Matthew 21:1

Matthew 21:1

In Matthew 21:1-11 the Bible says, "And when they drew near to Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway you shall find an donkey tied, and a colt with her: loose them and bring them unto me. And if any man say anything to you, you shall say, The Lord has need of them; and straightway He will send them. All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell you the daughter of Zion, Behold your king comes unto you, meek, and sitting upon a donkey, and a colt the foal of a donkey. And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, And brought the donkey, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set Him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee."

When Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem as recounted in Matthew 21, He was just a few days away from His crucifixion, and He knew it. Even though Jesus was just a few days away from His crucifixion, from a human standpoint this entry into Jerusalem was the high point of His career. Never was He more popular, and His enemies shrank into the background, at least for a few hours. However, because of their fears and jealousies, this great public display of Jesus’ popularity undoubtedly drove the religious leaders to plot Jesus’ death. Fear and jealousy still cause people to sin.

The reason that Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey was because the Jewish people knew that at His coronation the king would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. King Solomon did it. When Solomon became king, it says in First Kings 1:38-39, "So Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites, went down, and caused Solomon to ride upon King David’s mule, and brought him to Gihon. And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon."

One of the first prophecies in the Bible about the Messiah associated the Messiah with a donkey. Jacob prophesied in Genesis 49:10-11, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. Binding his foal unto the vine, and his donkey’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes." Here in Matthew Chapter 21, Matthew quoted the prophet Zechariah who prophesied of the coming Messiah and said in Zecharia 9:9, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, your king comes unto you: he is just and having salvation; lowly and riding upon a donkey, and upon a colt the foal of a donkey."

Jesus entered Jerusalem as a king. But it was only temporary because He came to die, not to reign. It was also temporary because the acceptance of Jesus as king by the multitudes was only temporary. They said, "Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord," but in just a few short days they would cry out, "Crucify Him." Dark days were to come for the city of Jerusalem. The Romans would eventually totally destroy it in a massive and horrible devastation. It’s too bad that the citizens rejected Jesus. What horrible sorrow and anguish that they eventually suffered.

The same is still true. All humans need Jesus as their king and their leader. Without Him they must face the sorrows and trials of life alone, and they will eventually be destroyed by those trials. Jesus is the giver of life, and without Him you will have only death and eternal damnation as a grim and inevitable reaper.

Jesus entered Jerusalem as king and He was received as king. What was the first thing that He did after entering Jerusalem? He went straight to the temple. Jesus combined the emphasis of king and priest into one person. The leaders of all countries will one day be judged by this standard. We will all be judged by what we did with our opportunities. In some ways leaders of nations have greater opportunities than most of us to influence what happens in their land. It is important that the leaders of a nation love what is good, and detest what is evil. It is important that they serve and trust in God. The founding fathers of America understood this. Quotations from the scriptures and references to God can often be found in the writings and speeches of the founding fathers. Men like George Washington and John Adams and Abraham Lincoln would be horrified to see a society where prayer and the teaching of the morality of the Bible is outlawed from the public schools.

The concept of the separation of church and state was never meant to be a reason to forbid the teaching of the Bible or a prohibition against prayer. It was simply meant to keep the government from forcing any particular church organization upon the citizens, which at the time of the founding of America was an abuse of power that was commonly happening in Europe. Any government official, school administrator, or teacher should be free to say good things about the Bible, about Jesus Christ, and about the Ten Commandments; just as they are free to speak against the Bible if they so desire. Our congress should allow the freedoms that our founding fathers obliviously meant for us to have. Congress could repair this damage by making a constitutional amendment to allow prayer in public schools. Sadly many of the leaders of this country have failed to combine their civil and spiritual responsibilities like they should. One day an old and decaying Bible may be found in the ash-heap of our society. If so, there will be found written in it just as there is today in Psalms 9:17, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God."

Jesus was an example of a leader who combined both civil and religious responsibilities. And when He visited the temple for the last time in His life, He taught some very important lessons about religious organizations. It is obvious that Jesus was not pleased with them. It says in Matthew 21:12, "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves." These people had gone to the temple for the wrong reason. They had gone there in order to increase their profits. They should have gone there in order to worship God and to draw closer to God.

This was the last time that Jesus visited the temple because it was near the end of His life. But the temple also would be eventually destroyed. The Jewish temple was meant to endure for a time but then to be done away with. The temple was done away with in a spiritual sense when Jesus was crucified, because when Jesus was crucified the temple veil was torn. The veil had blocked entrance to the holiest place in the temple. The veil was symbolic of the fact that access to the presence of God was restricted. This tearing of the veil was an announcement of the fact that access into the presence of God was now made available to all believers freely. One of the results of Christ’s crucifixion was that there was no longer a temple and there was no longer a priesthood. Every believer could now be his own priest and draw close to God through Christ, because of the work of the greatest of all priests, who is Jesus. Many of the details about the doing away of the priesthood and the end of the temple are found in the book of Hebrews. It says in Hebrews 6:19-20, "Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil; where the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made a high priest forever after the order of Melchisedec."

The temple was symbolically done away with by means of the death of Jesus, who died for the sins of the world. And the last temple in Jerusalem was physically done away with by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. when they totally destroyed it. If you are a believer in Christ, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit of God is within each believer. First Corinthians 3:16 says, "Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwells in you?" A believer should never harm or abuse his body in any way since a believer’s body is the temple of God, and God’s Holy Spirit dwells within.

A church building is not a temple, and it is not to be considered in the same way that the temple was. A church building is not a holy place, nor is it a place where you must be in order to be in the presence of God. In this life to be in the presence of God in the closest sense means accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and thus allowing the Holy Spirit of God to indwell within you. His presence is experienced wherever you go and whatever you do, because God is within you. Your body has become a temple for the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Jesus said in Matthew 21:13, "It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves." Since Jesus emphasized that prayer should be one of the major activities in the temple made of bricks and stone, then certainly prayer should be one of the primary activities in our lives. The temple is your body, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you through faith in Christ.

Matthew 21:14 says, "And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and He healed them." This is the last time in the Gospel of Matthew that healing is mentioned. He was just a few days away from His crucifixion, but He still showed love for others and cared for them and their sorrows. Jesus was the man of sorrows, but He came to bear our grief and our sorrow. Jesus came to serve and not to be served. He thought of others more than Himself. The first time that He visited the temple at age 12, He said to His mother, "Know you not that I must be about my Father’s business?" And here 18 years later He was still busy about His Father’s business. He lived the way that He told us to live; one day at a time. No matter how dark the future may appear to be, you can do the same thing that Jesus did. Today you can live for God.

Jesus healed the blind and the lame. Those who were blind are symbolic of people today who are spiritually blind. Those who are spiritually blind will only receive their sight by coming to Jesus. Those that were lame are symbolic of people today who are incapable of doing what they ought to do and incapable of being what they ought to be. Unless the blind, the lame, and all those in need come to Jesus, they will never be a complete person. They will never be all that they could be, neither in this life or the next. Humans were meant to be connected with God, to know Him, and to walk with Him. You are incomplete and you are crippled if you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ.

Matthew 21:15-17 says, "And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying in the temple and saying, "Hosanna to the son of David", they were sore displeased, And said unto him, Do you hear what these say? And Jesus said unto them, Yes; have you never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany; and He lodged there."

As Jesus often did in dealing with the scribes and Pharisees, He answered a question with a question. The priests knew that the praise given by the children was Messianic praise, and they saw that Jesus accepted it. Because they did not believe, they were displeased. Those who should have known the truth did not know it because their hearts were hardened. Jesus quoted Psalms chapter 9, something that the priests had probably heard many times over the years; but they did not know what it meant because truth is spiritually discerned. God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. The letter of the law is not enough. A child that is inspired by the Spirit of God knows many essential things about true worship, but an adult who reads the Bible and who is carnally involved in religion because of not being close to Christ can remain closed and hardened to the truth just as these priests were.

The first part of Matthew 21:17 says, "And he left them." Jesus would pass that way no more. How sad it is for those who do not reach out for truth when they have the opportunity. It appears that God commonly works like that. He comes into the life of someone to love them and to show them a better way, but that time has its limits. The Spirit of God convicts the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. But when a human being resolutely and finally pushes away from God, that human has chosen for himself a horrible destiny without God.

Matthew 21:18-20 says, "Now in the morning as He returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on you henceforward forever. And presently the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!"

Everything that God has created is for a reason and for a purpose. Fruit trees are meant to bear fruit. God’s children are also meant to bear fruit. In other words, the results of your life are meant to fit into the purpose of God. In some way the results of your life are supposed to honor God, to please God, and to fulfill the purpose of God for you. This can only happen by the Holy Spirit, and so is called the fruit of the Spirit. Once we become saved, one of the things that God does in our lives is to teach us truths so that we can become more fruitful.

If you have never born any fruit, then you are not one of His. To bear fruit is a natural outcome of being a believer. The religion of the Jews became unfruitful because Jews did not believe in the Messiah when the Messiah came to them. The Jewish people could have had a part in the spread of the Gospel, if they had only believed in the Messiah when He came to them. But instead in this age the Jewish people were cut off from being used by God in His work, and they withered away spiritually just as this fig tree withered away. Speaking of this setting aside of the nation of Israel, the Bible says in Romans 11:8-12, “According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear; unto this day. And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompence unto them: Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway. I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?”

Maybe you have born fruit for the Lord at one time in your life, but now for some reason fear being cut off. You don’t have to fear. If you have ever born fruit, it is because you are one of God’s children; and if you have ever born fruit, then God will work in your life over the years to help you bear more fruit. Jesus said in John 15:2, "Every branch in me that bears not fruit he takes away: and every branch that bears fruit, he purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit."

The disciples were amazed at seeing the fig tree wither away simply because Jesus rebuked it, but Jesus told them that they would be able to do the same kind of thing and much more through faith. The Bible says in Matthew 21:21-22, "Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If you have faith and doubt not, you shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if you shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive."

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