For followers
of Jesus, this week is a time to remember the most significant week in the
history of Christianity. This week, followers of Jesus celebrate what separates
Christianity from every other religious system. You see, Christianity, unlike
every other religious system, at its core is not about theology. Instead
Christianity, at its core, is about something that happened in history. And while
theology, or what we believe about God, is important as followers of Jesus, the
reason why Christianity exploded in the first century and has had such an
impact throughout history is because Christianity, at its core, is all about
something that happened in history.
This week, followers of Jesus
will celebrate what is referred to in church mumbo jumbo talk as Passion Week.
Passion Week celebrates the events from history that occurred the week between
Palm Sunday, which we celebrate this Sunday, and Easter Sunday, which we will
celebrate next Sunday. Passion Week is a time when followers of Jesus remember
Jesus entry into Jerusalem on what we refer to today as Palm Sunday, Jesus
arrest, trial and crucifixion on what we refer to today as Good Friday, and
Jesus resurrection from the dead, which we refer to as Easter Sunday.
And
during this week from history that we pause to remember and reflect, there are
three powerful images that capture our attention. And those images involve a
city, a cross, and an empty tomb. So for this Passion Week, we are going to
spend our time together in a sermon series entitled “A City, A Cross, and a
Tomb.” During this series we are going to spend our time together reflecting on
the significance that a single city, a single cross, and a single tomb have had
on history.
This
week, I would like for us to spend our time together talking about the
significance that a single city has had on history. And that single city is the
city of Jerusalem. For many of us, we are familiar with the city of Jerusalem
because the city of Jerusalem seems to be constantly in the news. 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.
Today, the city of Jerusalem is
the center of conflict between the nation of Israel and the Palestinian state,
both of whom believe that they should have sole possession of the city. At the
center of the fight for Jerusalem is a fight over an area in Jerusalem called
the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is a 37 acre piece of land in Jerusalem that
is considered one of the most holy sites to the three monotheistic religions,
which are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The Temple Mount is the holiest
site in Judaism, which regards it as the place where God's divine presence is more
present than any other place. Among Sunni Muslims, the Temple Mount is widely
considered the third holiest site in Islam and is revered as the Noble
Sanctuary, the location of Muhammad's journey to Jerusalem and ascent to heaven.
The site is also associated with Jewish biblical prophets who are also
venerated in Islam.
After the Muslim conquest of
Jerusalem in 637 CE, Umayyad Caliphs commissioned the construction of the
al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock on the site. The Dome was completed in 692 A.D.,
making it one of the oldest extant Islamic structures in the world. The Al Aqsa
Mosque rests on the far southern side of the Mount, facing Mecca. The Dome of
the Rock currently sits in the middle, occupying the area where the Holy Temple
previously stood. While the Temple Mount itself is not considered a holy site
within Christianity, the city of Jerusalem has a very significant place within
Christianity.
So this week, I would like for us
to see exactly why the city of Jerusalem is so significant when it comes to
God’s activity in history. 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. Outside the city of Jerusalem Abraham was involved in a
military battle in which he joined forces with the King of Sodom to defeat an
army led by five kings and rescue his nephew Lot. The King of Sodom, along with
a priest named Melchizedek, met Abraham and blessed him there.
Then, in Genesis 22, we read
about an event from history that occurred in 2054 B.C., where the Lord
commanded Abraham to travel to a mountain named Mount Moriah to sacrifice his
son Isaac, who had been born to Abraham as a result of a promise that the Lord
had made to Abraham. As Abraham was about to kill Isaac, the Lord intervened
and supernaturally provided a sacrifice in the place of Isaac. Abraham called
that place, "the Lord who provides" since Yahweh provided a sacrifice
in place of Isaac.
Then, in a section of a letter
that is recorded for us in the Bible called the book of Judges, an event from
history is recorded where, in 1734 B.C., after being delivered from slavery at
the hands of the nation of Egypt, as the Jewish nation began to take possession
of the land that God had promised them, the Jewish people fought against and
captured the city of Jerusalem. However, the Jewish people failed to faithfully
follow the Lord, but instead chose to rebel against the Lord. As a result the
Jewish people were repeatedly conquered by other nations as a sign of the
Lord’s judgment against their selfishness and rebellion.
Then, in 1003 B.C., the most
famous king to ever led the Jewish people, King David rose to power by
conquering Jerusalem. King David established Jerusalem as the capital city of
the Jewish people, where he ruled and reigned for thirty three years. As King,
King David desired to bring the Ark of the Covenant, which symbolized God’s
presence among the Jewish people into the city of Jerusalem in order to
establish Jerusalem as the spiritual as well as political center of the Jewish
nation. After failing to follow the Lord’s command when it came to how to bring
the ark into the city, which resulted in the death of one of King David’s men,
King David successfully brought the ark into the city.
Then, at the apex of his power and prominence,
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.
However,
near the end of his rule and reign, King David rebelled against the Lord by
calling for a census of the Jewish people. King David had arrogantly come to
the place where he was placing his confident trust in the size of his army
instead of the Lord. The Lord responded to King David’s rebellion by giving the
king a choice in his punishment: three years of famine,
three months of attack by his enemies, or three days of pestilence among the
Jewish people. King David, not wanting to feel the ruthlessness of man, told the
Lord that he wanted to fall into His hands.
As a result of King David’s
decision, the Lord sent a pestilence on the Jewish people that resulted in the
death of 70,000 men. The Lord sent an angelic messenger to destroy Jerusalem. However,
as the angelic messenger stood over the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite,
the Lord intervened and stopped him from exercising judgment of the city. As King
David, saw the angelic messenger standing between heaven and earth with his
sword drawn over Jerusalem the king pleaded to the Lord on behalf of the Jewish
people. The Lord responded by commanding King David, through the prophet Gad,
to build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan. The king bought
the threshing floor from Ornan and built an altar on it and offered a sacrifice
to the Lord on the altar.
The Lord responded to King David’s
sacrificial offerings by sending fire from heaven that consumed the burnt
offering. As a result of his encounter with the Lord, King David declared that
this would be the location for the Temple of the Lord. What is so interesting
is that the threshing floor of Ornan was located on the same place where
Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed. And that place was Mount Moriah. 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.
However, near the end of his
life, Solomon selfishly rebelled against the Lord by worshipping false gods
instead of the Lord due to the influence of his pagan wives. And as a result of
the selfishness and rebellion of Solomon and the Jewish people, the Lord tore
the Jewish people into two kingdoms. 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.
Tomorrow, we will look at
Zechariah’s prediction and proclamation together…
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