This week, we are looking at the
significance that a single city has had on history.
And that single city is the city of Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem seems to
be constantly in the news as a result of the conflict that surrounds this
single city. As a matter of fact, the city of Jerusalem has been a city of
conflict since it was first inhabited. Archeologists have discovered that the
oldest part of the city was settled around 4,000 B.C., making Jerusalem one of
the oldest cities in the world. And during its long history, Jerusalem has been
destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and
recaptured 44 times.
The
city of Jerusalem is so significant when it comes to God’s activity in history,
as we first hear about the city of Jerusalem in a section of the very first
letter in the Bible called the book of Genesis. In Genesis 14, we read about an
event from history that occurred around 2100 B.C. involving a man named
Abraham, who was the man from which the Jewish people descended from. Then, at the apex of his power and prominence,
the Jewish nation’s most famous king, a man named King David, desired to honor God by building what would later be
known as the temple in Jerusalem in order to house the
Ark of the Covenant.
However,
the Lord responded to the king’s request by making an amazing promise. A
promise that rejected King David’s request to build the Temple; a promise that
a son would instead build the Temple; a promise that the Lord would cause one
of King David’s future descendants
to be the Messiah who would be the one to establish God’s kingdom for all
eternity.
After
King David’s death in 970 B.C. his son Solomon became the King of the Jewish
people. Then in 966 B.C. King Solomon began to build the Temple on Mount
Moriah, which we know today as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The first Temple took
seven years and 183,300 men to build it. Upon completion the Temple measured
nearly 90 feet in length, 30 feet in width and 45 feet in height. Upon
completion in 959 B.C. the Jewish people worshipped the Lord there and the
glory of the Lord filled the Temple.
After
Solomon's death in 931 B.C. the city of Jerusalem became the capital city of
the Southern Kingdom of the Jewish people, which was known as Judea. The
Southern Kingdom of Judea would end up being ruled by a succession of twenty
kings from 931 B.C. to 586 B.C. These kings led the Jewish people to turn
from the Lord to worship false gods instead of the Lord.
Then, in 586 B.C., the Lord
fulfilled the promise that He had made to the Jewish people when it came to
what would happen if they turned from following the Lord to
instead follow false gods. The Lord rejected the Jewish people as He had been
rejected. The Lord removed the Jewish people from the Promised Land and
destroyed the Temple through the Babylonian Empire. And from 586 to 538 B.C.,
the Jewish people lived as a conquered people in that nation of Babylon.
Then,
in 538 B.C., the Persian Emperor Cyrus, after conquering the Babylonian Empire,
began to allow the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.
In 535 B.C., the foundation of the Temple was rebuilt as the Jewish people placed
their hope in a promise that the Lord had made to King David and the Jewish
people hundreds of years earlier. A promise that the Lord would send a rescuer,
a deliverer, a Messiah, who would bring the Jewish people back to God and back
to a place of prominence in the world.
However, while the Jewish people
were building their own houses, they failed to rebuild the rest of the Temple
or the walls around the city of Jerusalem. God responded by sending the
prophets Haggai and Zechariah to call the Jewish people to rebuild the Temple.
In 515 B.C., the rebuilding of the temple was completed on the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem.
As part of the Lord’s message to
the Jewish people, the prophet Zechariah wrote a letter to the Jewish people
that was preserved and is a part of our Bible’s today. In a letter that bears
his name, the prophet Zechariah, in 518 B.C. predicted and proclaimed what the
future held for the Jewish people. And in his prediction and proclamation of
what the future held for the Jewish people, Zechariah proclaimed the
significance that the city of Jerusalem would continue to hold for the Jewish
people, and for all humanity. So let’s look at Zechariah’s prediction and
proclamation together, beginning in Zechariah 9:9-10:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming
to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey,
Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
And the horse from Jerusalem; And the bow of war will be cut off. And He will
speak peace to the nations; And His dominion will be from sea to sea, And from
the River to the ends of the earth.
Here we see Zechariah proclaim
that there would be a day in the future when God would fulfill His promise to
send a rescuer, a deliverer, a Messiah, who would bring the Jewish people back
to God and back to prominence in the world. And on that day, this rescuer, this
deliverer, this Messiah, who is the One who is right and just, who possesses
and provides rescue and salvation, would enter the city of Jerusalem not with
arrogant pride and power on a machine of war. Instead, this rescuer, this deliverer,
this Messiah who is the One who is right and just, who possesses and provides
rescue and salvation, would enter the city in humility on a donkey.
However, the Jewish people failed
to remain faithful to the Lord. And from 518 B.C. to 430 B.C. the Lord
continued to send prophets to call the Jewish people away from their
selfishness and rebellion and back to God. However, the Jewish people continued
to selfishly rebel and reject the Lord. Then a little less than 550 years after
the prophet Zechariah had made his prediction and proclamation, in 30 A.D., an
event from history occurred that once again brought the city of Jerusalem to
center stage in history. An event from history that is recorded for us in a
section of an account of Jesus life in the Bible called the gospel of Matthew.
And it is this event from history
that launches us into the week of the single most important event that ever
occurred in history. So let’s look at this event from history together,
beginning in Matthew 21:1-5:
When they had approached Jerusalem and had come to Bethphage, at the Mount
of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the
village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with her; untie them
and bring them to Me. "If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, 'The
Lord has need of them,' and immediately he will send them." This took
place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: "SAY TO THE DAUGHTER
OF ZION, 'BEHOLD YOUR KING IS COMING TO YOU, GENTLE, AND MOUNTED ON A DONKEY,
EVEN ON A COLT, THE FOAL OF A BEAST OF BURDEN.'"
Matthew
brings us into this section of his account of Jesus life by providing for us
the context of this event from history that we are going to look at this
morning. As Jesus approached the city of Jerusalem on what we know today as
Palm Sunday, Jesus sent two of His disciples ahead in order to find a donkey.
But the disciples were not just to find any donkey; the disciples were to find
a donkey that would be tied up with a colt with her.
In other
words this was a specific donkey that Jesus had made arrangements to use for
His entry into Jerusalem. That is why Jesus explained to the disciples that if
anyone asked them why they were taking the donkey and the colt, they were to
reply that 'The Lord has need of them,' and immediately he will send them.”
This explanation, if communicated in the language that we use in our culture
today, would be like saying “If anyone asks about why you are taking the donkey
and the colt, just tell them that you have been sent by Jesus to pick up the
donkey that He had requested”.
Matthew then
explains that the reason why Jesus had arranged for the donkey and the colt in
advance was so that He would fulfill the very prediction and proclamation that
had been made over 500 years earlier by the prophet Zechariah. You see, Jesus
wanted the residents of Jerusalem to clearly understand that He was fulfilling God’s
promise to send a rescuer, a deliverer, a Messiah. Jesus wanted the residents
of Jerusalem to clearly understand that He was the Messiah and that He had
arrived as advertised. Matthew then records for us what happened next in verse
6-11:
The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, and brought
the donkey and the colt, and laid their coats on them; and He sat on the coats.
Most of the crowd spread their coats in the road, and others were cutting
branches from the trees and spreading them in the road. The crowds going ahead
of Him, and those who followed, were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of
David; BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Hosanna in the
highest!" When He had entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying,
"Who is this?" And the crowds were saying, "This is the prophet
Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee."
This
morning, can you imagine what that must have looked like? Can you imagine what
that must have sounded like? Can you imagine watching Jesus enter into the city
of Jerusalem as the crowds laid down palm branches and their coats so that
Jesus would enter the city of Jerusalem on as close to a red carpet as they
could make?
Matthew
tells us that as Jesus entered in to the city of Jerusalem, the crowds that
surrounded Jesus on every side shouted "Hosanna to the Son of David;
BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Hosanna in the highest!"
By shouting this statement the crowds were quoting from a section of a letter
that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of
Psalms.
In Psalm
118, the Psalmist proclaimed a Psalm of thanksgiving for God’s deliverance of
His people. As part of this psalm, in verse 26, the Psalmist pictures the parade
of victory that would accompany the arrival of the Messiah as conquering King.
The word Hosanna literally means “save now!” So the crowds that surrounded Jesus
as He entered Jerusalem were basically proclaiming “Save us now! We believe
that you are the Son of David, the fulfillment of God’s promise to send a
Messiah. How blessed are you who have come from the Lord to rescue and deliver
us! Save us now!”
Matthew then
tells us that as Jesus entered Jerusalem, the entire city was stirred with excitement
and questions. “Who is this that you are proclaiming as the Messiah?” people
were asking. “This is Jesus the prophet from Galilee, He is the Messiah”, was
the crowds response. But this morning, it was not simply the crowds that
surrounded Jesus as He entered Jerusalem that stirred up the city of Jerusalem.
Tomorrow, we
will see Jesus begin to stir things up…
No comments:
Post a Comment