Week #45 | A Great Entrance and a Long Week

 LOOK | WHAT DOES IT SAY?

(307) Luke 13:1-15:32

(308) Luke 16:1-17:37; John 11:1-57

(309) Matthew 19:1-30; Mark 10:1-31; Luke 18:1-30

(310) Matthew 20:1-34; Mark 10:32-52; Luke 18:31-19:28

(311) Matthew 21:1-22; Mark 11:1-25; Luke 19:29-48; John 12:1, 12:9-50

(312) Matthew 21:23-22:22; Mark 11:27-12:17; Luke 20:1-26

(313) Matthew 22:23-23:36; Mark 12:18-40; Luke 20:27-47

THINK | WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Reading #307: Jesus Did Not Come to Be Liked. As Jesus continues his journey towards Jerusalem, we see here in Luke's Gospel the different ways that the establishment tried to deal with Jesus. They tried to get close to him, but insincerely. They pretended to be concerned about his safety and warn him not to come to Jerusalem, but probably only so that they could brand Jesus a coward if he failed to show up. (As a side note: when those who are trying to trip you up start to suddenly be very nice and try to get close to you, and they are trying to get you to do or not do things, always go in the exact opposite direction of where they are trying to steer you. If they're worried about you talking to someone, or showing up somewhere, or making a decision, it's for a reason--so go ahead and do it.) When criticizing Jesus directly didn't work, they tried to connect him to the faults of those that he associated with. But Jesus did not come to be well-liked by the religious establishment. He came to call sinners to himself, and to die in their place.

Reading #308: Jesus Did Not Come Without the Testimony of the Spirit. All along the journey to Jerusalem, we see the wisdom with which Jesus taught and the miracles that he did. Imagine how inconvenient it was for the narrative that the establishment was trying to build when, shortly before the Passover, Jesus even raised Lazarus from the dead! There was no explaining that away.

Reading #309: Jesus Teaches on the Road. Jesus got all sorts of questions from all sorts of people. Some were trying to trap him in his words. Some wanted to follow him, but were still weighing it out. Some were genuinely seeking. Throughout, Jesus pointed them to a promise of a better world to come in the Kingdom of God. This is why Jesus didn't try to get the rich young ruler to give Jesus his money; instead he told him to give the poor his money, and to come and follow him. Jesus' words are not the words of a cult leader. A cult leader is always trying to gain money, or prestige, or followers, or satisfaction of personal desires--and a cult leader usually presents some kind of spiritual teaching about communal possessions or free love or political action which will gain him access to what he's really after. But Jesus is totally unlike this. He holds a strong stance on the permanence of marriage between one man and one woman. He rejects many would-be followers. He tells people to give money to other people, and not to him. He says that his Kingdom is not of this world and thus can't be gained through political action. He is completely who he says he is. The only way that he ever self-aggrandizes is through his testimony that he is God's presence on earth--a claim which, it turns out, is true.

Reading #310: Stop Trying to Get Ahead of Others. In this reading, Jesus teaches against the competitive desire to want to be more significant than others. In his parable, he says that the one who works for the landowner all day and the one who works for an hour get the same wage at the end because of the landowner's grace. The workers who had been there all day object, but the landowner insists that the wage is his to give. Jesus' followers are not supposed to try to figure out how they can consider themselves more important than others due to amount of time served, but to think of themselves as those who have received God's grace. A little while later, Jesus has to deal with a request from the mother of John and James to sit beside him in his kingdom as the most important followers of Jesus. They had, in fact, been among the earliest of Jesus' followers. But Jesus teaches again patiently that "getting ahead" is not what his kingdom is about.

Reading #311: The Triumphal Entry and Cleansing of the Temple. The Gospels all slow way down as Jesus begins to make his final trip to Jerusalem. Usually, about half of each Gospel is devoted to Jesus' final trip to Jerusalem and to the last week of Jesus' earthly life. But here we see the amazing entrance that awaited him when he arrived: between the 72 witnesses who had been sent out before Jesus according to Luke, and the famous raising of Lazarus according to John, the people who were at Jerusalem had been prepared and were ready to receive Jesus. This time Jesus causes a disturbance in the Temple again and claims it as his house (in every Gospel except John, who allows Jesus' appearance in the Temple on Hanukkah to be Jesus' definitive Temple appearance), but the establishment can do nothing because "the people were hanging upon his words" (Luke 19:48). Do you and I hang on the words of Jesus in this way? Would we follow him readily into situations that others around us might not understand?

Reading #312: Leading Questions by Hostile People. During this particular week in Jerusalem, it seems as if the establishment is on a full-time quest to undermine Jesus. (As it turns out, they will succeed, and in only a few days the crowd will call out for Jesus' crucifixion.) Here they question Jesus' authority and then try to trap him with a question that is designed to either make him unpopular with the crowds, or seen as a threat to the Romans. Jesus handles both, but the pressure is on. How would you handle that kind of pressure? Hebrews 12:2 says about Jesus that "for the joy set before him, he endured the cross." Is your trust in God such a part of your life that "for the joy set before you" you could also handle the pressure of whatever comes your way?

Reading #313: Jesus Puts An End to the Questioning, and Looks to the Cross. As the week pushes on, the various leaders from different groups keep trying to trap Jesus, or trip him up, or show him to be not as great of a teacher as people think he is. The Sadducees ask about the resurrection, and a teacher of the law asks Jesus about the greatest commandment. After answering both, Jesus finally asks them his own leading question. It's a question designed, as the establishment types realize, to either cause them to affirm Jesus or to make them unpopular with the crowds. Instead of having a clever answer like Jesus tends to have, they awkwardly decline. From this point they ask no further questions. But Jesus has exposed them now. He pronounces judgments against them. He takes the great weakness of very successful and self-assured people -their pride in their standing, and their anger at anything that might threaten that standing- and goads them into pursuing his crucifixion by publicly shaming them and pronouncing woes against them. He knows that their sinful pride will not let them do anything other than try to eliminate him as the social threat that they believe -must believe, for the sake of their standing- that he truly is. Which should make us wonder, do we have any attachment to our own standing at work, in our family, at church, or in the community that might feel protective over? How might we begin to practice letting go of that attachment in order to allow for what God might do in and through someone else? For the establishment leaders, they could not stand the idea of being overshadowed by some miracle working Galilean who spoke out of turn and didn't do things the proper way. They held onto their standing--and lost a much greater reward.

DO | HOW DO WE RESPOND?

How can we respond in our worship, attitude, and actions? I won't lay out exact responses in this space because the possibilities are often endless. But it is worth it to think about application in the categories of worship, attitude, and actions. Does this reading direct me to God in worship and thanksgiving and praise, or does it direct me towards a change that I need to make here and now? If it's about a change that I need to make, is this something inward in my attitude, or outward in my actions? This helps to rescue application from just being a series of how-to tips, or one-size-fits-all instructions that go beyond what the Bible actually states. Sometimes, the most helpful application we can make is to get a different perspective on what's the most important thing, or about how we should respond inwardly to the things going on around us.

PRAY | HOW DOES THIS BRING US TO GOD?

Whether in response to anything pointed out here, or to something else in your Bible reading time, take a few moments before you close up your Bible to pray in response to God. If you need a format for prayer, both the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), CALL (Confess, Ask, Love, Listen), and PRAY (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield) methods are helpful ways to stay consistent.

-Sean