Well, you've probably realized by now I'm not Pastor Clark or
Pastor Lewis. My name is Sam Morris.
I'm part of the leadership here at Calvary Chapel.
I serve with the kids in Sunday school and do some teaching on
Wednesday night as well as helping with some of the youth
on Wednesday. So good morning to everyone,
happy Palm Sunday. Let's let's pray and get into
the word. Lord.
It says in Isaiah that you tell us the end from the beginning,
Father, so that we know that You are God and there is no other.
Over 500 years ago, Lord, you prophesied of your coming into
Jerusalem. You revealed the very day in the
very manner of your coming, Lord.
Lord, please help us to discern the times that we live in today.
Lord. We see wars, rumors of wars,
pestilence, plagues, Father, or in famines and diverse places.
Lord. Lord, please just help us today
in our generation. We look at the world around us
and we wonder how much longer till you come again.
Father, I pray that each person here today or listening would
hear your word and be drawn closer to you in Jesus name,
Amen. All right, so I think everyone's
aware this is a very significant day, Palm Sunday, right?
The fulfilment of many prophecies, the arrival of
Messiah of Jerusalem. So I want to give a brief
overview of sort of what we call what the Passion week, right?
I know on, you know, Friday, Pastor Clark will talk about it
and then Lewis on obviously on Resurrection Sunday, we'll get
into a little bit more. But I thought it'd be a good
idea just to give you a sort of a layout of the week, right?
Jesus from Sunday to Sunday. So Palm Sunday writes A
triumphal entry in the Jerusalem.
Jesus arrives on the scene and this is as you'll find them in
the Gospel, Luke, you'll get scholars at the bait, some of
the events from Wednesday to Thursday and things like that.
But a lot of people have it like this.
So on Monday, he walks in and cleanses the temple, right?
And this is actually the second cleansing of the temple.
The first time it occurred in John 2, if you go back and look
at that, at the beginning of his earthly ministry.
And then he does it again at the end of his earthly ministry.
And when he's there in the temple, he has the lame and the
blind. They come in and he heals them,
right? Just like it was prophesied in
Isaiah. And then on Tuesday, he teaches
in the temple and he's questioned by the religious
leaders. Wednesday the religious leaders
plot to kill Jesus, and then Judas agrees to betray him.
Thursday you'll see the Passover with his disciples they arrest
in the Garden of Gethsemane. And then Friday, Good Friday,
you see Peter's denial, Jesus questioned by the Sanhedrin,
Pilate and Herod, and then crucified in the tomb before
sundown. And then Saturday's the Sabbath,
right? The day of rest.
And then on Sunday, the 1st day of week, obviously we're all
very familiar with that resurrection Sunday, right?
Now you're going to get some people that argue Christ's
death, whether it occurred on Friday or Thursday because they
say he had to be in the tomb for three days.
But if you look at Jewish, you know, the Jewish day, it's
sundown to sundown. So people who say Good Friday,
right? If he was in the tomb before
Friday evening, there's one day, then he's there Saturday, and
then he raises from that on Sunday, right?
So that'd be 3 days. So you get that argument.
We're not going to belabor that because me, some people say, Oh,
no, it's Thursday to get the full 3 days.
The most important part is he wasn't in the tomb anymore on
Sunday, right? So we're not going to worry
about that one. So before we get in the loop
today, and that's where we'll be in Chapter 19, if you would
please turn with me to Exodus 12 because I think it's important
to understand the Passover in itself as you look at this week
ahead for Jesus. So, Exodus 12.
So you have the 1st 9 plagues in Egypt, right?
And then it gets to the 10th one in Pharaoh's heart's been
hardened. And God says I'm, I'm going to
do something else, right? I'm going to take the first born
from everyone. But there's a way for you guys
to escape at the Israelites, right?
And he institutes the Passover where they had to take a lamb
and put the blood above their doorpost.
But we're going to read it here. So Exodus 12 verse, we'll go
through verses one through 6 here.
And it says, now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land
of Egypt, saying, this month shall at the beginning of
months, it shall be the first month of the year to you speak
to all the congregation of Israel, saying on the 10th of
this month, and that's the 10th of Nissan, every month shall
take for himself. Every man shall take for himself
a lamb according to the House of his father, a lamb for a
household. And if the household is too
small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house
take it according to the number of persons, according to each
man's need. You shall make your count for
the lamb. Your lamb shall be without
blemish, a male of the first year.
You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
They shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month.
And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall
kill it at twilight. So that's the 14th of Nissan,
four days later. So if you jump down the verse 12
now says, For I will pass through the land of Egypt on
that night and I will strike all the first born in the land of
Egypt, both man and beast and against all the gods of Egypt.
I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.
Now the blood shall be assigned for you on the House is where
you are. When I see the blood, I will
Passover you and the plague shall not be on you to destroy
you when I strike the land of Egypt.
So when you look back at the passion we Christ arrives on
Sunday, right? He's tested by the religious
leaders for four days and then he's killed at twilight, right
and buried Friday evening. So really parallels the Passover
that God instituted going back into the Exodus.
It's almost like God was trying to show them something through
their entire history leading up to that point, right?
That your true Passover lamb has arrived.
You need His blood to avoid this judgement that's coming.
So you either can accept him in turn or you're going to face
judgement. So we can get in the loop now.
So if you go to Luke 19 verse 28.
So we'll be jumping around a little bit today because this is
a very prophetic event, very historical.
So as we work down through, we're going to be jumping
through a couple different verses, but we'll start here in
Luke 19, verse 28 says, when he had said this, he went on ahead
going up to Jerusalem and it came to pass when he drew near
to Beth, Fuji and Bethany at the mountain called all of it that
He sent two of his disciples saying, going to the village
opposite you, whereas you enter, you will find the Colt tide and
on which no one has ever sat loose it and bring it here.
And if anyone asks you, why are you losing it?
Thus you shall say to him, because the Lord has needed it.
So right off the bat, my first thing is like, Jesus knew what
the disciples were going to ask here, right?
I think of like a modern equivalent.
You're walking into someone's driveway and you're just going
to go in and take their car, right?
Someone comes out of the house and they're like, Hey, what are
you? What are you doing, right?
So Jesus is preempting saying, Hey, tell me the Lord has need
of it and they'll understand that, right?
It's it's one of those things that you you think about and
it's kind of like, Oh yeah, the Lord doesn't need it.
They take and they just walk away.
But you think those people there and what we'll see that here
coming up in verse 3234, how they respond to that.
They must have had some sort of awareness to what was going on,
some awareness to who this Lord may be, right?
Just to hand over their donkey and colt and walk away from it.
So in verse 32, so those who were sent their way found it
just as he said to them. But as they were losing the
colt, the owners of it said to them, why are you losing the
colt? And they said the Lord has need
of him. So going back to their thoughts,
right, So they either recognize these disciples and have seen
them with Jesus and they knew who the Lord was that they're
Speaking of, right? Or they understood the prophecy
in Zechariah 9. So if you guys want to turn
there to Zechariah 9, it's a little bit before Matthew.
So don't go too far into the Old Testament back just a little
bit. So Zechariah 99 says, rejoice
greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jerusalem,
behold, your king is coming to you.
He's just in having salvation lowly and riding on a donkey, a
colt the full of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from
Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem.
The battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the
nation's. His dominion shall be from sea
to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.
So you see, God had prophesied 500 years before the survival of
Christ that he would ride in on a cold a full of a donkey. 500
years before it happened He had prophesied of it.
So go back to Luke here in verse 35.
Then they brought him to Jesus and they threw their own clothes
on the cold and they set Jesus on him.
And as he went, many spread their clothes on the road.
So Matthew's gospel, if you go look in chapter 21 of Matthew,
you'll see that there was a great multitude.
It was not just a few of the disciples or the 12 disciples,
right? It says there was a great
multitude that laid their clothes down on the road.
That's where you see them cutting down branches, palms,
right? The lay lay on the road and
spread them across there. So when you think about the idea
of laying clothes on the road, it's an idea that they're
showing respect for a king. There's a couple of examples of
it. The one that you see in the Old
Testament is give you a little bit of background.
So I think everyone probably knows who Ahab and Jezebel are.
You probably don't see too many people named Jezebel for a good
reason. But so Elisha and the sons of
the prophet. Elisha tells one of the sons of
the prophet go annoying Jehu king, right.
I'm going to print out God's pronouncing judgement on Ahab
and Jezebel and their family line.
So one of the sons of prophet runs out, goes to Jehu, anoints
him king takes off running because I think he's afraid he's
going to kill him. He runs back and Jehu gets back
to his sort of entourage and they say, oh, what, what did
what did that crazy prophet say? He's that he's just a crazy guy
in there. And they're like, no, really,
what did he tell you? He said I'd be king and he
anointed me. So immediately all his entourage
lays down their garments before him on the steps, right?
It's a sign of royalty, a sign of a king showing respect for
him. Now, the idea riding on a
donkey, you know, when Jesus came in on a donkey, this is
very significant in terms of his first coming versus second
coming. When he comes in on a donkey, it
symbolizes peace and humility. So normally a king, when they
come into a city and they're as a ruler, right?
They're looking to conquer, they're going to come in on a
horse, right? That sign of power, a conquering
king. And that's where you see Israel
and the Jewish people, right? They, they missed it.
And you even see the disciples, the chapters before, when Christ
is telling them, hey, this is what's coming.
I'm going to be cut off. They're going to kill me.
I'm going to die for the sins of the world.
And the disciples had no ID. And you see that all throughout
the Gospels that they were just as blind as everyone else was to
what was going to come because they, they expected their,
they've been taught their entire lives that the Messiah would
show up, set them free from Rome, and he'd established his
Kingdom. That's where you see James and
John and the mother arguing about, hey, when you come into
your power, can my son sit on your left and right hand, Right.
So they're thinking of this earth, earthly rule, which will
happen. But that's the second coming.
And they didn't. They didn't quite get that.
So if you look again in Luke 19/9, a little bit before Jesus
rides in, it's the story of Zacchaeus, right?
And you get to the end of that and he says salvation has come
to this house. What Jesus came to do in his
first coming at the end of that verse in 99, it says that he
came to seek and save that which was lost.
That was his goal of the first coming, right?
He's the true Passover lamb. And you see that reference
throughout the New Testament, the Gospels.
You see a Peter people calling him the Lamb of God.
John specifically called him the Lamb of God.
He is their Passover lamb in our Passover lamb, right?
So if you want to turn with me to Luke 4, so just go back a
couple pages. We're going to talk a little bit
more about his first coming compared to the second coming.
So Luke 4, he's in, in Nazareth, right in his hometown.
He walks into the synagogue and he's reading from Isaiah.
So in Luke 4 verse 16, so so he came to Nazareth where he had
been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the
synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.
And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah.
And there's a lot of prophecies in Isaiah for telling of the
coming of Christ and what he would do.
He'd cause the blind to see the lame to walk.
So he stood up and read Start here, verse 17.
And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah.
When he had opened the book, he found the place where it was
written. The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives and recover of the sight of the
blind, to set liberty at those who are pressed to proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord. So that that's Christ's first
coming, right? He came to sake and see, save
and seek that which was lost. We are right now in the
acceptable year of the Lord. And you notice he didn't quite
finish that verse. If you go look at that verse in
Isaiah, the next line is in the day of vengeance of our Lord,
right? So that's his second coming.
That's what's coming next. So the time that Christ first
came until now we are all in the acceptable year of the Lord.
So that second coming and this time He is going to come on a
horse. If you go to Revelation 19, God
willing, we get there with Lewis.
If the rapture of Christ doesn't return before then.
So Revelation 19, verse 11, it says, Now I saw heaven opened,
and behold a White Horse. And he who sat on him was called
faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and
makes war. His eyes were like a flame of
fire, and on his head were many crowns.
He had a name written that no one knew except himself.
He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is
called the Word of God. And the armies in heaven clothed
in fine linen white. And queen followed him on white
horses. Now out of his mouth goes a
sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nation's, and
he himself will rule them with a rod of iron.
He himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of
Almighty God. And he has on his robe and on
his thigh a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
So that's the second coming of Christ.
He's going to come in judgment in his second coming.
He's he's going to be on a horse that time and they will
recognize him that time. So I look at that and you think
about being in the acceptable year of the Lord.
We have a chance today to believe, right?
To put your faith in Christ while we're in this time.
Because listen, not everyone knows when they're going to die.
Your days are numbered. You can walk out today.
You can get in the car, start driving down the road, someone's
texting and they hit you and you're, you're, you're done,
right? It's over.
There's a lot of people texting out there in their cars.
There's a lot of accidents. There's a lot of sickness.
You just don't know the number of your days.
And James says it's pointed once for a man to die and then comes
the judgement. And Christ said that he's the
way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but
through him. So when you put those together
and you hear a lot about, Oh no, I'll wait to get right with
Christ, right? I'll wait, I'll put it off until
I'm dead so I can live this life now and enjoy everything I'm
enjoying. You can live in sin.
That's not how it works. And you see books written out
there that say, you know God, God loves everyone, which he
does. He loves everyone but they say,
oh, he'll just keep him in time out for so many years and after
that he'll let him free and everyone be in heaven together.
If that were so, then the question would be why?
Why in the Garden of Gethsemane, why did Christ say Father let
this cup pass from me, right? If there's another way, let it
pass from me and there wasn't right?
He said not my will, but your will be done.
So to contradict the character of our Father.
If it wasn't that way now, I mean, for me, hey, he's right to
do whatever he wants. He could say, OK, I'm going to
let everyone out, you know, and be good with it like I could.
I couldn't argue him if he wants to do that in the future.
But everything that we see here in Scripture says that once
we're going to die and then we're going to be waiting for
judgement. So we have to make our decision
today, right? So verse 37, Luke 19.
Then as he, as he was now drawing near the descent of
Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began
to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for the for the
mighty works they had been there for they had seen saying,
blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in
heaven and glory in the highest. And then in Matthew's Gospel you
see Hosanna to the Son of David, right?
Hosanna meaning saved now and son of David is obviously
Messianic. So that's why you see in this
next verse here, the Pharisees and some of the Pharisees called
to him from the crowd. Teacher, rebuke your disciples.
They knew what the disciples were claiming Christ to be.
They knew what the multitude was saying.
What was, you know, calling out the Christ.
And that's from Psalm 118. If you want to go there and look
at that one, but we'll stay here for now.
And Jesus answered them in verse 40.
He said, but I tell you that if these should keep silent, the
stones would immediately cry out.
When you think about that, the culmination of prophecy from 500
years from Zechariah, and even before that of the coming
Messiah, Christ is saying this is such a significant event that
even if there was no one around, the rocks would cry out.
And now it's his coming. And it's going to be the same
way when he comes a second time, right?
Because it's been prophesied of and you can't get around God's
word. If he says something's going to
happen, it's going to happen, right?
We're not going to get around that.
So when you see the mighty works, right, it says the
disciples are praising him for the mighty works that they had
seen. What did they see in the
Gospels, right? They they saw the deaf, lame and
blind healed. They saw multiple people raised
from the dead. Lazarus, he's already in the
tomb for four days, brought back to life.
Those are the mighty works that he had seen.
When you think about that, just seeing something doesn't always
make you believe. You think in our own life, you
know, we we know it's Jesus after he's resurrected, right?
He says to Thomas, because you have seen, right, you believe a
blessed are those who believe and have not seen.
That's kind of where we are, right?
We believe, and even though we didn't see all the miracles, we
didn't see him physically erased from the dead, but we believe
because he changed our hearts and he came into us.
So you can get caught up. In all this knowledge and all
this idea, like the Pharisees, they obviously knew a lot about
God. They didn't take it the heart
and they kind of created a bunch of traditions that were
nonsense. And God, I'm in a lot of
trouble. But you can get caught up in
this idea that you know so much about Jesus, but you don't
really know Jesus, right? And what's it say when Peter,
Jesus was asking the disciples, who do people say I am?
Some of the disciples said, Oh, you're Elijah.
Or some people were saying you're, you're John the Baptist
or some prophet. And what what's what's Peter say
to them? You know, what's Peter say back
to Jesus? He says.
No, you're, you're the Christ, you're the Son of the living
God. And that's the most important
question that you can answer for yourself.
Who is Jesus to you? It's not who's Jesus to me?
I can't make that decision for you to believe.
You have to have that in your own heart, whether Christ is the
Son of the living God, your Messiah, not my Messiah.
He has to be your Messiah, right?
So another point here, it says it talks about the Mount of
Olives. That's pretty significant as
well. We'll get to that here in a
second. Throughout Christ's.
Ministry on earth, you don't see him too often declaring himself
as the Messiah. This is one of the first times,
I think the first time really, that he walks in and says he
sets it up, goes, gets the donkey, has the everything
organized basically. And the fairy Pharisees say
rebuke your disciples because they're claiming this.
And he says, Nope, the rocks would cry out if, if they didn't
declare it in all the gospels, you'd see him heal people.
You'd see all these miracles. And what would he tell the
people after that? Keep quiet.
Don't tell anyone that I'm basically here, right?
He's kind of being hush, hush about it because his hour had
not come. You'd see that throughout the
gospel that says for his hour had not come because he didn't
want the people taking him and marching him into Jerusalem
before the will of God right before the time that he was
appointed to arrive in Jerusalem on that day.
All right, so. Speaking of the Mount of Olives,
his first coming, right? So he comes in on the Mount of
Olives. Let's talk a little bit about
the second coming now. So if you go to Acts One, it's
the ascension of Christ. And he goes up into the.
Clouds. We're going to jump around a
couple different verses here. So if you flip to.
The right from Luke. So verse 9.
Here says, now when He had spoken these things while they
watched, He was taken up in a cloud, received him out of their
sight, and while they look steadfastly toward heaven, as He
went up, behold, 2 men stood by them in white apparel, who also
said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?
This same Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will so
come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven.
And then verse 12, it says then they return to Jerusalem from
the mount called all of it, which is near Jerusalem, the
Sabbath day's journey. So you see Jesus came in the
first coming on, you know, through the Mount of Olives.
He ascended back into the clouds from the Mount of Olives.
If you go to Zechariah 14, we're going to see in the second
coming that he's also going to return to the Mount of Olives.
So if you go to Zechariah. 14 Just a little bit to the left in
Matthew. All right, so we'll pick up.
There in verse one it says Zechariah 14 One, behold, the
day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil will be divided in
your midst. For I will gather all nations to
battle against Jerusalem. The city shall be taken, the
house is rifled, the women ravished, half of the city shall
go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not
be cut off from the city. And then the Lord will go forth
and fight against those nations as he fights in the day of
battle. And that day his feet will stand
on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east.
The Mount of Olives shall be split into two from east to
West, making a very large valley.
Half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it
toward the South. So I have never been to Israel,
but I do have Google Maps and Google Earth, so you can look at
this. So if you look at the Mount of
Olives, right, I'm trying to get my bearings right here, so.
It's on the other side. Of the eastern gate of
Jerusalem. So this is my left hand.
So we're going to go here, right?
So eastern gate of Jerusalem. Now I'm backwards either way.
It's on the other side of the eastern gate of Jerusalem,
right? So Christ is going to arrive
there and he's going to split that mountain and you have the
Kidron Valley in between there. Now, there's some interesting
things about that right now today.
So the eastern gate where Christ has prophesied to enter back
into Jerusalem in 1541, the Ottoman Turks, I think it was
Suleiman the Magnificent, he sealed that gate shut because of
the Jewish prophecy that the Messiah would arrive there.
And they also put a Muslim graveyard right in front of it
because they thought, oh, a Jewish person is not going to
defile himself coming through the graveyard, right?
So they believed in it from the Jews, right?
And then on the other side of the Kidron Valley, on the Mount
of Olives, there's one of the most ancient and largest Jewish
graveyards awaiting the arrival of the Messiah.
So you got a pretty good picture of these people are trying to
keep the Messiah out. And on the other side you have
all the people waiting their Messiah, right?
Pretty interesting when you look at that.
But for them sealing that eastern gate, it's also called
the Golden Gate of the beautiful gate in Jerusalem.
You can go look this up online. You'll see images of it.
I wouldn't be banking on the Muslims keeping him out when he
arrives. If he's going to split the
mountain in two, I think that's also going to split and he's
just going to kind of walk in. So, you know, they they can try,
but I don't think it's, I think it's going to work there.
All right, so back to Luke 19. So this section we're going to.
Get into a little bit more history and prophecy.
And there's. A reason for belaboring some of
this because I think, I think it's important that we know that
everything in God's Word is true, right?
You can go back and look at the historical sites.
They keep digging places, they keep finding more and more.
So it's important to know that what you have in here is true
because when you get into the New Testament says everyone who
believes in the name of the Lord, right, who calls the name
of Jesus will be saved. If that wasn't true, why should
you believe that, right? So we're going to go through
some of this. So in verse 41 of Luke 19, it
says now as he drew near, he saw the city and he wept over it,
saying, if you hadn't known, even you, especially in this
your day, the things that make for your peace, but now they're
hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when
your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround
you, close you in on every side, and level you and your children
within you to the ground. They will not leaving you one
stone upon another because you do not know the time of your
visitation. That's that's a tough one,
right? To hear that one.
First time Israel they. They missed the first coming of
Christ, and it's been kind of a pattern for them.
If you read the Old Testament, what did they do?
The Joseph. They rejected him, threw him in
a pit, and then sold him as a slave to Egypt.
And the second time they accepted him.
Same thing with Moses. Remember when he went in to try
to Save the Children of Israel? They rejected him and they
wanted him gone. And then the Lord sent him back
and they finally accepted him. It's a bit of their pattern,
right? And then you see in Jesus's
final public sermon in the temple, right, he really lays
into the religious leaders and it's all those woes, right?
I think there's seven of them in there.
It says, woe do you scribes, Pharisees, you hypocrites.
And then he gets through all this that he's basically
hammering him with, and he gets the end of me.
He says, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is
he who comes in the name of the Lord, right?
Speaking of that nation of Israel, who right now their eyes
are blinded. And you'll see that in Romans
11, the Paul says that their eyes have been blinded until the
fullness of the Gentiles be brought in.
So it's. A bit of a big.
Judgement on them. So a little bit of history for
this section of scripture. So in 68 AD.
The Vespasian, who was a general at the time, had conquered the
outside areas like Galilee area leading up to Jerusalem, and he
was laying siege to Jerusalem. And then all of a sudden Emperor
Nero dies and he has to run back to Rome, right?
So you see in the New Testament, Christ warning them, and I think
it's even in the next chapter of Luke, he says that when you see
Jerusalem surrounded, flee, right?
He tells them to get out, run. And that's why you also see in
the book of the Acts that it's possible that.
The Holy Spirit and God. Put on those believers in
Jerusalem, on their hearts, that's all they had and
basically live communally together because in a short
period of time they were going to have to flee for their lives.
And if you have a house and you have a bunch of land, that's
going to make it pretty tough to get rid of that, right?
So that's, that's the thought behind that because you don't
really see that elsewhere in the Scripture and some of the other
letters that Paul writes to the church.
So there's a thought for that one, but we'll keep going here.
So once Emperor Nero died, there was a bit of a struggle with
some other guys, but eventually that's Basalum and that's when
that the city and the sanctuaries destroyed, he takes
over, right? If you ever run any accounts to
Josephus, he might be a little bit favorable to Titus and the
way he talks about him because he basically, I wouldn't say he
was a traitor turned on the Jews, but he kind of went on to
the Roman side. And that's how he was able to
live right under that line of emperors.
But so Titus, he goes back, sieges Jerusalem again, all the
Jews at the final hurrah get barricaded into the temple.
And there was an argument and Josephus was talking about this,
who's a Jewish slash Roman historian that Titus didn't want
to burn the temple down because he kind of wanted to keep his
like a trophy, right, for the conquest.
Like, hey, look what we did. Look at this beautiful building,
right, that we have and wipe them out.
So he can kind of conferred with his generals and said that no,
we're going to, we're going to keep it.
But you know, you kept getting the Jews coming out and
attacking the Romans and the Roman soldiers eventually set
fire to it and burn the temple down.
So they end up wiping out the temple in 70AD.
And when you see about not. One stone being left upon
another. When they wiped out the temple
and it burned down, a lot of the walls were laid with gold,
right? So that burned down and melted
into the cracks. And then the Romans went in
there to get all the gold and the treasure out.
They picked apart the stones and threw them out so that even
today you can see images online, if you've been to Jerusalem, you
can see that there's, these massive stones have been thrown
down from the temple wall on the ground, right?
Huge stones because the Romans, literally, they, they took it.
They took it down one stone upon another to get the gold out of
it. All right, so let's.
Let's go to Daniel 9. We got to finish the thought.
Here on this one. So I'm going to skip some.
Of Daniel 9 and we'll get we'll get the one part of it I'll fill
you in so Daniel's praying he looks back at prophecy from
Jeremiah and realizes that there's 70 years in Babylon that
they were going to have to spend for forsaking the Sabbath, right
So he's basically confessing his sins in the sins of the people
to the Lord and at the end of that prayer and that's where
we're going to pick up in verse 20 of.
Daniel, Chapter 9. He says now while I was
speaking, praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people,
Israel. Now it's an interesting thing
because Daniel, he's one of the, we know Daniel had sin, but he's
one of the people in the Bible that there's no mention of sin
of Daniel, right. And you'll see that where God
calls him greatly beloved, but we know he had sin because
Christ is only one without it. But very interesting that you
see that there. He's presenting my supplication
before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God.
Yes, while speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen
in the vision at the beginning being caused if I swiftly to
reach reach me about the time of the evening offering.
And he informed me and talked with me and said, Oh, Daniel, I
have now come forth to give you skill to understand at the
beginning of your supplications. The command went out and I've
come to tell you, for you are greatly beloved.
Therefore, consider the matter and understand the vision.
So I'm going to try to go through this pretty quick
because we won't have too much time.
So it says 70 weeks are determined for your people and
for your holy city. So this prophecy is for your
people and your holy city. Speaking to Daniel, it's talking
about the Jews. This is not a prophecy on the
Gentiles. This is a prophecy on the Jews
in Jerusalem. It says to finish transgression.
So you're going to see six things listed here.
The first three are the first coming of Christ.
The second three are the second coming of Christ.
It says to finish the transgressions, to make an end
of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity.
And that's what Christ did for us on the cross, right?
You finished a transgression, ended sin and made
reconciliation. And then here's the second
coming to bring in everlasting righteousness.
So this is one that have a hard time where people say that we're
living in the millennial reign right now because I don't see
everlasting righteousness in the world.
I don't see everything under under Christ right now.
When he comes back, we're going to see that.
But I don't see that right now. And Satan still seems like he's
not bound. So we'll we'll continue on.
So seal a vision and prophecy. I think there's some outstanding
prophecy. I don't think Christ has
returned yet, unless someone can tell me otherwise.
And to anoint the most holy, it says this is part of where we're
going to see our verse here today in Luke.
It says no, therefore and understand that from the going
forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem.
So this is not about building the temple, which you're going
to see in Ezra. And we don't have time to get in
all these verses, but the command the build and restore
Jerusalem was a Nehemiah 2 and approximately like 445 BC from a
hazardous says until the Messiah the Prince, there shall be 7
weeks and 62 weeks. So 69 of those 70 weeks is the
time period from that command until Jesus walks into
Jerusalem. And the street shall be built
again. In the wall, even in trouble
sometimes that's in Nehemiah, if you want to go read that.
They had a lot of trouble rebuilding the walls and streets
of Jerusalem and says after 62 weeks, so there's already been
seven weeks and now after another 62, so we're at week 69.
The Messiah shall be cut. Off, but not for himself.
So a lot of people have looked. At this the 70 weeks or
seven-year, so it's 70 * 7 four, 190 years when you go through
this prophecy and we'll we'll continue on here.
So you have 490 years. We fulfilled 483 of it until the
coming of Christ, right? So when you read that in Luke
19, it says for in this year day what we've had for you, the
peace I've had you, you should have known, right?
You should have known the time that I was coming to you because
I told you 483 years ago, or yeah, I told you 4 and 83 years
ago when I was going to arrive on the scene.
But you didn't see it, right? And there's some people and
there's some books out there. I think it's called The Coming
Prince. And he does his calculation.
He says it that Jesus would have if it was March 14th, 445 BC,
when the hazardous gave that command that he would arrived
on, let me see here, 32 AD, April 6th, which is really
close. Now you can argue that date
where it's 30 AD 33 or whatever, but it's really close.
And you have to remember when you go do this, the Jewish
calendar is 360 days, not 365. There's a lot of different
calendars out there. So it's not as easy as it looks
just taking 365 * 43 and getting there.
So there's a little bit more than that.
But what Jesus is telling them, they.
Should have known it, right? So let's continue the prophecy
because it also goes into what we have today.
And after 62 weeks, Messiah shall be cut off, but not for
himself. And the people of the Prince who
is to come shall destroy the city in the sanctuary.
So we already know that who destroyed the city in the
sanctuary? It was the Romans.
And then it says the people, the Prince who is to come.
And a lot of people believe this is the Antichrist descended from
the line of Rome, Rome. But Rome had a vast area.
So good guess on who exactly that may be right?
They had a lot of territory. The Babylon in six O 5 BC.
So this is somewhere in the neighborhood of like 530 ish BC
520 something BC. He's already prophesying that
there's a second temple in Jerusalem before the 2nd temple
is even wiped out. All right, it's not even built
yet until until the end of the war.
Desolations are determined. It says then he shall confirm a
covenant with many for one week. And this is the Antichrist in
that last seven-year period that with the timetable is going to
go back to the Jews, right? Because right now we're living
in the acceptable year of the Lord.
So that's that 483. To 490 that's left, it says.
But in the middle of the week, he shall bring an end to
sacrifice and offering. So when you see people talking
about 1/3 temple, you might be wondering, why do people think
there's going to be a third temple?
It's because right here, because in order to have sacrifice and
offering for the Jews, they have to have a third temple, right?
And for the Antichrist to cut that off, there must be one
there. And it says on the wing of
abomination shall be one who makes desolate even until the
consummation which is determined is poured out on the desolate.
So let's go back to Luke here. So we'll start getting towards
the end. And I mentioned before I.
Belabored going going through some of that just because I
think it's important for you to know that everything that the
Bible says is true. If you go back and look at those
prophecies, it happened exactly how God said it would happen.
And there's people out there and critics like to say no, Daniel
was written, you know, 100 BC or 200.
He still said the sanctuary is going to be sacked in 70AD,
right? He still prophesied when Christ
was going to arrive and they found that his prophecies they
are dated back to that time period is 500 BC plus.
You know, going back to the Jewish people.
And I mentioned before about Romans 11 that blindness has
come to them until the fullness of the Gentiles is brought in.
And then you see again in Luke 21, it talks about Jerusalem's
going to be trampled by Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles
are fulfilled. I mean, it's really hard not to
say God's on his own timetable with things, right?
He's given us numbers and dates and things are when it's going
to happen. He knows, you know, it might not
be our time. It's his time.
And you think about where we are right now.
We're in a generation where 100 years ago there was no nation of
Israel to look at. There was no, you say you would
read these and you'd be like, huh, like, what does that mean?
It must be the church, right? But God has not replaced Israel
with the church. If you go read Romans 910 and
11, you'll see that in there in Isaiah 66, A, it says, can a
nation be born in one day? Speaking of Israel, right,
that's where you see in May 14th, 1948, the nation of Israel
was declared a state again, right?
A country which came out of nowhere, right?
You never would have thought all these Jewish people from all
over the world would not be gathered back.
And I think there's seven, some million of them there.
So we live in some interesting times, right?
I think everyone's like, oh, that you hear that phrase out
there, We've never been closer to the coming of Christ, right?
And it's true because actually passes, you're getting closer.
But I think our generation, we've literally never been
closer to the coming of Christ. We have the nation of Israel
sitting in their land. You see other prophecies in
Daniel where it talks about people going to and fro
throughout the whole earth and knowledge is going to greatly
increase. I mean, what age do people say
we live in, right? It's the information age.
We have AI and data centers and all this crazy stuff going on.
You can't tell what's real and what's fake anymore.
So if the worship team wants to come.
Forward here, I'll begin to wrap up.
We're going to do a brief about the verse 45 and 48 for the
temple here for cleansing of the temple.
And it says in verse 45. Then he went into the temple and
began to drive those out who bought and sold.
And it's saying to them, it is written, my house is a House of
prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.
And he was teaching daily in the temple.
But the chief priests and the scribes and the leaders of the
people sought to destroy him and weren't were unable to do
anything, for all the people were very attentive to hear him.
So there's there's a lot. That can be said about what was
going on in the court of the Gentiles and the Temple during
that time. So what it was, you had all the
money changers and in the courtyard, right?
People will come in with their currency from out outside and
they say, no, you have to use the our currency here.
So they basically RIP you off. You go to another country,
they're going to charge you more to get their currency.
It might take a little bit. So they're had some exuberant
taxes basically to get the right coinage to be able to purchase
things in the temple courtyard. And then they were selling
animals because you would show up with your animal and they
say, Nope, that's not good. Has spots and blemishes, right?
And they'd be like, here, you have to buy one from us.
So now they're making people, when they're robbing them,
they're literally robbing them of their money, right?
And they're taking away the connection that the people have
to their sacrifice for their atonement, right?
So it just becomes a ritual of them.
It's just a thing they do. Hey, I can pay for it.
You just pay for it, right? It doesn't affect you at all.
What was that doing to Israel right?
Is destroying their witness right that court of the Gentiles
was supposed to be an area where they could come in and see the
God of Israel, right? The one who brought them out of
Egypt and see who he was but it. Was a den of thieves.
You know, First Corinthians 6 says, do you not know that your
bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you
have received from God? You are not your own, for you
were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are gods.
If you're here today and listening, if you allowed sin to
come into areas of your life, it's it's slowly going to
destroy you. You know the.
Bible says what do light. And darkness have in common.
If you're backsliding and living in sin, you might look really OK
on the outside, but I guarantee you, you feel empty on the
inside. If all you have to do is get
back with. Jesus and he'll come into you,
He'll cleanse you just like you did the temple, and he'll take
that sin and remove it. But when you start spending less
time with Jesus and more time with the world, you're not going
to be in a good situation. And for those, if you don't know
Christ today and you can't stop the fooling around, the
drunkenness, the anger, the lying, stealing or whatever type
of sin may be controlling your life, you know, you're
completely empty inside. You might have a lot of social
media followers and look like everything's pretty dandy on
there. I mean, for the young kids, if
anyone's listening, social media is really fake.
Everything you see on there is not real.
It might be real. The picture, even some of those
pictures are fake because people just want likes.
What you see on there is not real Life, OK?
But if if you're that. Empty inside.
You can't fix it on your own. You see a lot of self help
books, they get you through something, but what do you see
on the other side? A lot of people relapse, they go
back into it, right, because they can't do it on their own.
But. What does Christ promised?
Us, if you accept him as your Savior, it says the Holy Spirit,
he's going to come into you, He's going to cleanse you and
he's going to give you a new heart.
He's going to give you peace that passes all understanding.
All you have to do is invite. Him in and you have that peace
that you've never had before. So as we look at taking.
Communion here. For revealing yourself.
To us, Lord, through many prophecies and Lord even going
to look back at history and see the time, the very manner and
our Lord, the day that you would arrive in the Jerusalem.
Father for our own benefits so we can look back and understand
that what you were telling us is real.
It's not a favorable. It's not something that someone
just came up with. Lord, we can believe that this
word that we have here today is true, Lord.
And we know when you say that if we confess with our mouth, Lord,
and leave in our heart and you, Lord, that you will save us from
our sins, Father. Lord, we just thank you.
For this time today, Lord, I pray that you would bless those
who are here today. Lord in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, it. Says on the night he.
Was betrayed. He took the bread and we had
given thanks. He broke it and said this is my
body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
Says in the same way after. Supper He took the cup, saying,
This cup is a new coven in my blood.
Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.
Says whenever you eat this. Bread and drink this cup.
You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again, and
that's. What it's all about right we're.
Looking forward to the Lord coming again, and we know, we
know he's going to come again soon.