This morning, if you would take your Bibles and turn with me to Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel, and I’d like to begin reading at verse 28 through the end of the, through verse 44.
And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem. 29 And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, 30 saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. 31 And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him. 32 And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them. 33 And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? 34 And they said, The Lord hath need of him. 35 And they brought him to Jesus: and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon. 36 And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way. 37 And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; 38 saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. 39 And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. 40 And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.
41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, 42 saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. 43 For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, 44 and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.
Let’s just go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, I pray that you just speak to us this morning through your word. And Lord, I pray that you just help us to understand the circumstances that were surrounding when Jesus was entering into Jerusalem on that last Passover where he would be offered as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.
Lord, speak to us through your word and help us to understand your word this morning. And Lord, may our hearts and our attitudes be such that we long to see his second appearing. And we long for that day where peace shall rule from Jerusalem and he shall return at the end of the great tribulation and establish his kingdom.
And Lord, may we look to heaven and long for the rapture, the day that we shall be called to meet him. And Lord, may we desire that that day would come soon. Speak to us now, we pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen. As you look at the events that were surrounding last Sunday, we talked about what Jesus had done shortly before the Passover began. And he had gone to Bethany where Mary, Martha and Lazarus, very close friends, lived.
And he had gone there at the beckoning of Martha and Mary because Lazarus had died. He was initially ill when Jesus was first called. And you remember he delayed two days and then it took another two days for him to get there.
And Lazarus had been dead four days. But it was done so that they would all know who he was and see his power and authority. He wept at the grave of Lazarus.
He wept because he saw the reality of death and the pain that death caused. In the text this morning when he was getting ready to enter into Jerusalem, he overlooked the city and he wept again. Because he understood the reality of the situation of the hearts of the people there and their total lack of understanding.
That he was entering into the city of Jerusalem, not as the conquering king, but as the Lamb of God to take away their sin and the sin of the world. This morning I want to give us a lot of background into the events. And like I said, next Sunday we’re going to even look into greater depth into things that happened around the Passover time.
And things that were going on then and a couple days after the Passover as well. I mean the Palm Sunday when Jesus entered into Jerusalem. In order to understand the Scripture you need to understand the philosophies and beliefs and the worship that the people had and what they were looking for as Jesus is coming.
And so I wanted to give you first of all some of the people that really were Jesus’ enemies standing against the message that he was bringing. A message of salvation. And the sad thing is, many of these men that stood against Jesus should have been the ones that were knowing that he was coming and welcoming him.
In the Scriptures it talks about four various groups of people that were Jewish men that had various positions and beliefs. I want to share those with you this morning so that you understand who they are, what they believed and what they found so wrong with Jesus. First of all I want to talk to you about the Sadducees.
The Sadducees were the priests that were in charge of the temple. The Sadducees were the ones that were responsible for the sacrifices and for getting the animals in order and making the sacrifices on behalf of the people. The Sadducees were also responsible for collecting the tithes and the offerings of the people as they were the priestly group.
However, the Sadducees were anything but godly. If you look at their belief system, the Bible reveals to us that the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in miracles.
The Sadducees did not believe in the power and the authority of God. Yet they were the ones that were supposed to be the ones leading the people in worship. And they were the ones that were supposed to be the ones directing the people towards God.
What the Sadducees had done, being led by their high priest, who really was not the correct high priest at the time, because they had made arrangements with the Roman government that if they would control the people for Rome, Rome would help them and give them power and authority over the people. And they appointed men who were not in the line of Aaron and should have been the high priest to be the high priest. Caiaphas was not supposed to be the high priest, but he was.
And it was done in political arrangements with Rome. That was the Sadducees. The second group, if you were alive at the time of Jesus, you would have said, they are such moral men.
They were the Pharisees. Now the Pharisees were an interesting lot. And they had another close group of men that were intricately entwined with them, and that would be the Scribes.
Because you often will read in Scripture that the Scribes and the Pharisees. The Scribes and the Pharisees. So who were the Scribes and who were the Pharisees? The Pharisees were literalists.
They believed in the literal interpretation of the Word of God. The only problem is, they liked to add to the literal interpretation of the Word of God. If God said that you should do thus and thus, they would add also thus and thus and thus.
Because they wanted to have control over the people as well. And they were the ones that were telling the people, this is what you’ve got to do to have a relationship with God. The Pharisees were a group of men that were self-righteous and viewed themselves above everyone else.
And especially, especially if they viewed you as a sinner. They were much better than you. Jesus gave some examples.
He gave an example of a man who came into the temple one day, and he was a Pharisee. And he came into the temple, and he’s offering a prayer. And he prays so all can hear him.
He wants everyone to know his prayer. And pride just exudes from him. But Jesus wasn’t impressed.
Because he was drawing attention to himself and not really seeking God. The scribes, the scribes were responsible for recording the scriptures. And they were responsible to record every jot and tittle correctly.
If a scribe was writing a portion of scripture and recording it, and he made an error, he had to go back and start over again. Because every jot and tittle was to be recorded as the scripture, as Jesus says, that it was. That was the job of the scribes.
But they recorded all the scripture, but the scripture never got from their hand to their heart. They would record the scripture and know the scripture, but it never penetrated their minds. And they were greatly influenced by the attitude of the Pharisees.
The Pharisees were viewed by the people as being so righteous that you remember when Jesus told his disciples that one had to be more righteous than the Pharisees if he was to gain heaven. They said, well who can gain heaven then? Because they viewed the Pharisees as righteous men. But Jesus is saying, they’re not righteous.
You need to have a pure heart that can only be given to you by the Lord. Not by yourself. So the Sadducees didn’t believe the Bible, but yet they were in charge of promoting the Bible.
The Pharisees took the Bible to extremes and added to it, and never allowed it to penetrate with God’s grace and mercy and love. As a matter of fact, Jesus said that the Pharisees were so corrupt that they would scour the whole earth to find one convert. And when they had found him, they would take him closer to hell than heaven.
That was their belief system. Well there’s another group of people that are introduced in the account of when Jesus enters the last days of the Passover into the city and into the tabernacle. And we see that the Sadducees come and the Pharisees come and they wanted to trick Jesus.
But there’s another group of people and they’re the Herodians. Who are the Herodians? Well, they would be closer in many ways to their political belief system than the Sadducees. Because their goal was to combine the Roman government with Jewish theology and make them one so that Rome wouldn’t put pressure on the Jewish people.
And so they tried to draw very close to Herod, that’s why they were called the Herodians. And if you look at what was happening at that particular time in Israel, the descendants of Herod the Great were now the ones that had been entrusted with various portions of the nation of Israel. They had been divided amongst three of his descendants.
And they were trying to align themselves and gain favor with Herod so that he in turn would show favor to them, the Herodians. They really didn’t desire the things of God. They were seeking political support and seeking political help and seeking to make political alliances.
That’s why I say that they’re much closer to the Sadducees than the Pharisees. Because I don’t know even how much they believed the Bible at all. There’s another group of people at this particular time that are influencing the Jewish leadership.
They’re not mentioned per se in scripture, but they are mentioned in history, and that’s the Essenes. These were people that felt you needed to totally withdraw from the world. They went down and lived in the caves in Qumran.
Many people believe that the scriptures that are recorded are in the vials that were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were found in the vials in the caves, were probably written by the Essenes. They had an extreme belief system that you totally withdrew from the world and that it’s the only way that you can keep yourself pure.
But the problem was they couldn’t keep themselves pure either. If you’ve heard of Masada, most historians probably believe the group of people that ended up at the top of Masada and withheld the Roman army and finally all took their own lives rather than be killed or taken into slavery by Rome as Rome built a giant ramp up to Masada. It was huge because Masada sat on the top of a great big cliff or bluff that they were Essenes.
This is the group of Jewish leadership that you had at the time of Jesus for spiritual leaders that the people looked to. Political leaders, well you had Rome and you had Rome. Rome was controlling still at that time that part of the world.
Rome still had power although its power was beginning to crack. As I mentioned, the Herods were the ones that inherited Jerusalem. And in many ways, they viewed Jerusalem as nothing but trouble because the Jews always gave them trouble and they didn’t really enjoy having that as their station but they took it.
Herod the Great, which was the Herod that was in charge at the time of when Jesus’ birth, went to school with Cleopatra and Mark Antony in Rome. He was called Herod the Great because he’s the one that put the big addition onto the temple that had been built by Ezra and it’s called Herod’s, the temple built during Herod’s time but actually he remodeled and made it much huger and more beautiful than it was under Ezra’s building because it didn’t have the material or the money at that time. He also built a palace on Masada and his whole purpose in building the palace on Masada was because he feared Cleopatra.
He feared Cleopatra and felt that this would be a place he could go to escape from her if she ever came after him. He also built other buildings in Israel at that time but politically he hated Jews. He was their king and you see that his descendants at the time that Jesus was entering Jerusalem to be the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world, his descendants had been declared to be king over Israel even though the Herods were descendants of Esau, not Jacob.
Had no right to the throne, had no right to rule over the Jewish people. That’s some of the political intrigue that’s going on and you’re not going to understand the scripture and you’re not going to understand really what’s going on as Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday unless you know and the events that go on during that week, unless you have the background of those various groups of people. Now you add to this the vast majority of the common people.
Jesus has been ministering for three years. The majority of his ministry has been up in the Galilee region in northern Israel. He comes down to southern Israel for the feasts and he ministers there.
He went to the east side of Galilee to the ten Gentile cities one time and ministered there. He went, forget Tyre or Sidon, one of the two cities one time in southern, what is today southern Beirut. You’ve been hearing about Tyre and Sidon in the news.
He went to one of those cities one time and ministered to a Gentile woman. But the majority of his ministry was right around the sea of Galilee. Capernaum is his home base.
And I want you to understand the dynamics of the people in Israel at this time. The people in northern Israel were viewed by the people of southern Israel as the hillbillies and the hicks, if you put it into the vernacular of America. They’d be viewed kind of as the people that come from the Ozarks and that down there.
They’re not classy like we are in Jerusalem. And so you had a divide amongst the Jewish people as well. But also the Jewish people were tired of Rome.
They were tired of being controlled and manipulated by Rome, of paying taxes to Rome. If you understand the significance of who Jesus chose for his disciples, it’s very interesting too. Matthew was a tax collector.
Matthew would have been viewed as a traitor by the majority of the Jewish people because he was collecting taxes from Rome from them. And the way he made his money, as we mentioned last week, because Zacchaeus was a tax collector too, the way he made his money is whatever he could get in addition to what Rome wanted, he could keep. So a lot of times the tax collectors weren’t the most upright and honest people in the world.
Yet Jesus called Matthew and Matthew came and left being a tax collector and followed Jesus. At the same time, there was another belief system and group of people in Israel that were called the Zealots. The Zealots wanted to throw Rome off by force.
Jesus had a Zealot. He called a Zealot was one of his disciples. The person Barabbas, who was at the trial of Jesus, Rome would allow as a gesture of goodwill to the Jewish people that allow one condemned person a year to be set free during their Passover celebration.
Pilate tried to have that person be Jesus, but the people just cried out, crucify him, crucify him. And so he brought out another man who he thought the people would, the stark contrast between these two men was so great, they would automatically pick the other guy. That man was Barabbas.
Barabbas was a man who was an insurrectionist who had tried to overthrow Rome. He was a man who had done all kinds of wicked and evil things. Yet the people wanted Barabbas.
This is the dynamics that was going on. If you look at the dynamics of Israel during the time of Jesus when he came to enter as the Lamb of God into the city of Jerusalem, and you look at the dynamics of our country and the world today, things haven’t changed a lot. You’ve got people who look to politics and politicians as the means by which they’ll be delivered.
You’ve got religious people who are looking for the wrong reason to turn to God. You’ve got politicians and people of the world that despise Christians but pretend they don’t. And you’ve got political leaders and religious leaders that don’t believe the Bible at all and twist it and contort it to their own means.
That’s what you had as Jesus is preparing to enter into Jerusalem. Now, we say, what about the disciples? Surely, they’ve got it right, right? They are the ones that are going to become the apostles that are going to spread the gospel throughout the whole earth. And surely the majority of the people, as Jesus is marching from up north, and he’s going down to Jerusalem for the Passover, as he goes, he teaches. He doesn’t just walk without ever saying a word, but he teaches.
And as he teaches, he’s gathering people. People, they say, no one had ever taught like this man teaches. With the authority he possesses.
Why? Because he wrote the word of God himself. Because he was God. John tells us in his gospel, he was the word, the logos.
So of course he could teach with great authority. He wasn’t calling on Rabbi so-and-so, who interpreted from Rabbi so-and-so, who interpreted from Rabbi so-and-so. He spoke with the authority of God himself.
And so the people are following him. And they’re looking at all the dynamics that are going on in Israel at this time. And they’re thinking, we’re going to go to Jerusalem, but we’ve got those corrupt Sadducees and those self-righteous Pharisees.
And those Essenes that just want to leave the planet. And the Herodians that want to join with Rome. But we’ve got Jesus.
And he’s preaching truth. So let’s follow him. And I would venture to say, especially when you begin to look at the right words are said as he enters Jerusalem, but the understanding was wrong.
As we read in the text this morning, they cried out, Son of David, save us. What were they looking for salvation from? If you go to most people in the United States today, even Christians, and you ask them, what do you need to be saved from? How many of them would raise their hands and say, my sin, my selfish desires, the wickedness of my heart, my rebellion against God, my creator. No, they’d probably go, I need to be saved from a corrupt banking system that’s about ready to go bankrupt.
I need to be saved from corrupt politicians that only line their own pockets. I need to be saved from these world entities that want to destroy me and the United States. I need to be saved from these things.
Well, they’re real issues. Just as they were real issues during the time that Jesus walked on the earth, but the biggest problem which was behind every one of those issues. Have you ever stopped to think, what is the problem in the Middle East? Ever stop to think, what is the problem in the Middle East? It’s been going on for 2,000 years, over 2,000 years.
It’s been going on for just about 4,000 years, ever since the time of Abraham. It’s been going on. Before the time of Abraham it was going on.
All the way back to Cain and Abel it’s been going on. You know what the real problem in the Middle East is? It’s a spiritual problem. It’s a spiritual battle.
God made certain promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And some of those promises dealt with the land. Have you ever stopped to think, we’ve got a map out there in the foyer and it’s on a bulletin board and it says areas to pray for and areas where the gospel is hard to get in and areas where the gospel is not allowed.
What about the disciples? Surely, they’ve got it right, right? They are the ones that are going to become the apostles that are going to spread the gospel throughout the whole earth. And surely the majority of the people, as Jesus is marching from up north, and he’s going down to Jerusalem for the Passover, as he goes, he teaches. He doesn’t just walk without ever saying a word, but he teaches.
And as he teaches, he’s gathering people. People, they say, no one had ever taught like this man teaches. With the authority he possesses.
Why? Because he wrote the word of God himself. Because he was God. John tells us in his gospel, he was the word, the logos.
So of course he could teach with great authority. He wasn’t calling on Rabbi so-and-so, who interpreted from Rabbi so-and-so, who interpreted from Rabbi so-and-so. He spoke with the authority of God himself.
And so the people are following him. And they’re looking at all the dynamics that are going on in Israel at this time. And they’re thinking, we’re going to go to Jerusalem, but we’ve got those corrupt Sadducees and those self-righteous Pharisees.
And those Essenes that just want to leave the planet. And the Herodians that want to join with Rome. But we’ve got Jesus.
And he’s preaching truth. So let’s follow him. And I would venture to say, especially when you begin to look at the right words are said as he enters Jerusalem, but the understanding was wrong.
As we read in the text this morning, they cried out, Son of David, save us. What were they looking for salvation from? If you go to most people in the United States today, even Christians, and you ask them, what do you need to be saved from? How many of them would raise their hands and say, my sin, my selfish desires, the wickedness of my heart, my rebellion against God, my creator. No, they’d probably go, I need to be saved from a corrupt banking system that’s about ready to go bankrupt.
I need to be saved from corrupt politicians that only line their own pockets. I need to be saved from these world entities that want to destroy me and the United States. I need to be saved from these things.
Well, they’re real issues. Just as they were real issues during the time that Jesus walked on the earth, but the biggest problem which was behind every one of those issues. Have you ever stopped to think, what is the problem in the Middle East? Ever stop to think, what is the problem in the Middle East? It’s been going on for 2,000 years, over 2,000 years.
It’s been going on for just about 4,000 years, ever since the time of Abraham. It’s been going on. Before the time of Abraham it was going on.
All the way back to Cain and Abel it’s been going on. You know what the real problem in the Middle East is? It’s a spiritual problem. It’s a spiritual battle.
God made certain promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And some of those promises dealt with the land. Have you ever stopped to think, we’ve got a map out there in the foyer and it’s on a bulletin board and it says areas to pray for and areas where the gospel is hard to get in and areas where the gospel is not allowed.
And you look at this map and just about every one of those areas that is hard to get into and the gospel is not allowed are Muslim countries. And you look at the Muslim countries and then you look at that map and if you can find it, you’ll find a little speck that’s Israel. Why should the Muslim countries that surround Israel, that have got so much more land, most of them have oil and other means of great wealth.
Look at some of the Muslim countries in the Gulf. They are so wealthy. United Arab Emirates.
It’s like the ultimate Disneyland for people to go and take vacations. They’ve built islands. They’ve got the tallest building in the world.
You look at pictures and it’s amazing what they’ve done. You’ve got Saudi Arabia who’s got way more land than Israel. You’ve got Iran, a much larger country than Israel.
They have natural resources. They have oil. They have natural gas.
But we want to destroy Israel. Syria wants to destroy Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon wants to destroy Israel.
Why? It’s a spiritual battle. At the heart of it is the fact that men’s hearts are filled with sin and acrid. And the Bible tells us that there are three things that influence our lives.
The world, the flesh, and Satan himself. And the world system is controlled by Satan. Satan tempts us in our flesh and in our natural flesh.
We yield to those temptations and are governed by him. And he desires and hates God and hates all that God loves. And so he wants to destroy Israel.
Was that same belief system there at the time of Jesus? Absolutely. More than once Satan tried to kill Jesus before he could go to the cross and lay down his life where no man took it. Herod the Great tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby.
The synagogue that Jesus grew up in, in Nazareth, when Jesus read from Isaiah 61 and he read the Messianic passage, the first few verses of that passage, and he closed it before it came to the second coming of Jesus. He was talking about the first coming of the Messiah. He closed the scroll and he said, In this day this has been fulfilled.
And it says they took him at that time out to the edge of a cliff and tried to throw him over the cliff. But he walked through them and they couldn’t do it. Because no man could take his life, he laid it down.
But they tried because Satan wanted him dead. Satan tempted him. Attempting to get him to rebel and sin and to take what Satan had grabbed from Adam and Satan said, I’ll give you this.
I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the earth. Well, what kingdoms is he going to give them that God doesn’t ultimately have control over? But the kingdoms of the earth is the ones that Satan controls. If you look at Iran and you look at Daniel, we’re studying Daniel, we will get back to it one of these years.
But Daniel, it says that Gabriel came with a message for Daniel but he couldn’t get there, he was delayed. He started to come to Daniel the minute Daniel prayed but he couldn’t get there because he was withheld by the prince of Persia, a demonic prince, a demonic entity. And he fought with him until Michael came and helped.
They’re spiritual battles. And the battles in the Middle East and the battles in our world are spiritual battles. And people, we get so involved in daily living that we forget that ultimately it’s all going to come to a climax when Jesus returns.
But in order for Him to return as the King of kings and Lord of lords, He had to first come as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. And I wanted you to understand, the majority of the people, as Jesus was coming into the land of Israel at this particular time and getting ready to go into Jerusalem, were looking for Him to be the King that would deliver them out from under the hand of Rome. And establish Israel as the power it had once been under David and Solomon.
That’s what they were looking for. Very few of them, even His own disciples, didn’t understand that He was going to the cross. Remember last Sunday I said that, and read the verse that when they left Capernaum, He told them, We’re going to go to Jerusalem.
I’m going to be arrested. I’m going to be beaten. I’m going to be put to death.
I’m going to be buried and I’m going to rise again from the dead. They didn’t hear it. Got closer to Jerusalem, told them again.
Last Sunday we saw that He was on the outskirts of Jerusalem shortly before He raised Lazarus from the dead. Told them a third time. Never heard it.
Because when they get in there, all they’re thinking about is that He’s the Son of God, the Messiah, and the Messiah is going to come and establish His kingdom. That’s what the prophets told about, but they failed to read Isaiah 53 where it says He had to be the suffering servant first. So these are the events that are leading up to what we’re going to look at next Sunday when Jesus enters into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
This is the political and religious dynamics that are surrounding Him. This is what He’s facing when He gets in there. And this is why He wept before He entered.
Because they did not understand that He was coming to redeem them from their sin. Those of you who have been going through Ezekiel with us and went through Jeremiah with us on Sunday and Wednesday nights will understand Israel needed a Savior. Israel, the Jewish people, are sinners just like you and me.
And that’s why the prophets, when they came, they told them, Repent, turn to God, and look to the coming Messiah, the one who will be put to death for your sin. May we understand that the battles that we are in today, at the heart of it are spiritual battles, and the greatest battle of all is for men’s hearts. Every one of those Muslims that wants to destroy Israel and destroy America needs to know Jesus, and their attitude would change.
I’ve listened to the testimonies of some of the most men who were vile and wicked and who have now become transformed by the blood of Jesus Christ. That is the only thing that is ultimately going to solve the problems of the world. And we’ve got the message that can transform hearts.
It’s a more powerful thing than bullets, because it changes lives and makes them new creatures in Christ. Let’s just close in prayer. Father, I pray that you would help us to understand the political and religious dynamics surrounding the entrance of Jesus as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.
And Lord, I pray that you just go with us and help us to realize those same dynamics are in the world and Satan hasn’t changed his tactics. He wants to silence us just as he wanted to silence the crowd that was crying out, Hosanna, Son of David, save us, because they were speaking the truth and didn’t even know it. Lord, help us to cry out to Jesus and not be silenced.
This we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.
And you look at this map and just about every one of those areas that is hard to get into and the gospel is not allowed are Muslim countries. And you look at the Muslim countries and then you look at that map and if you can find it, you’ll find a little speck that’s Israel. Why should the Muslim countries that surround Israel, that have got so much more land, most of them have oil and other means of great wealth.
Look at some of the Muslim countries in the Gulf. They are so wealthy. United Arab Emirates.
It’s like the ultimate Disneyland for people to go and take vacations. They’ve built islands. They’ve got the tallest building in the world.
You look at pictures and it’s amazing what they’ve done. You’ve got Saudi Arabia who’s got way more land than Israel. You’ve got Iran, a much larger country than Israel.
They have natural resources. They have oil. They have natural gas.
But we want to destroy Israel. Syria wants to destroy Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon wants to destroy Israel.
Why? It’s a spiritual battle. At the heart of it is the fact that men’s hearts are filled with sin and acrid. And the Bible tells us that there are three things that influence our lives.
The world, the flesh, and Satan himself. And the world system is controlled by Satan. Satan tempts us in our flesh and in our natural flesh.
We yield to those temptations and are governed by him. And he desires and hates God and hates all that God loves. And so he wants to destroy Israel.
Was that same belief system there at the time of Jesus? Absolutely. More than once Satan tried to kill Jesus before he could go to the cross and lay down his life where no man took it. Herod the Great tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby.
The synagogue that Jesus grew up in, in Nazareth, when Jesus read from Isaiah 61 and he read the Messianic passage, the first few verses of that passage, and he closed it before it came to the second coming of Jesus. He was talking about the first coming of the Messiah. He closed the scroll and he said, In this day this has been fulfilled.
And it says they took him at that time out to the edge of a cliff and tried to throw him over the cliff. But he walked through them and they couldn’t do it. Because no man could take his life, he laid it down.
But they tried because Satan wanted him dead. Satan tempted him. Attempting to get him to rebel and sin and to take what Satan had grabbed from Adam and Satan said, I’ll give you this.
I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the earth. Well, what kingdoms is he going to give them that God doesn’t ultimately have control over? But the kingdoms of the earth is the ones that Satan controls. If you look at Iran and you look at Daniel, we’re studying Daniel, we will get back to it one of these years.
But Daniel, it says that Gabriel came with a message for Daniel but he couldn’t get there, he was delayed. He started to come to Daniel the minute Daniel prayed but he couldn’t get there because he was withheld by the prince of Persia, a demonic prince, a demonic entity. And he fought with him until Michael came and helped.
They’re spiritual battles. And the battles in the Middle East and the battles in our world are spiritual battles. And people, we get so involved in daily living that we forget that ultimately it’s all going to come to a climax when Jesus returns.
But in order for Him to return as the King of kings and Lord of lords, He had to first come as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. And I wanted you to understand, the majority of the people, as Jesus was coming into the land of Israel at this particular time and getting ready to go into Jerusalem, were looking for Him to be the King that would deliver them out from under the hand of Rome. And establish Israel as the power it had once been under David and Solomon.
That’s what they were looking for. Very few of them, even His own disciples, didn’t understand that He was going to the cross. Remember last Sunday I said that, and read the verse that when they left Capernaum, He told them, We’re going to go to Jerusalem.
I’m going to be arrested. I’m going to be beaten. I’m going to be put to death.
I’m going to be buried and I’m going to rise again from the dead. They didn’t hear it. Got closer to Jerusalem, told them again.
Last Sunday we saw that He was on the outskirts of Jerusalem shortly before He raised Lazarus from the dead. Told them a third time. Never heard it.
Because when they get in there, all they’re thinking about is that He’s the Son of God, the Messiah, and the Messiah is going to come and establish His kingdom. That’s what the prophets told about, but they failed to read Isaiah 53 where it says He had to be the suffering servant first. So these are the events that are leading up to what we’re going to look at next Sunday when Jesus enters into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
This is the political and religious dynamics that are surrounding Him. This is what He’s facing when He gets in there. And this is why He wept before He entered.
Because they did not understand that He was coming to redeem them from their sin. Those of you who have been going through Ezekiel with us and went through Jeremiah with us on Sunday and Wednesday nights will understand Israel needed a Savior. Israel, the Jewish people, are sinners just like you and me.
And that’s why the prophets, when they came, they told them, Repent, turn to God, and look to the coming Messiah, the one who will be put to death for your sin. May we understand that the battles that we are in today, at the heart of it are spiritual battles, and the greatest battle of all is for men’s hearts. Every one of those Muslims that wants to destroy Israel and destroy America needs to know Jesus, and their attitude would change.
I’ve listened to the testimonies of some of the most men who were vile and wicked and who have now become transformed by the blood of Jesus Christ. That is the only thing that is ultimately going to solve the problems of the world. And we’ve got the message that can transform hearts.
It’s a more powerful thing than bullets, because it changes lives and makes them new creatures in Christ. Let’s just close in prayer. Father, I pray that you would help us to understand the political and religious dynamics surrounding the entrance of Jesus as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.
And Lord, I pray that you just go with us and help us to realize those same dynamics are in the world and Satan hasn’t changed his tactics. He wants to silence us just as he wanted to silence the crowd that was crying out, Hosanna, Son of David, save us, because they were speaking the truth and didn’t even know it. Lord, help us to cry out to Jesus and not be silenced.
This we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.