back to indexPassion Week Devotional - Monday 4.06
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We're grateful that you can join in with us for a time of worship and devotion. 00:09:40.000 |
Right now is a time when a lot of us are staying on top of the news and 00:09:43.000 |
trying our best to stay informed, which we should be. 00:09:47.000 |
But one thing that could happen is at the forefront of our minds, 00:09:50.000 |
we could have simply current affairs at the top of the list. 00:09:55.000 |
But during this time of Easter, we want to make sure that we are intentionally and 00:10:00.000 |
actively trying to have our minds really focused on Christ, that his salvation work, 00:10:05.000 |
that all the things that he accomplished is at the forefront of our thoughts. 00:10:09.000 |
And also, what is causing us the greatest wonder and amazement and appreciation. 00:10:14.000 |
As we begin this time, would you please take a moment to pray with me? 00:10:24.000 |
But particularly now, as the world currently, Father, is at unrest, 00:10:32.000 |
But during this time, Father God, we want to make sure that our faith is active. 00:10:36.000 |
God, that we are considering you, that we are very aware of your presence. 00:10:41.000 |
And Lord, what we desire to do this week is to make sure that we are remembering 00:10:49.000 |
God, that we are remembering all that you have done, all the sacrifice, 00:10:53.000 |
all the suffering, and all the things that you had to lay down, 00:10:57.000 |
so that God, you would save our souls eternally. 00:11:00.000 |
And so for that, God, we want to devote to you our time, our thoughts, and our praise. 00:11:20.000 |
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has ever conceived 00:11:31.000 |
the glorious things you have prepared for everyone who has believed. 00:11:42.000 |
You brought us near and you called us your own, made us join heirs with your Son. 00:11:53.000 |
How high and how low, deep and how long, how sweet and how strong is your love. 00:12:04.000 |
How lavish your grace, how faithful your ways, how great is your love, oh Lord. 00:12:24.000 |
Objects of mercy should have known wrath were filled with unspeakable joy. 00:12:34.000 |
Riches of wisdom, unsearchable wealth, the wonder of knowing your love. 00:12:45.000 |
You are our treasure and our great reward, hope and our glorious King. 00:12:56.000 |
How high and how low, deep and how long, how sweet and how strong is your love. 00:13:07.000 |
How lavish your grace, how faithful your ways, how great is your love, oh Lord. 00:13:19.000 |
How high and how low, deep and how long, how sweet and how strong is your love. 00:13:30.000 |
How lavish your grace, how faithful your ways, how great is your love, oh Lord. 00:14:24.000 |
Come behold the wondrous mystery in the dawning of the King. 00:14:33.000 |
He the theme of heaven's praises, robed in frail humanity. 00:14:43.000 |
In our longing, in our darkness, now the Lamb of Christ has come. 00:14:53.000 |
Look to Christ who condescended, took all flesh to ransom us. 00:15:11.000 |
Come behold the wondrous mystery. He the perfect Son of Man. 00:15:20.000 |
In His living, in His suffering, never trace nor stain of sin. 00:15:37.000 |
The hell-bound man, Christ the great and sure fulfillment of the law in Him we stand. 00:15:58.000 |
Come behold the wondrous mystery. Christ the Lord upon the tree. 00:16:08.000 |
In the stead of ruined sins, He brings the Lamb in victory. 00:16:18.000 |
See the price of our redemption. See the Father's plan unfold. 00:16:28.000 |
Bringing many sons to glory, grace of measure, love untold. 00:16:46.000 |
Come behold the wondrous mystery. Slain by death, the God of life. 00:16:56.000 |
But no grave could ever restrain Him. Praise the Lord, He is alive. 00:17:13.000 |
Bring our hope, Christ in power resurrected, as we will be when He comes. 00:17:43.000 |
Okay, well we're glad you could make it out to listen and praise with us, 00:17:49.000 |
to walk down what our Savior went through on His last week here on earth 00:17:54.000 |
before He resurrected. And so to think about the gospel accounts, 00:18:00.000 |
it's a little bit difficult because initially you might think the gospel accounts are chronological. 00:18:05.000 |
They are not. And so what we're going to be doing this week as we go through the Passion Week 00:18:10.000 |
is to filter through and see what Christ did on each day. 00:18:13.000 |
So tonight being Monday, we'll see what Christ did on the Monday after Palm Sunday. 00:18:19.000 |
The most important thing to remember is this, is what Christ did on the cross, 00:18:24.000 |
is the resurrection that subsequently came after. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, 00:18:28.000 |
verses 3 through 4, it says, "For I delivered to you as of first importance 00:18:32.000 |
what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 00:18:37.000 |
and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." 00:18:42.000 |
So yesterday, hopefully you're with us on Palm Sunday, as Jesus arrived in Jerusalem. 00:18:47.000 |
We heard all about it, the crowd that was praising Hosanna, Hosanna to Jesus the King. 00:18:53.000 |
And they didn't realize that He came to do so much more than save them and rescue them 00:18:58.000 |
from a foreign oppression. He came to save them from their sin. 00:19:03.000 |
And just as we saw yesterday, Jesus was weeping as the crowd was cheering. 00:19:08.000 |
Now that Sunday evening, Jesus, He traveled to Bethany, to the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus 00:19:15.000 |
to spend the night. Bethany was a small village at the foot of the Mount of Olives, 00:19:20.000 |
a short distance east of Jerusalem. After a night of rest in Bethany, 00:19:25.000 |
Jesus headed back towards Jerusalem, and on His way He grew hungry. 00:19:30.000 |
He sees this fig tree, and He goes to it. Upon approaching it, it says here in Matthew 21, verse 18, 00:19:37.000 |
"Now in the morning when He was returning to the city, He became hungry. 00:19:42.000 |
Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only. 00:19:47.000 |
And He said to it, 'No longer shall there be any fruit from you.' 00:19:51.000 |
And at once the fig tree withered." It's an odd picture that Jesus would come across a tree without fruit 00:19:58.000 |
and use His power to curse this tree and kill the tree, essentially, which we see Him explain the very next day. 00:20:06.000 |
However, it isn't what it seems. Next, what happens is that Jesus, as He explains this tree and the cursing of it, 00:20:14.000 |
the significance of the condemnation that He has on this tree is to symbolize Israel. 00:20:20.000 |
He was trying to make a point. Israel was often referred to as a fig tree, 00:20:26.000 |
and three different prophets amongst many spoke of Israel and her leaders being fruitless. 00:20:32.000 |
It says in Jeremiah, chapter 8, verse 13, "I will surely snatch them away. 00:20:37.000 |
There will be no grapes on the vine and no figs on the fig tree. 00:20:41.000 |
And the leaf will wither, and what I have given them will pass away." 00:20:45.000 |
In Hosea, chapter 9, verse 10, it says, "I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. 00:20:50.000 |
I saw your forefathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season. 00:20:55.000 |
But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame, 00:20:59.000 |
and they became as detestable as that which they loved." 00:21:03.000 |
And then another prophet, Joel, in chapter 1, verse 7, says, 00:21:06.000 |
"It has made my vine a waste, and my fig tree splinters. 00:21:11.000 |
It has stripped them bare and cast them away. Their branches have become white." 00:21:16.000 |
The running theme here is that Israel, many times mentioned as a fig tree, 00:21:21.000 |
would be fruitless as a result of idolatry and a pursuit of false gods, 00:21:27.000 |
with their religion becoming a shell of what it was meant to be, 00:21:31.000 |
and without purpose and meaning, ultimately pursuing their own selfish desires, 00:21:36.000 |
with God becoming a means as to that pursuit. 00:21:40.000 |
Israel was God's chosen people, and yet as a nation, they didn't display the fruit of that reality. 00:21:46.000 |
They claimed to be in a covenant relationship with the Lord. 00:21:50.000 |
They claimed that they were chosen people, a people for His own possession, 00:21:54.000 |
a people that belonged to Him, and yet, just like the tree, there was no fruit. 00:22:02.000 |
Again, they were a shell. They held the outline of what Israel ought to be. 00:22:07.000 |
Though they looked the part of being a fig tree, they did not produce any figs. 00:22:12.000 |
What is a fig tree when it doesn't bear figs? 00:22:16.000 |
It's only good to be chopped down and disposed of. 00:22:24.000 |
But if God's people do not produce fruit, Jesus talks about it later on in John 15, verse 6. 00:22:29.000 |
He says, "He is thrown away as a branch, and dries up, and they gather them, 00:22:35.000 |
and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." 00:22:38.000 |
This is because if God's people are not bearing fruit, it's indicative that they do not truly abide in the Lord. 00:22:45.000 |
John 15, verse 5 says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. 00:22:49.000 |
He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit." 00:22:54.000 |
So no fruit means that there is no abiding in the Lord. 00:23:01.000 |
It's a dead branch, only good to be cast, thrown away, dried up, 00:23:06.000 |
ultimately to be used as firewood, burnt until there's nothing left. 00:23:12.000 |
This is not a directive for us to produce fruit. 00:23:17.000 |
You can't wring your own hands and force fruit to be displayed in your life. 00:23:23.000 |
And we see the reality of this playing out as he proceeds to walk into Jerusalem and into the temple courts, 00:23:33.000 |
And where the cursing of the fruitless fig tree was a symbolic gesture, 00:23:36.000 |
we see the real world example of what Jesus is talking about 00:23:48.000 |
"And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple. 00:23:54.000 |
And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. 00:23:59.000 |
And he said to them, 'It is written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, 00:24:11.000 |
The money lenders and sellers were bartering and cheating those who would make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem 00:24:17.000 |
from wherever they lived for the Passover, which was to happen on the Thursday. 00:24:22.000 |
The law stated that during the Passover, a sacrifice must be offered up to the Lord. 00:24:30.000 |
They knew how to barter with the sellers as well. 00:24:39.000 |
They were self-centered, and they were greedy as well. 00:24:43.000 |
They were probably trying to figure out the best way to pay the least bit of money to offer up to the Lord for Passover. 00:24:51.000 |
And for many of them, this was not so much an offering of worship. 00:25:00.000 |
Some religious thing that someone might do, no better than the Roman Catholics, 00:25:05.000 |
who practiced their Hail Marys and Rosaries to try to, with lifeless action, achieve God's favor. 00:25:12.000 |
It was not a love for the Lord thou seen there. 00:25:19.000 |
They were reluctantly doing what they were told they must do, 00:25:23.000 |
that they must go to the temple during the Passover and give this sacrifice. 00:25:29.000 |
There were three major times during the year, Pentecost, the Feast of Booths, and the Passover, 00:25:34.000 |
in which they were called to make this pilgrimage to the temple. 00:25:38.000 |
Now, we have to take a moment to remember what the Passover was. 00:25:41.000 |
We're going to be talking about that in depth on Thursday. 00:25:44.000 |
But just for a moment, we remember that the Passover was during the time of Egypt, after the 10th plague, 00:25:50.000 |
that God had an angel of death pass over the people who would put blood of the Lamb over their posts. 00:25:59.000 |
And this was all to point to the coming Messiah, who would save the lives of his people 00:26:04.000 |
by taking the wrath of God upon himself, like the Lamb, taking death so that we might live. 00:26:12.000 |
That picture, the Passover, was Jesus coming down into the world, 00:26:17.000 |
a culmination of thousands of years of waiting, 00:26:20.000 |
thousands of years of God meticulously planning out in order to display how he would unfurl his redemptive plan. 00:26:28.000 |
From Genesis 3, from the beginning of time even, when God told Adam and Eve 00:26:33.000 |
that one day a seed would come from the woman and crush the head of the serpent, 00:26:38.000 |
that Jesus was coming to fulfill all of this. 00:26:42.000 |
That during the time of the flood, Babel, Abraham, Joseph, 00:26:47.000 |
through the time of Joshua and the judges, the kings, the split kingdoms, 00:26:51.000 |
all the conquest of the four nations with Assyria and Babylon and Persia, with Greece and Rome, 00:26:59.000 |
all of Israelite history, waiting, waiting, waiting, and Jesus had finally come. 00:27:04.000 |
Here he was, walking down this last week of life towards the cross, 00:27:10.000 |
deliberately marching to atone for the sins of his people, 00:27:14.000 |
to finally and ultimately crush the head of the serpent, 00:27:17.000 |
to take away the sting of death, and to bring his people into the household of the Almighty God, 00:27:23.000 |
and to usher in a new kingdom that can never be taken away. 00:27:27.000 |
And here Jesus saw in the last week of his life, 00:27:30.000 |
the Jews bartering, cheating, swindling, conniving, and scheming on each other, 00:27:37.000 |
in the temple of the Lord where true worship was supposed to be. 00:27:47.000 |
This temple of God was as close to the physical presence of God that you could get. 00:27:51.000 |
And during the Old Testament time, the temple of God was where God had created a sign 00:27:56.000 |
and a symbol of this coming Messiah that would save the world, 00:28:00.000 |
where the Father would sacrifice his very own Son, the fallen man. 00:28:04.000 |
Jesus knew what he was doing this last week of his life, 00:28:07.000 |
and on this Monday he enters into his temple. 00:28:09.000 |
The day after, many people are praising, "Hosanna, Hosanna to the Messiah." 00:28:19.000 |
"Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? 00:28:24.000 |
Behold, I, even I, have seen it," declares the Lord. 00:28:31.000 |
And this is why Jesus was so angry in this temple. 00:28:38.000 |
This whole building, this whole temple building was a place for God to provide the reconciliation 00:28:45.000 |
For the Passover, such a beautiful image and picture of the redemptive plan of God. 00:28:51.000 |
And these Jews were bartering and trying to make a profit. 00:28:55.000 |
Greedy, selfish, robbing, hateful, glory hogs, 00:29:01.000 |
desiring to use gains for their personal security and pleasures of the world. 00:29:08.000 |
What they were doing isn't misplaced worship. 00:29:11.000 |
They're not just doing something a little bit wrong here. 00:29:17.000 |
This was a stamping and a spitting, a mocking of God. 00:29:25.000 |
That the people of God, during the time of great importance to God, 00:29:29.000 |
the Passover, in the holy city of God, in the holy temple of God, 00:29:34.000 |
with the sacrifices that were meant to save people from certain death, 00:29:45.000 |
This is satanic, and this is sin at its height. 00:29:49.000 |
This whole picture was to show that humanity, 00:29:53.000 |
humanity who's wholly at the mercy of a furious God, 00:30:00.000 |
but this whole system was built around this thought that they could purchase forgiveness. 00:30:06.000 |
Jesus knew that he alone could purchase forgiveness, and here they were. 00:30:12.000 |
And these Jews, they were doing it all in the name of God. 00:30:17.000 |
The fig tree imagery begins to make some sense. 00:30:21.000 |
These were the scant remnant, the people of Israel, 00:30:24.000 |
ravaged due to their perversions and idolatry, 00:30:27.000 |
diluted in their bloodline, far from their previous faithfulness. 00:30:32.000 |
And any kind of faithfulness that did exist was now a shadow, 00:30:37.000 |
an ugly outline, a shell of religious works, brought by human hands, 00:30:43.000 |
going through the motions of traveling to Jerusalem, traveling to this temple, 00:30:55.000 |
the one in which all things would be fulfilled. 00:30:58.000 |
All of Israelite history realized every shadow and symbol completed and perfected in Jesus, 00:31:05.000 |
the culmination of all the redemptive plan and actions of God, 00:31:21.000 |
It would have been better for them not to give sacrifice at all. 00:31:25.000 |
It would have been better not to have traveled to Jerusalem at all 00:31:28.000 |
than to do what they were doing in this temple. 00:31:33.000 |
"For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. 00:31:39.000 |
And in Isaiah 1, verse 11, God says to his people, 00:31:43.000 |
"What are your multiplied sacrifices to me?" says the Lord. 00:31:47.000 |
"I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle, 00:31:51.000 |
and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats." 00:32:01.000 |
and chased everyone out of his holy temple with the whip. 00:32:09.000 |
that God's wrath would be brought upon the people, 00:32:20.000 |
We see the sinners that he came to die for here in this picture. 00:32:24.000 |
And in every step this week, every picture and every story, 00:32:28.000 |
every narrative, every historical thing that happens during this Passion Week, 00:32:33.000 |
we'll see that Jesus has his face set towards the end. 00:32:37.000 |
Just like we learned yesterday during the Palm Sunday, 00:32:43.000 |
marching towards the end, this cross where he would meet the wrath of God head on for his people. 00:32:59.000 |
even as we see and we think about what Jesus did in his last week of life, 00:33:04.000 |
we can see such depth as to your deliberate and purposeful, intentional actions. 00:33:11.000 |
That Jesus, every day of his life, not just Passion Week, 00:33:16.000 |
every day of his life lived intentionally marching towards that cross. 00:33:21.000 |
And so Father, as we think about the last week, 00:33:28.000 |
and as we see from the perspective of you, our God, 00:33:31.000 |
I pray Lord that we would not be thinking about just the physical pain that happened. 00:33:38.000 |
But our theology would broaden during this time. 00:33:44.000 |
and what you did in every event leading up to that cross, 00:33:51.000 |
Father, thank you that as even as Jesus is angry here in this temple, 00:34:05.000 |
and a love for the people that he would come to save. 00:34:08.000 |
Father, would you cause our hearts to worship greater and greater as the days go by. 00:34:20.000 |
Thank you Lord, and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 00:38:09.000 |
And Father God, there is no other God like you. 00:38:28.000 |
your salvation plan, we want to appreciate the depth of it. 00:38:31.000 |
And as scripture calls us to know and understand 00:38:40.000 |
I pray in this way that we would have in our minds 00:38:44.000 |
and reflect upon all the different steps that Christ took, 00:38:51.000 |
but Father God, we would know the work of our Lord.