>> Good evening, everybody. We're grateful that you can join in with us for a time of worship and devotion. Right now is a time when a lot of us are staying on top of the news and trying our best to stay informed, which we should be. But one thing that could happen is at the forefront of our minds, we could have simply current affairs at the top of the list.

But during this time of Easter, we want to make sure that we are intentionally and actively trying to have our minds really focused on Christ, that his salvation work, that all the things that he accomplished is at the forefront of our thoughts. And also, what is causing us the greatest wonder and amazement and appreciation.

As we begin this time, would you please take a moment to pray with me? Our God, we thank you so much. Lord, in every season, we thank you. But particularly now, as the world currently, Father, is at unrest, there are many worries, legitimately so. But during this time, Father God, we want to make sure that our faith is active.

God, that we are considering you, that we are very aware of your presence. And Lord, what we desire to do this week is to make sure that we are remembering the work of our Savior, Jesus Christ. God, that we are remembering all that you have done, all the sacrifice, all the suffering, and all the things that you had to lay down, so that God, you would save our souls eternally.

And so for that, God, we want to devote to you our time, our thoughts, and our praise. In Christ's name, amen. We'll begin with time of worship. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has ever conceived the glorious things you have prepared for everyone who has believed.

You brought us near and you called us your own, made us join heirs with your Son. How high and how low, deep and how long, how sweet and how strong is your love. How lavish your grace, how faithful your ways, how great is your love, oh Lord. Objects of mercy should have known wrath were filled with unspeakable joy.

Riches of wisdom, unsearchable wealth, the wonder of knowing your love. You are our treasure and our great reward, hope and our glorious King. How high and how low, deep and how long, how sweet and how strong is your love. How lavish your grace, how faithful your ways, how great is your love, oh Lord.

How high and how low, deep and how long, how sweet and how strong is your love. How lavish your grace, how faithful your ways, how great is your love, oh Lord. How great is your love, oh Lord. Come behold the wondrous mystery in the dawning of the King. He the theme of heaven's praises, robed in frail humanity.

In our longing, in our darkness, now the Lamb of Christ has come. Look to Christ who condescended, took all flesh to ransom us. Come behold the wondrous mystery. He the perfect Son of Man. In His living, in His suffering, never trace nor stain of sin. See the true and better Adam come to save.

The hell-bound man, Christ the great and sure fulfillment of the law in Him we stand. Come behold the wondrous mystery. Christ the Lord upon the tree. In the stead of ruined sins, He brings the Lamb in victory. See the price of our redemption. See the Father's plan unfold. Bringing many sons to glory, grace of measure, love untold.

Come behold the wondrous mystery. Slain by death, the God of life. But no grave could ever restrain Him. Praise the Lord, He is alive. The foretaste of deliverance, how unworthy. Bring our hope, Christ in power resurrected, as we will be when He comes. Okay, well we're glad you could make it out to listen and praise with us, to walk down what our Savior went through on His last week here on earth before He resurrected.

And so to think about the gospel accounts, it's a little bit difficult because initially you might think the gospel accounts are chronological. They are not. And so what we're going to be doing this week as we go through the Passion Week is to filter through and see what Christ did on each day.

So tonight being Monday, we'll see what Christ did on the Monday after Palm Sunday. The most important thing to remember is this, is what Christ did on the cross, is the resurrection that subsequently came after. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 3 through 4, it says, "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." So yesterday, hopefully you're with us on Palm Sunday, as Jesus arrived in Jerusalem.

We heard all about it, the crowd that was praising Hosanna, Hosanna to Jesus the King. And they didn't realize that He came to do so much more than save them and rescue them from a foreign oppression. He came to save them from their sin. And just as we saw yesterday, Jesus was weeping as the crowd was cheering.

Now that Sunday evening, Jesus, He traveled to Bethany, to the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus to spend the night. Bethany was a small village at the foot of the Mount of Olives, a short distance east of Jerusalem. After a night of rest in Bethany, Jesus headed back towards Jerusalem, and on His way He grew hungry.

He sees this fig tree, and He goes to it. Upon approaching it, it says here in Matthew 21, verse 18, "Now in the morning when He was returning to the city, He became hungry. Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only.

And He said to it, 'No longer shall there be any fruit from you.' And at once the fig tree withered." It's an odd picture that Jesus would come across a tree without fruit and use His power to curse this tree and kill the tree, essentially, which we see Him explain the very next day.

However, it isn't what it seems. Next, what happens is that Jesus, as He explains this tree and the cursing of it, the significance of the condemnation that He has on this tree is to symbolize Israel. He was trying to make a point. Israel was often referred to as a fig tree, and three different prophets amongst many spoke of Israel and her leaders being fruitless.

It says in Jeremiah, chapter 8, verse 13, "I will surely snatch them away. There will be no grapes on the vine and no figs on the fig tree. And the leaf will wither, and what I have given them will pass away." In Hosea, chapter 9, verse 10, it says, "I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness.

I saw your forefathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season. But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame, and they became as detestable as that which they loved." And then another prophet, Joel, in chapter 1, verse 7, says, "It has made my vine a waste, and my fig tree splinters.

It has stripped them bare and cast them away. Their branches have become white." The running theme here is that Israel, many times mentioned as a fig tree, would be fruitless as a result of idolatry and a pursuit of false gods, with their religion becoming a shell of what it was meant to be, and without purpose and meaning, ultimately pursuing their own selfish desires, with God becoming a means as to that pursuit.

Israel was God's chosen people, and yet as a nation, they didn't display the fruit of that reality. They claimed to be in a covenant relationship with the Lord. They claimed that they were chosen people, a people for His own possession, a people that belonged to Him, and yet, just like the tree, there was no fruit.

Again, they were a shell. They held the outline of what Israel ought to be. Though they looked the part of being a fig tree, they did not produce any figs. What is a fig tree when it doesn't bear figs? It's only good to be chopped down and disposed of.

You see, God's people are marked by fruit. But if God's people do not produce fruit, Jesus talks about it later on in John 15, verse 6. He says, "He is thrown away as a branch, and dries up, and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." This is because if God's people are not bearing fruit, it's indicative that they do not truly abide in the Lord.

John 15, verse 5 says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit." So no fruit means that there is no abiding in the Lord. There is no root in the giver of life. It's a dead branch, only good to be cast, thrown away, dried up, ultimately to be used as firewood, burnt until there's nothing left.

This is not a directive for us to produce fruit. You can't do it yourself. You can't wring your own hands and force fruit to be displayed in your life. And we see the reality of this playing out as he proceeds to walk into Jerusalem and into the temple courts, which is what happens next.

Jesus walks into this temple. And where the cursing of the fruitless fig tree was a symbolic gesture, we see the real world example of what Jesus is talking about in full display on this Monday afternoon. In Matthew chapter 21 verse 12, it says, "And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple.

And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And he said to them, 'It is written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a robber's den."'" Now what does Jesus see here? The money lenders and sellers were bartering and cheating those who would make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem from wherever they lived for the Passover, which was to happen on the Thursday.

The law stated that during the Passover, a sacrifice must be offered up to the Lord. But don't view the pilgrims as victims. They knew how to barter with the sellers as well. They knew what they were doing. They were manipulating. They were counting their coins. They were self-centered, and they were greedy as well.

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. And for many of them, this was not so much an offering of worship. This was rote religion. Some habitual action. Some religious thing that someone might do, no better than the Roman Catholics, who practiced their Hail Marys and Rosaries to try to, with lifeless action, achieve God's favor.

It was not a love for the Lord thou seen there. There was no worshipful attitude or heart. They were reluctantly doing what they were told they must do, that they must go to the temple during the Passover and give this sacrifice. There were three major times during the year, Pentecost, the Feast of Booths, and the Passover, in which they were called to make this pilgrimage to the temple.

Now, we have to take a moment to remember what the Passover was. We're going to be talking about that in depth on Thursday. But just for a moment, we remember that the Passover was during the time of Egypt, after the 10th plague, that God had an angel of death pass over the people who would put blood of the Lamb over their posts.

And this was all to point to the coming Messiah, who would save the lives of his people by taking the wrath of God upon himself, like the Lamb, taking death so that we might live. That picture, the Passover, was Jesus coming down into the world, a culmination of thousands of years of waiting, thousands of years of God meticulously planning out in order to display how he would unfurl his redemptive plan.

From Genesis 3, from the beginning of time even, when God told Adam and Eve that one day a seed would come from the woman and crush the head of the serpent, that Jesus was coming to fulfill all of this. That during the time of the flood, Babel, Abraham, Joseph, through the time of Joshua and the judges, the kings, the split kingdoms, all the conquest of the four nations with Assyria and Babylon and Persia, with Greece and Rome, all of Israelite history, waiting, waiting, waiting, and Jesus had finally come.

Here he was, walking down this last week of life towards the cross, deliberately marching to atone for the sins of his people, to finally and ultimately crush the head of the serpent, to take away the sting of death, and to bring his people into the household of the Almighty God, and to usher in a new kingdom that can never be taken away.

And here Jesus saw in the last week of his life, the Jews bartering, cheating, swindling, conniving, and scheming on each other, in the temple of the Lord where true worship was supposed to be. The temple where sins were atoned for. This temple of God was as close to the physical presence of God that you could get.

And during the Old Testament time, the temple of God was where God had created a sign and a symbol of this coming Messiah that would save the world, where the Father would sacrifice his very own Son, the fallen man. Jesus knew what he was doing this last week of his life, and on this Monday he enters into his temple.

The day after, many people are praising, "Hosanna, Hosanna to the Messiah." In Jeremiah chapter 7 verse 11 it says, "Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it," declares the Lord. See, God foresaw this.

And this is why Jesus was so angry in this temple. The temple was a place for this sacrifice. This whole building, this whole temple building was a place for God to provide the reconciliation between him and his people. For the Passover, such a beautiful image and picture of the redemptive plan of God.

And these Jews were bartering and trying to make a profit. Greedy, selfish, robbing, hateful, glory hogs, desiring to use gains for their personal security and pleasures of the world. What they were doing isn't misplaced worship. They're not just doing something a little bit wrong here. This was sacrilege. This was a stamping and a spitting, a mocking of God.

This was rebellion at its highest. That the people of God, during the time of great importance to God, the Passover, in the holy city of God, in the holy temple of God, with the sacrifices that were meant to save people from certain death, they were acting like this. This was not misplaced worship.

This is satanic, and this is sin at its height. This whole picture was to show that humanity, humanity who's wholly at the mercy of a furious God, they were not just profiting, but this whole system was built around this thought that they could purchase forgiveness. Jesus knew that he alone could purchase forgiveness, and here they were.

And these Jews, they were doing it all in the name of God. The fig tree imagery begins to make some sense. These were Jews. These were the scant remnant, the people of Israel, ravaged due to their perversions and idolatry, diluted in their bloodline, far from their previous faithfulness. And any kind of faithfulness that did exist was now a shadow, an ugly outline, a shell of religious works, brought by human hands, going through the motions of traveling to Jerusalem, traveling to this temple, buying a sacrifice for the Passover.

And again, here was the one true sacrifice, the one in which all things would be fulfilled. All of Israelite history realized every shadow and symbol completed and perfected in Jesus, the culmination of all the redemptive plan and actions of God, standing at the foot of this temple, a mockery against God.

It would have been better for them not to give sacrifice at all. It would have been better not to have traveled to Jerusalem at all than to do what they were doing in this temple. In Psalm 51, verse 16, it says, "For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it.

You are not pleased with burnt offering." And in Isaiah 1, verse 11, God says to his people, "What are your multiplied sacrifices to me?" says the Lord. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle, and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats." And so Jesus, he overturned the tables and chased everyone out of his holy temple with the whip.

His holiness seen, God's holiness seen, that God's wrath would be brought upon the people, that Jesus would continue through this week with this just being the first step. We see the sinners that he came to die for here in this picture. And in every step this week, every picture and every story, every narrative, every historical thing that happens during this Passion Week, we'll see that Jesus has his face set towards the end.

Just like we learned yesterday during the Palm Sunday, that he was deliberate in his actions, marching towards the end, this cross where he would meet the wrath of God head on for his people. Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that even in these stories, even as we see and we think about what Jesus did in his last week of life, we can see such depth as to your deliberate and purposeful, intentional actions.

That Jesus, every day of his life, not just Passion Week, every day of his life lived intentionally marching towards that cross. And so Father, as we think about the last week, as we look through the eyes of our Savior, and as we see from the perspective of you, our God, I pray Lord that we would not be thinking about just the physical pain that happened.

But our theology would broaden during this time. That what you did on that cross, and what you did in every event leading up to that cross, oh God, it was so, so beautiful. Father, thank you that as even as Jesus is angry here in this temple, God for the joy set before him, he marched towards that cross.

As he set his eyes upon your glory, and a love for the people that he would come to save. Father, would you cause our hearts to worship greater and greater as the days go by. Until we go to Christ at the cross, and then our resurrected Christ on Sunday.

Thank you Lord, and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Lord of every age Lord of every age Author of the faith First, the last, the same Name above all names Crowned in majesty Glorious Prince of Peace We're on that guy's right hand A world that is command A world that is command Jesus, Lamb of God How great you are There is no other Savior Every knee bows down At your renown There is no other Savior Merciful High Priest Lover of the least Generous and mean Protector of the weak Sacrifice to death For us your final breath Time the world to save To overcome the grave To overcome the grave Jesus, Lamb of God How great you are There is no other Savior Every knee bows down At your renown There is no other Savior You will reign forever You will reign forever You will reign forever You will reign forever You will reign forever You will reign forever Jesus, Lamb of God How great you are There is no other Savior Every knee bows down At your renown There is no other Savior Amen, let's pray.

Our God, we want to thank you. There is no other Savior like you. And Father God, there is no other God like you. As we think about this week and appreciate the unfolding of your plan, we want to appreciate your love for us. Not just simply in general, not in superficiality.

Father God, as you have orchestrated your salvation plan, we want to appreciate the depth of it. And as scripture calls us to know and understand truly what is the depth, to hide in the breath of Christ's love, I pray in this way that we would have in our minds and reflect upon all the different steps that Christ took, all the different surroundings, not just so that we would know history, but Father God, we would know the work of our Lord.

We thank you, in Jesus' name we pray, amen. We'll see you here tomorrow, everybody. Good night.