As we pick up Matthew chapter 21, Jesus is finally becoming more direct about who he is, what he is here for, what he is doing, and the meaning of his mission as Messiah.
You could sort of say it’s like he is throwing the doors open.
He is no longer telling people not to go tell anyone what he did or what he said. He is now just fully displaying the fullness of who he is as our Messiah.
He is fully displaying the reality that he is the Savior and King and God of the universe. He is the Messiah that God promised in the Old Testament who is going to come and is going to redeem humanity and restore the world, who is going to find the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling and bring them back to the God who wants to redeem them and restore them.
And so he is fully displaying the truth of who he is now.
He is being completely direct about who he is now because it is finally time for him to start his march toward the cross.
Jesus Displays His Divine, Kingly Authority
He reveals who he is in three ways here in Matthew 21.
1. Jesus Has Authority Over History
Number one, Jesus demonstrates clearly and unmistakably that he has God’s kingly, divine authority to literally bend history to accomplish his purposes.
There’s this story that I personally just think is hilarious.
He tells the disciples, “Okay, go to Bethphage. Go into town. You are going to find a donkey, and you are going to find a colt. I want you to just grab them. Just untie the donkey and the colt and then bring them back here, okay? Now, if anybody stops you and says anything, all you’ve got to do is say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and they’re immediately going to send them along with you, and it’ll be fine.”
That’s weird, right?
You know, every single thing about that is weird and surreal.
That is like something out of, like, a David Lynch movie. That is like something out of an episode of Twin Peaks or something like that.
Imagine if somebody showed up at your house, grabbed your horse, and started walking off with them, and you came out of your front door and were like, “Hey, what are you doing with my horse?”
And they just said, “The Lord needs them.”
Are you going to give them your horse?
Probably not, right?
That would be insane.
And yet that is exactly what happens here.
Jesus is bending history. The Holy Spirit is bending the will of this person. He has prepared this person who owns the donkey and the colt ahead of time to just give them the donkey and the colt so that Jesus can ride them in his triumphal entry when he gets to town.
So number one, he has the authority to bend history to accomplish his purposes.
That is an authority that only God himself has.
Jesus is not just a teacher or a rabbi or a prophet.
He is Savior and King and God.
2. Jesus Has Authority Over Nature
Number two, Jesus demonstrates that he has God’s kingly and divine authority over nature itself.
He goes to a fig tree that we’re going to talk about in just a little bit.
He sees that this fig tree has produced no fruit.
He says, “There is no use in a fig tree that doesn’t grow figs.”
So he curses the fig tree, and it withers.
He tells the fig tree to wither, and the fig tree obeys.
He tells this piece of nature to die, and it dies.
He tells it to wither, and it withers.
The fig tree responds to his divine, kingly authority by withering.
3. Jesus Has Authority Over the Temple
And number three, most importantly, Jesus has God’s kingly, divine authority to cleanse and clear the temple.
This one requires a little bit more explanation.
This is a very commonly misunderstood story.
So Jesus walks into the temple.
He looks around, and he sees a bunch of money changers, a bunch of buyers and sellers, a bunch of people with cages.
They would have been full of animals—doves, pigeons, goats, everything—sacrificial animals.
They are selling sacrificial animals so that people can come to the temple without having to bring their own animals from home or from their own farm, purchase an animal right there.
Wealthy Israelites could have purchased an animal at an extreme markup, and then they could have used those animals as their sacrificial animals.
Now, is there anything inherently wrong with that?
No.
No, there is not.
A lot of people preach and teach this as if Jesus was angry that money had been brought into the equation at all when it came to the temple, but that was not the problem.
Money was always part of the equation with the temple.
In the Old Testament, there were full-on tithes and taxes that were due to the temple that you would pay to the money changers and so on and so forth in the temple.
So the problem is not that there’s a bunch of money changers there.
The problem is not that people are buying and selling.
The problem is those money changers, the buyers and the sellers, the sacrificial animals, they were all in exactly the wrong spot.
They were in what was called the Court of the Gentiles, or the Gentile Court, depending on your translation.
There may be a handful of different names that it’s called, but this was a section of the temple that was specifically meant for Gentiles who wanted to learn more about the God of Israel.
It was a part of the temple that was set for Gentiles who wanted to learn the truth about the true God, for Gentiles who were discerning the truth of Yahweh, Gentiles who were there to learn more so that they could leave behind their pagan gods and start giving true worship to the true God.
The Gentile Court was devoted to God’s mission to reach the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling among the Gentiles.
God has always loved Gentiles.
The Blessing of Israel Was Meant for Everyone
So what happened?
What happened was that by the first century, the leadership in Israel, the religious leaders, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, the Herodians, all of them, the entrenched religious authorities in Israel, had stopped believing the truth about God and his mission and had started believing a lie.
We’ve been talking about this all month long as we’ve been trekking through Matthew’s Gospel.
They believed that God loved Jews and God hated Gentiles.
They believed that God embraced Israelites and hated foreigners.
They believed that God loved people who had Abraham’s blood flowing through their veins and that he hated everybody else.
So they wanted a Messiah who would take over the reins of the military, who would raise up a military in Israel, conquer Rome, and then become the new Rome.
They wanted to replace the Roman Empire with an Israelite Empire where Israel ruled the world, subjugated all the other nations and all the other peoples of the world so that everyone else would be slaves to Israel, because they saw Israelites as humans.
They saw Gentiles as cattle.
So they literally outright rejected God’s continuous command to go bring the good news to the Gentiles, rescue them from their pagan worship so that they can be reunited with the true God, become part of God’s covenant with Abraham, and be gathered together around his throne for all of eternity.
That is what God desired all the way back in Genesis 1, all the way in Genesis 12.
This commonly misinterpreted passage—you hear preachers and teachers say, “Okay, God told Abraham, ‘Whoever blesses you will be blessed. Whoever curses you will be cursed.’ That means anybody who does anything bad for the nation of Israel will be blessed—anybody who does anything—oh, sorry—anybody who does anything good for the nation of Israel will be blessed. Anybody who does anything bad for the nation of Israel will be cursed. So you need to do whatever Israel wants all the time, no matter what, period, especially in terms of geopolitics and stuff like that.”
But that is not the point of Genesis 12, because if you read one sentence later, he says:
“All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”
—Genesis 12:3, WEB
The blessing for Israel was meant to become the blessing for everyone.
It was never about favoritism of one nation or one bloodline or one ethnicity.
It was always that Israel is the starting point, but the ending point is that every tribe and tongue and nation is gathered into God’s covenant and God’s kingdom so that they leave behind their false worship of false gods, take up true worship of the true God, and can be redeemed and restored through the Savior he would send so that all of creation can be brought back to God’s good original design.
But that was completely lost by the time of the first century.
And so the Court of the Gentiles in the temple that was supposed to be a place where Gentiles could come and they could learn about the true God and give themselves to him had completely stopped serving that purpose.
And instead, that’s where they put all the sacrificial animals and the money changers and the buyers and the sellers.
They literally kicked the Gentiles out of the temple so that they could service rich Israelites.
The God of the Temple Comes to His Temple
But something happens.
What happens is that the God of the temple comes to the temple.
And he looks around, and he’s pissed.
And by his kingly, divine authority, he starts flipping over the tables.
He makes a whip.
He starts literally whipping people, okay?
Jesus can do that.
You and I should generally not whip people.
You and I should generally not smash people’s tables and stuff like that.
But the God of the temple has an absolute divine, kingly right to break anybody’s stuff in his own temple.
And so he starts smashing the tables where they’ve been buying and selling sacrificial animals to rich Israelites and blocking faithful Gentiles who want to seek the true God.
He starts smashing all of it.
He clears out the temple.
He’s cleansing the temple.
He says—he quotes from the book of Isaiah, chapter 56, verse 7:
“My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
—Isaiah 56:7, WEB
A house of prayer for Gentiles just as much as Jews.
But you have turned it into—he’s quoting Jeremiah chapter 7 now:
“But you have made it a den of robbers.”
—Jeremiah 7:11, WEB
By his kingly, divine authority, Jesus is clearing and cleansing the temple.
You take these three things together, it is unmistakable.
Jesus is coming out of the closet as Savior and King and God.
He has God’s authority over nature.
He has God’s authority over history.
He has the sovereign power to bend history to accomplish his purposes.
And he has God’s divine authority to clear and cleanse the temple.
The Children Recognize Their King
And here’s the thing.
When the peasants and the children, the two least likely groups in the world, when the peasants and the children, when the outsiders and the rejects, when people who don’t know anything look at what Jesus is doing, they understand completely.
They understand perfectly.
They start taking off their robes as he approaches on this donkey, on this colt.
They lay their robes on the ground.
They start gathering up branches.
They lay the branches down on the ground to make a path for him.
They’re making a path for their divine King.
They are making a path for their God-King.
They are making a path for the Savior and King and God that they have been waiting for.
This is an act of submission.
It’s an act of faith.
And it’s an act of worship.
And yet the Pharisees and Sadducees, the scribes, the entrenched religious leaders in Israel, the people who should have recognized Jesus first and most faithfully before anybody else and more passionately than anybody else, they see all this.
There is no possible way that they’re not making the connections about who Jesus is, and yet still they reject him.
While the kids and the peasants are screaming out, “Hosanna, Son of David,” that was an Old Testament prophetic title for the coming Savior, King, and God.
They are saying, “You are our Savior. We’re throwing ourselves on your mercy. You are our King. We are submitting at your feet. You are our God. We are lifting you up in worship.”
While the children and the peasants call him Hosanna, King, Son of David, lay down their robes, throw down their branches, the religious leaders in Israel are challenging his authority.
They are rejecting his authority.
They say, “By what authority are you doing this?”
And Jesus says, “I’m doing this by exactly the same authority as John the Baptist did what he did.”
That’s the authority from heaven.
That is the authority from God himself.
But the difference between me and John the Baptist is that John the Baptist carried out a prophetic ministry by God’s calling and ordination and authority.
But I am the God who ordains.
I am the God who calls.
He says, “I am the authority by which John the Baptist ministered. I am the authority by which every prophet spoke the words of God. I am the authority by which the Scriptures you have of the Old Testament were breathed out and written. I am God’s divine, kingly authority here in the flesh in front of you. You need to submit to me the same way those peasants and those kids have.”
But instead of throwing themselves on his mercy as their Savior, submitting themselves to his authority as their King, and lifting him up in worship as their God, these entrenched religious authorities in Israel, they rejected Jesus.
And they went away and they plotted to have him arrested and killed.
Three Warnings to the Religious Leaders
And because that is true, Jesus warns them.
He uses three metaphors to warn them.
1. The Fruitless Fig Tree
Number one, he says, “You guys are like that fig tree over there.”
He walks over to a fig tree that’s bearing absolutely no fruit, and he says, “Wither,” and it withers.
He says, “You guys should be bearing the fruit of repentance and faith. You have grown up your whole life with the Scriptures. You’ve grown up your whole life with the prophets. You have spent your whole life preparing for the coming of the Messiah, and now the Messiah is in front of you, calling you to repent and place your faith in him.”
The Spirit of God is working in your hearts, working to get you to submit, working to get you to place your faith in me, working to get you to worship me, working to draw you to me in repentance and faith, and yet you are continually resisting the Spirit.
You are continually rejecting and opposing me.
You are not bearing the fruit of repentance and faith, and so you are going to wither like this fig tree if you don’t stop.
If you don’t give in, if you don’t submit to the Spirit’s work in your heart, if you don’t allow the Spirit to draw you to me, you will wither like this fig tree.
2. The Two Sons
Number two, he tells the parable of the two sons.
He says there was a man who had two sons.
He went to his first son, and he told him what he needed him to do.
And the son said, “No, go to hell. I ain’t doing nothing for you.”
But then later he realized he was wrong.
Later he repented, and he went and he obeyed his father.
But he had a second son.
And his father went to that second son, and he told him what he needed him to do.
And that son said, “Yeah, okay, no problem. Cool, fine. Sounds good. I will.”
And then he just never went and did it.
He just blew his father off.
He just disobeyed quietly.
He seemed compliant but was actually rebellious, whereas the other son began as rebellious but then learned repentance and obeyed.
He said, “You are like that second son. You seem compliant. You’re religious leaders. Your whole brand is built on being hyper-obedient, hyper-conscientious, hyper-strict, hyper-fundamentalistic, so on and so forth. So you’ve got a lot of people fooled into thinking that you are a follower of the Lord. But you don’t have me fooled. I see you. I see through you. I see what your heart is like.”
Your heart is like that bad tree that doesn’t produce fruit.
Your heart is like those rotten fish that come up in the net that have to be thrown out.
Your heart is like those weeds out in the field that need to be uprooted and then burned.
I’ve seen your heart.
Until the Holy Spirit breaks through, your heart will be like the pavement that the seeds of the Gospel cannot get through.
You are like that second son.
3. The Wicked Vineyard Workers
And three, he tells the parable of the vineyard.
He says there was a landowner who started a vineyard, and he hired a bunch of tenant farmers to work at his vineyard.
And then when time came for the harvest, he sent his servants to go and gather up the harvest.
But the vineyard workers, instead of turning over the harvest, they killed the servant.
So he sent another servant, and they killed that one too.
And so he sent another servant, and they killed that one too.
Finally, he said, “Okay, I’m just going to have to send my own son. I’m going to have to send my firstborn son. I’m going to have to send my beloved son. They’ll recognize him. They’ve seen me with him. They know him. They’ll respect him.”
And so he sends his son.
But they see that son, and they know who he is.
They’re not mistaken.
This is not just a misunderstanding.
They see the son.
They know who it is.
And they kill him too.
Because the problem is not that there was a misunderstanding.
The problem is not that they didn’t trust the servants that the vineyard owner sent.
The problem is that they’re wicked.
The problem is they’re rebellious.
The problem is that they’re evil.
The problem is in their heart.
And so they kill the vineyard owner’s son too.
They even reject him.
Jesus says, “You are like those vineyard workers. The Lord has sent his prophets to you, and your ancestors killed the prophets, and you followed in exactly their footsteps. Now he sent me. He sent his Son. I am not just a prophet of the Lord. I am the Lord of the prophets. I’ve come down from heaven. I am here standing before you, and still you reject and oppose me, just like those vineyard workers rejected and opposed every servant and even the owner’s son.”
So he says, “What’s the owner going to do to those people?”
He’s going to destroy them.
The Kingdom Will Be Given to Those Who Bear Its Fruit
Jesus is warning these religious leaders.
He’s saying that is what is waiting for you if you keep this up.
If you keep rejecting and opposing me, you will be destroyed like the vineyard workers.
You will be destroyed like the fig tree.
Jesus is giving them a very specific warning.
He’s saying that Israelites who reject Jesus will be destroyed.
Israelites who reject Jesus will be condemned.
He says Israelites who reject Jesus stop being Israelites.
Israelites who reject Jesus cease to be part of God’s covenant.
Israelites who reject Jesus stop being part of God’s kingdom.
Israelites who reject Jesus are banished from Israel.
And that is exactly what these Pharisees and Sadducees are heading for.
Everyone who rejects Jesus is rejected by the Lord, condemned by the Lord, and ultimately banished to eternal destruction by the Lord.
But at exactly the same time, everyone who sees Jesus, who responds to the Spirit’s work in their hearts with repentance and faith, who throws themselves on the mercy of Jesus as their Savior, who submits to Jesus as their King, who worships Jesus as their God—everyone, even tax collectors, even prostitutes, even Gentiles—everyone who believes Jesus becomes part of God’s people, God’s covenant, God’s kingdom, God’s family.
If you place your faith in Jesus, if you respond to the Spirit’s conviction by submitting to him as your King, throwing yourself on his mercy as your Savior, and worshiping him as your God, you will be redeemed and restored forever.
And then he will make you into one of his kingdom workers.
We Are Kingdom Workers for Jesus and With Jesus
We are kingdom workers for Jesus and with Jesus.
He has called us to come follow him the same way he called Peter, James, John, Andrew, Matthew, Philip, Nathaniel, and so on.
He has called us to come follow him as his disciples.
He has made us fishers for people.
He has made us workers for his harvest.
He has sent us out to go do his kingdom work of finding the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling and introducing them to the God who wants to redeem them and restore them, and to reflect the goodness and the glory of his kingdom by pouring ourselves into his work to turn the world upside down, to serve the poor and the powerless and the destitute, to raise the broken and the struggling up out of the pit.
He sent us out as his kingdom workers.
And here’s the thing.
He’s empowered us to do his kingdom work.
He’s given us his power to do his kingdom work.
He says in verse 21:
“Most certainly I tell you, if you have faith, and don’t doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you told this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it would be done. All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”
—Matthew 21:21–22, WEB
Another very commonly misunderstood thing.
This is not about the prosperity gospel.
This is not that if you believe God is going to give you a new Rolls-Royce, you will have one in your driveway a week from now.
If you believe that God will give you a new gold Rolex watch, you will have one on your wrist a week from now.
If you believe God will give you a supermodel wife, then you will have one a week from now.
If you believe God will give you a $65 million jet so that you can fly around and never have to fly commercial again, like Creflo Dollar, you will get one.
That is not what this is talking about.
This is about God’s kingdom work.
This is about the mission we’ve been sent on.
God is not going to give you whatever you ask for just because you asked for it, just because you believe, just because you didn’t doubt.
You don’t need a bigger house.
You really don’t.
Your house is fine.
You don’t need a better car.
Your car is fine.
You don’t need a better wife.
Your wife is fine.
She’s probably better than fine, okay?
Your wife is probably way out of your league, okay?
You don’t need any of those things.
What you need is the strength and the power to carry out the impossible tasks that God has given you on his mission.
Faith for the Mission God Has Given Us
But if you pour yourself into that mission and you rely on the Lord to give you the power for that mission, if you rely on him to empower you to heal that person that he’s told you to heal—you cannot just go to the hospital, lay your hands on people, and say, “You’re healed now.”
If God didn’t tell you to heal someone, you cannot heal them.
If God didn’t tell you to heal someone, you don’t have the power to heal them.
But if God tells you to heal somebody, he’s going to heal them through you.
If God tells you to cast out that demon, he is going to cast that demon out through you.
If God tells you to go talk to that person so that they can repent and believe, they are going to repent and believe.
Maybe today.
Maybe next week.
Maybe next year.
Maybe 10 years from now, after a long process of you pouring into them and sharing the truth with them while they reject you again and again and again.
A guy named Brad shared the Gospel with me roughly every week for two years, starting when I was about 15.
And right about the time I turned 17, it finally broke through, and I came to faith, genuine faith.
That was because of the faithfulness of a dude named Brad Coven, continually coming and talking to me because the Lord told him to talk to me and not to give up until he saw the fruit come about as a result.
And throughout that period, he relied on the Lord to change my heart.
He relied on the Lord to make good on his promise.
He prayed day in and day out that the Lord would break through the walls of my heart, and eventually he did.
That is just as difficult as moving a mountain.
He says God is going to empower you for the kingdom work that he has sent you out to do.
And if you believe, if you have faith, if you don’t allow your doubt to cause you to give up and just stop, if you persist, if you continue, you will see the Spirit of God supernaturally move whatever that mountain is that the Lord has sent you out to move.
Which Mountain Is God Telling You to Move?
And so the question that we all need to work through this morning is:
Which mountain is God telling us to move?
Which fig tree is God telling us to go destroy?
Which stronghold is God telling us to go break down?
Who is God telling you to talk to?
Who is God telling you to go share the good news with?
What difficult thing is God sending you out to do for his kingdom work and mission?
Whatever it is, go do it.
Pray every single day for the Lord to give you the power to accomplish it.
And do not stop until you have seen him smash the tree, move the mountain, overcome the obstacle that stands in the way of accomplishing the mission that he has given to you.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
Leave a comment