Eight Days that Changed the World – Monday
Thank you very much for coming tonight. I am delighted I could be here, but I’m very thankful that you are here as well. I hope that God will bless His Word to you as we read it together. Would you turn, please, to the gospel written by Mark? And we’re going to read in Mark chapter 11. Mark chapter 11.
We’re going to read at verse 12, but if you notice the end of the previous verse, it speaks about the eventide coming and the Lord Jesus going out to Bethany. So now verse 12 says, on the morrow, so that of course was Palm Sunday, when the Lord Jesus rode.
Into the city of Jerusalem and looked around about the temple, went out to Bethany Sunday evening, now on the morrow, so this is Monday, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came if happily he might find anything thereon. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever. And his disciples heard it. And they come to Jerusalem, and Jesus went into the temple and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? But ye have made it a den of thieves. And the scribes and chief priests heard it and sought how they might destroy him, for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine. And when even was come, he went out of the city. Now, one more reading, please, in John chapter 14.
John chapter 14 and verse 1. Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. Now that is an amazing statement. He is claiming equality of reliance and dependability with his father. Earlier in Matthew chapter 16, he said to Simon Peter, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father, which is in heaven, and I say unto you. He was putting himself on an equality of revelation. With the father. Here, it is the dependability of his word. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go, ye know, and the way ye know. Now, remember, please, he has told them repeatedly that he was going back to the Father.
We would think he’s speaking about heaven, but the way he put it was he was returning to the Father, and that the way by which he would return to the Father would be by death, by crucifixion, that he would go up to Jerusalem, that the chief priests would put him into the hands of the Romans, that he would be crucified, and he would rise from the dead. So he has told them this, and now he’s pointing out they should know where he is going and the way he is going. That is what elicits now this wonderful gospel statement when Thomas says unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. If no man cometh unto the Father, because that is where he was going, unto the Father, but by me.
We’re going to look this evening at some of the things that took place on the day after the Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem. Apparently, each evening from Palm Sunday up to and including Wednesday, the Lord Jesus and his disciples left Jerusalem and stayed for the night in the nearby village of Bethany. It is noteworthy that the only night that the Lord Jesus, that we have on record that the Lord Jesus spent in Jerusalem, was the night in which he was a captive when he was betrayed by Judas and was being held for trials by the high priest’s father-in-law and then by the high priest. So this Monday morning, we find the Lord Jesus and his 12 disciples returning from Bethany to the city of Jerusalem. Now, as you likely know, our English word hypocrite comes from the stage, comes from the idea of mask wearing, where people would put a mask on and would pretend to be something or someone they were not.
What is going to happen here in the events we’re going to look at is going to be the clash between the all-seeing, all-knowing son of, God and the hypocritical leaders who were mask wearing, who were pretending to be serving God and were actually merely serving themselves. That’s one reason why I read to you about that barren fig tree, because the leafy but barren fig tree, the condition actually was picturing what was happening in that city, that there were people with a lot of show, the way the Lord Jesus put it, that they were drawing near to God with their lips, but their heart was far from him. They did not have the reality of God’s salvation in their heart. Now, apart from the description the Lord Jesus gives us in Luke chapter 16 of what the rich man says when he is in hell, there are only two occasions I know of where the Lord Jesus used the words, my father’s house.
My father’s house. Both of them are in the gospel of John. He said, in his first cleansing of the temple, he said, take these things hence, make not my father’s house a house of merchandise. And then where we read in chapter 14, he’s speaking of heaven. And he says, in my father’s house, there are many dwelling places. So I want you to think about the contrast between the father’s house up there and what the Lord Jesus found in his father’s house down here. There was a contrast in the conditions because here’s what we learn about the temple. In the very place where the name of God was to be honored, conditions had sunk so low as you read about what’s going on that God’s very presence was dishonored. Now, Roman drachmas, the coinage that was in use in the Roman Empire and therefore was in the land of Israel. It had the image of Caesar on it. But Jews could not use that money to pay the temple tax or to pay what they owed to the government. So what would happen is they would come to Jerusalem with their Roman coins and there would be.
Vendors who had set up shop outside the temple and people would trade in their Roman coins to get the coins that were legal for the temple collection. I hope you never, I hope you never have to exchange money at an airport because if you do, you’re going to find that what gets added on to the supposed money you’re getting back or you’re giving to them is a payment. And it’s a pretty stiff payment where they decide what they’re going to add to the exchange rate. That is what was happening here. On the 25th day of the month Adar, so that’s about 18 or 19 days before the Passover, tax officers set up business in the part of the temple that was called the Court of the Gentiles. People would come there and they would exchange their money or they would buy the offerings instead of doing what God said, picking it out of their flock, looking it over, bringing it up to Jerusalem. They would just simply take some money with them, go up to Jerusalem. It was a very easy, convenient way of practicing their religion. I’m going to suggest to you that we are very prone to that.
And that all around us, and I’m not excluding us, but all around us, there is a tendency to do what comes easy rather than what is what God says. And what they were doing was a very convenient, easy way of supposedly serving God. But it seems to me that in it all, the sacredness of the presence of God was forgotten. This meant, of course, that they were also defrauding God’s people, because as I say, they were usurers, and the temple market was like a farmer’s market that would be set up at these specific times.
Was a place of money-making for the leaders. One of the phrases that secular history uses is calls it the bazaar of the sons of Annas, that is the father-in-law of the high priest. So this was a source of great wealth and income to the leaders. When the Lord Jesus overturns these tables and chases these people. And by the way, he never used the scourge against any of the humans, chases people out of the temple, makes the herds go out, cleans the temple, cleanses the temple. He’s actually shutting down a money-making conduit that is going to cause these leaders to just have further anger against the righteous son of God. Many 21st century Americans similarly live as though God has no place in their life. I’m not going to accuse you, but I’m going to challenge you. Do you live as if there is no God?
Do you live as if there is no God? I see that when I’m home with my family that I love very much. I see that on display constantly. Because there are two in my home that live as if there is no God. I never see them speaking to God. They never indicate anything of thanksgiving for the food that they get. Those are my daughter’s two golden retrievers. They have absolutely no consciousness or interest in a supreme being. And while you may laugh at that, please just reflect for a moment that there are many people you know, and there may be some in the meeting tonight, and that’s exactly how they live.
No consciousness of God, no reality of the goodness of God that has provided for them and met their needs and blessed them to live in a country like this with such freedom. That’s what was happening here. And as a result of the faulty practice of Judaism, they were disobeying God’s word. Convenience and compromise were evident in everything that was going on here. So just to sum it all up, in the Father’s house down here, apparently God was forgotten, reverence was scarce, devotion was scant, and corruption was rife. Do you remember that in John chapter two, when the Lord Jesus cleansed the temple the first time. He said, make not my father’s house a house of merchandise.
When we come to this second cleansing, he uses stronger language, doesn’t he? That they have made it a den of robbers. Because the moment that a person turns away from the word of God and doesn’t listen to what God says as far as how to get to heaven, all of a sudden things will worsen and they’ll get further away from the truth. And that was exactly what was happening here in the father’s house down here. More than half a century ago, let me emphasize that, more than 50 years ago, the Christian writer A.W. Tozer said this, more than 50 years ago.
In many churches, Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison, it would not hurt anyone. And if it were medicine, it would not cure anyone. He is talking about how the moment that we go by our own ideas when it comes to how to be saved, how to get to heaven, how to worship God, how to serve God, we are going to get further and further and further from the truth. And what was originally a house of merchandise when in the hands of these people had now become a den of robbers who were stealing from God and from God’s people. So I would like to ask you just to reflect on whether what you are trusting in to get to the Father’s house up there is what the Bible says is the way of salvation. Because what a contrast. And I think that then when you think about heaven, what a difference between the Father’s house up there and what the Lord Jesus found in his father’s house down here. Here’s what the Bible says about the father’s house up there. There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defiles or works abomination or makes a lie, but those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. That’s pretty sweeping, isn’t it?
There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defiles or works abomination or makes a lie, but those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Please remember, heaven is God’s country. Not yours, not mine. We can’t tell God what should get into heaven or who should enter heaven.
We can only find out from God how we can get there. And here is the verse from the word of God reminding us that heaven is a place where sin will never enter. It’s reminding us about the holiness of God. There was a very poetic way that one Old Testament prophet put it. He said that God was a purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Now God sees everything that happens in our world. But what the prophet is saying is God is so holy that sin cannot be allowed to stay in his presence. Heaven has no sin about it.
God is holy. Scholars tell us that at the root of that idea, at the basis of that concept is that God is other than us. He’s not like you and me. He’s not like anybody you have ever met. There’s no part of him that is sin. There’s no part of him that fights temptation. There’s no part of him that is marked by darkness. And when believers, and some of them were the finest people that ever lived, when believers discovered what God was like, the effect on them was profound. And I would suggest to every one of us here, speaker included, that if we got a glimpse from the word of God of what God was really like.
We would move with far greater reverence in the presence of God. Listen to what Isaiah said. He saw what God was like. He’d been trying to serve God. You know what he said? Woe is me. I’m undone. I’m a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. I’ve seen the King, the Lord of hosts. He was trembling in the presence of God. Job saw what God was like, and he confessed to God, I’ve heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now I see what God is like. And he said, I repent in dust and ashes. Daniel saw what God was like. And he said, my, my, my inners, I had no strength and my inner comeliness was turned to corruption. I felt like I was nothing but a seething mass of corruption in the presence of this holy being.
John saw the risen Christ and realized what he was like. John said, I fell at his feet as dead.
Interesting, isn’t it, that the Lord Jesus presents himself as the one who was dead and is alive and is alive forevermore. And John says, when I saw him, I fell like one who was dead before this living one. Peter saw what he was like. And as he watched those fish leaping into the nets after a completely fruitless night of fishing, and as he realized that the man who could see fish in the depth of the sea could see sin in his heart, But Peter got down on his knees on a fishing boat and said, depart from me. I’m a sinful man, Lord. Depart, leave me. Those are some of the finest people have ever lived. Then they realized what God was like. There’s a place where sin will never enter. That is heaven. If you’re going to be there, then there has to be a moment where you and your sins part company, where your sins are removed by what we were singing about, the fountain that Immanuel opened at Calvary that cleanses sin. At the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., there was a large wooden altar from a synagogue that was vandalized by Nazi soldiers.
You can see hatchet marks or perhaps knife marks trying to obliterate the words, but they were carved there so that people who were in front of it and people who may have been reading the Torah from behind it would never forget. And the words were, the words are, know before whom you stand. Realize, know the one that you’re standing before. It was to remind them that they were standing before God. Now, my dear friends, you don’t have to deal with me or what I think of you or what the gospel hall thinks or your friends. But there was a very significant statement about your creator and it says he’s the god with whom you have to do, and at the end of every life there is a meeting between you and god and what the bible calls the day of judgment at the great white throne but understand as somebody has said that when you meet god there, one of two things one of two things, is going to be in force for you that day, there will be perfect justice.
Or there will be perfect mercy. There will be perfect justice. God will not overlook one sin, perfect justice. There will be perfect mercy. God will never punish sin that has already been forgiven. One of those two things. And if you’re going to face mercy in that day, then you need to come to Christ tonight to be sure that your sins are taken away. But you remember the verse I quoted from the book of Revelation also reminds us that not only is God holy and not only is heaven holy, there shall in no wise enter in, but the verse tells us about the people who will enter in and gives us this wonderful description of people who are saved.
The ones who will enter in are people whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. The Lamb’s book of life.
It could have been called the book of the Lord Jesus Christ. It could have been called God’s book. It could have been called the Creator’s book, but it’s called the Lamb’s book of life. Because everyone who was going to be in heaven has been redeemed by the blood of the lamb. There’s a moment in the life of every person is going to be in heaven when that man, that woman, that person’s sins were washed away by the blood of Christ. That what Christ did at Calvary paid for the sins of that person. Please challenge your own thinking. Has there ever been a moment in your life where you came to understand what happened at Calvary and the value of the precious blood that Christ shed. It is the Lamb’s book, but it is the Lamb’s book of life because it’s bringing together two very, very important and wonderful gospel truths. Not only redemption because it’s the Lamb’s book, but a new birth, regeneration, because it is the Lamb’s book of life. His sacrifice at Calvary was made so that sins could be washed away. The laying down of his life, his life, was so that you could have life, new life, eternal life, and what he calls being born again.
And he’s offering that to you tonight. And the wonderful thing is he’s offering it to you as a gift, which is why the Bible says, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. That’s what the Bible says. It’s not of works that people are saved. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should brag. He’s offering that to you as a gift. Five years ago this month, March the 9th, 2021, there was a man speeding, southbound on I-275 in the Tampa area of Florida. The trouble was he was not only speeding, but he was speeding southbound on the northbound lanes. And a police officer was alerted to that and raced onto the highway, was able to place himself before that car came. And as that car was going to bear down on other passenger cars, this patrol officer, Jesse Madsen, drove his car in between.
It was a frightful crash. And that police officer was killed.
Saving people who would have been killed. He left three children behind, a wife and three children. And here is the statement made by a representative from the Police Benevolent Association. He said, last night, he put himself in between a car and a civilian. And he knew the sacrifice he was making, and he knew the risk and he chose to do it anyway. Please listen to me. At Calvary, the Lord Jesus did not merely know the risk. It wasn’t that he was contemplating what might have happened. He knew everything that was going to happen. He knew what would take place. He knew that it would cost him his life and he chose to do it anyway. And the Bible tells us why. It’s unmistakable. The Bible says, right there, God was displaying his love to you, in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Right there, Christ was displaying his love for you. And Paul came to understand it when he said, the son of God loved me and he gave himself for me. Did he give himself for you?
Did he give himself for you? Has that death, has that death brought any blessing into your life when it has been the source of peace and joy and forgiveness and eternal life and a home in heaven? All because he died on the cross. I hope that you will come into a knowledge of Christ’s work at Calvary. There’s another contrast. It’s a contrast as to the cleansing required. The temple needed to be cleansed. People had soiled it with their irreverence and their mercantilism. They had defiled it with their behavior. And so the temple needed to be cleansed of these greedy, money-making merchants and robbers.
But when you come to heaven, it’s not the place that needs to be cleansed. It’s the people. If you’re going to be in heaven, you need to be cleansed from your sins. You need, as I have said, you need to have your sins washed away. And so a saved person has been washed from his sins by the precious blood of Christ. Psalm 51, David the psalmist cried this. He said, wash me throughly from my iniquities, cleanse me from my sin. In the New Testament, John said the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s son, cleanses us from all sin.
John records that in Revelation chapter seven, there is an innumerable throng around the throne of God and the lamb. And they are there because they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. Isaiah, quoting God says, come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. John himself said in Revelation chapter one, to him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. This is something that you desperately, urgently, vitally need. You cannot get into heaven with your sins. You need to be cleansed from your sins by the blood of Christ. You know, we’re told, I’m no scientist in any definition of the word, but I’ve been told.
That snowflakes really aren’t pure, that there is a nuclei of something that collects moisture around it. And that when we look at the snowflake, it seems just pure and white. But that if you looked at it under a microscope, you’d be able to detect, in many cases, that there was something not white and clean at the center of it.
You come to Christ tonight and He will wash you throughly from your sins, inside and out, cleansing you, making you ready for the presence of God, assuring you of a home in heaven so that you will be able to stand before God without one sin condemning you, all because Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. Another description is that a saved person has been redeemed in the sense of being set free. The bondage is over. The person has been redeemed, and he has, I’ll quote you the words, he has redemption through Christ’s blood, even the forgiveness of sins. And again, if you turn to the book of Revelation, you’ll find people in heaven, and this is their language, that Christ was slain and he redeemed us to God by his blood. I hope that the repetition of what I’m telling you will impress on you that if you’re going to be in heaven, you need to be cleansed from your sins. You may not think you have a lot of sins. You may not think your sins are all that serious. God says they are. And God says you need to be cleansed from your sins.
I had a relative, cousin of my wife’s, and I knew that he had had some medical examinations underway. And when I saw him one Lord’s day, I said, how are you feeling? How are you doing? Now, listen carefully to what he said.
I feel fine.
He said, if the doctors hadn’t told me I was sick, I wouldn’t know I was sick. I just have to trust them about this because I don’t feel anything. What he did not feel killed him. What he did not fear, feel, took him away from his wife and children and killed him very young in life. That cancer that he didn’t feel. But he said, I just have to trust the doctors, the experts. You may not feel that you are a sinner, but please listen to the expert. His name is God. And he tells us that the heart of every one of us is deceitful above everything. And it is incurably wicked. And that the only way you could ever be in that father’s house up there is if you are cleansed from your sins by the precious blood of Christ. Let me just close by pointing out to you that Jerusalem’s temple had come up with a place of convenient worship. It was just being treated like ordinary property. In fact, people were taking shortcuts through the city by cutting through the temple area. And the Lord Jesus stopped them because it was his father’s house. Heaven is going to be a place of constant and eternal worship. There is going to be a glorious sight that’s going to lead to a joyful song. Here is what people who are cleansed from their sins and go to the father’s house up there. Here is what they’re going to see.
His servants shall serve him and they shall see his face. Think of the joy you feel when you are away for a long time and then you come home to a family that loves you and that you love after a long separation. Think of the joy that was pictured in Luke 15 between the father and the son who had returned from the far off country. There is great joy lying ahead. Let me speak to the Christians for just a moment. There is great joy lying ahead for every saved person. We’re going to actually see the man who died for us. We’re going to be there. Remember that when the disciples saw him, they were filled with wonder. As they looked at a man with mortal wounds in his hands and feet inside, who was alive and would never die again. And when we get to heaven, you see right now, Christians.
We read about Bethlehem and Capernaum and Gethsemane and Jerusalem and Calvary. And we think of what amazing grace and love brought the Savior from up there all the way down to these places of wretched poverty and indescribable pain. But I’ve often thought that when we save people, when we get to heaven and we see what heaven is really like, We will wonder that he was ever willing to leave, that he was ever willing to part with all of that for sinners like us. And every fresh sight of that once wounded Savior alive from the dead will draw fresh gratitude and thanksgiving and worship from our hearts. I’m going to leave most of the names out of this. This is going online, and we live in days when you need to be careful. But in 2008, a man was standing on, a bridge over the Thames River, intending to jump.
A perfect stranger, I’ll tell you his name, his name was Mike. A perfect stranger walked up to him and said this to him. Let me give you his words first. He said, I was unwell at the time. I had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression. I was actually in the hospital and I ran away from the hospital intending to take my life. I got to the bridge. I stepped onto the edge of the bridge. And then suddenly from out of nowhere, this guy approached me and just started talking to me. He was saying things to me like, please don’t do this, mate. Please, please don’t do this. Let’s just go for a coffee. Let’s just talk it over. And the man on the bridge said, at first, I tried to ignore him. I just wanted to block him out. I just wanted to jump and go through with it and get it over, be done with this life. But he was persistent. He was very understanding, very kind. And then he said to me, you can get through this. You can recover. He said, I had never thought of that. And Mike talked this would-be suicide back off the edge and onto the bridge. Police, ambulances came, and there was a crowd around this would-be suicide, and Mike just slipped away.
The man who was going to jump said he didn’t give an opportunity for me to thank him. So he ended up creating, some of the younger ones here will understand this. It’s a little beyond me. He ended up creating a hashtag find Mike Twitter campaign to find the man who saved his life. I’m telling you all of that just to tell you this. He said, if I find Mike, I know what I’m going to say. I plan to say thank you. Ultimately, I just want to really extend my gratitude for what he did that day. He didn’t need to stop. He didn’t need to talk to me, but he was determined not to let me jump. And that’s just incredible. That’s just an amazing act of human kindness. The Lord Jesus didn’t need to come. The Lord Jesus didn’t need to die. He had no sins of his own. The Lord Jesus did not need to die for me.
Or for you. And yet here is the message of the Bible. When we were helpless, when we were without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. And I think I’m speaking for everybody here who is already saved, that like this man knowing what he’s going to say to Mike, I think some of us know what we would like to try to say to the Lord Jesus when we meet him. Maybe the words of a very old hymn would express it. Thank thee, Lord, for saving my soul. Thank thee, Lord, for making me whole. Thank thee, Lord, for giving to me thy great salvation, so full, so free. We’re going to be in that heaven. We’re going to be with that Savior. We’re going to see the one who died for us. We want you to be there. God wants you to be there. He’s sending the message to you because he wants you to be cleansed from your sins, to join us on the way to heaven, to be sure in this uncertain, unsure world, to be sure based on the foundation of God’s unshakable book, that you have a home in the Father’s house, and that when the Lord comes or when your life is done, that instead of being in hell for your sins and in the lake of fire forever, that you will be in what the Lord Jesus calls, my Father’s house. Shall we pray?
Filed under: Gospel Series, higgins-eugene
