[0:00] 9. You don't have to turn there, I shall read it for us now. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem.
[0:15] Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. Behold, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, on the fowl of a donkey.
[0:30] I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations.
[0:41] His rule shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
[1:01] Well, may God bless us with the reading of his words throughout this morning. So let us now come to God in prayer. Prayer to God for God's people.
[1:12] Gracious God and Father, we recognize that as your people we are privileged and we are blessed, but we are living on this side of the new heavens and the new earth.
[1:27] And we recognize, Father God, that the fullness has not yet come, and you have not, the Lord Jesus Christ has not yet returned. And we thank you, Father God, that as we come before you this morning, after a period of time of not being able to gather, that this in itself is a great blessing.
[1:47] That, Father God, we are fulfilling your word, and we are fulfilling your promises in many ways of how good you are to answer the prayers of your people.
[1:58] We thank you, Father God, that you have always proven to be true, and the Palm Sunday is a reminder that in loving the world, you gave your only Son.
[2:10] And Christ has come, and Christ is with us, and Christ will come again. And we thank you, Father God, for birthdays. We thank you, Father God, for those who have gone to be with you.
[2:22] We thank you, Father God, that you are good to your people and that you will take care of them. And I would ask of you this morning, Father God, for all here and all watching online, that you would bless and keep them all, that you would love them and that you would care for them.
[2:37] And that, Father God, that they would know your particular blessing at this time that comes from gathering, and your particular blessing when they're unable to gather through for any reason.
[2:48] Father, we look to you this morning, Father God, to encourage, to build up, to strengthen your people, and to remind us that you have given us something to do until Christ returns.
[2:59] We pray, Father God, that you would bless your church throughout the land, throughout the nation, throughout the world. And we ask for this in Jesus' name. Amen.
[3:10] Amen. Amen. Well, I'm assuming that most of you will know where we're going to be turning in the Gospels.
[3:21] It's just a question of which Gospel do we read it from. So I'm going to be turning to the account of Palm Sunday in Matthew 24. The one on the video was taken from Mark.
[3:36] And as you know, the Gospels... So Matthew chapter 24.
[3:46] And we're going to be reading the first 27, 28 verses. Sorry, not Matthew 24. Matthew 21. See, I'm speaking of end times there, aren't I?
[3:59] The revelation, abomination of desolation and all of that. We're not quite there yet. Well, in our text, we're not quite there yet.
[4:09] It's a different story when it's already happened. So Matthew 21, sorry, verses 1 through to 27.
[4:20] Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethpage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her.
[4:41] Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say the Lord needs them, and he will send them at once.
[4:53] This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the fowl of a beast of burden.
[5:09] The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks and sat on them.
[5:23] Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David.
[5:37] Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, Who is this?
[5:49] And the crowd says, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. As Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
[6:08] He said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. And the blind and the lame come to him in the temple, and he healed them.
[6:19] But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were indignant.
[6:29] They said to him, Do you hear what these things are saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes, you have never read. Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babes you have prepared praise.
[6:45] And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. In the morning, as was he returning to the city, he became hungry, and seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it, but only leaves.
[7:05] And he said to it, May no fruit ever come from you again. And the fig tree withered it once. When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, How did the fig tree wither it once?
[7:17] And Jesus answered them, Truly, I say to you, if you have faith, and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen.
[7:41] And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, By what authority are you doing these things?
[7:57] And who gave you this authority? Jesus answered them, I also will ask you one question. And if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.
[8:12] The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man? And they discussed it among themselves, saying, If we say from heaven, he will say to us, Why then do you not believe him?
[8:25] But if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, We do not know.
[8:37] And he said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Well, before we come back to God's word this morning, let me pray for us and then we'll come to his word.
[8:56] Gracious God and Father, we pray to live a conscious Christianity. That Father God, we don't want to be absent-minded of the things that you have taught us, the blessings that you have given us, or how salvation has been accomplished for us.
[9:15] We thank you, Father God, that being saved means that our life not only changes in the future, but it is changed now. that we thank you for the reality that we have given to us through your word and through your spirit.
[9:30] We thank you, Father God, that we are a blessed people, however hard life might be. We are indeed a blessed people because of the salvation that Christ has accomplished.
[9:41] May we then, as we come to your word this morning, understand it in its fullness and appreciate what is being told to us, that we may glorify you and give you worship and honor you in thoughts, in words, and in deeds.
[9:56] And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, as you find yourself here in this passage, it's a familiar passage to many of us.
[10:09] Knowing that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is something that we are familiar with. But one of the things that Jesus draws our attention to is not only the expectations of the people, but it is the expectations of God.
[10:27] That God has expectations in the same way people have expectations. And there's no reason to have small expectations of God.
[10:38] There's no reason to have little expectations of what God could do. But sometimes we forget of the expectations that God has of us.
[10:51] And Jesus rides into Jerusalem and what becomes apparent is that the expectations that God has of his people have not been fulfilled by the people.
[11:04] And yet, the expectations the people have of God have been fulfilled because Jesus rides into Jerusalem and declares by his riding in that the King has come, that the Messiah has arrived.
[11:21] And therefore, it's not wrong in any way, shape, or form for all of our hopes, all of our hopes to be placed in one person. This is not, there is no room for having your eggs spread out into many baskets.
[11:39] When it comes to Christ, all your eggs need to be in one basket. When it comes to hope in Christ, they all need to be in Christ or else they will not be fulfilled.
[11:50] And this is what the Messiah is declaring in his coming, that every promise of God is yes and amen in Christ Jesus. All the eggs are in one basket. and they're in the safest possible basket where the fulfillment will come.
[12:06] But people never tend to live like that. People tend to be very cautious in how they live and they spread their eggs out, so to speak. We hedge our bets in life.
[12:19] We try and hedge our security in life. And so we trust the Lord, but at the same time we're hedging it with health care and insurances and families and all of these type of things, that God, it's in the details for sure.
[12:36] But it's not wrong for every single hope to be in Christ Jesus, for all of your cares and all of your burdens and all of your needs to be met by God. How God does it through the means that he chooses are varied.
[12:52] But the fact is that all our eggs are in one basket when it comes to Christ. That's the point of the Messiah coming. That every promise of God is yes and amen in Christ Jesus.
[13:02] That God doesn't just take care of salvation, he takes care of everything. And I think that's the blessing that we are meant to see. He doesn't just take care of salvation, he takes care of everything.
[13:16] Now with Jesus riding in on a donkey, now the reason for choosing the reading out of Mark is because the reading is much simpler because it only speaks of a cult. Here you'll notice it speaks of a donkey.
[13:27] an occult and you have to work out which one did Jesus ride in on? How are we supposed to figure that out? There's a farm down in the northwest who his main job as a farmer is to sell bulls.
[13:46] And he sells bulls to farmers. And when he sells a bull, he ties a donkey to it. And the reason he ties a donkey to it because he soon learned that if the bull upsets the donkey, the donkey will kick out and the bull doesn't like that.
[14:02] So one of the ways of keeping the bull calm is by tying a donkey to it who kicks out because no one likes to be kicked by a donkey, even bulls. And so one of the ways to calm a cult that has never been ridden on is to tie it to the donkey.
[14:18] And so the explanation is fairly simple. It's not a case that Jesus is straddling here to animals. It's simply a way of adding extra detail so that we can understand because most people would ask, how on earth did you ride on a colt that has never been ridden on before?
[14:36] It's impossible. They would kick out. They wouldn't be calm. Well, of course, if it's tied to a donkey, then that's how it remains calm. So the explanation is fairly simple.
[14:47] It's not, well, the Bible isn't contradicting itself here. It's a fairly simple explanation. And so Jesus rides in on a donkey, but of course, for Zechariah, for the Old Testament, the people of God knew what this meant, that this is the arrival of a king.
[15:05] But it's also the arrival of the type of king that you are welcoming. Then, therefore, a king who rides in on a donkey is a king who is humble, who is meek, who is coming to serve the people.
[15:21] In other words, if the king that was going to come fulfilled the expectations of the people, he wouldn't have rode in on a donkey, he would have rode in on a chariot with an army beside him, because no king who is planning to overthrow the Roman occupation of Jerusalem would ride in on a donkey.
[15:41] He would ride in on a chariot or chariots with armies behind him, ready to engage in war. And that is, of course, what the people expected. And so, when Jesus rides into Jerusalem in the very peaceful way that he does, fulfilling the prophecy, declaring that he is king, he is also declaring the type of king that he will be.
[16:03] Because Jerusalem cannot have two kings, the world cannot have two kings, we can only have one. And so, it's a fair expectation to expect the right king to come in and overthrow the wrong ones, to get rid of the Romans.
[16:18] And that is what the people of God would have been expecting. And so, it was a huge shock for Jesus not to ride into the Roman garrison, but to ride into Jerusalem and go into the temple.
[16:33] Every time I read Palm Sunday, I am shocked by what Jesus does. Because the coming Messiah meant the establishment of God's kingdom on earth.
[16:43] earth. And on earth, you can only have one king if you've got one kingdom. And yet, Jesus rides in and instead of overthrowing the Romans, he overthrows his own people.
[16:56] Instead of going into the Roman garrison, he goes into the temple. Because that's where the problem is. The problem with the Romans is a byproduct. The real issue that Jesus must deal with is actually in the temple.
[17:13] And so, here's the summary of what really happens. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah. The people are shouting their praises because they understand what this means.
[17:26] The king has come. And there can only be one king if you only have one kingdom. And so, this is now the fulfillment, the establishment of God's kingdom on earth.
[17:37] But Jesus, instead of going into the garrison, he goes into the temple and he overturns his own people. He throws out the money changers because they're robbing God. Jesus has said, my house should be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.
[17:53] Often, the way this is read is that people are assuming that people are robbing people. That's true. But the greater robbery, the greater theft, is that a house that was meant to be used for prayer has been used for trading.
[18:11] That's the greater robbery. And so, Jesus is saying, my house, which is to be a house of prayer for all nations and other accounts, has become a den of thieves. It has become a den of robbers.
[18:22] By you practicing things in the temple that you are not meant to be doing, you're robbing God. It's true that you're robbing people, and we'll get to that in a moment, but you're actually robbing God of worship.
[18:37] Now, this is absolutely key to Palm Sunday, because you cannot get to appreciate what Christ accomplishes on the cross until you can really appreciate that what Jesus has come to address is the worship of people before God.
[18:53] Everything is about worship. Everything is about worshiping God in spirit and in truth. And we know from John 4, do you remember when Jesus sits down by the woman at the well, and he says, well, God is seeking people who will worship him in spirit and in truth.
[19:09] God is seeking true worshipers, and Jesus rides into Jerusalem, and he comes to a place where you would expect to find true worshipers, and he doesn't find them. This is what Palm Sunday is about.
[19:22] It's about addressing the idolatrous worship of God's people, but overturning the temple because it is not being used for the purpose for which it was given.
[19:33] And of course, in many ways, you could argue that this is a particular religious sin because the chief priests here are one of the ones who are the most corrupt. Well, it goes on to turn on its head with the chief priest, then questioning the authority of Jesus.
[19:53] Who is this man that he thinks he can ride in and tell us what is right and wrong? Who is this man who can overturn the tables and sort of dictate to us what qualifies his worship and what doesn't?
[20:08] This is what Jesus has done. But of course, that is exactly what Jesus does. And so they pose a question to Jesus, by what authority?
[20:19] And Jesus says, well, okay, if you can tell me by what authority John does what he does, then I will tell you by what authority I have. And the people know that they can't answer it because if they did, they would be able to determine Jesus.
[20:37] So if they cannot judge by what authority John has been given to do the things he does, then they are unable to judge by what authority Jesus has. And therefore, if they're unable to judge, they're unable to question.
[20:52] So Jesus is beyond questioning. This is the point. That Jesus' actions in the temple are beyond being questioned.
[21:03] They are righteous and true and just. Now here's the important thing. If salvation was only about getting you from earth to heaven, then none of this would make any sense.
[21:18] That if salvation was only about redeeming your soul and getting you out of this world into the new world, then everything Jesus does here is ultimately pointless.
[21:31] Because none of it really matters. If the end game is to get you from here to heaven, then who cares about the temple? Who cares about John the Baptist?
[21:43] Who cares about the lame, the meek? Who cares about helping these people? But of course, salvation is not only about that, is it? In fact, salvation is very little about getting you out of this world into heaven.
[21:57] It's about getting you ready for the new world that is to come. The new heavens and the new earth that is to come. And so, salvation accomplishes the worship of God's people.
[22:10] And this is where Jesus starts on Palm Sunday. If these things didn't matter, then Jesus wouldn't address them. But what salvation accomplishes is that it transforms someone who does not worship God into someone who does.
[22:29] It transforms an idol worshiper into a true worshiper of God. If you were to read Romans as a bird's eye view, what you would find is this.
[22:39] Romans 1, idol worshipers. Romans 12, true worshipers. Romans 5 and 6, conversion, union with Christ. Romans 15, the only reason for ministry, the only reason for me standing here according to Romans 15, is to make sure you are worshipping God properly.
[22:59] That's my sole purpose. Paul says the only reason I go out and preach the gospel is because God deserves to be worshipped by those people who are unsaved.
[23:11] God deserves to be worshipped by everyone. The only reason for looking at someone and desiring their salvation is because God deserves to be worshipped.
[23:22] Now, of course, with the age of individualism and almost self-centrism, what has happened is the gospel has inverted itself where the gospel has become getting people out of hell.
[23:35] It's become less about God deserving the worship. It's become more about saving people from hell. Well, that's a very person-centered gospel.
[23:47] A God-centered gospel is one that looks at a person and understands that that person is meant to be a worshipper of God. That's a God-centered understanding of the gospel.
[24:00] A man-centered understanding of the gospel is one that focuses on man, what is best for man. But what God teaches us through his word, if we read it carefully, is that the gospel is very much about God, of which man gets to participate in.
[24:21] We get to share in the things of God. And when the gospel is taught in this way properly, you will have true converts. You will have people who will worship God in spirit and in truth.
[24:34] This is why God sent Jesus. This is what Jesus says to the woman at the well. God is seeking people who will worship him in spirit and in truth.
[24:46] And so when Jesus gets to the fig tree here, what he is demonstrating by the cursing of the fig tree is, of course, what is going to happen in the temple. The reason there is no worship is because there is no spiritual fruit.
[25:02] Jesus curses the fig tree because there is no fruit. He expects fruit. God expects spiritual fruit in the temple. There is no spiritual fruit in the temple.
[25:14] Jesus expects real fruit on the fig tree. There is no fruit on the fig tree. And so Jesus curses the fig tree as a way of illustrating what will happen to the temple.
[25:26] The temple is in its end days. Fair enough. It doesn't get destroyed until AD 70. but it's in its end he is. It is coming to an end. Jesus is bringing it to an end because it's a fruitless organization, if I can put it that way.
[25:45] It's a fruitless endeavor for this to continue. The king has ridden and rode into Jerusalem. He has declared that what he has come to address, that what salvation has actually come to address, is the worship of God's people.
[26:04] It is true worship. That's what salvation will accomplish. True worship. He has also told us in the cursing of the fig tree what is going to happen to the temple.
[26:16] The king has come. And therefore the kingdom has come with him. But as you know, and this is what saddens us, within the course of a week, within the course of one week, not even one whole week, the people cry, go from crying Hosanna to the son of David, to we have no king but Caesar.
[26:39] In one week. Jesus is our king Sunday. Friday, we have no king but Caesar. In one week. How fickle the people of God are and others are.
[26:55] Well, Jesus addresses the issues of worship because this is what salvation accomplishes. Please know that the accomplishment of salvation of Jesus Christ on the cross is to make people worshippers.
[27:09] It's not to get them out of hell. That's a byproduct. It is not to give them a life of health, wealth, and prosperity. If that comes great and wonderful.
[27:20] But it's a byproduct. The central thing that salvation accomplishes is that Jesus accomplishes what God is looking for. Men and women, boys and girls, who worship God in spirit and in truth.
[27:37] And therefore, in order to accomplish that, he first addresses the wrongful worship that is happening in the temple. salvation is defined by knowing God.
[27:50] Eternal life is defined, John 17, as knowing God and knowing the Son. And that knowing is the very heart of worship. So Jesus overturns the tables.
[28:02] He overturns the temple. Well, what about the temple and the fig tree? What is the real sin here? How are these people robbing God?
[28:13] And why does God deserve worship? Well, God deserves worship because he created us for that very purpose. In other words, we are at our very best when we are worshiping God in spirit and in truth.
[28:24] We are fulfilling the purpose for which we were made when we worship God in spirit and in truth. Anything less than that, we're not fulfilling the capacity for which we were made, the potential for which we were made.
[28:36] But when Jesus curses the fig tree, he's making a very specific and definite point. The fruitlessness that you see on the fig tree, the lack of fruit that you see on the fig tree, led to it being cursed by Jesus.
[28:54] It was cursed by Jesus because Jesus expected fruit to be there. And then he curses it with a curse that may no fruit ever come from you again. And we know that Jesus really isn't speaking about the fig tree.
[29:08] He is speaking about the fig tree, but he's making a point about the temple. And of course, it doesn't take long. It's only a matter of 30 or 40 years before we realize that the temple has come to an end.
[29:24] And here we are 2,000 years later and there still is no temple. Jesus was correct. Jesus brought the temple to its end because of its lack of spiritual fruit.
[29:38] So how is it that the temple has got to this, how is it that a place of worship has got to the place where people are not only robbing God by turning the place into a carpet warehouse, a place of trading, a place of let's, you know, let's profiteer off the people.
[29:58] How has it got to that place instead of fulfilling its purpose of it being a house of prayer? How has it come to that? And as I've always said, that God sees you throughout the week.
[30:11] Your worship is only acceptable today depending on the six days that led up to today. Let's never forget that. We cannot make right on five minutes before we get into the building what hasn't been right for the several hours leading up to it.
[30:27] It's incredibly important we understand that worship is a way of life. Now, too many people read this passage and think that the robbery is between people and people.
[30:39] And I want to say that that is true. It is the case that people are robbing people and we'll get to that at the moment. But the real robbery is that the purpose for which the temple was made, that is the worship of God, a house of prayer, is being overtaken by a practice of robbery where there is this money changing so that temple, so that animals can be bought for the sacrifice.
[31:07] And so it is the practice that is robbing God and the people are being robbed by the practice. And so the very place where you would expect to find true worshipers, you find robbers.
[31:20] Robbers. Robbers. Or my favorite phrase, people are not giving to God what belonged to God. They give it to Caesar. The whole world is messed up.
[31:33] We're rendering the wrong things to the wrong people. And that's what's happening here. So what are the money changers doing that is so serious?
[31:45] Well, number one, they're preventing worship because they're using the temple for something else other than it's meant to be used for. And secondly, they're also making money and 100% return through doing absolutely nothing.
[32:04] I mean, you'd be surprised just how much money and taxation play a role within the context of sin and judgment within the New Testament. Even in the Old Testament, you have it.
[32:15] Throughout God's word, God identifies two particular types of people. And in Jerusalem and Judea, they're identified as clear as day. You have makers and you have takers.
[32:28] You have makers and you have takers. The church has lived a life with makers and takers. Takers speaks for itself. They don't do any work. They simply take other people's work.
[32:40] We call it socialism. We call it Marxism. We call it stuff like that. As Margaret Thatcher once put it, and I'm not all that fond of Margaret Thatcher, but she was absolutely right when she said at some point you're going to run out of somebody else's money.
[32:55] At some point that will happen. It doesn't work because it's daylight robbery to take. Jerusalem was a place of taxation. Judea was a place of making, production.
[33:07] Judea made the goods, produced the goods, did the fishing, did broaden the income. And then the moment you get to Jerusalem, they tax you for it heavily.
[33:20] Here's the taxation and here's the crime. The temple had its own currency. And you as an Israelite had to buy animals for sacrifice. But your currency was not allowed to be used.
[33:32] You had to use temple currency to buy temple animals to make sacrifices for the offerings. And the exchange rate was 100%.
[33:43] That means whatever you wanted to exchange, let's say it was one coin, you had to give two to get one temple currency back in return. It was daylight robbery.
[33:55] It was 100% gain of proper hearing. So these chief priests and these temple people sat back while the people of the day, the hard-working people of the day, came to Jerusalem.
[34:08] Because remember, we're still in Old Testament times here. We're still having to offer sacrifices. We're still having to make atonement. Jesus has not yet died on the cross. So we're still living in the period of tithes and offerings and sacrifice.
[34:22] And all of these things. And they've done all their hard work. They now come to Jerusalem where they have to make, where they have to buy their animals and make their sacrifices. And the moment they get there, they realize the price is double.
[34:36] Because the temple has its own currency. And they inflate their currency 100% higher than the normal currency that people are using. And they make 100% clear profit. What a business.
[34:50] The church has never done that again, has it? The church has always done that. And it's a disgrace, an absolute disgrace.
[35:00] If God's law was obeyed, then the poor would have been helped. Go back and read the Mary and Joseph story. And understand the different types of offerings that can be given for different types of income and wealth and poverty and what you have.
[35:16] But the poor are not helped. They are exploited by the religious class being made to pay twice as much. And the religious class are making 100% on every trade.
[35:30] So here we have a place of worship. A place where people are to worship God in spirit and in truth. Where they are to help the poor in terms of charity. And it is daylight robbery, in one sense, towards the people.
[35:45] An absolute robbery by the practice to God. God is robbed twice over. Once by his law not being obeyed and people being robbed. And more importantly, by the fact that the purpose of the temple is not being fulfilled.
[36:00] And God is being robbed of worship. I'll give you a couple of illustrations. The reason one of these things happen is what I call the normative principle.
[36:11] The normative principle for reading the Bible is very dangerous because the principle means this. That if the Bible doesn't say anything against it, I can do it. Right?
[36:22] If the Bible doesn't say anything against a practice or a decision, then I'm free to do it. Okay, but there's lots of things that the Bible doesn't say that you're meant to work out by implication of the text.
[36:38] In other words, it says a lot and you're supposed to understand the text to say, Well, that would mean this and that would mean that. So, I think I would be fair to say that these men who live in the church, so to speak, or live off the church, who have aeroplanes for their ministry to fly around the world, For me, it's a robbery.
[37:02] Number one, nowhere in Scripture do you ever see a man who's allowed to have an international ministry or even an itinerant ministry. But the normative principle not only encourages it, it says, well, why can't a man go from church to church and preach here, there, and everywhere?
[37:22] It's nothing against it. The Bible doesn't say there's anything against it. The Bible doesn't have to say that there's anything against it because it's already told us that there's supposed to be one man in one church.
[37:33] Why need to go any further? But those who go for the normative principle can start off with itinerant ministry and it won't be long before they're at gay marriage. Because the Bible, right?
[37:45] The Bible doesn't say. So it doesn't take long to go from one ridiculous statement to a hundred ridiculous statements. So I'm still waiting for my aeroplane or my mansion or my car or my swimming pool.
[38:00] I'm still waiting, but I'm not going to get it and I'm not looking for it. A less obvious corruption. What about this one? A minister gets to live in a manse that the church pays for while he rents out his house so that someone else can pay his mortgage off.
[38:20] That's a hundred percent profiteering. And yet how many pastors are doing that? They're doing something that is no different than what is happening here.
[38:32] That's exactly what is happening here. And yet how many pastors are encouraged by their congregation? What you need to do is you want to buy a small house before you retire so you've got something to move into.
[38:43] Rent it out. Live in the manse which the congregation pays for. And no one will be smart enough to figure out that someone else is paying your mortgage off and you've got to live in a house for free.
[38:56] That kind of practice is robbery. You're robbing the people of God. And not only is it daylight robbery, how can that pastor, for instance, because these here are particular...
[39:12] I have to pick on the pastor because these don't seem to be sins of the congregation. They seem to be sins of the religious establishment. You'll get your turn. I'll get to you at some point.
[39:23] But this just so happens to be the sin of the ministry. And so you can understand how worship of God can be corrupted on normative principles. Because instead of people sticking to what the Bible says clearly, they live their lives by what the Bible doesn't say anything on.
[39:42] We can do this. We can do that. We can do the other. This is what Jesus is addressing here in the temple. Well, let's come to the conclusion as we close for this morning.
[39:54] Jesus rides in on Palm Sunday and people are waving their palm branches and singing Hosanna and they're expecting Jesus to take over the world. And instead of riding into the Roman garrison, he rides into the temple and he overturns his own people.
[40:12] Why? Because the one thing that matters to God, the one thing that God is seeking is men and women, boys and girls, who will worship him in spirit and in truth.
[40:23] And to make this point abundantly clear, that the temple has seen its last days, he curses the fig tree and says to it, no fruit will ever come from you again. It's an illustration of what will happen to the temple.
[40:37] And so as an exhortation, Palm Sunday is a wonderful reminder that you are made to worship God. Palm Sunday is Jesus riding in and telling us very clearly and plainly, this is what God has made you for.
[40:55] He has not made you to rob God or rob people, but rather to render to God the things that belong to God, most importantly, yourself. God is seeking worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth.
[41:17] And so what the salvation that Christ accomplishes on Friday, or his whole life is an accomplishment, will actually deal with these issues. Because if they didn't, then most of these issues are irrelevant and not even worth speaking about.
[41:32] But all of these issues are matters of worship. Because our whole life is an act of, or rather our whole life is to be an act of worship before our most holy God.
[41:46] So Christ saves, but he saves us to make us worshipers of the triune God of scripture. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[42:06] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[42:24] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.