Messiah - Gospel of Matthew - Week 28

0:00 · Speaker 1 Morning. So there are some phrases that are pretty much certain to start a fight. And I was thinking of a few of them. Do you like my new hairdo? What time of the night do you call this? Is that all we're getting? You're just like your father. I told you so.

0:24 · Speaker 1 I thought you said you wanted to lose weight. and two with particularly Northern Ireland shades. What are you looking at? Or who do you think you are? And it's that last one I want you to listen for as we watch and listen to some of today's chapter. It's Matthew 21. We're going to watch in Lumo. A lot of people have been asking me, where are these clips from?

0:52 · Speaker 1 It's called Lumo, L-U-M-O, and we're going to watch a good part of Matthew 21 here. So listen out for who do you think you are.

1:04 · Speaker 2 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, Say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away. This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet. Say to daughter Zion, See, your king comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey. The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

2:05 · Speaker 2 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven! When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, "Who is this?" The crowds answered, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee." Jesus entered the temple port. and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.

3:35 · Speaker 2 It is written, he said to them, my house will be called a house of prayer. But you are making it a den of robbers. The blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did, and the children shouting in the temple courts, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were indignant. Do you hear what these children are saying? they asked him. Yes, replied Jesus. Have you never read?

4:22 · Speaker 2 From the lips of children and infants, you, Lord, have called forth your praise. And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night. Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it, but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, May you never bear fruit again. Immediately the tree withered. When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. How did the fig tree wither so quickly, they asked.

5:22 · Speaker 2 Jesus replied Truly I tell you If you have faith and do not doubt Not only can you do what was done to the fig tree But also you can say to this mountain Go, throw yourself into the sea and it will be done

5:43 · Speaker 3 If you believe

5:45 · Speaker 2 You will receive whatever you ask for in prayer Jesus entered the temple courts, and while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. By what authority are you doing these things, they asked. And who gave you this authority? Jesus replied, I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John's baptism, where did it come from? Was it from heaven or of human origin?

6:30 · Speaker 2 They discussed it among themselves and said, If we say from heaven, he will ask, Then why didn't you believe him? But if we say of human origin, we are afraid of the people for they all hold that John was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, we don't know. Then he said, neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

7:04 · Speaker 1 Hopefully you picked it up in there. It's maybe not the exact phrase, but it's close enough. By Basically, who do you think you are? And if we look back over our Messiah series from Matthew, we've seen many times the collision between what Jesus taught and how he behaved and the ways of the Jewish religious leaders. And this was a really important theme for the first readers of this gospel. Remember, it was written for those in the early church who were coming under intense pressure from Jewish religious leaders in their day. Awful accusations were made against them and their livelihoods were even threatened because they were no longer aligned with official Judaism, which was an official religion in the Roman Empire. And so the writer of this, it's just an amazing masterpiece, Matthew's Gospel, but the writer of it had to make sure that they understood clearly that if they were facing trouble from Jewish leaders, they were only following the path that their master had shown them.

8:08 · Speaker 1 but as we reach this part of the story some of what has been hinted at up to now starts to become more explicit we've seen and heard Jesus teaching about and exemplifying a different kind of kingdom and we've had a very different picture of a king painted in Jesus than what we see in earthly kings like the Herods. And yes, there have been moments of conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders, but they've been taking place mainly in Galilee, away from the center of power. And I'm intrigued that in today's passage at the start of Matthew 21, as Jesus entered Jerusalem, the question asked in the city was, who is this? That kind of indicates to us that the King Jesus hadn't made much of an effort before to be noticed in the city, but that was all changing. Now, when these leaders asked Jesus, who do you think you are? In some ways, it was quite natural for them to ask that question. After all, they were supposed to be the guardians of the nation's spiritual life. In fact, in the parable at the end of this chapter that we didn't watch, it's just too long, where Jesus likens the leaders to the tenants of the master's vineyard.

9:35 · Speaker 1 Well, that reinforces for us that they should have been asking this question. In the Old Testament, we see Israel referred to as God's vineyard several times. And he expected the tenants of his vineyard, in this case, the spiritual leaders, to take good care of the vineyard. But they didn't. and they were going to have to face the consequences for that. In Jesus' words to them, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. So as spiritual leaders, they should be asking that question about authority from someone who was claiming to be a leader, but they also should have been willing to see the evidence before them in Jesus and what he taught, what he did, and how he lived. And there's a very definite change here in Jesus' actions.

10:32 · Speaker 1 Whereas before he has taken steps not to draw any more attention to himself than necessary, now he's very much in the public eye. And it starts with that entrance to Jerusalem riding on a donkey. And yes, it speaks of humility, but it's more than that. We noted this on Palm Sunday last year, that a king who came in peace would ride on a donkey. And this was the Prince of Peace, clearly owning his royal place, but showing a very different kind of king to what they had known and to what they were looking for. They wanted a king who would overthrow the Romans. God's king had much higher priorities than that. And if that wasn't enough to grab their attention, then we have this really uncomfortable episode of Jesus overturning the tables in the temple.

11:31 · Speaker 1 I liked watching it there because it brings the shock factor, I think, home to us rather than just reading it. It was quite a shocking episode, but I got to give you a bit of an aside on this. My work life involves working with a team of people, and we're trying to resource communities around the world to be more involved in Bible translation. And a lot of them are oral communities, and a lot of them have no biblical background at all. So when you're explaining biblical concepts and ideas to them, it's really important to show them pictures so they get an idea of what it is. Now, you'll know that AI is becoming more and more advanced, and we're using artificial intelligence in Bible translation. And one of the ways it can be used is to generate pictures to explain Bible things. So you just ask the engines to generate a picture.

12:19 · Speaker 1 So one of the teams asked AI to generate a picture of Jesus flipping over the tables in the temple. Where do you see what they came up with? Just shows you that you can't take AI at face value. You've got to be really careful however many advances are being made. But anyhow, this is an uncomfortable episode. We are not used to Jesus being angry and we may not know how to handle it. But he's definitely claiming authority to act in this way. He may have come humbly riding on a donkey as the Prince of Peace, but he was making a statement here.

13:01 · Speaker 1 What he saw angered him. it pained him. The temple was supposed to represent the glory of God, and the rituals were supposed to bring people to a better understanding of God. But under the watch of these leaders, it had all become corrupt. Just one example was this. People would come from the country with the animals that they were making a sacrifice with, but the inspectors at the temple would check over the animals. And they would often falsely assess that the animal had a defect, and therefore it couldn't be used in the sacrifice. But all was not lost, because those same inspectors were surprisingly able to offer you an alternative animal, at a price, of course.

13:52 · Speaker 1 And so the poor people even got robbed when they came to worship. And no doubt the religious leaders would get their cut. And Jesus rightly was angry. If he had kept himself out of the limelight before now, not any longer. But then again, he had told his disciples that things were on the move toward this purpose. In the previous chapter, Matthew 20 verses 18 and 19, he told them, we're going up to Jerusalem and the son of man's going to be delivered to the chief priests and the teachers of the law, they will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day, he will be raised to life. We were heading towards this.

14:41 · Speaker 1 And you know, I think we got to deal at least a little with this picture of Jesus being angry. Because we may or may not be comfortable with it. And maybe we have tended to kind of pass over it because we're not quite sure how to react to it. We might be happy to refer to it as righteous anger, but beyond that, we don't know. And I'm guessing when it comes to anger, we can often head to two extremes. Either we're so uncomfortable with the notion that we never dare to confront wrong when we see it, or we're too quick to confront, And we're happy to say that we are exhibiting righteous anger. And I struggle with both of those extremes. Surely there have to be times when we take a strong stand against what is wrong.

15:37 · Speaker 1 I'd argue especially on behalf of those who don't have a voice for themselves. The marginalized, the downtrodden, the innocent. And yet, whilst we have to take a stand, we also need to be careful that we're not just having an ugly tantrum over something we disagree with and dressing it up as righteous anger. See, I'm absolutely sure of this. I don't trust myself to be totally pure in my motives to the extent that I can confidently say my reaction to something is always righteous anger. And if you're representative of the rest of humanity, I don't trust you either. I know for sure that I can trust that Jesus' anger is righteous, but I can't claim his purity nor his knowledge of human hearts. So I just think we gotta be careful.

16:39 · Speaker 1 Whilst we shouldn't jerk from taking a stand on important issues, we need to be very careful to weigh up our motives and even our grasp of all the complexities of every situation. Anyhow, we need to move on. And as we do, we find another uncomfortable encounter, this time with a fig tree. And if you didn't pay careful attention to everything that was going on, you might be tempted to think that Jesus was still pretty miffed from what had happened the night before in the temple. And now he was taking his anger out on a tree. but it's way more significant than that. It starts with something very routine. Jesus is hungry.

17:23 · Speaker 1 And he spies a fig tree that has leaves. Now that's important. Because fig trees with leaves would be expected to have fruit at the same time. But this one doesn't. It's just leaves. It held all the promise of fruit, but there was none. And in cursing it, Jesus ensured that the tree withered. And yet as he did so, he was pointing out an important reality.

17:53 · Speaker 1 Because just as Israel were referred to in the Old Testament as a vine, God also spoke of them as a fig tree. The prophet Hosea talked about God looking on his people as if finding early figs on a fig tree and then bringing him joy. But there are also other examples of God's warning to them, that unless they turned from their evil ways, they wouldn't produce figs. And in a sense, Jesus' encounter here is the fulfillment of those warnings. Israel hasn't produced what God desired, and in particular, hasn't shared his love with the nations. We saw that in our Christmas playlists several times. And now God was taking decisive action. We've already mentioned a quote from the parable later in the chapter.

18:46 · Speaker 1 Where Jesus said, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you. And given to a people who will produce its fruit. And in another parable at the end of this chapter, I really encourage you to read them later on. Jesus is even more explicit. Again answering their question, who do you think you are? by putting himself into the parable as the son of the owner whom the evil tenants killed. And there's the most intriguing irony as Jesus tells them the story. The response of the leaders to the parable is one of horror.

19:20 · Speaker 1 Here's what they say. The master will bring those wretches to a wretched end and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the share of the crop at harvest time. How ironic. And it was only when Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven will be taken away from you, that the penny dropped and he realized he was talking about them. As we work our way through these different encounters, and we're going very quickly, we're just scratching the surface of the significance of all the different strands that weave together in this gospel. We can very clearly see the implications for both the immediate events in the life of Jesus and also how relevant it was for the early church for whom this gospel was written down. But we also need to go further and ask ourselves what the relevance of these encounters and the teaching of Jesus is for us today. And I know we can't possibly cover every implication.

20:26 · Speaker 1 So I'm just going to restrict it really to the story of the fig tree. Probably because it's the part of the story that challenges me most. And I've got to ask myself this question. If, like the Israelites, I want to be known as God's, If Jesus is my Lord, does he find fruit when he looks at me? Or does he just find leaves? From a distance, the fig tree looked great. It held lots of promise. But up close, it was empty.

21:14 · Speaker 1 The Jewish religious leaders and their system, they looked good. The rituals were right. They followed the rules and they even invented more rules just to be sure that they were getting it right. But you get up close to them and you find that they're empty. The church today, our church, me, are we sure that we don't just look good? That we have all the right answers? That we follow the expected rules?

21:57 · Speaker 1 And yet up close, there's no real fruit. For fruit isn't having all the right answers. Or practicing the right rituals. Or giving the right impression. That was the whole problem of the Pharisees. They thought it was. When the fruit that Jesus looks for is way beyond that. Now if we consider what we've learned already from this series in Messiah.

22:26 · Speaker 1 We have had more than enough evidence from Jesus teaching and his example in this gospel. To define for us the kind of fruit that he's looking for. It's compassion. Servanthood. Love for the outcast and foreigner. Outrageous generosity and mercy. And that's all just from Matthew chapter 20. The chapter before.

22:59 · Speaker 1 As we look back a bit further in this gospel. We find more fruit. Childlike faith, love for the lost, a forgiving spirit, seeking not to cause offense and arguments. Or if we cast our minds back a little bit further to the Sermon on the Mount, more fruit, dealing with our anger, purity in our lifestyles, straightforwardness in our dealings, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, loving our enemies. And again, we're just scratching the surface. But even scratching the surface, we should be starting to see how difficult this is.

23:55 · Speaker 1 The Pharisees badly wanted to reduce godliness to a set of rules where they could happily tick the box and say they were good enough. And the problem is we may not admit it, but we often want to try and do the same thing because we think if we can tick the box, if we've got the answers right to all the difficult questions, then we can justify ourselves. And it would be so much easier to reduce following Jesus to things that we can say we've got sorted and then move on. But Jesus never lets us do that. Those incredibly challenging standards, just from the Sermon on the Mount, should make that clear. But Jesus also showed it firsthand in his encounters with people. Just jump back two chapters to the passage that Andrew dealt with two weeks ago. The Pharisees wanted to be able to tick a box on marriage and divorce, and Jesus says, whoa, whoa, whoa.

24:52 · Speaker 1 The real stuff goes way deeper than that. Way beyond what you're thinking. And then the man who came to Jesus to ask him what he had to do to get eternal life. So Jesus started with the commandments. And the man was delighted because he reckoned that he kept them all. And then just when he thought he was in the clear, Jesus tells him to sell everything he has and give his money to the poor. And he scoped away because he was very rich and he wasn't up for that. Jesus was telling him, the fruit I'm looking for is not just about satisfying rules.

25:27 · Speaker 1 It's about a totally new heart. The obedience isn't to come from following rules. It's to come from a change inside. And because it's like that, you'll never get to the point where you can say, you've ticked all the boxes. And I have to believe that Jesus is still saying the same thing to us today. And I have to believe that that's just as tough a call for us as it was for those people back then. And that's where I want to go back to the fig tree. Because Jesus also said something else very interesting to his disciples.

26:04 · Speaker 1 When they saw it wither in response to Jesus cursing it, they were amazed. They're going, wow, look at that. Did you see that? How did that happen so quickly? They're astounded. But Jesus then responded, Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but you can also say to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. I've wrestled with those words this week because I'm pretty sure of this, that Jesus doesn't want his disciples going around merely zapping mountains.

26:50 · Speaker 1 That doesn't seem to be what he's getting at. I can't help but wonder if this promise of seeing greater things happen must be tied in with the theme of bearing fruit. I wonder if Jesus isn't saying to them, yes, the kind of life I'm calling you to in the kingdom is not easy. The fruit doesn't grow easily. The kind of heart change required isn't normal. But with God, all things are possible. And even if we look back to the Old Testament where God despaired at the lack of fruit from his people, there were also promises. Ezekiel passed on God's promise where God said, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.

27:41 · Speaker 1 Jeremiah passed on the message. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. And that last phrase from Jesus, if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Well, surely that has echoes of what's recorded at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

28:13 · Speaker 1 And surely it's not a coincidence back there at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that that comes right after Jesus had led down the size of the challenge it is to live life in the kingdom with a changed heart. And surely like here with the fig tree, he isn't encouraging his disciples to look for power merely to do all kinds of miracles. Surely a big part of it has to be his promise that if you want to take seriously his calling to live a kingdom of God life, if you want to see the greatest of all miracles, which is having your heart changed, then that is possible. See, I look at the kind of fruit that God wants to see in my life, and you know what? When I look at it, I know I'm in trouble. Those examples that we've quoted from Matthew's gospel are some. But we could also go to what the Apostle Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

29:29 · Speaker 1 I want to know who in here is prepared to put up their hands and say, I can tick the box on all of those. Like look at them. And compare yourself against them. Or even better, have way more fun. Those of you who know me, compare me against them. You'll have way more fun doing that. Or compare somebody else you know against them. If our closest friends and family could claim anonymity and we're allowed to score us out of 10 on each of those.

30:09 · Speaker 1 What do you reckon you'd score? I hate to think what I would score. And it's not the greatest miracle you can imagine seeing your own life changed to be able to bear fruit like that. And when we look at the fruit that Jesus wants to see, and when we realize how far away we are from it, that's the key. That is the first key step. And that's why the Pharisees just didn't get it.

30:53 · Speaker 1 They just couldn't see that they didn't match up because they were trying to meet other standards. But those who did, those who realized their need, they got to see Jesus do amazing things in their lives. And I truly believe that is still his promise today. Because you see, this isn't a guilt trip. This is about the promise of the power of God at work in us to do the greatest miracle imaginable, changing our hearts. And as long as we keep admitting our need for that help, we will see God at work. Once we start to think that we've ticked the box,

31:56 · Speaker 1 that's when the trouble starts. let's pray Father God we are a very interesting collection of people and if truth be told Father sometimes some of us felt that we've ticked the boxes and then at other times we're confronted with the truth and we see ourselves in the mirror that is your word and we thank you for it because it removes complacency from it. And we thank you that it speaks your truth. Father, thank you that today, above all the truth that it speaks, is the power of Jesus to change my heart, to change our hearts, to transform our lives, to keep on transforming our lives, and to make us new. So God, we pray that wherever each of us stands with you today, wherever we stand in regards to how we view ourselves, may we see ourselves truly in the mirror of your word. And may we come to Jesus and find that power that he promised, the answers to prayer that he promised, to see the greatest of miracles happen and keep on happening in our lives day after day. in his lovely name we pray Amen