We're in Luke chapter 19, and
today's lesson begins in verse 28, and many of your Bibles will
say that it's the heading of this block of Scriptures called
the Triumphal Entry, and we'll be looking at that. We have to kind of keep it in
context with what's gone on before. In the previous lesson, there
was a two-parter called, Occupy Till I Come, and it was the parable
of the ten pounds that he gave out, the ruler gave out, and
there were the good servants that took, and there was ten
pounds, they each got a pound, and they took the pound and said,
thy pound has gained ten pounds, or thy pound has gained five
pounds, And he said, well done thou good and faithful servants.
And the wicked servant said, well, I just kept your pound.
I didn't do anything with it. And what a picture of the gospel
that we see that was presented to, for example, the Jewish religion. And they didn't do anything with
it. They just kind of, they didn't understand it. And the point
we made was that you can't talk about what you don't know. They
knew the law, and that's really what they talked about. And we
find that same thing true in religion today, that people can't
really talk, they can't speak to things that they don't understand.
And unless a man be born again, he can't see the kingdom of God,
and he certainly can't tell others about it with any degree of truthfulness. And then he talked about his
enemies, he says, He said there was a division there. There were
the faithful servants that took the gospel and distributed it.
And there were the wicked servants and the ones that were called
mine enemies, those citizens who said, we'll not have this
man to rule over us. And so that brings us to verse
28. And when he had thus spoken,
he went before ascending up to Jerusalem. So he was in front.
He was the leader. at the head of the pack of people
there, this multitude that were going along. 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. saying,
go ye to the village over against you in the way in the which at
your entering you shall find a colt tied whereupon yet never
a man sat. Loose him and bring him hither.
And if any man ask you, why do you loose him? Thus shall you
say unto him, because the Lord hath need of him. And they that
were sent went their way and found even as he had said unto
them. And as they were loosing the colt, the owner thereof said
unto them, Why Lucia the colt? And they said, The Lord hath
need of him. And they brought him to Jesus,
and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus
thereon. And as he went, they spread their
clothes in the way. 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, saying, Blessed
be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees from
among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto
them, I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the
stones would immediately cry out." It's written that that's
going to happen. He said, you can't stop that. So there's quite a lot and we're
just going to kind of have a kind of an introductory portion today
that that deals with the first few verses here. And
remember, as we said, he was coming from Jericho, he's coming
from the east. And going up from 800 feet below
sea level, he's going up to almost 4,000 feet at the Mount of Olives. And when you come up to the Mount
of Olives, you have two little villages there. You have Bethany
And then a little further on you have Bethphage, and those
were these two towns that were mentioned here in the first couple
of verses. And then you went over the top of the Mount of
Olives, and then down into the Kidron Valley, and then up to
Jerusalem. So, it's interesting that all four
Gospels have this narrative in them, and they all bring a little
bit different points about it. We'll look at a couple of those
in part because it adds some very interesting things here.
So before we begin, I'd just like to, in context, it's just
critical to remember the essentials of what's transpiring. The most
important thing, the Son of Man, He said, is coming to seek and
save that which was lost, Luke 19.27. What is the purpose of
His being here? of the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. The purpose of seeking out all
of His sheep from among those His enemies and securing their
eternal lives by the sacrifice of His earthly life. He came
with that specific. He was the Lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world. So, that's His mission and yet
the vast majority of these people that are with Him and following
Him along are thinking, Oh, he's going to be the earthly king.
He's going to throw off the Roman yoke. He's going to deliver us
from the tyranny of the Romans. Remember, Archelaus slew 3,000
of them, and Pilate mingled the blood of some Galileans with
the sacrifice. They suffered a lot of atrocities
at the hands of the Romans. It wasn't their ideal situation
in their minds. They would like to be their own
kingdom again. They wanted Jesus to come in
and be their king, and be their ruler, and establish kind of
moral guidelines, and be a good ruler, and they would live happily
ever after. But he said, that's not why I'm
here. I came here. He said, my kingdom
is not of this world. My kingdom is not from hence. I came here to seek and to save
that which was lost. That was my mission from God.
And I came to lay down my life, a
ransom for many. In Isaiah 62, 11 it says, The Lord hath proclaimed unto
the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold,
thy salvation cometh, behold, his reward is with him, and his
work before him." What prophetic words there as he approaches
Jerusalem for really this week is the last time. We're in the
last week. in this block of Scripture here.
He's going to come to Jerusalem, and He's going to kind of come
and go a few times, and then ultimately it's going to end
in His betrayal and His sacrifice on the cross. So we're down to
the end. And you know, even though the
sheep are scattered among the enemies, the Lord is able to
see them, to seek them, and to save them. Isn't that wonderful? You look out and you just look
at the vast multitude, and he says, oh, Zacchaeus, I know your
name. Come down. And that's the way it is. He
knows His sheep. He knows their name. He calls
them and they hear His voice and they follow Him. And even
if they're scattered among those, and physically they don't look
any different to us or to anybody, the Lord is able to see and to
know His sheep and save them from the pit that they're in.
And it's interesting that even though they're among the enemies
and in their natural condition, they're at enmity with Him. And
yet, the Lord has loved them with everlasting love. He never
views them as the enemies. He just views them as lost sheep
that when you're born again, you're going to be able to see. And as Mike was mentioning in
our little meeting that we had earlier, as it says in Ezekiel,
when I give you a new heart, When you're born again, then
you're not going to be at enmity with me anymore. You're going
to love me. You're going to look at yourself entirely different.
You're going to look at yourself and loathe yourself because of
your sins, but He's going to make that better by saying, I've
taken care of that. You don't have to worry about
it anymore. And so, it's interesting also that in our previous lesson,
in Occupy Till I Come, the view our Lord has of the only two
peoples that we have described. And Norm's been describing them
also and declaring them on Wednesday night in Zechariah 14, the great
division of people. You know, everybody kind of falls
into the two classes. There's the wicked servants or
under the enemies that would not have this man to reign over
them. And he calls them mine enemies. And the other ones, He calls
them friends. He calls them faithful servants.
And those are the only two classes that we have. The faithful servants
whom He's loved with that everlasting love, and those mine enemies
who were the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, it says,
from eternity. Those who hated Him and would
not have Him to reign over them. To have Him rule over me, it
incensed their sensibilities. That just grates me that I have
to give in. And we'll never give in until
we've been born again. But we'll just not have that
mandarin over us until that happens. It grates on their sensibilities
to have to not have it their way. I have my idea how religion
and salvation ought to work according to my standards and my ideology, and what he's saying is not it.
Free grace is We're going to find through our lesson here
that free grace is not well thought of in the general population. He would not be and he was not
the king of their imaginations. They had a picture and a thought
in their mind of how they wanted things to be. That was not the truth. And yet, they said things that
God declared that they would say. Hosanna to the King. They would declare the spiritual
nature of His coming, even though they really couldn't see it and
understand it. Remember, even the disciples in Acts said, Will
thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? So, there we have that. Unless
a man be born again, he just can't see the Kingdom of God.
And so in verse 28, when he had thus spoken, he went before,
ascending up to Jerusalem. Again, he's coming from the east.
It's the last week, his final journey to Jerusalem. The last
Passover. I was just reading through that
this morning, how they were having that Passover dinner in that
upper chamber that he had all prepared. And they observed the
Passover feast and he just took everything and said, here's what
this really means. Here's what this bread means,
my body broken for you. Here's what this cup means. Take this cup and divide it among
yourselves, he said. And whenever you do this, remember
me, because this is my blood that I'm going to shed for you.
This is my body that is going to be broken for you. And so
we'll get there sometime in the future. So, the last Passover, the true Lamb
of God would be sacrificed, the blood applied for the sins of
all his people of all time. And in verse 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.
And so I'd like to spend a little bit of time on those two towns
this morning because they're significant. And on my map that
I had, and I think I shared that graphic with you a couple of
lessons ago, but as you come up that trail from Jericho, you
come to Bethany first. And remember, that's where Lazarus
was. raised from the dead. He's a
dear friend of Jesus. But that's how he looks at all
of his saints. He says, from henceforth I call you not servants,
I call you my friends. There's no greater love than
a man lay down his life for his friends. Lazarus raised from the dead,
and he let him go through that physical death on purpose, if
you remember that, and he waited until four days, and they said,
oh man, don't open that. He wanted to make sure that everybody
understood the concept of death. And they were pretty aware of
that. They didn't have refrigeration
and stuff. You roll back that rock and it's going to smell
bad, because he's been in there long enough for the decomposition
process to begin. And he said, Lazarus, come forth. And he came out. And he said,
loose him and let him go. So that happened there. And the
name of Bethany means House of Dates. And date palms were the typical tree there in that area. And those palms produced dates. My dad worked on a date palm
ranch down in California. before I was born and after World
War II. And date palms kind of play a significant
role in what transpires. And Bethphage means house of
unripe figs. Fig trees have always represented
in an allegorical way the effects of the fall. Right off the bat
in Genesis we find Adam made aprons of fig leaves. And so we have that. In Matthew
21, in this account of the same circumstances that we find Jesus
in here, Jesus cursed a fig tree there. So we'll look at the significance
of that in context with what's been previously examined in that
parable of the ten pounds that we that we looked at in our previous
lesson, Occupy Till I Come. And you know, again, that parable
showed that the Jews had been entrusted with the gospel, but
they really couldn't see it, and therefore they could not
and didn't do anything with it. They produced no fruit. The gospel
seed was not sown. They had the words, but they
didn't have the Spirit. They appeared ultra-religious
but it was only skin deep. Matthew 23, 27 says, Woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you're like unto whited sepulchres,
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full
of dead man's bones and of all uncleanness. Remember, before
the Passover, all the Jews would go out to all the, if you touched
a dead man's body or even his grave you were considered unclean
for a week. So they didn't want anybody to
accidentally come trodden into Jerusalem and step on a sepulcher
or sit down on one or not recognize it. So they went out and painted
them all white and pretty so they would show up. He said,
but inside they're full of bones. They're full of dead man's bones.
And that's what he said, you religious hypocrites look like.
You kind of look okay on the outside, but inside. It's not
good. Isaiah 29, 13, the Lord said,
for as much as this people, they draw near me with their mouth,
they said all the religious words, they said God, Elohim, and Lord,
Jehovah, and sacrifice. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. They said all the religious words, and pay your
tithes, and I fast three times a week, and I keep all the law. They said all the religious words,
but he says, their lips honor me, but they've removed their
heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the
precepts of men. So in Matthew 21, we have the
record of the Lord approaching this fig tree, this kind of a
metaphorical fig tree, expecting fruit. So let's turn to Matthew
21, 18. And he had, in this account in
Matthew, he had already made the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
cleansed the temple of the money changers, returned back up the
Mount of Olives to Bethany to lodge at night. That's where
he would go into Jerusalem for the day, and then he would go
back out over the Mount of Olives and go to Bethany and stay with
Martha and Mary and Lazarus. That's where she washed his feet
with her tears and perfume and all those kind of things. And
in the morning, he leaves. the house of dates in the Bethany. And he passes through this Bethphage
area, the house of unripe figs. And so in Matthew 21, 18, Now
in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And
when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it and found
nothing thereon but leaves only. And he said unto it, Let no fruit
grow on the henceforth henceforward forever. And presently, the fig
tree withered away, and the disciples saw it, and they marveled, saying,
How soon has a fig tree withered away? I mean, right in front
of their very eyes, it just went dried up and withered. Isn't
that interesting? He came forward with an expectation. I mean, he knew But it's for us. It's for the church. It's for
our admonition. He went to that fig tree expecting
to get fruit off of it, and there was nothing there but leaves. And so he curses it and said,
henceforth, The Jewish religion is never
going to bear fruit. It's just not. The fig tree accurately
describes the Jewish religion, the state of being. And as we
read just a minute ago, they were like whited sepulchers.
And like this tree, they were beautiful on the outside. They
had the appearance of tree. They had the leaves. But
when you got to digging around in the leaves, there wasn't anything
in there. It was bare. And it didn't produce any fruit.
It should have produced fruit, but it did not. It had only leaves. It had only
the show. And you know, the words and the
judgment of the Lord are born of righteousness and born of
divine justice and born of the sovereignty of Almighty God. He said, there should be fruit
here, but you didn't do anything with it. So from henceforth,
forevermore, You'll never bear fruit. You
could have, if you would have just seen the gospel. Isn't that
what it says in Hebrews 4 too? The gospel for under us was a
gospel preached as well as under them. But the word preached did
not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard
it. that in Zechariah 14, as Norm's been teaching on Wednesday
nights, the Jews had been blessed with the Gospel, blessed with
infinite displays of grace and power, right in front of their face,
and yet it didn't profit them. They just couldn't see it. And
we find the same thing here. Jesus is standing right in their
midst, They could not see Him as Christ. And they couldn't
see Him as Savior. They couldn't see the Kingdom
of God. So when He saw that fig tree
and found nothing thereon but leaves only, He said unto it,
let no fruit grow on thee henceforth forever. And presently the fig
tree withered away. And so back here to Luke 19, Again, there's significance in
the two villages. You know, in Acts chapter 1 it
says, and I read in one of my archaeological, geographical
study things, that Bethphage, was a Sabbath day's journey from
Jerusalem. And that's kind of what it says
in Acts 1.12. They went back to the Mount of Olives, which
was a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem. Well, a Sabbath day's
journey was the maximum amount of distance you could travel
on the Sabbath day without breaking the law. So isn't it interesting that
Bethphagia was the limit of the Sabbath day's journey? the house
of unripe figs was as far as the law would let you go." Isn't
that interesting? But you could go a little farther
to Bethany and get grace, where Lazarus was raised from the dead. So you have these two pictures
here of what these two towns kind of represent spiritually.
One place is just as far as the law lets you go, and the next
place is where grace had done a mighty work. What a contrast. A place of grace versus a place
of cursing. And you know what's really interesting
is that at the very moment that this has taken place, the Jews
are planning, they're trying to figure out how they can kill
Lazarus again. I mean, he died of illness the
first time. But now they're trying to figure
out how to kill him. In John, we read that in John 12, verse
9, talks about this kind of the same block of time. And much
of the Jews therefore knew that He was there, that's the Lord,
that's Jesus, and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that
they might see Lazarus also." All these multitudes said, oh,
we want to see Jesus because He does all the miracles, and
we want to see Lazarus because we all know that He was dead,
dead, dead, dead, four times dead. And Jesus raised Him from
the dead. So they came not for Jesus' sake
only. They wanted to see that show, but they also wanted to
see what was on Channel 2. They wanted to see Lazarus also. That would be something. I saw
Lazarus. He was dead. They might see Lazarus also whom
he had raised from the dead in verse 10 of John chapter 12. But the chief priests consulted
that they might put Lazarus also to death. So it infers there
that they already had consulted how to put Jesus to death. And
they wanted to put Lazarus to death also because It didn't
fit their scheme, didn't fit their ideology. They couldn't
see him as the kingdom of God. And all they saw in Lazarus was
he's evidence of what we don't like, basically. And so the view
of the fall turns out to be, how can we kill grace? And that's
an important concept for us to keep in mind. Religion's always
trying to kill grace all the time. It's just like a non-stop
battle. Well, I know what the Bible says,
but we don't like that, so we don't go there. We take that
seed and snip that grace part off of the end of it. Well, then
it doesn't work. It doesn't grow. as we learned
in our last lesson there. You know, it's interesting, I
was talking to Norm, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves
a little bit here, but they wanted to kill Jesus right along, but
He had such a crowd following with Him, they were afraid, the
Scripture tells us. They wanted to kill him, but
they could not because of the multitude. They feared that if
they killed him with the great multitude of people around him,
it would be bad for them. The people would be up in arms.
And then we find later on that Judas comes to them and says,
I'll figure out a way to get him to you. apart from the crowd. And we'll find that later here
as we go on. But how can we kill grace? Isn't that awful? Isn't that awful? So we have a contrast to dividing
the faithful servants bearing the fruit of the gospel, the
wicked servants, mine enemies, bearing nothing but leaves. All these things, they're not
separate incidences, they're not separate things, they're
all pointing to the same thing. to Christ, the gospel in Christ,
and they're pointing to the total failure of man's ability to do
anything in his own behalf, whether by law, by works, by his own
ideology, by his own methodology. Almost everything in religion
turns something that's in the Scripture into some, I think, in his commentary on Romans.
Norm, who's that? Yeah, Robert Haldane. He says,
it gets turned into methodology. It gets turned into a method
of things you can do to turn works of grace into righteousness. Well, I kept the law from my
youth up, or I did this. I prayed three times a day. I fast twice a week. All these
things that I do, and yet all that is to no avail. You know,
in this house of dates, you think about a palm tree. It grows just
straight up, tall, and then it just kind of blooms out at the
top. To me, it just says, boy, what
a picture of the Lord. This stalk comes out of the ground,
and then the fruit and everything is up there. He did this. He caused this. The righteous
shall flourish like the palm tree. Psalm 92, 12. He shall grow like a cedar in
Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord will
flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth
fruit in old age. Our pastor's going to experience
that. He's aging right before our eyes. Says he's still going to bring
forth fruit, so. They shall be fat and flourishing.
I'm not going to say anything about that part. To show that
the Lord is upright, he's my rock, and there's no unrighteousness
in him. So, isn't that interesting how
that talks about that palm tree flourishing and bearing fruit?
And what is the purpose of it? to show that the Lord is upright,
that He is my rock and there's no unrighteousness in Him. It
explains it. So verse 29, 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, saying,
Go into the village over against you, in the which at your entering
you shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat, Loose him
and bring him hither." You know, all that is written must be fulfilled. It wasn't just written just so
we can say, oh yeah, he was a good fortune teller, he had a good
crystal ball. It was written for a purpose. and it will transpire, it will
be fulfilled. It shall come to pass. Remember
we had that lesson on that? It shall come to pass, whatever
the Lord said, whatever He wrote down in the Old Testament. It
shall come to pass. It cannot fail. Not one word of what is written
in the Law and in the Prophets. It cannot fail. What an important
thing for us to hang on to. Whatever the Lord has set His
seal to, it cannot fail. Cannot fail. Zechariah 9.9, Rejoice
greatly, O daughter of Zion, and shout. That's what they're
going to do here. They're going to shout as He
comes in. Hosanna to the O daughter of
Jerusalem. Behold, thy King cometh unto
thee. He is just. and having salvation lowly and
riding upon an ass and upon the colt, the foal of an ass." That's
in Zechariah 9.9. That's a long time before where
we're at in Luke 19. A long time. And he didn't write
it just for accident. You know, in Romans 3.26, I was
reading Haldane's commentary on Romans 3 because of this verse
in Zechariah where it says, He's just. He is absolutely just. There is no shadow of turning
with Him in His justness. Well, in Romans 3.26 it says,
To declare, I say at this time, His righteousness, that he might
be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."
When he comes writing in, he is absolutely just, and he's
going to be the justifier of his people. He's going to completely
satisfy the requirements of righteousness. He's going to completely satisfy
what's required to be just. On the back of your bulletins,
I think there's a sermon portion by Gary Shepard that said, what's it say there, Norm? Sin is never ignored or covered
up. It must be punished. It cannot be reversed. It must
be punished. It cannot be reversed. It must be punished. And He is
there to satisfy that need. He is going to go there and by
imputation take the sins of His people, take them to the cross,
die in their place, and then by imputation deliver His righteousness
to them, and they have that, and it's eternal. He might be just and the justifier
of him that believeth in Jesus." When you've been justified, one
of the old Baptist preachers always said, it's just as if
I'd never sinned. That's how God sees you, because
your sins have been taken by His Son and dealt with. So, it's
interesting to look at this and say, well, who rejoices and who
does not? Some rejoice, even though their
understanding is really incorrect spiritually, they nevertheless
are gathered together to do the part which God hath before determined
should be done. They're going to shout, Hosanna
to the King. They're going to cry out, the
Lord your King cometh. even though they don't really
maybe understand it. Others don't rejoice. They're
saying, I wish he would just go away and never come back.
Because I don't like what he says. Remember in John 6, 6,
6? Hey, no one can come to me except
the Father which sent me draw him. All that the Father gives
me shall come to me. And after that, Many of his disciples
walked no more with him. He said, we don't like that.
We liked everything. We liked the free fish and bread
and stuff. But when it come right down to
getting the truth of the gospel, take that seed and snip it in
half. They didn't rejoice. And even at that moment, they're
unleashing the full evil of their nature in the fall. They're plotting
to kill him. In their hearts, they've already
done it. They're just trying to figure out how they can do
it and get away with it. They're scheming. They're planning. They're going to go to him and
try to catch him in a series of tricks. They just have no
idea who they're dealing with because they can't see the King
of Glory. They can't see. Well, we'll try
and get him to say that you shouldn't pay your taxes. And then when He didn't fall
for that, they lied about it. And then they said, well, it
worked, didn't it? So, they're planning to be rid
of this One whom they hated without a cause, whom they would not
have reign over them. And again, we have grace, the
great divider. Remember back to our lesson in
Luke chapter 12, verse 51, So the gospel of grace is the
only thing that makes a difference. Coming to Christ because He's
drawn you, coming to Christ because He said, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me, that's the only answer. So we'll stop
there, and next time we'll pick up as the actual triumphal entry. Thank you for your attention,
and be free.