doing, verse by verse, learning about who Jesus is, about what he was, what he did, who God is, through the eyes and the words of Matthew. It's been a really good time. We've now are entering into chapter 21 and things are making a massive shift. Today, we're going to discover that If you're new with us, you can catch right up. You're going to hop right in. You've actually are joining us at a great time because we're going to get into really the last week of his life and so much is going to take place. This is really for us what I've been calling the road trip section of the gospel according to Matthew. So Jesus, he's been on this road trip since chapter 16. Where, in chapter 16, he had this really significant conversation with the disciples about how he was Israel's king and as Israel's king, he was going to become king by dying, by being brutally murdered and executed, and this was surprising to the disciples a bit shocking like they were not pleased to receive this information from Jesus. And Jesus, we're told at that point, set his face then to go to Jerusalem. So for chapters now almost a year literally last May in chapter 16, we've been following these conversations that Jesus has had on the road as he heads towards his death, and almost all of these conversations have been about people misunderstanding Jesus and misunderstanding what it means to follow him. And so today we've reached the destination. Congratulations. The road trip's over today, like we got there, it's over.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Today ends, and it ends in a really, really dramatic way. Something shifts today, with a story that we're going to read and read over the next few weeks. In fact, we've seen Jesus is, like, operated somewhat under the radar, although the leadership of Israel is becoming more and more aware of this kingdom movement. But today Jesus changes how he behaves in public and if you've been with us and following along with us through this series, you'll notice this that Jesus comes into Jerusalem to bring his kingdom, this upside down kingdom, and some people are thrilled and some people are not happy at all. This story happens, actually, in three scenes that are all dramatic. And first, the first is him coming into Jerusalem. That's this week. We'll get to that in just a moment. Then over the next two weeks, we see this scene where he's clearing out the temple. And then the following where he's cursing a fig tree. And you're like, what's that all about? Why is he cursing a tree? We'll see, but for today let's go ahead and go for it.

Speaker 1: 3:39

So let's dive in the Matthew, chapter 21, starting in verse one. As they approached Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two disciples saying to them go into the village ahead of you and at once you will find a donkey, tied there with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them and he will send them right away. And then it's like Matthew whispers in our ear. He says, dear reader, this took place to fulfill what was spoken through. The prophet Say to you, daughter Zion, see your king comes to you, gentle, riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. So some of you don't know what prophet that he's quoting. This is actually the prophet Zechariah In verse 6,.

Speaker 1: 4:38

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on In a very large crowd, spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from trees and spread them on the road, and the crowds that went ahead of him and those that follow shouted Hoshanna, hoshanna, son to the son of David. Now, what's interesting right here is that we read this is translated for us into English, and this one word isn't it's still its original language, which is Hoshanna is how you say it which means save me, save me. So, hoshana, save me to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord Hoshana in the highest, save me in the highest heaven.

Speaker 1: 5:28

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, then the whole city was stirred. Now some of you maybe are reading a different translation. Some of you have a translation that might say it was in turmoil. The whole city was in turmoil. So stir when you think of stir, like, think of, like you know, when you stir in your sleep, like it's really disturbed, like you're having a really difficult time, kind of tossing and turning, nightmarish, something like that. And so that's what's happened here. It's like the point is turmoil, like real disturbance, and the whole city is in turmoil and asked excuse me, asked who is this Like? What's happening right now? This is a big scene that's going on. The crowd's answered this is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth and Galilee. So Jesus had timed his arrival in Jerusalem and this whole road trip, and he's timed his arrival in Jerusalem for the week before Passover, and this was a very, very intentional thing that he's doing here.

Speaker 1: 6:34

In the Christian calendar, some of you know it's called Palm Sunday. It's the beginning of what Christians call Holy Week. That's all leading up to Passion Friday or Crucifixion Friday, followed up by Resurrection Sunday, easter. We just celebrated that. And so this Christian holy week on the Jewish calendar is this week leading up to the Passover. It's really the most charged, volatile, significant week of the whole year for Israel, in the capital city of Jerusalem, there.

Speaker 1: 7:06

And what's interesting is, if you read, you find out from archaeologists. They tell us that at the time, the population of Jerusalem would have been around 50,000 people in the first century and somewhere around 150,000 Jews and pilgrims from all over the world would have descended every year in Jerusalem. I appreciate it, buddy, I'm just a little sick. Thank you, though. I appreciate it, that's very kind. And so you have 50,000 people that kind of live in this city and around 150, so three times as much would descend from all over the world to Jerusalem for this one week, which just means, like imagine that A city that's made and has about 50,000 people you can look at like this room is made for right now about 500 people, and how many of you have been here when we've packed it with like 700? Like it's ridiculous, like you're just squished in here like sardines. So this is like a sardine city where there would have just been people everywhere, like they would have been families camping out in the hills all during the nights. All around Jerusalem there's just tens and tens of thousands of people additionally.

Speaker 1: 8:12

And so now Jesus is coming right. We're told that he has this large crowd and there's people coming with him, like thousands of pilgrims, and they're coming for this feast. And Jesus has timed all of this and it's actually. We actually see. I love this. He's prearranged some of it as well, and this is just like this epic scene.

Speaker 1: 8:34

Now, you can't recreate this, but let me just show you a picture. So he's coming from the east and this is a picture taken from the main, like touristy spot on the Mount of Olives, and you can't see the Mount of Olives because you're in the Mount of Olives, like that's where you're looking out from and it's actually this big mount. And so, just as a side note, when you hear mountains in the Bible, it's not like a mountain like we think of it, no, no, no, think like across the water here, like Crockett, like foothills in Napa, not like Mount Diablo, across the water, just like really tall hills. And so that's what you're looking at here is just directly west from the Mount of Olives, and those castle walls right there, those are not the walls that were there in Jesus's days. I think it's kind of funny because those walls are only 600 years old. We can't wrap our mind around that stuff. They were built 1400 years after the walls of Jesus, but they're in the same location as the walls of Jerusalem, where they would have been. And then in that picture you can see that like a gold dome right there. That's the Muslim holy site called Dome of the Rock, and this would have been the location where the temple would have stood, although the temple would have been much, much larger than that structure that's there right now. So the point is the Mount of Olives and it's just like this, you can see, it's just like this steep downhill into this valley. When we were there just a couple years ago you can actually do the Passion Walk or you can walk down into there, but we couldn't do it because it had been wet and so it's really slippery, it's dangerous, so it's really steep.

Speaker 1: 10:14

And Jesus comes over the Mount right there of Olives and there's like this little village where he's like prearranged everything which is just such an interesting part of the story because it happens more than once during Holy Week where he's prearranged these donkeys and he says that there's like this in this village you're going to find this donkey, and this isn't a big town, this isn't even like a one-stop light town kind of place. So it's not like there's just donkeys everywhere, there's just a little small town, village and Jesus is prearranged with somebody that there's going to be some donkeys there, and then there's like this code word right, like the disciples as they're processing this, they're like we're supposed to go untie a donkey. You would feel like awkward, like who does this even belong to? Like, why do we have to give? This feels uncomfortable. We're just going to take a donkey. And then he told them he's like, and someone probably is going to come up to you and say what are you doing with the donkey? And then you're just supposed to tell them that the Lord needs them. And, mark, they went and found a colt outside the street, tied at a doorway, and as they untied it, some people standing there asked what are you doing untying the colt? And they answered as Jesus had told them to and the people let them go.

Speaker 1: 11:26

This is like so great. I mean, think about this. This is like a Star Wars moment, like the force, right, the Lord needs the donkey, right. That's what I'm like imagining. I don't know if you've ever experienced this. Have you ever felt like God's asked you to do something that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense and he's called you to do something and you don't really understand how it's supposed to work, but then it just kind of works? I know I've got many of those stories.

Speaker 1: 11:55

My wife and I we have one of those stories when we got this message from God to go adopt an orphan from Ethiopia. We're like what, like what in the world? It was so specific For us adoption wasn't something that we were really interested in or pursuing and literally I was losing sleep about a little boy in Ethiopia and I was like I need to stop thinking about this, I'm not interested in doing anything like this. And so I figured I would tell my wife and say something and she'd be like yeah, no, and I'd be like I know, right, and then I could stop losing sleep about this, like move on. And so it wasn't like. We went to dinner, I was like I have a serious conversation. We were like cleaning the house and I just like flippantly, threw it by and I'm like, hey, what do you think about adopting a little boy from Ethiopia? And she like stopped. I remember she looked at me and smiled. She's like I've hearts at the same time, like this high-five moment. And then we're like, nah, we don't want to do that. So that started a ton of Star Wars stories for us.

Speaker 1: 12:58

I'll tell you one real quick, one long story short. So we're going over to get Malachi and bring him back and we have to arrange all the travel, and so it's very difficult because at the time he was going to have an Ethiopian passport, not a US one, and he had to come up with a transit visa to go through a handful of different countries. That, potentially, was the only ways for us to get back, and so we were really struggling with figuring that out. We finally got a hold of a travel agent and she's like oh, if you go through Frankfurt, you don't have to get a travel visa. And we were like oh, we heard that you had to in these other places. She's like no, you're good to go. And so it was like yeah, are you sure? Yes, we're sure. Okay, good, well, that's the only way we can go.

Speaker 1: 13:45

So we're in Ethiopia, addis Ababa, and we're getting ready to fly home the day before and someone asked us. They're like oh, how are you getting home? We're sharing that information. We're like oh, we're going through Frankfurt. And they're like you know, you have to have a travel visa for that, a transit visa for that. And we're like no, no, they told us we didn't have to have that. And they're like well, good luck. And we're like huh, I hope it's more than luck. We're flying. It's a nine-hour flight. Someone was very generous to us and gave us like miles. So we got to sit closer to the front and, mind you, we've been on the plane for nine hours with a child, like an infant seven-month-old.

Speaker 1: 14:21

And we land and it's December and so it's freezing outside, and they stop out on the tarmac and they say the government officials have just picked this plane and pulled up and said we need to prepare for documentation to show your transit visas if you're passing through, and all this stuff. And they're doing this on the loudspeaker and they're like anyone who doesn't have the proper documentation is going to be sent back on the plane. And you're going back. And so we're looking at each other, going whoa, whoa, whoa. What in the world is happening? So we're now standing up, the door is open and it's in another language that they're arguing with people. Someone has just been sent back on the plane. So it's like, oh my gosh, this is real. We do not know what to do. We're staring at each other.

Speaker 1: 15:01

Michelle's got a backpack on the back, she's got a baby pack on the front, I've got all kinds of stuff in my hands and we're not having any idea what to do. And there is this flight attendant that I'm telling you. I have not seen the entire time and, mind you again, we've been on this plane for a long time. There has been plenty of opportunities to see a baby right, because we're there and she's standing there at the front watching everyone kind of come up and all of a sudden she goes oh, a baby right. And comes and squeezes through people and comes over and takes a peek at Malachi and we're like, oh yeah, baby, yeah, what are we going to do? Right? So she goes oh no, it's cold Grabs Michelle's arm and starts walking around people and takes us out where the officials are, top of the stairs inside of the plane, takes and then gets in to argue with them and says, no, no, no, it was like she did this.

Speaker 1: 15:47

The Lord needs them, right? She goes, she's like they're not doing this, it's cold, it's a baby, and they're like arguing. And then she just pulls Michelle around and walks us down towards the bus and I'm just like, oh my gosh. We get onto the bus and like we go in the corner and we just sat there and we don't even talk because we're both doing the code word too, like don't show nothing, right? It was the craziest. The lady just went away again. I don't even know. She went back on the plane Never seen this lady before and it literally was like the Star Wars moment of like this is what's going to happen, transit visa or whatever, I don't know, but that kind of thing right. So I don't know if you've ever experienced those kinds of moments so many I have, so many, from just even that when God asked me to do these things, that things happen. So it's just really cool. But it's going to happen again.

Speaker 1: 16:30

We're going to read about it in a couple of weeks or a couple of years, I don't know when they celebrate the room that they celebrate the Last Supper in. It's prearranged as well, with like a code word. It's awesome. The point is that Jesus has arranged all of this Like it's all really intentional Every move, every step, every word that he's going to say from this point on for the next seven days. It's intentional.

Speaker 1: 16:59

This is the culmination of his whole mission to announce and to bring the kingdom of God into reality. And so he comes over this hill, the Mount of Olives right there, and he's got these two donkeys, which we'll talk about more in just a couple of minutes. But then there's we're told these like huge crowds and these pilgrims, and they've like seen these miracles up in Galilee. They've come all of this way and they've heard these teachings and they really believe that he is the real deal, like he's, like they're shouting. Like they're shouting like he's the Messiah, like save us, son of David. He's.

Speaker 1: 17:37

This is a huge moment. And then they have like this impromptu red carpet thing where they are taking off their cloaks like part of their clothes and they're like laying it out in front of them. I mean, just picture, understand the scene. Like try to go there with me. Like it's a money or dirty road, it's your only jacket. It just tells us really what people really think, think of Jesus. Like they really believe he's the Messiah, the son of David, like he's the King, like let's get the branches. Like this is such an epic scene and it's all intentional. Well, maybe not the part. I don't know if he would have intended that the crowds do the impromptu like red carpet moment. It's probably a pleasant surprise. But you can see clearly that this is an event that Jesus has both intended and planned and it becomes this really huge thing.

Speaker 1: 18:32

Now some of us might think, well, yeah, it's Jesus, he deserves our praise. But has this been Jesus' MO up to this point? Has this been the way he's been operating in the public? Up to this point? And if you've been following us, if you've been following along, this is actually the exact opposite to everything that Jesus has been doing. Like you might remember, on more than two occasions when people said publicly and after Jesus had healed them, they said you're the Messiah, you're the son of David. And what did Jesus say to them? You remember? You remember he said shh, don't tell anybody. Like, be quiet, don't tell anybody. You remember that? And this happened more than a few times. And he's been operating like under the radar and he's slowly been coming into more confrontations with Israel's leaders. But then, like, all of a sudden, we're here, like it's public, it's like really, really public and really intentional, like he doesn't just tell the crowds at this point to be quiet. When they start saying these things about him, which they're calling him the son of David, which is this messianic, like this language that's happening there, he's just like yeah, yeah, this is it. And he just gets on a donkey.

Speaker 1: 19:51

Now, jesus was not the first king of Israel to ride down this very hillside on a donkey. King David, after his son rebelled against him in 2 Samuel 16, when he is reinstated as Israel's king. He made the exact same ride on a donkey. And then the son of David Solomon, when it went to his coronation as king, guess what he rode to his coronation His father's donkey. So what Jesus is doing here, everything is so architected here.

Speaker 1: 20:25

It's full of symbolism, full of meaning, and it's as if he's staged like he's waited and now the moment to like reveal who he is. It says see, your king comes to you, gentle, and riding on a donkey, on a colt. The foal of a donkey Now, a donkey, we need to understand, is an animal of peace. You don't usually take a donkey into war, right, the horse was an animal of war, and so he's coming, not as this takeover, but when that's what people wanted.

Speaker 1: 21:06

Now, when Jesus says he's going to become king, what did he mean by that? What do you think the crowds think he means? Now that he's going to become king, and what did he mean by that? What do you think the crowds think he means? Now that he's coming as king, when he's, you know, riding victoriously into Jerusalem, what does Jesus know he's going there to do? He knows he's going there to die. I doubt that these crowds think that that's going to happen. They're screaming save us, save us, son of David, us, save us, son of David. See those big bad Romans over there. Like let's go get them. Like this is a charged moment, like you've got to save us. You can see it actually overshadows the temple that the Romans have been.

Speaker 1: 21:45

I'm just trying to paint the gravity of this scene right here. We can just fly by it and that there's something really, really significant happening here. Why is Jesus doing this in such a public, dramatic presentation of who he is? What do the people of Jerusalem think when you're reading this and you're looking at this? How do they feel about Jesus, king Jesus, riding up to Jerusalem? Well, we read it already Disturbed, like, deeply disturbed. It was stirred turmoil and deeply disturbed for all kinds of reasons. One, jerusalem already had leaders like chief priests, the Sanhedrin, and then there's this huge fortress that's overshadowing the temple that represents the king of the world, which at the time was Caesar Augustus of Rome. So Jerusalem already had a king and it's not Jesus. And this is a way to get yourself killed.

Speaker 1: 22:40

So I just want to camp out right here for a minute, just because we need to understand that the two scenes that follow this over the next two weeks is a side of Jesus that we don't typically see, like we have not seen this very often from him, and we're going to spend the next 12 months Well, we're going to take some pauses on Matthew and do some other things in the midst of that, but, all in all, seven months of the next year we're going to spend working through the last seven days of Jesus's life. You know, matthew opens up with genealogy and history is really important. It goes right kind of into the Christmas story and it's really short because they're focusing much less on the Christmas story but much more on the cross and the impact of that, and it's seven days. So we're going to take seven months to do it, but it's going to be seven days in every conversation. Everything Jesus does is public, it's calculated and it is meant to communicate more than just what the surface events show, and so I want to help us get the gravity of this we're going to. I're going to pause with everyone for just a minute. I'm going to show you something else. We'll come back to the story but I think that this might help give some perspective, some renewed perspective of kind of what's going on and what's taking place here.

Speaker 1: 24:03

I want to show you an image that you may or may not be familiar with. How many of you have seen this image before? Actually, I'll see a show of hands, because maybe some of you have seen this image before. Actually, I'll see a show of hands because maybe some of you Okay, a handful of you have. All right, anybody know who this artist is. Yeah, a handful of you know that. Okay, so this is an artist. For those of you who don't know, it goes by the name Banksy. He's a British artist, some would say a graffiti artist, but he's a street artist, and I'll show you why. I think he's much more significant than that.

Speaker 1: 24:31

This image that you see right here was originally painted not just two miles from where Jesus rode into Jerusalem. Did you know that? The original right here? It was painted on a separating barrier wall that divides modern Jerusalem from the Palestinian West Bank, and, like Bethlehem and Jerusalem are just like these bedroom town now, but there's this separation wall due to conflict and so on, and so this is the West Bank side. It's a painting of a Palestinian teenager. Instead of throwing him all a cocktail bomb, he's throwing flowers, banksy's like this fascinating artist. You could Google him and get yourself into like a little weird spiral and people love to hate him or they hate to love him Publicly. His identity is unknown.

Speaker 1: 25:17

He's pulled off really crazy things. There's one weird image of him that was caught on some security cameras because they were trying to do an art show and it was like he wanted to do it but didn't want to do it, and so he snuck in in this inspector gadget uniform and they have security cameras hanging a piece of art there. A piece of his art was being sold. Maybe this is popular, but actually once the gaveling hit, it had a remote to it and it started shredding the painting and the shredder actually got jammed. It was supposed to shred the whole thing that's the one with the balloon girl and so it's illegal. He would do this in the cover of night. It's illegal to paint on the barrier wall and his career has been up to actually doing very similar things to what Jesus will be up to in his last seven days.

Speaker 1: 26:05

His art is always political and the social commentary. It's always very sarcastic, it's very charged, it's always symbolic. You can see some of his other art here. It's always very sarcastic, it's very charged, it's always symbolic. You can see some of his other art here. There's so much stuff the one that's the Peace and Love that's actually a piece in San Francisco, local here.

Speaker 1: 26:22

But I think the most provocative thing that he ever did was he snuck into Disneyland and dressed up a blow-up doll in a prisoner uniform from Guantanamo Bay, based on photographs from this scene. Do you guys hear about this? This was back in 2006. So he placed this blow-up doll the entrance of Thunder Mountain, this ride in Disneyland and this is actually from an iconic photograph that was taken of these prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and he put it in Disneyland and people were shocked. They didn't notice it at first, but whoever first noticed it said it had actually been up for hours. They didn't notice it and it caused them to shut down the park of Disneyland for three hours. They shut it down because they thought some sort of threat was going on. They didn't know what this was.

Speaker 1: 27:06

But here's my point. Here's an artist, right. He has convictions about politics, about religion, about the way the Western powers behave, and he pulls these very calculated public stunts. It gets everybody's attention. It'll shock people, make you question your values make you rethink things. And his career this is his job and somehow he's made a job of this, and Banksy has been to Western culture in the last 20 years or so is exactly what the Israelite prophets were in their day.

Speaker 1: 27:45

If you go read Isaiah, chapter 20, you'll see God asks Isaiah who's a very public figure to go walk around Jerusalem for one year wearing no clothes, totally naked I hope that never happens to you. Totally naked and shocking. It's supposed to be the shocking symbol of the naked captives that will be taken to Assyria when God allows Assyria to come take over part of Israel because of their sin and idolatry. Or the prophet Ezekiel God told him to shave his head off not his head off, his hair off of his head, all of it off with a sword, and then go out into public and throw his hair up and then chop it while it's in the air with this sword, as this symbol of the Babylonian army is heading towards Jerusalem to take them out. And it was like street theater. This was what Israelite prophets do these shocking public symbols and if you know Israel's scriptures, you get the symbols Like these make sense, and this is know Israel's scriptures, you get the symbols. These make sense and this is what Jesus is doing here.

Speaker 1: 28:58

What he's doing in scene two and three is precisely that he's taking up this mantle of the Israelite prophets, and this is very public, it's very symbolic, it's attention-getting, shocking behavior. Why he has a message. He has a message and he's getting our attention. He has a message from the God of Israel that the time is up and that Israel's chance to respond to the kingdom of God offer through Jesus, chance to respond to the kingdom of God, offer through Jesus the window's closing so he rides into Jerusalem and what does he go? What does he do when all the eyes are on him, watching him? Where does he go, the missus? Next week? He goes straight to the temple, the epicenter of all of this.

Speaker 1: 29:49

So until then, until next week, until we get to the scene two and three, what do we do with today? Well, I think we need to reframe and understand this week and the gravity of this moment. This is such a big moment where he's saying I'm the one and you can crown me as your king or you can kill me. There is no other choice. Are you going to crown me or are you going to kill me. And so that's what we get to deal with. Will you crown him as your king, your Lord, or do you want to kill him Because the upside down kingdom has arrived? The scene has been set and now we ask is he Lord of your life, lord of all or nothing at all? Because he will be your Lord or he will be nothing. And the king is in the room and his name is Jesus. Will you stand? The king is in the room and his name is jesus. Will you stand? Come see the scars of love upon his