Who Is This?

Imagine this. You are in a darkened room. It's a movie theater. The screen is black. And there's no sound. And then slowly, something horrible fades into view. Three crosses, three instruments of torture, three people died there today. And one of them is Jesus Christ. How did he get there? And what's next for him? You know, there's a very well-known movie director named J.J. Abrams, and he's famous for a little screenwriting device. And it's this. He often starts his movies with his heroes in a really dire predicament, like they are duct taped to the fuselage of a crashing airplane. There's no pilot. They are unconscious, and there's a time bomb in the luggage hold. And then you see a subtitle. One week earlier, and you discover how our hero got into that predicament.

So that's what I want to do for you this morning. There's Jesus on the cross. He's dead. One week earlier, he is being welcomed by a gigantic crowd into Jerusalem. Everyone's happy to see him. They're proclaiming him their leader. So how did he go from this to the cross in less than a week? That is a mystery that most people I know cannot explain, even most Christians. It always confused me growing up in the church. We celebrated Palm Sunday and the donkey and the palm trees and Jesus as king. And then a week later, he's dead. How did that happen? Well, it's a mystery I want to start to solve this morning.

Why don't you grab your message notes that look like this? We begin a holy week, as Mark said, today. That is the final week of Jesus Christ's life before the crucifixion. And this morning, what I want to look at is the first day of the final week of the life of Jesus Christ. And the key to really understanding this whole last week and the mystery of how Jesus went from popular to pariah, from lauded by the crowds, to the crowds yelling, "Crucify!" And the key is this question, Matthew 21:10 says, "When Jesus entered Jerusalem to kick off that final week, the whole city was stirred and asked, 'Who is this? Who is Jesus?'"

That is a great question. It is a question that gets posed of Jesus and to Jesus and about Jesus again and again and again and again all throughout this final week of his life. And it is a question that is very easy to get wrong. It's so easy for our image of Jesus Christ to be this cliched, sanitized version of Jesus that has very little to do with the way the Bible portrays him. But it's really the pop culture view of Jesus.

I mean, just think about this week. I mean, it's Easter week, right? Holy week. And I don't know if you've noticed, but all the cable TV networks and the TV stations kind of roll out all of their old religious movies and their TV specials that have anything to do with Jesus on this week. You see them all over TV, and I made some screen captures of some of these just to show you how often I think they kind of get the Jesus thing wrong. Like, for example, he's almost always blonde hair and blue eyes. This is not a Jewish man, people. I look at him and I think, "This guy is Swedish. This is Lars of Nazareth. This is not Jesus of Nazareth."

And the Bible portrays him as very charismatic and unpredictable, yet in the movies he's often what I call low blood pressure Jesus. Do you know what I'm talking about? Someone get this guy a muffin because he is hardly awake. Now, lately there's been a trend toward what I call hunky Jesus, where he looks less like he should be cast in a Jesus movie and more like he should be on the cover of the next Danielle Steele novel. You know what I'm talking about? With the wind blowing. And often he looks kind of like, in an attempt maybe, to look more earthy, he looks like what I call surfer Jesus, like this one. Looks like he's about to say, "You know, stand up paddle boarding? I kind of invented that. Only without the board, you know?"

But this final week of Jesus Christ-like, this is where there's almost always a swing in the miss in the movies, like this is a screen capture from Jesus Christ Superstar. This was a major theatrical release. And the Bible says a large crowd welcomed Jesus into town and maybe they didn't have the budget for extras, but there are 12 people welcoming him into town. Count them, I did. There's exactly 12. But here's why this is a problem. The way the movies portray this final week, it never really makes any sense. Again, how does Jesus go from everybody thinking he's like the best thing since sliced bread to everyone is screaming, "Kill him!" I've never adequately explained in any movie I've ever seen.

So let's start solving that mystery today. And as I said, it all has to do with how they answer the question, "Who is this?" And a lot rides on how you answer this question. If you are kind of a veteran Christian here today, but if you're honest, you're sort of a bored believer, you know, you've gone from born-again to bored-again, and you're thinking, "Oh, you know, my faith just needs to be revitalized." If you see the charismatic, revolutionary, frankly, outrageous Jesus who just leaps from the page of the Bible in this last week of his life, you are going to have your faith revitalized.

And one of the reasons your faith may be kind of boring to you right now is you've settled for the cliched, sanitized pop culture of Jesus, not the real Jesus of Scripture. And maybe you're new to all this church stuff, and Jesus kind of intrigues you, but you really want to get past kind of the kitschy Jesus and encounter the true Jesus of history. This is going to just blow your mind. What we're going to do this morning is we're going to be just in a few verses in Matthew 21. We're going to go verse by verse through verses 8 through 15, and we're going to look for some clues to answer this question, "Who is Jesus Christ?"

And you're going to discover why he went from being the most popular person in Jerusalem to being the least popular person in less than a week. I'm going to take this in three scenes. Are you ready for this? Scene one, we see that Jesus is the revolutionary king, the truly revolutionary king. Start in Matthew 21:8, it says, "A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road." Now stop there for a second, because if I'm complaining that the crowd was larger than 12, well, what did it really look like? There's a clue here. It says, "In John, that this very large crowd were the pilgrims who came into town for the Passover week."

And there's an ancient writer named Josephus who lived in Jerusalem in the first century, and he says that they used to take a census of the number of people who came into town to perform their sacrifices, and he estimates that an average crowd of pilgrims this time of year numbered around 2.5 million, a little bigger than 12. So you've got to picture something like one of those big rallies on the mall in Washington, D.C. There's just people as far as the eye can see. And what was the attitude of this crowd? Well, there's a historian named Don Carson who says, "In the first century, 'the Passover feast was to Jews what the Fourth of July is to Americans.' It was a rallying point for intense nationalistic zeal."

So are you starting to get the picture here? Two and a half million patriotic people, and it says they spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Now, the Gospel of Mark specifies these were palm branches and that they were also waving these palms. Why palms? This is very important, and I think you'll miss the whole aspect, one whole aspect of what happens during this week if you miss this. The palms were the symbol of the country. When the ancient Jews minted their own money, look what symbol is on their coins. The palm. The palm was like their flag. It was their American eagle. It was their stars and stripes. They didn't have fabric flags. They just waved palm branches to wave their flags.

So two and a half million patriotic people are waving what amounted to their flag, the palm, and then it gets more intense because what are they shouting? They are not just kind of going, "Ahhh!" They are chanting and singing something in unison together. The Bible says, "The crowds that went ahead of them and those that followed shouted, 'Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest heaven.'" They're not ad libbing. Every word here is quoted. They are lyrics in Psalm 118, which is huge, because historians tell us in those days that was like their national anthem. You can look it up on your own, but Psalm 118 is all about kicking out the foreign oppressors from Jerusalem and liberating the nation of Israel.

So start to put together these clues. Why would a large crowd be giving Jesus the ancient equivalent of a massive Israeli flag waving patriotic ticker tape parade? One more little clue. Almost exactly 200 years before this, a man named Judas Maccabeus arose as the savior of the nation of Israel. Now check this out. Judas Maccabeus came down to Jerusalem from Galilee just like Jesus, 200 years before Christ. His message was that a new kingdom was coming just like Jesus, 200 years before Christ. And when Judas Maccabeus rode into Jerusalem 200 years before Christ, guess what the crowds were doing for him? Waving palm branches and singing that same exact Psalm lyric.

And what does Judas Maccabeus do next 200 years before Christ? Well, he goes right up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which had been taken over by the foreign oppressors, the Syrian Greeks. And he brandishes weapons and he kicks out the foreigners from the Temple Mount and he cleanses the temple and liberates the country. Now by Jesus' time, the Jews are again being oppressed by foreigners, the Romans, and they dream of another war of liberation. So are you starting to get what's happening here psychologically? Why is the crowd doing all of this basically recapitulating that great victory parade on the bicentennial of the Maccabean Revolution?

I mean, quick show of hands, was anybody here in this room alive in 1976? Come on, show your age, I mean your pride. Do you remember kind of the goofy clothes that we wore in 1976 and everybody was all about the American Revolution, right? It was revolution fever all year long. Everybody was into George Washington and all the revolutionary army. Well, that's kind of what was happening in Jesus' day. People had bicentennial fever. And here's the kicker, what does "Hosanna" actually mean? Literally. It means save now. So this giant patriotic crowd is waving flags and they're recapitulating their war of liberation and they're chanting to Jesus as he enters the city, "Save now, save now, save now, save now!" For then it was the revolution could happen again today. They were thinking, "All right, Romans, game on!"

And as he enters the city, the suspense mounts, it says, "When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred." And here it is again, they asked, "Who is this?" And the crowds answered, "This is Jesus." Now watch this, "The what?" "The prophet from Nazareth in Galilee." That's an important word. They said, they saw him as just a prophet. In those days, the prophets of the Old Testament, of the Hebrew Scriptures, that prophesied 400 to 600 years before this, they were seen as sort of the cheerleaders for the nation who were going to bring back the good old days. The prophets prophesied that one day the nation, the kingdom of Israel, would be restored. So they were looking at Jesus as somebody who was going to bring back the good old days when of course Jesus was there to lead them to something new and better.

Watch this, they were sure that what they needed was a political revolution. But he was there to start a spiritual revolution. Do you see the parallels between you and me? Somebody once said, "We come to God with our felt needs, but Jesus goes to our root needs." Right? Their felt need was what? Liberation from the Romans. But Jesus knew their root need was liberation from themselves. And so he goes for the cross and not the crown. And we need to learn the same lesson today. We can demand that God fulfill our agenda and it can seem so obvious to us what our need is that God needs to fulfill, but God knows better what it is that we truly need.

I love this quote from Tim Keller. He said, "God always gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he does." He says, "If you learn this, you'll live a contented, non-anxious life. If you don't learn this, you won't." And so really, here's the question. Ask yourself, "Do I expect God to enact my agenda?" Because that's what these people were doing. But at some point you have to realize Jesus has his own agenda. He's got his own timing. And you need to humbly bow before him as the only, truly revolutionary king. Every other revolution wasn't really a true revolution because it just puts into place human beings who are sinful and flawed.

And whether it's a capitalist revolution or communist revolution or monarchist revolution, it always just ends up replaying the same vices as the previous revolution because people are people and they're sinful and they're flawed and their hearts need healing. And so Jesus says, "Let me give you a true revolution. Let me transform you from the inside out." So end scene one. Cross dissolve as Jesus strides into the city walls for scene two, where he is the fierce liberator. The fierce liberator. Now, fierce is maybe not a word you'd associate with Jesus, right? A lot of people tend to think of Jesus as sort of Mr. Rogers in a robe, right?

Well, check this out. Imagine again that you're there. Jesus has these millions of supporters shouting, "Save now! Kick out the Romans!" And now imagine what you're thinking next. "Look, he's going up into the city just like Judas Maccabeus did. Look, he's walking up onto the Temple Mount just like Judas Maccabeus. Look, now he's making a weapon, a big, big whip. Now he's raising the whip. He's starting to--he's going to kick out the foreigners! The revolution is happening!" Now, wait. What is he doing now? Jesus, who do you think you are? Because watch what happens next. He does something nobody expects.

It says, verse 21, "Jesus entered the Temple Courts and drove out the Romans?" No. "Drew out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves." What is this all about? Well, let me show you a model of the Temple Courts in Jesus' day. The place he enters is called the Court of the Gentiles. It's a big, wide plaza there. Now, it was meant to be a place where people from all nations could come to the Temple Mount and pray and worship God, but in Jesus' day, it didn't look empty like that. It was more crowded than the Santa Cruz flea market in the old drive-in movie parking lot.

It was just wall-to-wall stalls, and these two and a half million people would come up there and they would shop for animals, birds and lambs and so on to sacrifice at the temple, and they would have to get their money exchanged because the way the temple system worked, you couldn't use your normal coins. You had to exchange them for little temple tokens, like getting bus tokens. And of course, this money exchange thing became a racket, and Jesus sees all of this. There's no place for the foreigners to come and worship, and he is ticked. And it says he makes this whip, and he begins to drive people out. Imagine the chaos. There's sheep bleeding as they go running everywhere. Bleeding, not bleeding. As they go running everywhere, he's opening the cages of the doves. They're flapping in people's faces as they fly to their liberation.

You ever dropped a jar of change? You know the noise it makes, and it's like marbles just spilling everywhere. Well, this is what is happening, not dozens, but hundreds of places all over this court. So the animals crying and the doves flapping and the money all over the place. Just chaos. And it's all caused by one man. Now, could Mr. Rogers in a robe pull that off? Stop selling those doves, you bad people. It would never happen. Jesus is the original bull in a china shop here. Jesus is absolutely a bulldozer. And this is really good news for you and me, and I'll show you why.

The other day, my wife and I were watching one of those Disney nature documentaries. It was great. And there was a scene there where they showed a bunch of animal mamas guarding their young. There were grizzly bear mamas guarding their cubs. And there was a whole sequence of this cheetah mother who was guarding her young against hyenas. Just check out the look in her eyes. You are not touching my babies, right? Well, that is the look in Jesus' eye at the Temple Mount when he raises that whip and says, "Get out of my house and stop hurting my children." Look at what he says. "It is written, 'My house.'" Notice he calls the Temple "my house." Making himself equal to God. "My house will be called a house of prayer, but you're making it a den of thieves."

The Gospel of Mark tells us he finished this line. It's a quotation from Isaiah. "My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." All nations. So do you see what's happening here? Instead of kicking the Gentiles, the foreigners, off the Temple Mount, Jesus -- watch this now -- Jesus is making room for more Gentiles. And instantly, two and a half million people are livid because he's not fulfilling their agenda. In fact, he's doing the opposite. The tide begins to turn. But we can't really point fingers at them because here's the truth. We all often build barriers to God, intentionally or unintentionally. We divide people in us versus them, camps. But Jesus builds bridges. Didn't he do this? All through his ministry, he welcomed Gentiles and prostitutes and tax collectors and sinners. In fact, he came to build the ultimate bridge shaped like a cross.

So here's the question. Am I joining Jesus in busting these barriers that people build? Even this old barrier between Jew and Gentile. You know, just a couple of weeks ago, I emceed our panel here on race and religion. It was really great. There were black and Hispanic and Asian panelists, and everybody had striking things to say about how we can build walls, often even unintentionally, between races. But let me give you one example. One guy who was Jewish, brilliant cardiologist. In fact, he's studying at Oxford now, too. He's a Princeton grad. He's from Santa Cruz, and he told me, "René, the anti-Semitism that I encountered" -- now, he's only my age. "But he said the anti-Semitism I encountered growing up from people who called themselves Christians pushed me away from even considering the claims of Christ for much of my adult life."

He said, "I used to love to quote Gandhi and say, 'You know, I like your Christ, but I can't stand your Christians.'" You ever feel like that? And by the way, as long as we're talking about this, this horrible anti-Semitic slur that you hear once in a while, calling Jews Christ killers, it's horrific and evil and unbiblical because Jesus said, "I lay down my own life. No one takes it from me." All of this Jesus orchestrated, getting the crowds favored and getting them to push him away so that he would be crucified. He did all this on purpose. That's what the Bible teaches.

But this man heard this sort of thing from Christians his whole life, and he said it was not until he was going to Princeton, and one Princeton professor who got to know him intentionally built bridges. And this man invited him to his house for dinner, and he invited him out to concerts. And after a year of establishing a relationship, he finally invited him to church, and he told me, "René, I am a Jewish follower of Jesus as my Messiah today because one Christian took the time to intentionally build bridges to me." And so my question is, can you do that to people all around you? It does not happen by accident. It takes intentionality. It takes planning. It takes relationship. It takes love. But that is our mission.

And you have an opportunity to do that by inviting people to the Easter services with these cards in a way that you don't have many of the other weeks of the year. So don't let this opportunity go by. Grab a stack of these cards. Invite people in because you know that's what Jesus would be doing. All right, now ready for the conclusion, scene three. Imagine the scene of the plaza. The animals have wandered off, and the doves have all flown away, and the money changers are gone because they're trying to chase down their coins as they cascade off the temple mount down the stairs. So this nice big courtyard is now empty, and Jesus has one more example of outrageous behavior up his sleeve.

Scene three. He is the scandalous healer. Now how can a healer be scandalous? Next verse, verse 14. "The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them." Now this may seem an innocuous verse to you, but what do you think the key phrase is in this verse? The outrageous phrase. "At the temple." Because the blind and the lame were not allowed at the temple. The religious law said to keep them away from the temple. It said no man who has any defect may come near the temple, specifically no man who is blind or lame. They were kept even further away than the Gentiles. They weren't allowed up on the temple mount at all. But Jesus has just made some room.

And so he says, "Look, there's a lot of space here now. You, come on up. Come on. Me? But I'm not allowed up there. You know what? It's my house. So come on up. I'm inviting you in. Now come on, relax, and watch this." And he heals them. Man, I love what Jesus does here, because it's a fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy about what the Messiah would do when he came. Isaiah 35 says, "Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the mute tongue will shout for joy." He is doing for anybody who has eyes to see what the Messiah would be doing.

And this is the kind of thing Jesus does all throughout his life, isn't it? Bringing in the outcasts, inviting them to a banquet. I saw a great example of this the other day on TV. A high school in Las Vegas was having their prom, and a 17-year-old student there named Daniel Rivas, who has Down's syndrome, wanted to go to the prom, but nobody wanted to go with him. Well, a girl who had the same lunch period as him, named Kylie Fronius, asked him to the prom during lunch, and her friends posted a picture of it to social media. Well, people at a local TV station saw that post. And so as they got ready to leave Daniel's house for the prom, here is what happened.

Look at this surprise. That's them. Hello. Oh, my God. I'm Monica Jackson with the Fox 5 Surprise Spot. Are you Kylie? Yes, ma'am. Hello, Kylie. Hi, Daniel. You look so handsome. Your story touched so many people, and everybody is so proud of you for asking Daniel out. Thank you. I hope I can make his night fun. Well, I think you have. You are great. I just want to take you home. And, Mom, you're over here. You okay? I'm just touched. My heart is happy. So this is going to be a pretty special night for you, right? Yes, ma'am.

So we want you guys to arrive in style. Oh, my goodness. Are they really proud of you? You will be arriving in Rolls-Royce to your homecoming. I'm going to cry. That's just amazing. What do you think, Daniel? Mama is so happy for me. You guys are awesome. You know, it's not about that Daniel has a disability. Kylie didn't see any disabilities. That is like, "What's your heart, boss?" It's about... Okay, guys, let's get in. Oh, my gosh. You happy, buddy? Yeah. How was the ride? Awesome. This is Eliante Casino, and so we're going to take you guys inside. This is Bistro 57. Hi, Chef Franco. Hey, nice to see you. Daniel likes spaghetti with meatballs, like Mama makes at home. And this is home.

So whatever you guys want, just order it. And that's your pizza? I come here a lot, and I walk by and I'm like, "I can never afford to come in here again." Or let alone take my kids here. What are your hopes for Daniel after high school? He actually wants to go to college. He's like, "I'm going to be a chef, and you know what? I'm going to try as much as I can to provide that for him." What's wrong? Are you crying? Yeah. Oh, God. Is that the rush? No way, you're joking. We're going to give you a $10,000 scholarship. That's you. That's from United Nissan. So now I've got to get to Kylie. There's one more big gift. I'm going to need everybody's help, though. We're going to have to exit the left door here. And we're going to have to walk outside. Give me your hand. Here we go. This is for you. I'm going to cry. I can't even, like, my mind is blown. Oh, my goodness. She's shaking.

Isn't that awesome? I just love that. It just gives me goosebumps. But what explains our emotions when we see something like that? Honestly, I think we are getting a glimpse of the heart of God. Because Jesus rolled out the red carpet to something way cooler than a prom. It was to the banqueting table in the kingdom of God. And he did that for the lepers and the poor and the blind and the lame and the Jew and the Gentile and the upper class and the lower class alike. See, we often label people unworthy. And Jesus welcomes them in by grace.

Now, most of us go, "Yeah, I love grace. That's great. Undeserved favor of God. Yeah, you love it for you." But grace is messy. Grace means we invite people into church and into the most core of our fellowship who are blind and who are lame in many different ways. People who with blind spots to their own blindness. People who say, "I'm not blind. You're blind." And if we're going to be like Jesus, we're going to welcome them and then let Jesus heal them. And we're also going to let Jesus heal us. So here's the question for you. Will I let Jesus heal me? Because really, we're all blind and lame. So will you let Jesus heal your wounds?

So do you see what's happening? Jesus just tweaks everybody's expectations about who he is. And so at the end of the first day, there are two different responses to him. The same exact responses that people have to this day. Verse 15, "But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting the temple courts, 'Hosanna to the son of David!' they were indignant." Do you hear what these children are saying? They asked him. Now, these two different groups are both saying the exact same thing, the wonderful things he did. One group, ironically the religious leaders, is indignant because Jesus did not fit into their box. But there's another response, worship. And who's doing that? The kids.

Have you noticed how often kids see Jesus so much more clearly than grown-ups? And it's not just sentimental thinking. Jesus said that. Next verse, verse 16, "Yes," replied Jesus, "Have you never read? From the lips of children and infants, you, Lord, have called forth your praise." I'll close with this. Some of you know one of my favorite books is called Children's Letters to God. Actual letters kids wrote to God and sent us. Well, here's just a few of them. "Dear God, I didn't think orange went with purple till I saw the sunset you made on Tuesday. That was cool. Eugene." Here's another one. "Dear God, I don't ever feel alone since I found out about you, Nora." That's cool.

But, you know, kids change in the way they view God, and I think it's because they see adults and they see the quid pro quo relationship we have with God that he's there to actualize our agenda. And so some of these letters reflect that. Here's a little boy who writes, "Dear God, I wrote you before. Do you remember? Well, I did what I promised, but you did not send me the horse yet. What about it?" Honestly, you ever pray this to God? "Well, I went to church every week for two months, but you did not send me. You know, I prayed for you. What about it?" But a much better worshipful response is this final letter to God. "Dear God, count me in, your friend, Herbie."

You know, really, that's the bottom line, is do I just say to Jesus, "Count me in. Will I let Jesus be himself with me and not force my agenda, my timing, my identity onto him?" And I want to invite you to pray that prayer, maybe for the first time, maybe as a re-commitment, a re-dedication this morning. Let Jesus be the King, the Liberator, the Healer that you need today. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we just confess to you that many, many times we force you into our mold. We put our agenda on you. And so right now, we just want to say be the truly revolutionary King, the fierce Liberator, the Healer of our wounds, and the way you see best.

In other words, be my Savior and my Lord. It's amazing when I think that you came and orchestrated events so that you would be crucified because you knew that your sacrifice for our sins was what we needed the most. It makes me just worship you more. And so, Jesus, I just ask this week, this Passion Week, this Holy Week, we simply ask for you, for the real you, so that we can know you and love you more. In your name we pray. Amen.