The Character of Jesus

Yeah, there we go.

My bad.

I had it the wrong way.

It's great to be back in Walnut Grove today, and it's great to be with people worshiping the Lord.

If you are watching with us online, we're excited that you're with us.

A lot of times I'll have an introduction, and that introduction will sometimes set the context for a passage that we're going to study.

But why do it boring when you could do it on the video?

So join with me as I set up this passage.

In Mark chapter 11, we see where Jesus is.

Mark 11 · chapter mention

Right outside the city of Jerusalem.

As a matter of fact, he's been on this journey to Jerusalem.

We know what's going to happen in Jerusalem.

He's ultimately going to be arrested.

He's going to be crucified.

And we see this the beautiful story of the gospel unfold.

But before he goes into Jerusalem, he approaches what's called the Mount of Olives and he sends two of his disciples to uh to go into Jerusalem and he says, I want you to do something that's kind of unusual.

I want you to go get a donkey.

There's a man inside the city that has a donkey, and I want you to approach that man and tell him that the Lord has use of your donkey.

And so these guys walk into uh the city of Jerusalem and they they approach this man that has a little donkey.

And I don't want I don't know for sure, but I wonder if that little donkey was like little Millie right here.

You see Millie, Millie, take take a look at the camera.

Can you look at the camera?

No, not me.

Not not me.

And so so they they tell this guy that, hey, the Lord has use of your donkey, and they take this donkey back to Jesus.

And on what we call um Palm Sunday, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey.

I imagine it might have been a little bit larger than Millie here, but probably not that much larger.

And it says that the they threw their cloaks, the disciples threw their cloaks on the back of the donkey, and as they approached Jerusalem, people laid down their cloaks and and and all on the streets going into that eastern gate of Jerusalem, and they waved palm branches and shouted, Hosanna, Hosanna to the king who has come to save us.

And so what is happening with this?

Why is is Jesus riding into Jerusalem in this triumphant processional on a donkey?

Because here's the deal, it was triumphant processionals were common.

I mean, kings rode into cities, uh-uh.

Kings and generals and Caesars and all types of high um officials rode in and they had these triumphant processions, but they rode in on majestic animals.

They rode in on chariots, they rode in on horses and white horses.

But why would Jesus, the king, ride in on a donkey?

Well, I think what Jesus is doing here is he's juxtaposing his majesty and his might to his weakness and his meekness.

He's being very intentional here about showing us the two different aspects of his character.

I love the sermon that I came across from Jonathan Edwards.

It's a sermon from the 1730s.

And Jonathan Edwards preaches on this passage out of Revelation 5, and it's verses 5 and 6, and it says this And one of the elders said to me, Weep not, for behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed to open the book.

So I look, and behold, in the midst of the throne stood a lamb, looking as if it had been slain.

See what John does here?

He mentions the lion of the tribe of Judah, which is Jesus, but then he says, in the midst of the throne stood a lamb looking as if it had been slain.

What is he doing in taking, in, and juxtaposing these two images, the lion and the lamb?

I'm gonna quote Jonathan Edwards here.

He says, A lion excels in strength and the majesty of his appearance and voice.

A lamb excels in meekness and is sacrificed for human clothing and for food.

But Jesus Christ is both because the diverse excellencies of both lion and lamb are wonderfully met in him.

I want to take a second to tell you that we live in a world that was created by a good God, and this world was not meant for COVID-19.

The world was not meant for racial tension, the world was not meant for the brokenness that we see in the midst of our lives right now.

The world was created for God to walk and to be with his people.

As a matter of fact, we're about to study a little section where Jesus goes into the temple.

And before we look at that temple, we're gonna look back at the first temple.

See, the Garden of Eden was the first temple.

And it's where God walked in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve.

But they decided that they knew better than God, and because they knew better than God, they were banished from the original temple in the Garden of Eden.

And so what does God do to answer the problem of the separation between God and man?

He is a mighty God, but he becomes meek.

And he becomes weak to be an answer to this dilemma.

Now, just in case you're not sure, I was wearing the black t-shirt that said United on it, okay?

Just so you know that.

Listen, here's what I want to do.

I want to I want to I want to quote Jonathan Edwards a little bit more as he goes into his sermon, and I want to I want to highlight who Jesus Christ is as he talks about these two separate perspectives of who Jesus is.

He says, there do meet in Christ infinite highness and infinite accessibility, infinite justice, yet infinite grace, infinite glory, yet infinite humility, infinite majesty, infinite transcendent meekness, absolute sovereignty, yet perfect submission, infinite all-sufficiency in himself, yet entire trust and dependence upon God.

He's a lion, he's a lamb, he's a rock, he's a pearl, he's a mighty captain, he's a tender lover, he's a fragile flower, he's a mighty tree of life.

Now, as we dive in to Mark chapter 11, we're gonna begin in verse 15 for those of you who want to follow along.

Mark 11 · chapter mention

But here's what we're looking at today.

Last week, if you were here, depending on where you were at which location and watching online, whether you heard Jonah or whether you heard Nathan, you heard them share a message out of Matthew 23 where Jesus is angry.

He's angry about religion and he's angry about the religious leaders.

In this passage, we see a bit of Jesus' righteous anger as well.

It says, Jesus, here's the big idea for this morning.

Jesus' desire is to make it simple for all peoples to connect to God.

And he's willing to fight for it before he dives for it.

So that's what we're seeing in this passage.

We see this righteous anger of Jesus.

He is angry, yet he does not sin.

So look at verse 15.

It says, They they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple.

This is the day after this triumphant entry.

They he entered the temple and he began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple.

And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.

And he was teaching them and saying to them, Is it not written?

Listen to what he says, my house shall be called a house of fire.

You may go to handheld.

He says, Is this by the way, let me let me I I this is just the the tip of the iceberg.

This morning we came in and we had all kinds of technical issues.

And I told all of our team, I said, let me tell you what the enemy wants us to do.

The enemy wants us to be distracted, where the name of Jesus Christ will not be lifted up, and where the people of God will not worship, and where the people who don't know God can't hear about Jesus and what he's done.

And so let me read this verse in verse 17 of Mark chapter 11.

Mark 11 · chapter mention

And he was teaching them and saying to them, It is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all what?

For all the nations.

Not for one group of people, not for an exclusive group of people, but for all the nations.

That word nations there, it's it's literally means it's the it's the Greek word ethnate.

It means all people groups, all ethnicities, all people all over the world.

But you have made it, he says, a den of robbers, and the chief priest and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.

And when evening came, they went out of the city.

And so let me make this clear.

Jesus came to remove obstacles that religion and religious leaders had created.

Jesus came to remove all the obstacles that religion and religious leaders had created.

And so I I want to I put a pit I want to put a picture up here on the screen of the temple.

And you need to understand that this temple, this was what was called Herod's temple.

Uh David had the vision of the temple.

He raised the money for the temple.

Solomon built the temple, and then we end up here in the life of during the time of Jesus with what was called Herod's temple.

And when you walked into the temple area, the first area that you came to was known as the court of the Gentiles.

It was for the for all the nations, for all of those people that were not Jewish people, that were not part of the nation of Israel.

It was where the non-Jewish people could go, where they could hear about God, where they could pray and they could from a distance learn about God.

It was what we would call the biggest division of the temple.

And all that area was full of people selling sacrificial animals and exchanging money.

Now, let me let me make this clear.

There was nothing wrong with providing these sacrificial animals for people that would journey to Jerusalem to be part of the festival, to be part of the Passover experience.

A lot of those people could not travel with animals, and so when they got to Jerusalem, they had to be able to buy an animal to sacrifice.

Nothing wrong with people from other nations coming and exchanging currency.

The problem was that they had taken the Gentile court and made it like the floor of the of Wall Street.

And it was the place where the Gentiles, where the people who didn't know God, could stand at a distance and watch God's people worship and carry out their sacrificial system that would provide for their forgiveness, provide for their atonement.

That was the purpose of God's people.

See, the nation of Israel was never meant to be an exclusive nation.

God's purpose for Israel was for always for them to be an example and to be the means by which all other peoples on the earth would know God.

Matter of fact, if you just read through Isaiah, if you, I mean, I've just picked out a couple of verses, but if you read through the book of Isaiah, you would see Isaiah 42, 6 says, I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I will take you by the hand and keep you.

He says, I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations.

All through the book of Isaiah, God is speaking to his people, telling them that you exist for the nations.

You exist for the people that don't know me yet.

Isaiah 49, 6 says, He says, Is it too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel?

I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

And so the historian Josephus says that there would have been on during this festival, Passover festival, there there would have been 250,000 plus lambs that were bought and sold and sacrificed in the temple.

And the whole purpose of the just Gentile court was for the people of God to look, I mean, for for the people of the nations to be able to see from a distance what it was like to have a relationship with the living God, the one true God.

And they had turned the Gentile court into a Wall Street trading floor where there was no clarity, no ability, no understanding of who God was.

They couldn't even see from a distance that was confusing.

It was chaos, and they could not understand that God desperately wanted a relationship with them.

It was a place where the Gentiles were supposed to find God.

Where from a distance they can understand it.

See, Jesus' desire was to make it simple for all peoples, for all nations, for all people groups to know that God loved them, make it simple for them to connect with God.

And Jesus is saying, you know what, I'm willing to fight for it, and then I'm about to die for it.

So Jesus, now this sounds maybe kind of crazy, but Jesus throws a righteous anger fit.

Now he doesn't sin.

Now, y'all have seen people throw a fit, right?

Don't look at your spouse, don't look at your kids.

I mean, there's fits thrown in your houses probably all the time.

There's fits that are thrown.

We're just fit-throwing people.

That's just part of our character.

Jesus throws a righteous anger fit and he walks into the temples and he starts throwing tables.

It says in Matthew, he's got a whip that he makes, and he's he's he just get out of my house, get out of my house.

He's throwing tables upside down and and and all over the place.

He says, You have made my house a den of robbers.

You are taking advantage of the very people that I want to connect with.

We have a church we partner with in Clarkston that has 13 languages represented.

And so my wife and I befriended a couple that had moved here from Iraq, and there's a long story with it, but but part of our relationship obviously was so we could hopefully share the love of Christ.

But but you take for granted when people move here from a different country and and all the things that they have to do to try to try to get a job and get connected, and and and so he got a job.

His name was Hassan, was the a husband of the family, a hard-working man.

Just so pleasant to build a friendship and a relationship with Hassan.

And so it came time for him to buy a car.

Can you imagine being uh from another country and trying to buy a car in a foreign country?

You don't speak the language very well, and so we we helped him get connected to buy a car, and then he says, Hey, I need to go get a tag.

And and and so I went up to Memorial Drive to the place where you get the tag, and and and we sat in this room full of people, I mean, twice the size probably of this room, and and and people from all over the place.

And Hassan pulls out, listen, he pulls out a watt of cash, probably eight hundred dollars cash in his pocket.

I said, put that away.

And so we go up to the window to get his tag, and he's not he doesn't speak English very well.

And the lady behind the window, now she was great, but she could have asked him for any amount of money she wanted to, and he would have given it to her, and it happens all the time that people are taken advantage of, and this is the temple of God, and people from all over the world had come, people that were not Jewish, and it was an opportunity to show and demonstrate and to share the love of God, and Jesus said, You've turned my house into a den of robbers.

Now, to understand the temple fully, you've got to go back to the first temple.

I mentioned it in the video.

The first temple was not the temple that Solomon built, the first temple was the Garden of Eden.

It's where God created and established a relationship with his creation, and it even says that he walked in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve.

There was no barrier.

He was able to be with his creation without any barrier whatsoever.

That is the temple.

That is what God created this world for.

Before sin, before brokenness.

That is what the temple was about.

That's what the garden was in the presence of God.

There was no death, there was no decay, there was no deformity, there's no evil, there's no imperfections.

None of that could exist in the garden.

All that they experienced was God's full presence and the shalom of God that went with it.

The fullness of joy, the fullness of peace, the fullness that we all long for in our hearts.

They're experiencing it.

But what happened?

See, when human beings decided, when Adam and Eve decided to build their lives on something other than what God had said, God said, You can't live in my temple anymore.

You can't live in my sanctuary anymore.

You have to be shut out of it.

And so he said, You've got to leave the sanctuary.

You've got to leave the temple.

We as human beings are shut out of the presence of God.

That's what happened to Adam and Eve.

They had to leave.

They were banished from the garden, right?

They're banished from the presence of God.

And so can you imagine them walking out of the gate where they left the presence of God?

They left the shalom.

They left the fullness of Joy.

They exchanged true life for a counterfeit.

And as they turned around, they looked at that gate.

And God had placed at that gate a cherry boom.

That's what Genesis 3.24 says.

He drove out the man.

And at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

That's what kept them from coming back into the presence of God.

A flaming sword that barred the way back into the presence of God.

What's that deal?

What's that about?

It's because we have built our lives on other things that were banished from God's presence.

We can't go back into the presence of God.

We've built our lives on power and status and acclaim and maybe even things that are good gifts that God's given us.

Maybe it's family or or or maybe it's some gift that you have or a job or or a or a race or even a nationality.

All the things that we have put our hope in have separated us from God.

And what do we get from that?

We get conflicts and we get wars and we get violence and we get death and we get injustice and we get poverty and we get disease.

So I'm giving you an overview of where we what has gotten us to the place that we are in this world.

We trample on one another rather than serving and loving one another.

And here's the deal.

We say, God, I'm sorry, and he just lets us back in.

Could they have turned around and said, hey, God, I'm just sorry?

Possibly you could say that, but but here's a biblical principle.

And it's the principle of justice.

There always has to be a payment for what's been wronged.

There always has to be a payment.

There always has to be a penalty.

That's just the we know that.

Inside of our hearts, we know when somebody is gravely wronged, that there has to be justice.

A friend that I went to church with years years ago, probably 35 years ago, she was brutally raped.

And I remember, I remember those of us that were in the youth group at that time, I remember this righteous anger that was rising up inside of us.

I remember experiencing it, and you, and I knew that, I knew in my mind there has to be forgiveness, but there has to be a payment, and there has to be justice when somebody is wronged.

And it it is the right thing for somebody to go to prison and to suffer the justice when they do something gravely wrong.

That's the way God designed this world.

So there had to be a payment.

Oh God, can we just say we're sorry and go back?

No, there has to be a payment.

There has to be something that is paid to make right what has been wrong.

There must be a payment.

We're not talking about vindictiveness.

We're not talking about anything that is ungodly.

We're talking about the justice of God.

And that's what that flaming sword is.

The angel that stood at the gate.

There had to be a penalty.

Unless you pay for what has happened, unless you pay for your disobedience, you will never ever be allowed to go back into the presence of God.

And so then you fast forward thousands of years to the temple, to the temple where Jesus visited.

And there was constant payment.

It's the atonement, it's the sacrificial system.

Lambs and goats and animals constantly, blood being shed, so God would accept his people, and so he would hold back a measure of his full justice.

So what's beyond the outer courts is this is this temple.

You know, back to the picture.

There's this large part of the temple, this inner court called the Holy of Holies.

And it was only once a year that a person could go in there, and that person was the high priest.

He could only go in once a year to sacrifice and to sprinkle the blood on the on the on the seat of mercy seat where for another year God would allow his people to live without his full anger and justice coming out upon them.

In the Old Testament, the prophets would prophesy there's gonna be a day when all this will end.

There'll be no more need for bloodshed.

There'll be no more need to sacrifice animals.

There'll be a day when the glory of God will come upon the earth as God originally intended it.

In spite of that fact, nobody could figure out what to do.

Prophets kept on prophesying that someday the glory of God was going to come cover the earth.

As a matter of fact, in Zechariah, the same passage where Zechariah prophesies about the king riding into Jerusalem on a little colt, he says, your Messiah, your king will come back gentle and riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

And that same passage of Scripture, Zechariah prophesies that this prophecy, and I don't have time to go into the detail, but it says that every pot, and what I'm talking about is little bowls, bowls that you would eat out of.

And inside the temple where they would perform these sacrifices, they had these instruments, these pots and bowls and and and different types of instruments they would use in the sacrificial system.

And it says one day, every bowl in Jerusalem, every bowl will be holy before the Lord God Almighty.

All these bowls will be sacred.

And here's what he says: even the Canaanites will be allowed into the house of the Lord Almighty.

The Canaanites, I mean, they're they're the evil enemies of Jerusalem, of the Jewish people.

Yes, even those people will be allowed.

Even the Canaanites, the hated enemy of Jewish people, they will be allowed to come into the presence of God.

Now, what is this prophecy about?

And what allows us to get beyond the flaming sword back into the presence of God?

There has to be a payment.

There has to be somebody that will take upon themselves the penalty of all of the sins of humanity.

And that's Jesus.

That's why Jesus is so angry.

Because he knew in a week, in a week from when he stormed upon that Gentile court, he knew that he would give his life and he would die a cruel death on the cross.

And it's through his death that he takes the sword upon himself.

He's the one that pays the penalty.

He's the one that opens the gates back into the presence of God.

Jesus becomes the ultimate sacrifice.

Jesus is the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God.

He is the one who is capable of taking and paying the penalty, and he is gentle enough to be the Lamb that is sacrificed.

That's what Jesus said to the disciples, you go and make disciples of all nations.

What he's saying is, hey, no more is there any separation.

There's no Gentile court, there's no court for the women, there's no court for the for the priests.

Listen, all the courts are removed.

It's either those that are inside the kingdom of God or those that are outside the kingdom of God.

And he's saying, I have come to pay the ultimate penalty.

I have come to take the sword upon myself so that the presence of God would be made available again to all people.

God's ultimate goal is that we would all be in his presence and that we would all worship him as we are created to worship him.

Psalm 96 says this the trees of the wood will sing for joy before the Lord when he comes to rule the earth.

Isaiah 55 says, the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Now, as I was walking my neighborhood this week and thinking about this message, I looked around at the yards that were landscaped, and I looked at some of the beautiful flowers that God had put in the ground, and I looked up at the trees, and I thought this thought that I am not gonna let creation outworship me.

I am part of God's highest creation.

I am one who He has died for.

I've been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

It's the lion of Judah that is provided for my hope and for my eternal life.

I will not let creation outworship me.

And that's why when we come in together as a church, that that listen, we're not coming to just stand here and sit like lumps on a log with our arms crossed.

We're coming to meet with the creator of the universe who has taken our sins away.

He has taken the sword upon himself, and he has made just what was injust.

The death of death because of the death of Christ.

If you hang around with older people or sometimes people in certain settings, whatever, you'll they'll they'll get around to talking about.

Have you heard about so-and-so?

They they passed away.

Have you heard about so-and-so?

They they they they died.

And have you heard about so-and-so?

I told our worship team this morning, I said, what if we just walked around in this COVID-19 infested world and just reminded the enemy that wants to steal our joy?

So, hey, have you heard of the death of death?

Did you hear that death died?

Because of the death of Jesus Christ, death is now dead.

And that's why in this world, that's why I keep I've said to people, they say, somebody asked me a couple weeks ago, what hey, what do you make of this COVID thing?

I said, Well, I'm not afraid to die.

You know why?

Because death has already died.

If I die, I'm gonna be with him.

Now I'm gonna live cautiously.

I don't think he's done with me yet.

I mean, I don't want to speed up what what's you know, I don't want to test God or anything, but I want to tell you that death has died because of the death of Jesus Christ.

He took the sword for you and me.

He took it.

This is the the reason at the end of chapter 15 of the book of Mark, the moment Jesus dies, the veil in the temple is ripped from top to bottom by invisible hands.

The creator has made it possible for you to re-enter the presence of God.

And the temple was obsolete at that point.

That's why the writer of Hebrews in chapter 4 he said, now you can boldly and confidently go before the throne of God.

You can approach God without any fear.

He is your Savior, He is with you, He will not forsake you.

He is a good, good Father, and that's why this series is Jesus the unsafe savior.

He's not safe, I'm telling you, but he's good, he's the king, I tell you.

The Jerusalem council of church leaders in Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

They got together and they're trying to decide: are we gonna make, are we gonna make all of the people that become Christians?

Are we gonna make them do all the Jewish stuff before they become believers in Jesus?

And James comes to a point in the meeting where he stands up and he says, let's not make it difficult for the Gentiles to come to Jesus.

Let's make it simple.

That's why we want to impact our communities.

That's why we want to be a church that invests in children in the next generation.

That's why we want to be a church that cares about local schools.

That's why we want to be a church that cares about our communities and cares about racial injustice.

That's why we want to be a church that loves on our first responders and thanks them for what they do to serve us.

That's why we want to be a church that cares about our neighbor, that will bless every home and cover every home with prayer and that we would care for people and that we would ultimately share the love of Jesus with them.

That's why we're gonna gather tonight at 6:30 at the campuses on this side of the county, and we're gonna pray.

We're gonna pray for our administrators, we're gonna pray for our principals, we're gonna pray for our teachers, we're gonna pray for our coaches, we're gonna pray for our faculty members, we're gonna pray for all those that are serving, and we know there's tension right now, but we serve a God that is way beyond greater than any of the tension that we have in our world.

So I want to encourage you tonight.

Let's consider showing up 6:30 and let's boldly go before God, and let's pray that God would cover our students and our teachers and our educators because this is a week that is filled with a lot of tension.

So, Father, we pray as we consider how you have spoken us through your word this morning.

Lord, I pray for those that are here this morning that maybe have never entered into a personal relationship with Jesus.

Maybe their first step is to put their faith for the first time in their Savior, Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that the gospel, it's simple, it's costly, it costs Jesus' life, but it's simple in that you just simply admit that you need Jesus.

And that you repent and put your faith in Jesus as your Savior and your Lord.

You confess him as your as your Lord and you begin to walk and journey with him.

Maybe those of you that are believers, maybe you've already put your faith in Jesus, but everybody has a next step.

Maybe your next step is baptism.

We're gonna baptize next Sunday.

Maybe for some of you it's to it's to it's to join one of our serve teams.

Maybe it's it's to take the next step to consider making us your family, becoming a member of Church of the Grove.

And so I want you to consider what your next step is as we lift up the name of Jesus.

One last time this morning as we worship, and may we worship in a way that we know that we're not gonna let creation out worship us.

We're gonna say, All hell, King Jesus, you are worthy of all the praise and glory and honor that we can offer you this morning.

So, church, I want to ask you to stand with me right now.

Let's stand together.

And let's thank God for who he is and what he's done on our behalf.

Let's lift him up as the creator of the universe, as the one who took upon himself the sword that separated us from the presence of God.

All hell, King Jesus.