Luke 19:28-20:8

Read along as Matthew guides us through the Gospel of Luke. In these verses, Jesus enters Jerusalem as King, enters the Temple as the true High Priest, and thus causes much conflict between himself and the religious leaders. They question his authority, and Jesus retorts their challenge with a brilliant answer. Listen along with us, please!

Matthew Schmidt is the Pastor of St. Paul's United Church of Christ located in the beautiful small town of Grand Haven, MI. To discover more about St. Paul's visit our website. www.stpaulsgrandhaven.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, well, friends, welcome to Bible study. We are reading the Gospel of Luke, and today we'll start reading in chapter 19, verse 28. And if you were with us previously, then you know that Jesus has been traveling around, making his way patiently towards Jerusalem. He just traveled through Jericho, that city where all the highways would turn from there up to the hills, up to the mountain, up to the city of David, Jerusalem. So that's where he's gonna go, right after being in Jericho, hanging out with Zacchaeus, our favorite little tax collector. And so we'll read starting in verse twenty-eight when Jesus finally arrives in Jerusalem as king. But first we'll pray. Heavenly Father, you sit enthroned on high, and yet you stoop to pick the needy up from the ash heap. In the incarnation, God, you step down from your throne, you put on flesh, become a human being, become this Jesus, who we can read about and wonder about, who we can watch go to work. Now today as we read of your triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as you approach the temple, the meeting place between heaven and earth, we pray that you would create a kind of temple in our hearts, a meeting place between us and you, that you would cultivate holiness in our lives, that your goodness and your glory would shine throughout whatever we're going through. Now illuminate our hearts with your word, we pray. Amen. So Luke 19, verse 28, after Jesus had said this, and of course he is he's just told the parable of the ten minas. So after Jesus had said this, he went on ahead. Going up to Jerusalem. And why does the Bible always say up to Jerusalem? It's kind of like up north. Except he's not heading north, he's heading to the west. It's he's going up a mountain, yeah. He's gonna climb up a mountain.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

So he's going up a mountain to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built on top of a mountain in a range of mountains. As he approached Bethpage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives. That's that's one of the mountains right across the valley from Jerusalem. He sent two of his disciples, saying to them, Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. And if anyone asks you, why are you untying it, say that the Lord needs it. So there these towns are built in the mountain ranges across the valley from the big city. And Jesus is saying, When you get up to this town, it if you're standing there, you can see Jerusalem. It's just a little hike down a valley and then a hike back up, and you're in the city. And he's saying, in one of these little towns, you're gonna find a colt tied there that no one has ever ridden. This is a very oddly specific thing. How does Jesus know that there's gonna be an animal that nobody has ever ridden in this particular town outside of Jerusalem? So that's one answer. He's omnipotent, he knows everything. He knows everything. That that could be, that's maybe that's part of it. Who what does he care if he's gonna ride a colt that's never been ridden, though? I mean, it it's just an oddly specific thing. Okay. Yeah. So you're seeing this as a sign of power? Okay. Yeah. Uh any other ideas.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Yeah. All right, so because it's a cold, it's a male. If it was a filling, it'd be a female. So they're gonna be more specific.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

So there's there's uh Jesus is is being intentional here. He's gonna stage a public display that is gonna mean something connected to the messiah. He's he's been taking his time. Uh on playing right. So there's there's prophecies, there's also folklore and traditions around the coming of the Messiah. And they're connected to David, you know, there's a scene during David's reign that he he leaves the city, right? And then there's this idea that someday he'll come back to reclaim the city, right? And how will he do that? And then the stories sort of grow from there. And if you read uh like the Talmud, uh a work of rabbinic literature, there's a basic idea that someday the Messiah will either come on the clouds, if Israel's been really good, the Messiah will show up on the clouds, riding the clouds. And if Israel has been naughty, if they're not following God, then the Messiah will show up on a colt. You know, there's so so there's literally a guy in town, and maybe even more than one guy in town in these towns, that has an animal ready for that day. You know, if you go to Jerusalem today, there are people just sitting there at the ready, ready to rebuild the temple. They've got all the tools measured out exactly as the Bible says the tools shall be used to rebuild the temple. Um, and they're just sitting there and they're and they're just ready. They're ready for that day when they get the sign that it's time for them to go to work and do the thing that they've been waiting for their entire lives. And there's probably a guy sitting in Bethpage or Bethany who's got an unridden cult, precisely so that the prophecy shall be fulfilled. And this will be the animal that the Messiah, if the Messiah comes in his lifetime, and if that cult dies, you get a new cult and you train it up to be unridden, right? And you just follow that, and it's just oh, and so Jesus might be telling his disciples, go and find that guy. And when he asks the question, What do you need my unridden cult for? What does he tell them to respond? The Lord needs it. And this goes back to why do we call Jesus Lord? Lord means Messiah, it means king, it means uh something more than just um God, it's a different kind of title. So the Lord needs it. Uh and so Jesus is going to stage a kind of parade and he's planning this, and he wants people to see the public display, he wants people to associate his ministry with what's going to happen next. Uh, and and so what he's trying to act out publicly is that the king is arriving, that the messiah is here. Now he he's pretty careful not to like self-anoint himself as Messiah, but he's gonna take some steps that pretty clearly say, yeah, I'm fulfilling what the word has been projecting and longing for and hoping for. And in this particular season of, you know, the life of Israel, the life of the people of God, are they in a great spot where they're following God and you know, the Messiah shall come on the clouds according to the Talmud? No, no, they're all of their religious leadership is totally corrupt. The temple has become a den of thieves, it is stealing from the poor and giving money to Rome, right? And so the whole system is corrupt, and and that means there's lots of people who want the king to show up and kick butt and take names and drive out the pagans that should not be in their temple, thank you very much, and drive out the bad priests that should not be serving their temple in sin, thank you very much. And there's all kinds of different ideas on how to do that. And, you know, in the hundred years, either side of Jesus, there's upwards of 10 messianic figures that come claiming to be this kind of Lord who will liberate the oppressed Israel and bring about freedom, bring about purity to worship. So Jesus is gonna take his stab at that. That's one reason why he's riding an unridden colt or donkey. Any other reasons why you would ride a donkey? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Well, anyone can't be a water, but you can get an animal donkey to come and walk them along. Right? In a donkey?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Potentially. I mean it depends on the animal, I would assume. Yeah. Yeah. Walked it around, just not ridden it. Yeah. Probably trained it for the moment so that it can do the right thing. Who wants to be the guy with the donkey that's unrideable when it needs to finally be ridden, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

And then Dr. Donkey Bank, and then the kids. The dog who knew about how to get back home, and then somebody else in a family guy down to Josh Put the right to left, and that doctor turns on the battle. So the next person's fine. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

What's that? Yeah, yep. And so so uh Zechariah is predicting the king coming riding a donkey for what reason? This is a little it's slight, it's there's nuance here. It's slightly different than what the Talmud is saying about the reason why the Messiah might be riding a colt. What's Zechariah saying? That the king will come how. This is the other angle into why he rides a donkey. Yes, that's it. It's the antithesis of the war horse. Instead of the chariot and the war horse, the king will come riding on a donkey. And so that's that is just the other huge public sign here. What is Jesus signaling by entering the city to take over the city, to capture the city, to liberate the city, riding a donkey instead of a chariot and war horse? Yes, it's it's peace. The battle bow will be broken, and he will proclaim this is the Prince of Peace. This is the peaceable kingdom. This is Jesus arriving, intentionally signaling, I come in peace totally. Also, I come as the Messiah. You know, both of those things are true. He wants to walk into Jerusalem with this intentional display of I am the true king that the prophecies foretold, and I'm the peaceful king. And I'm I'm gonna end your wars, I'm gonna drive out violence, you know. And it's it's uh historically, if you just look at kind of the dates here, um, it's quite possible uh there were there were battles and skirmishes going on in this region uh in this time period, and it's quite possible that um one of Herod's sons was having a kind of parade on the other side of the city when Jesus enters riding a donkey. That that uh there's a conquering king having uh a war victory parade on one side of the city, specifically timed with the festival, so that a bunch of people are in town, and uh and half the city over there is excited about how strong their king is, and then over on the other side of town, entering under the beautiful gate, is this alternate perspective? Jesus riding a donkey or a colt. And why do the gospels seem to differ between donkey and colt and Matthew say donkey and colt? And it's because they're struggling with that Zachariah text, which meant mentions a donkey and a colt. And so they're they're doing their best to say, yeah, both, kind of. And so, and then and then people will do loops like backflips trying to make that make sense. Maybe he was riding the donkey but pulling the colt, or maybe it's the same animal, but it's not really the same animal, and and you get into a little bit of a thing with that. But but you get into things like that when you're trying to fulfill scripture, which is you know 500 years old, and the details are a little bit fuzzy, and you're trying to, you know, hit the details perfectly. So, but the main point is this is the Messiah and he comes in peace. Okay, so if anyone asks you, why are you untying it, say the Lord needs it. Verse 32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, Why are you untying the colt? And they replied, The Lord needs it. Have the disciples been faithful? Yes, they're doing exactly what Jesus has asked them to do in this instance. They won't always be faithful as the story gets deeper towards the cross. They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt, and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. And of course, there's uh, you know, there's a story in I think it's 2 Kings something about putting cloaks over puddles when the king enters. So again, these are kingly images, right? When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen. You can read this like they just spontaneously burst into song. You can also read it as, oh, this is planned. This is this is the moment. Right when you clear the town and you're overlooking the valley where the echo of your cries could bounce off the Kidron Valley and approach Jerusalem's beautiful gate. You start screaming and shouting the exact phrases of the Psalms that predict the coming of the Son of David. Psalm 118, right? You start saying the words of scripture that you are are understanding to be true in this exact moment. And so people are, and and how many, what's this crowd here? It's the same crowd that's been following him from Jericho, the same crowd that was making so much noise that the blind man outside the city of Jericho said, What's all this noise? It's the same crowd that probably grew after the blind man joined their ranks and and after Zacchaeus, you know, became a part of the movement. That movement from the Jericho area is now reaching its crescendo, and they're chanting and they're screaming and loud voices, joyfully praising God for all the miracles that they had seen. Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. That's from Psalm 118. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Let me just ask a basic question. Is Jesus a king? Yeah. If we are so averse to kings that we have lost the ability, and this is a real thing in our world, there's been so many bad kings throughout history, and and we have invented other forms of government that seem to be so much more and enlightened and mature, democracy, things like that, uh, that we really do not like kings in general. We lose a major aspect of Jesus' identity when we just outright reject that. Because calling Jesus a king was precisely the antidote for every concern that you have about kings. He is no ordinary king. That's the point. He is a king that instead of riding a war horse, rides a donkey. He is a king who comes in peace, not violence, right? He is a king who will sacrifice his own life to save his people, not a king who hides in his castle and sends soldiers out to do his bidding. He's a good king. Not just a good king, he is the only form of king that planet Earth should ever have. Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. We lose something of God's power when we strip Jesus of his kingly status. And sometimes it's important to deconstruct that to make sure we haven't, you know, idolized his power instead of seeing that he's the anti-king. Does that make sense? Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Why are they saying rebuke your disciples? They know exactly what's going on here. They're watching the guy ride the unridden colt, chanting the hymns that you sing when the Messiah approaches. I mean, they're not idiots. They see what's happening and they're saying, No, no, no, no, no. Here's your sh here's your chance, buddy. Rebuke your disciples, cut this out. Do they have the authority to tell Jesus not to be king? They're gonna try. I tell you, he replied, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. And now we realize, oh, this is no ordinary king, this is the king of the universe. Inanimate objects bend the knee to this king. Stones sing of God's praise. Why? Because this is the God that made rocks and minerals and atoms. This is the God who made all of creation. And so if these human beings close up their mouths, the white-tailed deers will dance us, you know, dance in the hills, and the the rams will bleat, and the sheep will cry out, and the lions will roar, and the rocks will sing. I tell you, he replied, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes. So Jesus kind of pauses. Uh he's approaching Jerusalem and he weeps over the city. Why is Jesus crying when he looks out at God's, you know, the city of God, the city of David, why would he be crying?

SPEAKER_06 22:04

It's become so corrupt and nobody's really found. God speak themselves.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

It's become so corrupt, people are out for themselves, people are selfish, people are greedy, people are pursuing worldly power, worldly understandings of power. Nobody has eyes to even see. I mean, he literally says it, what would make for peace? If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes, what would have brought Jerusalem peace that day?

SPEAKER_04 22:47

God is returning to the city to dwell in this.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

I mean, read the end of the Bible. There's a chance here for humanity to see that God Himself, incarnate in Jesus Christ, is entering our world. I mean, as as dramatically as he did in Christmas, now fulfilling all of what the incarnation means, coming to Jerusalem to dwell in Jerusalem, to sit down on his throne. And if the whole city worshiped and praised, if the whole city understood, yeah, we there's no reason we don't have to fight Rome anymore. Rome has no power here. We don't need money anymore. What is money? If all the systems that people are leveraging for their own greed, for their own power, if all those systems would have just halted, and the people would have sang as the stones themselves are singing, I mean, peace. Peace on earth. You know, in that phrase the stones would cry out, it's so it's so powerful, I would imagine, for the the earliest readers of this, because Christianity emerges uh really a couple decades after the life of Jesus. And part of why it emerges and and and finds its own legs so quickly is because uh because of what happens to Jerusalem after Jesus. Jerusalem ends up being conquered and destroyed by the Roman Empire. And and when they go to destroy the temple um because of the Jewish-Roman War, uh they line up logs on the outside of the temple, and all those limestones, all those rocks, they cry out. Only they cry out in utter pain and agony because the heat from the logs creates steam inside the rocks and they literally explode. And to this day, there's only a little bit of the foundation of the temple, that you know, a little bit of rubble left. We call it the Wailing Wall. And those rocks are huge, but it's nothing compared to what the, you know, what the entirety of the platform and the temple was like before Rome destroyed it. And so the rocks literally do cry out. And if anybody, you know, a couple decades after Jesus, after 70 AD, when that temple is destroyed and the city is in shambles, and the Jewish faith has been squished like a bug and it's seeped out the edges in forms like uh like rabbinical traditions and and Phariseeic traditions and Christianity, um, if they'd be reading this, I'm sure they would see the irony. If Jerusalem knew what would make for peace, and they don't, and what's the impact of that? Total war and destruction. If we knew what would make for peace, we would unplug AI right now. And we're not going to. Even if Anthropic comes forward and says, Can we have a global halt on AI, please? Because it's gonna become sentient soon and we might lose control of it. We won't stop it. We won't. Why not? Why won't we stop it? Why won't we stop making weapons of war? Because they might make them first, and we have to protect ourselves, damn it. If only we knew what would make for peace. And do you know what makes for peace? I mean the rest of the Jesus story. Break bread together, Last Supper, pray together, help each other out, talk to each other, and learn from each other. Jesus goes to the cross and dies in love, in non-violent resistance against the powers of this world. And so he's weeping before this all happened, he knows what's gonna happen. He knows that humanity will choose the path of conflict, the path of aggression, the path of anti-love, the path of power, the path of I'd rather hold my own destiny in my hands than hand my destiny over to God. And so he weeps. If you knew, and and the irony, Yerushalem, city of peace, Jerusalem literally means the city of peace. And in both the Muslim faith, the Jewish faith, and the Christian faith, in all three, Jerusalem, however you translate it, means city of peace. The irony, you guys. It's so sad. And I'm laughing because the laughing is just avoiding the tears that I should be shedding, like Jesus, that even to this day the Middle East is at war. And not just the Middle East, the rest of the world is preparing for war. Like we didn't learn from World War II, like we didn't learn from World War One. Right. That's how it works. Right. As long as we have an enemy, we will defend ourselves against an enemy. Does Jesus have any enemies? Yeah. What happens when the enemies say death to Jesus? He lets them kill him. I mean that that's what I'm saying. Like he even that it's always the same story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how could how could it be that Christians would want to too? Every major religion has people who are radicalized and think that war is the answer. There are Christians who read this story of Jesus and think that war is the answer. Like they skip the whole riding a donkey instead of a war horse thing. Insert all of the crusades, right? The 1100s. Do you know what that I mean? Just human beings from England to France to Italy, just getting their dad's sword and meeting up with people and walking all the way to Jerusalem to just die in a mud fight with Muslims over this city called peace. I mean, for 2,000 years we've gone to war over this spot on the planet, and it is no accident that Jesus enters the city and weeps and says, If only you knew what would make for peace, and do you know what would make for peace? And they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And you're right, it takes two to tango.

SPEAKER_04 29:51

And neither side backs down.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Not unless both sides win, right? And Jesus offers us just a totally different way, and the world still doesn't fully understand it. The cost of discipleship is a burden to carry your own cross. I mean, he says that again and again throughout the gospels. We still hardly know what it means. His disciples knew exactly what it means. I mean, it's it's no accident that his closest disciples are crucified or martyred or killed in the same type of fashion that he is, because they knew exactly what makes for peace, which is if my enemy wants to hurt me, well then I do what Jesus said. I turn the other cheek. And I keep turning the other cheek until they learn that they don't have to hit me to get their way. And there's a million examples where that's inappropriate, right? If you're a if you're a spouse and your spouse is hitting you, and I'm not saying turn the other cheek. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just I'm saying leaders of the church should follow the way of Jesus. Peace. Peace. So as he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it, and we weep over it, and said, If you, even you, had known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes. This is a couple decades before the war, right? The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. And this literally happens in the Jewish Roman War. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you. There's a there's a time for peace. There's a time to claim peace. And then Jesus' warning if you don't claim peace long enough while war is coming, the war is gonna come. And when when that day happened, I mean Jerusalem is in shambles. It takes centuries to rebuild that city. And arguably it's just never become, you know, the kind of city that it was under David. When Jesus entered the temple court, so so he enters the city, and then he, where does he go next? He goes immediately to the temple. He doesn't go to one of Herod's palaces, which is maybe where the king would be. He doesn't go to where Pilate's headquarters are, he goes to God's house, the temple. When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. It is written, he said to them, My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it into a den of robbers. What does that mean? Why are there people selling things in the temple? And do we do a version of this today?

unknown 33:23

And someone's gonna male and they have to do it.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

So how do they make money by asking people to like by selling things? So people people come and they need to buy some doves, and so they've got cages of doves, and you can purchase a dove in order to okay how much money are there are there other ways that uh that they manipulate you with money in the temple in the time of Jesus? So so if you want to go in and buy from these people who are selling you doves or a sacrificial animal or uh you know a certain amount of grain to sacrifice, um, and you go up to them and you jingle your pocket and you've got some Roman money, they'll say, that money's not good here. You need to go go back to the gate and do a currency exchange. And what happens when you make a currency exchange? Is that a fair trade? No. And most people it's not a fair trade, and most people uh are making one to two pilgrimages in their entire life. Now, there are people who are devout, and and you hear stories of them throughout scripture, they go to every festival. Obviously, there's people who go to every festival and and they make that a priority in their life. There's other people who um these festivals happen to come at the same time when you know the harvest is going on, or you've got a job in that city over there, and you can't just get off work. Uh, and so some families, and also it's expensive to travel in the ancient world. You've got to find a caravan, you can't just pack up your own minivan and drive with gas stations along the way. And you've got to find a group of people, maybe your whole village is gonna go, and your whole village doesn't go all the time, so you've got to wait for the whole village to decide to go or find a caravan that you trust to travel with. Some people might go to the temple just once in their life, and it will be a glorious experience for them, and they'll give their life's earnings in order to have a chance to offer something before the Lord. And Jesus is saying that system should be free, that system should be prayerful and holy, and they've turned it into a den of robbers and thieves. And why have they done that? What why would they do that?

SPEAKER_04 36:47

Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Yeah. And it's so beautiful, and that's the way it could be. People gathering for this beautiful festival, gathering to sing, gathering to worship. That's really what it's designed to be. It's designed to be this holy festival, you know? Yeah. And you know, 10 years before Jesus is on the scene, before he begins his active ministry, if you were a devout Jewish person, are you excited about what's happened to the temple? No. You you might be proud of it because Herod the Great, for 60 years, was building out the temple to be as big and beautiful as it can, could be. But all of his funding and all of his money was coming from the evil Roman Empire. He was building out the temple for a purpose. And the purpose was Rome completely understood how to govern people and keep the peace. And they would govern people by allowing them to worship their own gods. And and then, in the same way that tax collectors are really just middlemen funneling money towards Caesar, the temple itself had become like a middleman funneling money up to the emperor. And so you build out this extra glorious temple that's the biggest it's ever been, bigger than Solomon's temple. You you make the money changers a system, you encourage the priests to sell things within after the currency is exchanged. But then guess who's in the back room re-exchanging that currency back to Roman money? You know, the same people selling, right? And Rome is sitting there accruing wealth on the Jewish religious system. It is corrupt. And Jesus walks in and says, This is corrupt. And 10 years before Jesus and 10 years after Jesus, Jewish, devout Jewish people will look at that system and say, This is so unfair. We have to get the pagans out of our holy temple. I mean, the idea that the temple would be a place of prayer and not a den of thieves would be a very, very popular idea. And everyone would have ideas on how to make that happen, including what ends up happening in 66 AD when finally they revolt and they go to war and they stab all the soldiers and they gut them and they clear out the city, only to have Rome bring the army, surround the city, and destroy the entire thing, and hunt down every Jewish soldier that they could find and kill them. You go out to Masada and see what Rome, what a crazy Roman general did to find the last couple people that he just wanted to kill. It's it's really nuts what happens from 66 to 70 AD. And Jesus is saying, I this is gonna happen unless all of us decide, including he's talking to the priests, right? He's talking to the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the religious leaders. He's talking to all of Israel and saying, unless you all decide to change, unless you know what makes for peace, this thing's gonna end messy, hot, and on fire. Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. It is written, he said to them, My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. Every day he was teaching at the temple, but the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Let's what's that list again? So he's teaching, let's say he gets there on a Monday, and for the whole week leading up to the Friday Passover festival, Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, he's teaching in the temple courts, a very public, open spot. Anyone can go in and gather a group and sit on some stairs in Solomon's colonnade and have a conversation and teach. He's doing all this publicly. He's not hiding. He's just in a public spot teaching. And the chief priests do not like it. Why? Because they're corrupt and they don't want to change. The teachers of the law and the leaders among the people are all trying to kill him. Because the leadership, the teachers, and the priests are all corrupt. Or the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people aren't as corrupt as the chief priests, but they don't like Jesus because he seems to be interpreting Torah in a different way than they interpret it. So it's quite possible that there's a diversity of reasons as to why these leaders want to get rid of this rabble rouser, this renegade. You know, we have tamed Jesus and neutered him to be this like really nice, good shepherd, tends the sheep kind of king. He is a king who comes in the name of peace. There's also a way to give Jesus immense power without giving him war power. Do you know what I mean by that? It in one way is just to see the effect that he has. We're still talking about Jesus. I mean, the whole world has found out about this guy. And you know what? 99% of the world has no idea about the Jewish Roman war, which, if you were alive in the time of Jesus, would have been the biggest thing that happened in Jerusalem in 300 years. But today we're talking about this rabbi who's teaching and is killed like a common criminal. I mean, that's his power. His power is that his love and his goodness and his holiness is so true and so real that human beings want to pay attention to him. It's like we're attracted to him. It's really neat. His healing power. Everything he offers is benevolent. Everything he offers is good. Now it requires us setting down some of our expectations of what is good. But everything Jesus is trying to do is to bless us and keep us safe and bring about peace and forgive us and heal us and reconcile us. And you can you can feel his magnetism if if you open yourself to him, right? So the chief priests, the teachers of the law, the leaders among the people were trying to kill him, yet they could not find any way to kill him because all the people hung. On his words. How do you kill the guy that everybody loves? That was verse 48. Yeah, they could not find any way to do it because all the people hung on his words. How do you kill the guy that everyone loves? You gotta you gotta do it secretly. You need to stage a kind of trial that smears him with enough baggage that people accept that he deserves to be killed. And and what would make it even better is if you could get Rome to do it, then it wouldn't be us, it would be Rome. Right? And so they they're hatching a plan to kill Jesus behind the scenes, to stage a false smear campaign against him, to get the pagans to do it, to do their dirty work. And meanwhile, Jesus, day after day after day, is revealing truth and goodness by teaching. And what is he teaching? He's teaching Torah, he's teaching God's word, he's opening up God's word so that people understand how God is working in this world, how God wants to redeem things, how this whole thing is coming about. And meanwhile, evil behind the scenes is just working against it. One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple courts and proclaiming the good news, and what's the good news that he's proclaiming? You go back to the very first time Jesus preached. He goes to the synagogue on the appropriate day, and he gets to read the scroll of Isaiah. And he says, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news. And to whom is the good news? Who receives the good news? To proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind. And when it gets to that part, the blind guy who joined the movement back in Jericho cheers extra loudly, right? To set the oppressed free and the family that just spent their life savings buying two turtle doves, cheers, right? Because they understand that they're victims in this paradigm. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, which is the year of Jubilee. We've talked about this, the the canceling of all debts, right? The the renegotiating and sharing of all property. So that that guy whose farm has acquired 150 farms around his farm has to go back to just owning one farm, and the other families get to reclaim their granddaddy's farm, right? So that when it says he's proclaiming good news, he's talking about forgiveness, he's talking about the release of prisoners, he's talking about the canceling of economic um oppression. He's talking about bringing about the good life. He's also saying that this is all readily available. Now God is with us and turn to God. He's encouraging the city to turn to God. Here you are. You're coming to the temple. Don't come to the temple for your own sake. Come to worship the holy and other God, right? So there's a lot in that message of proclaiming the good news. A lot that the wealthy, the powerful would not like, and a lot that some wealthy and powerful would love, right? Let's not just paint all wealthy and powerful people with a broad brush. There's wealthy and powerful people that are following the Jesus movement saying, Yes, this is what we've always longed for, right? Tell us, uh, so the teachers of the law, together with the elders and the chief priests, they come up to him and they say, Tell us, verse two, tell us by what authority you are doing these things. Who gave you this authority? Why do they need to double check that? They're quite certain they have authority. This is their domain, they're in charge, and yet also are they? You only ask by whose authority you do something if your form of authority is finicky at best. Did Rome put you up to this? Right? That's kind of the question behind this. Um Are you on our side? Clearly you're saying a different message than us. What does Rome think? What do the truly powerful in our world think? Who's got the authority? Are they asking if God has given him the authority? They should be. That's that's the right answer. You know, the big guy upstairs who is their boss. Uh, is he the one giving you the author? I hope their question is genuine. I hope that they genuinely are wondering if Jesus has authority that is God derived. I think they're probably just double checking to make sure he doesn't have some mega donors behind him whose name are Caesar and, you know, Admiral and think about how it was then.

unknown 49:53

They didn't have anything.

SPEAKER_00 49:55

Exactly. Right. Totally. These priests have never met the Caesar. But they know he's the big guy behind the scenes, yeah.

unknown 50:07

Why not?

SPEAKER_00 50:08

Oh, totally. Yep. Uh they also, you know, they want to try to trap him. So they want to have the conversation about authority because if he starts talking about God's authority, if he gets a little too kooky and out there theologically, that's an in for them, right? They can leverage if they're trying to debate him publicly and win the debate publicly. Now, Jesus is a master jujitsu Jedi knight. He does not lose in public debates. So he asks a fantastic follow-up question. He replied, I will also, so he doesn't directly answer who gave you this authority. He says, I will also ask you a question. Tell me, John's baptism. You know John the Baptist? You know the most popular prophet that this world has ever known? You know the guy that thousands and thousands and thousands of Jewish people went out of the city, out of Judea, out of the wilderness, out from the north, down to the Jordan River to be baptized by. You know that John Baptist guy that like 80% of Jewish people were baptized by? That super popular figure? You know, his baptism? Was it from heaven? Or of human origin? Why is that such a genius response? Maybe who's he actually talking to when he asks that question? Who does he want to hear him ask that question? He's talking to the priests, but he's also talking to the people. Because if you're somebody who uh is a devout Jew, you love God, you worship God, you go to the temple for forgiveness of sins, you also went and were baptized by John. Do you want the temple to tell you that John's baptism is a human baptism that doesn't matter? No. And so he's challenging the temple with a system, with a popular system that has been challenging the temple for years now, and that is very, very well received by people. So if the crowds have all been baptized by John, and then these priests say, Yeah, that wasn't real, then the crowds immediately are on Jesus' side. Well, they discussed it among themselves. If we say from heaven, he will ask, why didn't you believe him, right? If we say that John was a real prophet and his baptism is from heaven, then he'll say, Why didn't you ever leave the temple and go get baptized? If God is on the move out there and you love God and you serve God, why didn't you go and get baptized, right? But if we say of human origin, all the people will stone us because they're persuaded that John was a prophet.

SPEAKER_04 53:17

Man, they're in a tough spot, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 53:24

The people will kill them for blasphemy if they say that John's baptism isn't from heaven. So if this is a public challenge, somebody with authority challenges somebody with authority publicly. Who won that debate? Who's winning it so far? Jesus. Yeah. So they answered, uh, we do not know. I love that. We do we do not know. And Jesus said, Well, then neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. Mic drop, right? Challenge accepted, volley returned, points for Jesus. Now I like to assume that there is more that's happening than just what we get in the Bible, and I and I imagine that this type of thing is happening this whole week. That uh chief priests changing shifts, or chief, you know, different religious leaders listening to him talk are trying to challenge Jesus, and he's just batting them away like flies, like pests, all week long, and it ticks them off so much. And they will go behind closed doors and they will commiserate and they will say, We're too powerful to let this fool take our power. And if only they knew what would make for peace. You go back to Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem. Is it peace if the powerful aren't willing to give up their power? No, there won't be. There won't be peace until the powerful on both sides, all sides, are willing to give up their power. Right? That's that's actually what makes for peace. And this is, you know, this is why there are systems today. We're talking about kings versus democracy in America right now. That's and really the whole Western world is talking about that. And I think it's a fair com we should have public debates about that, but I also think it's missing the mark because we're not actually talking about power when we have those conversations. We're talking about the perception of power. The idea of human beings voting as opposed to one ruler deciding feels like a transfer of power. Except that we don't have a pure people are voting system. We just don't. With citizens united, powerful people do not have to give up their power in order to gain peace, right? With the the way our society is set up, we're not going to solve the problem by just that side versus that side. Jesus is absolutely challenging every human heart to ask, will you give up yourself in order for the other to flourish? That's what he models. Will you give up yourself in order to have the other flourish? And that's just it's a conversation that's not happening publicly in our modern-day politics. It should be happening more in religious circles. What does it mean to bear our cross, to follow Jesus, to go the way of God and not our own way? Can we deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him?

unknown 57:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

He's been capable of doing the God.

unknown 57:13

Right. And then all the people, I mean, I work with something. I don't think my people. Right.

SPEAKER_03 57:26

Yeah.

unknown 57:27

And I didn't know many of them.

SPEAKER_00 57:28

Right. Right, right, right. Yeah, companies are c companies today are are an interesting, you know. I was just having a conversation with somebody after church yesterday about what it's like to work at their company and how decent and kind people are towards each other. You can find companies where people are decent and kind towards each other. Um, and then, you know, I I've got a good friend who works for this mega conglomerate insurance company in Grand Rapids, Acquisure, a Kryzer, I don't know how to say it. You know, they just announced that they that they fired 1,800 people because of their AI system. They've been using AI for seven years, but they were able to let go of 1800 people in their global business because computers can do those jobs now. And I was asking him if you know if he got cut along with those 1800, and he goes, No, I was actually on the other side of it. He said, and and I was helping to plan that. And and and that was just a fascinating conversation because here you have a guy who can't change the system if he tried. He feels like he has zero power, and yet he's got a family he's got to provide for, he's got a job that he doesn't want to lose. And when the boss comes to him and says, I need you to come up with a plan that you can, you know, save us money over here, and it ruins 1800 people's j lives, you know. And he actually said, I was surprised it was only 1800 because we projected 2600. And that was a surprise. And and someday will that come for him? Yeah. It it literally came for him two years ago when the same thing happened and he lost his job at that company before the company hired him back again, right? It it's just do we know what makes for peace in our world?

SPEAKER_01 59:17

Some people do all the trench corporations like that, and like yeah, the people that work for the benefit.

SPEAKER_03 59:25

Right.

SPEAKER_04 59:28

Yeah. I mean, really good paying the worst of the character that we're still being. Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 59:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 59:45

And I considered their work with the thing.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

Exactly. Or I think about my grandpa who worked for DW before DW sold, and he got a pension. He stocked shelves for DW for 30 years. He put an apron around his waist, and he made sure food was on the shelves. And he he retired with a pension that was nice. And he was able to buy a home and pay for college for his kids and retire. And today, DW literally has robots stocking shelves, you know, and they're not they they canceled their pension plan, right? They that's too much liquid cash that they didn't want on hand, controlled by the working class, you know, or or just divvied out to the working class. They they wanted uh to have more leverage, right? And that's it just gets ugly quickly. Do we know what makes for peace? Short answer, no. No. And I'll put myself in that position too. I don't always know what makes for peace. But I I do trust that Jesus does, and I'm gonna spend my life trying to follow his way and figure out how he lived and make the best decisions I can, and I will fail, I won't be perfect, but I I trust that this guy here is the one to learn from.

unknown 1:01:14

But I think we don't think bad for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:21

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:26

But that's right. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. You're talking about how to reconcile. Yeah. You can you can surprise people just in the way you behave. Yeah. All right, friends, we will leave it there. Jesus wins the the argument uh about where his authority is derived from. Grace and peace, everybody.