Tuesday

We don't know what Jesus did on the day after the Triumphal Entry, but on the next day, He taught and delivered what we call "the Olivet Discourse." On His way, Jesus used a fig tree to talk about faith (Matt 21:18-22). Back at the Temple, He took on the Pharisees. They questioned His authority (almost like "Did God say ...?") and revealed their hearts when they refused to answer Jesus's question for fear of the crowd (Matt 21:23-27). Then He really took them to task. He told parables they recognized as damning to their own position (Matt 21:28-46). He taught more parables and ridiculed the Sadducees for their anti-resurrection stance (Matt 22:23-33). He gave the famous "two-rule" thing ... love God and love your neighbor (Matt 22:34-40). "On these two commandments," He said, "depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matt 22:40). He proved from Psalm 110 that the Messiah was not merely a man, but the Lord of all (Matt 22:41-46). And in Matthew 23, with some of the most scathing language found in Scripture, Jesus pronounced the "woes" on the scribes and Pharisees. Mind you, "woe" in their language wasn't "poor, pitiful me!" It was "God has turned His back on you!!!." "Blind guides!...For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness...Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?" (Matt 23:24-33). Not the "nice guy Jesus" so many like to see. Then ... He wept ... over Jerusalem (Matt 23:37-39)

He went to the Mount of Olives next and spoke about prophecy. It's a popular passage (Matt 24:1-25). I grew up with language like "wars and rumors of wars" (Matt 24:5-8) predicting the Second Coming and "one will be taken and one left" (Matt 24:40) as a clear indication of the Pre-Trib Rapture. Maybe. Jesus was speaking of the future ... their future. And He wanted them to know what was coming. The most important parts were not the details of when and what, but things like the certainty that the elect would not be led astray (Matt 24:22), that God would guard His own (Matt 24:22), and that Jesus is coming (Matt 24:29-31). He told them, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away" (Matt 24:35). No one knows when, but "you also must be ready" (Matt 24:44) because "Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes" (Matt 24:46).

Jesus made some of His harshest and most penetrating statements on this day. He spoke of the evils of the Jewish religious leadership and both the fear and the wonder of His return. He urged, above all, that we ... be ready, be working when He comes. Don't be that virgin who was unprepared (Matt 25:1-13). Remember, the goats and the sheep look similar, but goats and sheep don't act alike (Matt 25:31-46). Our lives must reflect actively the external change that being born again causes necessarily. Jesus spent this day in His last week offering these messages that He thought essential to express before He left. We should pay heed. As long as He's not back, we should be serving diligently with a waiting heart and a passion to be like Him.