Prophet, Priest, King

Would you grab a Bible and open it to Matthew chapter 21?

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

And while you're turning there, before I pray, I need to give

you a very, very important announcement.

You should have gotten an e-mail from me.

If you have not gotten an e-mail from me, see me afterwards so

that I can make sure you're on our e-mail address, e-mail, you

know, thing whatever that's called.

If you show up next Sunday on Resurrection Sunday, the most

important Sunday of the year, where we celebrate the fact that

our Savior who have been crucified on Friday rose on

Sunday. If you show up to this place at

9:30, you're going to be all by yourself.

This service is not happening on Easter Sunday, on Easter Sunday,

Resurrection Sunday for a number of years, I'm not sure how many

years, but for a number of years now, we have met in the most

appropriate place to celebrate the resurrection of Christ in

Pittman Cemetery or any cemetery which is about two miles Yonder

way. So if you need directions, I

made a, I made an event on our web page.

So you can go see that and see how to get there.

But we're going to meet there and we're going to meet early.

It's a sunrise service. And so we need to be there at

7:15-ish. Try and be a little bit early.

If you want to bring something to drop a tailgate and put

breakfast buffet on your tailgate.

We'll have a very short service remembering and and celebrating

the resurrection. We will have communion and then

and then we'll have breakfast buffet afterward and it'll be

the most It's my very favorite worship service of the entire

year. So, so please, if you can,

please be there next Sunday. OK, Let me pray for us and we'll

look at our text on Palm Sunday. Father God, we ask that you

would come and be our teacher today.

We ask that you would send your Spirit in the name of our Savior

Jesus, and that He would take up the Word and that He would teach

us, build us up, and establish us in the faith.

I pray, Lord, that You would give us eyes to see the glory of

Jesus Christ, that we might trust in Him, that we might

rejoice in Him, that we might be established in His salvation.

So would you teach us today? Lord?

We ask it in Christ's name, Amen.

OK, you're in Matthew chapter 21.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

I want to show you three things from this text.

The 1st is it's a text themed on Palm Sunday.

And so the first thing I want to show you from this text is a

clear declaration of intent. What is Palm Sunday about?

What are we? What are we doing here?

Matthew is going to make it very, very plain.

So let's read verses one through 5 where you see a very plain

declaration of intent from the Lord Jesus.

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethpage

to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent 2 disciples saying to

them, Go into the village in front of you, and immediately

you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her.

Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you,

you shall say the Lord needs them and he will send them at

once. And I always think this is funny

to imagine the guy seeing 2 random strangers taking his

donkey like what are you doing? Well the Lord needs these oh oh

OK help yourself. But they that happens.

This took place verse 4 very important.

This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet saying

this is Zechariah 99 and you ought to go back and read

Zechariah 99 and verse 10. Say to the daughter of Zion,

behold your king. If you write in your Bible

circle square brackets, your king is coming to you humble,

mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the full of a beast of burden.

This is a clear declaration up by Christ that he is the king of

Israel. So in the Scriptures it said

that Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies.

I don't know the exact number if you if you count patterns and

symbols and types, it's just infinite.

They're everywhere that everything that the Old

Testament promised and prefigured, Christ fulfilled all

of those. But this is the fulfillment that

gets the most criticism by those who hate our Christ.

They say, well, how hard would it be to fulfill this prophecy

to ride into a particular place on a donkey?

Like he could have picked anything.

He just sort of arranged the mule.

There isn't a miraculous component to it.

Like at his birth when the sovereign God of the universe

took a despot named Caesar Augustus, who loved to tax his

people, and he uses that guy to ensure that the Holy Family make

their way to Bethlehem so that that prophecy might be

fulfilled, that Christ would be born in Bethlehem.

This is not like that. Jesus just says, go in there and

get me a mule. So what's going on?

Well, what's going on here is that Jesus is no longer being

coy about his kingship. You know, all of those texts,

right, where Jesus heals somebody and they come to him

and say, thank you, Lord, thank you.

And he says, whatever you do, don't tell anybody, right?

Don't tell anybody because his his hour had not yet come.

Go and tell no one. And of course nobody ever

listens to that. They all go and say Jesus did

something amazing for me. But all throughout his life in

ministry, he's been hinting at, he makes clear declarations too.

But typically he's very coy whether or not he is the king.

From this point forward, Jesus is not being coy.

He is declaring as authoritatively as can be

possible that he is the king and that he's coming to his capital

city and that he is declaring and announcing crown rights.

That's what is going on in this text, that he is declaring

himself to be king. You notice that while kingship

is the theme, remember in verse 5, say to the daughter of Zion,

behold, your king is coming to you.

So Matthew says this is all about Davidic kingship that

Jesus is taking onto himself. But even though the theme is

kingship, the mystery is humility.

What kind of king are we going to get here?

Well, it's a humble king. This is the greatest warlord

that there has ever been riding into Jerusalem to do single

combat with Satan and with all rebel forces.

Have you ever noticed that that like on the in the Passion Week,

it's not, it's not Jesus the doormat of heaven just coming to

take it on the chin. It's a new and better David

walking onto a battlefield with a much worse Goliath and he's

going to take him in single combat and crush him.

Jesus is coming into Jerusalem to conquer the world and to

establish the greatest Kingdom that the world will ever know.

A Kingdom that Daniel said. When this Kingdom comes, it's

going to be a stone cut without hands.

It's going to strike all of the man made kingdoms in the world.

In the world. They're going to disappear and

turn into dust. And that stone is going to

become a mountain, a mountainous Kingdom that fills the world.

This is a king and a Kingdom to end all other kings and

kingdoms. But how does this warlord come?

The sovereign of the universe. He comes on the full of a

donkey. He's not riding on Bocephalus,

the untamable steed of Alexander the Great.

A horse of this of Alexander the Great that is more famous than

most warriors that there have ever been.

Jesus doesn't come on the White Horse.

Jesus does not fly in on Air Force One.

He does not wave from the safe balcony of Buckingham Palace.

Jesus comes to his people as one of the people on a humble

donkey. He is a lover of the lowly who

happens to be mightier by far than the mightiest that the

world has ever known. And so it's worth just stopping

for a moment and reminding ourselves that if we as

Christians do not hold both of these attributes of Christ in

tension, we lose Christ. We we lose him all together if

we don't hold these two things together.

If you think Jesus is just the humble lover of the little guy,

that's all he is. He just loves everybody.

He doesn't have any enemies. He doesn't ever lose his temper.

You're about to see that not to be the case.

But if you think that that's Jesus, then you need to go read

what this Christ does to his foes in the Book of Revelation.

And I'm glad you asked. I'm going to read it to you.

Don't turn, just listen. Then I saw heaven open and

behold, a White Horse. He's no longer on the donkey,

He's on the White Horse. The one sitting on it is called

faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and

makes war. His eyes are like a flame of

fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has the name

written that no one knows but He himself.

He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which

he is called is the Word of God. This is our Christ.

And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and

pure, were following with him on white horses.

And from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down

the nation's. He will rule them with a rod of

iron. He will tread the winepress of

the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.

And on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of

Kings and Lord of Lords. This dude on a donkey is not a

doormat. This is the Warlord, the

sovereign of the universe. And yet, and yet if all you have

if your entire knowledge of Christ as God, who is vengeful,

coming to bring wrath, a destroyer of evil, then again

you lose out on Christ. He is the one who both shatters

the nations. Like is mentioned in Revelation

19. He shatters the nations like

rebellious clay pots that they are.

He also in Psalm 2 is the one that promises those nations.

Blessed is the nation that takes refuge in the Lord's Christ.

In the Gospel, Christ is not portrayed as either simpering

Savior or as a dominating despot.

Rather, he is shown to be the sovereign Lord who loves to save

humble people. This is why, brothers and

sisters, pride is the great sin because it puts us in opposition

to the Lord. God opposes the proud, but He

gives grace to the humble. And so think about as our nation

comes into the middle of our year, we come into June and we

call it, as my favorite author has called it, goeth before the

fall month, right? Pride month where we take the

symbol of God's wrath against sin.

That which he said I'm not, not that he's not going to hold

accountable, but he's not going to destroy the world anymore.

I'm going to put my bow in the sky to remind you every time it

rains that I'm not going to do what I did at Noah's flood.

Not that he's laid aside His Holiness or his justice, but

he's not going to do that again. And in our pride, in our

nation's pride, we take that symbol of God's war and God's

wrath, and they wear it and painted on the faces of

Sodomites pride. The reason pride is the great

sin in the scriptures is because it puts us in opposition to the

wrath of God, to the person of God who opposes the proud.

And so these are people who don't understand that it will be

payday Sunday. When you make pride your boast,

you ensure your own damnation. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem

on a donkey, he is declaring in the language of sacred Scripture

as clearly as possible that the Kingdom of heaven has arrived

upon the earth and the king has come.

Now I want to show you, secondly, A savvy crowd that

ends up having a short, a short fuse the crowd.

So so Jesus claims kingship by riding it on a donkey and the

crowd knows exactly what they're doing, what he's doing.

Look in verse 6, the disciples went and did and did as Jesus

directed them. They brought the donkey and the

cold and put on them their cloaks and sat on them and and

he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their

cloaks on the road, others cut branches from the trees and

spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before

him and that followed him were shouting hosanna to the son of

David. Well, what does that mean, son

of David? It means King, it means Messiah,

it means the anointed of the Lord that will sit upon the

eternal Kingdom, house and throne of David.

So when they see him coming in on a colt into Jerusalem, they

say this is King, this is who he is.

They know exactly what he's doing.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the

highest. And when he entered Jerusalem,

the whole city was stirred up saying who is this?

And the crown said, this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of

Galilee. So you have a clear declaration

of Christ. I am the king.

And the crowd knows exactly what this means.

Son of David tells you everything you need to know.

Jesus has right here claimed the throne of David, and they are,

the crowds are affirming that. And therefore it's not a bad

place to remind ourselves of CS Lewis's most helpful argument,

not most helpful, but very helpful argument against merely

thinking well of the person of Jesus of Nazareth, right.

We are the American culture. What we love to do is we love to

speak in glowing terms about Jesus.

We love Jesus, He's a good, good man.

We love us some Jesus. We'll pray in his name.

We'll, we'll, we'll, you know, we'll use his name as an

expletive. We'll, we'll hold it in high

esteem. But the problem is, mere words

of respect towards Christ are not enough.

Politicians will pray in his name, asking for blessings right

before they utterly disregard the crown rights of he who is on

the throne. Muslims and Mormons alike claim

to honor Jesus as a very great man and a prophet.

Indeed He is great. He's He's the best man that's

ever been. But Jesus never claimed to be

those things. He claimed to be something so

much more. He claimed to be God in the

flesh, Yahweh of old who came to establish his Kingdom, the

Kingdom of heaven upon the earth so that the will of his Father

God would be done here as it is in heaven.

That's what Jesus claimed. He claimed to be very God, a

very God come to this world to rule.

So Lewis is helpful. He says Jesus is either wrong or

he's right. And if he's wrong, then we have

two options. He's either a liar, which makes

him the worst ever. He knew he was not Messiah, so

he's merely a liar. We should vilify his name.

Don't hold him in high esteem. Good teachers never lie.

Good teachers don't mislead billions of people to hang their

eternal hopes on him. He's not a good teacher if he's

wrong, He's either. At worst, he's a liar.

At best he's a lunatic. OK, at best he's a lunatic.

Or he's right, which would mean that he is.

Lord Jesus of Nazareth leaves you and he leaves me with no

third option. So we ought to either hate Him

as the worst of liars, we should pity him as a lunatic that was

crucified for a mental derangement, or we should

worship Him as the Creator and Redeemer and King of the cosmos.

He is the King who sits upon the throne.

And you cannot listen to me, brothers and sisters, you cannot

like this guy. It's not enough for us to say

I'm I'm a big fan. I love me some Jesus.

You must render your allegiance and swear fidelity.

You must be baptized into his triune name.

Bend your knee and obey. You must endeavor to honor Him

in thought word. Indeed, Jesus is declaring His

eternal kingship and authority. And so the question is, will you

hold out some wrinkle of your life in which you will not honor

him as king when he cries mine over all things?

Last thing I want to show you is the unreadiness of Israel to

receive their king. So Jesus declares his kingship

by coming on on a colt. All the crowds know this is

exactly what he is intending. And then you're going to see an

unready Israel. So look in verse 12.

And Jesus entered the temple and he drove out all who sold and

bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of

the money changers in the seats of those who sold pigeons.

And he said to them, it is written, My house shall be

called a House of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he

healed them. But when the chief priest and

scribes saw, watch what they see, two things, the wonderful

things that he did, and the children crying out in the

temple, hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.

And they said to him, do you hear what these are saying?

Implication. You need to stop them because

they're worshipping you. And Jesus said to them, yes,

have you never read out of the mouths of infants and nursing

babies? You have prepared praise?

Leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged

there. So Israel, the decree by

Almighty God is that Israel would be a light and a blessing

to the nations. God said when He called Abraham

in you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

But Israel's not a light and they are not a blessing to the

Gentiles. They are a deception.

OK, When Jesus comes into the temple, if you, if you don't

know this, you had the temple had a a series of gradations of

closeness to the presence of God.

You had the Holy of Holies. Outside of that, you had the

holy place outside of that, you had the, the court of the Jews

where Jewish men could enter. Outside of that, the court of

no, the court of the Jewish men. Outside of that was the court of

the Court of the Jews, where Jewish women could enter as

well. And then outside of that, the

biggest walled section of the temple was the Court of the

Gentiles. It's where all the room was.

And so when the Jews set up in the temple, the money changing

tables and those who are selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, when

they set those things up, they set them up in the Court of the

Gentiles. And so if you're just some dumb

Goeme and you hear. That God, God is the God of

Israel, that he is blessing this nation.

And so you come to Jerusalem to try and learn about this God.

The only place, the closest place you can get there, get to

that God is the place where they're doing all of their

business and you can just drink in the cynicism of like this is

all business. It's all for profit.

You, you have experienced the same thing when you come to a

church and every Sunday is about how you need to sacrificially

give so I can get a raise. Like you're just like, man, I

want, we want to worship God and you're making this a House of

commerce. By the way, it's the first ever

exercise in stadium pricing, right?

Where you, where you pay to park and then you pay to get in the

gate. And now that they've got you in

the gate and if you're hungry or thirsty, you got to pay their

prices. And so the, the, as you come

into the sacrificial system, you might bring your sheep or you

might bring your sacrifice. And the, and the priests at this

time, we're going to tell you, no, those are not justified.

They're not, they're not examined.

They're not proper temple sacrifices.

And so you have to go, you have to go buy one from us that's

exorbitantly priced. And so you say, well, I've got

to worship gone. So I'll go and I'll pay this,

I'll pay this price. And you as a Roman citizen, you

take your denarius to go buy that sheep or buy that oxen or

buy that pigeon. And they say, no, no, no, no, we

cannot take coinage that has Caesar's image on it.

You got to go change your money. So it's like going to the

airport and they've got you. You can't, you can't shop around

to the greatest exchange rate. It's just whatever, whatever

they say it is. So they're exorbitant in their

exchange rate and then they're exorbitant in their pricing.

And the Gentiles are watching all of this saying the God of

Israel is a joke. And Jesus comes in and he sees

that going on in the in the in the court of the Gentiles.

He doesn't wring his hands. He doesn't ask politely for them

to stop it. Would you please stop this?

Jesus entered the temple and he drove out all who sold and

bought in the temple. John says he made a whip of

cords and he drove out man and beast.

So picture sweet Jesus, meek and mild, whipping men and driving

them out of the temple, those who sought and sold and bought

in the temple. So they're not a light and a

blessing to the Gentiles. They're a deception.

They are not liberation and refreshment to the poor, but

they're a domination. It's very interesting, John,

when John talks about Jesus clearing the temple, he mentions

sheep and he mentions oxen and he mentions pigeons.

Matthew, as the former tax collector, mentions only one.

He he the seats of those who sold pigeons.

He he overturned them. Pigeons were a provision for the

poor. You have to sacrifice for sin.

You have to, you have to make an offering to the Lord.

And if you're wealthy, it's no big deal.

You can afford it. But if you're poor, you can't,

you can't afford a goat. You can't afford an ox.

So what do you do? Well, and according to law,

there's a provision for the poor.

It's turtledoves. It's it's, it's birds.

Cheap, right? Easy.

Anybody can afford this. They are set up and they're

oppressing the poor. They're not, they're not a place

of liberation and refreshment, but a place of domination of the

poor. It's not a place of intercession

and prayer, but it's a place of commerce.

They're they're doing business. They're not on their knees

before a holy God saying forgive us, use us, bless us, draw near

to us. This is one of the most

jaw-dropping indications that they are not prepared to receive

their Christ. They are not a place of glad

healing, but of religiosity that disallows God.

Look in verse 14 and imagine this, right, verse 14, The blind

and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them.

Imagine coming to church. You're just here to worship and

all of a sudden blind people start coming in and start

seeing, and people with crutches start like dropping them and

they can dance and they can worship God like God is moving

here. And the chief priests and the

scribes, when they saw the wonderful things that he did,

and the children crying out hosanna to the son of David,

they were indignant. They were mortified.

We got to stop all this. This is not what this place is

for. They were disallowing the very

work of God. I heard a story one time of a

church service that was going on and a drunk man, doors open in

the back, a stumbling, stuttering drunk guy comes in,

sits on the back row. The whole church is kind of

disturbed. What do we do?

There's a drunk guy in our midst.

And so the deacons or the elders, whoever they were, they

do the holy thing for God and they get up and they go ask him

to leave like you're, you're disturbing.

So they kick him out. And the story goes, a man got up

and in the name of Christ followed him out and took him to

get a meal. Which is the accurate

representation of God, right? If you have problems, this is

not the place for you, right? If you have sin that needs

forgiven, you need to go somewhere else because we're the

good people here, right? If you have healing, if you have

brokenness in your past, we have trauma.

Like this is not the place. This is a place where serious

people worship a serious gone. Christ says no, this is a place

where I'm going to meet with my people and I'm going to heal

them if they need it, and I'm going to give myself to them.

And it made the religious leaders super angry.

And I'll just point out in passing the two things that they

hated. They hated seeing the wonderful

things that he did because they were jealous of those things.

They also hated seeing children praising Christ, which means

it's the greatest thing in the world for a church to be full of

babies disturbing us as they shout their praise because out

of the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have

prepared praise. So Jesus is the King and he has

come into his Kingdom and they were not ready.

So there's a, there's a mysterious but an obvious truth

here that I want to talk to you about before I wrap this up In

the Gospel of John, at the very beginning of the Gospel of John,

right after Jesus's first miracle and the wedding of

Canaan of Galilee, Jesus goes into the temple and he cleanses

it. He drives out, he does this, the

cleansing of the temple. And then Matthew and all the

other synoptic gospels, Mark and Luke, they have Jesus cleansing

the temple at the end of his ministry.

And So what gives? Like did he, did he do it twice?

Or did John just like miss, like John just forgot?

No, it was at the end, not at the beginning.

Well, were there two or was there just one?

And and why the other question is why does every account of him

cleansing the temple, why is it followed by the religious

leaders asking him by what authority he can do these

things? Look in verse 23 of chapter 21.

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and elders of the

people came up to him as he was teaching and he's and they said,

by what authority are you doing these things?

Who gave you this authority? You can't do that.

You're not in charge, you who gave you this authority?

Well, it's a question of authority.

And again, the the theme is kingship.

The mystery is that Jesus as David's son and heir is taking

to himself in this and these verses, not just the kingship of

the Davidic kingship, but he is also taking up a priesthood.

He's also taking up a priesthood.

Whose job is it to cleanse the temple?

It's not the king, it's the priest Jesus is taking.

And the book of Hebrews bears this out.

Psalm 110 bears this out, that Jesus is taking up the

priesthood of Melchizedek, which the the author of Hebrews says

that the priesthood of Melchizedek both preceded and

superseded the the Levitical priesthood, right.

So if you remember the story, Abraham goes to war to rescue

Lot, and when he's coming back, he's met by two men.

One is the king of Sodomites and the other is the king of

Jerusalem and his name is Melchizedek.

And Abraham is met by these two guys and Melchizedek is called,

he's the king of Salem and he's called a priest of the Most high

God. And Melchizedek blesses Abraham

and Abraham gives Melchizedek a tithe of everything he's got.

And Melchizedek very interestingly brings Abraham a

gift. Abraham comes back with all of

the spoils of war and, and Melchizedek comes to Abraham

with two things. What would the, what would the

king and the priest of Jerusalem, the prefigurement of

Christ? What would he bring Abraham?

Would you be shocked to know that he'd bring him that he

brought him bread and he brought him wine.

The Melchizedek brought Abraham communion and he brought him

communion centuries before the, the father of the Levitical

priesthood, Levi was ever born. So, so this Melchizedek, it's,

it's really bizarre. He's a Gentile guy living in the

future capital, exactly in the place where Jesus will be

crucified and win the world and risen and win the world.

And he's ruling there and he's being a priest there.

And so when David comes into the throne, another really helpful

text, but David is coming to the throne.

He's bringing the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem and he

lays aside his kingly robes and he puts on an effort, a linen

effort. That's the the garb of a priest

and his wife Saul's daughter says, oh, she mocks him.

You, you've distinguished yourself before the eyes of the

maidens. You've laid aside your kingly

robes and you're you're dressed as a priest.

What are you doing? Well, David was taking up the

order of Melchizedek, the the, the priesthood of Melchizedek.

And Jesus is doing the exact same thing.

Now, what's what's marvelous is according to the Levitical law,

if your house had a disease in it, you were to call the priest

and the priest would come to your house and he would look at

the disease and he would take out every stone out of the wall

that had a a disease on. If it was mold or whatever it

was the priest, it was a priest's job to cleanse that

house. He would take out all the

stones. He would put new stones in that

place and then he would leave and he would come back later.

And when he came back later, the text says, and this is Leviticus

14, let me make sure, yeah, Leviticus 14, that the priest

would come back again later on. And here's how this text reads.

He's going to go back and re examine the house and re examine

all the stones that he had taken out in the plaster that he had

put in there. The priest shall go and look.

And he says, and if the disease has spread in the house, it is a

persistent leprous disease in the house and the house is

unclean. And he, the priest, listen to

these words, He shall break down the house and its stones and its

timber, and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry

them out of the city to an unclean place.

Moreover, whoever enters the house while it is shut up shall

be unclean until evening. Whoever sleeps in the house

shall wash his clothes. Whoever eats in the house shall

wash his clothes. Jesus at the beginning of his

ministry comes and cleanses the temple and then he leaves and he

comes back at the end of his ministry to see if that if that

cancer of self righteousness, of oppression of the poor,

disregarding God in his word. Has this cancer metastasized or

has it been healed? And he comes the second round of

the temple, and they are just as sick, if not more so.

And so he promises in just a few verses in Matthew, you see that

temple I'm going to take. And he said he uses the exact

same words. Not one stone will be left upon

another. The whole house is unclean.

I'm going to tear it down and I'm going to start over.

And that's the very thing that he does.

So Jesus comes as king and as priest to the temple to inspect

for disease. He cleanses it once at the

beginning of his ministry, leaves, comes back three years

later, the disease is still there and he promises to take

take the whole house down. OK, So what three things in this

text. First of all, Jesus is king.

He is king over all of it. So you and I need to repent of

our sin, we need to trust in him, and we need to be saved.

And then we need to put everything that you are and

everything that you have under this King's authority, because

he can be trusted as his greatest attribute is humility.

Let me ask you something, brother.

Sister, could you trust in a sovereign king who uses his

sovereignty to take your sin off of you and to die in your place

so that you could go free? Could you trust that guy with

everything you've got? Yes you can, and yes you must,

and so must I Jesus is king. Secondly, Jesus is priest.

He has given the answer for sin once for all and has ascended

into the heavenly Tabernacle where he lives forever to make

intercession for us. The author of Hebrews again says

that the Old Testament Tabernacle was made after a

pattern that God had showed Moses a heavenly pattern, a real

thing in heaven, that God showed him the pattern and Moses made a

copy of it. But there's no, there's no seat

in the heaven, in the in the earthly Tabernacle, but there is

one in heaven because Jesus finished it and he sat down.

He lives forever to make intercession for us at the right

hand of God. So go straight to the Father in

the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Do it with confidence because he as our great high priest, he is

who he says he is. He really made an end to your

sin and he's really given you access to the Father.

And lastly, he is king, He is priest, and Jesus is the prophet

who not only speaks the word of God faithfully, He is the very

word of God. When Jesus speaks, God speaks.

So trust him and obey. As prophet, priest and King,

Jesus gives us all today an invitation that carries the

weight of a command. Say that to you again.

He gives you an invitation, but it carries the weight of a

command. When the sovereign of the

universe says, hey, you can do this, why don't you do this?

You better do it. It's a command.

And this is the command that you come to the table.

This bread, this cup is the bread and the wine of the new

and better Melchizedek. Who will bless it in the name of

God Most High. Bless us in the name of God Most

High, if we will humble ourselves and come to Him.

But this bread and this wine is better than the Old Testament

bread of and wine of Melchizedek.

Because this bread and this cup is His body which was broken for

us. It is His blood which was shed

for the forgiveness of our sins, and it is freely given to all

who will humble themselves and come to Christ.

So let me ask you, brother, sister, would you be fed today

by the King of heaven and the King of earth?

Would you have him feed you? Would you have him bless you in

the name of God? Most high me too.

So come, eat and drink in remembrance of Christ.

Come and welcome to King Jesus. Let me pray for us.

Father God, we marvel to see both the sovereignty of Christ

that he is the the answer to all the hopes of humanity throughout

all the centuries. He is sovereign, but unthinkably

he's also humble. And he meets us in our

brokenness. He meets us in our sin, in that

great cost to himself, rescues us from our sin and our

separation and our shame, and unthinkably comes to us with

bread and wine, with gift, blessing us in the name of God

most time. And so we pray, Father, in the

name of your son and in the power of your spirit, that as we

come to this table to be fed by Christ, prophet, priest and

king, would you sanctify this table to us.

But this would be a real participation in the body of

Christ together and that you administer to us at the table

through these things. We trust you for that and we ask

you for it in Jesus name, Amen.