Matthew Part 2(Richard Jordan)

8/19/2019 Matthew Part 2(Richard Jordan)

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Grace School of the Bible

MATTHEW (Part 2)

DISPENSATIONAL BIBLE STUDY

Copyright

All rights are reserved. Except for personal use, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from Grace School of the Bible

Richard JordanGrace School of the BibleP.O. Box 97Bloomingdale, IL 60108www.GraceImpact.org

MATTHEW 203 1(Part 2, Lesson 1)


Matthew 16:21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, howthat he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.

I have pointed this verse out to you before. From that time forth: that is, at this point in the ministry of Christ, He begins to tell them that He is going to Jerusalem and die and be raised again the third day.



If this is where He began to do that, you know that prior to this point in the Book of Matthew, He had not told them about His death. He had not told them before this time that He was going to Jerusalem and will die and then be raised again; this is the point when He begins to tell them about it. This is an important point in the earthly ministry of Christ as related in the Book of Matthew.

From this point onward, He is no longer going to the throne; He is no longer destined for the crown. He is no longer going to the kingdom; He is going to the cross. His rejection is now evident. In Luke 9, He sets His face toward Jerusalem. He says, I must needs go to Jerusalem. I have to do this. The die was castand nothing was going to stop Him.

Luke 9:51 And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,

53 And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go toJerusalem.

There was no question about it. He was going to Jerusalem and that s all there was to it. The point is that, at this time, He begins to tell them, That s where weare now headed, fellows. When He tells them, their response is very interesting.

As you study and teach Matthew remember that this is a critically important pass

age. Peter has acclaimed Him as the Messiah, and He said, I am going to build my church (the Messianic church) on that acknowledgement; that is, upon the truth that Jesus Christ is Messiah. That shows you that, while they understood that He was the Messiah, the King of Israel, they did not know anything about the cross because He hadn t yet told them anything about it. Up until this point, they had been preaching the gospel of the kingdom. In Chapters 4 and 9, He was preaching it. In Chapter 10, He sent the apostles out to preach the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but at that time they didn t know anything about the crucifixion.

I hope you understand that you can t get doctrine for today out of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Dr. Henry Grube of Mobile, Alabama, used to go to Bob Jones University now and t

hen to hire some teachers for his school. Old Dr. Bob was a good friend of Dr.Grube, and he would invite Dr. Grube to preach in chapel when he was there. I veheard Dr, Grube tell about speaking in chapel to all those thousands of kids and the professors, and he d say, Now, turn in your Bible to the Old Testament Book of Matthew. It would take the professors six weeks to try to get the kids straightened out about the Book of Matthew being in the Old Testament.

Hebrews 9:16 For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.17 For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.

Do you know what that tells me? When did Jesus death take place in the Books of

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John at the beginning or the end of those books? It was at the end. Well then, according to Hebrews, you are on Old Testament ground.The New Testament could not possibly have gone into effect until Jesus died on

the cross, because a testament is not in effect until after the death of the testator, the man who made the testament. So the time we are reading about here is Old Testament ground, not New Testament ground.

As you know, we call Matthew to Revelation the New Testament, and that s all right. You are not violating some Biblical principle by calling it the New Testament. You don t always have to put it in quotes and get all hyper about it, but you un



derstand that the New Testament does not technically begin in Matthew, Chapter 1. What the Bible calls the new testament begins after the crucifixion.

Mr. O Hair said that the three great mistakes that people make are (1) beginning the Old Testament in Genesis 1, when it really began in Exodus 20, (2) beginningthe New Testament in Matthew 1, when it really began after the crucifixion of Christ and (3) beginning the body of Christ in Acts 2, when it really began with Paul.

If you don t get those things straight you will never know how to operate, and you ll never get the details of the Bible down correctly.

It is important for you to understand that the things we are reading about in the Book of Matthew are not doctrine for today. You are not going to find the plan of salvation here. You are not going to find how God desires for you and me to live as members of the church, the body of Christ, in the dispensation of grace. God has had other people in His program besides you and me, and He gave instructions for them. The body of Christ in the dispensation of grace is not all God ever had. He has other dispensations and other people. These books are instructions written in the prophetic program especially for that favored nation, Israel.

Matthew 16:21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, howthat he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief p

riests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying,

Thank God, you are going to go die for my sins. No.

22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.

Listen, people, if Peter didn t know that Jesus was going to die at Calvary, he could not possibly have been preaching about His blood atonement for the forgiveness of sins at this time in Matthew. He was preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He has just explained that Christ is the Messiah.

The Gospel of the Kingdom has to do with the good news that the kingdom was coming; it focuses on the gathering together the governmental hierarchy for the kingdom. It doesn t have to do with how that kingdom is going to be established through the death of Christ. That is something that Jesus began to share with them at this point. They don t get it at first; we will see that as we go down throughMatthew 16 and 17. They resist that because they don t understand the necessity of it. As a result, they get into spiritual error and some judgment falls on them. We ll see that in Chapter 17.

Peter did learn about the crucifixion of Christ, of course, as it became a reality. They did later understand that God did intend for Him to die and be raisedfrom the dead, as the scripture had foretold.

The apostle Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, addressing the nation Israel, said,

Acts 2:22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:23 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:24 Whom God hath raised up,

The point is that when Peter talked to Israel about the crucifixion, He still do



esn t point to it and say, There is the answer for your sin problem. He points to the cross and says, You guys mistook your Messiah and you nailed Him to the tree. He blames Israel, for by wicked hands they crucified their Messiah; they did not recognize Him even though God bore evident testimony to who He was.

Then, in Verse 38, he warns them to repent, to change their mind about who He is, to believe that He is the Messiah and to be baptized in His name for the remission of sins in order to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost; that is, to becomeidentified with that little flock, to join ranks with them and become a part ofthe true nation.

My point to you is that Peter blamed Israel for the crucifixion. If you go back to Matthew 16, you will see how the cross is regarded in the message about thekingdom program. It s just as Peter described it in Acts.

Matthew 16:23 But he [Jesus] turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be ofGod, but those that be of men.

Peter had become a stumbling block. Back in Verse 18, he was called a rock; now he s a stumbling block, the wrong kind of rock. Peter ignored the advance information that Christ gave him there in Verse 21. He was led by his own understanding, and he was savoring the things of men; in other words, he was going on human viewpoint, rather than responding to what Christ had been teaching him. Peter

had his own ideas about how things ought to go. Christ said, Get thee behind me, Satan. That was a rebuke.

24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me,

You can t start arguing with me; you must deny yourself. You must say, You re right Lord; I am wrong.

24 let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose hislife for my sake shall find it.26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

That is a good question. That is a question about discipleship in the kingdom program. He is identifying what the cross means to those people in the kingdom program.

You ve heard people use Verse 24 this way: I have my cross to bear, when they are talking about being sick or having some problem. This is my cross to bear. That isn t what is meant in the Bible about a person s taking up his cross denying himself and bearing the cross. The idea in bearing his cross is a symbol, a figure of speech, used to describe the rejection of Christ and the participation of the believers in His rejection. He and they share that rejection.

When He said, If a man wants to follow me, he has to sell what he has, get rid of

everything, forsake all that he has, deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. In other words, Come and share in my rejection.

He had been rejected, and He s the outcast from the nation. Those that go to Himand join that little flock of believers are going to be the outcasts of the nation. At this time, in the kingdom program, the cross did not symbolize the place where Christ died and made the fully satisfying payment for sins. We learn about that later. We learn the secret meaning of the cross later through the apostle Paul.



In the kingdom program, the cross symbolized His rejection and their rejection.They are coming and taking their place with Him outside the camp.

27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Notice that the issue in Verses 27 and 28 is the glory, the kingdom, the secondcoming. In Verse 21, He told them about His suffering and rejection. In Verses 24 26, He is tells them about their participation in His rejection. They have rejected me, and if you follow me, they are going to reject you. Then He tells them, in Verse 27, not to worry about the suffering and the rejection because theglory is coming. Now He is going to focus on the glory of the kingdom. Peter said that the prophets showed before the sufferings and the glory that should follow.

So, Christ tells them not to be distraught about the rejection and the suffering because the glory is going to follow. It s a reassurance to all those who must endure suffering to know that they will participate with Christ in the glory of His kingdom.

27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

Now, that refers to their rewards in the kingdom, just as it says back in Chapter 10:

Matthew 10:32 Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

That is the issue: Let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. If heloses his life, he will find it. But if he finds it (keeps it for himself), hewill lose it.

What He is talking about is their reward in the kingdom when Christ returns. In Revelation 22, He says, Behold, I come quickly and my reward is with me. He willcome back and reward those kingdom saints for faithful service.

28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

In other words, don t worry about the sufferings because the rewards are going tocome.

Matthew 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

That s what He is saying to them: don t worry about the sufferings. Don t worry about the problems; they will be short lived. They will be just for awhile, and the reward is going to be much greater.

28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Some of those folks standing there aren t going to die before they see the kingdom. He is assuring them of the fact that they are going to inherit that kingdom with Him.



Tell me something. Has the kingdom come yet? No. Are there any of those people that were standing there still alive? No. Well then, did Jesus make a mistake? Go back to Chapter 10.

Matthew 10:23 But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

Did they go over the cities and He hadn t come? You d better believe it. What s thedeal? There are two explanations offered. One is okay but it is fudging a little bit. The other is real solid.

One explanation is that there are four passages in Matthew: 10:23; 16:28; 23:39and 24:34, where if you looked at the Greek text, you would see a little particle an. That particle puts a condition on the statement. The books tell you that is an untranslatable particle which indicates a conditional statement. That is true, so this is really a statement with a condition implied.

The problem with that explanation is that they say the little particle is untranslatable. If I can express to you what it means and tell you the condition, then I can translate the word, and it is not an untranslatable idiom. I have never seen one English translation that offered a condition there; there aren t any. There isn t any way to express it in English, and yet you can express it with an unde

rstood condition. The argument about the Greek particle, as I see it, is a little overblown there. It s not the simple explanation that you look for.

If I say to you that we are going to have a picnic on Saturday and I say, You, Vera, bring the potato chips, and Dorothy, you bring the Dr. Pepper. Joe, you bring the hot dogs and let Barbara bring the sauerkraut . Now, everybody knows what they are going to do. We ll meet at the picnic spot, and I am going to bring an appetite. We all are going to meet on Saturday for a picnic.

Now, what happens if it rains? You ll stay home, won t you? Did I have to say that to you? No, you understood a condition if it doesn t rain. Now, if you are foxy,you will ask about what happens if it rains? You probably won t ask, but the condition will be there and you will understand it.

There is an important condition here in the offer of the kingdom during the ministry of Christ. The offer is made to Israel: here s the opportunity to receive your kingdom. What does that imply? It implies the condition that they must receive it. He says in Chapter 11:14 that if you will receive it [the kingdom], John will be Elijah. That s the condition. He says this with the implied condition that the nation is to receive their kingdom.

My friend, had they received their kingdom and the dispensation of grace, the dispensation of the mystery, not interrupted the prophetic program, what that verse says would have come to pass exactly as it says. But, because God interrupted the prophetic program with a secret purpose that He had not revealed to anyone, instead of the prophetic program continuing, it has been interrupted.

In Matthew 17:1 8, you find the transfiguration of Christ.

Matthew 17:1 And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,2 And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and hisraiment was white as the light.

A lot of people will tell you that Matthew 16:28 was fulfilled here, that Peter, James and John were the ones standing there who would see the kingdom come. Bu



t, what they see in Chapter 17 has to do with the glory of Christ. They are seeing the kingdom majesty and the Shekinah glory of God as Christ is transfigured, but they aren t seeing the second coming of Christ. They are seeing His majesty.

His transfiguration does not fulfill Verse 28. It confirms His statement in Verse 27 that He shall come in the glory of His Father. What you see in Chapter 17, is not the Son of man coming in His kingdom, but you see the Son of man in the Shekinah glory of His Father. What Christ is doing is showing His disciples asample of the glory that is going to be His, in order to confirm their faith.

He begins to tell them that He is going to go die. He hadn t told them about Hisimpending death until now. He has been telling them about His kingdom and the wonderful time of reigning and ruling that they all are going to have. Now He says, Before the kingdom comes, there is going to be suffering. I am going to suffer and die, and you who follow me will suffer. All of you aren t going to die, but many of you will. In order to confirm their faith in that coming glory, He istransfigured before them.

In 2 Peter 1, Peter refers to the transfiguration to confirm the truthfulness of their message in the face of the delay in His return.

2 Peter 1:16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesse

s of his majesty.17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.

Now, if you want to see the testimony of the kingdom majesty he is talking about, there it is in Matthew 17.

Peter says, Do you remember what we saw on the mount of transfiguration? It wasa testimony to the majesty of Christ and the surety of His coming in the glory of the Father. The message we preached to you about the kingdom is true, althoug

h it hasn t yet come, because we were eyewitnesses of His kingdom glory.19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed,

Peter says, We were eyewitnesses and saw Him glorified on the mount of transfiguration, but we have something better than an eyewitness account: we have the word of God, the sure word of prophecy.

There was a researcher of supernatural events on TV, and he was researching people who use divining rods to find water or gold. He had a film about Peter Popoff. You used to hear Popoff on the radio and see him on TV. He was a slap bang healer. He claimed to be a man anointed of God with the gift of knowledge. When

you watched him on television, he would go out through that audience and say something like, There s a man named Henry here. His wife is Alice and they live at 1697 Third Avenue. Henry, you have gall bladder trouble.

Boy, he had them convinced; everything he said was always correct. Popoff claimed that God told him.

A guy went to his meeting, recorded it and told about it on a popular TV talk show. He took an FM receiver and he tuned it to a frequency of 39.17 MHz, and all of a sudden he heard a woman s voice saying the name Henry. This guy took a pictur



e of Popoff, who had a hearing aid in his ear, hidden under his hair, and the cord going down into his coat.

Before the meeting, his wife had everybody fill out a little card with name, wife s name, address and the reason you came to be healed. Mrs. Popoff was in the back of the auditorium reading the information from these cards to her husband, and he was acting like he was getting the information straight from God.

That guy was on the radio every day of the week and on television all over thiscountry. That researcher shot a torpedo into Popoff s little submarine. I wish that everybody had seen that.

The researcher said that scam wouldn t even make a very good game show. There Popoff had his wife in the back of the room reading those cards over a little closed

circuit transmitter, much like the wireless mike we ve got here that will transmit about 700 feet. That s probably what they had, with just a little bitty receiver, but he was trying to make everybody think God was working through him.

If you watched that guy, and unless you were a researcher trained to see how people pull off shenanigans and charlatanism, you d have to say, It looked real to me.

It would show a guy breaking up his crutches. Those poor people were just being duped, but it looked good. You can t always trust eyewitness accounts.

Peter says, We didn t follow cunningly devised fables; we saw it.

Did you ever take a colorblind test? You are shown a picture formed of coloreddots and asked what you see. I said, Well, I see a milk carton and a ball. He said, Okay, you passed. I thought, You didn t have to be too smart to pass this one.hat I found out later was that, if you were colorblind, you didn t see the shapeson that paper. The colors blended together and you couldn t see them.

Optical illusions are like that. You can go out on a fall evening, and the harvest moon comes up so big you can t put your arms around it (so you put your arms around your wife and she purrs like a kitten). In a little while you take your arms away, and she asks, What s the matter? Now the moon is no bigger than a dime, a

nd I can get my arms around it. The big moon is an optical illusion on the horizon, isn t it?

I can deceive you if all I have to do is show you something. There is something more sure and it s that book. That is what Peter is saying.

Christ gave them this experience on the mount of transfiguration so that they might receive the word of God, the word from the Father in Matthew 17:5, declaring who He is.

Once again, this transfiguration is given to confirm the fact that the Son of man shall come in the glory of the Father with His angels, even though He is first going to die.

Matthew 17:1 And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,

Notice that it says after six days. Notice how Luke says it:

Luke 9:28 And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he tookPeter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.

If it is after six and about eight, it s on the seventh day. You will have to remembe



r the things we studied back in Chapter 14, when we talked about those sevens. The seventh day compares to the thousandth year, the millennial kingdom. Remember the seven sevens.

Here, in Matthew 17, is a type of Christ s glory when He comes. It s a foretaste of the glory He will have in that kingdom. You are going to see elements here that foretell the coming of Christ in all the glory of the Father.

It is after six days, on the seventh day. That s the millennium, the seventh day rest. He takes them up on a high mountain; repeatedly, in the Bible, a mountainis the type of a kingdom.

Matthew 17:2 And was transfigured before them

Luke 9:29 And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.

It s as though He changed His countenance so that the glory that resided inside of Him came out, and His clothes glistened.

Matthew 17:2 and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.

Do you understand what it is to shine as the sun? The spotlights shine down on me

as I stand here and they reflect from me, but I am not shining as the sun. That is shining like the moon. (I am moonshine, not sunshine.) If you shine like the sun, the light comes from within and you glow like a light bulb. His clothes are as white as light and glistening. The light is just shining out of Him. What Peter, James and John saw when they looked at Him was glorified humanity. There He was, the Son of man, and yet He shown in the glory of the Father. If you want to know what glorified humanity looks like, that passage right there describes it for you.

It is important that you to see that the glory comes from the inside, and it demonstrates the glory of God shining through Christ.

Matthew 17:5 While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: andbehold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;

Who is talking? That s God the Father in the cloud. There is the Son of God with the same glory shining out of Him; don t mistake it. The glory isn t shining downfrom the Father on the Son like the lights are shining on me. The same glory they see in the Father, they also see in the Lord Jesus Christ, shining out of Him. Do you know why? They are both God; they are one in essence and being. They are both God, equal with one another: God the Father and God the Son. There is total equality between them. They have and share the same glory. There is God the Son shining forth with the Shekinah glory, and there s God the Father shining out of the heavens with the Shekinah glory. The glory is the same because they

are the same in essence and being. That s a great statement on the deity of Christ.

In Verse 5, the bright cloud is the glory of the Father.

Ezekiel 1:4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud,

That is not the same as the clouds in 1Thessalonians 4 that is associated with the rapture. This is a different cloud.



4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud,and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

On down in the passage, you see the four living creatures that compare with thefour creatures in Revelation, Chapter 4:

Ezekiek 1:26 And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.27 And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance ofhis loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.28 As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about.

That s Revelation Four, where it tells about that throne set in heaven.

28 This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD [Jehovah].And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.

When you read that in Ezekiel, and in other places, about the glory of the LORD,

it s always about the second coming of Christ. It s always about Christ being manifested in the glory of the Father that He will have in the kingdom.

Isaiah 60:1 Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.

That glory will come and take over:

2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thyrising.

When Christ comes, Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express imageof his person (Hebrews 1:3), it is always in the same glory that the Father has.

Isaiah 60:19 The sun shall be no more thy light by day;[talking to Israel about the Millennium] neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.20 Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the LORD shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall beended.

That s a reference to part of the land over there in Palestine that will be illuminated by the Shekinah glory of God when Christ is there. You read about it over

in Ezekiel 43. The glory shining out of Him is so bright that it never gets dark.

Do you remember, over in Matthew 13, where the saints are going to shine?

Matthew 13:43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

How does the sun shine? It shines from within and radiates outwardly.



Matthew 17:3 And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.

Now, Moses represents the Law, and Elijah represents the prophets. They are the two witnesses in Revelation 11:4. Someone says, I thought one of those witnesses was Elijah and the other, Enoch. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and Enoch didn t die and Elijah didn t die but these two witnesses both die in the tribulation, so everybody gets to die once. It has to be Enoch.

No, they misunderstand that verse. It s just a statement of a general truth thatpeople die. That verse doesn t say that every man has to die one time.

There are two reasons why you know that. There s a group that isn t going to die at the rapture. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep. I Corinthians 15:51

That creates a problem for that interpretation of the verse in Hebrews. (Hebrews 9:27)

The other reason: how about Lazarus? He died twice. I never heard anybody explain that one. Jesus called to Lazarus to come out of the grave. He came out,but where is he? The guy has been dead for nineteen hundred years. He died again.

How about the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11)? How about the widow s son who was raised by Elijah? (1Kings 7:22) They died again. Well, if it is appointed unto man once to die, what about the people who died twice? That verse is notsaying everybody has to die one time.

As it is appointed unto man once to die is a general principle. What s the wages ofsin? Then you understand why they died, don t you? Just because Enoch and Elijah didn t have to die, it doesn t violate that verse.

Enoch won t fit the passage in Revelation, but Moses will. Moses and Elijah are the two witnesses in Revelation 11. They are the only two men who have done what the passage says those two witnesses are going to do, so that s who they are andwhy they show up on the mountain with Christ.

The last four proper names in the Old Testament are associated with what s going on in Matthew 17.

Malachi 4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness

The Sun: does that sound like Matthew 17:2? That s Christ.

2 arise with healing in his wings;

4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horebfor all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and

dreadful day of the LORD:

The last four proper names in your Old Testament, in a passage dealing with thesecond coming of Christ, are Moses, Horeb, Elijah and the LORD. The setting inMatthew 17 is a mountain. (Horeb is Mt. Sinai. Verse 4) I know one thing: wehave here the LORD, Moses and Elijah. There isn t any doubt about whom the two witnesses are when you compare these two passages (Malachi 4:5 and Revelation 11).

Matthew 17:3 And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with



him.4 Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.5 While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.6 And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid.7 And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid.8 And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.

Isn t that touching? He reaches out and touches those trembling disciples and Hesays, Get up, boys, it s okay. They look up and they only have eyes for Him. He s all there is. If you ever needed a motto for your life, Jesus only would be a goodone.

There are people who take these words Jesus only to deny the Trinity and the equality of the members of the Godhead. That won t work. The passage is demonstrating that Christ will come in the glory of the Father, sharing the glory of JehovahGod, Himself being Jehovah.

Jesus Christ is the manifest person of the Godhead, and if you want to worship the Father you have to come to the Father through Him. Anybody who says he wants

to worship God, or Allah, and he doesn t come through Jesus Christ, will never make it. You can t worship God unless you come through Jesus Christ; it s that simple. That s the long and the short of it and all the way around it.

And so, they don t see anybody but Jesus.

In the next lesson, we ll go back and start in Verse 4 and try to ferret out thatinformation about the second coming of Christ.


Matthew 17:1 And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,

Many times, Christ takes Peter, James and John apart with Him. It is usually said that these men are in a special inner circle with Christ. I am not so sure it was true that they were so special to Him in a positive sense.

I heard J. Vernon McGee once say something about that that I have often thoughtabout. (I can t prove that it s true, but I do think there is some merit to it.) He said that the reason Christ took Peter, James and John with Him is because they were sort of thick headed. They were slow and needed His special attention.

People talk about John, the beloved disciple, and John being so wonderful, sweet and mild mannered. They never got that out of the Bible. One time he asked, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and zap those guys?The Bible calls James and John the sons of thunder.



If a guy seldom opens his mouth and is never loud, you wouldn t call him a son of thunder, would you? John was sort of a boisterous guy. I am not sure that everybody has the right idea about John, James or Peter. Maybe that s why He took themaside; maybe it isn t. I don t know, but He took those three into a high mountain,what we call the Mount of Transfiguration.

2 And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and hisraiment was white as the light.

That s the demonstration of glorified humanity. If you want to know what a glorified body looks like, there you have it in a verse. It s a manifestation of the majesty of Christ. In Verse 27, He is confirming that He is going to come in theglory of His Father:

Matthew 16:27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father

He demonstrates His glory and the majesty of His coming kingdom.

17:3 And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.

When Christ was transfigured there, Moses and Elijah show up. Now, it is interesting to me that they recognize them. That ought to put to rest the question you might have in your mind, Can we recognize people in the next life?

Sometimes I get mail asking, Will we recognize each other in heaven? One of the proofs that we will recognize each other is this passage right here. There are two passages that settle it. In this passage they recognize Moses and Elijah. They are distinguishable people. When you die and go into eternity, it doesn t take away all distinction.

The other passage is in Luke 16, where it tells that the rich man died, lifted up his eyes in hell, looked across the gulf and saw Lazarus, and he recognized him. He also saw Abraham and knew who he was. Lazarus and Abraham also knew whothe rich man was. So you are going to recognize people in the next life, both in heaven and in hell. The distinctions aren t lost. If you ever need a verse todemonstrate to somebody that they will know their loved ones in the next life, this passage and in the other one in Luke 16 and there are a number of others are

the ones I suggest to you.We already noticed in Verse 3 that Moses represents the law and Elijah represents the prophets. These are the two witnesses that show up in the tribulation. I told you in the last lesson that these are Moses and Elijah, not Enoch and Elijah. These two men represent the two types of saints that will be in the kingdom.

In John 11, Lazarus has died and Jesus asks his sister, Martha, Don t you know he is going to rise?

John 11:24 Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believethin me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

There is somebody who has died and will live again in resurrection.

26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

Here He s talking about a fellow who is not going to die but will walk right intothat kingdom.



John 8:51 Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

He isn t going to die. He will not taste death. (Verse 52)

The expression taste death means to die. In Verse 51, it says, you won t see death. At the end of Verse 52, it says, If a man keep my saying, he shall never tasteof death.

The two expressions are synonyms and are used interchangeably. The point is that there are going to be two kinds of people who go into the kingdom. One kind is like these people here:

Matthew 16:28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

We know that didn t happen because God has interrupted the prophetic program. He has called a temporary halt to it, but at this time the prophetic program was inprogress; had it gone on to its conclusion then, they would have gone right into that kingdom without dying.

In the kingdom, they will be given longevity. The nation Israel will be healedin that kingdom. By his stripes we [Israel] are healed.

In Ezekiel 47, it tells that the nations are given healing. The trees that growbeside the river of life are for healing. There is a method whereby people arehealed. Longevity is restored back into humanity, and they will just continue to live and not see death as long as long as they believe in the Lord.

He said, Some of you are going to die. Those who think they are doing God s will are going to kill you, but if you die, you ll be resurrected.

God told Abraham, in Genesis 15, You and your seed are going are going to inherit this land. Then He said, Your seed is going down into Egypt for four hundred years. Does that mean that Abraham was going to live four hundred years? No, Abraham knew he was going to die. God told him he wasn t going to possess the land at

that time. After they have been in Egypt four hundred years, I will bring them back out. Abraham understood the resurrection and knew how he was going to receive the promises. He knew he was going to receive the land, but first he is going to die. The only way he could get the land would be through his resurrection.

There will be some that are resurrected and some who will go into the kingdom without dying.

There are two kinds of Old Testament saints. Moses was a saint who died and will be resurrected. Elijah was a saint who didn t die. Remember that Enoch and Elijah are two guys in the Old Testament who didn t die.

Matthew 17:4 Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us

to be here:

People use that quote and say, It s good for us to be here [in church today].

I ve seen that a lot of times in church bulletins. They want to write a verse above the date, and often it is, Lord, it is good for us to be here. Well, it is good to be here. Peter thought it was good to be there.

if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.



Peter takes a bad rap for saying that. You hardly ever read a commentary that says anything good about Peter here. But, you know, there is something good to be said about Peter at this point. He wasn t just blowing off at the mouth. Peter understood what was going on. Why would he say something about building tabernacles?

There are some feast days in Israel s calendar. You need to be familiar with these feasts. If you are going to understand Israel s prophetic calendar, you have to understand these feasts.

In Leviticus 23, there is passover. That symbolizes the cross; Christ dies.

Then there is pentecost, fifty days after the passover. And when the day of pentecost was fully come. . . (Acts 2); that is, when the fulfillment of the type was fully come.

After passover and pentecost, there is a period of months where there are no feasts. Then, on the first day of the seventh month there is the blowing of trumpets, when the nation is gathered together. That s the re gathering of Israel in the future.

On the tenth day of the seventh month is the Day of Atonement. That s a type of the second coming of Christ, when He comes back and establishes that new covenant

with the nation; it goes into effect, and He takes away their sin.After that is the feast of tabernacles. The feast of what? Tabernacles! What is it that Peter wants to build here? Tabernacles. Peter understood that what he was seeing there in Matthew 17 was a type of the kingdom. He was seeing the Christ in His glory, majesty and honor that were going to be manifested in that kingdom.

Peter said, Hey, it s time for the feast of tabernacles. All Jewish men went down to Jerusalem three times a year. Every man in Israel was to go to Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 16:16) at Passover, at Pentecost and at the feast of tabernacles. At the feast of tabernacles, they were to go to Jerusalem and build little booths of tree branches to live in for that week. They set up their little tabernacles,

and they would live there in that booth for that week.That is what Peter understood. The feast of tabernacles was a type of the millennial kingdom.

Zechariah 14:1 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh

3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives,

9 And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.

16 And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.

18 And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the LORD will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.19 This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.



The feast of tabernacles is a picture and a type of the millennial kingdom. All the nations of the earth will be required to come and keep that feast. In other words, they have to come and participate in the worship of the King who is the King of kings and Lord of lords in that day.

Now, in prophecy the feast of tabernacles is associated with the kingdom. Peter understood that, so he said, We need to make some tabernacles. We ll make you one, one for Moses and one for Elijah.

Moses represented the law, and Elijah was the prophet. There you have the law,the prophets and Christ, the king.

In including all three of them, Peter is thinking of the type. He understood something about that kingdom, so he isn t quite as worthy of the scorn that he is usually given. Most of the people who scorn him at this point don t understand thedoctrine in the passage nearly as well as Peter did. Peter made a mistake, so he had to learn something. Notice what happens:

Matthew 17:5 While he yet spake,[he is still speaking] behold, a bright cloudovershadowed them:

As we learned in the last lesson, the cloud described in Ezekiel 1:4 is what wesee at the transfiguration in Verse 2.

5 and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.

In other words, Peter, quit talking and listen to Him.

6 And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid.

You need to remember that three times in your Bible the heavens opened and the Father declared, This is my beloved Son : once, at His baptism in Matthew 3; againat His transfiguration (Matthew 17) and in Psalm 2 which records what God the Father said about the resurrection of Christ. That pronouncement, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased is made with regard to Him as Prophet, Priest an

d King.7 And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid.8 And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.

That s a very touching phrase. The Lord came and He touched that poor, frightened group of men (type of His remnant), and when He reached out and comforted them, they looked up and saw only Jesus. He was preeminent.

Zechariah 14:9 And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.

It isn t that we are all going to be equal in the kingdom; it s just Him. If they s

ee only Jesus, who departed? Moses and Elijah. You see, in that kingdom, Moses (type of the law) and Elijah (type of the prophets) disappear; all is fulfilled in Christ. The law is fulfilled in Christ s kingdom, and the prophets are fulfilled in the kingdom. When Christ appears in the glory of His kingdom, it will be as He said,

Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

The law points to that kingdom. Paul says that it is a shadow of things to come



, inthe ages to come. The prophets point to the kingdom. When Christ appears in His kingdom glory, the law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah) disappear in the fulfillment of all that they had foretold: Christ and the kingdom.

Matthew 17:9 And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.

Again, notice the withdrawal of the emphasis on His ministry. He says, Don t tellanybody about the glory that you have seen until after I have been raised from the dead.

This is the issue in this part of Matthew 17 as it was in Matthew, Chapter 16.

Matthew 16:20 Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.

He draws the emphasis away from His messianic office. He did it the first timein Chapter 12:

Matthew 12:16 And charged them that they should not make him known.

The reason is that, as showed in this section of Matthew, He is withdrawing from the nation. His rejection has been established, and he is focusing on training

His replacements. So, there is a departure from the emphasis on His public ministry. They are no longer to go out to all Israel and make known His messianicglory and His messianic office. He focuses now on just that little flock.

He is no longer on His way to the throne; now He is on His way to the tree. His rejection has been formalized.

Matthew 17:10 And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?11 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.12 But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suf

fer of them.13 Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.

Now, these verses entail the doctrine of the second coming of Elijah which we studied in some detail back in Chapter 11. You remember what He said: if Israelhad received the kingdom, John the Baptist would have been Elijah for he came in the spirit and power of Elijah.

Jesus would have been that prophet like unto Moses foretold in Deuteronomy 18:15 19. John the Baptist and Jesus would have been the two witnesses, the two olivetrees that Zechariah 4:3 talks about, and the prophecy would have been fulfilled.

Israel will never be able to point to God and say, We couldn t have accepted Him;we couldn t have received the kingdom because some of the prophesies weren t fulfilled. Everything was ready.

The problem was in the if . If you will receive it, Elijah has already come, and they knew him not. The opportunity was there, but they rejected it.

12 Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

In other words, His rejection has been set. What they do to John is a preview o



f what is to come for Him. There isn t any maybe about it; it s already been determined. It s just as when God told Jeremiah, Don t pray for these people. It isn t going to help. They ve gone too far and the judgment is coming. That s the situation here.

Jeremiah, that weeping prophet, cries and his heart is broken for Israel. In Matthew 23, you see the fulfillment of his grief. You see the Lord Jesus Christ standing on the hill and looking down over Jerusalem, and He says,

Matthew 23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

>Have you ever heard somebody talk about a jeremiad? It s taken from the name ofthat weeping prophet. It characterizes Christ s sorrow in this verse. That explains what we saw back in Chapter 16; Jeremiah is a type of the remnant s trouble in the tribulation.

What follows, from Verse 14 down to Verse 21, is a strange event, and it is recorded here for a very significant reason. I want you to follow what takes placehere.

They have come down from the mountain, representing the second coming of Christ.

Matthew 17:14 And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying,15 Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, Lunatic means moonstruck. His son has a mental problem.

and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.16 And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.

The man has a son who is demon possessed. The boy is going through all these seizures. The man brings his son to the disciples of Christ, to the little flock,

but they can t help.Notice that Jesus doesn t address the man; He speaks to His disciples.

17 Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how longshall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you [put up with you]? bring him hither to me.18 And Jesus rebuked the devil;

At the second coming of Christ, Israel is in control of the devil. Here is Israel, in need of the ministry of that little flock, but the little flock is of nohelp to them.

19 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast himout?

Prior to this, the disciples had been able to cast out devils. In Matthew 10, He gave them power and they went about casting out devils. All of a sudden, they can t do it any longer. Why not?

20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossi



ble unto you.21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

That passage of scripture has been a real problem for Bible students down through the years. If you take away the dispensational position of this time period in the Book of Matthew, you ll never understand what is happening here. The Charismatic folks and the Pentecostals have a heyday with this passage because they don t understand the dispensational setting, but most Protestant, fundamental Biblescholars don t know what is going on, either, so they don t have an answer for them.

Notice why they can t cast out devils: He says it is because of their unbelief.

Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Unbelief is the opposite of faith. Faith is trusting in what God says. Then what is unbelief? It s not trusting in what God says. What had God said that theyweren t trusting? Did they believe they could cast out the devil? They must have believed they could because they tried.

Some people say, You have to have faith that you can do it. You see that these guys believed they could do it, because they tried. Do you suppose a guy would try to cast out a demon if he didn t think he could do it? These guys tried and couldn t do it, so they walked away puzzled. I used to be able to do it. What s the mat

ter now? In fact, they came to Him and asked why they couldn t, because they thought they were supposed to be able to do it.

There is something else involved here. Go back with me and look at Verse 12 for the context.

12 Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

9 Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.

Matthew 16:21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, howthat he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.

What was their response? Were they brokenhearted? No. What did they do? Theysaid, No! It isn t going to happen to you. They bow up their back and say, Just letanybody lay a hand on you and he ll draw back a stub.

Peter still believes that in the garden. A fellow reached out to grab Him, andPeter whacked off the man s ear. There is only one way Peter could have whacked off his ear when he swung at him: the guy was ducking. Do you know what Peter was aiming at? Peter was aiming at his head. The Lord reached out and put the man s ear back on. Peter didn t understand that. What s going on?

16:22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.

Matthew 17:22 And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men:23 And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry.

That s the very first time these guys were ever sorry to hear about His death.

Their disappointment when they were unable to cast out the devil from this boy woke them up and convinced them about the added revelation that Christ was giving



to them about His death and resurrection. Let me show you.

21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

What is the issue in prayer and fasting?

Matthew 9:14 Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and thePharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?15 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.

If those men recognized that Jesus was going to be taken from them, what would be the proper response? It would be fasting.

Christ said, This kind only comes out by prayer and fasting. When He told them before that He would be taken from them, when He announced His coming death, theydidn t mourn. They didn t respond in a proper manner because they didn t believe it.

They resisted it and refused to believe it. Therefore, prayer and fasting on their part manifested their understanding of, and their faith in, the revelationabout His death and resurrection.

My dear friend, it was not until after the resurrection of Christ that they ever fully understood what He had told them about his death and resurrection. There

fore, it was not until after His resurrection that the power that they once hadwas restored to them. It was not until Pentecost that they again had the powerto reproduce those feats. Once again, it was after the resurrection, when theywere in harmony with the mind of God that they could perform the miracles butnot until then.

There is a real lesson there for you. Because they didn t walk in the advance ofthe revelation that they were given, they lost their spiritual power. The secret of spiritual power is walking in the light that God gives you. The source ofspiritual power for you is not getting in your closet and praying and begging God for this and that and the next thing, praying and confessing sins, but it is getting in that book and find out what God has told you and the information thatGod has given to you in the word of God rightly divided and get on with that. T

hat is where spiritual power is.You want to be a spiritual person and minister in faith with power. Don t you want that? Don t you want to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man? I hope you do. I hope you don t try to walk in your own strength. There isn t any other way to do that except to walk in the light that God gives you in that book.

Let me tell you something: the light is there and there is no excuse for you not to know it. He gave you that book right there for you to read. He s given you God the Holy Spirit as an indwelling teacher. You have a local church here and a classroom where you can learn it. You have time and opportunity and, hey! You can get on with it, and that s what you need to do. God s word is the source of spiritual power in every age and at every time: walking in the light that God give

s you.

Matthew 17:22 And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men:23 And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry.

They don t understand it all but they are beginning to get the message. They were disturbed by what He was saying to them. It evidently took that incident to make them understand what He meant when He said, This kind doesn t come out but by pr



ayer and fasting. I m going to go away. I m going to leave you, and it s time for you to fast, but unless you understand the advance in the revelation here, you won t have any ministry. They finally recognize that and wake up to the fact.

24 And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money cameto Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?

Here s another strange event that is going to take place. There is a beautiful picture here. They come and ask Peter, Pete, does your master pay tax? He said, Yes. , no double talk. Notice the contrast between Peter and the religious leaders.

Matthew 21:23 And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authoritydoest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?24 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things.25 The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasonedwith themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Whydid ye not then believe him?26 But if we shall say, Of men; we fear the people; for all hold John as a prophet.27 And they answered Jesus, and said, We cannot tell. The crooks! They knew where it came from. You see Peter wasn t that kind of guy. Pete

r was honest and what he said was all out there. He may have run off at the mouth more than he ought to but he gave them a straight answer. He was a good man. He had a good heart. He wasn t a crook always trying to figure out You tell me what youwant me to tell you and then I ll tell you. He wasn t a cheap politician or opportunist.

Hey, Pete, does your master pay tribute? Yes. You see in the next verse, Christ sortof rebukes him for saying that but he s a man with a clear conscience.

Matthew 17:25 He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying,

Christ reads his mind and stops him before he speaks.

What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?26 Peter saith unto him, Of strangers

When the king goes out and collects tax money, from whom does he take it, from his family or people outside of his family? From those outside. If you are in the royal family, if you are the king s kids, he isn t going to come around and beatyou on the head to get tax money out of you. He s going to go beat it out of somebody else. He taxes other people.

26 Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free.

The royal family is exempt from tax. You see, Peter had forgotten about something: he had forgotten that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah King of Israel. So, should Christ have to pay tribute? No. Who should pay? Strangers. Did Christ pay tribute? Yes. Then which class was He in, children or strangers? He was a stranger, as far as Israel was concerned. Do you see the outcast condition of Christ? He had to pay tribute like a stranger. The believers were not children of the kingdom of Israel at that time; they were children of the kingdom of heaven. (We ll study the children of the kingdom of heaven in Chapter 18. This chapter introduces Chapter 18.)



The point here is, as Christ asks, Who pays tribute? Kings take it of strangers, not of their family, but I m required to pay tribute. Israel wasn t welcoming Him as their Messiah.

1 Peter 2:11 Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims,

So, you have a picture of the situation in which Christ is found. He s got to pay tribute like a stranger, and so does Peter, because they are rejected. They are not recognized for who they are.

Matthew 17:27 Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea,and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hastopened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

That s remarkable! Let s not offend them, Peter. He sends him down to get the tribute money. Notice that He sends him to a fish. Isn t that wild? Go down there, throw in your hook, pull out the first fish you catch, open its mouth and there you will find the money. He knew what was going on down in the depths of the sea.He knew where that tribute money had been dropped, and He knew where the fish would be that had picked it up in its mouth. He knew that when Peter threw in the hook, he would get it.

Christ commanded creation. That fish brings the exact amount of money that was

required.Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

He gave man dominion over creation, and man lost it, but Christ restores that dominion. Every time you see Christ doing something like that, it s a demonstration that the Messiah is the last Adam. He s the one who came to restore to man s possession what Adam lost in his rebellion.

In the transfiguration, at the beginning of the chapter, you saw God s original pu

rpose for man. God s purpose for man was to glorify God. You see the restorationof man s lost dominion over creation in the tribute money found in the fish s mouth. It was restored in Christ.

There is a touching picture that you see repeated through Matthew. Though always rejected by the nation, He s the one that God had promised. He s the Messiah. He takes that little flock aside and comforts them, assures them and teaches themafter the resurrection and at Pentecost, in His absence, when He sends the Spirit of God on them. He is teaching them things here in Matthew that they ll look back on and understand later. They ll say, Remember that He said this, and therefore we can endure because of what He taught us. They don t understand it all right here in Matthew, but He is teaching them lessons that they can draw on later.

It says of those disciples in Acts 4 that they [the rulers and elders of Israel]took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. They had learned the lessons, and when God the Holy Spirit came, He instructed them and put it all together for them so that they could go on and walk in those truths.

We ll go on to Chapter 18, which is about being a child of the kingdom and not offending the children of the kingdom, in the next lesson.




Matthew 18:1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

Now, these guys were arguing about who would be the greatest, the biggest, the most important; who would be the chief guy in the kingdom of heaven. They were confused about the nature of the kingdom because they want to know who will be the greatest in the kingdom. Each one was thinking, I m going to be up here; you re going to be down there. Which of us is going to be the greatest? They were thinking like most of us think. They had missed the real nature of the witness they were to carry on in the absence of Christ.

They have had to learn some hard lessons in the past few chapters. He had beentelling them about His going away, but they don t fully perceive that yet. It isbecoming evident that He is going to turn the ministry over to them, and they are beginning to get an understanding of the coming kingdom, but they are arguingwho is going to be the greatest in it.

Notice that this contention seems to go on all through this period.

Matthew 20:20 Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons,

Momma is bringing her boys. Momma is always taking care of the boys.

Through the years I ve done a lot of marriage counseling, and I ve married a few couples. Do you know who causes more trouble in a marriage than anybody else? Dare I tell you? The one individual that causes more trouble than anybody else, in most cases maybe not in your case is the mother of the husband. That s a fact.God knew that, so He said that the man is to forsake mother and father; he is to

leave them. That boy s momma wants to be sure he got a good deal. I ve seen thathappen time and time and time again.

So, here comes Momma with her boys. These boys were big enough to take care ofthemselves; they just haven t been assertive enough to suit her.

20 Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him.

She came, worshipping Him and buttering Him up, in order to get something.

21 And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy

kingdom.

He s up at the top, and she wants her sons to be the big guys right next to Him.He takes a minute to talk to them about it.

25 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

He tells them, The Gentiles rule their kingdoms by dictatorship, where one or two



top guys rule and everybody else is in subjection.

26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

Christ s kingdom is not going to be like the Gentiles kingdoms. He is trying to make that clear to them. The standard of greatness is not might and exaltation.The basis of greatness in His kingdom is in Verse 27:

27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, andto give his life a ransom for many.

Back in Chapter 18:1, they didn t understand what constituted greatness in the kingdom of heaven. They thought it was going to be like one of the Gentile kingdoms. They misunderstood the nature of the witness they were to have in the world.

So, in Verses 2 and 3 and following, Christ gives them an illustration. (Thereis indication, if you compare the other gospel accounts, they may have been in Peter s house. Perhaps He called one of Peter s children to Him. Anyway, He is going to use an illustration here to explain the character of the testimony these men are going to bear.)

Matthew 18:2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it werebetter for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

The point is very clear: the little child is a humble, simple person, someone who just believes.

Except ye be converted [changed over] You understand what a convertible is, don tyou? That s a car with a top that can be folded back or removed. You can changeit over. That is what the word convert means. Your thinking has to be changedto that of a little child. If you don t change your way of thinking, you will never enter into to the kingdom of heaven. The spirit that is becoming to the followers of the rejected Lord is that of a little child.

4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Don t miss the point of His illustration about the little child. Why did He choose a little child? You ask, Who does the little child represent? Well, there s a sp

ecial reason why He talks about the little child and the little children.

Luke 12:31 But rather seek ye the kingdom of God;

In other words, don t seek all these other things like the Gentiles do, but seek God s kingdom first.

and all these things shall be added unto you.32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.



The little flock is going to get the kingdom. The little child (Matthew 18) will get the kingdom. Do you see the comparison there?

Christ was talking to His apostles in the upper room the night before He was crucified, and notice what He calls them in the first two words of this verse in John:

John 13:33 Little children,

So when I come to Matthew 18, I don t have any problem understanding who is represented by the little child and the little ones. The little child in Matthew 18 represents that little flock. It represents the believing remnant within the apostate, unbelieving nation. The little flock that true nation, the true children of God omits the bigger nation.

Notice the mental attitude that they will have.

Matthew 18:4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, in the kingdom of heaven, the attitude of the little flock is to be one of humility. That s their becoming garb.

Old Bob Jones used to say, Humility is truth s most becoming garb. That means thatthe most becoming dress deportment and mental attitude that truth can have is humility. Folks, when you profess the truth, you are not professing something that is innate within you. You are professing something that God gave you. If you have the truth, it didn t come from you; it came from God. If you have an ability to perceive truth, it comes from God, not from you.

People who are stuck on their own mental ability and their own greatness never rely on the Lord.

Luke 10:20 is a scripture I hope you never forget. Every believer needs to know this verse because it is the key to understanding the word and will of God in any age.

Luke 10:20 Notwithstanding in this rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.

In other words, don t rejoice because of the powerful demonstrations you see whenyou zap people and cast out demons, as they could at that time, but rejoice that your name is in the Lamb s book of life.

21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit,

This is the only verse of scripture that I know of where the Bible says that Jesus rejoiced. I am sure that He had many happy times. I don t think He went around poker faced and unhappy all the time. In fact, there are many illustrations in

the gospel accounts of His sense of humor when He dealt with people. He had agreat sense of humor. We see in the word of God that He had a marvelous, biting sarcasm. He has a real sense of humor as He looks at man s feeble efforts to get things done. He knows our frame and understands that we are just dust. He s not some ogre sitting in the heavens with a stick just waiting for some reason to crown you in the back of the head and knock you in the mud. The Lord is not thatway; that isn t His nature, and that isn t His purpose.

But, it is interesting to me to read that the only time it is recorded (that I know of) that Jesus ever rejoiced was on this occasion.



21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.

Do you see who gets His revelation? Look people, child like humility is the first requisite for learning the word and the will of God in any and every age. That is especially true in this kingdom age. Back in the Chronicles, He told them, If my people, which are called by my name, will humble themselves . Peter said,umble yourselves. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

This verse has been referred to several times in Matthew already:

Micah 6:8 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

God s will is not self assertion, which is what these men were exhibiting, but merely childlike humility. Haven t we already seen in Matthew that the little flockdidn t have anything to brag about within themselves? Moses said that they were going to be considered a foolish nation. Paul quotes that passage in Romans 10 and describes that little flock as a foolish nation in the eyes of Israel. To Israel it seemed foolish that this little group of people could ever accomplish the

great purposes of God. That is what is meant here.Matthew 18:4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.

In other words, If you receive the little child, you receive me, as per the instructions He gave them in Matthew 10, including the house that receives you, receives me. It s like the verse over in Matthew 25 that says, as you have done it unto to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me.

6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me,

Offend doesn t mean you ve said something to hurt their feelings; that s not what that is talking about. Offend means they are causing them to sin, as in Corinthians: If meat make my brother to offend. The meaning is that you have hindered the godly edification that God is trying to work in his life. He s talking about causing the man to sin.

6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it werebetter for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

You get the idea that it doesn t go too well for the guy who offends one of theselittle ones. If you receive a little one (one of the least of these my brethren) and treat him well, you ve done it unto me. But, if you offend one of them, you

watch out because I am going to take care of mine.

What He is emphasizing is that God is going to take care of His own people. Just because they are a little child a little flock doesn t mean that they are unimportant. The problem here is that they were looking at things the way the world looks at them. They thought, If we are going to possess the kingdom we are going to have to be a great people, but He tells them, No, you aren t going to be great.

In Acts 4, the leaders of Israel called them ignorant and unlearned men. They sai



elation 11.

Zechariah 4 is where that passage finds its root, and you are reading about thewitness of the remnant in the tribulation.

Zechariah 4:6 Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.

That s exactly what those disciples had forgotten over there in Matthew.

7 Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain:and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.8 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,9 The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me untoyou.10 For who hath despised the day of small things [the little flock]? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.

The idea is that the little group will win the victory when they go into the Kin

gdom. That s the analogy here of the little flock and the little children. Again, it has to do with His second coming and the Kingdom.

Matthew 18:7 Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be thatoffences come;

Listen, people, it is a natural consequence of living in a fallen creation thatthere s going to be trouble. You might as well know it. They have to understandthat.

Romans 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

Until that kingdom comes there will be problems, but that is no excuse for the people who cause the problems.

Matthew 18:7 but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!

In Matthew 26:24, that man by whom the offense comes is identified as Judas Iscariot, but in this passage it probably has a little wider application.

8 Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.9 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be c

ast into hell fire.

That passage is reminiscent of what we read back in Chapter 5 when we studied the Sermon on the Mount. It is kingdom teaching.

Matthew 5:29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy



whole body should be cast into hell.

That fire is associated with the second advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Mark 9:43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Matthew 18:8 says to be cast into everlasting fire. The definition of everlasting fire, in Mark 9:43, is the fire that never shall be quenched.

If somebody gives you the explanation about gehenna, the Greek word, not meaning eternal but a fire that continues for a time and finally ends, well then, you bring them over here to Mark 9 and show them Verses 43, 45, and 48, where it says the fire never can be quenched. That is everlasting burning. That is eternaldamnation; that s hell.

I am not going to go over that passage now because the details are on those tapes, Eternal Judgment. If you haven t heard those tapes on Eternal Judgment, you need to listen to them because there are too many details to go over in this lesson.

When Jesus Christ comes back to earth at His second advent in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, He sets on fire a location south of the De

ad Sea. That fire melts through the earth down into the lowest hell, and in the millennial kingdom a shaft is opened down into hell. There is a door into hell with gates, bars and locks. That passage is located in Palestine, south of the Dead Sea. You can t see it because it is a spiritual, not a physical, location.

The earth covers it now, but at His second coming the fire that Jesus Christ comes with will melt the earth there with molten lava and burn out that opening down into hell.

In the millennial kingdom rebels will be executed instantly. There won t be a long process of judgment, but sinners will be executed immediately and cast into hell. That is what the passage means about being cast into everlasting fire. They ll be pitched right into it like garbage.

When the nations of the earth go up to worship before the Lord in the millennium, Isaiah 66 says they can go out there and look on the carcasses of those people and see that monument of the everlasting burning of the wrath of God against sin. God s attitude toward sin is plainly demonstrated in that everlasting burning. At the end of the millennium that place, called gehenna, is cast into the lake of fire. When you hear somebody telling you about gehenna being the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, remember that it represents the garbage dump of the universe for the souls of the damned of the ages.

That is what He is referring to here. It is going to be tough for the man who causes offenses because that man is going to be cast out into hell, everlasting burning. God is going to see to the judgment.

Matthew 18:10 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones;

If you told me that I was going to despise one of these little ones, that you were going to burn me to a fare thee well, and then you said, Take heed, that s a pretty good warning, isn t it? It s pretty good advice.

10 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones;

Notice in the passage the element of salvation based on faith plus works. In other words, the way you are saved from that everlasting burning is, if the hand o



ffends you, cut it off. He is speaking figuratively; He is not talking about self mutilation.

The passage in Matthew says, If your eye offends you, pluck it out. He is speaking figuratively and saying that it is better to do without an eye than it is to be cast into hell. Of course, some people don t want to admit that this is a figure of speech, but hell is not a figure of speech.

Imagine someone saying, Cut off your hand so you won t be cast off into a figure of speech. That doesn t make a whole lot of sense. You want to take it in the natural sense of what the words mean. He isn t talking about mutilating yourself but He means absolute self denial.

In that kingdom program, salvation is on the basis of faith plus works. You ask, How do men get a right standing before God on the basis of their works? Well, they can t. In the kingdom program, salvation does not mean what we mean today.

Matthew 18:11 For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

In the kingdom program, salvation has to do with their entering into a literal,physical, visible, earthly, Davidic kingdom, headed up at Jerusalem. So for them, salvation is not just gaining spiritual blessings there are spiritual blessings like forgiveness and light but earthly and material blessings too. Salvation in the kingdom program is not simply right standing before God;?? it is that

? and it is always gained on the basis of faith. But, the salvation package inthe kingdom program also contains a lot of physical blessings, and they are entered into on the basis of some works that are necessary to accomplish those physical results.

Now, today our salvation doesn t contain physical promises for this life. When it does take on a physical aspect, it will be at the rapture when we get a new, glorified body. But you see, God is going to have to give you that body because all the things we are going to inherit out there are things we can t enter into now. We have to have a new body to get up there to heavenly places. If they tookyour earthly body out there about fifteen or twenty miles beyond the edge of space, it would just implode. You need a new body to go out there. In order to gain our inheritance out there in heavenly places, we have to have a new body, a s

piritual body. Therefore, our blessings are spiritual today.Our inheritance is quite different from that of the little flock s. Our salvation package is different and the basis of it all is different. The programs are different, and if you don t rightly divide the word and keep the two programs separate, you wind up in absolute confusion.

10 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you,That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.11 For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

Now, Verse 10 is a real strange verse. If you want comic relief on a Saturday a

fternoon, just go to the library and read what some of the commentaries say about Verse 10.

When He says, their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven, the commentary writers just strip a gear, buddy. What in the world is He talking about? There is something here that you need to understand about angels.

In the Bible, angels function as representatives of at least five different groups of people. First, there are the children, right here. The little children have an angel that appears for them in heaven.



ll 185,000 people in one evening. That angel really worked for a living! The little flock is protected supernaturally in that tribulation period, and He is saying, You d better not mess with that little flock because the Lord is going to deliver them. I mean; they have guardian angels taking care of them.

Matthew 18:11 For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

You have to understand that today you and I don t have guardian angels. I don t know if you ever wondered about how, in time past, God intervened in people s lives and in the life of the nation Israel. He did it through the corps of angelic representatives that He has in the world. If somebody was in peril, He would deliver him by a supernatural means.

That is not the way God operates today. That supernatural intervention of the angels was for the purpose of delivering Israel into her kingdom.

In your Christian life, you need to operate on the basis of intelligent understanding of how God is working today. You don t want to claim promises that God gave Israel, not us, and then get frustrated when they don t work. You don t want to assume you have a guardian angel hanging around. What do you need with a guardian angel when you have God the Holy Spirit dwelling in your body?

What would a guardian angel do for you just keep you alive down here a littlelonger? What kind of benefit would that be for you? I ve said before that at the

rapture, the Lord is going to have to jerk some Christian people twice to get them off the ground because they have their roots sunk in so deep. At that day,you ll find that all these things that seem so important now are just going to dissolve away.

We have different promises than were given to the little flock, and ours are far better.

MATTHEW 203 4

(Part 2, Lesson 4)

Our Father, we thank you for your word and pray that you would give us wisdom and insight into it. May we clearly see the things that are here in this passage. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Matthew 18. In the last lesson, we got down through Verse 10 and we finished by talking about angels and how they provide the supernatural protection and intervention that God is going to give the little flock, that little group of believers in Israel, during the time of offense in the tribulation period.

In Verses 11 14, He gives an illustration of how it is that God s intention is toprotect those people and how Christ will see to that.

Matthew 18:11 For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.12 How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?13 And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.



14 Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.

Christ has come to carry out the Father s will. The Father s will is that the littlest one out there not be lost.

You know the story of the ninety and nine and the one. You know the same parable with the same content in Luke 15. We have a song:

The ninety nine within the foldAre safe from fears and storms of night,But one is on the mountains cold,'Twill perish there how sad the sight!Refrain:Go search it out and bring it home,No more in darkness let it roam;You ll find it there in dreadful plight,Oh! go and bring it back tonight.

The idea is that the one is lost out there.

To understand the analogy of the parable, come back to Chapter 9.

Matthew 9:12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole n

eed not a physician, but they that are sick.Who needs the physician? A healthy man? No. You aren t going to pay for his time off if he isn t sick, are you? If you are sick, then you want the doctor, and you appreciate the fact that he is on the job.

13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

In other words, the nation Israel looked upon themselves as being well, having no problem as to being righteous. They were the ninety and nine who considered themselves safe in the fold. Jesus came to save, not the ninety and nine peoplewho thought they were safe and didn t want a saviour. A guy in the swimming pool

who can swim doesn t want to be saved.A friend of mine once was sitting out by a motel swimming pool. Two truck drivers drove in to the motel, got rooms and went out to the pool. One guy jumped into the deep end of the pool, swimming and splashing around and kept calling hisfriend to come in. The water s wonderful. Finally, his friend ran out there and leaped into the deep end of the swimming pool, and he sank right to the bottom. He came up screaming at the top of his lungs, Help! The dude couldn t swim. How dumb it was to jump into the deep end when he knew he couldn t swim.

A friend of mine jumped in and dragged that guy out of the swimming pool. Whenhe got him out he asked him, Mister, are you saved? The guy said, I m a Catholic. l, if I did a dumb thing like you just did, I d sure want to know I was saved.

My point is that the fellow who knew how to swim could take care of himself andhe didn t scream for help. It was the guy who was in over his head and couldn t swim that needed somebody to come and help him. He needed a saviour.

That s the idea here in the parable. If you aren t sick, you don t need a doctor. Ifyou are not a sinner, you don t need someone to call you to repentance. If you are not lost, you don t need a Saviour. Christ came to save the lost.

I said to you before that you ll never get saved until you get lost. The problem



in religion is that people think they are righteous. Righteous people don t think they need a Saviour. They trust themselves to work their righteousness. But when you know you are lost, well, that s a different story.

Do you want to know how small that Little Flock was? The ratio He gives was one out of a hundred, one percent.

Come with me to two passages. Get Luke 19 and Ezekiel 34. He says, For the Sonof man is come to save that which was lost. Notice the comparative passage in Luke 19:9 and 10 very carefully. Zacchaeus had climbed up a sycamore tree for to see, and the Lord said, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house.

Luke 19:9 And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.

Do you see why salvation came to his house? It was because the Son of man, whowas going to bring Abraham s blessings, had shown up and this man is a son of Abraham.

10 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

For all my years in the ministry I have heard this verse used as a salvation verse. It was our theme in rescue mission work. I began my ministry in a rescue m

ission, and our theme was The Least, the Last and the Lost, and we d quote that verse over and over, but I never heard anybody quote its context: This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.

He came to seek and save the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10, 15,Luke 13, 19), so what you have in Matthew and Luke is Christ s coming to save that believing remnant in Israel.

There are some tremendous events recorded in the prophecy of Ezekiel 34, 35 and36. In Chapter 37, you see the national re gathering and restoration of Israel

the two kingdoms becoming one. In Chapters 38 and 39, you see the battle of Gog and Magog at the second advent of Jesus Christ. Then, in Chapters 40 48, you have the description of the millennial temple and the kingdom the worship of

God and the reign of Christ in the millennium. So, you are in a second coming setting.

Ezekiel 34:11 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both searchmy sheep, and seek them out.12 As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of allplaces where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.13 And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.

God is going to re gather the nation Israel back into their homeland and plant t

hem once again in Palestine.

15 I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord GOD. 16 I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.17 And as for you, O my flock [that little flock],

26 there shall be showers of blessing.



We sing that song, too. (For some reason, I am on a song jag.) We sing:

There shall be showers of blessing: This is the promise of love; There shall beseasons refreshing, Sent from the Savior above. Showers of blessing, Showers ofblessing we need: Mercy drops round us are falling, But for the showers we plead.

The showers of blessing in the song refers to Acts 3:19, where Peter talks about the times of refreshing that shall come from the presence of the Lord.

In Chapter 18, where it says the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost, it is referring to Christ as the Great Shepherd.

There are three aspects of Christ as the shepherd in Psalms. Christ is depicted in three ways: In John 10, He says the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep, and in Psalm 22, you see Him as the good Shepherd laying down His life for the sheep.

In Psalm 23, you are reminded of the great Shepherd who is raised from the dead(Hebrews 13). Then, in Psalm 24, you are reminded of the chief Shepherd who isover the flock. That s found in 1 Peter 5.

In Psalm 22, you have the good Shepherd, Christ crucified, laying down His life

for the sheep.In Psalm 23, you see the congregation under the watch care of the great Shepherd.

In Psalm 24, you have the second coming of Christ, the chief Shepherd leading among His people.

Christ is the Shepherd in all three offices: Prophet, Priest and King. In all of those positions, He is Israel s Shepherd, gathering His fold together.

The Bible refers to Israel repeatedly as sheep. In fact, Gentiles are never called sheep. The only possible exception is in Matthew 25, and there the Gentiles ha

ve come and joined themselves to Israel, and thus are identified with the sheepinstead of the goat nations.

Matthew 18:13 And if so be that he find it [that one out of a hundred], verilyI say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.

That describes His joy over the salvation of the little flock. Verse 14 is important:


In the last lesson, we talked about the importance of that expression little ones. He was talking about the little children, but He was also referring to that little flock. We mentioned the possibility that Christ was in Peter s home at thattime. You see that in the comparative passages. He takes up a little child and uses the child to illustrate God s working with the little remnant.


2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count sla



ckness; but is longsuffering to us ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

In other words, the will of the Father is that these people be saved. The reference is to the Little Flock but also to the little children. He is talking about the little children, and what is true of them is true of the Little Flock. This is a very important verse regarding the age of accountability and the salvation of children.

When He says, It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish, He is saying that it is God s will for that littlechild to be saved.

There is an issue of the age of accountability for children in the Bible. (This is an aside from the doctrine of Matthew, but it is something that you should be familiar with.) We live in an age when the death of children is wholesale. I tell you, folks, one of the most disgraceful things that has happened in our national history is the wholesale slaughter that is taking place right now to little innocent, unborn babies. They are humans and they have a soul and life. Anybody who knows anything about the biological process of conception and birth knows that. Anybody who knows anything about the Bible knows when life begins.

Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee,

If there wasn t a person there, He couldn t do those things. Scripture after scripture identifies that unborn child as a person. The only difference is the stageof his development. The only difference between when you were a newborn baby and the adult that you are now is development, isn t it? As you keep developing, your old body is going to wear out. You go through the spring and summer of life, then into the autumn of life and then winter. The only difference between that little child an hour after it is born and an hour before it is born is its place of residence, where it lives.

The wholesale murder of the millions of babies that are being killed today has brought about an interest in the issue of infant death: What happens to babies when they die? There are a lot of different ideas about that.

Some say, God chose the elect babies before the foundation of the world so that they are saved and the non elect babies are lost. That means that you have absolutely no choice in your salvation. Then why would He tell you to believe, if your faith isn t involved in your salvation? You can t save yourself. God initiates the process: He sent His Son; He sent the word of God; He sent the gospel message and the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to you. But folks, if it is by grace are ye saved through faith, and that baby can t believe, the issue isn t quite that cut and dried.

Some people say, Well, they are just all lost. Some say, No, they re all saved. Te are a lot of different ideas. What s the answer?

The answer is to see that God recognizes a point at which a person becomes accountable. Babies have a sin nature, but they are sinners by birth and not by choice. In other words, the knowledge of right and wrong and personal accountability is not yet there. Up until that point God doesn t impute their sin to them.

Romans 5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Sin was present, but it wasn t known to be sin because the law had not been given; therefore, it was not imputed to them. Nevertheless, death reigned. They were



sinners, so they died. Why do you die? The natural consequences of sin are that you get sick and die. You die because of sin, but there is a period in lifewhen you are not accountable, and God in His justice doesn t impute that sin, He doesn t mark it down. He doesn t hold it against you until there is a knowledge of sin.

Romans 4:15 Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.

That s why, in Chapter 3:21, it says, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Romans 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

In other words, there comes a point in the life of an individual, who previously didn t know right from wrong, when he does know and has reached the age of accountability. Prior to coming to that understanding, that person is not held accountable for his sin. Christ died for his sin and so God is free (because of Calvary) to save those whom He chooses to save. Because of Christ s death on Calvary,God is free to save the one who believes, and God is also free, through Calvary, to save the one who has not come to accountability yet.

Let me give you an actual illustration of some people who are said not to have come to the age of accountability. (Some people say the age of accountability is

twelve; others say eight.)You know the story. Moses is recounting how Israel came up out of Kadesh Barnea, and spies were sent into the land and came back with a report. Then the people said, No, we won t go in because of the spies report, so they wander in the wilderness.

Deuteronomy 1:39 Moreover your little ones [compare that with the little ones inMatthew 18], which ye said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it.

Now, look here: it says they had no knowledge of good and evil. Where in the Bibl

e did you ever read a phrase like that before? Didn t God tell Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? He said that if they eat of that tree and gain the knowledge of good and evil, then they would die.

These weren t just little kids (some were upwards of nineteen years old) who didn tknow good and evil. They were in the same condition regarding the knowledge ofsin that Adam and Eve were in the garden. We call that innocence. In comparing Deuteronomy 1:39 with Genesis 3:1 3, the indication is that the same terminology is used to describe these little ones here that describe Adam and Eve before the fall.

Adam and Eve had no knowledge of sin and then they gained a personal knowledge of good and evil and became sinners; just so there is a time in a little child s li

fe when he has no knowledge of the difference between good and evil.

Isaiah 7:16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose thegood, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.

Clearly, there is a point before which the child doesn t know, isn t accountable and has not reached the place of making that personal choice between good and evil.

You have to remember that and work within that time frame.



and is no comfort to them.

And again, people, you folks are exposed to truth about that and sometimes the light of the truth sort of makes you feel that everybody walks in the understanding of that, but people don t know those things. You need to be equipped to be able to share that truth.

Matthew 18:15 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tellhim his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.16 But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.18 Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.19 Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is inheaven.20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

He has been talking to them about offenses and problems. He is going to demonstrate in this passage how that Little Flock should handle problems and offenses t

hat arise in their own midst. Verses 15 18 are very clear: If a brother trespass against thee. In Matthew 5, it says, If you have done something against somebody or if he has done something against you, either way, you are to put your gift down and go to your brother and get it straightened out.

If your brother has done something against you, you go and get it straightened out. Don t you sit in the corner and complain. You have a responsibility before God and you are out of the will of God if you don t go to that person who has trespassed against you. We would rather sit in a corner and fuss and feel sorry forourselves and lick our wounds rather than go do that. But God says that you have a responsibility to go and if you don t, you are disobedient. You are as disobedient to God as the man was offensive to you.

Now, this is the kingdom program but you understand how that doctrine in the kingdom program can fit you too, don t you? You see that it isn t such bad advice foryou. In fact, if you d read Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3, you would see that is exactly the same kind of advice that Paul gives. The ethics of the Sermon on the Mount and these passages are taken under grace and remember how I showed you a few weeks ago that under grace you do good works like you do under the law. You just do them for a different reason. In many cases the good works are exactly the same, especially the ethics content, but you do them for a different reason.

Now, this is the prescribed way to handle a problem. First, you go to the guy and confront him with it and explain to him what you did wrong and you try to iron the thing out. If he will pay attention to you, you have gained a friend. If

he won t, then you get some witnesses, other brothers, and take them with you and go back the second time. Then if he won t respond to that, then you take it to the church, to the assembly, to the body of believers. Then if he won t respond to the discipline of the assembly, you re to say, This guy s problem is that he is a heathen.

Matthew 18:17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.



You just treat him as a lost man. What were they supposed to do with a heathen? Excommunicate the guy. Get him out because he isn t responsive.

Now, this isn t given as policy for the local church today. It s a kingdom programkind of thing. There are some stipulations He gives you to make that work thatare unavailable for us today but it is still good practical advice as a way of going about to do things.

Matthew 18:18 Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

What is that a reference to in the context? Is that a reference to taking up an offering? There was a guy the other day on TV who said, I am praying that God will loose your pocketbooks. Is that talking about buying demons and keeping them away from your car so it will run so you will go on your journey the way you want to go?

Just the other day, a lady said, Pray for me, Brother Rick, I am binding the demons away from my automobile. Is that what that verse is talking about? It s what preachers say. No, the context of the verse is discipline in the assembly. Thecontext is about the church having to make decisions about problems among the members.

Christ says, Whatever decision you come to is official. If you bind it or you loose it, whatever you do, the decision you come to in the controversy is an official decision. I am giving you authority to act for heaven in my absence. He s fixing to go away and they are given authority to act officially for Him while He isn t there.

19 Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is inheaven.20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

He is going away and yet He is going to be in the midst of them in the person of

the Holy Spirit. He is going to bear testimony to that.Mr. O Hair used to say, Where two or three are gathered together, take up an offering.

That isn t what Christ is talking about. People say, Well, where there are two orthree gathered together, He is in our midst. People! He is in you all the time! Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. You don t have to have two or three to get together. The idea of two or three is the number to have a quorum.No official board or committee can have a meeting without a quorum. In your rulebook you have to have the number that a quorum consists of and that s the statement there. It s the meeting in my name (in my authority). We say, Stop! In the name of the law. That means in the authority of the law. That s the idea there. The qu

orum is two or three gathered together in the authority of Christ.

Verse 18 compares with Mathew 16:19 and John 21:21 23. It demonstrates the apostolic authority that Christ gave to His apostles to bind and loose, to act officially in His absence. Peter is the head and those apostles are His official representatives on the earth. It is a reference to the authority given to these apostles to officially represent Christ during His absence, authority to act in His stead while He is in exile.

I call your attention once again to Galatians 2:1 9, where they use that authori



ty to loose themselves from their post resurrection commission and to bind the gentiles over to Paul. They used their apostolic authority to officially recognize the new dispensation and the new message given to that new apostle, Paul. They use it in other cases too.

What you have there, really, (rather than it being a prayer promise) is that itgets into terrible extremes. People say, If I have two or three people to agreewith me in praying here, I can get whatever God says. You well know that you have seen people do that. You have friends who pray for something good for you and it doesn t come to pass.

I watched Jim Bakker on TV. About a year and a half ago, Tammy Sue was in the hospital. She had a nervous breakdown and couldn t sing. She was out in California for two months in the mental ward getting counseling and therapy. I used to think, Don t you reckon this guy with all these millions of people who love him so much, don t you think there would be at least two or three of them who would pray for his wife? He could do it. And all those dudes sitting in the couch every day, they could do it. They could pray and ask God to get her out of that place.

She came back and sat on the couch and cried. That verse says that if two or three agreed, the Father would do it. Either that verse is wrong or what they are saying about the verse isn t right. The latter is the case.

That whole context is about the way that local church is to function in the time when the tremendous problems and controversies are going to be in their midst a

nd their Lord is going to be in heaven. He sets up that government among His apostles.

In Revelation 1, 2 and 3, He walks in the midst of the candlesticks, in the midst of those churches, and that s how He does it.

Verse 21 is an appropriate one to follow the one that tells how to handle problems.

21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

In other words, How many times am I supposed to let this guy sin against me and forgive him? Seventy times seven. That s four hundred ninety. (People ask, What happens when you get to four hundred ninety one?)

Four hundred ninety does that ring a bell when you study the Bible? How about seven ? If seven rings a bell, four hundred and ninety would ring a bell if you studied numbers in the Bible very much. Numbers are very interesting and especiallywhen associated with Israel. Four hundred and ninety (490) is a number that showup in Israel s calendar over and over and over again. It is an important number in Israel s prophetic clock and calendar.

I am not going over it tonight but you can find the information in Clarence Lark

in s big book, Dispensational Truth, with all those charts and maps. He has an excellent section in there about the different stages of four hundred and ninety year periods during the history of Israel.

From the time that God made the covenant with Abraham until Joshua enters into the land is a period of four hundred and ninety years. From the time of Joshua going in until the time of Saul is four hundred and ninety years. Saul to Nebuchadnezzar is a period of four hundred and ninety years. From the commandment togo back and rebuild Jerusalem to Messiah the Prince and the Seventieth Week of Daniel is four hundred and ninety years. That s the last one.



Those four hundred and ninety year periods are very interesting and instructivewith regard to how Israel s prophetic clock ticks because they identify how they will stop sometimes when God won t count time if certain things are true. Then He ll start counting time again. Those four hundred and ninety years will sometimescover almost a six hundred period of time but God counted only four hundred andninety in there because certain things were true. Israel was out of the land, for example. We don t have time in these classes to go over that but Larkin has that all laid out for you.

Again, I recommend when you study prophecy that you get that book by Larkin because if you will get his book you ll never have to read all these modern books that come out about prophecy. Salem Curbin and The Late Great Planet Earth and allthose books you won t need them because you ll have the book where they get their information. You can t beat it.

From Verse 23 to the end of the chapter, He gives them a parable that demonstrates the principle that He has just given them. When He told Peter to forgive four hundred and ninety times, Peter understood that He wasn t telling him to forgive infinitely. He is talking about the forgiveness in relationship to a period of time and an incident in Israel s prophetic clock and the last four hundred and ninety year period with only seven years left to tick the Seventieth Week of Daniel 9. That seven year period is what is dealt with in this parable.

Matthew 18:23 Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants.24 And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents.25 But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.26 The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.27 Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.28 But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence:

The man owed ten thousand talents (that would be like saying ten thousand dollars for comparison) and he couldn t pay but the master had compassion and forgave him. Now, he goes and finds a servant who owes him a hundred pence (for comparison four pennies). A pence was a portion of a talent.

28 But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.29 And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Havepatience with me, and I will pay thee all.30 And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay thedebt.31 So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came

and told unto their lord all that was done.32 Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me:33 Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as Ihad pity on thee?34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he shouldpay all that was due unto him.

Now, you understand what s going on there. You understand the principle that To whom much is given, much is required. When his big debt was forgiven, he should ha



ve forgiven the little debt.

But, there is more to it than that doctrinally. He says, the kingdom of heaven [is] likened unto . This illustrates what is going on in the Kingdom of Heaven. Israel was so enormously in debt to God that they couldn t pay. How could a nation so blessed as Israel who had violated God s law so thoroughly ever pay the debt?

They couldn t. Then they with wicked hands take their Messiah and hang Him on atree. And, just to throw reason in the face, they nail Him and say Away with Him. Crucify Him! They join hands with the gentiles and they murder their Messiah. As He hangs on that cross, He says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

What do you think the response would be to such wonderful love and forgiveness?Look at early Acts and see what happens to Israel. Rather than being grateful

to God for His forgiveness of such an enormous grievous sin, they crucify theirown Messiah. What do they do? The nation is angry with the Little Flock as they go out and bear testimony to the resurrected Christ. Rather than opening their arms to the Little Flock and falling at their feet in repentance and trustingChrist as their Messiah, they are angry with the Little Flock for receiving mercy from God. You read Acts 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and all the way through Chapter12, and you see a tremendous persecution. They try to strangle the life out ofthe Little Flock.

Thus, God takes the nation and promises to deliver them to the tormentors. Read

Revelation 14 and you will see that exact word as used to describe the great Tribulation.

Matthew 18:35 So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

Do you see how that fits for them doctrinally?

Mr. O Hair has a wonderful poem he wrote about that lady over there in Luke. That little lady had nothing to pay.

Rather than being angry with the one who has forgiven them, Israel should have recognized that God had forgiven them and should have responded in kind, but they

didn t. He warns them and so it comes in the Book of Acts that, when they failed to respond, He delivered Israel to the tormentors.

That tribulation period is that just, deserved response to their unrepentant heart.

Peter, Little Flock, all the way through to the end of that four hundred and ninety years, you d better be forgiving because the torment is the result.

That Little Flock was going to endure to the end of the four hundred and ninetyyear period laid out in Daniel s Seventy Weeks.

So he is to forgive, not seven times, but four hundred and ninety times, enough

to get him all the way through that period of tribulation. Endure to the end and then go into the kingdom.

Our forgiveness today: compare Matthew 18:35 with Chapter 6:14 and 15, the prayer on the Sermon on the Mount, the Our Father prayer (the official prayer of the Roman Catholic Church today).

Matthew 6:9 MatthewOur Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.11 Give us this day our daily bread.



Those are all things the Little Flock will pray in that Tribulation.

Thy kingdom come. They are looking for it.Thy will be done. That s what is going to happen in the kingdom.Give us this day our daily bread. He ll feed them day by day by day in the wilderne

ss.Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That s what the Little Flock does i

n the Tribulation. They forgive. The nation refuses but that those little ones are consistent to the end.

Today, we forgive our brothers who trespass against us too, but for a far different reason. We do it because God for Christ s sake hath forgiven us. (Ephesians 4:32) .

So, there s a difference between the two programs. One the law program, one the grace program and yet the good works are just the same.

I hope you understand. To me, it is a thrill and a fascination to study the Book of Matthew, to see how it fits in the program where it works, not just to tryto pull it out and stick it on us and consequently have verses that don t work, but to see where it fits: how it works wonderfully and perfectly for them and yet to see how gracious and consistent God is ? principles that we can apply even to ourselves.


Matthew 19:1 And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan;2 And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.

Notice that He had finished the sayings He had been giving them in Chapters 16 18. He finished the discourse we have been studying about His rejection and thefact that He was going to the cross. His rejection affected the nature of the testimony that the disciples were to bear during His absence. He was going to goaway and leave the ministry in the hands of the little flock.

When He had finished those sayings, He departed from Galilee. You remember that in Chapter 4:12, He went into Galilee.

Matthew 4:12 Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee;

From this point until Chapter 19:1, His ministry was up in Galilee. Now He is g

oing back down to the area around Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee and south into Judaea beyond Jordan, on the eastern side. Then, a little later, He comes back across Jordan into Jerusalem for the last time. He has already told them that He is going there to die. In Luke, we read that He set His face to go to Jerusalem.

Matthew 19:2 And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.

He continues His healing ministry there.



3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him

Notice the Pharisees reaction to the miracles that He did. The Pharisees used the healings that He performed in Judaea to start a doctrinal argument, and they completely ignored the miracles. That is what these guys have done all along. They didn t have any heart for the people He healed. All they wanted to do was argue cold doctrine, but their doctrine was not Bible truth. The doctrine they were arguing about was opposed to what they were doing.

Matthew 14:36 And besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.

There is a tremendous healing ministry going on there in Gennesaret.

Matthew 15:1 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying,2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?

They try to get into a doctrinal argument with Him. They ignored the miracles and the impact of the miracles, which were the credentials of the Messiah. God taught Israel with signs and wonders. They ignored the teaching ministry God was giving them, with its signs and wonders, and instead introduced a technical argument about traditions. That was the attitude of the Pharisees all the way through Chapter 15.

At the end of the chapter, there is the feeding of the five thousand, and in Verse 37, we re told:

37 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full.38 And they that did eat were four thousand men,

Matthew 16:1 The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven.

They want to argue. What I am trying to show you is that the heart attitude of the Pharisees was not a willingness to hear and see and understand what was going

on. They wanted to promote their religious system, so they just try to argue.

So, in Matthew 19:3, they raise the question of divorce.

3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

They are testing tempting Him. They are trying to get Him to make a mistake.They are trying to get Him to say something that is wrong.

The devil s attempt all down through the ages has been to get God to break one word in His book. If God Almighty tripped Himself up one time, the devil would hav

e been successful. That s the reason the Bible is so important. It is so necessary that you understand that it is God s word and is not full of mistakes. It is not just vague little homilies and messages but it is the sure word of God. It is what God said and it is exact. People, if there were some mistakes in it, itwould not be true. If something is not true, what do you call that? It s a lie. Who is the father of lies? It is the devil. If God Almighty lied, He d have to get off the throne and let the devil sit on the throne. He would be subject to the devil.

So, the devil s attempt down through the ages has been to try to get people balled



People have been reading what Moses wrote in Genesis 1 5, for about 3,500 years, and do you know that nobody has had to revise that one time. People say, The Bible is not a science textbook. Well, I know it doesn t give you the formula for water but when it speaks about things related to science and history, you d better believe it because it s right. You don t have to worry about it. You can read it and know where you came from.

Matthew 19:4 that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain [two] shall be one flesh?

Notice it carefully: the two are to become one flesh:

6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

He is describing Adam and Eve and the first marriage. God made Adam and then Eve, his helpmeet. The Pharisees are asking, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? Christ said, Didn t you read your Bible? Don t you know what God says about marriage? In the beginning when God made man and gave him Eve as a wife and joined them together, that was the standard for marriage, not the way sinful man corrupted it later on, but that is the standard.

Somebody has called marriage a creation institution; that is, it was instituted by God at creation and that s true. There are four divine institutions that God has established for the perpetuation, the propagation and the protection of the human race. They are the issue in Genesis 1 11. Those first eleven chapters in the Book of Genesis cover two thousand years of human history. (From Genesis 12 50 is not even two thousand years. It is just a few hundred years.) From Genesis to Malachi covers only about two thousand years.

Those first eleven chapters of Genesis identify and explain those four divine institutions for the establishment and perpetuation of the human race. We ve talked about those four institutions before.

Number 1: the basic one is the issue of volition. The fact is that Adam was cr

eated with volition, with the personal ability to choose his own destiny and the responsibility to do so. Eve was also created that way. Genesis 1, 2 and 3 demonstrate the issue of volition. In fact, that is demonstrated all through theBible. That is the most basic issue in establishing the race. Mankind could never be perpetuated without volition.

Number 2 is marriage and that is what we are dealing with here. Two people exercise volition when they choose to join in a covenant of companionship for life.They choose to be husband and wife. Marriage is for the protection of the third institution.

Number 3 is the family. Volition is the basis of marriage, and marriage is thebasis of the family. I choose to commit myself to this relationship. I choose t

he commitment.

Somebody said, regarding Hollywood, soap opera type trial marriages, We may choose to do it later but we do not choose to do it now. It will be good for us at another time. That s baloney. That is not what marriage is. Marriage is when thetwo become one. It s a lifetime commitment that you make up front, but it s a commitment for life.

If you go down and buy an automobile and promise to make payments of $350 a month for sixty months, you have made a commitment. If you make these payments for



fourteen months and then decide, I don t think I want to make these payments any more, what do you reckon is going to happen to you? Is the dealer going to say, Okay, forget it; just keep the car. ? You know better than that. They are going tocome get the car, keep your money and maybe put you in jail.

I knew a man who quit making payments on his car, and they didn t just get his car, they got a court judgment to attach that man s home. They were going to try tosell his house for the $11,000 that he owed. He had an $80,000 house, and theywere just going after the $11,000. (By the way, he wrecked the car and that iswhy they didn t go after the car, but they came and got what was left of it and took it away.)

You understand about commitment and responsibility. It is the same about marriage. Marriage is for the protection of the family. The family is the basic building block of society. A stable marriage produces a stable family, and the family produces a stable society.

Number 4 is nationalism, which is built on the family. When internationalism takes over, you ve moved into Genesis 11 and outside the framework that God established. Internationalism is designed to destroy nationalism; it produces chaos and it will wind up with the antichrist in the Book of Revelation.

Those are the four institutions. Marriage is basic in the divine institutions for the establishment of the human race.

My friend, when you weaken and destroy the divine principles for marriage, you are not giving people freedom; you are putting chains around their neck. You are not liberating people when you tell them, You can be free and sophisticated andlive any way you want to live. What that does is destroy the foundation upon which society is to be built. You notice that when a dictator comes in and takes over, he stops people s promiscuous ways. Do you know that?

You go over to Saigon and see what the Communists did when they took over. Youcan go to Russia or to Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Albania or Yugoslavia and see what they do to people. They say, We don t tolerate this kind of stuff. People are shot if they do some of those things. They aren t going to change human nature, but they prohibit those deviations. They curb them and they sto

p them because they know that if there is going to be an orderly maintenance ofsociety, it can t be that way.

Marriage is the very basic, foundational block in the perpetuation of the humanrace. When Christ is talking about it here, He goes back to that divine institution. By the way, those four divine institutions are perpetuated all through human history. Those things are trans dispensational; they last through all the dispensations. They are adjusted and they function differently, perhaps, under the different laws of the dispensation but they start in the beginning and go all the way through.

Matthew 19:6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

They are no more twain, but one flesh. That expression one flesh describes what the Bible calls marriage. If you want God s definition for marriage, there are no longer two but one flesh. One flesh is the definition of what therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.

Notice how that came about:

Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.



God perceived that man needed a companion.

19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to everybeast of the field

Have you ever wondered why God brought those beasts before Adam? Adam, you study these animals and consider their lifestyle. You ve seen those Sunday School pictures showing Adam sitting on a stump and God on the other side. A giraffe goes by and Adam says, Hmm, that s a giraffe, so now it s a giraffe. A bear goes by and Adam says, Hmm, that s a bear. That isn t how it happened, you see. Adam didn t just gave them any name that popped into his head when they walked by him.

It says that whatever Adam called them were their names thereof. He gave them names that reflected what each animal was, and the name stuck.

Adam spent the time necessary to study the characteristics, lifestyles and mannerisms of these animals, and he gave them names that matched their nature and character. It took him considerable time and the result was that Adam realized there was not found a helpmeet for him.

God showed Adam the creation around him and as Adam observed their lifestyle hesaw that there was a male animal and a female animal and that they paired off and mated and then they would have families offspring, progeny. Then they would begin to form into groups herds, prides and flocks. They began to have a social order. Adam looked at all that, but he didn t see anyone for him. God used that experience in Adam s life to develop in him a sense of loneliness, a sense of incompleteness, but then God made Adam complete because when God made the woman, He took her out of Adam.

Genesis 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept (in essence he died): and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and bro

ught her unto the man.That must have been quite a sight. Made He a woman. In the margin it says that the Lord built her.

Guys stand out on the street corner and see a woman go by, and they ll say, Boy, she s really built. Jesus said, Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall giveaccount thereof in the day of judgment. They re quoting from the scripture and don t even know it.

God stacked her all up there and brought her to Adam, and Adam said, Wow! Wherehave you been all my life? You re the only girl in the world for me! And she was.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. [Moses comment]

The point is that the woman was taken out of the man, and in marriage the oneness is re established.

Somebody has described marriage as a covenant of loving and intimate companionshi



p for life. I don t know how good a term covenant is, but I know that an intimate and loving companionship for life is certainly right.

There is a popular viewpoint about marriage, but as far as the Bible is concerned, marriage is not the ceremony that takes place when you stand in front of a preacher or a justice of the peace and say, I do.

Marriage in the Bible is when the two become one flesh. It has to do with a physical relationship that is the ultimate expression of that mutual self giving and submission in marriage. That physical relationship is considered to be so important, the two becoming one flesh, that that is considered to be marriage.

1 Corinthians 6 may be one of the most startling passages in Paul s epistles. I have struggled with this for years. I know what the verses say but it s the ramifications that I struggle with. I look around me and think that if that is true,and there is no doubt in my mind that it is, We are in a mess. I don t know what you do with a verse like this. I know what it says.

1 Corinthians 6:16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

The idea is that when a man is joined to a harlot, he was doing the thing that makes marriage, marriage. Now, that is startling.

Some people think that marriage is a ceremony. It isn t exactly that easy. I amnot discounting the ceremony, but I am saying that marriage is more than the ceremony. Marriage is a commitment between two people, but it is more than that.

Today there are a lot of people talking about how to have a happy marriage, butthey don t have the slightest idea what marriage is in this Bible. Most of what they say is about how to manipulate and connive to get your own way, just to getsome satisfaction for yourself out of a given situation. They tell you how to connive to get your own way so you can satisfy the lusts of your flesh. That s what most of that advise is about, but that hasn t anything at all to do with what the Bible says about marriage.

In Matthew, Christ said that the standard for marriage is in Genesis 2, so if you want to know what marriage is, look back there.

Marriage is the two becoming one flesh. The old Catholic idea about how you get married is to go stand in front of a priest or preacher and say, I do. So the way you get unmarried is to go stand in front of somebody and say, I don t, any more.

That won t do.

Genesis 16:3 And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abramto be his wife.

Do you reckon they had a ceremony there? I don t think they did. I don t expect Sa

rah said, Let s go have a wedding ceremony, and you marry Hagar.

4 And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived:

You understand how he took her to be his wife, don t you?

Isaiah 54:1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child [reference to Sarah] formore are the children of the desolate [Sarah] than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD.



God says that Hagar was Abraham s married wife. The way the marriage took place didn t have anything to do with standing in front of a preacher. They were married by virtue of the physical relationship.

You remember the story of Jacob who wanted to marry Rachel. But, before he wasmarried to Rachel, he got Leah.

Genesis 29:21 And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife,

She was already his espoused wife, already committed to him.

21 And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, thatI may go in unto her.22 And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast.23 And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in unto her.24 And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for an handmaid.25 And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?

There weren t any I do s there. There weren t any will you s or yes, I will s. ot tricked.

26 And Laban said, It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.

28 And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week: and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also.

Also indicates that Jacob has two wives. You see, marriage in the Bible is a little different than it is in modern books. Marriage is a very serious proposition. Marriage is the commitment of a man and a woman to one another to live in anintimate and loving relationship, and the ultimate expression of that intimacy is the thing that makes marriage, marriage, in the Bible. It s the two becoming one flesh.

When Jesus was asked about marriage, Is it right to put your wife away for any reason? He said, Wait a minute, guys, don t you remember what marriage really is? Marriage is what God has joined together, and God says that what He has joined together, let not man put asunder.

Now, you realize in modern America, there are a lot of men and a lot of women who stood only one time before a preacher or priest and they will tell you, I ve only been married once and yet as far as God is concerned some of them have been married many times. You will want to impress upon people the importance of what makes marriage, marriage. If you don t communicate it to them, they may go out andget themselves all balled up in a complicated life of sin, and sin does complicate things, doesn t it? Sin will wreck their lives if they try to live in a way th

at will never work. It s a serious responsibility.

Matthew 19:6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together , let not man put asunder.

God s definition of marriage is that what He has joined together, don t let anybodyput asunder.

They are setting Him up here:



7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

Then what did Moses mean in Deuteronomy 24, when he said you could give her a writing of divorcement and send her away?

8 He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

Notice the change of words there. In Verse 7, they say, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

Jesus says to them, You haven t read that verse, have you? Moses didn t command you,he just allowed you to do it. He was just regulating your sinful activities; He wasn t saying it was what you ought to do. Moses wasn t saying this was the way that marriage ought to work.

Christ was saying, You people are just making a mockery of this institution, so He stepped in and regulated their sinful activity, but he was not recommending it. Under the law program, because of the hardness of their heart and their rebellion, God set up a way out for them; otherwise, they d all have been killed. Godwas gracious to them under the law program and gave them a way out that they had to have because of their rebellion and their refusal of the way He had established marriage to function.

Verse 7, Moses said . . .

Verse 9, And I say. . .

Contrast that with Chapter 5.

Matthew 5:31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: [That s what the law said.]32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Do you see the contrast? Verse 31 was the regulation under the law of Moses. But now, under the kingdom program, I am saying.

Do you remember, when we studied Chapter 5, He told them, It hath been said by them of old time but I say unto you ? The difference was between the regulations under the old Mosaic covenant and those of the new covenant, the kingdom program that Christ was preaching.

Luke 16:16 The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.

The kingdom of God is now the issue. There was a different set of regulations under the law. Do you see the dispensational change in the instructions?

From Adam to Moses divorce was not allowed. What God had joined together, let no man put asunder; that was the regulation. Then, from Moses to Christ, there was the provision to get a writing of divorcement and God allowed it. It wasn t His will, but He allowed it in order to regulate their sinful activity. But here sthe third set of instructions pertaining to the kingdom program:

Matthew 19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.



It is interesting to compare this verse with the ones in Mark and Luke because they don t list the exception. Matthew 5 and Matthew 19 give what is generally called the exception clause, which is the one exception to the prohibition of divorce. They were forbidden to divorce and remarry except in the case of fornication.

By the way, do you understand the difference between fornication and adultery?In our modern English, they are often considered synonymous.

Adultery is when people who are already married have sexual relations with somebody else. In the dictionary, fornication is committed by people who are not married having sexual relations.

In the Bible, adultery is just what you know it to be, and fornication is not just committed by people who are not married. The Bible meaning of the word fornication is derived from the word pornography. It is repeated adultery. In other words, it is not just one act of adultery, but it is adultery repeated over and over, as in 2 Peter:

2 Peter 2:14 Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin;

It is that constant giving of self to it that s fornication. It s a completely illicit lifestyle.

Why would there be an exception clause in Matthew? Let me show you a couple ofinteresting verses. When Christ gave the regulations with regard to the kingdom program, He gave this exception which reflects exactly the dispensational dealings of God with Israel in the kingdom. Just as under the law God made allowance for divorce for the hardness, rebellion and sinfulness of the people, so underthe kingdom program, He makes allowance for divorce for the reason of unfaithfulness in marriage. This illustrates the broad dispensational dealing of God with Israel.

Jeremiah 3:7 And I said after she [the northern ten tribes] had done all thesethings, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.

Why did God say He divorced Israel? For her spiritual adultery, her going after other gods and playing the harlot; that is, for her spiritual unfaithfulness to Him, God had divorced Israel and had sent the northern ten tribes away into captivity.

Isaiah 50:1 Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you?Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.

He is saying, I didn t cause it; she did it. The reason for the divorce was not mine. I didn t find someone else that I loved, but Israel was unfaithful to me andwent off into spiritual adultery. I was finally forced to write her a bill of divorcement and send her away. So, God and Israel were estranged. God had divorced Israel because of her spiritual fornication and sent her away into captivity.

Here we see Christ calling Judah, the southern kingdom, the part of the nation that is left, from their spiritual adultery lest He be forced to put them away al



Remember what we studied last time when Christ gave instructions about marriagein the kingdom program.

Matthew 19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

Matthew 19:10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.

In response to that, His disciples said, If that is the case, it s not good to marry. If you are in that kind of jeopardy, maybe you shouldn t risk getting married.

11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying,

I ve always been fascinated by the disciples reaction in Verse 10. I mean, if marriage is that permanent, maybe you shouldn t get married. Maybe you shouldn t stickyour chin out. The best thing for people who just want to hop into marriage isto think about how they can get out of it, and then not do it. It s like the ministry: if you can stand not doing it, then don t.

A couple sat in my living room on a Sunday afternoon. When you talk to love birds like that, they don t listen to a word you say. I like to set up marriage counseling ahead of time, but I like to do as much counseling after the wedding as before. Six months after the wedding, they are willing to listen to you; six months before, they don t hear a word you say. They re just batting their eyes at each other and wanting to get through this session. Six months later, they get a little more serious about things. They ve butted heads a couple times and then youget a good audience.

Matthew 19:11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, w

hich have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

That is a much abused passage. Not everybody can receive the idea of not getting married.

1 Corinthians 7:9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is betterto marry than to burn.

There are some people who need to be married. They want to get married, and they don t want to hear about staying single, but there are some who are eunuchs; that is, they have no desire to be married. For there are some eunuchs, which wereso born from their mother's womb:

There are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men. Some were made eunuchs by a physical operation to prevent their having children.

There be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs. They have determined in their heart to practice celibacy. It s not the way they were born or what somebody did to them; it s something they choose to do for the kingdom s sake.

He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Whatever you are able to do, that s what you should choose. Some people need to be married. Some people can t ha



ve children. Some people have had a physical operation for one reason to another. There are people who choose to be celibate and dedicate themselves to pressing on to the kingdom. Being made a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven s sake is tobe totally dedicated to what God is doing and being completely involved with Him in the ministry.

Verse 12 is the Roman Catholic proof text for the celibacy of the clergy. If you ask a priest why he doesn t get married, he ll tell you he is a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven s sake.

Come over to 1 Timothy 4, and let me give you the verse on Roman Catholic celibacy that is more a propo. Matthew 19:12 doesn t have anything to do with a fellowin a long robe with his collar turned backward and who is not married. It has to do with dedication.

1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times someshall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats,

There is a doctrine of legislated celibacy that forbids people to marry for religious reasons. That is what the Roman Catholic priests practice. It is not like Matthew 19 where He says if you want to remain single, that s fine.

What the Roman Church teaches is described in First Timothy 4:3, where it is legislated celibacy. It is legislation contrary to the way God made men and the natural order of things. They don t use Matthew 19:12 correctly. You need to remind them of First Timothy 4:3. Clerical celibacy has nothing to do with the wordof God.

By the way, do you know who Origen was? He was one of the church fathers. He was responsible for the Alexandrian text being used to translate the new Bibles.

He had himself castrated, on the basis of Verse 12, and he went barefoot, on the basis of Matthew 10: Provide neither gold, neither shoes for your journey. Tht shows you the extremes that religious fanatics and intellectuals can go to.

Origen didn t believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and he believed that the devil was going to get saved. And yet, he d go to these extremes in his attempt to serve an ecclesiastical organization. That s wild and beyond all common sense.

Matthew 19:13 Then were there brought unto him little children, that he shouldput his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them.14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.15 And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence.

After He talked about divorce, and the choice of marriage or celibacy being a matter of your dedication to the Lord, then He brings up the matter of children.

When you think of marriage, you have to realize that you re not just involving yourself and your partner but you are involving children. These all go together.

It is interesting that little children are brought for Him to put His hands on them and pray for them. The disciples rebuked the people who brought them, but He said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Remember that we ve already talked about the little children in Matthew 18. This is



Psalm 39:5 Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah.

Every man at his best is altogether vanity. He is just empty, worthless, no good, of no consequence: vanity. You understand that word vanity. You have a vanity in your bedroom. That s where you get all fixed up but it s vanity, you see. A man at his best, the best good thing he did, isn t any good. You never want to forget that. Always understand that man at his best can t make it.

But, religion says, What good thing must I do, what good thing do you require meto do? I ll do it. Religion thinks it can produce something that God will accept, and the Bible says, Every man at his best state is altogether vanity.

Notice also that he says, What good thing. Religion always focuses on the neuter, the thing. Salvation focuses on a person and that person is the Lord Jesus Christ. Salvation says, Look unto me and live. Religion says, Give me something to do. What thing shall I do? Let me show you how it talks.

Hosea 8:5 Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off; mine anger is kindled against them: how long will it be ere they attain to innocency?

What has happened is that the Baal worship, represented by the golden calf, that

Israel has joined, isn t helping them.Hosea 8:6 For from Israel was it [the calf] also: the workman made it; therefore [underline] it is not God: but the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces.

The difference between salvation and religion is right there. Salvation saves you by a person. Religion saves you by a thing.

They had a campaign a few years ago and they put the bumper stickers out which said, I found it. I didn t find Christ, I found it. Well, it is not God. When you see religion of any kind holding out an it , a thing, to you, remember that verse. It, it, it is not God! That is what religion always tries to do: give you some thing. Salvation always points you to a person. Look unto me unto the ends of the

earth, and live. Trust the Lord Jesus Christ.Notice that this guy comes with the classic religious question about the good thing. He s asking how to gain eternal life. The answer that the Lord gave him is not the answer we would give a person asking that question.Christ told him, If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. Now, you couldn t get a passing grade in a course in evangelism at the average church, certainly not at a grace church, if you were asked the question, What must I do to inherit eternal life? and your answer was to keep the commandments. That would be thewrong answer! That is not the answer we give.

Today, eternal life is a free gift, but here Christ said, Keep the commandments. I call your attention again to the fact that eternal life was different in the k

ingdom program than it is for us today. What the expression eternal life encompasses is different in the Book of Matthew than it is in the Book of Romans.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal lifethrough Jesus Christ our Lord.

Eternal life is a free gift from God today!

Romans 5:17 For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in l



ife by one, Jesus Christ.18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

When you trust Christ as your Saviour, God Almighty gives you His righteousness. He puts you in Christ because you have the righteousness of God in Christ. When you have His righteousness, God imputes to you His life, eternal life. It is a present possession; I have it right now and I got it on December 31, 1962, when I trusted Jesus Christ as my Saviour. You who have trusted Christ have God s eternal life as a present possession, and we are blessed with all spiritual blessings. We have that spiritual life right now.

When you go back to the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the issue of eternal life was not a spiritual life that was imputed as a result of faith in Christ Jesus. Eternal life, at that time, was understood to mean entrance into His physical kingdom on the earth.

Jesus said, If you will enter into life, keep the commandments.

Mark 9:43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to ent

er into life maimed,45 And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life,

47 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God

He uses the terms enter into life; enter into life; enter into the kingdom of God. Folks, He uses the term enter into life as a synonym for entering into the kingdom of God. In Christ s earthly ministry, when He was preaching the gospel of the kingdom to the Old Testament Jew, they understood that when He said enter into life, He was saying enter into the kingdom.

In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, eternal life is that aspect of divine blessingfor those who will enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is related to their future possession of an earthly kingdom.

It is absolutely critical for you to understand this because if you don t, you will be in complete confusion about the plan of salvation now and what men s hope was in time past. You are going to think that these people were justified before God on the basis of their works, but they were not. They were justified before God on the basis of their faith in what God told them, and the means of their justification was the blood of Christ. They just didn t know about all that at the time.

You don t learn about the efficacy of the cross until you come to Paul. These people were not looking in faith to Calvary for a finished atonement, an accomplished redemption. Eternal life to them was what they had been told about: the kingdom in which they would live forever. It was a future state that they wanted to enter into.

In Luke, Chapter 18, is a parallel passage to the one in Matthew 19.

Luke 18:28 Then Peter said, Lo, we have left all, and followed thee.29 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left



house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God'ssake,30 Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.

Everlasting life was, to them, a future possession in the kingdom of God. Folks, that s clear. The issue of everlasting life for Israel was bound up in the Abrahamic Covenant.

I have talked to you before about what Abraham understood about the covenant God made with him. God told Abraham, You and your seed are going to inherit this land. Go out and walk up and down in this land. This land is going to belong to your and your seed, but before you get it there is going to be a delay of four hundred years or more. What s going to happen to Abraham during those four hundred years? He is going to die and many of his seed are going to die. They will go down into a strange land and be brought back up again later (Genesis 15).

If Abraham knew he was going to get the land (and he believes God that he is), and he knows his seed is going to inherit the land (and he believes God that they are) and yet he knows he is going to die, how does he think he is going to getthe land? Folks, there isn t but one way if he is going to get the land: he has to be resurrected. He is going to live in that land forever, and if he is goingto live forever, isn t that eternal life?

Somebody said, A lost man lives forever in hell. He s a lost man, forever in hell,but that isn t life down there, brother. He doesn t cease to exist; that s the wrongdefinition of death. Some think that death is the cessation of consciousness and existence, but it doesn t mean that in the Bible. The second death is the lake of fire, and you can t call that living, can you?

You know the story about the millionaire who died and he was buried in his goldCadillac. He was dead, but he was sitting up in his gold Cadillac as they tookhim down to the cemetery. A guy sitting on the corner watching him go by said to his friend, Man, that s really living. He wasn t living; he was dead.

Eternal life had to do with that Abrahamic covenant, and it was the basic issue in their hope.

Isaiah 55:3 Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.

This verse is a reference to the blessings of the covenants that are secured bythis (the Abrahamic) covenant. They are going to live.

Daniel 12:2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

These kingdom saints are partakers of the resurrection of life. Everlasting life is given to them at the resurrection. Do you see how different that is from w

hat you and I have today? What we are told about our salvation is tremendouslydifferent. Eternal life itself is different, and it includes a different set of concepts for us than it had for Israel.

That s why I say to you that salvation is a broad word, and you have to find out what is in Israel s salvation package and what s in ours. Salvation in the dispensation of grace is so different from salvation in the prophetic, kingdom program that they can t really be compared. They are radically different. If you don t see and distinguish those differences, you will always have confusion. You ll be trying to read the body of Christ into the kingdom program back there or take what is



true in the dispensation of grace today and demand that it was true of people in time past or in the ages to come. You must not do that.

A basic dispensational principle is that you don t read truth from one dispensation into another one, past or future. If you don t practice right division and seethe distinctions that are there, you ll never understand what was going on back there in the gospel accounts.

That is why it is so critical for you to understand the distinctive nature of the ministry of Paul.

By the way, you are not robbing yourself of anything when you do that. What you are really doing is gaining understanding of what was happening back here (in the four gospel accounts) and protecting yourself from a lot of confusion.

Matthew 7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life,and few there be that find it.

It is very clear that life, in this verse, is at the end of the path leading toit. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life. They godown the path, and at the end is life. The price they must pay to get there ispretty clearly defined in the passage.

Matthew 19:17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

The verse has to do with the program that was in effect; in other words, if youwant to get into the kingdom, here s what you have to do.

Number 1, you have to keep the commandments.

18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thys

elf.Christ begins to give him the requirements here.

20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect [lacking nothing], go and sellthat thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

Rich men don t go and sell what they have to give it away. Why do rich men sell what they have? They do it to get more riches. The motivation that rich men have in selling is to make a profit, to get more.

Here, Christ is revealing the heart of this young man. He tells him to sell what he has and give it away. You can t live for this world. You have to seek firstthe kingdom of God and His righteousness and then the things will be added to you.

In Verse 21, He adds on the provisions of the kingdom message.

Luke 16:16 The law and the prophets were until John:

The young man said he had kept the law and the prophets. Now what do I have to d



o?

since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.

At this time it was not adequate just to keep the law; they had to come into the kingdom program also. The kingdom program says:

Luke 12:32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.33 Sell that ye have, and give alms;

That s what He said to the man in Verse 21.

Matthew 16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

Then he can be my disciple. You ve got to get rid of your possessions, deny yourself and come and follow me. That was the kingdom requirement for being a disciple. Of course, if the man had truly believed, he would have followed.

Matthew 19:22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

You see, the young man really didn t believe; that was his problem. Had he really

believed that Christ was the Messiah, and had he really sought the kingdom of God and His righteousness; if he had been really interested what God was doing, he would have come and gotten involved in the program that God had in effect. He didn t do that, so he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions.

My uncle used to say, I never argue with the Bible, but there is one verse of scripture that I think is backwards. When it says, He had great possessions, I think the problem really was that the great possessions had him. That probably is a true commentary. His heart was on his great possessions.

That issue of being perfect (complete) speaks of everlasting life in the kingdom program. The focus is on His future kingdom on earth; hence the element of works is involved. When Christ adds that kingdom requirement, the rich man gives u

p.23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye ofa needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Now, that passage has called forth all kinds of hallucinations from commentaries and preachers down through the years. You can read all kinds of goofy speculations about some gate over there that is supposed to be called the camel gate and the eye of the needle. They tell how the camels have to get down on their knees and scrub through and all that nonsense. Those are just some nightmares somebodyhad. There never has been a gate like that; somebody just made that up and bega

n to tell it. It sounded good so others just started repeating it because theydidn t know what the passage was talking about.

Have you ever heard of humor? Have you never heard of sarcasm? Why in the world would somebody not think that the Lord, creator of all, can use those mannersof speech? I mean, if you can talk and be creative, don t you think He can? That s just the Lord s sense of humor showing through there. He is just saying, Man, it sjust impossible. Can you take that camel over here and stick it through the eye of a needle? Can you do that? It s an absurdity.



Matthew 19:26 But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

The whole issue in the passage is about something that s impossible for men to accomplish. It would be just as easy to stick a camel through the eye of a needleas it would be for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven. You don t have to make up something about a gate that never existed. All you have to do is understand what He is explaining. He is setting up a syllogism for the impossibility.

25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who thencan be saved?26 But Jesus beheld them

He just looked at them (and probably shook His head in disbelief) and said, Aren tyou guys getting this yet?

and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

Who then can be saved? Nobody can, on their own, but with God, that s a different matter. You need to remember that. They supposed that the rich had some kind of advantage, but what they found out was that the key to salvation and blessingin the kingdom, or anywhere else, is getting involved in what God is doing. It s

not our efforts; it s God s work.27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

Peter says, Okay, we meet the qualifications. The rich man might not have met them, but we do. We have forsaken all and followed you. Peter wasn t a pauper. Hewas a fisherman with a boat and a family, but he had forsaken his livelihood and had come and followed Christ. He said, We qualify, now what are we going to get? We are poor and we are following you.

You need to be very familiar with Verses 28 30

28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

Did you know that, at this time, Peter did not have eternal life as a personal possession? That is interesting.

30 But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.

That last verse is explained in the parable in Chapter 20, but I want you to see

some things in Verse 28 first.

Ye which have followed me: Ye which have followed me [and met the kingdom requirements], notice that comma in the regeneration . . . The difference between heresy and truth is a comma in your Bible. He didn t say, Ye which have followed me in the regeneration; that is, you ve joined me in being regenerated. He said, Ye whi have followed me (comma), in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit inthe throne of his glory When is the regeneration? It is in the kingdom.

That word regeneration is used twice in your Bible.



Titus 3:5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;

This has to do with the individual regeneration that members of the body of Christ receive. We have already received this regeneration, when we trusted Christ. We have our regeneration; it is a present possession. Israel is going to receive her regeneration in the kingdom; in fact, the whole world is going to be regenerated. Creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption, and therewill be new life given. The pristine garden freshness of Eden will be restoredto the creation in that regeneration.

Matthew 19:28 when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory,

Where is that? That s in Israel, and the throne of His glory will be in Jerusalem.

Matthew 25:31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

Jeremiah 14:21 Do not abhor us, for thy name's sake, do not disgrace the throne of thy glory: remember, break not thy covenant with us.

That throne of his glory is the throne of Him who rules over the nation Israel.Luke 1:30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the LordGod shall give unto him the throne of his father David:33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

If it doesn t end, it goes on forever, doesn t it?

My dear friend, the throne of His glory is going to be in Jerusalem. You d better mark it down that Jerusalem is going to be the city of the great King one day.Think about that, would you? When you watch the politics in the news and the t

hings that are going on today, you just think about Jerusalem becoming the center of the government of this planet. When Christ comes back it will be a reality. When He comes and sits on the throne of His glory, the twelve apostles will sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. We ll go into the details of that in the next lesson. I want you to see the governmental hierarchy that comes from Christ, right down through Israel and across the nations in the kingdom. I want that to be clear in your mind.


Matthew 19:27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?



28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration

The regeneration is the Kingdom of Heaven. It s what Peter calls the times of refreshing, in Acts 3.

In Romans 8:21, Paul says, the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

There is an individual regeneration when you are born again by the Spirit of God. Israel will experience that regeneration as a nation.

The earth itself, the creation, will experience that in the millennium when Christ comes back and removes the curse and gives a new life (regeneration) to creation.

in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory,

We talked about the throne of his glory last time. He will take the throne of His glory in Jerusalem at His second coming. It is the throne of Messiah in Jerusalem. It is important that you understand that. The throne of His glory is that literal, physical, visible, earthly throne located in Jerusalem from which Messiah will reign. He will be the King of the whole world when He reigns in the kingdom with Jerusalem as the capital city:

when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

I heard a guy from California using that passage on the television one time. My family and I were at a motel down in Kentucky; we were on our way to attend some meetings. He was using that verse to say that you ought to forsake your wifeif you want eternal life. He said that what you have to do is get rid of your wife. My wife looked to see where it says husbands in that verse. She got upset because she didn t see that in the verse. You can really get yourself in a mess

quoting passages like that and trying to apply them to yourself today.When we finished the last lesson, we were describing the governmental structureof the kingdom. I want to spend a little time with you now considering the twelve apostles, sitting on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. It is important that you understand how the government of the kingdom age will operate.

Come with me to Acts 7 and notice that the twelve apostles represent the nationIsrael. The reason that there were twelve, not ten or fourteen, is because they represent the twelve tribes of the nation Israel.

Acts 7:8 And he [God] gave him [Abraham] the covenant of circumcision: and so A

braham begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs.

There are twelve tribes of Israel, descended from the twelve patriarchs. The number twelve in your Bible has to do with the nation Israel. The patriarchs ruled over each of the twelve tribes.

How many inches are there on a ruler? Twelve inches. Have you ever noticed that in the metric system they go back to units of ten? Do you know what ten represents? The number ten in the Bible is the gentile number. The number twelve is



the Jewish number, Israel s number. The gentiles want to turn the numeric system back to units of ten, but isn t it interesting how the number twelve keeps showing up; that is Israel s number. The gentiles, of course, want to change everything into their own image.

In Numbers 1, he has given you a list of names and then says:

Numbers 1:16 These were the renowned of the congregation, princes of the tribes of their fathers, heads of thousands in Israel.

The point is that God had ordained that each tribe in Israel have a prince, thetop authority, who would rule over the tribe and who would represent that tribebefore the rest of the nation. The twelve tribes had princes to rule over them.

1 Chronicles 27:16 Furthermore over the tribes of Israel: the ruler of the Reubenites was Eliezer the son of Zichri: of the Simeonites, Shephatiah the son of Maachah:17 Of the Levites, Hashabiah the son of Kemuel: of the Aaronites, Zadok:18 Of Judah, Elihu, one of the brethren of David: of Issachar, Omri the son ofMichael:19 Of Zebulun, Ishmaiah the son of Obadiah: of Naphtali, Jerimoth the son of Azriel:20 Of the children of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Azaziah: of the half tribe of

Manasseh, Joel the son of Pedaiah:21 Of the half tribe of Manasseh in Gilead, Iddo the son of Zechariah: of Benjamin, Jaasiel the son of Abner:22 Of Dan, Azareel the son of Jeroham. These were the princes of the tribes ofIsrael.

In other words, all through history, God had a prince over each tribe. That was the system of rule. When Christ told the apostles that they would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, they understood that He was referring to that consistent policy that God had for Israel, in having twelve princesruling over the twelve tribes.

God had promised Israel that when the kingdom came, He would restore their judge

s, princes and governors the ruling authority over that nation.Isaiah 1:25 And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin:26 And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.

One of the ways God established righteousness in Israel was by the decisions ofthese judges. When there were disputes, any decisions about right or wrong that had to be made (Deuteronomy 17), the parties would go to the judge. They would plead their case before the judge at the time, and the judge would make the righteous decree. That s the issue here concerning the kingdom. God promised to set

up that political, governmental system again in which the rule of God would bein force in the nation.

Isaiah 32:1 Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.

There shall be the king over the nation, with twelve princes the twelve apostles sitting on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Come to Jeremiah, Chapter 30. Verse 18 begins a passage on the second coming, b



ut we will break in at Verse 21 to see what s pertinent here.

Jeremiah 30:21 And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them; and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me: for who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me?saith the LORD.

The point is that the heathen aren t going to rule over Israel any longer. The nobles, governors and rulers will be from among their own people. There are manyother similar passages. The twelve apostles are going to rule over the twelve tribes of Israel.

(Chart) Jesus Christ will be King; under Him will be the twelve apostles, eachruling over a tribe of Israel. Who will the twelve tribes rule?

Luke 19:11 And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.12 He said therefore, A certain nobleman [Christ] went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.13 And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds [authority] ,and said unto them, Occupy till I come.

Remember what I told you that the number ten represented? (It is the Gentile nu

mber.) These tribes are given authority over the Gentiles.13 And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.14 But his citizens [Israel] hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.

The little flock is given kingdom authority. Israel, instead of responding to Christ and trusting Him as their Messiah, said, We don t want him. Acts, Chapter 7,tells how they sent a messenger after Him, up into heaven. (Your Bible fits together just like a hand in a glove.) In Acts Seven, Stephen died and went up to where Christ was standing to receive him. Stephen was His official representative, sent back by the nation Israel to Christ; they were saying, We won t have you to

reign over us. The fall of Israel takes place right there.What they wanted isn t going to make any difference; He is coming back, anyway.

15 And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.16 Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pound17 And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

Notice that their reward is authority over ten cities. The servant is given a position of political authority in the kingdom. That man is faithful in that tim

e of tribulation, doing the work that God gives him to do.

Remember this parable because, when we finish Matthew 19, Chapter 20 will be a continuation of what we are studying here. You are going to have to remember this principle.

The man was faithful in the work God had committed to him. One man was faithful with ten pounds; one was faithful with five pounds. The result was that the first was given authority over ten cities, and the next was given authority over five cities (Verse 19).



Rewards for the little flock involve receiving authority to reign over some cities. Not only does Christ reign over Israel, and the twelve apostles reign overthe twelve tribes, but the tribes reign over the cities of the earth.

It is interesting to see what God is going to do. The entire chapter of Deuteronomy 32 prophesies, in detail, the second coming of Christ to the earth.

Deuteronomy 32:7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

Tell me something: are the bounds of the nations set today according to the number of Israel? What is the number of the children of Israel? Are there twelveboundaries out there today? Goodnight, nurse! You know there are not. How many continents are there? There are seven. (You can t even say they are continents today.) This is a prophetic view of what God is going to do in that future age after Christ returns.

This is referring to some things in the past, too, but prophetically it looks to the future. When Christ comes back, He is going to divide the nations of the earth into twelve sections units or divisions ? according to the number of the ch

ildren of Israel.9 For the LORD'S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

God is going to have His inheritance in Israel; He is going to divide the earthinto twelve sections, and each section will have a tribe of Israel ruling over the cities and establishing the governmental authority of Messiah in that geographic area.

How many different fruits will the tree of life bear? There will be twelve. Does that interest you just a little bit? In Revelation, it tells about people who will go up to the New Jerusalem, and partake of tree of life which bare twelvemanner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month. The leaves of the tree will

be for the healing of the nations. Each of those twelve months corresponds to a section of the earth. These people will participate in the government of the universe.

The heavenly places, the universe around the earth, are also going to be divided up into twelve sections. You and I, as members of the body of Christ, will fill up the positions of rank and authority in the heavenly government out there, just as the nation Israel will in the earthly government. Just as God restores the headship of Jesus Christ over the earth through the instrumentality of Israel, He is going to restore the headship of Jesus Christ over the heavenly places through the instrumentality of the church, the body of Christ. Our ministry willbe out there. Listen, folks, the earth is going to be brought into complete subjection to Jesus Christ in that millennial kingdom, and also throughout the ages

beyond. He isn t going to just be sitting around. That kingdom is going to be areal and living entity.

I asked you before, Can you imagine a time when the mayor of the city of Chicagois a saint of the most High God and the chief of police and all the governmental authority will be, as well? It will be a wonderful day. It is going to take God to do that. It will take the second coming of Christ to make that happen, and that s what is going to happen.

So, there s a government that goes out to the nations. There is a pecking order (hi



erarchy) who gives homage to Christ through the government that He will set up.

There is one other thing I d like to point out: turn back to Isaiah 55. Jesus Christ is going to be the KING OF KINGS. There is something in the chart I drew that isn t exactly right. Christ is over all and He is going to reign over the kings of the earth. Under Him, reigning over the nation Israel as their prince and king, is David.

Isaiah 55:3 Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.4 Behold, I have given him [David] for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people.

Jeremiah 30 is a passage about the tribulation and the promise of the kingdom.In Verse 7, He talks about the time of Jacob s trouble ; you are familiar with that as a title of the tribulation.

Jeremiah 30:9 But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.

The indication is that David will be raised from the dead and will reign over the nation. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David those Old Testament saints are going to be in the millennial kingdom, are they not?

Matthew 8:11 And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness:

Come with me to Ezekiel 34. There is a great deal of information in the Book of Ezekiel about the structure, both political and religious, of the millennial kingdom.

Ezekiel 34:23 And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.24 And I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them;I the LORD have spoken it.

25 And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land:26 And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.

Showers of Blessings

Oh what love that flows down in my soul; There are so many blessings I can't count everyone. Lord, I thank You; Lord, I praise You For all You've done.

When you sang that song Showers of Blessing, did you know you were singing about the millennial kingdom? You didn t, did you? That verse is where the song came fr

om.

David is going to be reigning over them.

Hosea 3:4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, andwithout a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without anephod, and without teraphim:5 Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days.



David has been dead a long time, yet this is talking about that future kingdom.

In the governmental structure of the kingdom in Israel, Christ will be King over all the other kings of the earth. David will be king over Israel, and Israel will be head of the governmental structure through which He will extend His reign over the nations.

Now when Christ explained all that to the apostles, they understood at least some of what I put on the chart for you. This bunch of old gentiles in this century think they re going to run everything forever, so they can never figure out these things.

Somebody may come along and say, Well, the Bible isn t dealing with that. Listen, if the Bible isn t interested in who is running things, what would it be interested in? Isn t that what everybody is interested in, anyway?

Do you know that the main theme of your Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the authority of a throne over the universe? That is what the whole conflict is about. From Genesis 1, right on through the Bible, the conflict is over who will gain the authority. Who will be on the throne and control the universe God or the devil? If you know anything about Isaiah 14, you know that Satan s five fold plan of rebellion against God was to take over the throne and run things.

It isn t going to happen. The reason that it isn t going to happen is not because man can stop it. Man got in the ring with the devil and the devil gave him one good whack and threw him out of the ring. So, God said, I ll come down and do whatyou couldn t do for yourself; Jesus Christ became the God man, that wonderful, unique person who has provided everything that God ever intended for us. Everything we have He has given, and everything accomplished in the universe will be what He does.

Matthew 19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

The apostles are going to rule over the nations, but the little flock, all the f

aithful, are going to receive their part.30 But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.

20:1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.

He gives the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, but notice Verse 16, which is the interpretation:

16 So the last shall be first, and the first last:

We just saw that statement in Chapter 19, Verse 30. The parable in the first si

xteen verses of Chapter 20 is an amplification of what he was saying to Peter in Chapter 19. Between Matthew 19:30 and 20:16 is a parable about something thatwas troubling Peter. To be honest with you, I really don t understand this passage too well. I don t have a lot of light to give you on this. In the last two days, I have read what fifteen or twenty commentaries have to say about Chapter 20in the Book of Matthew, and I ll tell you, they don t shed much light on it, either. They just don t let you know that they don t fully understand it. They talk a lot about it, but they don t give much help; there s a lot of heat but not much light.

I know something about the passage, but I can t give you too much help with it.



Maybe I should show you why it is rather nebulous.

Matthew 20:1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder [God the Father]

Hebrews 3:1 6 talks about the house, which is Israel.

which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard [Israeland Judah (Isaiah 5)].2 And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, andsaith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.

This householder (type of God the Father) looking for laborers to work in His vineyard. He goes out early in the morning at 6:00 and again at 9:00 (third hour), again at noon (sixth hour), and again at 3:00 (ninth hour). Then He goes out

again at 5:00 in the afternoon to hire more workers. He is going to them; theyaren t coming to Him.

Luke 19:10 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

This is God the Father reaching out, seeking out people in the nation Israel toserve Him. We can understand that.

Notice that the time element is very important in this passage. My own personal estimation is that we can t understand the passage too well now because of that time element.

You remember that when we studied Chapter 14, we talked about that fourth watch

in the night. He came to them in the fourth watch. I tried to show you that had to do with the second coming of Christ, from a dating system that is laid outin your Bible to identify the time period during which the second coming of Christ will take place.

We can t figure it today because the dispensation of grace has intervened. When we try to, we get into trouble. Notice that there are four time periods described in the parable when he hired laborers: early to the third hour, to the sixth hour, to the ninth hour and to the eleventh hour, and then evening. That four fold division (early to nine, to noon, to three and then six) is the same division (six to nine, nine to twelve, twelve to three, three to six) in Mark 13:35, except that here the twelfth hour ( the tribulation) is not included.

So, in the passage there are some instructions for the tribulation saints in reference to the timing of the second advent of Christ. When you get into passages like that, you and I just draw a blank because we are not going to figure it out. When I study the passage and I have to tell you that I don t have a lot of information for you, I don t worry about it, because when I read all these commentaries, I see that they draw a blank, too.

If you want to read some to of the wildest stuff written in the commentaries about the Book of Matthew, you can read what they say about this passage right here. They write some crazy stuff. You wonder where the guys thinking has gone. Th



ey ll be doing pretty well going through the rest of the book, but when they get here, their reason just disappears.

You have to notice that it is about Israel. It is setting up a time schedule about the second coming and rewarding those who serve Him during the tribulation.

8 So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Callthe labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. 9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more;and they likewise received every man a penny.11 And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house,12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equalunto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?14 Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?

The answer is Yes, you can do what you want to with it. It s yours. Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

He rebukes them for that. That s the argument of a legalist against God s operating on the basis of sovereign grace. God can do what He wants to do. You agreed to work for a penny. Why are you complaining because somebody else gets a like reward? You are getting what you agreed to work for, aren t you? Are you mad because God, in grace, is rewarding somebody else? That s just too bad.

The point of the passage is that God is sovereign.

15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?

God is sovereign in what He gives and what He gives is dependant on His calling. He did it the way He wanted to do it. He set up the rules. His giving to them was the reward for their service. It wasn t based on their merit: how long they d worked or what they had done. Their reward wasn t given to them out of debt, because God owed them something, but it was given out of God s grace.

When you think of rewards, you have to remember, whether under grace or under the kingdom program, God is never your debtor! No man, no man ever has God indebted to him. God never owes you anything, and God never owed these people anything. The very basic principle on which God deals with man is that God is the giver.

Now, the length of time they worked, the amount of work they did or the prominence of their position didn t determine the reward. They all got what God intendedto give them. The issue was their faithfulness, not what they were doing but being on the job. They were on the job so they got the reward.The issue there is that the reward is not based on the amount of work they did but on the motive involved.

There is something that you have to see especially about this to understand theissue. He is emphasizing the motive. They get the reward because of the motive.



Go back to Chapter 19, and notice what Peter said:

Matthew 19:27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?

What was the issue to Peter? Was it houses, land, family, income, job or Christ? Christ was the issue. Peter s motive was to follow Christ; it was not to get something, but it was to follow Christ.

That ye which have followed me, . . . You see, Peter s motive for service, and the motive of these kingdom saints, was Christ Himself. That was the motive not getting something.

Listen to me now: this is always true in the Bible when you read about rewardsand service. Rewards are not given to pay you back for serving Him. God is never your debtor. The promise of rewards is to give encouragement to the person who is serving and suffering.

Matthew 5:11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, andshall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad [why?]: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

The promise of reward is an encouragement for faithfulness. What is the rewardpromised here? These apostles are going to get positions of rule in the kingdom. Who will they be serving? They will be serving Christ in the positions in which they will reign. Who will be exalted? Christ will be. The whole plan isn t about giving glory to Peter or about our getting glory. The entire plan in which we all participate exalts the Lord Jesus Christ.

The reward hasn t anything to do with God being indebted to us owing us something. It s about our participation in God s program. When God put you in His program, it is for the glory of Jesus Christ.

And you, Peter, remember the issue isn t what you are going to get but the issue is the glory that Christ is going to get.

Matthew 20:16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

We say that the first should be first, but our ideas don t count. God says that the last will be first. God is going to lift up those who understand His program and have just trusted in His grace.

Notice something about these people who came in last. He never promised to paythem a penny. He said, Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. They didn t even know what they were working for. They just knew the guy they were working for would do right. Then he came and gave them their reward, the penny.

for many be called, but few chosen.

Notice carefully that the passage has nothing to do with salvation. That verseis used constantly by people to say, Well, many are called but just a few are elected to salvation. Please notice that the passage has nothing to do with salvation. When you hear somebody use that passage to prove that people are elected or chosen to salvation, you remember that they are using that passage with complete disregard to its context.

Many are going to be called to service, to serve in the vineyard, but there are



just going to be a few who are chosen to become a part of that special group ofpeople. In this context, it is the people who understand what God is really doing. They have come to appreciate the principle of grace.

I remind you that the issue in this entire passage is about the principle of the kingdom, which is the principle of grace. The working principle of the New Covenant is grace, which God provides through Christ.

Matthew 20:27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Let him not be first; let him be last.

28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, andto give his life a ransom for many.

He says there will be a lot of workers out there, but there ll be only a few who understand what God is doing. Peter, you need to be one of the few. You just keep remembering who is your motive and goal. It is Christ.


When people read Matthew 19:28 about the twelve apostles sitting on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel that s usually about all they get out of it, but that is just the beginning of the passage. It goes all the way down through the parable in Chapter 20, Verses 1 15. Verse 16 of Chapter 20 gives the interpretation.

Matthew 20:16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

Verse 16 is a very misunderstood verse and is usually pulled out of its context. You get very little light or real understanding of that parable from commentaries or among preachers. I told you last time that I can t give you a great deal of help with it. I see the gist of it, but the meaning of the details kind of escapes me. I think the reason for that is because it looks particularly toward the last days and has to do with the second coming of Christ. Anything in that realm can get to be a little nebulous. You can t quite figure it out in all its details yet. The people for whom it was written will be able to understand it, but you and I can t do it yet.

It has to do with the fact that the last shall be first. That is like Chapter 19, Verse 30, except that it is stated there in reverse order: the first shall be

last and the last shall be first.

The parable that goes between those similar verses demonstrates that truth. Heis saying, You people who are last (the little flock in Chapter 19:28) shall be first. In other words, you are going to replace the leaders, the people who were first, and you late comers are going to be first.

In the parable, the men who went out late into the vineyard got as much pay as the fellows who were there at the very beginning. You have to recall what we have studied often before about that little flock in Christ s ministry. We first not



iced in Chapter 4 that they were the outcasts, the nobodies in Israel, and yet because of their faith in Christ as their Messiah, God called the little flock together and identified them as the ones to whom it was the Father s good pleasure to give the kingdom. They are the ones, the apostles, who are going to sit on the twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Then, in Matthew 19, Verses 29 and 30, it talks about all of the little flock that will be rewarded with everlasting life in the kingdom.

The first shall be last; in other words, the people who were given the opportunity previously are going to have to stand aside and let the little flock go through first. Let me show you an illustration of that. The late comers, that little flock, are going to take the place of those whose lineage goes way back to thebeginning of the nation. I don t mean just apostate Israel, but also the believers who go way back.

Matthew 11:9 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.10 For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist:

John the Baptist was the head. He said that there hadn t been a greater prophet t

han John show up at anytime, but . . .11 notwithstanding he that is least [Is that last? If you are least, you are way down at the bottom, aren t you?] in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

John is the great prophet; he announces the Messiah s coming, but that least one in the kingdom is going to be greater than John. The last shall be first and, the first will come in after them.

John is the one who gathers that tribulation remnant, that little group of people. He calls himself the friend of the bridegroom. Those people follow Christ. John bridges the gap between the law and the prophets and the preaching of that kingdom program.

Christ said that these people who have embraced this kingdom program are a part of that little group of believers, though they look insignificant as far as Israel is concerned, they are going to be the leaders of the nation. They show up last, time wise, in the tribulation (which is the time period we are looking at here), but they will be the leaders in the kingdom program. That s the issue in thepassage.

Matthew 20:16 for many be called, but few chosen.

Notice carefully that this is a reference to the issue of service. The passageis not talking about salvation; it s talking about positions of service to Christin the kingdom program. That is important to notice because Verse 16 is often q

uoted and used in regard to salvation. People say, Many are called but just a few elect are chosen and get saved.

In this passage, there is no question of anybody being rejected for salvation.The issue is about favor accorded to some people who have a special calling andare chosen of God to perform certain service.

When you see the issue of election in your Bible, it is repeatedly associated with service, not salvation. I will give you two examples. These two verses (Matthew 19:30 and 20:16) are used to demonstrate the doctrine of election (Please un



derstand that I believe in election; I rejoice in the doctrine of election.), but the theological concepts that are commonly taught which equate the words election and predestination in theology are not the same as what is taught in the Bible. They don t mean the same thing.

Sometimes theologians will take a good Bible word and give it an entirely different meaning. Usually, theologians develop their own words. Most often, you hear the issues of predestination and election taught from a theological concept which says that whatever happens in the world, everything that goes on, was predetermined by God before the foundation of the world. That has absolutely nothingat all to do with what the word predestination means in the Bible. Did you know that? That s what it means in theology, but that s not what it means in the Bible.

Paul uses the word predestination four times: twice in Romans, Chapter 8 and twice in Romans, Chapter 1. Each time, it refers to what God does with a person who is already a child of God. It refers to saved people.

It was mentioned that, within the next few days, a certain brother will go hometo be with the Lord. He has the glorious hope out there about getting that glorified body and sharing in the glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ throughoutall the ages to come. That is what God has predetermined would be the destiny of every member of the body of Christ. That s what predestination is in the Bible.

God predestinated us, as saved people, to the adoption of sons; that is, the redemption of the body, getting a glorified body and being publically put on display as his full grown sons, sharing in the glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ. God has predetermined, predestinated, that you and I, as saved people, will get there. Now, that s a lot different than God predetermining that motorcycle to drive out there by the building just a few minutes ago.

You see, sometimes theology has a different meaning for a word than does the Bible. I know sometimes you think I am nuts because I keep telling you, The Bible is the issue. The Bible is the issue. The Bible is the issue. The philosophy, the logic, the syllogisms and propositions of men with their reasoning and the development and evolution of their thought patterns are not the issue.

People, if you had to figure out, in your noodle, what God is doing, you could not do it, could you? But, when you come to the word of God, it s different. That is the context in which you study.

The issue of election is very similar to that of predestination.

John 15:16 is a verse that is often quoted, and rightly so.

John 15:16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,

How can election be any other way? If there is a choosing, God has to do the choosing. But notice what the rest of the verse says.

If I say to you, You have not chosen me but I have chosen you, that that is not what that verse says? You say, That is what you just said. No, I only read a part of the verse; it says more than that.

16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you [why?], that [purpose and intent] ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain,

Do you know why God ordained them and why he chose them? He chose them to go ou



t and bear fruit. It doesn t say that He chose and ordained them to be saved. He chose and ordained them to go out, as His servants, to bear fruit in their productive service for Him.

So, when you hear somebody say, Well, when it comes to salvation, God says, I have chosen you and you haven t chosen me ; therefore, your faith doesn t have anything to do with it, you just remember, will you, that isn t what that verse says, and youknow what it really does say. If you have an opportunity, point it out to people.

Here is another verse:

Romans 9:11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any goodor evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)

Aren t you glad that what God has chosen to do is going to be accomplished? Man,that s assurance, isn t it? That s comfort, isn t it? That s a thrill. But what is it that God has purposed to do? What is it that the purpose of God is, according to election, His choosing; what is that purpose?

11 that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.

The purpose of God, according to His choice, was that the elder should serve the younger. That was Esau who would serve the younger, Jacob. God chose Jacob, and so that the purpose of God according to His election, choosing and desire, might stand, He said, The elder shall serve the younger. The issue there was service.

I say that to you just so you understand that oftentimes Matthew 20:16 is used out of its context. Again, the context is serving in the vineyard of the Father.

Matthew 20:17 And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, [Notice that Jesus took the twelve disciples apar

t. If you read that in the newspaper, it would have a different meaning wouldn t it? That s the way some verses read a little humorous.]18 Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death,19 And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.

Remember, His face has been set toward Jerusalem ever since Chapter 16:21. From that time forth, He began to show them that He had to go to Jerusalem and die.

So, now as He goes back toward Jerusalem that last time, he reminds them of what He has been telling them about going up there. It s time for Him to die and be raised again.

Look at the parallel passage in Luke 18.

Luke 18:31 Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we goup to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning theSon of man shall be accomplished.32 For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:33 And they shall scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again.34 And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them,



neither knew they the things which were spoken.

In Verse 34, it says they don t understand when He tells them that He is going upthere and die; they just don t grasp it. For years now, these men had been preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and even yet they don t understand that Christ is going to die, be buried and be raised again the third day.

The content of the gospel they had been preaching is certainly different from the gospel we preach today, isn t it?

In John 20, you see His resurrection. Peter and John have been to the tomb andhave seen that Christ has been resurrected.

John 20:8 Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.9 For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.

He has already risen on that resurrection morning, and they still don t know the scripture about that. The idea that these men were preaching the same gospel message, the contents being the same then as ours is today, is just spoken by people who don t read the Bible and don t care what the Bible says when they read it. You need to remember that and be conscious of the differences. What they are doing in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is preaching about that coming kingdom. That

was the good news (gospel) for them.So, He was going to Jerusalem to die and they didn t understand. To demonstrate their lack of understanding, notice what happens next:

Matthew 20:20 Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons,worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him. [Mrs. Zebedee, with her two boys in tow, came to Jesus and began to butter Him up because she wanted something.]21 And he said unto her, What wilt thou? [Isn t that interesting? He gets rightto the point. What do you want? ]21 She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand and the other on the left, in thy kingdom.

Mark 10:37 They [James and John] said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit,one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.

In Matthew it says in thy kingdom ; Mark says in thy glory. You see, He is going tosit on the throne of His glory. They believed and understood that Christ had been teaching them about a literal, physical, visible, earthly kingdom when the glory of God will be manifested on this planet in a kingdom that has its geographiccenter in the city of Jerusalem. That s clear. The disciples understood the nature of the kingdom.

(The a millenarians and post millenarians and all the other kinds of millenarians ignore the scripture.)

38 But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask:

They didn t understand that He was going to go die on the cross, but they did understand that He was going to come back in a kingdom, and that kingdom was going to be the manifestation of His glory.

What follows in the passage here is a discussion of the nature of real leadership. She is asking Him to let her boys be the number two leaders right next to Christ. The passage that follows gives the nature of true leadership. Mrs. Zebed



ee was playing politics. (Anybody who lives in the city of Chicago understandspolitics.) Well, that s what she s doing. Jesus answers her in a very clear manner.

Mark 10:38 But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?

That s a good question. Are you able? Have you counted the cost?

can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?39 And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized:40 But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but itshall be given to them for whom it is prepared.

Notice: the cup and the baptism. That is a reference to the cross. The cup has to do with death. He has already been water baptized. It can t be that. It s abaptism of death at Calvary. Physical death is the issue there. The cup is physical death. The cup He is talking about, that these disciples are also going to drink: He is going to be rejected and die and be baptized with the baptism of death. They too, are going to be rejected and they too, are going to drink ofthat cup and be baptized with the baptism that He will be baptized with. The is

sue there is rejection.The cup is not a reference to the Father s cup.

Matthew 26:42 He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.

The cup there is the Father s cup. It s not my cup as in Matthew 20. This is the cup that comes from the hand of God the Father. The issue in Matthew 26 is not physical death. Christ looks into that cup and doesn t just see that He is going todie, but He sees God s fury and wrath poured out without mixture against sin. We ll study that in detail when we get over to Matthew 26 and I ll show you the references in the Old Testament that verify that. The cup over there is where God pour

s out His wrath against sin on Christ.That s not what these men are going to partake in. He s talking about dying. Are you guys willing to be rejected even to the point of dying with me?

We can do it! That s big talk. He says, Well, you re going to get your chance to prove it. But, I tell you guys, to sit on my right hand and my left hand, I can t give it to you because that s already been given by God the Father to somebody else.

Now, to whom do you reckon the Father gave that? Come back to Chapter 17 and let me show you an idea. I can t prove this but I can give you an educated guess.

Matthew 17:3 And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with

him.

Let me ask you something. There is Jesus transfigured before them and there s Moses and Elijah standing there. How do you reckon they were standing there? Moses, Elijah and Jesus? Or was it Jesus, Elijah and Moses? Or was it Jesus, Moses and Elijah? Then who was on His right hand? Moses was the great giver of the law. Elijah was the great representative of the prophets. Jesus said, I am not come to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill them. When the kingdom comes, it is the fulfillment of all that the law promised and all of what the prophets prophesied. The kingdom is the very basis, the very foundation, the very



strength and execution of the law and the prophets. There will be twelve apostles on twelve thrones, each one a prince in Israel and David will be the regent over them. Christ will live in that great millennial temple in Shiloh up north of Jerusalem, in the prince s portion. The two witnesses, Moses and Elijah, lefthand, right hand, probably will sit on either side. I can t prove that, but it is probable.

Matthew 20:24 And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren.

The other apostles were angry because they were jealous. Notice how the ten get jealous at the two. Are you familiar with the division of ten and two? That s the age old division of the nation, isn t it? That verse also represents the age old jealousy between the two kingdoms. If you recall, that is why the kingdom split in the first place. All that division between the two houses, the ten and the two: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. It was Judah and Benjamin inthe south and Ephraim and the rest of the tribes in the north. That s why Ephraim, the first in the list, is used as another name for the northern kingdom. It s interesting how that age old division of Israel in its two parts and the age oldjealousy and contention between them remains throughout your Bible.

25 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

26 But it shall not be so among you:In other words, my kingdom is not based on political power and intrigue, not based on a dictatorship, not based on the type of dominion and authority that the Gentiles have. When you look at Verse 25, you see that there is a startling statement by the rightful King of this universe about the Gentile dominions. He says that the governments of the Gentiles are conceited, self righteous, self glorifying dictators. That is not a very flattering estimation of Gentiles. Do youknow what kind of government we live under today? (I can get into trouble whenI talk like that because we consider our country perfect. Why do we consider it perfect? Because it is my country.)

Hey folks, the same intrigue going on back there, and the same intrigue going on

all over the face of the earth, goes on right here. If you think you can makefriends with the governments of this world and promote the cause of righteousness by doing that, you haven t read very carefully.

Luke 16:15 And he said unto them, for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

The nations and their governments are just that way. What could be more of theworld than the politics and governments of this world? You can thank God when a nation like ours has a heritage of being influenced by the truth of the word of God and the body of Christ. You can thank God for that, can t you? The political, economic and social liberties that you and I enjoy today come from a governmental concept that comes right out of the gospel. We can be grateful for that;

I am not diminishing that at all. I am just pointing out to you something about the governments of the world. You can t close your eyes to these things. Appreciate your heritage and be glad of it, but realize where it came from and what the real issue is: that book.

Matthew 20:26 But it shall not be so among you:

He is saying, My kingdom isn t like the kingdoms of the Gentiles.

Notice what Jesus said when He was standing before Pilate:



John 18:33 Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus,and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?34 Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?

Wow! He s the judge. Pilate asks, Are you king of the Jews? Jesus answers, Did youfigure that out by yourself or did somebody have to tell you? That s bold. That s the Lord.

35 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew?

Pilate says, Am I one of you guys? I don t get information from the likes of you.

Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world

My kingdom is not like your kingdom, where lost people hand others over in orderto accomplish their own will. That s not my kind of kingdom.

36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of thisworld, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but [underline] now is my kingdom not from hence.

He is not saying that His kingdom won t ever be down here on earth. That s what the modernists say. The new Bibles leave that word now out of that verse so you won t understand that He is making a dispensational statement. Right now the world system belongs to the adversary, and my kingdom doesn t have its origins down here. It is not like the kingdoms of the Gentiles but when it comes . . .!

Revelation 11:15 The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

At the time, His kingdom wasn t down here, but it s coming. It s coming.When His kingdom comes, it won t be like the Gentile kingdoms. We re based on dictatorship. What is His kingdom based on?

Matthew 20:26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Do you want to be great? Do you know who the great one will be in His kingdom?It will be that bond slave out there running around barefoot in the dust waitin

g on the master s table. That s not the way the world looks at greatness, is it?

We look at the chief, a big charismatic guy drawing people in. Jesus says, No, no, no. You misunderstand about my kingdom. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33) That s the issue.

So, if you want to be a leader in His kingdom, if you want to be first in His kingdom, then you be last, the servant of all.

28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, andto give his life a ransom for many.

He is the great example. You be like Him. If you want to be in His kingdom, be like your King. I didn t come to be served, I came to serve. I came to do what you couldn t do for yourself and to give my life for many.



and the two.

All three synoptic accounts (Matthew, Mark and Luke) begin the last week of ourLord s life with this incident.

Matthew 21 begins with His entry into Jerusalem, and within a week s time from where we are in this passage, He ll be dead. In less than one week, He ll hang on thecross and die. The last thing these gospel writers show you about His ministry, as He goes to Jerusalem, is two blind men being healed. It s like the divided nation of Israel crying to Him, hanging onto Him and owning Him as the son of David as they will one day. The blind men press on against the opposition of the crowd.

32 And Jesus stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye that I shalldo unto you?33 They say unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened.34 So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him.

You see, our Lord opened the eyes of them that believed on Him as their Messiah. They recognized Him as the son of David, as who He was, and then those men followed Him. That s a type, just one last little statement by Matthew, Mark and Luke that that s who He was.

Israel rejected Him, but here s what He would do for them that would believe. It sa figure, a type, a picture of that true remnant out there in the future day who would wait for Him and would recognize Him and own Him for who He is. They would see Him as the one who was going to come and remove the curse from creation;they would believe on Him, receive the restoration and then follow Him.

The disciples, ministering in early Acts, can look back on these events and say, That s what could have happened, but it didn t. The tribulation saints will be ableto look back and say, That s what we are; we are the blind Bartimaeus and his friend. We re the two houses who look to the son of David and cry out for Him to be to us who He really is and come and remove the curse. He will come and remove thecurse, and they believe on Him, receive the restoration and follow Him.

It s a touching way for the writer of each one of the synoptic gospels to end Hisministry among the Lord s people, demonstrating that He is who He claimed to be.

Now we see that He goes to Jerusalem to die. Now the focus will change from His being the son of David and will begin to focus on His being the son of Abraham, the perfect sacrifice.


In Matthew, Chapter 21, we come to the last week of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Chapters 26 and 27 record the actual events that took place in the lastfew hours of His life.

John, Chapter 12, relates some of the same events, and the Book of John has twenty one chapters. You have to remember that when you come to John 12, you have c



ome down to the last six days in the life of the Lord Jesus on this earth.

In fact, John 13 19 takes place in the last twenty four hours of His life, so there are a lot of chapters focused on that event. Of course, there are no otherevents in all of human history that we believers ought to know about more than the events that surround the death, burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and especially the meaning of those events as they are expounded in Paul s epistles.

Now we come to the last six days in the life of Christ.

Matthew 21:1 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples,

He sends these disciples into Jerusalem, and what follows is what is generally called the triumphal entry of Christ. In the Scofield Reference Bible the heading of the chapter says, The King s public offer of himself as king.

This is what is called Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, prior to the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The reason it is called Palm Sunday is because when He came into the city, the people laid palm branches down in his path.

Matthew 21:1 then sent Jesus two disciples,

2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them;and straightway he will send them.4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them,

It is a tremendously significant scene taking place here. In fact, the prophetsays Behold! Look! Pay attention to what s going on here! Behold your king! Look at him! As though he expected it to be a surprising, startling kind of a sce

ne, and certainly it was.It was not apparently a very triumphant entry. He sent His disciples to get a little donkey and her colt. He s not going into the city on a white charger, not in a chariot with captives before Him, but He is entering the city on an ass not even the momma, but on the little colt. When the prophet said, Behold your King! he adds that He is meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.

Zechariah 9:9 says that He is lowly. He is meek and lowly. Do you remember a passage we have already read using that expression in the Book of Matthew? Comeback to Chapter 11.

Matthew 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I willgive you rest.29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

You will recall that when we studied that chapter, we noticed carefully the passage and its entire context and the invitation of Christ in view of His rejection by Israel as their King. He has presented Himself, and they have rejected Himand have nothing to do with Him. He is changing the focus and is withdrawing Hi



mself from the nation, and now He is training that little flock. He is gathering that little group of believers together.

So, when He presents Himself here, He is meek and lowly. He comes not in gloryand majesty but in humiliation.

This passage is not about the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem to offerHimself as king. At this point, Christ is not, as is usually stated, offering the kingdom to Israel. The way you know that is by reading Luke 19, and so often this is the case: when people disagree about things in scripture, you should always look for some other scripture to shed light on it.

Luke 19:11 And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, [He tells them this just prior to where we are reading in Matthew.] and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

In other words, they thought the kingdom was going to appear immediately, so prior to His entry into Jerusalem, He tells them a parable to explain to them thatthe kingdom is not going to materialize immediately. There is going to be a delay because the King has been rejected.

Luke 19:12 He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.

13 And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.14 But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us.

The delay in the setting up of the kingdom has to do with the fact that the citizens say, We don t want him! He has explained that to the apostles prior to Matthew 21, so it makes no sense that He would offer the kingdom at His entry into Jerusalem after He has just told them it isn t going to show up.

Some of you are going to run into arguments like that in your ministries, when you are talking to people. The standard Acts Two position is that the fall of Israel takes place here. The position of some of the old timers is that it takes

place in Matthew 12. The other position is that it takes place at Calvary. Here, they say He offers the kingdom, Israel refuses it and kills Him, and God sets Israel aside and starts the body of Christ in Acts 2. Either way they put it:whether they put the offer of the kingdom and the fall of Israel in Matthew 12 or at the cross, and the church beginning in Acts 2, they can t be right. You needto be aware of why that is not true and how you can demonstrate that.

That is not true because in Acts 2 and in Acts 3 you see Peter making the offerof the kingdom to Israel. When we study the Book of Acts, you are going to seeclearly that in Acts 2 and 3 Peter offers the kingdom to Israel. He makes the offer clearly. There s no problem understanding that. The offer is not made herein Matthew where we are studying but it is made over in early Acts.

The real triumphal entry of Christ will be at His second coming. In Revelation19, He doesn t come on a donkey; He comes on a white horse. In Mr. O Hair s book, 170 Sunday School Lessons and Sermon Outlines, He has a little message entitled TheAss and the White Horse. In that lesson, he contrasts the first coming of Christ here in humiliation with His second coming in Revelation 19 in majesty and glory.

Zechariah 9 speaks of the first and second comings. Behold thy King cometh. That is the Second Coming, isn t it? That s when your King shows up.



Luke 20:20 And they watched him,

They watched Him on days eleven, twelve and thirteen. That s exactly what they were to do according to the regulation.

What you have in Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19 and John 12, with the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, has nothing to do with His coming in as the King to set up a kingdom. The amillennialists and others who don t rightly divide the word of truth believe that you and I are Israel, and non dispensational people teach thatHis coming to present Himself as King to Israel was really when He began to reign over a spiritual kingdom. It has to be a spiritual kingdom because you don t see it out there in the political world, do you? No. They don t understand what He was doing there. They don t understand that the prophetic program has been interrupted and today God is forming a spiritual body of believers called the body of Christ which was a mystery and not a part of the prophetic program.

Those who do not rightly divide the word of truth don t understand that and don t want to understand that, so they say that He is presenting Himself as King so He s a funny looking King. Oh, it s a spiritual kingdom in the hearts of men.

You can t deny that, can you? Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. There s a spiritual kingdom involved here, but folks, there is also a literal, physical, visible, Davidic, earthly manifestation of that kingdom when He willfulfill the promises that God made to Israel. Here He is presenting Himself as

Israel s Passover lamb, the true one. They don t understand it, but that is who Heis.

Once again, it demonstrates the blindness of the nation. You ll see a little later, that John also recorded these things so that, after the cross, in the early Acts period, the disciples could look back and then they could understand what was going on here. These things teach, illustrate and demonstrate the purposes of God that He is presenting to the nation.

Rather than presenting Himself as King, He is presenting Himself as the rejected one, on the very day. To me that is touching; that is fantastic. Exactly when Israel is bringing in their Passover lamb, here comes the real one and they don t even know it. They don t even recognize Him, and they refuse Him.

Matthew 21:6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them,7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut downbranches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.

What He does is significant.

By the way, Verse 5 is a problem text and you ll have that thrown at you sometimes. People will say, See, the Bible has contradictions in it.

Thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of

an ass.

Was He sitting on one or two? Well, the verse sounds as though He s sitting on two. You know He can t be. The idea is that He is sitting on the colt, the baby.Isn t the baby a donkey? It says He is sitting on a donkey, on the colt the foalof an ass. What else would the donkey be? He is sitting on the little one, not the momma. He sent the disciples to get both of them. Ye shall find an ass tied and a colt with her . . . and bring them unto me. He didn t sit on the mother but on the little guy whereon yet never man sat.



How would you like to jump on an unbroken donkey? What do you reckon would happen to you? There is something about a donkey: you can break a horse without riding him, but you cannot break a donkey without riding him. I knew guys down south on a farm where they used donkeys. They ll tell you real quick that you can t work them before you ride them. They had mules in their stable, and sometimes they d wind up with a donkey and they couldn t use him. It just won t work. The only way you can break that rascal is to ride him. Until he has been ridden, he isn t broken. You can t hook him to a plow.

What did Christ do? He got on that colt. If there is any triumph in that passage, that s it. It s that overruling power of the Saviour.

Do you know why the Bible is so humiliating to man? The reason people don t likeit is because the Bible is always right and they are always wrong. If you are going to be right, you have to be what the Bible says to be. Don t make any mistake about it; when it crosses you, that Book is right every time. You can plead your case with somebody else or argue your cause with the government maybe, but you can t argue with God.

You know what a donkey is known for: stubbornness and rebellion. He won t do what you want him to do; he is going to do what he wants to do, but when they put Christ on that little colt, off he went. The Bible compares man to an ass s colt and that isn t very flattering. The connection indicates that man is just as stubborn and rebellious by nature as that little donkey.

Job 11:12 For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt

That isn t very flattering, is it? The word man is the Hebrew word adam which means mankind.

Do you know what the Lord did? He got right on the little donkey and off He went. It wasn t any problem. That s power. That s triumph.

Exodus 13:13 And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.

That s talking about redemption. Isn t that wild? Why would He connect you with an ass, with a donkey? I hope you are not overlooking a spiritual point there.

Back in Matthew 21:2, you ll notice that it wasn t just an ass but it was an ass tied. Folks, Israel was bound by the law. The men were to go and loose them.

Matthew 21:3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them.

Just as the donkey was tied, Israel was bound by the law. Christ had come to loose them from the law even in spite of the opposition of the nation.

7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they se

t him thereon.

9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

In spite of Israel s folly, rebellion and stubborn self will, like that of the little ass s colt, He was in control. They may carry Christ to the cross, but it wasonly done because it was His will and His plan. They didn t take Him to the cross against His will. He was riding that stubborn little donkey which is a tragic



type of the nation Israel.

In John 12, there is a verse you should not miss.

John 12:14 And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written,15 Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt.16 These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him.

I have told you repeatedly that the events we have studied about in the Book ofMatthew were recorded so that, after Christ had been glorified and the Holy Spirit had come, God could recall these things to their minds, and then they could look back and remember that He had been training them all along. That is exactly what happened. That s what is going on here. These events have tremendous significance in the program that is in effect at this time.

Matthew 21:9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

Save us now is the idea. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosa

nna in the highest. The disciples are proclaiming Him.10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who isthis?11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

One last time, Christ forces the city of Jersualem to consider His claim of whoHe is, as He comes in.

12 And Jesus went into the temple of God,

Malachi 3:1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the m

essenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.

Christ came into the temple of God, as foretold.

Matthew 21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer;

This is a second coming phenomenon. In the passage, He is doing what He is going to do at His second advent. It s the just as He did in Verse 5, when he fulfilled the quote from Zechariah 9. Again, we see the blending of His two advents together. The point is that the problem is not that Christ is reluctant; He is ready to fulfill what has been promised. He is confirming the promises made unto t

he fathers. The problem is with Israel not with Christ, but with Israel.

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,13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

He had cleansed the temple once before, in John 2, at the beginning of His ministry, and this is the second cleansing, coming at the end of His ministry. He ca



me in and drove out all those people who were cheating, conniving and making merchandise out of the worship of Jehovah God. He told them they were making merchandise and were phonies, and He throws them out. He says, My house shall be called the house of prayer. (Isaiah 56:7) He says it will be a house of prayer for all people. That demonstrates Israel s failure to be what God wanted them to be. The worship of God was to go through them out to all nations, but they have turned His house into a den of thieves. They were making merchandise and were a bunch of hirelings. He demonstrated His attitude toward them by throwing them out and bringing His wrath and indignation down on them.

14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.

They came to Him in the temple and He demonstrated once again what He was goingto do when He came into the temple.

This is a reference to Psalm 118, a second coming passage. Once again, this isa second coming prophecy that would have been fulfilled had the nation been receptive.

Psalm 118:26 Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD: [That s what they cried out at His entry into Jerusalem: Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Why did He immediately go to the Temple?] We have blessed you out of the house of the LORD.

He came in and Matthew said, There he is! He s the one! Matthew showed that Christ went right to the temple. He healed the blind and the lame, and they blessed Him out of the house of the Lord.

27 God is the LORD, which hath shewed us light: bind the sacrifice with cords,even unto the horns of the altar.

Sometimes people ask, What would have happened if Israel had received Christ as her Messiah? It is said that they couldn t have done it in Matthew because then there wouldn t have been a Calvary never been a sacrifice, never been a payment. I tell you, that this is not true. That verse right there demonstrates that, had they responded in faith to the teaching of the word of God that was given to them through the prophets, John, Christ and the apostles, the sacrifice would stil

l have been made. Christ came as the Passover lamb, He went to the temple, and they praised God out of the temple, and what does the next verse say they are todo? They are to bind the sacrifice with cords to the altar.

Remember that the perfect type and picture of Christ on Calvary is Abraham, in Genesis 22, taking Isaac up on the mountain. Abraham said, I and the lad will goyonder and worship, and come again to you. I am going up there and kill my boy.

God Almighty is going to raise him from the dead and then we re coming back downhere.

Who was supposed to kill Isaac? Abraham was. Isaac laid his life down like a lamb dumb before his shearer. Isaac laid himself down and his dad tied him to thealtar; he raised the knife, but God stopped him. In Israel s case, they would hav

e offered the sacrifice. Christ would have willingly been sacrificed by the nation, and the offering would have been made. God had made the provision, but Heknew they weren t going to accept it. God had made the provision, and we see from the context, it was right there.

Because of the wicked, stubborn, rebellious unbelief of the nation, it was donein a much different way. The reason was because of their sin and rebellion.

Don t you ever point your finger at Israel because the hammer that drove the nails in His hands and feet, the spear that was thrust into His side and the whip tha



t plowed His back have your finger prints. If you look at that cross closely you ll see your engravings and your carpentry work, so don t just blame Israel. Nonetheless, the deed was to be done.

Christ healed the blind and lame, just as the Psalm said He would.

Matthew 21:15 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,

When they saw Him getting the glory and being praised out of the temple, the religious leaders of Israel got angry. They were upset and they didn t like it. They were offended, and He pinpointed their problem for them.

16 And [they] said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith untothem, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?

Yea; have ye never read . . .? Boy, I love the way He dealt with that bunch of religious big shots. He just kept firing verses at them. I have found that if you keep firing verses at people, they ll wind up trying to destroy you. They re going to crucify you. They are going to do to you what they did to Paul.

By the way, did you guys read your Bible this morning? Have you had devotions today? Christ asked that over and over in Matthew. I have pointed it out to you.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?

That s wonderful; that s wonderful. He was saying, Didn t you read over there in theBook of Psalms where God says He is going to reveal doctrinal truth to those who come to Him as little children and who simply believe what He tells them? Do you religious big shots here know what your problem is? You just don t want to believe what God said. You don t want to be just little babes.

Have you ever noticed that when you tell a little child something, he ll believe

it? He said, That s who gets the truth. A child just wants to believe what God says. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise. And whoshall be able to stand?

17 And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany; and he lodged there.

He is demonstrating His rejection by the leaders of Israel and of Jerusalem. Check the record, and you will see that He didn t stay in Jerusalem at night, untilthe night before they took Him to the cross. He left the city every night and came back the next day. He was out of the city during night, until the night of the thirteenth and fourteenth when He went to the upper room and then spent the night in Pilate s judgment hall. He went to the cross the next morning.

He rejects the city and the elders. He demonstrates that by the cursing of the barren fig tree, and the rest of the chapter focuses on that rejection. The point of the passage is summed up in Verse 43.

Matthew 21:43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken fromyou [the religious leaders], and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

He rejects them and He is going to take the kingdom authority from them and give



it to that little flock.

Luke 12:32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Matthew 21:18 Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered.19 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 thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.20 And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!

People have accused the Lord of all kinds of untoward things because of cursingthe fig tree. They say, He was just touchy and irrational. Touchiness is when you blow up about little things; you get irritable. I read a definition this week that convicted me. It said, Touchiness is self conceit set with a hair trigger.

You think about that, will you? Touchiness is self conceit with an overblown view of your own ability. You think too highly of yourself. You are too big for your britches (or your dress).

Set with a hair trigger: that really convicts me. People say that was Christ s attitude here. He came in the morning and wanted something to eat. There was nothing, so He causes the tree to wither. Is that how it was? Hardly, you know better than that. There s an illustration here in the cursing of the fig tree about

what was happening dispensationally and spiritually with Israel.Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. Hasn t Christ been lo

oking for fruit in Israel since day one? Hasn t He come hungering to see a responsive heart among His people? Sure, He has.


Luke 19:41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,42 Saying, If thou hadst known,

He is hungry; His heart craves fruit. John the Baptist told these same religious leaders, Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance. (Matthew 3:8)

So, He comes hungering and looking for fruit in Israel and He doesn t find any. He comes to the fig tree oh, it had leaves. When there are leaves on a fig tree, that fig tree is saying, Come and eat. Israel had all the window dressing: they had the law, the ordinances and the statutes, and they ve got the religious leaders in all their regalia. They had everything that made them look like you could come there and find some fruit. Christ came and told them, You re an empty vine.

By the way, there are four trees in the Bible (Judges 9) that relate to the history of Israel. There is the vine tree: the vine tree in Psalm 80 represents Is

rael as a nation, the national life of Israel. There is the olive tree. Oliveoil is a type of the Holy Spirit. The olive tree represents the spiritual lifeof Israel.

Then there is a fig tree. The fig tree first shows up in the Bible with Adam and Eve who made aprons out of fig leaves. They made clothes to cover their nakedness. Rather than going to God and saying, Lord, we have messed up and we need help, they thought, We ll fix it ourselves. They had fig tree religion.

Next to Matthew 21:19, write down in your notes Jeremiah 24, and read that passa



not . . . Mark it down: the reason Israel failed to recognize her Messiah, as Paul tells you, is because they didn t walk by faith.

Romans 9:30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which isof faith.31 But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness.32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the worksof the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone;33 As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

Paul is saying that if Israel had been walking by faith when God laid the Rock in Zion, they would have recognized Him and received Him. The problem was that they were walking in their own self righteous efforts.

Christ is talking to the little flock: If ye have faith, and doubt not Faith is the issue, and that little nation had to believe. Matthew 21:21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, [You re not only going to see them pass away] but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

What does that refer to? You have seen that passage before in Matthew, haven t you?

Jesus had come down from the mount of transfiguration, and He found the disciples trying to cast out a devil from a little kid, but they couldn t.

Matthew 17:18 And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and thechild was cured from that very hour.19 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast himout?20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain,

Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. [Isn t that the same kind of situation?]21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

That s the same as the promise over there in Matthew 21. What does the mountain represent? Over and over, in prophetic scripture, a mountain is the type of a kingdom. These men had just come up against a conflict.

Do you recall what we learned in Matthew 12? You have to put the passages together. In Matthew 12, the kingdom of God came into conflict with the kingdom of Satan over the casting out of devils. When Christ came along and cast out the evil spirits and demons, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan were in opposition and were contending with one another.

If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you would say unto this mountain, to this opposition from Satan s kingdom, Scram, buddy. You would have power over those things.

He is saying that the mountain represents the opposition of Satan s policy of evil, Satan s kingdom, against what God is doing here. He is saying to them, Do you want to overcome the adversary? Do you want to overcome the obstacle? Do you want to overcome Satan s attack? The way you do that is just to get on with the program that I have in effect because my program is going to overcome his program.



My kingdom is going to overcome his kingdom.

Do you follow me? You have to get all the cobwebs out of your head from what you hear on TV. You have to forget all that stuff and think about the passage.

Matthew 21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, yeshall receive.

Notice the word believing. So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. That s not talking about a prayer where you sit down and dream up whatever you want and then ask God to give it to you. That s a prayer you ask, believing, in accordance with God s will.

People call that an unconditional prayer promise. That doesn t mean that it is notconditioned on the will of God. Every prayer is conditioned on the will of God. You can t pray relying on your own human viewpoint and have God run by your agenda. That s nonsense. The point is that when you pray in the will of God, in line with what God is doing, you re going to know what to pray for and you ll get the answer. That s the unconditional nature of it. We don t have any prayer promises like this one today, but they did.

1 John 5:14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the

petitions that we desired of him.That s unconditional: when they ask, believing, according to his will, He will do it.

Now, how could they know His will?

1 John 2:20 But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.

27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you,

That s talking about the Holy Spirit; that s talking about that new covenant blessing, when I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; .

. . I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments...

and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

That s part of that new covenant blessing that is given to the little flock and to the nation Israel.

You want to remember, in Matthew 21 you have a wonderful record of what is going on at the time. Christ presented Himself as their Redeemer. That had to havebeen a touching scene. In their blindness, they didn t recognize Him. He went im

mediately to the temple, just as the scripture said He would. They failed to see Him for who He was. He did in the temple what His heart longed to do for thewhole nation; He cleansed the temple. Again, they failed to recognize Him, so He left the temple and went away.

He came back the next day and saw the fig tree. His heart said, I m hungry, and Ihave come for fruit, but you have nothing but the form of religion. That s goingto bring the judgment of God on you, and He cursed the fig tree.

He turned to that little flock and said, You d better learn this fact: the issue is



faith. The essential point is to believe what God said. That is always the issue.


We are studying the Book of Matthew in some detail, and we have come to Matthew21:23. We are going to look at the last few days of the life of the Lord JesusChrist on earth. We are within just three or four days of His death at Calvary, so we are down to the very last of His life and ministry.

In the first part of Chapter 21, He enters into Jerusalem. He goes into the temple, cleanses the temple and throws out the moneychangers. He heals the blind and lame and then He leaves the city.

The next day He curses the fig tree which is a representation of the judgment of God on the nation Israel. It is symbolic, a type.

Then, in Matthew 22:23 and the following verses, He focuses on the details of the judgment of God on the various classes that make up the nation Israel.

In Matthew 21:23, He talks to the chief priests and elders, and that discussioncontinues on down through Chapter 22:14. In this passage, He gives them three parables that relate to them.

In Matthew 22:15, He deals with the Pharisees; in Verse 16, the Herodians; in Verse 23, the Saduccees. In Verse 35, He deals with the lawyers.

He is breaking down the leaders of the nation into their various classes as they are standing around Him. He addresses each one and talks to them about the jud

gment of God upon them and their attitude toward Him that calls forth that judgment.

The events going on here happen in rapid succession, within a very compressed time frame. There are single chapters in Matthew during which months transpire, but that s not the way it is here. These things are taking place within one short period of time, within a day or so. These verses give a compressed view of events.

Matthew is presenting a dispensational overview. He is looking ahead and picking out things that Christ does and telling us that these events emphasize the issue of His being the Messiah and showing Israel s unbelief and rejection of Him.

Matthew 21:23 And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority?

Now, when these guys came, they didn t say, Dearly beloved, we have come here this afternoon to find out by what authority and ordination you do these things. They were steaming when they came in. They were angry. They came in and demanded, WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU RE DOING! That was the tenor of their conversation.



It is little wonder that they confronted Him and it is little wonder that theywere mad.

Matthew 21:12 And Jesus went into the temple of God [what they considered their territory], 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,13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.

They were at a revival meeting. The Lord went in and threw out all those crooks and moneychangers. That caused quite a stir. Those people were paying the chief priests a kickback to allow them to be there doing what they were doing. Hethrew them all out, and that wasn t the half of it: He said This is my house. It was God s house. He was claiming to be Jehovah God who owned the temple, and then He does a number of miracles. I expect the chief priests and scribes (the religious hierarchy who ran the temple) were standing over in a corner looking at all that.

Then the next day, He showed up again. As He walked into the temple this time,what do you think He would do for an encore? They re saying, Here s the guy that shook up the place yesterday, and now He s coming back. They ask Him, Who gave you the right to do these things? (The things that are recorded back in Verses 12, 13 and 14.)

Don t you reckon that if a fellow came in and did those things and then healed the blind I don t mean like some charlatan on TV who says they do but they don t really do it; I don t mean like some dude who has a tent outside the city like they do now and fills it up with a bunch of dumb gentiles that they d take notice?

Christ went in there and really healed them. He really did it, and there it is; they are healed. The blind man sees and the lame guy walks. People knew who they were and they recognize the miracles. If someone came and did those kinds of miracles, what should you do? Would you get mad at him? No, you ought to believe on him and receive him. You ought to appreciate him, and you ought to say, Come in!

We ve already looked at Isaiah 35 where it says that, when your God comes to saveIsrael, Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of thedumb sing:

He is who He said He is: He is Messiah. But the chief priests and elders cameand asked, Who gave you the right to do this? They ignored the miracles and the issue of who He was altogether and sat as a bunch of ecclesiastical judges over His right to cleanse the temple and His claim as to who He was.

Let me say something to you: when you go out to preach the word of God (this isjust a spiritual application and side note), you are going to see, as in the next passage down through Verse 27, unique little glimpses into the psyche of relig

ious leaders. There are some tremendous lessons for you to remember here.

When you get to preaching and teaching the word of God, you d better remember that what they are going to challenge is your authority. Who gave you the right todo what you are doing? You d better be sure you have the right authority. Do you know what the right authority is? It is not a commissioning service from somechurch or some bishop or some religious leader. It is that book in your hand, and if that isn t your authority, what you do is just going to fall down around your ears.



Hey folks, they knew what was going on.

37 But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, [ We wonder who that is]. [No!] This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.39 And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.

They knew who He was, yet they claimed to be agnostics. They said, We can t tell. They said that in order to protect their ecclesiastical position. You see, as long as you remain an agnostic, as long as you remain uncommitted, religion will allow you to receive the praises of men and keep your standing.

If you think that is too hard, come over to John 12 and read these words carefully. You guys who are going into the ministry and will be leading people in local churches, don t you forget what religion does when it claims to be broadminded and tolerant. I m talking about the religions and ecclesiastical systems of the world. They say, We can t tell and that s just your interpretation; they are trying to get rid of that book because they don t want to be subject to the authority of the living word of God.

As long as you don t know, you can get along with them. You can maintain your sta

tus and position and keep your pomp and ecclesiastical rank. As soon as you start knowing some truths, they re going to have a problem with you.

John 12:42 Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; [Notice that many among the same group of people, the chief rulers, believed] but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue:

There were men in that crowd that knew the right answer to the question, but they didn t speak up because they feared the Pharisees taking away their position of ecclesiastical standing and the pomp.

43 For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.

Christ s response to their We can t tell is interesting. Their aim in their willful ignorance was to protect themselves from losing the praises of men. Everybody knew John s ministry came from heaven, but if they admit that, He ll say, Why didn t yousubmit to it then? They feared to say, It is of man, because they knew the massestook John to be a prophet. Everybody knew he came from God, so the best coursefor them was to ignore it.

The problem in Israel wasn t that they didn t know; it was that they chose not to believe. Don t forget that. When you go out to preach the gospel to people and you share with them the truth that Christ died for their sins, that they are lost sinners, that they are bankrupt, that they can t offer anything that God will accept, that when they try to give God some of their ceremonial correctness and good

works they are just pitting their righteousness against God s righteousness and God says He ll have none of it.

The requirement to go to heaven and be accepted with God is to be perfect, and you re not perfect. No matter how good you think you are, you re not perfect, are you? You re not perfect and none of your kin were. That s the reason they all died.

The wages of sin is death. The punishment for sin against Almighty God is deathand hell. Because you need perfection is the reason why God gave His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die at Calvary to be your perfect Saviour. You can have God s righteousness and acceptance in Him and in Him alone. You get salvation on Go



d s terms, not yours.

When you tell that to people and they say, No, that s just your opinion, they are willfully choosing not to believe. It isn t ignorance when you have shared it withthem and they know it. They have a haughty heart of rebellion. They have things they want to hang onto and won t let them go; that s all it is.

When you go to them, you need to understand that. You need to love them and share the gospel with them. You need to share the truth with them and you need tounderstand them because then you can minister to them.

1 Corinthians 2:15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himselfis judged of no man.

You understand what is going on with them, even though they don t understand anything about you.

Notice His response:

Matthew 21:27 And he said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I dothese things.

The Lord says, Okay, if you are going to claim ignorance or broadminded tolerance, when you are deliberately rejecting the truth, I m not going to tell you a thin

g. Their condition was unbelief willful, deliberate unbelief.He goes on and gives three parables that set forth the condition of the chief priests and the elders and his dealings with them in response. What think ye? He tosses it back to them and confronts them. He is not going to let them off the hook without answering Him.

Matthew 21:28 But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard.29 He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went.30 And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.31 Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The fir

st.You d have to be completely dense not to know the answer to that. If I told my boy to go out and cut the grass, and he said, I m not going to do it, but he thinks about it and changes his mind and cuts the grass, did he do my will? Yes. At first he said, No, but then he changed his mind and did it. If I say to another oneof my sons, Go cut the grass, and he says, Okay. I call him back three hours laterand ask, Do you have the grass cut? No. Did he do what I wanted him to do? No. It isn t simply the profession that counts. Which one of the guys did the will ofthe father? Obviously, the first one did.

Matthew 21:31 Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you [religious leaders].

32 For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.

In other words, the publicans and the harlots at first said no to God. They were breaking the commandments and were out of the will of God. John came and cried to them, Repent! and they turned around; they repented. They changed their mind and believed.

The Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, priests and rulers had been offering



lip service to God; they were professing all along to be serving God. The publicans and harlots weren t and were obviously violating the commandments of God. The men who were doing the religious ceremonies were giving lip service so as to appear to be pleasing to God were like the fig tree professing to have fruit andhaving none.

In the end, they refused to repent. They refused the word of God when it came.Do you know why? They had all those ceremonies but they lacked the one thing t

hat God required and that was faith.

They were performing the ceremonies and wearing the long black robes. They hadthe title. One of them would see another in the marketplace and he d say, There goes Father So and So; He holds forth down at Such and Such Synagogue. Another would say, Here comes Rabbi So and So. You did know they used those terms, didn t you?

Matthew 23:7 And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which isin heaven.10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

There you see three religious titles they had. That s not a son talking to his daddy and calling him father. He s talking about religious titles: father, rabbi, master. If you hear that kind of thing in this century, it s because some of that paganism that got into Israel from Babylon is still hanging over today.

They loved these religious titles, but when the word of God came from John, rather than responding in faith, they did not believe.

The baptism of John was the testing point on which Christ leaned when He arguedhis Messianic authority. That s because, with John came the testimony about Messiah and authority of the kingdom.

Luke 7:29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God,

being baptized with the baptism of John.They said, God is right. We ve been wrong, but we believe what He says, and they came and submitted to John s baptism of repentance for remission of sins. .

30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.

Water baptism, when it was in effect at that time, had to do with an outward expression of a man s heart attitude toward the message that God sent. You ve heard all your life that water baptism is an outward symbol of an inward faith, and that is exactly true in these passages. The problem was that the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against them and their hearts were filled with w

illful disobedience and unbelief. As a result of that, they weren t doing the will of the Father although they professed to be doing it.

That s who they were. That was their condition. Now, what was to be the outcomeof that? They were in unbelief.

32 For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.



They saw it and repented not. They had the witness and they refused it. What was His response to that kind of attitude?

33 Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:34 And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.35 And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, andstoned another.36 Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.

The vineyard is Israel (Isaiah 5, Psalm 80). The householder is God the Fatherwho planted the vineyard in Judah. The husbandmen (the farmers) are the rulersof Israel to whom He is talking in Verse 23. You know that because in Verse 25, the chief priests and the Pharisees perceived that the parable referred to them, so the servants in Verses 35 and 36 are the prophets.

God sent them prophet after prophet in the Old Testament: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah. The husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Back in the Old Testament, you see that over and over.

37 But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.39 And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.

These men were more than just unfaithful. They attempted to seize the inheritance (the vineyard) with violence, to take it for their own use by violence.

Matthew 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

That is, the kingdom was in the hands of religious racketeers. In your study, y

ou ll see the demonic activity that went on in the gospel accounts, and you ll see the tremendous violence it caused, where one is thrown into the fire and one is thrown on the ground and they thrash around. That violence demonstrates the satanic attack, through the leaders of Israel, to bring the nation Israel into a condition that would prevent God from fulfilling His promises and blessing the whole world through their instrumentality.

Matthew 21:40 When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?

Christ asked them another question; He continued doing that in these parables.They wouldn t answer the first one, so He gave them a parable. He asked them a question and they condemned themselves out of their own mouths.

Originally, they answered, we don t know. We can t tell. He isn t going to let them off without answering and claiming ignorance, so He says, I ll tell you what. Here sthe situation. What s your answer?

41 They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will letout his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.

He is going to put them out and destroy them for killing his son.



42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures,

I love that. Over and over in Matthew, He asks them, Don t you ever look at thatbook? A minute ago the question was about authority. The authority comes fromreading that book. I tell you, people, sometimes you hear preachers say some things that sound a little strange. If you open up that book and read the verses, they don t sound quite so strange. There is tremendous impact and authority in that book.

42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone whichthe builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?

Acts 4:8 11 identifies the builders in Israel as these religious leaders. Their job was to build up the nation Israel. They were to build into the nation that form of doctrine that God had committed to them. He gave them the pattern for it back under Moses. That pattern of sound doctrine was to be built into the nation, and the nation was to be built up by faith in that doctrine that God had committed to them.

These men weren t doing that. Had they walked by faith in the doctrine that God had given them, they would have recognized their Messiah from the word of God when He came. Their faith would have followed the word of God and recognized Him,

but instead they rejected the very cornerstone.43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you [the religious leaders of Israel],

and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

We have talked to you about that verse time and again. That s probably one of the most important verses in the Book of Matthew.

Christ was in the process of replacing the builders of the nation. They were to have been the builders of Israel, but now they have rejected Him, and God the Father is rejecting them and replacing them with a nation bringing forth the fruit

s thereof.There are two things to remember. The nation that replaces them is not the Gentiles. If you have a Scofield Reference Bible, you will see that he has a note saying that Israel was being replaced by the Gentiles, and that is just patentlywrong. The word Gentiles in the Bible is the word nations (plural). It is notone nation, but it is all the nations of the earth.

43 The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation (singular)that brings forth the fruits of the kingdom.

What nation among the nations of the world is God going to give that kingdom to? He isn t giving it out to all the nations.

John 10:16 says, Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold. In Romans 10:19, Paul talks about that foolish nation.

Those three passages are generally understood to be references to turning the program over to the Gentiles, but they are not!

The other sheep speaks of the binding together of the two houses of Israel under the authority of Jerusalem, as foretold in Ezekiel 37. He told them, in Matthew10, not to go to the Gentiles and not to go to the Samaritans. He is going to b



ind the two kingdoms of Israel back together.

In Acts 1, you see them going out to Samaria. In Acts 8, Samaria receives the word, but they don t receive the full blessings of the message until they own the authority of Jerusalem. There s the healing of the nation.

Gentiles are never referred to as sheep in the Bible. Only one time in the Bible are Gentiles ever called sheep, and we ll see that in Matthew 25, when they come and become a part of the nation Israel. In Romans 10:19, the foolish nation (singular) is the little flock. It s the nation we are going to look at right here:

Luke 12:32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

To whom does the Lord Jesus Christ say He is going to give the kingdom? To thelittle flock. Listen people, these men ministering back there were not mistaken about the nature of the kingdom that Christ was talking about. The liberal, modernistic idea the a millenarian approach to what was happening back there,was that the disciples just misunderstood and thought He was talking about a literal, physical, visible earthly, Davidic Kingdom with His headquarters in Jerusalem, but He really wasn t. He was really talking about a moral, righteous, spiritual kingdom where Jew and Gentile were made one in Christ, but they just kept misunderstanding Him.

The people who say that, have an attitude that cares nothing about the word of God because that view is a complete and total contradiction of page after page after page after page in this Bible.

God doesn t take the kingdom from Israel and give it to the Gentiles or to the body of Christ. God simply interrupted the program that He has for Israel.

There is not one page, not one verse in here where He talks about that kingdom and says, You fellows misunderstand; it isn t a literal, physical, visible, earthly kingdom, but rather it is a spiritual kingdom that I m talking about.

He did talk about a spiritual kingdom, but it will be a spiritual kingdom materializing on the earth. So, it isn t a misnomer and it isn t false Bible understandin

g to be pre millennial. This kingdom is a real kingdom, a political, geographical reign of the Saviour over this planet. He is gathering together a governmental hierarchy of people in the nation Israel, that believing remnant, who are going to receive governmental authority in that kingdom.

The reason that kingdom isn t in power today is that Israel rejected that kingdom. They rejected their Messiah and crucified Him. They rejected the offer of the kingdom in the early Acts period as presented to them by the Holy Spirit through that little flock. God interrupted that kingdom offer; He has held it in abeyance and set the nation aside. He has introduced a new program in which we areinvolved today.

The kingdom program was no fabrication. They weren t misunderstanding what was go

ing on. Christ never corrected them, but rather, God has interrupted that program. Understanding the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation ofthe mystery will solve the problem that theologians of our day grapple with in this regard. It is the key to properly understanding what God is doing today.

When it grips your heart, nothing else will ever satisfy. It takes away the fog of confusion. I hope you understand that, and I hope you have down in your soul a deep burning conviction about its importance because it rescues you from confusion. It lets simple people like you and me just believe God s word in spite of the confusion of the religious masses. Notice that is what happens right here:



Matthew 21:44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.45 And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them.46 But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet.

They got the point and they wanted to destroy Him, but the common, ordinary people listened to His word and said, That s God s word.

Common, ordinary people, if left to themselves, will believe. That s why religion won t leave them to themselves. That s why the religious system will do everything it can to keep you from getting the word of God to them. But, just left to themselves, they see it.

44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone [Christ] shall be broken:

That s the first coming of Christ. He s a stumbling stone.

but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

He s a smiting stone (Daniel 21:44 and 45). That stone will come back and destroy

the image and grow into the kingdom of God on the earth.He is a stumbling stone to those who don t have faith. They stumble at the word, Peter says. They stumble over Him, not having faith and not believing His word.They miss Him, they don t trust Him; they don t make Him their Saviour in this context, their Messiah. When He comes He will smite them. Did you notice that itsays He will grind them to powder ? That s thorough, complete, total destruction.

Folks, that isn t just grinding people into annihilation. No. Jesus said that if your hand offends you, cut it off. It s better to go through life without a hand than it is to be cast into hell fire where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.

Folks, if hell is a figure of speech, it makes no sense to cut your hand off lest ye be cast into the figure of speech. That doesn t make a lick of sense. Do you know why? It isn t true. Do you know what happens to people without Christ, no matter what the dispensation? They die and go to hell. That s what He is talking about. He is talking about coming back and destroying them with everlasting destruction.

Christ is viewed as three different stones. There is the stumbling stone and the smiting stone and one other, the saving and sustaining stone.

1 Corinthians 10:4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

That Rock, Christ, sustained them. We sing that song:

My hope is built on nothing lessThan Jesus' blood and righteousness;I dare not trust the sweetest frame,But wholly lean on Jesus' name.On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;All other ground is sinking sand.

That s the hope and that s the saving stone.



Had Israel had faith, and had they been walking by faith all along, when the word revealed Him as Messiah, they would have believed Him; they would have received the word. They didn t, and though they had the outward appearance of righteousness, they weren t doing the will of the Father. They had the privilege of being the householders, the husbandmen of the kingdom, the possessors and rulers of it, and they were familiar with the things of God, but God says, I ll miserably destroy you. Why? They lacked faith. They didn t respond in faith to the word of God when it came to them.

We don t live in that dispensation; we live in the dispensation of grace. My friend, you and I today, have the same responsibility to respond in faith to God s word to us that Israel did in time past. Religion works the same way today as it did back then to take away the authority of the word of God. It wants to destroy its authority in your life. It wants to cause you to reason and think within yourself in every situation.

Isaiah 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Faith has to bow and say, Yes, Lord, I believe.

I hope you are saved today. I hope you know Christ as your Saviour and that you enjoy the complete and total forgiveness of your sins and that you revel in tha

t wonderful knowledge that you possess eternal life right now.Last night we had a memorial service in this room and that is on my mind tonight. He went to the Lord, and there was a whole host of people here; no doubt some of them, when it comes time for them to face death, won t be able to say, For me to depart, and be with Christ . . . is far better . They don t have that confidence.They don t know.

Not to know that you will, is to know you won t. There isn t any middle ground, folks. You are or you are not; you re in or you re out. It will be up or down: heaven or hell.

A guy said, I believe that when you die, you go to heaven, because this is hell,

here on earth. He s wrong. He missed the truth about that.


TEST #1

On a separate sheet of properly headed paper answer the following questions using complete sentences where appropriate. You may use and unmarked Bible to answer the following questions on a separate sheet of properly headed paper. This is your last Romans test glory!!!.

1. What is the importance of from that time forth and began in 16:21?2. How does 16:22 prove that Peter and the Twelve were not preaching the gospel of grace?3. Matt. 16:24 26 explains how the cross fits into the Kingdom program. Identify the meaning they were to attribute to it.




MATTHEW (Part 2 301)DISPENSATIONAL BIBLE STUDY





Matthew 22:1 And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said,

This is the third parable that Christ has given while in the temple.

Matthew 21:23 And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, . . .

The first parable begins in Verse 28 and is about the two sons. The next one begins in Verse 33 and is about the vineyard, the householder and the wicked husbandmen. The third one begins in Chapter 22.

You need to get the setting in your mind: He is in the temple and the religious leaders the chief priests, the elders and the Pharisees are gathered around and they are angry. He had come into Jerusalem the day before riding on the donkey. He had gone into the temple and cleansed it and that angered them. He had entered the temple, overturned the tables of the moneychangers and run them out of the temple.

He came back the second day and they got all upset. What are you coming back for? Who told you that you could do all this? What s going on here? They confronted

Him and He began to deal with them.We have read the first two parables thus far, and it is that context that He gives them this parable about a king who made a marriage supper for his son. The king wanted to honor his son s marriage by giving a great supper for him.

Matthew 22:2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son,3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.

5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise:6 And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth [angry]: and he sent forth hisarmies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.10 So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

In the passage, the king makes an opportunity to honor his son s marriage by celebrating with a supper. The offer of the kingdom of heaven is like the events inthis parable. He sends out invitations by his servants. There are a lot of things in the Book of Matthew to compare with the other gospel accounts. I don t always point themout to you for two reasons: we would never get through Matthew, and I expect you to be able to find some of these things on your own.

Luke 14 is a parallel account of the great supper.



Luke 14:16 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many:17 And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.

Notice, in Verse 17, he sends one servant. In Matthew 22, he sends servants (plural) on the first and second bidding. In Luke 14:16, the man sent out invitations, and it doesn t say how he did it. The first invitation is given in Verse 16. The second notice is given in Verse 17.

I want you to see that in Matthew, the word is servants. In Luke, it is servant. he difference is that in Matthew He is referring to the apostles who go out to call Israel to the supper. In Luke, at the second bidding, He sends His servant, and if you read on down through the passage you will see that the servant is theHoly Spirit. The reference there is to the Spirit of God working through the preachers.

You will notice some differences in how the bidding is done. It is representative of the difference between God the Holy Spirit s working and peoples working. That s the reason for the differences. That is something for you to study on your ownThe king sends out invitations three times. The first is in Verse 3.

Matthew 22:3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.

The next time he sends out his servants, he tells them to make the invitation really clear. Don t just say to come. Tell them that the dinner is prepared, the oxen and fatlings are killed and everything is ready. The groceries are on the table. It is time. Tell them to come right now. Come and get it.

What did they do? They made light of it and wouldn t have any part of it.

He is describing what was going on during the Lord s ministry. He came Himself, and He sent His servants. God the Father sent John the Baptist to the nation; then Christ sent out the apostles (Matthew 10) and the seventy. They went out and

called Israel to repentance, but what did Israel do? They didn t want any part of it. They crucified Christ and He went back into heaven. Finally, He sent the Holy Spirit on the apostles and they went out, but then they didn t just say to come; in the early Acts period they said, All things are ready.

In Acts 2 and 3, Peter says, Hey! The One you crucified, God raised Him up. He sMessiah and God is ready to send Him back! The time has come for you now to receive Him! Come and dine! (There s a song that says the Master calleth, Come and dine. This is where the song comes from.) That s the same invitation as in John 21:ome and dine. Peter is giving the invitation in the early Acts period.

In Matthew 22:3, you see John the Baptist during the earthly ministry of Christwith the twelve and the seventy. Then, in Verse 4, you have the added urgency a

bout all things being ready. In other words, in the New Covenant which Christ established, the king provides everything. You don t have to bring a thing. Everything you need is here and is ready. Just come!

5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise:

You remember the parable where the guy says, I ve got a piece of land and I ve got to go check it out to see if it is there. I have always wondered, do you reckon somebody is going to steal his land? Another says, I ve got an ox and I ve got to go p



rove it and see if he will run and if he is hitting on all eight cylinders. Andthen another guy says, I married a wife. Most of us understand that excuse, don t we?

6 And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.

That s the Acts period. They respond with contempt and in violence to the message preached.

7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth [angry]: and he sent forth hisarmies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

Their city is naturally Jerusalem in association with the parable about the kingdom of heaven. Where are they at this point? They have had the first invitation; they didn t respond during the earthly ministry of Christ. The second invitation to Israel was given in the early Acts period. Again, instead of responding favorably, they rejected it with contempt and then violently opposed the message.

After they rejected that second call and exercised violence against the messengers, the response from God was wrath. The response from the king in the parablewas to go down and destroy those murderers and burn up their city. In other words, he comes down and pours out his wrath on them. In the parable, the response

of the king to the second rejection of the call is wrath.Daniel 9:25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall beseven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, andthe wall, even in troublous times.26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off [the crucifixion of Christ], but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.27 And he [the anti Christ] shall confirm the covenant with many for one week [the Seventieth Week:

Visualize in your mind the sixty nine weeks: right after the sixty ninth week,the crucifixion of Christ takes place. Then the people of the prince that shall come will destroy the temple, and there is a tremendous turmoil. The anti Christ will come and rescue Israel.

In the parable in Matthew 22, you see the nation s rejection of God s call, and then you see God s wrath poured out on those who reject the message. My point to youis that the wrath that destroys the city will take place in what we call the tribulation period.

When we studied the Book of Daniel, I tried to show you at great length that what we call the day of the Lord includes the seventieth week but also involves more time than just that seven year period. Another expression in prophecy of that

time is the last days. It refers to the last days of Daniel s prophecy.

Luke 21:20 And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.

Do you know what compassed means? When I was in Junior High School in a math class, we were told to buy a protractor and a compass. The compass had a needle on one side and you stuck a pencil on the other and drew circles with it. It got its name from the word circle. That is what the word means, to go around. That kind of compass is an instrument for drawing circles.



When you see Jerusalem circled around (surrounded) with armies (Matthew 22), you know they re going to destroy the city.

Luke 21:20 And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.21 Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them whichare in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.22 For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.

You don t have the same exact details in the two accounts of the parable, but Luke adds that the king sends his armies in and destroys Jerusalem. Here, the armies are the enemies of Israel, but I remind you that in Isaiah 10, God Almighty says that the anti Christ is a rod in His hand. In other words, God brings the anti Christ against Israel as an instrument of His judgment on the nation.

23 But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in thosedays! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. 24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captiveinto all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

Most of the Bible commentaries and the teachers will tell you that this took place in 70 A.D. and that the destruction of Jerusalem at that time is what is prophesied here. It is true that the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.

There were three times that Jerusalem was destroyed. It wasn t until about 135 A.D. that the city was completely laid waste and all the Jews deported.

I was talking to a Jewish brother about what he understood as an Israeli about that passage. He agreed very closely with what I understood from reading Jewishhistory. The temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., but it was not at the same time that the city was completely laid waste. In 115 A.D. and 135 A.D., there was another series of revolts and Jerusalem was completely destroyed.

So it is evident that the significance of 70 A.D. refers to the temple but not necessarily to the city itself. Commentaries generally tell you that 70 A.D. iswhen Jerusalem was destroyed. The reason that I don t believe that is because by70 A.D. the dispensation of grace was going full bore, and the events in the Book of Acts were over with and Paul s epistles are all written.

If it were true that Jerusalem was destroyed then, the prophetic program would still be in effect. It s much more fitting to understand that God interrupted theprophetic program. When you interrupt something, does it keep going? No, it stops and it isn t proceeding. So, there are some parallels in that Jerusalem was abandoned, God had withdrawn His blessings from the nation and made Israel just one of the nations, and, as a consequence, they were destroyed and scattered. Bu

t this passage is referring specifically to the tribulation period. If you look at Verses 25 29, you will see the second advent of Christ; that indicates thatwe re in the tribulation here.

Luke 21:24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led awaycaptive into all nations:

That s exactly what will happen in the tribulation, according to Deuteronomy 28:

and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gent



iles be fulfilled.

If you go back to Matthew 22, you will see that is what is foretold in the passage. So, between Matthew 22:6 and Matthew 22:7, with the destruction of the city, right there you have literally skipped over the dispensation of grace. Why?Because it wasn t made known back then. The teachings in the parables don t take into consideration the mystery age, the age in which we live today during which the prophetic program has been interrupted. God just put a parenthesis, as it were, in the sentence. If you put a parenthesis in the sentence, that doesn t affect the meaning of the sentence. You can take out the parenthesis or leave it in,and it doesn t affect the sentence except to make it longer. A lot of times I ll read up to a parenthesis, skip it and keep reading. Then I ll go back and read theparenthesis.

God has put a parenthetical age in here right after the word wroth in Verse 7 at the colon. This is one of the reasons it so thrilling to understand the dispensation of grace. It was just when the time had come that God s wrath was to be poured out that He interrupted the prophetic program. Instead of pouring out Hiswrath, He poured out His grace.

People talk about the dispensation of grace as just being about the body of Christ, but let me tell you something: don t ever think that the dispensation of grace is just about the body of Christ. The basis of the dispensing (the giving out) of grace is to understand that God has withheld His wrath and poured out His g

race. That is the very definition of His dispensing grace. It was that one place in history that was so crucial; it was at such a crisis point that He withheld His wrath.

Matthew 22:7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth:

The dispensation of grace fits at the colon in Verse 7, after the words he was wroth:

and he sent forth his armies, [that is in the Tribulation].8 Then saith he to his servants, [in the tribulation]

Now, here is the third call. This is a future call that He will issue in the tr

ibulation. Notice once again, you have the first two calls during His first advent and then the judgment at the second advent all in one passage. The reason for that is that the dispensation of grace isn t taken into consideration, and there is almost a two thousand year time period which was unknown to the Lord s hearers and unrevealed by the Lord at this time.

If you don t understand that, you will have absolute confusion when you read thispassage because you are going to have to fit the church, the body of Christ, inhere somewhere. You have to fit in the bringing of the gospel to you and me. That s what the average preacher does with the rest of this passage. He tries to fit it on us, and you can see as we read on that it just won t work.

8 Then saith he to his servants [third call], The wedding is ready, but they wh

ich were bidden were not worthy.

He says that the ones who were bidden prior to this aren t worthy. They rejectedthe invitation, so pay no more attention to them. They won t be receiving the kingdom. He has already told the leaders of Israel:

Matthew 21:43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken fromyou [the established leaders and priesthood], and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.



The established priesthood has been rejected because they were not worthy. Come over to Acts 13 and notice that is the same description Paul uses as he describes Israel s rejection of the word of God that he preached to them.

Acts 13:46 Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you [Jews]: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.

They who were bidden were not worthy, but if you didn t understand that the dispensation of grace was a mystery at that time, how could you go from Verse 8 over to Verse 13 and say that Verses 9 and 10 in Matthew 22 are in the dispensation of Grace? You see, you can get yourself messed up if you don t understand that themystery program has interrupted the prophetic program.

Matthew 22:8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.

In other words, He has rejected the leaders of Israel, the established priesthood. He tells his servants not to go back to those people.

9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.10 So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as m

any as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.They go out and choose those who sought me not. Notice who these people are. They are obviously not the gentiles because the gentiles are never placed into thekingdom before Israel. What you have here is the gathering out of Israel a group of guests to be present at the wedding supper.

Notice that these people are going to be guests. That is important! Mark thatdown in your mind. These people are not being invited to be the bride. Don t forget that. They are going to come and be guests of the father. They are not the bride; the bride is not seen at all in this parable. In fact, in every parable that Christ gives about a marriage, and whenever you read about a marriage here, the bride is never involved. You see the bridegroom, the friends of the bride

groom, the guests, the feast, the father, but no bride.Have you ever heard anybody argue about who the bride of Christ is? They arguebecause nobody can find her. Some of you folks were Roman Catholics at one time. Have you ever heard the term the Bride of Christ used? Sure you have. Whatare they referring to when they mention the bride of Christ? The Roman Catholic Church. That s why the nuns wear the wedding ring. They are married to Him when they take their vows.

Did you ever hear about the birthday of the church? That s said to be Pentecost Sunday. You hear all these terms used, and all we dumb Protestants argue about those Catholic terms which don t have anything to do with the Bible. Then we get all bent out of shape (upset) with each other when we can t get everybody to line u

p (agree) on these things. It s weird (strange).

Romans 10:19 But I say, Did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provokeyou to jealousy by them that are no people [nobodies out in the highways and hedges], and by a foolish nation [believing remnant, not gentiles] I will anger you.20 But Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not;I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me.

Those are the people finally invited in the parable. They weren t trying to get t



o the wedding supper. They weren t invited to begin with. He says, Go out in the highways and hedges and invite the people, bad and good, who aren t seeking after me and tell them to come on in. He is talking about that little flock. He has rejected the leaders of the nation, and He is gathering that little flock together out of the highways and hedges of the nation Israel.

He is gathering together this foolish nation this righteous nation, this new nation that they might be the kingdom of priests that Israel was ordained to be. Notice what Peter called that little flock:

1 Peter 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation,

Remember that title, the chosen generation.

Matthew 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.

They are the few who are chosen.

a royal priesthood,

Royalty denotes kings. The priesthood is, of course, the priests. These people are kings and priests unto our God, just as it says they will be in Revelation1 and 5.

an holy nation, That s the nation that brings forth the fruits of the kingdom.

a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath calledyou out of darkness into his marvellous light:10 Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Because of Verse 10, people think that is talking about gentiles. You could make that mistake if you didn t know anything about Hosea 1, Romans 10 and Matthew 21. When he says, You were not a people but are now the people of God, he s talking about those people in Israel who are out there in the highways and the hedges. T

hey are the little flock that Christ sends His servants to call.Matthew 4:16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light

We have here the exact passage from Isaiah 9:2 quoted in Matthew 4 when He calls out those disciples. He goes up in Galilee to get them. He is forming that little flock that Israel thought were outcasts and of no value. He says to them, You are a chosen generation, you re a royal priesthood. You are the ones to whom the Father is going to give the kingdom. He is going to take the kingdom from the established leadership and give it to this new, righteous, holy nation that Heis forming, the believing remnant.

Referring to this little group of people, the Pentecostal church there in Acts,

it says:

Acts 4:34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things thatwere sold,35 And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.36 And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus,37 Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' fe



ght on them, nor any heat.17 For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shalllead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

They aren t going to need the groceries, money, investments and retirement programs because they are going to be up there in that temple when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and establishes the kingdom.

David was set up as the king over Israel in Jerusalem. North of Jerusalem is Shiloh, where the Messiah will build a marvelous temple during the millennium. Ezekiel 40 48 describes the location and the way the land is going to be partitioned. The Messiah is going to have His place of residence in that temple.

These tribulation saints are going to minister in that temple, if the passages mean what they say. That is the purpose and goal of that little flock. They will be right hand men, as it were, for the Saviour in the millennium. They serve him day and night in his temple. They have immediate access as kings and priests.The twelve apostles will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke 22:30). There will be a political kingdom, and the nation Israel willgo out to the world administering the reign of the king.

They will be priests, representatives and ministers of God in that day, too. It s a great day that is coming for them.

In Matthew 22, the parable is describing the gathering out of Israel a group ofguests to be presented at the marriage supper and then to function for Him through the kingdom.

By the way, did you notice over there in Revelation 7 that those tribulation saints were given white robes?

Matthew 22:11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:

This man didn t have on a wedding garment. That means that he didn t belong there.He was uninvited; he was a usurper.

12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

He was speechless. Isn t that interesting? Remember that: He was speechless.

From Verse 15 throughout the rest of the chapter, the scribes and Pharisees, Sadducees and Herodians come together and each asks Christ a question. How does He respond? He answers each one. They try to trick Him in His speech and entangle Him in His talk but He answers them immediately.

Down in Verse 41, He asks them one simple question, and what happens?

Matthew 22:46 And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

They didn t want to talk to Him anymore. They were speechless.

That uninvited guest in the parable is representative of somebody trying to crash the party on his own merits. He is representative of what Jesus said in John, Chapter 10, about the thief and the robber who climb up some other way. He didn t come in at the door of the sheepfold.



itual body of believers, totally unaffected by any works that you and I can do.Now He says, But to him that worketh not . (Romans 4:5) Now there aren t any works

involved. Period. In fact, the person who is justified today is the one who doesn t work.

Do you know that today you are justified before God by refusing to do anything?Do you know what the mark of your salvation is? It s the fact that you aren t doin

g anything to get saved? If you are doing something to get saved, to prove that you are saved or to keep yourself saved, that is just a testimony that you do not trust the right one to save you. Isn t that something? That s wonderful isn t it?

If you have the right garment, if you are clothed with that divine righteousness, your garment is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. We re in Him. That s wonderful.Do you know that when God places you in Christ, you are God s workmanship (Ephesians 2:10)? It s not your working, but God s workmanship. That won t hinder your service. There are preachers all over this country who don t trust God Almighty to do God s work. They want you to work to get saved, work to prove you are saved and work, work, work. God says, No, it s not what you do but what I ve done. You are my workmanship. I created you in Christ Jesus unto good works, and I ordain that you should walk in them.

There s a little saying:

"Only one life, 'twill soon be past; only what's done for Christ will last.Only one life; 'twill soon be past. (That s right!)Only what's done for Christ will last. (That s not right. It should say, Only what s done by Christ will last. )

Just like the king in the parable, and just as in the new covenant, God has made all the provisions, and God is going to accomplish for Israel what Israel couldn t do on her own, so it is today. That same principle of grace is the very method of God s operation today. Boy, to me that s wonderful! That s reason for real rejoicing, and I hope you rejoice in it, too.


Matthew 22:15 Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.

Now, the rest of this chapter deals with the issue of some people who are trying to catch the Lord in questions. Matthew does a real interesting thing. He put

s three different events: Verse 15, the Pharisees; Verse 23, the Sadducees; andin Verse 35, another Pharisee, a lawyer. They ask Him questions to try to trick Him. They try to entangle Him in His talk. As we go down through the passage, we will see that they ask Him questions that try to tangle Him up in what He is saying. Every time they do that, He answers them immediately. No problem.

Matthew 22:41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,

Every time they ask Him a question, He answers with no hesitation. Now, when He asks them a question, they stand there with their thumb in their mouth and scra



tching their head and can t answer it. The end result is in Verse 46:

46 And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

I ll show you some passages that indicate that at the judgment, men will judge Him. They will question His justice and His righteousness. He ll answer them and then ask them some questions and they won t be able to answer any of them.

In Job 26, there are six questions God is going to ask men at the Great White Throne Judgment and none of them will be able to answer any of them. Any answersthey give will be answers He won t accept. They ll be wrong answers. When men judge God, He always comes out with the answer. When God judges men they always come up short. That s a good principle.

I ve told you before that the reason that the world doesn t like the Bible is because they sense that the Bible is against them. The Bible is negative toward man and positive toward God. You are a sinner and you are wrong. God is righteous and He is right. People say, Oh, that is just all that hate literature to get you down and give you some kind of complex. But, that is not true at all because the Bible has good news for sinners. It is a message of love and grace but it just tells it like it is. It doesn t let you cover it up because you never can takecare of sin by covering it and hiding it and ignoring it, you have to deal withit. That is what the cross does: it gives you the capacity to deal with sin.

Matthew 22:15 Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.16 And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man:

They are buttering Him up. Anytime somebody begins to tell you how good you are, always listen because somewhere along the line there s going to be a but. They butter you up and get your guard down and stick it to you.

for thou regardest not the person of men.17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou?

You re so smart, good and right. God sent you.

17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?

You see, that s just pure wickedness manifest in what they are doing. They have a total want of any conscience about them. Christ sees it and senses it, He reads them and understands what is in them and calls their hand about it.

They ask Him a question: What do you think? Should you pay taxes to Caesar? If H

e says, No, He d be a rebel against the government. If He said, Yes, He wouldn t be Messiah because He would be saying that Caesar ought to be running them. Theythought they had Him. We got Him now!

19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?21 They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore untoCaesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.22 When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.



ou to do something that violates the Word of God, you don t have to do it. Unfortunately, paying taxes is not a violation of the Word of God. I know believers go out and run big campaigns about not paying taxes and don t do this and don t do that, but that s just what they want to do. If you want to go join a tax revolt, go ahead, but just don t say God told you to do it. That s my point. Do it in the name of something else, but don t do it in the name of the Lord.

Christ is making a point. You should remember that verse because it demonstrates a separation between church and state and the responsibility of the believer to be a part of the system. Now understand that the reason for the gentile dominion today, the reason that Caesar and those in his train are running the world,is that Israel rejected her kingdom and God set that kingdom program aside.

Romans 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in paintogether until now.23 And not only they, but ourselves also,

One day He ll come back and take over the reins of government but you aren t going to bring in the Kingdom and you re not going to set up a righteous kingdom on the earth. It isn t going to happen. The United States is not a Christian nation, never has been and never will be. We are fortunate to have gained some of the social, economic and political blessings of the social influence of the preaching of the gospel that we inherited from the Reformation and we can be grateful for that and thank God. We can fight and contend for the maintenance of those things.

The greatest influence in the country and society is to get out and preach the gospel and build strong Bible believing local churches where the life of the Lord Jesus Christ is clearly manifest and where the Word of God is preached and where righteousness is exalted. That is the greatest thing you can do for a country.

Thank God for the privileges we have. We are blessed people. Because we have those blessings, we don t want just to think we are something special beyond what we are. Specialness comes from the Lord. We aren t bringing in the Kingdom. TheKingdom isn t here today; it s held in abeyance while God is forming the Body of Christ. We are under a different program.

Matthew 22:23 The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection,

Brother Bob Johnson used to say that the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection, therefore they were sad, you see. That s true. If you don t have any hope, you are going to be sad.

The Sadducees didn t believe in the resurrection and were the liberals of the day. The Pharisees were the fundamentalists, the conservatives. They come up asking about the politics, you know. The Sadducees come and ask about the supernatural, the resurrection.

24 Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother [Deuteronomy 25].25 Now there were with us seven brethren [they give an illustration]: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wifeunto his brother:26 Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.27 And last of all the woman died also.28 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.



Deuteronomy 25 says that if a man is married and doesn t have any children and hedies, then his brother is to take his wife and raise up seed for him. That hasto do with the perpetuation of the inheritance in the land. That s the reason those regulations were given.

Here is an illustration of seven boys. The first one married a woman and didn t have children and he died. His widow marries brothers all the way down so that she eventually has seven husbands. They all died and then she dies. Now, in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be?

If there is a resurrection. Figure this one out. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? You have heard that question. That s what they are doing. Whosewife will she be? She had seven.

29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

He said, You re a bunch of Bible blockheads. When you don t know the Bible, you don tknow anything about the power of God. People run around talking about this and that and you can go to church after church after church, all over the world tonight, and there are people there doing all kinds of things and they don t have one lick of understanding of what the Bible is about and what the Bible says even though they are quoting it a lot of the time. They don t minister to the people so the people can understand the Word of God.

As a pastor and teacher, my job is to teach myself out of a job. My purpose isto teach you the Word of God so that you don t need me. That s weird, isn t it? If apastor feels that way, why do we need him? We don t need him if you come to the point of perfection (spiritual maturity). You can go to the cupboard and feed yourself. Do you know something? I don t like to feed other people all the time. I want you to grow up to the place where if you get hungry and have a need and you need something from the Lord, you can go to the kitchen and pull out groceries and put them on the counter and make your own self something to eat.

The purpose of the overseer is to train you to do that. That doesn t mean you don t ever eat together. It means that sometimes he serves you a meal and sometimesyou serve him a meal. That doesn t mean you don t eat together and enjoy each other s

fellowship. It just means you don t eat just when he wants to feed you. He hasmade you self sufficient. I understand that you always need teachers but I am talking about getting to know and understand the scriptures.

Folks, if you don t have the key to right division of the Word of God, you ll never be able to do that on your own. If you can t rightly divide the Word and don t know what God is doing today and how it fits into the Word of God and if your pastor and teacher aren t teaching you that, you aren t getting that information built up in you, you never are going to understand. Then the pastor isn t doing his job.

That s what is happening to these guys. He says, You guys are sitting around philosophically arguing and you pull a verse out of Moses, out of context, and don t ha

ve any idea what it is about. You have taken it completely out of its context out of its dispensational setting. (And they did.) You have this exercise in futility of talking. You re talking about the Bible but you don t know anything about it. Besides that, you don t know anything about the power of God. You birds don t even believe in the resurrection.

You have to understand that He is talking to the long, black robed, academic, powerful, collared, religious leaders of His day. These weren t a bunch of rescue mission bums. These were the religious bosses of Israel He is talking to. Theyhad all the paraphernalia, the long robes, the chains around their necks, the li



ttle star of Molech, that five pointed star, and all that business. They had all that. They jangle as they walk down the road.

They walk up to Him and say, We would just like to ask you a question. He responds to them like acid, You re wrong. You don t know the Bible. You don t know the power of God.

30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

If they had known anything about the Word of God, they would have known that. How are the angels of God in heaven? Why don t they marry or are given in marriage? They are all men. I am sorry that Dr. Scofield is wrong in his note when hesays they are sexless. They are all men.

We re not going to take the time but you can go verse after verse through the OldTestament and see that this is what angels are. There is a lot of misunderstanding about angels. Angels are not long haired, white robed, big winged ladies.They are not a cross between a lady and a man where you scratch your head and can t figure out which one it is. Angels don t have wings either, by the way. Isn t that disappointing?

Do you know who have wings, in the Bible? Cherubim, seraphim they are different from angels. An angel is a man, in the Bible. Before he showed up in a long w

hite robe with long, white hair, he d probably come in a seer sucker suit. I know he doesn t have one of those but he is not wearing all this religious paraphernalia that everybody has him dressed in.

We were at the Capitol in Washington this past week and were in the Rotunda andup overhead they have these pictures about sixty feet across that fill up the dome. I said to the man who was with me, Look up there. There is Mrs. George Washington. It was old George up there looking down at everybody and he had on a dress. You look at his face and you can tell it is George but you think it must be Mrs. Washington. The guide explained that it wasn t a dress but a big blanket over his lap which made it look like a dress.

We went into the oval office, the president s office, on Saturday afternoon. On t

he wall over the mantle facing his desk, there s a life size picture of George Washington. You would appreciate this, gentlemen, he had the military haircut of the day which was shaved, almost bald, a little GI. You thought the GI was justin the twentieth century invention. That was the military haircut of the day.The guide told us that it was a real picture of Washington as a younger man before he became famous and got out of the military. They didn t wear the little wigs except when they went to dances and social occasions. So, when you see Georgeriding on the horse and he s wearing the wig, that really wasn t the norm. (That doesn t have anything to do with Matthew but I got into that somehow.)

Angels don t have dresses. They don t have wings. They are men.

Revelation 21:17 And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and fou

r cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.

What in the world would make you believe that an angel was not a man when you have a verse that clear? (The cubit is about eighteen inches.) A hundred and forty four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.

If you go back in the Old Testament and start in Genesis, Exodus, and right on through, that s what angels are. If the religious leaders had known anything about the Old Testament they would have known the scripture and believed the Bible, they would have known that. The problem was they weren t paying any attention to t



he Bible so they just made up a problem.

Matthew 22:31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God isnot the God of the dead, but of the living.

The point is that God is a God of resurrection. The God of resurrection fulfills His promises. He said, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and theGod of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Those guys aren t dead and gone and forgotten forever. Those people are alive. God is a God of the living and He is going to bring them forth in resurrection.

Luke describes the resurrection of the tribulation saints in a parallel context. In Luke s account of this story:

Luke 20:34 And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage:35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:36 Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels;

That is, they don t die. They have immortality.

and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

So when they are raised, they come up with immortality in resurrection.The Sadducees didn t understand any of that.

Matthew 22:31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God,

That s a great verse on inspiration and preservation. That s a great verse to tellyou that when the Lord Jesus Christ read His Bible, and when those people thereread their Bible, they were reading what God said to them. Any time you have aproblem with the authority of the Word of God, there s a verse right there to hang

your hat on and rest your faith in.Have you not read? What you read in this book is that which was spoken unto you b

y God. That is inspiration. Every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God that s what is in that book. It s God breathed.

That s also preservation because it doesn t say that God wrote it and is something like what He said back there. They didn t have the original manuscripts here. They had copies. Some people say that they had translations of them. I m not so sure about that but that s what some people say. Whatever they had, it was close enough to what that original was for Jesus to say, Have you not read what God said? That s preservation. So, that s a great verse.

In fact, I have to give you a personal word of testimony about that verse. About twenty ears ago when I was in a liberal college down south, I remember that the most conservative fellow on the campus was a neo orthodox (and they don t believe anything) and everybody else was worse than he was. I remember talking aboutinspiration in the Bible and I came across that verse right there and that verse settled some convictions for me about what that book is. That s a powerful verse if you will consider it. If you have any problem with the authority of the Word of God, there s a verse that will help you.

Have you not read what is written down that was spoken to you by God?



Matthew 22:22 When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.

33 And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine.

Every time He answers back, everybody says, Wow!

34 But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

What is the greatest commandment? See all this philosophical reasoning just likea bunch of religious guys.

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.38 This is the first and great commandment.39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

You have to understand what was going on there. That s a great passage. The law

was designed, as Paul said, to show us our sin.Romans 3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

If you ever have to deal with anybody if they are a sinner or not, that is a great verse to use. I ve used that passage time and time again on religious people.

Somebody will say, I m not so bad. Well, do you keep the greatest commandment? Is there anybody here tonight who would profess to keep the great commandment?

37 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,and with all thy mind.

Do you love the Lord with everything that is in you? You know that isn t true. Do you give Him all your love? You know you don t, don t you? You don t and you knowyou don t. Folks, you have broken the greatest. What good do you think it is going to keep the rest? I mean, you are lost and you are going to die and go to hell. You re going to bust hell wide open.

Somebody says, In order to go to heaven, you have to be perfect. You don t qualify. That s why God gave the Saviour. You have a perfect Saviour and in Him you have redemption. That s why it isn t what is in you but it s what is in Christ that counts so much. That s why we make so much of Him because He is all in all.

The law says, You d better love the Lord thy God with everything that is in you. A

nd, that isn t all. You d better love your neighbor as yourself. The first four commandments focus on loving the Lord thy God. The rest of them focus on loving your neighbor as yourself. If you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, body and strength and you love your neighbor as yourself and you do loveyourself, don t you?

The other day I saw a guy take that verse, love your neighbor as yourself. See? You are supposed to love yourself. That s the doctrine of self love. That s the verse they use to prove it. That isn t what that verse is saying and you know it. That verse is saying that you do love yourself, and you do, don t you?



All this business about people who hate themselves. Well, they didn t start out that way. That is just the wages and the result of their wickedness. That s all it is. You might as well face the facts. If you get down to the bottom of it, and I have done it, time and again with people, all of a sudden they really do love themselves and are just trying to make something special out of themselves by making out like they hate themselves.

I know that s tough. That s hard. It sounds mean and nasty but you take somebody who is having those kinds of emotional problems and all that kind of business, and you sit across the table and want to help them, it isn t long before you learn just to be honest with them and cut right on in because if you don t get down to the problem, you are never going to solve it.

You do love yourself. He says, If you love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, every time you buy yourself a new car, you buy your neighbor one; every time you buy yourself a new hat, buy your neighbor one; every time you buy yourself a new dress, buy your neighbor one; every time you buy yourself a new VCR orcolor TV, buy your neighbor one, you wouldn t have any problems, would you? You d have the happiest neighborhood in town, wouldn t you? Sure you would.

There s something involved in the question that I want you to see.

Mark 12:28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning togethe

r, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the firstcommandment of all?29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

All the other commandments are just extensions of those two. Notice that Verses 29 and 30 are quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5 and 6. Verse 31 is a quote from Leviticus 19. When He is asked about the commandments, what commandments do you rec

kon He is being asked about? The Ten Commandments ? but he doesn t quote the TenCommandments. He quotes Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19. He does that becausethe guy who comes up to ask the question has something in his mind. His question is designed to draw attention to the importance of the nation Israel.

In Deuteronomy 4, he says, What nation is so great and has God so near as this nation. He talks about how God has given them His law, His statutes, and God dwells with that special nation. No other nation on the face of the earth ever hadGod Himself dwell in their midst. God Himself ordained their religion and God Himself ordained their government as the nation Israel.

So, the guy asks, Which one of our commandments is the greatest? Christ answers with a specific set of instructions given to Israel as a nation. That s what I want

you to see.

Hear, O Israel. The idea of loving the Lord their God is not given just to the individual but it is given to the nation Israel. When He says, Love your neighboras yourself, He is talking about one Jew loving another Jew. (Go back and read Leviticus 19.) That explains why He would say, Love your neighbor as yourself, but go out and kill these Canaanites.

Have you seen some of these liberals try to figure out how you are supposed to kill the Canaanites if you re supposed to love your neighbor? The neighbors were J



ews, one Jew loving another Jew. Those Canaanites were usurpers in the land and God said to go kill them and get them out of the land because they didn t belongthere. They ve stolen it. That s the explanation for that.

Matthew 22:39 love thy neighbour .

37 love the Lord thy God

The law says, Love me. It s a command. Do you love Him? It s a command for you to love your neighbor. Do you? Well, you know you don t.

This afternoon my neighbor dug up crabgrass. It s in my yard too. He didn t dig mine up. Is he loving me as he loves himself? Not hardly. Tomorrow I am going to dig the crabgrass out of my lawn. If he hadn t already dug his ? it would still be there Saturday. Am I loving my neighbor as myself? Not hardly.

Compare the way grace operates. The law says, Love me. It demands, it commands,it requires you to love and yet you know you don t have the capacity so you fail.

Grace does the exact opposite.

2 Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:

15 And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.

Notice what constrains you. The love of Christ. Notice that it doesn t say, My love for Him. We sing that song, Oh, how I love Jesus. That is not what the Bible verse says. Under grace, what motivates you and pushes you along isn t your greatlove for Him and how much you love the Lord because you never love Him enough, do you? Grace says, Look how much I love you.

God says to us, Let me show you how much I value and esteem you. Look yonder toCalvary. If you ever doubt my love for you, remember Calvary. If you ever wonder if I really love you, there is an objective demonstration in history of how much I value and esteem you. Look there.

Let that motivate you. Look at how much I love you. The law says, Love me. God, under grace, says, I love you. Look at how much I love you. Look what I have provided for you.

They are two different systems. They both are perfect systems. Both have beengiven by God and both are in the Bible. We don t live under the law system today. The demand today is not, Love the Lord thy God! Love your neighbor! The demand today is just Look at how much I love you and then you forgive others as God for Christ s sake hath forgiven you. You begin to understand how God loves you. Youbegin to focus on that and get excited about that and you begin to understand that and it begins to affect the way you relate to other people. Rather than reaching down inside yourself and having to pull up your own strength, you look to H

im. That is the grace way. That s different.

Matthew 22:41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,42 Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David.43 He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit[by inspiration] call him Lord, saying,44 The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?45 If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?



s of that?

Do you ever think that unsaved men ever change? They never do. That rich man in hell in Luke 16 remains just as lofty. People say, When you get to hell, you llbecome a believer. No, you won t. You will know the reality but you knew that all along anyway. When men go to hell, they don t change their character or nature.

They are just as rebellious. They would still reach up and throw God off the throne if they had a chance. They ll still do what that rich man in Luke 16 did: argue until the last breath about how it ought to be done. A dead man in hell suffering in torments of the damned is going to argue about how to get saved. No, no. If one were raised from the dead. You dumb thump, what do you know about it?

You didn t make it. They ll argue about it. They re not going to believe God regardless and submit to His authority. No, they don t change in hell. Their wicked character is just revealed and all the restraints are removed.

You know, when men stand before God at the White Throne Judgment, lost men stand there and God executes righteous judgment, they are going to argue their case and God is going to let them do it.

Every time the religious leaders ask Christ a question He answers immediately..He ll say, Now let me ask you one and they can t say a word. And no man was able to

answer him a word. One of the greatest illustrations of that in the Bible is inthat passage in Matthew 22. There is no answer.

Romans 3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

God brings out the standard of His own righteousness and says, All have sinned and come short. Here s the measure and you only came up to here and there I am.

Next time we ll go through Matthew 23 which is where Christ pronounces the woes on the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It is one of the most vilifying pieces of literature in all the Word of God as far as religion is concerned but there are some tremendously positive truths there for us as we study through it.


Matthew 23 is a great passage of scripture and it is very unusual. You learn that the Lord Jesus Christ didn t remain silent when the opposition of the religious leaders to the truth was concerned. Our Lord spoke out quite vociferously andquite forcefully and quite clearly when religious leaders stood in opposition to

the truth. He rebuked them for it.

Paul was the same way.

Romans 3:8 And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirmthat we say,)

When you read Galatians 1 and 2 and the Book of Acts, you will see that the apostle Paul stood toe to toe with people, even with religious leaders who opposed the truth of God.



The Lord Jesus Christ does the same thing. In this chapter, He pronounces doomof the nation s leaders, the Pharisees and scribes, their ritualism and traditionalism.

You will recall from last time in Chapter 22, Verses 41 45, how they couldn t seethe testimony that the scriptures held forth to the deity of Christ and who He was. They couldn t see it and were confused by it. They were in a hopeless thickcloud of darkness. So because of their blindness and hardness of heart, Christgoes after them in Chapter 23 and He rebukes them.

Matthew 23 and John 8 are two passages in your Bible that are never preached about or preached from, by liberals and Roman Catholics. You are going to see whyas we go down through here. These things are sort of like a blowtorch to thosetwo classes of people because they go against the things that those two religious groups put forth.

Yet, I don t want you to misunderstand the chapter. This chapter is not just thunder. It s not just Christ being harsh and sarcastic and bombastic toward the leaders of Israel. If you read this chapter and don t see the sorrow in the Saviour s heart and if you don t hear the tears in His voice, you haven t properly read the chapter. But in spite of the sorrow and in spite of the tears over their waywardness, He clearly pronounces judgment. Folks, God s attitude toward sin is that it has to be dealt with. You need to learn that.

Matthew 23:1 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:

You need to remember that you have spent a whole chapter prior to this, with Christ talking to the Pharisees, scribes, the Sadducees and religious leaders. They all come and ask Christ questions, trying to tangle Him up and He answers them. Then He asks them a question and they can t answer Him. In other words, He turns out to be the authority.

2 The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

Here, He is commending, just as He should and naturally would do. He adheres to the proper Messianic mission. He is Messiah and His message is to call Israelinto conformity with the will and purpose of God. He doesn t come and say that those guys are breaking the law and won t pay any attention to it. They won t listento it; they don t get it; so therefore, just forget the law. He doesn t do that.

He isn t taking Israel out from under the law. He is going to take Israel out from under the leadership of these apostate leaders, but not out from under the law. Israel and the believing remnant are to be under the law. He isn t changing the program. It is important that you see that. He is just going to change the occupants who sit in Moses seat, in other words, the leaders of the nation. The kingdom of God is going to be taken from them and given to a nation bringing fort

h the fruits of the kingdom but He s not taking them out from under the law.

There has not been a dispensational change. Those brethren who see a dispensational change here don t really have anything to point to. It is a mistake to conclude that the crucifixion of Christ produced a dispensational change where God set Israel aside. He isn t doing that here. As you read through the passage you will see that He isn t taking them out from under the law, but rather, He s commending the law to them and saying it s just the leaders and the teachers that are the problem.



2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:

That s a reference to Exodus 18.

Exodus 18:13 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening.14 And when Moses' father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone,and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?15 And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people come unto me to enquire of God:16 When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.

Moses sat and judged the people. When the people wanted to know God s will and word and the purpose of the statutes, they came to Moses and asked. Moses would give them the understanding. He would declare from his seat, from his position of authority, the statutes of God and His laws.

If you read on down through that chapter, you ll see that Moses dad in law told him, You re going to kill yourself. This is too much for you to do. You need some help so you don t wear yourself down and burn yourself out, etc. That s like it is today where they use all the modern psychological techniques to get you to quit.

24 So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father in law, and did all that he had said.25 And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.26 And they judged the people at all seasons: the hard causes they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves.

The idea was the development of a system of authority where choices and judgments were made under Moses and then to go out among the people. This hierarchy iswhat later in Matthew is called the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the nationIsrael.

When you come to Matthew 23, this is what He is talking about. They sit in Moses seat. They are the people to go to, to get a definitive interpretation of thejudgments and statutes that God gave Israel through Moses and to find out the will of God.

Matthew 23:2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:

By the way, the word for seat in the Greek is cathedra. Have you ever heard ofanybody speaking ex cathedra? That means from the seat. The idea is that when Ispeak ex cathedra, that is God speaking. That s what the guy says. That s the doctrine. That is the throwback to an Old Testament Jewish, Mosaic system.

Going down through this chapter, you are going to see reference after reference

that speaks of the religious system. (I m talking about Romanism, the Roman Catholic doctrine.) You will see reference after reference to Rome and the Roman doctrine. Now, Rome wasn t in existence at that time as the Roman Catholic Church but there is a connection. What you are seeing today in Rome is Baal worship in the Bible.

Baal worship began in the Book of Judges and continued all through the Old Testament. With headquarters in Babylon it infiltrated the nation Israel when they went down into Babylonian captivity. When they came out they were totally saturated with it.



At this time in Christ s ministry, Baal worship had basically taken over the religion in Israel. That same religious system is in the world today. (You and I see it in the form of the Roman Church).

The reason for the connection and similarities is the Baal worship going all the way through. The Roman Church might cease to exist tomorrow, (it won t but it could) albeit in a different form but the religion of Baal worship goes way back to Nimrod in your Bible and goes all the way across to the anti Christ. You seethe characteristics, no matter what the church. For example in Revelation 17, people say that has to be the Roman Catholic Church but it isn t. Really it is Baal worship. If the manifestations of Baal worship exist today in the Roman church and many protestant churches, then what you are looking for is Baal worship, no matter where it is. That s what you are seeing here. Judaism was infested with it and that s why Jewish people here can be so similar to what you see in the Catholic Church today. It isn t just the Roman branch, it is also the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox branch. They all have basically the same doctrine. We are more familiar with the western branch which isRoman but it is that Catholic system.

3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe [whatever Moses said to do], that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

In other words, When they tell you what Moses said, do it, but when they give you their works what does He tell them?

Matthew 15:1 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying,2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.

They don t say, The tradition of Moses, but the tradition of the elders. They re nolking about the Word of God, about what Moses said. They re talking about all this religious tradition that they have developed.

3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment

of God by your tradition?God gave some commandments and they came along and added some tradition that violated what God said to do.

6 And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye madethe commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.7 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

There is a conflicting thing going on in Israel. These men sit in Moses seat and sometimes tell what Moses said and sometimes they come in with the traditions of the fathers.

So, Christ says, They sit in Moses seat, therefore when they tell you what Moses says, do it. Don t rebel against them because you re giving obedience to the Word of God. But, don t do after their works. Don t follow their traditions. Don t do what they are doing because they are saying this but they are doing that, so they are violating the Word of God. You obey them when they are telling you what Moses says, but when they are giving you their tradition, forget it. In Verse 4, He ll



tell why.

Verses 4 7 demonstrate what false tradition is all about. Verses 8 10 demonstrate what true religion is all about.

4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders;

They require you to do all these things that are hard to do.

but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

Write down by that verse Galatians 6:12 and 13. That is exactly what Paul is saying in that passage.

Galatians 6:12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire tohave you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.

They don t keep the law. They don t do it but they want you to do it to keep you under their subjection.

5 But all their works they do for to be seen of men:That s the true motive of religion, of tradition. I have told you people time and again, Religion is designed for the satisfaction of the lust of your flesh. That s what it is all about. The issue isn t getting something done and pleasing God Almighty. The issue is people seeing you.

5 they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,6 And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,7 And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

Rabbi, rabbi! religious titles. It s pomp and ceremony and self exaltation. Youdon t want to let Verses 5 and 6 pass you by. In Verse 5, a phylactery is a little box with scripture that they tie on their forehead. They had garments with enlarged borders.

Go back to Numbers 15 and Deuteronomy 22, and you will see that they had garments with borders that had to be a certain width and they enlarged those. These people are wearing special clothing to identify themselves as preachers, religiousleaders. You don t have any problem with that, do you? They ve got their collar onbackwards maybe. Well, that isn t nearly as hard as wearing a little box up hereon your forehead. They wear long robes. You don t believe that, do you?

You will want to think about what you are reading here in this passage, if you c

an, and conjure up in your mind a picture of these guys. They are bunch of menwho love to be greeted as Rabbi. Give them a religious title for exaltation. We ll see what they are in a moment. They wear special clothing to identify themselves as ministers, religious leaders. They follow the traditions that they have received from their church.

Mark 12:38 And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, whichlove to go in long clothing,

Do you reckon that means long underwear? I wear that in the wintertime. I put



on my long johns about the first week in October and take them off about the fourth week in May. The only time I don t have them on is when I go to Florida and to California and when I take a bath, of course. Is that what the verse is talking about?

Hey folks, the Mormons wear long underwear, religious underwear. They don t evertake theirs off. They have holy, sanctified underwear. I m not kidding you. That s not funny. That s tragic. They believe they can t be sanctified and the temple be made holy if they ever take that stuff off. How would you like to take a bath every night with your leg hung over the side of the tub with your underwear tied on your foot? You would think that is crazy but there are people you rub shoulders with every day who are such religious fanatics that they do that on a daily basis and think that is going to get them to glory. And you wonder why the Lord talks the way He does in Matthew 23.

As we go down through this chapter you will see, when we get down to it, the Lord just burns the hide off these guys. There s a reason for it. You hear, Let s just love everybody. Let s just talk so sweet. That is just a soft cheap talk of people who don t want to stand up for what is right. They just want to go along so they can get along. I ll tell you that any old piece of dead lumber can float downthe river but it takes a live fish to swim upstream. You get out there in the world and deal with the religious system and you go floating down the river and you re going to wind up where they always wind up and that s down at the bottom of the pond in a pile that will be burned up.

Luke 20:46 Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in [bless your heart] long robes,

Now, do you know any religious leaders who go around dressed in long robes following their church tradition with funny looking clothes in order to identify themselves as practitioners of their religion? That s who you re dealing with here.

Matthew 23:4 For they bind heavy burdens5 But all their works they do7 And greetings in the markets8 But be not ye called Rabbi:

Verses 4 7 are talking about them, the false guys. In Verses 8 10, He turns tothe disciples and He says, I want you guys to be genuine. Don t be like them. Bereal. (What s that?)

8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which isin heaven.10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humblehimself shall be exalted.

In the passage, He is talking about religious titles that are worn by religiousleaders. He says, Don t you take these religious titles that these religious leaders are wearing.

This passage of scripture in Job is designed to give you a proper viewpoint about religious titles and religious leaders. Elihu is speaking:

Job 32:21 Let me not, I pray you, accept any man's person, neither let me giveflattering titles unto man.



22 For I know not to give flattering titles; in so doing my maker would soon take me away.

You have to be careful when you talk to people, don t you? He says, I know betterthan to give people flattering titles. It s just a bunch of stuff to make them look good like over in Matthew 23. If I do that, the Lord is going to get me for that. There are going to be some problems come along the way.

Now you understand we don t live under the same dispensation that they did. The Lord deals with us a little differently today but the principle is the same about what we ought and ought not to do, what pleases God and what doesn t please Him.

You rub people the wrong way when you get a verse like Psalm 111:9.

Psalm 111:9 He sent redemption unto his people: he hath commanded his covenantfor ever: holy and reverend is his name.

Isn t that interesting? Have you ever heard anybody called Reverend So and so? Have you ever noticed that we don t do too much of that? Did you ever wonder why that is? The reason is like the verse we just read. When it says, Holy and reverend is his name, it is not saying, God s name is holy and his name is reverend andll a man Reverend like I call you Stan, or you Bill, or you Dorothy, or Vera. It snot His given name. It means that God s name is holy. God s name is to be reveren

ced. Why would you take that word and apply it to a man? Bible people generally know better than that.

When you get around people who don t know any better, they are people who are nottoo hepped up on the Word of God and they are more keyed in to their religious tradition. Religious tradition gives titles such as reverend and others to men. Now you didn t sin against God and blaspheme the Holy Spirit when you did it, but it s just the mentality you get as a Bible believer and somebody who is going by the scripture that you kind of shy away from that.

If somebody comes in here and calls somebody reverend, don t kick them in the seat of the pants and land them out on the street. That wouldn t be grace.

The thing is that you want to be sure why it is inappropriate. It winds up to be a thing where it is just a thing to be seen of men and to exalt people. If apreacher won t teach you the Word of God and won t build you up in the faith and won t edify your soul in sound doctrine, he isn t worth your respect. If he does that, he will have your respect. Amen? That s right.

If a man has anything to him in the ministry his ministerial manhood will show itself through and will commend himself in your conscience by the manifestation of the truth. He won t need somebody coming along and giving him a bunch of handles so it sounds like a CB radio going off somewhere: the Right Reverend Doctor So

and so and all that business. I have some brethren I write back and forth with. I look up in the dictionary how to address somebody with a long title. I ll put that title on the envelope and start the letter on one side and go all the way

over to the other side of the page before I get to write their name. It s just a joke but some people do that, you know.

Look back in Matthew 23 and notice these three titles that He uses: rabbi, father and master. All three are religious titles that the Pharisees love to swap in the marketplace. It is interesting to me that Christ chose these three, obviously, the most popular ones.

The implication of these three titles are different in some way. There are a lot of things you can do with them. For example, there are three basic things tha



t men need in spiritual things that are reflected here. You need spiritual life. You need instruction and authority in your spiritual life. Then you need guidance and direction in your spiritual life. They re the definition of these three titles.

Rabbi means the teaching office that those Jews ascribed infallibility to. A rabbi was an infallible teacher, someone who communicated authoritatively.

Father in Verse 9. Do you know anybody that calls their religious leader father?Didn t you ever wonder where that came from? I have a friend who is a smart alec

k and I remember one time going to a meeting with him. A woman introduced him to a priest and said, This is Father So and so. My friend reached out to shake his hand and said, Oh, I didn t know you had children. I thought, I need a rock to crawlunder. That is not what this is. This is a religious title.

Write down in the margin of your Bible Judges 17 and 18. Get away from the television and Time magazine and read your Bible a little bit. Go back there and read those chapters and you will find the first time any priest was ever called father in the Word of God (Judges 17). Somebody says, Our church is the oldest church. It sure is. It goes all the way back to Judges 17 at least. You see that s nothing New Testament or nothing Christian. You don t go over to 1 Corinthians 4:15 where Paul says, I ve begotten you through the gospel and say, That s what they mean.ather is a religious title that goes way back a thousand years before Christ. And, these Jews right here are using it. It s a religious title that He says, Don t us

e. Father is the priestly office. It s the imparting and sustaining of life. In Verse

9, Christ is saying, Call no man your father. He is not talking about your daddy. I heard a guy say that one time. He said, We call our daddies, father. If you live down south, you don t. I never called my daddy, father. I called him Pop.

I called him Popsicle. I called him Dad. I called him Hey you. I called hima lot of things but never said, Father, will you come fix my bicycle? Maybe you talked to your dad like that. I never did.

He s not talking about that anyway. He s talking about religious titles. He is forbidding or recognizing any man s power to impart life by ceremonies or any way like that.

By the way, do you know what this word is? Pope. Pop. Papa. Those are all the same words which come from papas. It s a word that means a male nurse. You ll hear somebody talk about the word pope and describe it as a nursing father. The word paps is the same.

Remember these guys who sit in Moses seat.

Numbers 11:12 Have I [Moses] conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father

Isn t that a twist? Here s a bunch of people sitting in Moses seat taking a title that belonged to Moses and applying it to themselves. Then you have a bunch of gu

ys and gals in this century doing the same thing.

Folks, that s the true apostolic succession. That goes right on back through these Pharisees, right on back through Moses, back to Numbers 11, Judges 17, right back to Baal worship which is what it is.

Matthew 23:10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

Master means a leader, a director of the guiding office. Rabbi is the teaching off



ice. Father is the priestly office and master is the guiding office. The infallible teaching office is where you get authority and instruction. The priestly office is where you get impartation and sustaining of life. The master is where you are going to get spiritual guidance for your life.

That is what religion is going to offer. We will give you infallible authority and rule and guide for life. We ll give you life through our ceremonies that willsustain your life; through the rites and rituals that we give you to do. We ll give you guidance in the details of your life; and here are the things that you ought to go do.

See what Christ says in Verse 8: Don t be called a rabbi. Why? It s because Christ is your Master.

Do you need to go out there to that teaching office of that religious system? Is that where you need to go? No. You ve got something better than that. You ve got the Lord Jesus Christ. He s the final authority. He s the one to go to. He s theWord of God.

9 And call no man your father upon the earth

Do you need that priestly office to have to go between you and God to give you life? Why no. Paul said, Christ is our life. You ve got one Father which is in you. You see, you have the real one. Religion has just a counterfeit.

10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

Folks, you don t need some religion to guide you around. You ve got the Lord JesusChrist and isn t He an unfailing guide?

Proverbs says, Commit your way unto the Lord.

Proverbs 3:6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Christ is unfailing. You see, Christ said, You aren t in that false religion overthere, you ve got me. You ve got what is real; you ve got the truth. Do you see the contrast there?

11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

That s that moral principle of grace and of true service.

12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humblehimself shall be exalted.

James said, Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God who could just crush you. Humble y

ourself. There isn t any reason for anybody to strut.

In Israel s program here, these things had special reference. But, you know there

is some spiritual truth there that you and I don t want to forget: that moral principle of grace and of true service.

Listen. The New Covenant and the kingdom are based on grace, but we live in the Dispensation of Grace. Israel will receive their covenant blessings on the basis of grace, all that God could do for them through the cross work of Christ. We live in the Dispensation of Grace where everything is grace. If these thingswere true of them, how much more it ought to be true for us today.

11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.



12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased;

You go strutting and getting all the titles and all that religion and they willruin you.

and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

Galatians 6:12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh [an impressive show], they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire tohave you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.

They desire you to be circumcised ? to keep the law? No, that they may glory inyour flesh. That s that group back there in Matthew 23:1 7. They just want to beseen of men.

Galatians 6:14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

When you come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, you realize what God is doing through the cross work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The world is crucified unto me said Paul. That is your position in Christ. You are dead to that stuff. and I unto the world. That s your experience. You see, it completely readjusts your whole lif

e. Paul said, That s why we glory. If any man glory, let him glory in the Lord. no man glory in his flesh.

Do you know why we try to talk about the Lord Jesus Christ all the time around here, not about what somebody else is doing or what s happening about things and organizations and that kind of stuff? Folks, what counts is what the Lord is doing. The thing that counts in you and in me is what the Lord is doing in us.

What we focus on is His word and on His life as it operates through us. We enjoy seeing it live in each other and we enjoy seeing it operate in one another. We enjoy the testimony of a living demonstration of it. That s what we want it tobe. As soon as it gets to be that old, cold, dead stuff Listen. You take warning, will you?

We don t have time to get down through those woes tonight because the time is gone.

You take warning, will you? If the Pharisees could slip into traditionalism, don t think you couldn t.

Do something for me for homework for next time. Start in Verse 13 and read down through the rest of the chapter and you will see that there are eight woes.

Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!14 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!15 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides,23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

Take those eight woes and go back to Matthew 5 and take the eight beatitudes. Compare them and see what you come up with. Just spend a little time this week doing that and it will help you.



Compare the eight beatitudes that reflect God s righteousness and the eight woes that reflect the Pharisees false righteousness. It s a fascinating study.


Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shutup the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Here begins a series of eight woes pronounced by Christ on the Pharisees, on the religious leaders of the nation Israel as we go down through the passage here.

This is the King s verdict on the nation s leaders and it is not a very pretty picture when you read it. In fact, it is rather a sad passage to read. John 8 is an

other passage like it. When the Lord faces the religious leaders, He just basically skins their hide off and tacks it up on the wall and packs it down with salt. He goes after them in these passages. It s not because they didn t deserve it.

Did you do what I asked you last week about comparing the beatitudes and these eight woes? If you did, you can compare and lay them out on a piece of paper beside each other and you will see in these eight woes that you have the exact opposite of God s righteousness. If you take the beatitudes which reflect the righteous attitude of God and the attitude that the servants of Christ will have in the Kingdom and then take these woes in Matthew 23, there is an absolute contrast between God s attitude and God s righteousness and the result of religion. If you spend a lot of time in a passage like Matthew 23, it doesn t take you long where you

don t have much use for religion because that is what the passage is about.Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shutup the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

In other words, they have a bad influence on the people they are ministering to. These Pharisees and scribes should have had a good influence and should have ushered people into the kingdom. John the Baptist came preaching Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The Lord came preaching Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Christ sent out the twelve and then the seventy proclaiming the same message. Had the Pharisees and scribes been men of faith, they would have responded to the Word of God and the message preached by John the Baptist. Had

they responded in faith, they would have led the nation Israel on to receivingher Kingdom.

Rather than doing that, they shut up the Kingdom and opposed and refused and fought against the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom and the message that wasoffered to them. We have seen that time and again. This late in the Book of Matthew you don t need that demonstrated to you. They oppose it not only so they don t go in but the people who are listening and responding to John and to the ministry of Christ and of the apostles, are even stopped from getting it. It s a sad situation. They re a bad influence on the nation and not being the leaders they ou



tter off, not worse off. You go out there to make a convert of a heathen or pagan and he is worse off than you are and you came there to help him. He d better off if you had left the pagan in his paganism and the heathen in his idolatry than to get him converted to this religious system. This religious system goes all over the face of the earth with its outreach, subjection and convert system. The convert is made twofold more the child of hell than themselves.

16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!17 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?18 And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing [what they say]; butwhosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.19 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?20 Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all thingsthereon.21 And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein.22 And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.

He says, You guys are nuts. You ve got your values all twisted up. In this verse,

He begins to get into a little light on the real problem that these people are having. Whoso sweareth by the temple, they say, that s nothing, but if you swear by the gold on the temple, they get all upset. You see, they are not concerned about the temple that God gave them to build and to worship in. They are only concerned about the veneer, the gold on the outside. They re just a bunch of covetous dudes trying to protect their wealth, that s all.

Ye fools and blind. You have to understand whom He is talking to. He is talkingto the religious leaders of His nation. They are the leaders of Israel. They had a theocracy where religion and politics were all under one head. These are the leaders of the commonwealth. He says, Ye fools and blind. You guys are cracked and you don t know where you are going. That s tough language.

17 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?

They think gold is greater. All they are interested in is money. They are notinterested in the temple and worshipping God. They re just interested in some profit.

18 And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing [they say]; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.

Who gets the gift that is on the altar? The priests do. They get all bent outof shape if you are going to mess with what is theirs. You can talk about the altar if you want to and it doesn t make any difference. You can talk about God an

d worship and all that but Just don t mess around with what is mine. They have their values all mixed up.

19 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?

It s important that you see that.

20 Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all thingsthereon.



our hands and you blockheads, what are you doing? You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Oh, there s a speck in my food. And, you strain that little bitty speck. A gnat is so small that it can fly right through a screen.

Down south on a hot summer day, you have the windows open to let the breeze in.Flies and mosquitoes can t get through the screen but that gnat can just fly righ

t through. I have seen a swarm of them as big as your fist fly right through a window screen and not even slow up because they are so tiny.

He says, You take that little itty bitty tiny thing and strain at that. You knowfolks, you can swallow a little tiny gnat in your drink, it won t hurt you and you won t even notice it. But, have you ever tried to swallow a camel? You can t do it.

He says, You strain at the gnat, a non essential thing that is of no real consequence and you swallow the camel. You take the important issues and swallow them.

They were missing the important things because they were looking for a show of the flesh. They left everything but what they could eat. All they were interested in was their belly, money and themselves, the outward, the physical and that swhat got them in trouble. They weren t walking by faith.

That s what happened to Israel. Instead of walking by faith and responding to God s word to them, they got caught up in all this physical stuff out here and all th

at they have their eyes on.25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

In other words, if you clean up the inside, the outside will follow suit. You don t ever have to worry about that. If you will take the moral and spiritual problems and get them straight, the outside will take care of itself. It will follow suit.

What happens is that religion focuses on the outside and forgets the inside. He s already told them that it s a thing that comes from inside, from the things thatproceed out of the mouth. It s the things that come from within that defile. That s where the problem is.

He says, You guys don t see that. You think you can do the external things. That s what religion always does gives you external things to do to make God happy withyou.

27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers [white washed graves], which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

He says, You guys are just a bag of bones. You have a nice veneered, white washed exterior but inside, you are just terrible. You are rotten down inside.

28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are fullof hypocrisy and iniquity.

What a statement. That s a passage right there that all you have to do is to read it and you can understand it. That doesn t need any comment at all, brother. That s tough.



29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombsof the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,30 If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakerswith them in the blood of the prophets.

He s fixing to lower the boom on them. You watch Him. He says, You bunch of hypocrites, you look back there and see your fathers kill the prophets and you say, Oh, we wouldn t have killed the prophets. We would have honored the prophets.

When He talks about building the tombs of the prophets and about garnishing thesepulchres of the righteous, He s talking about going about decorating and makingout like they honor these people and (proudly) saying We wouldn t have killed them.

Have you ever heard anybody say, If I had been there, I would never have killedJesus ? It s that kind of thing.

31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of themwhich killed the prophets.32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

They are doing the same thing that their fathers did. They come from that longline of ancestors who have rejected the Word of God, rejected the prophets of God, killed them, spurned them. He says, Guys, you re in that long line of ancestors

and I just want you to know that judgment is coming. 32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

The wrath of God is fixing to fall on these people and just consume them. Thatwrath, of course, is the tribulation period. In a few minutes we will see thatthey are called the generation of my wrath. That apostate nation is the nation upon whom that tribulation and wrath of God and the time of Jacob s trouble is going to fall but that believing remnant will be saved out of it. Christ is just pronouncing the judgment and verdict of God upon that nation.

34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophetsWho is talking? Who sent the prophets to Israel? Jehovah did. Whom does He say did? I did. Jesus Christ simply speaks for God the Father in the first person. That s a statement of deity. That is one of those statements that even the newBibles don t know anything about to take out. God has fixed those things in His word over and over and over again so that no matter what translation you use, there are always some of them there to stick out at you. There they are. He sortof just nonchalantly says, I sent you the prophets. Those religious leaders didn tmiss it; they re angry! When you get down to the end of this passage, He walks out of the temple and says, Your house is left desolate. He is saying, I am God Almighty and I am leaving this place. When I walk out, God is leaving.

No wonder they crucified Him. You come in and say you are Jehovah God in the flesh and When I leave, God is leaving. That s pretty clear what you are saying. They re after Him. If they had been people of faith, they would have trusted Him. He said, Don t believe me because I said it, believe me for the works sake. That s go evidence. They just didn t have any faith. They were going around trying to doit by works of righteousness, outward religion, rather than faith in God s word.

34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: andsome of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in you



he gospel.

I guess I have never understood that viewpoint. The other day a man told me about talking to a grace pastor who had been preaching six years and the young guywas bragging to this fellow that in six years he had never preached about the mystery. He thought that was really great. There s something we are talking aboutthat has never allowed me to have that kind of viewpoint. It s this: when you begin to see that the wrath of God was ready to be poured out in the early Acts period I m talking about the generation of His wrath ? where it is going to be poured out to consume and destroy, the day of the vengeance of Almighty God was readyto come.

When you see and understand the peril and the place where the prophetic clock had come and then you see, just as the wrath was ready to be poured out, God interrupted and stopped the prophetic program. Instead of pouring out wrath on a sin

cursed, wrath deserving world, God delayed the wrath and poured out His grace.

To me, that means that every day I get up in the morning is another day of grace. Every day that the Dispensation of Grace is extended another twenty four hours means that the wrath is held back another twenty four hours. It makes it another day of salvation. That is the very basis of the Gospel of the Grace of God. That is the very basis of the Dispensation of the Grace of God.

I ll just be honest with you about my own attitude. Of all the things we learn about who we are in Christ, I don t know anything else that thrills me more than the fact that God, in His grace has withheld and delayed the wrath and extended grace. Every day, every hour, every moment that it goes on is another extension of grace. That is what the Dispensation of Grace is all about.

How can you be happy that you don t preach about that and the secret interruptionof the prophetic program? How you can be happy and proud about not preaching about that or even be content not to preach it, I don t understand. I don t understand how you can appreciate what you have in the cross.

Christ looks out over that guilty city and He laments.


I told you when we started that Matthew 23 is a hard pill. It s a hard, scathingdenunciation of the religiosity of Israel and yet Christ didn t utter it with fire in His eyes and thunder in His voice. He uttered it out of a broken heart. He looks out at the hardness of their heart and he cried, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets. You go on in your blind and foolish ways. How often would I have gathered you and brought you under my protective love, my protection, my care, my benevolence. How often would I have reached out and huggedyou to myself like a hen takes her little chicks under her wing to protect themand would give herself for them. How often would I have done that but you would

n t. You didn t want it.

What a crime. That demonstrates a bunch of people just hog tied by religious tradition stumbling in the fog of ignorance and superstition, choking on the smoke of lust and a cloud of the dust of materialism. They wouldn t come to Him. They would take a gift off the altar and they d take gold off the temple, but they wouldn t take Him.

I don t know anywhere else that human depravity demonstrates itself and rears itswicked head like that. You can go to the gutter, you can go to the hell holes o



f this world and you will never find human depravity manifested like that. Youwould not.

37 how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

That verse is a problem for a hyper Calvinist. It s a good problem. They ought to have it. He says, I would, and ye would not. How can that be so, if they weren t able? He would; they wouldn t. It s cruel mockery if all the religious traditionabout salvation and irresistible grace were so.

38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

Matthew 21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer

My house shall be called a house of prayer. He calls the temple, My house.

Matthew 23:38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

It is no longer my house but your house.

39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

24:1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple:You ve got to see what He is doing. He places Himself as God the Father pronouncing judgment on the temple as He leaves it. In essence, He is saying, I m God, Jehovah, and I am leaving. This place isn t my house anymore. Now it s yours. It s your religion and I am leaving. It s the judgment of God.

23:39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

They aren t going to see Him again until they are willing to receive Him and alsoto receive their Kingdom.

Matthew 23 is the verdict, the pronouncement of judgment, finally laid. The axis laid to the root of the tree.

Then in Chapter 24, He goes outside and gives the second Sermon on the Mount, the Olivet Discourse. We ll go into that next time. Before we quit, there is one thing I want you to see.

Luke 24:44 and Matthew 23:35 are two verses in scripture that you need to be familiar with, not so much in their context but what they are.

Jesus Christ gave two great canonical statements. A canonical statement declares what the contents of the Bible are, what books make up the Bible (the canon of

scripture).

Our Old Testament is the Bible that the Jews and Christ had at that time. On two different occasions Christ identifies the contents of the Hebrew Bible.

Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

The Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms are the three divisions that make



up the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible: the TORAH, the NEVI'IM (the prophets), and the KETHUVIM (the writings). The Book of Psalms stood at the head of the writings so that section took the name of Psalms. Those same three divisions are in a Hebrew Bible today. So, when Christ identifies the contents of the Hebrew Bible, He says there are three sections: the Law of Moses (the Torah), the Prophets and the Psalms (the writings).

Notice that there is one prominent section that is left out of there. He does not mention the Apocrypha. He does not mention the Pseudepigrapha writings (thefalse writings). The Book of Enoch, all these lost books of the Bible, ? how areyou to know if they should be in the Bible? Is the Bible incomplete? No. Your Bible is not incomplete. It isn t enough to believe that because you want to believe it. You need something in the Word of God that indicates that it is complete. The Apocrypha is eleven books that are added in the Catholic Old Testament. He omits them. They are not a part of the Word of God.

Matthew 23:35 is the other canonical statement.

Matthew 23:35 That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel [in Genesis 4] unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar [2 Chronicles].

2 Chronicles 24:20 And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them

Somebody may say, Doesn t Matthew say Zechariah, the son of Barachias ? That it does.Here it says, Zechariah, son of Jehoiada. Jehoiada was a great king in Israel wh

o brought great revival and blessing to the nation. He restored the temple. The word Barachias means blessed of Jehovah, the blessed one of the Lord. It easily would be a name that Jehoiada would bear as a title and an additional name given by later generations.

In Verse 21, they stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the LORD. The courtyard would be between the altar and the temple.

In Matthew 23:35, He is saying, All the blood from Abel to Zechariah, from Genesi

s 4 to 2 Chronicles 24, from the first book in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis) to the last book (2 Chronicles). (We would say from Genesis to Revelation in our Bible.)

The verse is saying, From the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible, from Genesis to 2 Chronicles. But, wait a minute. Is Second Chronicles the end of their Bible? You have to remember that the order of the books in their Bible wasdifferent from yours. The Hebrew Bible had twenty four books in it. Our Old Testament has thirty nine books. The same thirty nine books that are in your OldTestament are the same books in the Hebrew Bible.

Their Hebrew Bible had only had twenty four books because First and Second Samuel were only one book. Ezra and Nehemiah were only one book in a Hebrew Bible.

Daniel to Malachi (the twelve minor prophets) were only one book in a Hebrew Bible. It was called The Twelve. So, you see they had the same books but they weren t divided into as many books. The identical same books that you have in your Bible but arranged in a different order are the same books in a Hebrew Bible.

A Jewish brother who was here the other day had a Hebrew Bible and the books were in the order that an old Hebrew Bible has its books in. I have one in my office. Second Chronicles is the last book in it. There is no Apocrypha. There s no Pseudepigrapha. His Bible has just the books and the chapters and the verses that are in your Bible.



If somebody comes along and says that you ought to have the Apocrypha, you say, No, no, no. They say, Why not? You say, Because Jesus Christ made the authoritative statement on the contents of the Old Testament and He left it out and since Heleft it out, we re going to leave it out.

If you want an interesting exercise in believing Bible study, you ought to check out the last few verses of 2 Chronicles and then the last verses in Malachi. Do that sometime this week and you ll see why the order of books is different. The last word in your Old Testament is curse. That s what the law is. That s what is going to happen to gentiles. They are going to get the curse and be under the foot and the heel. When a gentile comes to the end of that Old Testament, it is just condemnation and curse, middle wall of partition, put outside.

When a Jew comes to the end of his Bible, in 2 Chronicles, it talks about goingback into the land, having the Kingdom restored (type of the Second Coming of Christ in the Millennial Kingdom). It s talking about the restoration of Israel out of Babylon. It s a great way to end their Bible because that s exactly what the future holds for them

The way your Old Testament is arranged tells you exactly what the future is going to be for Gentiles.

That s one of those little spiritual designs that God puts in His word to demonstr

ate to you His superintendency over it for the eye of faith to see and respond to.


Matthew 24:1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple:

You have to compare that with the two previous verses in Chapter 23.Matthew 23:38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.24:1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple:

As I said before, He is saying, When I leave, that s Jehovah God leaving the temple and it s not my house any more, it s your house. Indeed, that is exactly what happened. After the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a very interesting event that we ll study in more detail when we come to it.

Matthew 27:50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the

ghost [He died].51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom;

The veil tore from the top. No man got up there to tear it like that, so God Himself, obviously, tore it open.

and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

The rending of that veil of the temple was very significant. There are a lot of



sometimes and other times it isn t going great. I asked him, What makes the difference? He said, Well, it seems like the pastor works so hard and when he is seeingresults, the work goes great but when he isn t seeing results, the work is not sogreat.

Now, you understand that is not the way it ought to be. That is walking by sight and not by faith. You need to know what your job and responsibility is and who you are as an ambassador of Christ and how you are to work and walk, and to walk that way by faith regardless of what it looks like you are accomplishing.

Hey folks, there are times to sow the seed, and sow the seed and water the seed, and water the seed and cultivate the seed, and then there is harvest time. You have to minster to people where you are, to people the way they are, not whereyou want them to be and the way you want them to be. Maybe they aren t ready to bring forth the harvest. You don t have any business trying to force them before they are spiritually ready to bring it forth. You are to minister to them wherethey are and that is faith: walking by faith, doing what God has for you to do.

It is always dangerous to begin to look at the visible manifestations.

Hosea 8:14 For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples;

That s interesting. They lost the Lord in the building program. You have to be careful. Don t misunderstand. I am not saying you shouldn t have a building. I think you should have a building because it is a fantastic tool in the work of the

ministry. It s something that transforms your ministry and gives permanence to it and gives a commitment to the community and all those things. It is valuable but you shouldn t worship the building. You worship God. And, being caught up inthe building isn t the issue; it s the work of the ministry that goes on amidst thepeople that s the issue. As soon as you forget that, you re right here in the position that the disciples were in, in Matthew 24:1. You re right in the position that is represented here by Judas mentality.

Matthew 24:1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

They are real impressed by the buildings.

2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

They come and show Him the beautiful buildings and what does the Lord do? He says, I am going to destroy the whole thing. Write down in the margin of your Bible, Micah 3:12 and Jeremiah 26:18. If you will check those references, you will find that at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, they are going to plow up the temple area and all of it will be destroyed and one stone won t be left upon another. Those references are Second Advent passages when He comes back. He is saying, Don t get all enamored by what you guys see all this empty pomp and ceremonialism and all the beautiful buildings because all this is going to be burned up to a fare thee well; just uprooted and turned over when I come back.

The average Bible commentary says that Verse 2 took place in 70 A.D. In fact, if you have a Scofield Reference Bible, it will probably identify it in a note.

I have said this before, but in studying Matthew 24, you have to get into this issue so I ll say it now and not repeat it over and over. In 70 A. D., Titus destroyed the temple. According to Jewish historians, there were three sieges by Titus. Finally, the third one in 115 A. D. completely exterminated and deported all the Jews from the land. The first one took place in 70 A. D. when Titus destroyed the temple.



I guess you could call it 70 A. D. itis because most of the commentaries have. They go down through this passage and try to pick certain events out of it and say, That s 70 A.D. The reason for that is that they don t see the truth of the mysteryof the Dispensation of the Grace of God. They don t see how the dispensation in which we live interrupted Matthew 24 and stopped its fulfillment of all the passages here that they relate to 70 A. D. Every one of them without exception are second advent passages that refer doctrinally to Jesus Christ coming back at theend of the Tribulation, at the end of the Seventieth Week, destroying His enemies and setting up His Kingdom.

Because they don t recognize that the Dispensation of Grace interrupted that process, they make some things apply to 70 A. D. and some of the others to the Second Advent. Rather than realizing by 70 A. D. the prophetic program had been set aside, the Dispensation of Grace was in full swing and the normal standard for the Dispensation of Grace had long ago been reached.

The Acts period covers a time period of approximately 33 A. D. to 63 A. D. Allof Paul s epistles had been written long before 70 A. D. In fact, I personally believe that all of the New Testament had been written and collated together and copies of it were being made and distributed by 70 A. D. I realize that is a much earlier date than for what most of the books allow but I think I can demonstrate that on the ones you can identify in scripture where they are written.

My point to you is that rather than trying to slip the prophetic program over, or rather than having Christ talk about something continuing in the prophetic program through the present age, it s much easier just to recognize that there is aninterruption and a parenthesis stuck in here. Rather than trying to make some of it fit 70 A. D. when the facts don t all fit because as soon as you say 70 A. D. you have to deal with the fact that it says, There shall not be left here one stone upon another. With the fact that, that really didn t happen with Titus.

If an unbeliever comes along and says, It didn t happen just that way. The templewas destroyed but every stone of the temple wasn t turned over. They didn t dig them all up. So then, you have to deal with that. The better course is just to recognize that it was not 70 A. D.

In the rest of the passage, as I teach it, you won t hear me say much about 70 A.D. except in a negative way. I am not trying to be negative but I am saying toyou that isn t what s going on in the mind of Christ as he teaches His disciples. As they receive it they are not thinking of 70 A. D. When 70 A. D. came, they did not think that it was the fulfillment of these passages.

Hebrews 8:13 In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Nowthat which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

He is obviously talking about that which carries on the Mosaic Covenant. That s the temple and the temple worship which was still taking place when the Book of Hebrews was written.

Hebrews 10:11 And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering [sacrifices in the temple].

But, He says, that is fixing to vanish away. The Book of Hebrews is written in light of the Pauline information. It is written in light of the interruption that has come in God s program for the nation Israel. It is written in light of the advanced revelation given by Paul about the cross work of Christ. Hebrews explains to the kingdom saint how the cross accomplishes his program as well as the program for the Body of Christ.



He goes up from the Mount of Olives and they say He will come back in like manner.

Zechariah 14:1 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh,3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives,

When Christ comes back the second time, His feet touch terra firma on the same place as the last time His feet touched the earth: Mount of Olives. When you come to Matthew 24, it is not by coincidence but it is by design that He gives this discourse on the Mount of Olives.

The Mount of Olives in your Bible is associated with the Second Coming of Christ back to the earth to set up His kingdom. So, He sits on that mountain to giveHis second Sermon on the Mount identifying together with that time in which is going to come back and establish His kingdom.

Matthew 24 and 25 are two of the most difficult chapters in the entire Bible todecipher. They are surpassed only by Acts 2 and perhaps Hebrews 6. There aren tany two chapters in the New Testament any more difficult to get through than these two chapters except Acts 2. If you can get through Acts 2 without killing yourself, theologically and spiritually, you did a good job. It s tough. Most peop

le can t do it. That s the bloodiest battleground in all the New Testament. Hebrews 6 is pretty tough too. Next to those two, Matthew 24 and 25 are probably thehardest chapters in the New Testament. So, we are not fixing to go down through an easy part of the Bible.

We are also down to the point where, as far as my teaching on the video goes, Ineed to get on and not spend forever in one passage. So, I am going to go downhere rather quickly, partly because I don t want to stick my neck out and have somebody chop it off five years from now. In other words, I don t want to say something that I don t know for sure is true which means I don t have a whole lot to say about a lot of these verses. The other thing is the time constraints.

But, I want you to know ahead of time about these two passages you talk about co

ntroversy and different ideas with people trying to figure them out. There areat least fifteen different cults that base major doctrines on these two chapters. About fifty cults base theirs on Acts 2. So, there are at least fifteen false doctrines based on these chapters right here.

The basic thing that will keep you from making a mistake and might make you notto understand where everything fits, but what will keep you from making a mistake is to recognize that you are not a part of these chapters in any way, shape or form. If you will keep the Church, the Body of Christ completely out of here,then you won t mess up in any major way even though you might not get all the details straight.

Remember that I have told you that if you know how to rightly divide the word, y

ou may get a little piece out and not know exactly what that piece means and you might not be able to decipher it all, but you will know where it fits, so you won t be tripping over it. That s important.

I ll tell you folks, if you will follow that procedure, just simple, common, old,ordinary people like you and me can keep from making some mistakes that the brilliant minds of the twentieth century in theological circles can t keep from making. That s important.

Matthew 24:3 Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of



thy coming, and of the end of the world?

They really ask two questions (there are two question marks). When shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and the end of the world? If you say there are two questions, they are in three parts. If you say there are three questions, you have one when and two what questions. I don t care how you do it as long as you recognize there are three sections.

He answers these questions in reverse order. Verses 4 24 answer the one about the end of the world. Verses 25 31 answer the question about the sign of His coming. Then in Verses 32 51, He answers the question of when? Nowhere in it does 70 A.D. apply.

3 Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

You have to remember that expression the end of the world and think about what Hehas already talked about. You have seen it before in the parable of the tares and the wheat.

Matthew 13:38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

When is the end of the world in this passage? Is it the end of the planet? Ifit is, how are they going to have a kingdom afterward? We use the word world in so many different ways. We see a child walking by and we say that he is in his own little world. We talk about The World Tomorrow. (Twenty first century) We t

alk about the world of the depression days. We use that word to describe a closed in system.

Paul, in Galatians 1:4, describes this present evil world. Sometimes we use the word age. We talk about the Industrial Age and the Iron Age and the Computer Age. That s the same kind of word.

The end of the world or the end of the age in Matthew 13 is the end of the tribulation period. It s the end of the present evil world of the god of this world (Satan). It s the end of that and the beginning of the Kingdom of God.

Revelation 11:15 The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

Do you reckon that it will be a different world then than it is now? You d better believe it. The end of the world comes at the end of the tribulation period, the end of the Seventieth Week of Daniel, when Christ takes up the reins and becomes the King over the universe that He by rights is. He takes them out of the domain and out of the control of Satan and the new age begins.

This present evil world is the world system that is under the control of the authority of Satan. It s the vehicle that manifests and expresses Satan s philosophy.

It s the channel for which his program is executed and carried out.



That s why Paul says, Be not conformed to this world. James 4 says, Friendship withthe world is enmity against God. Is he talking about being friends with nature?

Don t be silly. You see, you use the word in different ways and God s word can dothe same thing. What you have to do when you read a passage like that is to determine the sense of the use of the word. That isn t that hard to do when you have another passage like Chapter 13 that has already explained it to you. So whenyou come to Chapter 24, Verse 3, you don t have any trouble with the end of the world. You know He s not talking about when He s going to burn up the planet. He s talking about the time that the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever. (Revelation 11:15)

So the end of the world that He is talking about is the end of the tribulation,the end of the Seventieth Week, when Christ sets up His Kingdom.

Now, Christ is going to answer first the question about the end of the world.

Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

By the way, why would He wait on the when question and answer the what ones first?

Acts 1:6 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lor

d, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

Acts 1 is less than a week after they ask in Matthew 24 and they still don t havethe answer. When, when? Why didn t He answer that question? It is not for you to know the times and the seasons. He never tells them. In essence, He tells them that they can t know.

Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: f

or all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.People say, When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, it means the end is comingclose. Is that what that verse says? It says When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, it isn t close. That s a kick in the seat of the pants, isn t it?

7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and thereshall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

End of sorrows? No, they are the beginning of sorrows. Isn t it interesting how people quote that passage just as if those things happen. The Lord must be coming because those things are happening. No, that s just the beginning of sorrows.

When does a race end, at the beginning or at the finish? When I ran track, I had to get over the finish line. It didn t make any difference how I started (unless it was a short race and I had to get off fast).

Wars and rumors of war are only a characteristic of the beginning.

9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hat



e one another.

Many of the believers in the group are going to betray each other.

11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

When I read that verse, it makes my blood run cold when I see all the godlessness and pornography and the cussing and the carrying on and all the debauchery that goes on around us today. He says, Because iniquity shall abound. When iniquity abounds, the love of many waxes cold.

Paul says in 2 Timothy 3, They are without natural affection. Do you want to fixa society where a mom will put her baby in a plastic bag, tie it up and put it in the garbage can so she doesn t hear its muffled cries as it expires? Do you know how to get a nation like that? Just let iniquity abound. Don t you tell me that letting sin abound doesn t cost. It will cost in your life too. You let sin run rampant in your life, whether they are maliciousness, covetousness, pride, jealousy, sins of the spirit or sins of the flesh, it will cost you. Your heart will become dead. It will kill you spiritually.

That s a powerful verse. Remember that verse. But, that s also characteristic of the Tribulation.

13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.Unto the end of what? It s unto the end of the Tribulation; not unto the end of you

r life; not to the end of the apostolic age. How do you know?

14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

The end is in Verses 3, 6, 13 and 14 and it is going to be the same end.

That period of time in Verses 9 14 when the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations. And yet, in Verses 9 12, it is obvious that it is going to be a tough time to preach the Gospel of the King

dom. People aren t going to be falling all over themselves to believe and receive it. Gospel of the Kingdom, of course, has to do with Christ establishing His kingdom on the earth. People aren t going to want it. People in the ranks of that Little Flock are going to rebel against it.

What you have down to Verse 14 is the first half of the Seventieth Week of Daniel. You know that by Verse 15.

15 When ye therefore [because of all these other things] shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

There are two things in Verse 15 to notice. When, in Daniel 9:27, does the abomination that maketh desolation stand in the holy place? Is it at the beginning, or the middle or the end of the week? It stands up in the middle of the week.

(Daniel 11:31, Daniel 8:13, etc.) It is very clear that it is in the middle of the week.

So, down to Verse 15 is the first half of the week, the first three and a half years. After Verse 15 will be the second half of the week, the second three anda half years. Verse 15 identifies the middle of the week.



The sixth seal has to do with signs in heaven and the heavens opening and thosethings being associated with the manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Those six seals will match the events back in Matthew 24. Let me show them to you.

Matthew 24:5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

There are many false Christs show up to compare with the false Christ in the first seal.

Matthew 24:6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars:7 For nation shall rise against nation

That compares with the second seal of wars with the rider of the red horse.

7 and there shall be famines,

That s the third seal with the horseman on the black horse.

7 and pestilences, and earthquakes

That s the fourth seal with the pale horse and rider.

Matthew 24:9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

There is tremendous persecution as in the fifth seal.

Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun bedarkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

In Verses 29 and 30, you see the signs in the heavens and the sign of the Son of man in heaven. When we study that in a week of two, you are going to find that the sign of the Son of man appears in the heavens in Revelation 6, in the middle of the Seventieth Week of Daniel.

In Matthew 24, it s not exactly laid out as in the sixth seal but it follows the general outline of the events that you re going to have detailed later in Revelation 6.

So, again, when you study Matthew 24, you are studying future history about theTribulation and the Second Coming of Christ. You re not studying about what is going on today. The rapture of the Body of Christ isn t involved. You and I aren t there and we aren t going to be.




Matthew 24. The last time, we got down through Verse 14 but before we go on, Iwant to go back and deal with Verses 13 and 14 in the passage. I trust you remember that Verse 15 is the middle of the Seventieth Week of Daniel. In the first fourteen verses of the chapter, beginning at Verse 4 and following, is a description of the first half of the Seventieth Week of Daniel 9.

You are familiar, of course, with those seventy weeks. The last week, the seventieth, is that seven year period of tribulation during which the antichrist comes on the scene. He comes into power at the beginning of the week. His career extends throughout that seven year period of the tribulation, but he is revealed in his true character after the first three and a half years, in the middle of the week. The last half of the week is known as "the great tribulation." You learn that from the passage we are about to read.

After describing the beginning of sorrows, the beginning of the week and the persecution that is going to be raised against the believing remnant (those peoplewho are going out and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom during that tribulation period), He says:

Matthew 24:13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

I think I told you the last time that Matthew 24 is a chapter that is unexcelled in scripture, except for Acts 2, for a seed bed and source of cults, heresies and false doctrine. I guess more false doctrine comes out of Acts 2 and Matthew24 than any other two chapters in the Bible. The reason is that people don t realize what is going on in those passages. They don t understand how they fit in the prophetic program.

But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. Some people believe you have to hold out to the end in order to get saved,

Where I was raised, the offering would be taken and then I would hear the prayer: Use this offering for the ongoing of thy kingdom and receive us into heaven at

last. I have heard that all my life. May we hold out until we get to heaven. You know the song, Jesus Paid It All.

Jesus paid it all,All to Him I owe;Sin had left a crimson stain,He washed it white as snow.

A guy down south made up a song. He wrote:

Jesus paid a part,And I a part, you know.

Sin had left a crimson stain,We washed it white as snow.

That s the idea of holding out and holding on.

We sing The Old Rugged Cross. We used to sing that every night at the Rescue Mission. I have never ever been real sure about the chorus. I will cling to the old rugged cross. I get the idea of hanging and clinging on. That is not what thesongwriter meant. He meant that it was dear to him. I am going to exchange it some day for a crown.



A lot of people say, I am going to hang on, keep on and keep on and if I endureuntil I die, then I ll get a crown and get into heaven.

That isn t what Verse 13 is talking about. You can see how they can misread it that way.

You never want to assume that heretics and people in cults and people in false doctrine are just there because they are screwy between the ears. That isn t true. You talk to any of the cults and branches of Christianity and to people in false doctrine that follow a works program and anything like that and you will find that those people go to the Bible and get verses to teach their systems. It has always fascinated me that here s a great segment of Christendom that believes they can lose their salvation. They believe they can get saved and yet theycan lose it and if they don t hold out until they die, they aren t going to be saved.

Somebody comes along and says, That s nonsense and makes fun of them. The guy thatsays that never realizes there are verses in the Bible that those people look at and believe.

Here s one of the verses: But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall besaved. Do you see how a guy could use that to prove he has to endure to the end?

What happens if you don t hold out to the end? Do you get saved? Not according to the verse. So you need to understand the verse. If it is true, and it is,once you believe and are saved and justified before God, you are eternally secure in Christ and that has always been true from Adam onward.

No one has ever been justified before God Almighty except through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. When you are placed into the redemptive merits of Christ s blood and His cross work, then you are secure. But you see, people in time past didn t know about it and in fact, nobody knew about it until God revealed all those things that were accomplished for all men through the cross. He revealed that through the apostle Paul in Romans 3, and 1Timothy 2. It s only until youcome to where we are now that we understand that, but it has still been true.

What is this passage saying? Is it saying one thing sometime when something else is true? No, it s not. About the word save there: you always want to be careful about the words in your Bible. We ask, Are you saved?

I was going down the street one time in Mobile back about 1967 and I was passing out tracts and talking to people about the Lord. A dude, a hippie with a cut off shirt with a bowtie, a scrawny little guy, went by and I gave him a tract. I said to him, Did you know that Jesus saves? He answered, Hey cool, man, what s he save, green stamps? I said, No. He saves sinners and you qualify. (You have to be quick to have a come back for some of those guys.)

The Lord saves means different things to people. In the Bible it is used in a lot of different ways. Let me show you.

1 Timothy 4:16 Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.

I thought that Timothy was already a saved man. Didn t Paul call him my son in the faith in 1 Timothy 1:2? What s he talking about? Save thyself from hell? No, he is talking about saving yourself and your ministry from the apostasy back in Verses 1and 2 and the rest of the chapter. Here you can be saved not from hell, but from apostasy.



1 Timothy 2:15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

Ladies, do you reckon you are going to get saved if you have babies? Do you reckon that you going to be eternally secure and go to heaven when you die if you have children?

The word saved can mean a lot of different things. We learn today that salvation for a believer in the Dispensation of Grace is in three tenses. It s somethingyou should learn early in your Christian life. You are saved past tense. On December 31, 1962, I trusted Jesus Christ as my Saviour and I was saved from the penalty of sin. Dying and going to hell has never been an issue to me. I was justified before God, saved (past tense) from the penalty of sin.

One day, in the future, I shall be saved. That s confusing, isn t it? Past tense I was. But there is a future tense I will be saved from the presence of sin. When Christ comes back for his church, He ll catch me away and give me a new glorified body and I will be saved (Romans 5).

There is also a present tense. It is justification in the past, glorification in the future and sanctification in the present. We are now being saved by His life. We are being saved from the power of indwelling sin by the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Christ right now.

Past, present and future. The word can be used in a lot of different ways. You have to understand those words.

What you mean when you ask somebody, Are you saved? is Are you a member of the family of God? What you really want to ask is, Have you been justified? But if you ask if they have been justified, they will look at you with a blank look. You have a chance if you say saved. People will understand a little bit if you say saved.


Come back to Jeremiah 30. It is important that you see what that salvation is in the verse.

Jeremiah 30:4 And these are the words that the LORD spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah.5 For thus saith the LORD; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace.6 Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?

They look out and everybody is so tormented that the men are in the same torments and pains just as though they were going through the pain of childbirth. When the Bible wants to describe the most excruciating pain that human experience can endure, it talks about travail of the labor pains of childbirth. I have had n

o personal experience with that so I can t tell you if it is the most excruciating pain and it may not be for you. I have been around it and seen it and you ladies can testify better, but I know in the Bible that the labor pain of childbirth is described as the most excruciating pain there is.

7 Alas! for that day is great [day of torment and pain], so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble;

The great day of Jacob s trouble of pain, torment and tribulation is the great tribulation period. It s what we are reading about in Matthew 24. That time of Jaco



b's trouble is that tribulation period, the Seventieth Week, when God pours outHis wrath on the nation.

but he [Jacob] shall be saved out of it.

There is the issue of a nation of people (Jacob, Israel) being saved out of that tribulation period. Remember, we ve talked about this time and again, that entrance into the Kingdom was not a purely spiritual experience. It has to do with a literal, physical salvation, as promised in all of the prophets where a literal, visible, physical nation is to go into a literal, physical, visible Kingdom.There is a physical issue don t miss that.

There is a lot of discussion about being born again and you need to know what the passage is talking about. Here, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus.

John 3:7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

Don t ever let anybody tell you that you need to get rid of the thee s and the thouour Bible. Don t ever let anybody say that to you. That is one of the most marvelous Bible study aids that you will ever find. The Old English had an ability to distinguish between you (singular) and you (plural) that our modern English language does not have. The Greek, Latin, Spanish, German and almost all other languages have the ability to say you as an individual and you collectively. Thepersonal pronouns: I, you, he, she, it are singular. We, you, they are plural.

In Old English it was thou or thee for the second person singular and ye or you for second person plural.

I say to thee, Nicodemus as an individual, I want thee to hear me. Ye, (not thee, Nicodemus, but the whole nation), must be born again. The new birth, doctrinally and primarily as an issue in this Bible, refers to Jesus talking to the nation.All the individuals in that new nation, in that believing remnant, in that Little Flock, had to have the spiritual experience of being born again.

John 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be bornof water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

The man who walks into that kingdom over there and enters into it has to have th

is spiritual birth.John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Unless you have this spiritual birth, Christ says, you will not be able to enter or understand the kingdom. Hence you won t endure out there because you won t know what is going on. The people who are born again, that believing remnant, are theones who are going to endure and go in. Salvation for Israel in the Tribulation is not purely a spiritual issue. It is also a physical thing with a physical salvation involved in it.

Luke 1:70 As he [God] spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been

since the world began:71 That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us;

This is the daddy of John the Baptist talking about what John is going to do when he comes. That is a physical salvation

72 To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant;73 The oath which he sware to our father Abraham,



74 That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of ourenemies might serve him without fear,75 In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.

The point is that they are going to be physically delivered and go into that kingdom wherein they will serve God in righteousness and true holiness.

That salvation is the issue in Matthew 24:13. It is not a spiritual salvation from hell and getting into the family of God that he is dealing with but He s teaching about people enduring through that Tribulation and going into that kingdom over there.

2 Peter 1:10 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:11 For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

How does a man make his calling and election sure in the passage? Well, you give diligence to the things he has just told you in Verses 5 9 to add to your faith. In other words, he is talking about enduring. He s talking about going on toperfection and growing and consistently going on.

By that performance, James 2 says, Faith without works is dead so we see that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. It s the same issue: faith and wo

rks. It s the same program.You understand that is not the way a man is justified today. It s entirely different today.

It was faith plus works equals salvation then. It was a physical salvation into the kingdom. It was a group of physical people like you and me (but they will be Jews), who will go into that kingdom. In order to have a physical kingdom they had to have a physical salvation of a nation.

It isn t like you and me where we get all the spiritual blessings up front. Israel is saved physically in order they might gain spiritual benefits and profits.You and I are saved spiritually. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings th

e moment we trust Christ and we get the physical benefits of that later, at theRapture and on out into eternity when we get the positions in the heavenly places.

So, we have the spiritual first and the physical later. They have the physicalfirst and the spiritual later.


That is, he shall have that entrance into the kingdom, saved out of that time of Jacob s trouble.

Notice the end in the verse. What is that? It s not the end of your life and it s no

t the end of the apostolic age. It s the end of the Seventieth Week, the end of the Tribulation. Come back to Daniel 11 and notice the expression the end. When you read that expression in prophecy, it s a term like that day. As you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the other prophets you begin to notice that day, that day, that day. Historically and prophetically, it looks toward that great Day of the Lord.

The end, the end, the end is the end of the Tribulation. It s the time that the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, when the world system as we know it constituted today, ends and Satan is taken out of the po



sition of authority and the system is turned over into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. It s the end of the world system which takes place at the end of the Tribulation.

Daniel 11:35 And some of them of understanding shall fall,

We have studied this passage which takes place in the last half of the Tribulation

to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end:because it is yet for a time appointed.

That will be an exact correlation with Matthew 24:13.

Daniel 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

8 And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be theend of these things?9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed tillthe time of the end.

13 But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy l

ot at the end of the days.Daniel 7:26 But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion,to consume and to destroy it unto the end.

Every one of those passages is the end of the Tribulation.

Daniel 7:26 But the judgment shall sit[the judgment in Verse 22], and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end.

Daniel 8:17 So he came near where I stood: and when he came, I was afraid, andfell upon my face: but he said unto me, Understand, O son of man: for at the time of the end shall be the vision.

19 And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end ofthe indignation: for at the time appointed the end shall be.

Daniel 9:26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

You can just go on and on with the end, the end. Come over to the Book of Hebrews, written to the Hebrews like the Book of Daniel was.

Hebrews 3:6 But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we h

old fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.

What does that verse sound like? Does that verse sound like anything we have read tonight? It sounds like Matthew 24:13, doesn t it?

14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;

Matthew 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him unde



rstand:)

Do you see Daniel spoken of in Verse 15? That s why I went back to the Book of Daniel to pick up all those references because the context of the end in Matthew 24:13 is the Book of Daniel.

So, being saved, enduring unto the end, that is, the man who stays faithful to the end of the Tribulation, his salvation has to do with that kingdom. You haveto remember that the entrance for the nation into that kingdom wasn t purely spiritual. It had to do with the literal, physical salvation into that kingdom promised by all the prophets that was the reward for faithful service unto the end.

Matthew 24:13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world .

Now, the Gospel of the Kingdom has to do with Christ establishing His kingdom on the earth. In the passage, it is to be proclaimed by the Little Flock in the tribulation period, during the Seventieth Week of Daniel, prior to the Second Coming of Christ.

14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

Obviously, the end is the Second Coming of Christ.

That verse is a problem to some people and there is a lot of misunderstanding about it. You hear it on the radio all the time. We ve got to get the gospel preached all over the world so it will hasten the Second Coming of Christ. Jesus can tcome back until the Gospel of Grace is preached to everybody in the world. Thatisn t what the verse says. It says, The gospel of the kingdom, not the gospel of grace.

You need to understand the basic distinction between the Gospel of the Kingdom and going around proclaiming that Christ will come and establish His kingdom (the message for the nation Israel), and the Gospel of the Grace of God which is what we preach today about the finished work of Christ at Calvary being the basis of where He takes Jew and Gentile into one body and places them on an absolute eq

ual basis and blesses us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.There are two distinct messages, two systems, two programs. But you see, instead of dividing them and putting them in the places where they ought to go, people take this verse in order to whip up enthusiasm at missionary conferences that s when you hear this verse and the verse, Go into all the world and preach the wordto every creature. You hear little phrases out of verses at special times like missionary conferences in order to get you interested to do what they want you to do.

People, I don t know how you feel about that but I have had people do that to me years ago and I have had enough of it. I am not interested in people getting meto do what they want me to do. I want to know what God is doing in this book.

I want to know what God is saying. I want to know how God is operating and I want to know what God has to say about it so I can go do what He is doing.

That s the key. That isn t stealing anything from you. It isn t depriving you of anything. It is setting you free. Down south we used to sing a song: He Set Me Free. If you haven t sung it, you ought to. He broke the bars of prison for me. Thatwill break the chains off.

Matthew 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness



People ask, Why would it be preached in all the world if the issue is Israel andPalestine? You have already discovered the reason for this. You have to remember where we have already been in our study in Matthew because that helps you out. You have already seen in Matthew 13 the parable of the wheat and the tares.

Matthew 13:38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;

The Son of man comes and sows the seed in His field. The field is the world. He sows the wheat out there. He is going to sow the message and His people out into the world. You already know about that. They are going out into the world, raising a standard.

Mark 16: 15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

How are you going to get to every creature? You re going to have to go to the whole world.

Luke 24:47 And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in hisname among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

Come over to Revelation. Here is another great verse that is often misused in missionary activity.

Revelation 3:8 I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it:

There is an open door that God Almighty sets before the tribulation saints there in those churches for the gospel to go out to all the nations as a witness anda warning. These people were faithful.

3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.

They were faithful and they take the message out. All the time, Christian people talk about God setting before you an open door and there it is. You just walk through it. You begin to ask, How did He do that? Well, in this situation here, He s going to come down with a supernatural activity and intervention and the door is just going to open. No man can shut it and nobody is going to stop it.

When Paul talks about an open door, it is an opportunity. It s a different thingaltogether.

I told you recently that I had the opportunity to go to Washington, D. C. to meet with a pastor of a large church there and to talk to him and his staff about the grace message. You know folks, God opened a door there and today I made arra

ngements for getting a flight to go there. God opened a door but He didn t just get on the phone one day and slap that pastor on the head and tell him he was giving him a ministry to call Brother Jordan in Chicago. That s the way some peoplethink it operates. God doesn t just go put it in somebody s head with some extra biblical revelation. The problem with that is that all of a sudden those revelations are all out in the air and God is revealing Himself today in that book.

God does speak to us today but it is through that book. Do you know how He opened a door? There was a man, the pastor of an Acts 2 church, at the Cedar Lake Conference and he came and listened to the messages all week. He is beginning to



read and study and he called me over and said, Would you talk to me? We sat andtalked about three hours over an open Bible about the doctrine and he said, Man,this is wonderful, and he began to perceive it and he took some books from the Bible Society: Things That Differ, Our Great Commission and Paul.

He took these tools and went home and studied them and he called his friend in Virginia, and he said, Look what I am learning! His friend said, Send some to me. o he sent some to him and all of a sudden they were studying and he said, I ve gota bright idea. Why don t we call Brother Jordan? I want to ask him some questions.

Do you know how it came about? It came about through the activity and the witness and the testimony and the operating of the Church, the Body of Christ, people being interested in studying the word.

That kind of activity would never have taken place if there weren t a Bible Society and if those books didn t exist and if there were no conference. Understand that you have a part in that. All the activity that we do together as we raise upthe standard of the Gospel of Grace produces fruit and opportunity. You have opportunities like that every day and you can look at them and recognize them as God given opportunities, not given like Revelation 3, but given as a natural result of the testimony that God gives you. You can take advantage of them as untothe Lord and do it for Him.

Back to Matthew. Christ s disciples are going to be sown out as a witness. Remember when we were in Matthew 13, I talked to you about these people being sown into the world for two reasons. Number one is to gather the remnant out of Israel.

Revelation 7:9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they wh

ich came out of great tribulation,These are the ones who came out of the witness of Matthew 24:14. They came from all nations, kindreds, people and tongues. The nation Israel is scattered allover the world. The witness goes out and preaches about Christ coming and establishing His kingdom. We re going to see later on how Christ is there in the heavens. They see Him and they go out and proclaim who He is. A believing remnant is gathered from all over the world.

James 1:1 says that the Book of James is written to the twelve tribes scatteredabroad all over the world. There are instructions on how they are to operate and come back together.

First, they are sown into the world as a witness to all nations because Israel has to be re gathered. As the witness goes out to Israel, it certainly speaks to the Gentiles.

Psalm 2 is a Psalm about the Second Coming of Christ. Verses 4 6 take place inthe tribulation period.

Psalm 2:4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have themin derision.



6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion

The Spirit of God speaks to the kings of the earth in light of His coming back and reigning over them:

10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

The witness will go out and call Israel to come join the Little Flock, the faithful remnant. It will say to the kings of the earth: Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little when He comes back.

You will find nations that do just that and we ll see it in Chapter 25.

I want you to compare Matthew 24 with Matthew 10:23. Here s a question that I get every now and then. Christ is talking to the twelve apostles. You see them identified and their names given in Verses 2 4. In Verse 5, He begins to commandthem and the instructions go all the way to the end of the chapter.

Matthew 10:23 But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till

the Son of man be come.Are the twelve apostles going to get over all the world with their testimony before Christ comes back? No, not even over all the cities of Israel before the Son of man returns.

Matthew 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

Is somebody going to go out to all nations? Yes. Somebody asks, How can Matthew 24:14 say that the gospel will be preached for a witness to all nations and yet in Matthew 10:23, it says that the apostles don t get out over Jerusalem? Good question. If the apostles don t go, are they the only ones preaching? Can anybody

else go? Obviously the apostles don t go but the remnant does. The remnant is sown into the world by the apostles.

Did you ever read over in Acts 8:1 that is exactly what happened? It was no surprise to anybody when it took place.

Acts 8:1 And Saul was consenting unto his [Stephen s] death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles

There weren t but twelve believers left in Jerusalem. Everybody else scattered out all over the region. I wonder what they did when they went out.

Acts 11:19 Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only.

They went out and preached the Gospel of the Circumcision, the Gospel of the Kingdom, to Israel just like they knew they were supposed to do. They bore that Gospel of the Kingdom which was a message particularly and exclusively for Israel.



Understand what He is doing there in Chapter 24, Verse 14, with the Gospel of the Kingdom going out. That is the first half of the week. This thing is beginning and the persecution comes because of all that.

Matthew 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

Those people are going to be able to understand the Book of Daniel. If you remember when we studied through Daniel, we got into Chapter 7 and I told you that everything from here on is going to get real confusing. (Some of you thought itwas confusing from the start.) You get in Chapter 7 and you say, Well, maybe itis this or maybe it is that. Then you get in Chapter 8 and you say, Maybe it is that. You get into Chapter 9 and you say, I ve got something here, and you get in Chapters 10 and 11, and you say, I don t know what in the world that is.

I ve told you not to worry about it because the people for whom it was written will understand it.

By the way, the abomination of desolation that stands in the holy place (Daniel9:27; 11:31; 8:13) will take place in the middle of the Seventieth Week: three and a half years on one side and three and a half years on the other side.

The apostle Paul describes in detail the taking away of the sacrifice system tha

t the anti Christ re establishes You have the anti Christ setting himself up in the temple declaring himself to be God Almighty (2 Thessalonians 2:3 and 4).

The anti Christ is on the earth declaring himself to be Almighty God. Jesus Christ is in the heavens. We ll see Him next time down in Verses 29 and 30, the sign of the Son of man in the heavens. The anti Christ is going to say, Do you see him up there? That s the devil and we ve got to get ready to fight him. He is goingto convince the citizenry of this planet that he is God and that Jesus Christ is the devil. He is the good guy and Christ is the bad guy. If you know anything about personal work in the age of grace, you know that wouldn t be too hard to do, would it?

His religion, his activity, his system (he is God and Christ is the enemy) will

deceive the nations. That s what is going on in the context that you are reading. What you are reading in Matthew 24, is not that activity but what the believing remnant is to do when all that is taking place around them.

Matthew 24:16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of hishouse:18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:

Why wouldn t you want it to be in the winter? It would be tough to be in the mountains in the wintertime, wouldn t it? Why wouldn t you want it to be on the Sabbath day? Write Revelation 14:12 by that verse.

Revelation 14:12 Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

They keep the commandments in the tribulation period and are back under the law, back under Israel s program. The law is back in effect. On the Sabbath day they couldn t flee.



Matthew 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

There shall be tremendous, tremendous persecution.

22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

Verse 22 is a misunderstood passage. When He is talking about the days being shortened, He is not talking about chopping off some of the days in the last halfof the Tribulation. You ll find Bible teachers say, That means that those 1,260 days, the last three and a half years are shortened so they can t all be there. They go over to Revelation 8 and say that there won t be twenty four hour days, maybesixteen hour days so the days will be a third shorter.

All that speculation is hyperventilation that people get involved in and from here on down in the chapter there is just one verse after another of it.

If there are 1,260 days, isn t that shortening them? How long do you reckon those things would go? Look what He is saying.

22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

In other words, He is saying that if those days of wrath and tribulation were to go to their natural conclusion, nobody would last. Everybody would be destroyed. There wouldn t be anybody saved or delivered. But, God is going to cut them short. How short? There won t be more than 1,260 of them. God puts a limit on how far that wrath is going to go, and that s the limit.

You can t eliminate some of the 1,260 days because there is verse after verse written after this passage that say that there are going to be 1,260.

If you want to know how short are they are. It s like the man who said a woman ought not to wear short hair and a man ought not wear long hair. The natural question is How short is short and how long is long?

The length is given to you. If those days of wrath were allowed to go to theirnatural conclusion, everybody would be destroyed. But, because God has a purpose according to election, He has a purpose to save that believing remnant and establish His kingdom. He has put a limit on the days and they can go only so far.


TEST #2

On a separate sheet of properly headed paper answer the following questions using complete sentences where appropriate. You may use and unmarked Bible to lookup references.

1. Who are the servants who invite guests to the wedding in 22:1 10?2. Identify the interpretation of the three calls in this parable.3. Matt. 22:7 is often said to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70



A.D. Do you agree? Why?4. Who is the guest without a garment?5. Explain the ramifications of Christ s statement, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar s and unto God the things that are God s.6. Angels are generally said to be sexless because of 22:30. Do you agree? Prove your answer by Scripture.7. Explain how Matt. 22:31 is a great verse to demonstrate the inspirationand preservation of Scripture.8. What are the two great commandments in the law and how is it that all the law finds its basis in them?9. When His enemies asked Him questions, Christ answered them all. What happened when He asked them questions?10. How could Daniel call Christ Lord when Christ is his son (22:41 45)?11. In light of 22:46, explain the contrast between Rom. 3:4 and Psalm 51:4.12. In Matt. 23 we learn that the Lord often remained silent when religiousleaders opposed the truth. T or F?13. In Matt. 23:1 3 Christ clearly instructs the disciples to keep the Mosaic Law. T or F?14. What is the significance of the prohibition in 23:9?15. Identify this generation: referred to in 23:36.16. Explain Christ s canonical statement in 23:35.17. How does 23:37 effect Hyper Calvinism?18. Christ s statement in 23:38 indicates that God Himself would never forsake Israel even though Christ was being rejected. T or F?

19. What is meant by the term the end of the world in 24:3?20. How does Matt. 24 compare with Rev. 6?21. Explain Matt. 24:13.22. The reason for the persecution of 24:9 12 is found in 24:14. T or F?23. Matt. 24:15 is generally used to teach that preaching the gospel to allthe world will result in the return of Christ. Demonstrate the fallacy of thisposition.24. At what point in the tribulation does Matt. 24:15 take place?25. Explain what is meant by the shortening of the days in 24:22.

MATTHEW 301 8(Lesson 19)

Matthew 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

Notice the term great tribulation. Then is a reference back to Verse 15 where the omination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place. That is in the middle of the Seventieth Week of Daniel 9. Those last three and a half years is specifically designated as the great tribulation. The whole seven year period is tribulation. The tribulation refers to more time before the se

ventieth week even begins. The seventieth week begins with the manifestation of the anti Christ and then it is going to run for seven years. The first half of the week is tribulation but the second half is especially the great tribulation.

It s a special time period in which some tremendous persecution and the wrath ofGod are poured out. There shall be great tribulation, such as was not since thebeginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

Matthew 24:22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no fleshbe saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.



I talked to you about this last time and I pointed out that the elect is the nation Israel. The issue about the days being shortened has to do with the trouble of those days that if they went to their natural conclusion, nobody would be left. But, God doesn t want everybody to be destroyed because He has that elect group that is to be saved out of the Tribulation and into the Millennium and into His purposes. Therefore, the days are shortened.

You will see that when you study prophecy, there is a tremendous amount of speculation. You read the commentaries about how the days will be shortened. The days will be shortened by God putting a limit on them. Instead of that wrath against sin going to its natural conclusion and destroying everybody, God places a limit on it. The second half of the week is three and a half years, 1,260 days.

He s not subtracting a certain number of days from the 1,260 because chapters written after this in Revelation say that there are 1,260, so there are 1,260 days.

You don t know how many days there are in Matthew 24 because prior to Revelation,He doesn t tell how many. About the shortening of the days I ve tried about six different ways to work this and there are about three different legitimate ways. One is to subtract a third of the hours (eight) to shorten the days from twenty four down to sixteen hours. Revelation 8 talks about the sun being darkened a third of the time, and so forth. If you take a third of the day (eight hours) off every day, they get over faster. That is true in Revelation 8 but that isn t the issue here. He is not talking about God shrinking the number of the days.

By the way, if a day were twenty four hours or sixteen hours, it still would bea day. Then they say, except those days should be shortened. Well, it is just easier to understand that what he says that if those days were to go to their natural conclusion, nobody is going to be delivered from the destruction. But because God has a purpose to deliver some people from that destruction, a chosen agency, (that Little Flock to go into that kingdom) he has, therefore, put a perimeter on the length of the time when that wrath is poured out. In other words, God will shorten the days because He has a purpose to accomplish for the elect s sake.

23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.

24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive thevery elect.

Notice that they are trying to deceive the elect with signs and wonders of the apostolic time.

2 Thessalonians 2:9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

Revelation 16:14 For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles,

He is saying that if you are willing to say that something that appears to be su

pernatural has to be of God Almighty, you re going to be deceived. He told Israel in Deuteronomy 13 (We have looked at these verses, time and again) that if a prophet comes and does a miracle or has a vision and he does it in front of you and then he uses it to try to get you to not believe the Word of God, you re not tofollow him. You re to follow the scriptures and God s commandments. If somebody comes along and professes to have a word from God that contradicts it, and does amiracle to demonstrate that God sent him, you are not to pay any attention to him.

So, here the anti Christ comes along with all these signs and wonders. People w



ho go after that kind of thing, people who focus on physical things, believe them.

We ve been talking to you about prayer and how prayer today focuses first on the spiritual issues in the Dispensation of Grace. That s why we walk by faith and not by sight. In other words, we walk on the basis of some sound doctrine we restin, some eternal things that you don t see, but you know through the perception of faith not by the way that things seem to appear.

In that age there, there are going to be some people come along with signs and wonders and if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. It is persuasive.

Matthew 24:25 Behold, I have told you before. [He warns them.]26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

In other words, there are going to be a lot of people trying to deceive God s people into believing that they have Christ. There s the Messiah! There is going to be a great deal of deception in the tribulation period about the Second Coming ofChrist.

He explains it plainly in Verse 27. Here is why you don t believe it when somebody tells you that there was a secret coming and He s there.

27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

It will be a visible coming. It will be noisy and something people can see andhear and know about. It isn t going to sneak up on anybody. It isn t going to be hidden, but it s going to be an open, known event.

Jehovah s Witnesses say that Christ came back in 1914 or some goofy date. Seventh Day Adventists say He came back in 1860 something, or so. Christ said, Don t letanybody come along and say that my Second Coming came and you can t see me, don t believe them. He said, You know how the lightning appears. Do you have any problem missing the lightning? It lights up the sky. Do you have any trouble hearing

the thunder? Just like lightning comes from the east, lights up and covers thewhole sky, when I come, Behold. Every eye shall see him. (Revelation 1:7)

Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

You re not going to miss the Second Coming of Christ. So, don t believe it when somebody says, He is over there or He is out there. There He is! When I show up, everybody is going to know it s me. There isn t any doubt about what He is talking about and how it s going to come.

Verse 27 is often misunderstood and misused by people who are talking about Him

coming from the east and going to the west. He doesn t say that He is going to come out of the east. We ve got a song, When He Breaks the Eastern Sky. There s a song about going in the eastern gate. That s the gate through which He is going intothe city of Jerusalem. (Ezekiel)

The Lord comes out of the north at His second advent, not out of the east. They take people out to the cemetery and bury them facing the east. My dad is buried down there in Mobile and he is facing the east. Why is that? They bury people facing east because they think that is where Jesus is going to come from. I used to think that made good sense until I found out in the Bible that He s not com



Number 1.

Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven:

There are clear, visible signs in the heavens associated with the coming of Christ in Matthew 24.

There are no signs associated with the rapture of the Church, the Body of Christ. There are no signs to tell you if the Lord s coming is near or not near. It can come at any moment. It is imminent. That is, it could take place at any moment as far as we are concerned.

Somebody may say, It can t take place at any moment because it can only take placeat one moment and God knows that moment. That s right and you re not God so you don tknow which moment, do you. You don t know if it is the next moment or ten years from now or two minutes from now, so as far as you are concerned, it is imminent. It could happen at any time. You can argue all around it but there still aren t any signs. There is no way for you and me to determine when the Rapture is going to take place.

You can walk around out there and say that the world is getting so bad out there that it s just got to be soon, but that s just something that people like to say.It hasn t anything to do with do with it. There s no way you can look out about you

and tell. The Lord can come at any moment.Number 2.

Matthew 24:28 For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

That is a reference to Armageddon. The wrath of God at Armageddon is in view in Matthew 24.

1 Thessalonians 5:9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,

There is no wrath involved for the Body of Christ. We are not involved with the Battle of Armageddon at all.

Number 3.

Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn,

In Matthew 24, people are sorry to see Him come.

In 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5, there is joy and rejoicing at the Rapture of the Church. Are you going to be sorry to see the Lord come? I hope you won t. I tell you this and honestly I sometimes believe it, that I think the Lord is going to h

ave to jerk some of His people three or four times to get them loose from the ground because they have their roots sunk down so deep down here. But, I guarantee, you will be glad even if He has to do that.

Number 4.

Matthew 24:30 they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven

If you read 1 Thessalonians 4, you will see that it s the saints who go out in the clouds. In Matthew, you see the Son of man coming in the clouds.



Number 5.

Matthew 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet,

Christ sends His angels to gather the elect.

In 1 Thessalonians 4, Christ Himself comes to get the Body of Christ. If you don t think there is a difference in that, you haven t thought very clearly. Do you think there is a difference if I send my kid to get you and if I come to get youmyself?

My wife asks, Do you love me? I tell my son, David, go tell your mom that I loveher. Do you reckon that is as good as if I told her myself? You understand it is personal attention.

Number 6.

Matthew 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet,

The angels sound a trumpet in Matthew 24:31.

In 1 Thessalonians 4, the trump belongs to God. It s God who is blowing the trumpet.

Number 7.

Matthew 24:31 And he shall send his angels and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

There is no Rapture in that verse at all. They don t gather them into the sky; they gather them from the four winds (from the four corners of the world.). In 1Thessalonians, Christ catches the saints into the air.

Look down through the rest of Matthew 24. Do you see a resurrection anywhere?There is no resurrection in that passage.

1 Thessalonians 4:16 the dead in Christ shall rise first:The Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body. We are changed without dyi

ng.

There are contrasts; they are not the same. We are resurrected without dying.

Matthew 24 is not a reference to the Rapture of the Church, the Body of Christ.Matthew 24 is a reference to the second advent of Christ back to the earth.

(Chart) When the Dispensation of Grace is over with, the Rapture of the Body of Christ takes place. Christ descends from heaven and catches the Body of Christ out (before the tribulation period).

The Second Advent that we are reading about in Matthew 24, takes place at the end of the tribulation period, at the end of the time of Jacob s trouble. So, 1 Thessalonians is not in the passage.

Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun bedarkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

Notice after the tribulation of those days. After what tribulation? The tribulat



ion of the Great Tribulation, right?

(Chart) Christ is crucified. Then there is the Body of Christ and the Rapture. Next is the tribulation period of seven years that we re studying about, the middle of that seven year period, 1,260 days on each side. The second half is called the Great Tribulation. The second advent of Christ is at the end of that period.

29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,

After the tribulation of those days, at the end of the seventieth week, these signs are going to appear in heaven and Christ is going to show up. The signs appear after the seventieth week is over according to the verse.

I point that out to you because post tribulation rapturists use this passage totry to prove that the rapture takes place at the end of the tribulation. They say that the wrath is poured out just when Christ comes back at the end of the tribulation, not back during the tribulation or the Great Tribulation. They say that the wrath in the tribulation period is the wrath of Satan and the wrath of man, but God s wrath isn t poured out until Christ comes back. Therefore, the Day of the Lord occurs at the Second Coming of Christ.

Come to Malachi 4 and Acts 2 and let me show you where they get that. If you ev

er talk to a post tribulationist who knows his stuff, he ll give you these verses.

Malachi 4:5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

Elijah comes before the Day of the Lord.

Acts 2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come:

Elijah comes in the tribulation period before the great and notable Day of the Lord. They say that the great and notable Day of the Lord is not the tribulation.

The signs of the sun and moon take place before the Day of the Lord.In Matthew 24:29, they take place after the tribulation. So, the Day of the Lord has to be after the tribulation, right? That sounds good so far but let s lookat some other verses.

Revelation 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

In other words, this book is going to tell you things that are going to come to

pass in the future.

3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy,

This is a book of prophecy all the way through. That means that the churches in Chapters 2 and 3 are future from the time that John wrote the book. How aboutthat?

10 I [John] was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,



11 Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest,write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches

Where was John? I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. When is the Lord s day? Is that Sunday? I was raised in a church where they said that Sunday was the Lord s day all day long. We didn t go out to eat after church on Sunday and we went home and Mama worked the whole afternoon cooking the meal. You could let a waitress have a day of rest so you could slave and cook at home. That was always funny to me. It wasn t funny to Mama because she had to do the cooking. We didn t go to B & H because they stayed open on Sunday the Blue Laws and all that.

That isn t what that verse says. Do you see Sunday anywhere in that passage? When you see Lord with an apostrophe s, what does that mean? It is possessive, isn t it? It means that it s the day that belongs to the Lord. The Day of the Lord is another way to say the Lord s Day. That s the genitive case: the Day of the Lord.

John was transported by prophetic vision from wherever he was in the first century all the way over where we are, up to the future Day of the Lord. The Book of the Revelation is a book that describes the Day of the Lord.

That s a problem because the Book of the Revelation describes more than the second advent of Christ. It describes the whole Seventieth Week of Daniel plus a little more and the whole of it is called the Day of the Lord. That isn t the half of it. Come back to the Book of Isaiah. If you want to get confused, we can get

confused here.We have one passage that says the Day of the Lord is the whole tribulation period. You have another passage that says that a guy shows up in the tribulation period but he shows up before the great and notable Day of the Lord. You have another passage that says the sun is going to turn black and the moon is going to turn to blood before the Day of the Lord.

Isaiah 13:6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.

9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give theirlight: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.11 And I will punish the world for their evil,

That takes place in the Day of the Lord.

13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

There s a passage that says that the sun and moon shall be darkened and the heavens shake during the Day of the Lord. I have told you before that when you studyprophecy, you need to have a road map.

Studying prophecy is hard. You have a verse that something is going to take place here and another verse says it is going to take place over there. You have to juggle those things together and put them on a time line to get them all straightened out. It isn t the easiest thing in the world.

Isaiah 24:21 And it shall come to pass in that day [the day of the Lord], thatthe LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kingsof the earth upon the earth.22 And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, a



nd shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.

The Lord reigns in Zion and in Jerusalem after the Tribulation, after the Second Coming. That s a millennial passage.

He says that the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed in the Millennium. Now I have a passage that says the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall turn to blood during the Day of the Lord. Another passage says it is going to take place after the Day of the Lord and another passage says it is going to takeplace before the Day of the Lord.

Are you ready for an answer?

Go back to Acts 2. I have been fudging on that passage a little bit, haven t I?

Acts 2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come:

Notice: that great and notable day of the Lord. That is a reference to the actual Second Advent itself of the Lord Jesus Christ. Did you notice all those otherreferences, except Malachi 4, said the day of the Lord? Malachi 4:5 and Acts 2:20

say, the great and notable and the great and dreadful Day of the Lord. They are specific references to the point at which Jesus Christ comes back to the earth.

Joel 3:16 The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake

When Christ comes back He is going to shake up the constellations and planetarysystems. Folks, you have other passages that describe the Day of the Lord (notthe great and notable Day) but just the Day of the Lord and say those signs aregoing to take place during the Tribulation. Some others say they are going to take place after the Tribulation. One passage says the Tribulation, the Second Advent and the Millennium, all of this, is the Day of the Lord.

The expression the Day of the Lord that begins in Isaiah 2 describes a broad time period in which there is a great and notable point. That is, there is a point of climax in the Day of the Lord which is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at which all of the things that are accomplished in the Day of the Lord either lead up to or go away from. That special point is called the great and notable Day of the Lord. It is especially designated in your Bible in a special way to single out that part of the Day of the Lord that refers to His actual advent backto the earth.

So, the Day of the Lord is a broad term that has a very special part in it called the great and notable part. It is the climatic point referring especially tothe time when Jesus Christ Himself makes His appearance.

The reason that those passages say that these signs take place before the greatand notable Day of the Lord is because they are taking place not in the generaltime period but prior to His personal advent back coming in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God.

Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun bedarkened, and the moon shall not give her light,

Come over to Ezekiel 32 and see how this will come about. This whole chapter is on the Second Coming of Christ.



Ezekiel 32: 7 And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and makethe stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light.

In other words, the sun is not going to give her light and will be darkened by a cloud covering it when Christ comes. If you have any doubt that can take place, I call your attention to May 1980 when Mount St. Helens blew her top. Just afew years ago; remember the reports. I read about it and have before, during and after pictures of it. They said it was just pitch black during the day because of the thick ash cloud in the sky.

Ezekiel 32:8 indicates how that will happen.

Jeremiah 13:15 Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud: for the LORD hath spoken. [good advice]16 Give glory to the LORD your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness.

You see, God is going to send darkness on those people. It s going to be a darkness like in Exodus where the darkness could be felt and it s going to stop them. Associated with His coming, there is going to be a blackness that sends out terror and horror on the people that He comes back to destroy. It s associated with th

e shadow of death.A shadow is cast by an object. If I put my hand between the light, there is a shadow under it. It s like a cloud that will float over the earth and everything that gets hit by its shadow dies. They don t just die, they die the death of Death. In Revelation, it says they are killed with Death.

How can you be killed with death? When you are killed, you are dead. There issomething that is called Death. In Revelation 6, he says that Death and Hell followed with him. There is a special kind of death.

When you read about that shadow of death in the Old Testament, it s not talking about going down through a deep, dark valley and having a tough time of life. I don t

know how to explain it but it may be something like a fallout that would come out from under that cloud and there is death associated with it.

Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun bedarkened, and the moon shall not give her light,

The Second Coming of Christ is likened to a morning after a rainstorm.

Malachi 4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings;

The Second Coming is like the sun coming up in the morning but also like the sun coming up in the morning after a rainstorm. What brings a storm? Clouds.

Hosea 6:1 Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he willheal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.2 After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.

I ve talked to you about the typology in that passage.

3 Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and fo



rmer rain unto the earth.

I ll give you some verses that will help you and you can run the references on your own.

The Second Coming of Christ, physically, literally, is associated with and is likened to and is involved with these kinds of events. It is like a morning after a rain. Evidently the rain is literal because the latter and former rains areliteral.

Verses to study: Hosea 6:1 3; Ezekiel 1:28; 2 Samuel 23:4; Song of Solomon 2:11; Psalm 72:6 and 7; Psalm 68:9; and Judges 5:4. If you will spend a little time in those passages I wish we had time to go through them and work it all out for you but that s another hour and we just don t have that much time.

Matthew 24:29 the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

Stars in the Bible are often defined as angels. If you write down Revelation 12:7 9, you will see where Satan has war and falls out of heaven and one third ofthe stars in heaven go with him. People say that s what that is a reference to.That might very well be. The stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

But, in Revelation 12, Satan being cast out of heaven is in the middle of the seventieth week. Matthew 24:29 takes place after the seventy weeks are over. So, probably what you are reading in Verse 29 is literal. It might be, I can t prove it, but probably it is.

The safest thing is to leave most of these things and let them be literal if you can. There are a lot of places where you can t. Obviously they are not literalbut in this passage, the sun and the moon are literal, so you would have to explain why the stars and powers wouldn t be. Probably they are literal and what He s talking about means just what He is saying.

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in th

e clouds of heaven with power and great glory.Let me say one thing about the sign of the Son of man. The sign of the Son of man is not the sign of the cross. The Roman emperor Constantine saw the sign ofthe cross in the heavens and he converted the whole Roman Empire to Christianity because of this vision. He went forth With this sign, we conquer. That came from a pagan, Roman emperor named Constantine. He took the cross and made it the official sign of the Roman Empire. He got saved by seeing a sign in the clouds out there.

Now, if someone told me that he heard the gospel and trusted Jesus Christ as his Saviour because he realized that he was a hell bound sinner, I d feel a lot better about it. I only know what is passed on to me because I wasn t there in 300 A.D

. He saw that sign and that is why you see that cross everywhere in jewelry and religious symbolism and politics.

When the average religionist thinks of the sign of the Son of man, it is the cross. I have read that in commentaries and books and heard people quote the verse and say it. They think of the sign of the cross. Well, it s not that. It s something else. We ll spend ten or fifteen minutes next time going over what it is. It is a fascinating study and continues the study on the Second Advent.




Our God and Father, we thank you again for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank youfor your word that teaches us about Him and gives us understanding and insight into your mind and thinking. We pray as we look at these passages tonight that we might have clarity of thought into what is here, that we might be able to appreciate these things and be able to take them to heart. We thank you in Christ s name. Amen.

Matthew 24:29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun bedarkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Now, this passage is dealing, of course, with the second advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. When He says, Immediately after the tribulation of those days, He is describing the events that are going to take place after the close of the Seventieth Week of Daniel. The time for Christ s advent has come and it s ushered in by the phenomena in Verse 29, of the sun and moon being darkened and the stars falling. We talked about that last time.

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn,

I pointed out to you that this is not the Rapture of the Church. Come over to Revelation 1. The Book of the Revelation looks into the future and into the issues of the prophetic coming of Christ back to the earth. We call it the Revelati

on or the Second Coming of Christ in prophecy.Revelation 1:7 Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.

That is an open, obvious coming that strikes terror into the hearts of the people of the earth. They who pierced Him will see Him and will wail. Who pierced Him? Israel. Israel and the nations will see Him when He comes. As it says:

30 then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

The idea is that it is an open coming. It is not the secret coming to take theChurch the Body of Christ away where He appears just to the Body of Christ. The Rapture is not in this passage and we saw that clearly last time.

There are some interesting things in Verse 30. Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man. I finished last time by telling you that the sign is not the cross.

Constantine was supposed to have seen a sign in the heavens. It was a cross and he heard a voice that says, In this sign, conquer! Being a good Roman, he wanted



to conquer the world, you know, and rule the world and be a political boss over everybody so he Christianized the world. Constantine made the Christian faiththe official state religion of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Milan. That s why the Roman church at Rome, where he happened to live, got to be politically the most powerful and its head man today is to be supreme over everything. Historically, it goes back to the Roman Empire under Constantine.

That sign of the cross in the sky is not the sign of the Son of man.

You understand that people have all kinds of religious signs. The Jews have the Star of David. In the Bible, the burning bush is the sign of Israel. In the Bible the sign for Israel is not a star but a burning bush. Though it burns, itcan t be consumed.

Acts 7 quotes Amos 5:

Acts 7:43 Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.

The so called Star of David was introduced into Israel s religious life as a partof Baal worship as a symbol and icon whereby they worshipped the adversary, thedevil, who came in and sought to pollute them and their religion. That star was designed to worship Molech. It is the star of Molech and Remphan, a part of Ba

al worship which has been passed down through the centuries as a part of the perpetuation of that system. We have studied Baal worship before and have seen that Baal worship goes back to Genesis and way over to the anti Christ. These things are all out there and they function.

So, it isn t strange that you would see the sign of the Son of man to be said to be one thing and turn out in the Bible to be something else. What exactly is the sign of the Son of man?

Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

They are going to see the Son of man coming from whatever they see up there in the heavens.

Follow closely. Jesus is being interrogated by the high priest.

Mark 14:61 But he held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?62 And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

Notice in the verse that He is in two positions. They are going to see Him sitting at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. One position,He is sitting down. When you are sitting, you are stationary. When you are com

ing, you get up and move. There are two different positions involved here.

(Chart) Revelation 6 takes place in the middle of the Seventieth Week of Daniel. You ll have to think for a minute: the Body of Christ is raptured. Then there sthe Tribulation, the Seventieth Week of Daniel. The period of seven years is divided into two halves, three and half years on one side and three and a half years on the other after which Christ comes back and sets up His kingdom. He casts Satan into the bottomless pit and reigns for a thousand years. Revelation 6 is in the middle of the week.



Revelation 6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and themoon became as blood;13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth heruntimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

When they see that sixth seal open, the heavens depart as a scroll and the people on the earth can look up into the heavens and see the Son of man sitting on the throne. They say, Hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne andfrom the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of his wrath is come.

Revelation 11:15 And the seventh angel sounded;

(The sixth seal and the sixth angel are seen in Chapter 6. The seventh seal reveals seven angels.) Now you are down to the last one of those angels.

15 And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

In Revelation 12, Verses 7 9, you see the war in heaven and the devil and his angels are being cast out of heaven.

10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser ofour brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

In other words, when Satan is cast out of his position in the heavenly places down to the earth, when the war is over and he is cast out, Now is come salvation a

nd strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ. When did that take place? Look back at Verse 6.

6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

That is 1,260 days.

7 And there was war in heaven:9 And the great dragon was cast out13 And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.

14 And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.

Obviously, Satan is cast out in the middle of the week and persecutes the womanfor the last half of the week. I am trying to get you to see that Christ begins His rulership in the heavens in the middle of the seventieth week. He casts Satan out of the heavens down to the earth. When that event takes place, the kings and the mighty men and the people on the earth see Him do it. There is a mid tribulation appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ when the heavens draw back and th



ey see what he does.

Now, the sign of the Son of man is like the star that comes out of Jacob (Numbers 24:16). In Matthew 2, when Christ was born they saw His star. It will compare with that city called Zion in Hebrews 12. It s that city of the great King andit comes out of the third heaven down into the universe. It appears in the heavens and they see that sign and understand that an invasion from outer space is about to take place.

Fifty years ago, if people said that to you, you would have thought they were nuts, wouldn t you? Does it sound so nutty to you today when they talk about an invasion from outer space? Did you ever think that is what the Second Coming of Christ is? Sure it is. You don t think about it sometimes like that but that is exactly what it is.

He comes out of heaven s glory down here to this little peanut of a planet and Hebrings His armies and wages war. He fights against Satan and all the nations of the earth. Isn t that an invasion? That s what I thought one was. He comes out of the heavens. The anti Christ is down here on the earth in the middle of thatweek. The man of sin becomes the son of perdition. He stands up and goes intothat temple and declares himself to be God. He goes around deceiving the nations that he is God Almighty and that Jesus Christ up there in heaven is Satan.

If you watch Star Wars and Star Wars II, you hear them say, The force be with you.

Daniel 11 and they don t even know what they are saying. They have no idea thatthey are quoting scripture. They talk about the dark kingdom and all that business. Here you have Satan who appears as an angel of light. What color is light?

Have you ever seen a headlight coming at you at night? It looks white, doesn t it? Do you know what color they wear in Star Wars? They are the good guys. Theywear white.

Satan deceives people into believing that he is God and that he s the one who is going to establish the kingdom and they follow him. But, he is anti Christ. Heis the false Christ, the false Messiah, and this world is going to follow him.

You ought not to get all bent out of shape and upset about this. They are following him now, aren t they?

I have a friend who preaches a sermon: What To Do If You Miss The Rapture. Point number one is, Don t get all upset. You were going to hell anyway. I thought about that and it is a dying truth, isn t it? If you are sitting here tonight and dying and on your way to hell and the Rapture came, why would you get upset? Why don t you get upset now? Why get upset then? Wouldn t it be a whole lot tougher over there to get saved than it is now? What you need to do is trust Christ now.

When He talks about the sign of the Son of man in heaven, there are two positions: One: He sits (Revelation 6).

Revelation 19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge

and make war.12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothedin fine linen, white and clean.15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.



at is going to happen when He comes. Don t just go on by that lightly. Think itthrough, man. You should better think about what is going to happen and you should better be in the right situation when it does and be ready. You are going to see all those issues about being ready in Matthew 24 as we go down through that passage.

We ve talked about the city in heaven which is called Zion (Hebrews 12 and Psalm 2:6). In Acts 7, Stephen saw Christ standing at the right hand of God in that city.

(Chart) After the interruption of the prophetic program, that city went back into the heavenly places, far above all heavens where He is today. At the Rapture of the Church, He comes down and takes us up to the third heaven. Then in themiddle of the seventieth week, that city comes back into the universe and establishes itself in heaven and from that point, the war is waged and the heavens are purged. Satan is cast down and Christ s Kingdom begins to reign in the heavenlyplaces.

You and I as members of the Body of Christ take up our positions reigning in the heavenlies. Then the attention is placed on the earth and the battle is on inthe last half of the week. Christ fights against them from heaven until He comes back at the end of the Tribulation and casts Satan into the bottomless pit and sets up His throne.

You have two situations: they see Him sitting and the other, coming.Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven:

He is not talking so much about the appearing in the middle of the week but about the sign of the Son of man (Isaiah calls it an ensign). It is going to reappear when He comes back at the end of the Tribulation and they are going to literally see Him come out of this city down to earth. When He comes He ll be ready for the battle of Armageddon that you hear so much about.

You will want to remember to get the tape that we did some time ago about the route of the Second Coming of Christ. When He comes back to the earth there is aspecifically prearranged, prophesied route that He is going to take through the

land of Palestine, coming down from the north to the Mediterranean Sea, down tothe Sinai and back along the east coast of the Dead Sea, across the Jordan River and into Jerusalem. It is all laid out. The route of the anti Christ is laidout too. He is going to come back and fight. You need to be familiar with that information.

The information here is that He is coming.

Matthew 24:30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven:

It is sort of like a satellite or planet out there.

and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of

man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

The clouds of heaven that He comes with, no doubt, are angels and they ll be the angels in Verse 31.

31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

That issue of gathering together the elect by the angels, again, is not the Rapt



ure. People say, That s the Rapture that s in 1 Thessalonians 4 with the trump of God. But, in 1 Thessalonians, Christ Himself comes and gathers the saints. Here He sends the angels to gather the saints. Over there, it is the trump of God. Here, the angels have the trumpet. If you want to see that in prophecy, go backto Isaiah 27. The elect in the passage there is Israel, that believing remnant. It will be the faithful remnant, the elect, His chosen in Israel, scattered abroad and gathered back together by Christ,

Isaiah 27:12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount atJerusalem.

Isaiah 26:20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers [His Second Coming], and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.

Isaiah says, As birds flying over, I will defend it. Passing over Jerusalem, I lldefend it. There will be a defense made by Him. He says to hide until all thatindignation and fierce anger is past.

21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity:

They are going to see Him come out of His place, that city Zion, down to get them.

the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.

Amos 9:14 And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit ofthem.15 And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up o

ut of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.Now when that happens, it isn t going to be like it is over there today. They re going to be in the land and dwell safely. They re not going to need an army to fight off everybody. The Palestine question will be answered and God is going to take care of all these complex issues that everybody worries about because God owns the land and He gives it to whomsoever He will. He gave the title deed to Abraham and will come back and set it all right.

The United Nations and the dudes over there in the Middle East don t own that land. They can partition it any way they want to but God owns it. He can give it to whomsoever He wants. He gave it to Abraham and his seed after him. When Christ comes back He ll fix up all that over there.

What those Jews, those Israelis, over there are trying to do today is to build the kingdom in their own power. They say, We re going to make the desert blossom like a rose and we re going to have safety and all this stuff without God but they aren t going to do it. Before that thing is through over there, there are going tobe some folks come down there and clean their plow to a fare thee well. Those people are just going to polish and sharpen it up and make it ready to do business again. They are going to wipe out those people over there. Then Christ is going to come after all that.



What He s talking about here is gathering together His elect, His people, and planting them in the land, in the kingdom.

Matthew 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

The four winds, of course, are the four directions of the compass: north, south, east and west.

One time I sat in a snack shop with a man with a PhD. in physics and he told methat the Bible is full of mistakes. I ve always been a dumb guy and just never knew that. I handed him a Bible and said, Boy, Doc, I d like you to show me one. I minterested in this. I m going to preach about this. I d better write them down. Tell me one.

Well, er, er. Well, it talks about the four corners of the earth. Then he grinnedat me as a fellow who had an IQ of 272. I said, Four corners of the earth. Whyis that wrong? He said, Ho, ho, ho. We know that the earth is round.

I said, But, you know, when we were in Boy Scouts, we were told about the four points of the compass. And when I turn the news on the evening, I want to watch the weather and the sports. The weatherman will say, Sunrise is at 5:28. Don t those meteorologists know that the sun doesn t rise?

Well, he said, that s the language of accommodation. It s just the way we talk. I d, So, it s okay for you to use that language and not the Bible?

Do you get my drift? Some of these people just blow smoke at you like that andgo Ho, ho, ho. You re not Santa Claus; you don t have to give them gifts.

So, when He talks about the four winds of heaven, He is talking about going north, south, east and west, just like any compass that you ever took directions from.

from one end of heaven to the other.

This next parable of the fig tree is important.Matthew 24:32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

What is near? The end. Christ is coming.

34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

You re going to have to be willing to trust His word in order to understand this,especially in that day.

That parable right there is designed to identify the elect that He has specified back in Verse 31. This generation in Verse 34, is the elect. This parable hereis the parable from which all the date setting from the Second Coming of Christcomes from in our generation.

This is the way it is done. Look at Verse 33. When ye shall see all these things. What things? The fig tree putting forth its leaves. When you see the fig tr



ee bud, the Second Coming is near. This generation that sees the fig tree bud shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.

In other words, the generation that sees the fig tree bud is going to be the generation that will see Christ come back, gather His elect and set up the Kingdom.

If you were a part of that Little Flock, would that be a comfort to you? If you saw the fig tree bud, then you d say, Hey! We re the generation. He s coming! The rable is designed to give comfort and to cause the faithful remnant to keep watching, waiting and being faithful. That is what the rest of the chapter is all about.

This parable is used by people today, failing to see that God has interrupted the prophetic program and introduced a new mystery dispensation. The fig tree represents Israel in the Bible. They say, Therefore, the generation that sees Israel bud when did Israel bud? They became a nation in 1948. This generation how longis a generation? People say, Thirty three years. Jesus was thirty three years old: a perfect generation.

So you take 1948 and add 33 and you get 1981. You have to have seven years for the Tribulation so that would take you to 1988 minus seven years, therefore, theRapture had to come in 1981. Do you know there were books written all over thiscountry? Have you heard of the book The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay?

He wrote books teaching and preaching and sold them all over the country saying that in 1981 Jesus Christ was going to come and rapture the Church the Body of Christ away. Did it happen? I hope not because if it did, we all missed it.He got rich from his ministry. (There are a lot of things worse than getting rich.)

That kind of date setting, that kind of foolish misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the prophetic scripture brings the teaching ministry of the Word of God into absolute reproach.

In early 1981, there was a man who flew from California to Chicago, a grace believer who understands Right Division of the Word of God, and he sat in my officewith Pastor Stam and me and offered to give us literally hundreds of thousands o

f dollars if we would get on the radio on that certain day in June and tell that Jesus Christ was going to rapture the Church away. We didn t take his money. He went from there to a man in Oklahoma who took his money and then never did it.

My point to you is that the reason we wouldn t do it, even if it had been going to happen that day, there wasn t any way that we were going to know about it. We would just be bringing the teaching ministry of the Word of God into absolute reproach.

Have you noticed in the last five years the tremendous shift among evangelical,fundamental believers away from the pre trib rapture to believing in the post trib rapture? There has been a tremendous shift. Do you know why? It s because t

hose guys set the dates and they didn t work. They say, We set the date and we must have been wrong, therefore, the pre trib system must be wrong. They abandonedit and went the other way. It is dangerous to set dates.

The basic error that they made is two fold. One: they forgot to see the mystery, that this passage has nothing to do with the Dispensation of Grace. They will tell you that the generation that sees that fig tree bud isn t the Body of Christ some will even tell you that. But, since the Tribulation has to come, therefore, the Rapture has to come first. That is what the grace brother was saying. Hesaid, That is the day that the anti Christ is going to be revealed and the Sevent



ieth Week of Daniel begin. Therefore, the Rapture has to come prior to that. They get that sophisticated with it.

The problem in the passage is that they misunderstand what the fig tree represents. The fig tree in that Bible does not represent the national life of Israel.However, it is associated with Israel.

There are four trees in your Bible that are issues with God. All of them were in Genesis 2 and 3. Those four trees plot the history of God s dealings with Israel. The fig tree is one of them but there are three others. Each one represents a specific issue in Israel s life. The fig tree has a very clearly defined relationship with the nation Israel which has nothing to do with their national life. Hence, when you see the nation planted, you are not seeing the budding of thefig tree.

Now, next time we ll take up there. We ll go through the passages and talk about what the fig tree is and we will see how to understand the budding of the fig tree so you can properly understand who this generation is that sees the fig tree budand how that assurance will be a welcome thing for them as they go through thatawful time of Jacob s trouble.


Matthew 24:32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

That s the illustration. I understand that because, as long as I can remember, there were gigantic fig trees in our backyard. My Mom always made fig preserves.

She d go out in the morning and gather about two gallons of figs. When she got a pot full of them she d cook them down and make the most delicious fig preserves.

I know what you are talking about when you see the dead looking limbs spring forth buds and out they come. Then you know summer is near. Winter is over and warm weather is coming.

33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.34 Verily I say unto you, This generation

I have said to you that this generation, in the context, is obviously the generation that sees these things come to pass. It s the generation that sees the fig tree bud.

33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, [signs and wonders]

The generation that sees the fig tree bud is the generation that is going to see the Lord Jesus Christ come back.

Come over to Luke 21 and notice this issue about seeing these things.

Luke 21:25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;26 Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which



are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.27 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.28 And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up yourheads; for your redemption draweth nigh.

That verse in Acts 1, as Christ ascended into heaven, is why the disciples stood there and looked up to heaven. The angel said to them, Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? You d think that was a dumb question because they had just watched Christ go.

11 why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up fromyou into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

The reason they weren t supposed to stand there looking up into the heavens was because Christ had told them, When you see these signs take place, then look up. Until then should they be looking up? No, it wasn t time for them to expect His return in the clouds.

There are specific, identifiable signs that will precede and identify the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, there are specific, identifiable signs that the nation Israel and those tribulation saints are going to be able to look for and when they see these things happen, then they know that the second ad

vent of Christ back to the earth is near.That s what you are dealing with in Matthew 24:32 34. The signs and the sign of the Son of man given there are the budding of the fig tree.

I have said to you before that this parable of the fig tree is overdrawn and extended. People use it and say that the fig tree represents Israel and Israel budded forth in 1948 and became a nation and put forth leaves. Therefore, the Second Coming of Christ has to be within a generation which is forty years (they say). Therefore, if you have forty years, you have to subtract seven years for the tribulation period. You have thirty three years left, so that would be 1981 for Christ s return. Did He come in 1981? If so, we re in trouble. Then they say, We misfigured and misfired but it s really 1982. (Now they are saying 2011.)

Because of a misunderstanding, they failed to recognize that the mystery, the Dispensation of Grace, the Body of Christ, the age in which we live, is not involved in this passage at all. They don t know anything about the mystery age or thedispensation of the mystery. This passage is interrupted and the mystery age in which we live is inserted here. The explanation about the gap is not there.

Failing to see that, they misinterpret the fig tree and try to apply it to the nation Israel. If you just read the passage in its simplest form, the fig tree is only an illustration of when it gives its leaves you know it s summer. Therefore, when you see these signs and events taking place, then you know that Christ is coming. If you can read the weather and nature, then you can read the signs in the simplest form. That s what He is saying.

I told you before that when Christ interprets the parables (in Matthew 13, He interprets two of them) he does it in order to show the disciples how to interpret all the others. Therefore, there is an issue about looking at the details of the parable and identifying the specific parts.

If you want to identify the fig tree, you have to study the trees in the Bible that are associated with God s dealings with Israel. There are four trees in yourBible that God uses in association with His dealings with men.



Please don t misunderstand me. There are far more than four trees in the Bible.You read about the cedars of Lebanon and the big oaks and others. I am not saying these four are the only tree trees in the scriptures. But, these four are the special trees that God uses to represent His dealings with men and especiallywith Israel. You will find all four of them in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2and 3. These trees represent special issues and doctrine about the nation Israel.

Judges 9:7 And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood in the top of mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them, Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you.

Jotham is going to give them a parable.

8 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us.9 But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?10 And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us.11 But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my goodfruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?12 Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.13 And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God andman, and go to be promoted over the trees?

14 Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us.15 And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.

If you read on down in the parable, you will see the application and that he isgiving an illustration of what is going on around them at the time. As it were, the nations of the earth came to Israel and said, Will you reign over us? Lookat all the privileges and blessings you have to offer us. He points to it underthe representative of the olive tree, the fig tree and the vine tree and says, We need you to reign over us.

The olive, fig and vine, representing Israel, say, No. We won t have it. It s my fa

tness; it s my sweetness; it s my wine. We are going to enjoy ourselves and we aren t going to worry about you getting the blessings.

So, the nations turn to the bramble.

John 5:43 I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.

The idea is that the bramble represents Israel under the anti Christ, another who comes and takes over.

My purpose tonight is not to study Judges 9 because it would take a good hour to study that passage and look up the parallel passages that explain what is going

on there.

The trees represent the nations and you will see them that way in Ezekiel 17; Ezekiel 31; Matthew 3:10; Isaiah 55:12 and 13. You will see how the trees are used to represent the nations. The nations come to Israel in the parable under four different figures.

The olive tree represents the nation Israel. In the Bible, olive oil represents the Holy Spirit. The olive tree represents the spiritual blessings that God gave Israel. The vine tree and the fig tree are the two that are usually misunder



stood. The bramble represents apostate Israel under the anti Christ.

If the olive tree is spiritual Israel, usually you will find the fig tree representing national Israel and the vine as religious Israel. But, that isn t true. It s backwards.

If you want some passages demonstrating the olive tree as spiritual Israel, go to Zechariah 4 and Romans 11.

Psalm 80:8 Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.9 Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and itfilled the land.10 The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.

God brought the nation Israel out of Egypt and took them into Palestine and planted them.

If you check Isaiah 5 and Psalm 80 where you are reading, you will find that the nation is represented, not as a fig tree, but as a vine tree (grape vine). So, what you have in the vine tree is Israel as a nation with national blessings.

Now, that leaves the fig tree. Now, where is the first time in the Bible that y

ou see a fig? In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sin and hide themselves and take fig leaves and make aprons. They make themselves some clothes out of fig leaves. What is it when a man tries to cover himself up before God Almighty with good works? Religion.

In your Bible, the fig tree represents self righteousness, works, religion. When you want to see religious Israel, it s under that figure.

The olive tree represents the spiritual blessings that God gave Israel. They come through the New Covenant. They come through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the New Covenant.

The vine tree represents the nation that God brought out of Egypt.

The bramble represents apostate Israel.

The fig tree represents the religious life of the nation Israel.

Think just for a minute of the Garden of Eden. There is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There is the tree of life. There is a fig tree because they used fig leaves. Then after the fall, there is the curse of the ground that was to bring forth thorns and thistles, the bramble bush. You have all four of them in Genesis 2 and 3.

Which one of the trees in the Bible, the vine and olive, is the forbidden fruit? Do you know of anyone ever forbidden to eat an olive in the Bible? Do you kno

w of anyone ever forbidden to eat the fruit of the vine?

In Numbers 6, a Nazarite couldn t eat it. It was forbidden fruit to somebody who is dedicated to the Lord as Adam and Eve were to be in the Garden of Eden. If you want to read something that is interesting, you can study that out. It is a fascinating study to try to identify what the forbidden fruit is and I ve done that for you in detail about a year and a half ago on a Sunday night. We ran the references and I tried to identify the forbidden fruit and what the representation is. The forbidden fruit wasn t an apple, folks. It was a grape. I like grapes. I don t have anything against grapes: I like them. But, that is what it is in



the Bible.

The fruit of one of those trees represents blood and that is grapes. We use the juice in the Communion service. In Deuteronomy, he talks about the pure blood of the grape. When Adam and Eve took that grape, they got blood poisoning, if you will.

There is an interesting book by an anthropologist by the name of Arthur Custance. I saw this book just a few years ago but I saw these things in the scriptures long before that so I am not trying to base the doctrine on what Custance wrote, the doctrine is in the scripture, but it is interesting to see Custance s book about the forbidden fruit. He identifies a genetic defect that is brought aboutby the fruit of the vine and he says that is what caused Adam and Eve to die physically.

He talks about all this scientific stuff so I can t prove or disprove him. You start blowing all that smoke at me and I can t tell if you are telling the truth ornot. I don t know how to evaluate it. But, it is interesting and it squares with the scripture.

Matthew 24:33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that itis near, even at the doors.34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

Unfortunately, most of the brethren go back to Bullinger and Larkin for this. They go back and pull out their books where they identify the fig tree as the national life of Israel. They say, Therefore, when you see Israel become a nation again, it is the budding of the fig tree. Where they got off was mis identifyingthe fig tree. (National rather than religious)

Now, if the fig tree is the religious life of Israel, what are they going to belooking for? What He is saying is, this generation that sees the religious life of Israel re established and flourishing again, that generation is going to see Christ return.

When we studied the Seventieth Week of Daniel 8, I tried to show you that two hu

ndred twenty days after the beginning of the seventieth week, the temple will have been rebuilt and on the two hundred twentieth day of the seventieth week, they are going to re institute the sacrifices of the Levitical system. Do you seehow one thing builds on the next and the next?

Matthew 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place,

That temple is operating there in the middle of the week. The anti Christ comes in and throws out the sacrifices and says, I m God. Christ says, When you see all that happen, you ll know that the end is close. He is giving them some reassuranceand confidence that no matter how bad things get under the anti Christ, When yousee these things happening, the end is just a short time away. Hang on. Be fai

thful. Stick it out. Go on. Don t melt under the opposition.

Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

They are going to have to be willing to trust His words on this issue.

The rest of the chapter deals with watching and with the issue of endurance, being faithful to the end, holding on, being ready and understanding what is goingon around them.



Before we go on, I want you to see one more thing about the fig tree. In Matthew 21, Christ cursed the fig tree.

Matthew 21:17 And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany; and he lodged there.18 Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered.19 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 thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.

When we were studying that passage, I tried to tell you that wasn t just a tempertantrum on the part of the Lord. He wasn t just being mad and pitching a fit because He didn t get breakfast and didn t get fig preserves on His toast that morning. That wasn t the issue.

As you study the passage, there is a symbolic representation in what He is doing that corresponds with what is happening in Israel at the time.

Now, if the fig tree represents the national life of Israel and Christ cursed the fig tree and said, Let not fruit grow on it forever, could the nation ever be replanted and restored? No. If it is cursed forever, it can t be restored. So ifthe fig tree is the nation, He has just destroyed the pre millennial system of Bible study (the fact that Christ would come back and set up the kingdom with Isr

ael as the head of the nations).But, the fig tree is the religious life of Israel and Christ cursed the fig tree. So, when they see the anti Christ come in and reestablish the religious lifeof Israel, what has happened to the religious life of Israel? It has been cursed. Christ cursed it and said, It didn t bring forth fruit and it will never bringforth fruit.

What did the law bring forth? Life or death? Death. Wasn t the Mosaic Law Israel s religion? He is saying, I m not going to use that Old Covenant, that old law, that old ministration of death but I am going to replace it with a New Covenant.

Go through the Book of Hebrews, Chapters 7 and 8. Do that sometime and see how

He says that the Mosaic Covenant is old and is vanishing away and is being replaced with the New Covenant, with a new system. The Old will be put away becauseall it did was gender the curse. The New Covenant is replacing it as a new system that gives light.

Now, when those people see the anti Christ reestablish the old Levitical system, they can then count the days (Daniel 8) to when Christ is going to come, just a short time.

The parable of the fig tree is very important. But it is important, too, for you understand it so you don t get off into a system of interpretation that really winds up, not just causing people to set dates that have fallen through, but ends up destroying the very basis of the pre millennial system itself.

Matthew 24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

That is a great passage and you hear people quote it all the time. It is interesting that they want to set dates and right in the passage it says you can t knowthe day and hour. They say, It doesn t say that you can t know the month and week. Man, if you can t know the day, how are you going to know the month and the week?

To find the day, it s located in a week, isn t it? A week is located in a month.How are you going to get to September 24, 1986 without knowing the month and wee



k first? You can t even find where you are on the calendar if you can t find the month, can you?


Come over to the parallel passage in Mark 13 and compare it with Verse 36.

Mark 13:32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

Now you see, in Mark, how He adds, neither the Son? If you have a new translation of the Bible: the New American Standard, the New International Version or Good News for Modern Man, anything based on the critical text, the Westcott Hort type text, you ve got neither the son in Matthew 24:36. They go over to Mark and say,t s in Mark, so it ought also to be in Matthew.

Why it is out of all the Majority Texts and Greek texts, except two or three? They say, Some scribe didn t like it in there so he erased it from Matthew. If he didn t like it in Matthew, why didn t he erase it from Mark?

You see, it s a slight on the deity of Christ. It makes Christ less than omniscient if it says that He didn t know. A scribe erased it so we ll put it back in. If he erased it out of Matthew for that good reason, why didn t he erase it out of Mark?

Didn t he know it was in Mark too?No, no. That is just nonsense. There is a reason that it is in Mark and not in Matthew. You never met a textual critic in your life who had the spiritual ability to discern the reason. It takes spiritual ability to do that, not linguistic techniques.

The Book of Matthew presents Christ as the King. The Book of Mark presents Himas the servant. The Book of Luke presents Him as the man and the Book of John presents Him as God.

Mark s caricature of the Lord Jesus Christ is that of a suffering servant of Jehovah.

John 15:15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth.

Isn t that interesting? A servant doesn t know what his lord is going to do. The lord or master doesn t take the servant into his confidence about what he is goingto do. He just tells him what he wants done and the servant goes and does it.Isn t it interesting that the account of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ that pictures Him as the servant says, The son didn t know it either. Mark put it in because he is illustrating the humility of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said:

Philippians 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedientunto death, even the death of the cross.

He didn t demand the free exercise of His attributes. The marvelous thing about this anthropic person (to use a big word because it isn t adequate to say the God man ) is because He s the Holy man and the Holy God. He s the unique personage of the universe, the celebrity of all times. There has never been anybody like Him andnever ever will be one like the Lord Jesus Christ. Who can describe Him and who



can define Him and who can tell you all about His nature? We ve got big words:hypostatic union, the union of the nature of God and man in one person to create a unique person.So, when the Bible paints His portrait as King, it doesn t say that He doesn t know, but when it paints His portrait as the servant of the Lord, it says, Neither the Son. To me, that is one of the most precious demonstrations of inspiration in the entire Bible. It s how God can put it in the right place for the right reason.

Let me tell you something. When you study your Bible, give it the benefit of the doubt, would you? When there is something in there that you don t understand, don t just run over to some preacher or some book or some teacher and look for a reason to get rid of it. That s the path of unbelief.

Take the path of faith. Gird up your loins like a man and study! Quit being so lazy, a good for nothing scoundrel that just doesn t have the time to figure it out. If your bank book didn t balance this month, you would figure out where the problem was, wouldn t you? Sure you would. There are some of you people who would hunt for two cents in your bank book the rest of the night, if you had to. You d put thirty hours in to it because it would bug you. If you see something likethat in the Bible, you just say, Oh, it must be a mistake. Don t do that! Take the path of faith and you will find the reward rich as you do that. Maybe you will have to spend a little time studying and thinking and looking.

I never saw anybody give that explanation for that passage. Do you know how I f

ound out? I put that in the back of my mind one time and just kept reading through my Bible. I said, Lord, I know there s an answer for that and I don t know whatit is, but I know it s back there. One day I read that passage in John 15: there sthe answer! The answer to what? The answer to Mark 13!

You say, That s a screwy way to study. No, that s meditation. That s the cogitationsof your head on your pillow, thinking and mulling it over. Some of you folks are still laughing about some of those goofy new shows you watched on TV last night. Meditate on that book. Feed on it. Make it your life. You will find answers.

Matthew 24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Sonof man be.

38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

There is a lot of information there and we are not going to get it all but let me just give you a couple points.

The days of Noe [The Greek spelling for the Hebrew is Noah.]

37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

If you go back to Genesis 4 6, you will see that those are the days of Noah. Th

ose things are a picture of the tribulation period. The flood is a picture of the Tribulation.

1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.



Think what happened. Noah builds an ark. They go in the ark and God shuts thedoor and the rain comes down. Who got wet? The people who stayed on land. What happened to the ark? The rains came down, and the floods came up. Where did the ark go? It floated right up. It was just a big old box they couldn t drive around. They weren t going anywhere. They just wanted to live. This black, tar pitched, water tight box, about three times bigger than a football field with three stories which gave it a tremendous cargo capacity, floated. It says that eight souls were saved by the water.

Noah was saved from the flood. In other words, the water physically saved Noah. They re in the ark and are held up by the water. The wrath of God fell but theark kept them from being destroyed.

21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

Noah and the ark are the like figure. They are a type. The anti type is the baptism that saves these people.

(Chart) What the ark did for Noah, will preserve this Little Flock of believers through the judgment of God s wrath in the Tribulation into the blessing of the kingdom. Noah was saved physically from God s wrath through the flood and he got o

ut of that ark and took seven clean animals and two each of all the other animals. He took the clean animals so when he got out of that ark he was going to offer some sacrifices unto God Almighty. In Genesis 8, Noah takes those sacrifices and offers burnt offerings the first time it ever happened on the face of the earth. The sweet smell of those offerings went up before the Lord. Noah was saved physically and then he worshipped God Almighty through the spiritual sacrifices of praise given unto God.

The people, through the Little Flock, are saved through the Tribulation. The door to that Little Flock (just like Noah got in the ark through a door) is the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

Water baptism (John 10) is the door into the Little Flock (the ark) that will sa

ve the people through the wrath of the tribulation period to go into the Millennium.

So when Christ says, As in the days of Noe, He s not just picking something out of nowhere. He s talking about typology that fits the tribulation period.

Matthew 24:38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away;

These people were just completely satiated with satisfying themselves. They were going along like everything was going to happen as it always had happened as i

n 2 Peter 3. They weren t paying any attention and the wrath fell. They had nopreaching of righteousness for one hundred twenty years. Can you imagine the spectacle of this guy building this old boat? Those people had never even seen rain. I mean, he was a byword and a heckle and a mockery and they didn t pay any attention to his preaching.

39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away;

Where did the flood take them? In death and judgment.



39 so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Where are they going to take him? People say, There s the Rapture. I ve seen preachers do it, you know. They have funny little things they do. They can flop their hand as they snatch a person away. I can t do it because it hurts my wrist. They l take (snatch) a person here and there. That s the way at the Rapture: one will be taken if he is lost, and one will be left.

41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

The problem here is that she is not taken in salvation and glory to be with theLord, it s in judgment to be destroyed. This is exactly the opposite of the Rapture. Do you see that?

Don t let someone come along and tell you that in Matthew 24 and Luke 17 where two will be in the bed and one taken, etc. that that s the Rapture of the Church. Inthe context, it has nothing to do with you going to be with the Lord.

Do you see how people who don t pay attention to their Bible take a verse that sounds like something that is going to happen at the Rapture and misapply it? Whereas in reality, in Verse 39, the type is that these people are taken in judgment. It took them all away and destroyed them. When Christ comes, the judgment of

the Tribulation is going to take them away and destroy them.Luke 17:36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.

Where did you learn that took place? That s the Battle of Armageddon (Revelation17) where they are destroyed in judgment. They re not taken up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. They are taken in judgment ? that s where they are taken. There is no question about it.


It has been over a month since our last lessons so I am not exactly sure where we left off so if we have gone over some of this, consider it to be review.


The day and hour that Christ is talking about is His return. Of course, in Matthew 24, you have the Sermon on the Mount of Olives, the second Sermon on the Mount. In the first part of the chapter we had a foreview about the Second Coming of Christ, the Tribulation, His appearing and the parable of the budding of the fig tree. When they see these things, then they will know that His coming is near.

Then He says, But of that day and hour. In other words, the exact time, nobody knows, No man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.



If you have one of the new, modern Bibles on the market today, it doesn t read there in Matthew like it does in the King James Version. Yours says in Verse 36: knoweth no man but my Father only. There is an addition in the new Bibles throughthe critical text, of neither the son. They pick that up from Mark.

Mark 13:32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

According to what they say, the idea is that some copyist or scribe somewhere removed it from Matthew because he didn t want somebody to think that Christ didn t know something. The problem with that is if you removed it from Matthew, why didn t you read Mark? Isn t that like some of us who don t read but one of them?

If you want to know the real reason that it is not in Matthew but is in Mark, come over to John. You need to understand the purposes for these books. I have tried to point out to you repeatedly how each one of the four gospels was written with a particular viewpoint of the Lord Jesus Christ. If God had wanted one biography of His Son, do you know how many there would have been? One.

Now, the fact that the Lord wanted four is the reason that you have four. Justas there are four faces on the four living creatures around the throne of God, each of those faces reflects something in regard to the manifestation of the character of Christ. Just as you see a lion, an ox, etc. on those faces, so it is t

hat you have four gospel accounts. Each one presents the Lord Jesus Christ in a little different way. We have studied this.

Matthew presents Him as the King. Mark presents Him as the servant. Luke presents Him as the man and John presents Him as God.

John 15:15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth:

In other words, one of the characteristics of a servant is that he doesn t know what his master or lord is doing. So, when you come to Mark 13, the gospel that presents the Lord Jesus Christ as the servant, the servant doesn t know the day orhour. In Matthew as the King, Christ would know the day and the hour.

It is the design of the Holy Spirit in conforming to the characteristics of thebooks that He is writing to put those things in and those things out. I realize that it takes a little bit of study and spiritual discernment to see that but it is better to study and have spiritual discernment than to sit around and readthe comics.

Matthew 24:36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.37 But as the days of Noe were

Noah is the Greek spelling for the Hebrew Noe. I have pointed out to you before that names are often spelled differently in the New Testament than they are in

the Old Testament. It s just a difference between the Greek and the Hebrew.

Matthew 24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Sonof man be.38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the oth



er left.

That s a tremendously misunderstood passage. You often hear it quoted with regard to the Rapture of the Body of Christ. That passage has absolutely nothing to do with the Rapture of which you and I are going to be a part as God ends the Dispensation of Grace by taking the Body of Christ back out into the heavens to bewith Him.

37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Well then, the flood in the days of Noah are a picture or a type of the Tribulation and the coming of Christ.

38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away;

In other words, in Noah s day, people were living and going on and taking care ofbusiness just like they didn t have a problem in the world. There Noah was, a preacher of righteous for one hundred twenty years, proclaiming the judgment of God on the world. The world just yawned as though it didn t make any difference. Tomorrow will be just another day like today. They were just eating and drinking and carrying on. They didn t pay any attention as if they had nothing to worry about.

so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

In other words, just like the climate was in Noah s day, it is going to be just like that when Christ comes back. The days that precede the flood are a picture of the days that will precede the coming of Christ. The days before the flood, the days of Noah, are a picture of the tribulation period.

Notice how this pipe runs all through your Bible.

1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah,

In other words, Christ went and preached to some spirits that are in prison. Those spirits were in prison because they were disobedient during Noah s day.

20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

In other words, the flood back there and the baptism of judgment that the earthencountered when God poured out the watery judgment on the earth destroyed everybody except Noah and his family (his wife, three sons and their wives). That is a figure, a type, a picture, a representation, a parallel of what is going to happen in the salvation that Peter is talking about.

Peter is talking to the circumcision saints and he says, That s a like figure whereunto the baptism that now saves us. He s not talking about water baptism, not in the sense of the putting away the filth of the flesh. Water baptism never put aw



40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Where is the one going to be taken? It has to be in judgment because that is what the passage is talking about. In the passage when you are taken, all of a sudden the Lord doesn t just snatch you off the earth to meet the Lord in the air. That isn t what that passage is talking about.

There are going to be two people out in the field tending to their own businessand working, and one is going to be taken in judgment and the other is not going to be taken in judgment.

40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Notice the parallel passage in the Book of Luke.

Luke 17:35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.

That s a reference to the Battle of Armageddon. These people are just going to be

dumped out and the Lord is going to clean their plow to a fare thee well. There is going to be wrath and judgment and destruction on them.

Revelation 19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothedin fine linen, white and clean.15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the n

ations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselvestogether unto the supper of the great God;18 That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.19 And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gatheredtogether to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.

There was a big feast when they got over there.

21 and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.

You re reading about the Battle of Armageddon. What He is talking about in Matthew and Luke is that these people will be taken in judgment. When Christ comes back He is going to destroy them in that great battle.

Matthew 24:42 Watch therefore:



Because He is coming and you are not going to know when He is coming, be on your toes.

for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

The Little Flock s duty during Christ s absence is to be watching and to be ready.

43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch thethief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.

That makes sense, doesn t it? If you knew a guy was going to rob you tonight at 8:00, would you be home? Sure you would. If you knew he wasn t going to come until two o clock in the morning, you d come on to church, go home sit there in your rocker with your shotgun and wait for him to come at two o clock. A thief doesn t telegraph when he is going to do it. They do it when you are not expecting it. Ifyou knew when to be ready, you d be ready. Well, you don t know.

44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

From here on down in the chapter, He is going to go over the duty of His servants. In light of the fact that He is going away, He is going to be absent from their midst and there is going to be a delay in His coming.

You are going to see in the passage that He is showing them that He is going tobe away and it will be awhile before He gets back. Here s what you do while I am gone.

How do you know it s going to be awhile before He gets back? You know the calendar in Daniel 9 of sixty nine weeks and that one week remains. He s got to be crucified. Then there s going to be a war and destruction of the temple and a war andthen the Seventieth Week of seven years.

These men are being taught and are beginning to understand the prophetic calendar of Israel. You know, seven years may not seem so long to you but it does to me. It seems like an eternity to me in some ways. When you are a little bitty s

even year old, you think seven years will never go by but the older you get thequicker it goes by.

When you are having trouble, tribulation, difficulties, problems and heartacheslike these people are going to have in that great Tribulation such as never was, don t you think seven years would tick by mighty slow? So He says, I am going away and it is going to seem like it will be forever but it won t be. Here s what you do while I am absent.

Matthew 24 and 25 demonstrate the effect of the return of Christ on three groups of people. In Verses 1 25 in Chapter 24 demonstrate its effect of the return of Christ on the Jew, on Israel. It s the great Tribulation. Then in Verses 36 t

hrough Chapter 25, Verse 30, He demonstrates its effects on His servants duringHis absence. Then in Chapter 25:31 to the end of the chapter, He demonstrates its effect on the nations of the world.

The duty of the disciples in Christ s absence is going to be dealt with here. Their duty is to Watch therefore and be ready. Be on your guard.

Matthew 24:45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath maderuler over his household, to give them meat in due season?46 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.



The lord has made him ruler over all his household so when his lord comes, the faithful and wise servant will be doing just what he was left to do.

48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;49 And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,51 And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites:there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The problem with that wicked servant is that he says in his heart My lord isn t coming. The importance of those words saying it in his heart can t be overemphasized.This is the guy s will when he says it in his heart. This is the man s attitude. It s his choice in the matter. This man doesn t want the lord to come back. He is living for himself. The guy s bad heart is his problem. The result is judgment and wrath.

Christ is telling them that He is going to leave them and leave His goods in their hands. I am going to leave you as my stewards and servants. You be faithfuland you take the meat of the Word of God that I give you and you teach it and preach it and give it out. You don t decide in your heart that you don t want the Lor

d to come back and want to do it your way. That s a wicked servant. That will disqualify you from service.

If you look at Chapter 25, there s a parable here with regard to the issue of faithful service. He talks about Who is that faithful and wise servant.

The faithful servant in Chapter 24, is the one who keeps on giving out the meatand does exactly what the master left him to do.

In Chapter 24 you have the faithful servant. In Chapter 25 in the parable of the virgins, you have the wise servant.

Matthew 25:1 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, whic

h took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

He is continuing the exhortations concerning their duties in His absence. He is going to talk to them about what a wise servant is. This parable of the ten virgins is one of those parables that preachers have enjoyed taking the doctrine from the Word of God out of context. They take Verse 6 and make a great preaching text.

5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye ou

t to meet him.

If you have done much work around rescue missions and have been at many evangelistic meetings, preachers tell a lot of stories. I know of at least three different magazines and a half a dozen different books with the title of The Midnight Cry.

There was a cry made: Here He comes! The idea is that the midnight cry is the cry of the Lord s coming. It s that voice crying in the wilderness. Here s the Lord! Get ready! Get right! There s that song, Oh, Why Not Tonight. The clock is clicking to



ward midnight and there is a new day. You hear all that pressure.

I have heard some good preaching by some of those guys but then I ve also heard some stuff, as the fellow has said, It is good as far as it goes but the problem is that it goes kind of far sometimes. It gets out of hand.

This passage doesn t have anything to do with salvation. This passage has to do with service, serving the Lord. The virgins here are not a bunch of half saved people and half lost people, half believers and half false believers. It s an illustration of what it means to be wise and what it means to be foolish. In the context of what we are studying here, virgins are a reference to tribulation saints.

Revelation 14:1 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

You see there the hundred forty and four thousand that were sealed in Chapter 7. You saw them on earth and now they are up on mount Zion in heaven in the New Jerusalem. In Revelation 7, you see that they are sealed. In Revelation 14, you see why He sealed them and why they are in heaven.

Revelation 14:2 And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters,and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping wi

th their harps:3 And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.4 These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

Notice in Verse 4, why they are called virgins is because they were not defiledwith women. Now, ladies, don t get all bent out of shape. It isn t a marriage kind of thing that he is talking about. There is an issue about being defiled withwomen in the tribulation period. Marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled, says Hebrews 13. Marriage is honorable and you don t have to try to qualify to be on

e of these guys by being a priest and a celibate, etc. That isn t what He is talking about. There is a special issue here.

8 And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, thatgreat city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

That is the defilement there. It s being defiled with Babylon.

Revelation 2:14 [To the church at Pergamos] But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.

20 [To the church at Thyatira] Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

Obviously, the issue has to do with idolatry. Obviously, the issue has to do with drinking the wine of a religious system that the anti Christ sets up. When the anti Christ comes in and makes that covenant with the nation Israel, he is going to reinstitute Israel s religious life.



Remember that we talked about that fig tree and how Christ cursed it and said that it would never bring forth fruit again. He cursed Israel s religious life. Yet, the anti Christ rebuilds their temple and reinstates their animal sacrifices, draws them away from faith in Christ to faith in himself.

In the Tribulation, the whole religious system will be designed to cause peopleto drink of the wine of Baal worship and to commit spiritual fornication. Unfortunately, in that day it will be literal fornication. There will be literal vestal virgins, they are called, in Baal worship.

In Baal worship there is a male deity who is associated with and accompanied bya female deity, the queen of heaven. In reality, the queen of heaven is the mother of the male deity. You have to get back into Hysslop to get all that mythology. You see her in the Bible as Ashteroth.

It is interesting that you can go all around town and see churches all over Chicago called Queen of Heaven. Jeremiah 7 and 44 identify the queen of heaven, the name is given and it is right there in your Bible. All you have to do is read it. Don t be superstitious, and think that everybody is talking against your religion or somebody else s religion. It s right there in your Bible. Five or six hundred years before Christ it s talking about it being an apostate Baal worshipping crowd. They have priests called fathers. You get that thing and begin to go withit and pretty soon you find out why people don t like the Bible.

That is what they are talking about over there in Revelation. Don t get mixed upin that anti Christ system, that Baal worship, that Babylon religion. That is the issue about not being defiled.

The virgins are tribulation saints who have kept themselves unspotted from all that.

Matthew 25:1 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps,

Notice that there are ten virgins. In the Bible, ten is the number of the gentiles. You say, I thought you said that these virgins were tribulation saints. The

y are. There are ten of them because they are taking the word out to the gentiles during the Tribulation. This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be a witness to allthe world. We saw in Matthew 13, that they are sown into the world during the absence of Christ.

Notice in that line that they took their lamps.

I want you to get the symbolism in the parable and understand that this isn t theChurch the Body of Christ. This isn t the Dispensation of Grace. This is the tribulation period. This is the Kingdom of Heaven. This is Jewish. It is exactly what it says it is.

Isaiah 62:1 For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake

I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.

So these ten virgins take their lamps that are burning and they go out to meet the bridegroom as he comes from the wedding to go to the marriage supper.

2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

What made the difference?



3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.7 Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

Do you remember what happened with Noah? God told him to take his boys and their wives and get into the ark. What happened? They were ready. They paid attention. They went in and God shut the door.

There were five wise virgins who were ready when he came and they went in and God shut the door.

11 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.12 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.13 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

What s the point? The point is not salvation. The issue is service. You need tobe ready because you don t know when he is coming. You want to be wise.

What did the wise guys do that the foolish guys didn t do? The wise guys took extra oil with them.

In other words, the wise virgins were prepared in case there was a delay. Theytook enough oil to get them all the way through the night. They didn t make out like he was going to be back in five minutes. They said, Maybe he won t be here infive minutes. Maybe we are going to have to keep our lamps burning all night long so we are going to be ready for that and they are ready.

The whole point with the foolish virgins is that they had to go out and get oil. How would you like to have to go out at midnight and try to find somebody to sell you some oil? Do you reckon it would be easy to go out at midnight to get somebody to open up his business to sell you some oil? I suspect that it wouldn thave been. You see, the virgins had to get ready. They weren t prepared.

Christ is showing that this isn t the time to be unprepared. What a time to be unprepared going out to meet the bridegroom with his entourage going into the marriage supper and you re not ready. You need to be prepared and ready, on duty.

The oil in the passage is often said to be the Holy Spirit, but it just won t work. First of all, the Holy Spirit hasn t been given at this time, not until after Christ is glorified. These people He was talking to wouldn t even have thought abo

ut it being the Holy Spirit.

8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.

How many of you folks think you can give some of the Holy Spirit to somebody else? Forget it. You can t. If you need to get the Holy Spirit, you can t come to me and say, Give me a little of the Spirit that you have.

They go and get the oil and then come back and knock at the door and they still



can t get in. If the oil is the Holy Spirit which they now have but they still can t get in, it just doesn t make any sense to make the oil the Holy Spirit.

It isn t talking about the Holy Spirit or getting saved or a false servant running out to get saved and then coming back and the lord wouldn t let him in because he got saved too late. It isn t about salvation at all but about service and aboutthese tribulation saints who have a charge and a responsibility to prepare and be ready.

Notice in the passage that the delay in Christ s return is clearly predicted. Heis telling them that it is going to be a while and that there is going to be a delay and to be prepared. Be wise in view of my going away and the delay in my return.

Luke 19:11 And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

You see that He is trying to teach them that the kingdom isn t going to appear immediately. He is telling them about His death, burial and resurrection, His ascension back to the Father s right hand and that He ll sit there as a royal exile. He is going to send them out as His representatives, in His absence. He is no longer going to dwell in His house. He is going to leave His house. (The Lord dwelt in the house of Israel.)

It was called a house because it was where God was to dwell. He goes away, leaves His house and puts His goods into the hands of His servants until He returns. But, He says, It s going to be a while, guys, so you be faithful. You be wise and you be ready all the time.

Now, here s something real interesting. What did they do while the bridegroom tarried? They all slumbered and slept. The parable in Matthew 13 of the wheat and the tares says, While men slept the enemy came in and sowed the tares in the field. Here they are sleeping. .

You see, you need to be on duty because if you sleep, then enemy is going to come in and sow tares.

Here s the contrast back in Matthew 24.

Matthew 24:48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;

There s the guy who, in his heart, said, The lord isn t coming back. That s an opinionof the matter. My will is that the lord won t come back.

These guys in Matthew 25 just went to sleep. They didn t choose that the lord not come back; they just forgot that he was coming. They forgot to be prepared. Let me show you the passage.

Here is the contrast to the guy who says in his heart, My lord delays his coming.

2 Peter 1:16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the



holy mount.

Peter says, We went up on the mount of transfiguration and we saw with our eyes the glory of God the Father demonstrated on God the Son and we heard with our ears the declaration of God the Father that this is He. We have eye witness and ear account. Then he says, But.

19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy;

That ought to sink into you. Peter said, I ve got eyewitness account. I saw it and I heard it, but I ve got something that is more sure the Word of God.

Do you know something that is more sure than what you experience, what you see or hear? It s that book. Christian people say, If only I could see it or if the Lord would just open up the heavens and say it to me.

Peter says, There is something better than that. You have the written Word of God.

whereunto ye do well that ye take heed,

He says, It s good for you to pay attention to the Word of God,

as unto a light that shineth in a dark place,

Isn t that what the Word of God is? It s sort of like The entrance of thy word giveth light and giveth understanding to the simple. That old book comes in and is just like a light shining in a dark place.

until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

People ask, What in the world is that verse talking about? The day dawning is the glorious coming of Christ. Malachi says it s like the Sun of righteousness arising. The day star over there in Revelation is the Lord Jesus Christ at his coming.

Peter says that the truth of Christ s coming must arise in these people s hearts giv

ing them that inner assurance that He is coming, assured by the Word of God. As they spend time in the Word of God and see the truth in the sure word of prophecy that He is coming and that they pay heed to that, it s like a light that shines in the darkness and it gives them assurance that He is coming.

Assured by that fact, then they are going to be alert to detect the gleams of the day breaking. They re going to be alert to catch the first rays of the sun as it comes up of His glorious return. They are going to be on the ball to notice when He comes to see it. They are going to be ready as they pay attention.

As they take the more sure word of prophecy and give heed unto it, they are ready in that hope, that inner attitude in the heart, that inner subjective attitude of that day star rising. They have that confidence and that assurance. It kee

ps them ready. They are not like that wicked servant that says in his heart, Mylord delays his coming. Here s a man who has turned his back on the Word of God and the truth of God and walks in human viewpoint and self will.

But, these people in their hearts say, He s coming. I need to be ready. He s coming. I need to be faithful. He s coming. It may be a while, but He s coming so I need to take the provisions with me and always be ready.

That s true of those people in that Tribulation. But if it is true of them, how much more should it be true of us that we, too, are always ready. Paul said to t



he Thessalonians that they were waiting for his Son from heaven.

1 Thessalonians 1:10 And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus,

Titus 2:13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ

Philippians 3:20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:

What does that word look mean? To look is like a rubber neck stretching out its head to see earnest expectation. That s the way we should be, always doing that which would be happy to have Him find us doing when He comes.


Matthew 25. Last time we went down through the parable of the ten virgins. Verse 13 contains the issue in the passage. In fact, we find the issue in the latter part of Chapter 24, also.

Matthew 25:13 Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.


The two verses are nearly identical. You will see, between the verses, the issue of when the Son of man is going to come. We are discussing the passage on the Olivet discourse, the second Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 24:3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be thesign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

He is discussing the time element in the passage where we are now reading in Chapter 25

Matthew 25:1 Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins,

I tried to point out to you last time that there is going to be a delay in His coming. The kingdom isn t going to be set up immediately. Due to that delay theyneed to be ready and to give attention to being prepared, to be wise virgins, no

t foolish representatives in view of the delay in His coming. The issue in thepassage is to be ready and prepared.

I think I pointed out to you that ten is the number of the Gentiles in the Bible.

Zechariah 8:23 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shalltake hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.



nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

They had come to understand and believe, from what He was teaching about the Kingdom, that it was going to appear immediately. He is now teaching them that No,it s coming but it isn t going to be set up immediately. That s the purpose of the parable.

That verse right there ought to help you. There are people who say that when the Holy Spirit came in Acts 2, the kingdom of God came. This passage is clear that that is not what happened. They could not look to Pentecost and expect thatto be the coming of the kingdom because He was teaching a parable to tell them that He was going away and that the kingdom wasn t coming soon.

So, this parable is given to straighten out the erroneous thinking of the amillennial viewpoint that the kingdom would come when the Spirit came and that therewas a spiritual kingdom in their midst.

Luke 19:12 He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.13 And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.

They go out and basically do what the servants in Matthew 25 are supposed to do.

They invest and gain more pounds.16 Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.17 And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

He goes on down and next servant gained five pounds. The third servant didn t gain any as in Matthew.

The parables are not the same but the principles are similar. In Matthew, He gives to one, five pounds; to one, two pounds; and to another, one pound. In Luke, He gives them all one talent. In Matthew, though they start out with a different number of pounds, there is equality in the rewards. In Luke they start out

with one and get a different reward based on what they ve done.The details are a little different but the reason I point it out to you is because it is a parallel parable. They demonstrate the difference in viewpoint thatMatthew has as compared to Luke.

I ve shown you over and over that Matthew has a purpose in mind as he writes. Mark, Luke and John also have their own purpose. The way they present it and the material about it all focus on that.

Matthew s purpose is to deal with the national and dispensational considerations involved in the ministry of Christ and that is what he focuses on. That s what isin the passage. Luke, on the other hand, is focusing on the personal issues and

concerns, the moral issues that are involved and you will see that in the parable there.

Let me give you another illustration. Look back to Matthew 22.

Matthew 22:2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son,3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding:

Luke 14:16 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade m



any:17 And sent his servant

Matthew says that he sent servants (plural). Luke says he sent one servant. When we studied that passage, I tried to show you that the issue in Matthew was looked at dispensationally and he is talking about his servants, the Little Flock, going out and calling the nation to repentance and to come to the marriage supper.

In Luke, it is looked at morally, the accountability and responsibility. Who is the servant? Not the individual people going out but God the Holy Spirit who ministers through those people so there are a lot of people going out. Matthew says it is a national issue with all the people in the nation lined up and goingout. Luke says that there are all these people going but there s really just oneand that s the Holy Spirit ministering. So, Luke is looking at the moral issues behind it, the responsibility and accountability. Matthew looks at the dispsensational issue.

That s what you re dealing with in Chapter 25 in these parables. When you see the differences in the two parables, just understand that it s a difference in the outlook and viewpoint of the writers and the books you re dealing with.

Matthew 25:19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.

Now, this is the Second Coming of Christ. He has come back with His kingdom. His long delay is over with. Notice the issue of the delay. He is going to deal with them about how they were to act during His absence. Once again, I point out to you that Christ is training these people how they should function and minister and work in view of the fact that He is going to go away. He is going to leave them here as His representatives.

Faithfulness and constancy are going to be put to the test because He is going to be gone a long time. If you go back in the Psalms, they say, How long, O Lord?

Those saints under the altar in Revelation 6 say, How long? That s the cry of theremnant in His absence under the tribulation wrath and distress: How long will it be before you come and deliver us?

This is what they are to do during that period of time. This is the way they are to be overcomers.

20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

In Luke, the man who brought ten talents was given authority over ten cities. Here in Matthew, he doesn t identify the amount or nature of the reward but just th

at he is going to rule with the Lord in His Kingdom.

22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredstunto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering wherethou hast not strawed:



25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thouknewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then atmy coming I should have received mine own with usury.28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

Now, here is the principle.

29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Six or eight times in Matthew that expression: weeping and wailing and gnashingof teeth is referred to and is never ever a reference to losing one s salvation.It is always a reference to losing positions and rewards in that kingdom. Notice that the issue here between the two faithful servants and unfaithful servant is the issue of rewards in the kingdom. The faithful two got rewarded, the one who wasn t faithful didn t use the things the master had given him to use, so he is not rewarded but loses his position in the kingdom. Again, it is a national issue. He is not talking about personal, individual salvation. He is talking about

who it is in the nation that is going to get the rewards of the kingdom and who is going to lose out, who is going to be the true fellowship and the true flock and who is going to be the tares rather than the wheat.

21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

Both of the faithful servants are given rulership in the kingdom. The government in the Millennial Kingdom is going to be populated by these faithful servants. That s the hope and reward that they are looking for.

I want you to look at a few of these passages so you don t mistake what we re talkin

g about. (There is a tremendous amount of confusion in our day about the government and how it relates to the Christian.) The passage we are reading was written to a bunch of people in view of the absence of the Lord Jesus Christ and they are going to live through that tribulation period and they are going to be involved in it. He will come back and set up His kingdom and they are going to reign with Him.

My dear friend, during the Dispensation of Grace wherein we live and wherein God has interrupted the prophetic program, the passages that we are reading here, are not operating today as they will over there. They are in the Word of God and a part of the Word that is written for our admonition and learning to instructus or anybody else about how God is going to deal with people over there, but they are not about what God is doing today. What God is doing today is found in t

he part of the Word of God in Romans to Philemon the Dispensation of Grace. That righteous nation is going to reign in the government of the kingdom. That swhat Christ promised His disciples and that is what they are looking for. Theyknow about the wrath to come and that they are to be faithful and go into that kingdom and gain positions of rulership. There is no land and political structure for the saints of God to rule in until that kingdom comes. Until Jesus Christ comes back and sets up His kingdom, there is no geography for believers to runand rule. The saints take up the government in the kingdom and all the attempts, by all the liberals and conservatives, left wingers, right wingers and all the



In this parable in Matthew 25, the first two servants are faithful. The third one is a wicked, slothful, lazy, unfaithful servant. What s the difference between them? The first two servants had confidence in their master s goodness and love. Notice how good the master is:

Matthew 25:14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability;

That indicates several things. It tells me about his kindness. He delivers his goods to a bunch of people who don t have anything. They didn t deserve them but he gave them to them anyway. He is kind to them. He could have hired somebody to do the job but he took these servants and let them have the goods. He is generous in that he gave them not to just one but gave them to all three servants.He is wise, too. He gave to every man according to his demonstrated ability tohandle what was given to him. Have you ever had put on your shoulders more than you could bear? That isn t too comfortable, is it? It isn t too wise of the guy who did it to you.

So, the master is generous, kind and wise. The first two servants recognized that and they go out and live in light of whom they know him to be and they servehim.

The third servant didn t trust him. He s an unbeliever. He doesn t trust his masterand he demonstrates real ingratitude. He doesn t say, Thank you. He said, You gaveit to me and it was a problem. He is idle. He went and buried the goods. He was a lazy guy. But the worst thing about him was his injustice. He begins to accuse his master of being an evil man. That was a great injustice because the man wasn t evil. He was kind, generous and wise in his dealing with him. The servant demonstrates his heart.

The reason for what Christ is doing is that He is demonstrating that there is atrue remnant and then there is a false fellowship. There is the wheat and there are the tares and they ve got to be identified.

(Chart) I ve said to you time and again, here s that Little Flock. Here s the nation,

all Israel. The wheat and the tares have to be identified as to who is who. That s the reason that 1 John is in the Bible. That book is a series of tests given in order that you might know who the true fellowship is and who the false fellowship is. John says, This is what a person who is really one of the true believers of true fellowship, really a part of the righteous nation, will do. And, here s what a guy in the false fellowship will do. John gives a series of test after test after test to manifest and discern the true (the wheat) from the false (the tares).

That demonstration is what Christ is illustrating. The faithful receive a reward. The unfaithful are cast into outer darkness. They are cast outside the pale of the kingdom and they suffer for it.

You have seen now, how Christ s coming affects the Jew, the world, the Tribulation and how it affects the Little Flock with the issue that they have to be ready during the delay. They have to be wise and prepared. They have to be faithful.

If they are unfaithful and unprepared and unwise, they aren t going to get the reward.

Matthew ends the chapter with one last event. Now, you are going to see how the Second Coming of Christ affects the nations out there.

Matthew 25:31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy ang



els with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations.

The throne of his glory, once again, is the throne of His father, David. When you get familiar with the Old Testament, you can just run verse after verse and these terms appear over and over in your Bible.

Jeremiah 14:20 We acknowledge, O LORD, our wickedness, and the iniquity of ourfathers: for we have sinned against thee.21 Do not abhor us, for thy name's sake, do not disgrace the throne of thy glory: remember, break not thy covenant with us [Israel].

The throne of thy glory is the throne of Israel.

Jeremiah 3:17 At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.

That s in that Millennial Kingdom. In that kingdom, Jerusalem is going to be thethrone of the Lord, the throne of His glory. It s the place in the earth where His glory, the Shekinah glory, is going to abide. The out manifestation of His presence is going to be there in a blazing, brilliant demonstration of light. People who are cast out of that kingdom are said to be in outer darkness. Where the kingdom is, is light.

Psalm 102:16 When the LORD shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory.17 He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.18 This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD.

Folks, there is going to be a time when the nation Israel is scattered and doesn t exist as a nation as it does today. It says that this is written for the generation to come (the people that shall be created.) (Isaiah 66: the nation that will be born in a day.) The word generation means the born ones.

So, you have the throne of His glory. The Son of man will come to take up His kingdom reign. The Son of man is a Messianic title.

Daniel 7:13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they broughthim near before him.14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

It s as the Son of man that the parable in Luke 19 says that he goes into a far country to receive a kingdom and return. That s the passage right there that tellsyou about Christ going up as the Son of God before the Father, receiving the kingdom and returning with it.

Matthew 25:31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

He comes back with the heavenly host to set up His kingdom.

32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

Now, this is what we call the judgment of the nations. There are seven judgments



in the Bible.

The first one is the judgment of sin at Calvary when Jesus Christ died for sin.

The second one is the believer s self judgment today. Paul says, If you judge yourself, you won t be judged.

The third is the Judgment Seat of Christ that takes place at the Rapture.

The fourth is the judgment of the nation Israel in the Tribulation where the wheat is separated from the tares. The wheat is gathered into the kingdom and thetares are burned up in the Tribulation.

The fifth one is the judgment of the nations at the end of the Tribulation whenChrist comes back.

Then there is the great white throne judgment after the Millennial Kingdom where the lost of the ages are judged.

Then there is the judgment of the lost angels at that time also.

So, there are seven different, distinct judgments in the Bible. The one you are dealing with here is the judgment of the nations that takes place when Christ c

omes back to the earth to set up His kingdom.You have to rightly divide between those judgments to know where they fit and what they are. Every time you read the word judgment in the Bible, it s like the word baptism. A lot of people read the word baptism and the first thing they sayis, Water! There are seven major baptisms in the Bible, most of which have nothing to do with water so you have to be careful about that and have to study the Bible and not just look at a word and attribute some religious definition to it.

This judgment of the nations takes place at the Second Coming of Christ. It s not the last judgment of the lost (the great white throne). That takes place after the Millennium.

At this judgment there is no resurrection. At the great white throne there is a resurrection.

At this judgment the living are judged. At the great white throne, the dead, small and great, stand before God.

Here it involves nations. Over there it is individuals.

Here there are no books opened. At the great white throne there are books thatare opened.

This judgment is on the earth. At the great white throne, heaven and earth have

fled away and there isn t any earth any more.

This one has three classes of people: Jews, Gentiles; saved and lost; (my brethren, the sheep and the goats). There at the great white throne, there is only one class: just the lost.

This judgment takes place before the kingdom. The great white throne judgment occurs after the kingdom. They are not the same. They are separated by a thousand years.



People, if you are not a pre millennialist, you ll never get your Bible straight.I looked at about six Bible commentaries by great names at the office today and t

hey all are amillennialists and covenant theologians. They tell you that this passage here is the way lost men are going to be judged in the final judgment ? and it just won t make it. Not at all. This is not a judgment of the lost at theend of time (the great white throne judgment). There is not just one general resurrection and one general judgment. This is the judgment of the nations priorto the Millennium, distinct from the great white throne judgment over there in Revelation 20.

Matthew 25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations:

Come over to Zechariah and I want you to see why they are all gathered before Him.

Zechariah 14:1 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.

The nations will be gathered into the Tribulation at Jerusalem to fight againstthe Lord.

Isaiah 34:1 Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it.

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of passages written to the whole world, not just to Israel? Oh, great! Here s something addressed to the Gentiles. Look what it says, though. Look here, you nations. I m fixing to wipe you out! Thatdoesn t sound like grace, does it?

2 For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all th

eir armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.

When is that? That s the Battle of Armageddon. I want you to see that He is gathering them all together.

Joel 3:1 For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.

11 Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves togethe

r round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O LORD.

The Lord is going to establish a United Nations and gather them all together and then the armies of heaven are going to come down on them.

12 Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.

That s the advent. That s Armageddon. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.



Here s the verse they should have written on the wall across the street from the United Nations building in New York. They wrote Isaiah 2: (Beat your swords into plowshares.) Here s the one, if they had believed the Bible, they would have written:

Zephaniah 3:8 Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the day that I rise up to the prey [second advent]: for my determination is to gather the nations [the politicans say, Whoopee. The Lord is going to get us all together], [Why, Lord?] that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.

The Lord is going to get all the nations together and sit in judgment on them and destroy the wicked, as you are going to see it here, and reward the righteous.

Matthew 25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Which ones do you reckon are the good ones? Do you want to be called an old goat? No, I didn t figure you did. It s a Bible expression back in Ezekiel.

By the way, who are the sheep in the Bible? Israel are the sheep. This is theonly verse in the Bible that Gentiles are ever called sheep. He calls them that because they are fixing to become participants in the Abrahamic blessing. They are going to get the blessings that God has for the nations through Israel because they have been identified with Abraham s seed. That s who they are.

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of myFather, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

Come ye blessed of my Father. Write down by that verse Genesis 12:3.

Genesis 12:3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseththee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Christ is announcing the long awaited Abrahamic blessing, In thy seed, Abraham, shall all families of the earth be blessed.


TEST #3


1. Why does Christ say His return will be like lightning in 24:27?2. To what is 24:28 a reference?3. By comparing 24:27 31 with I Thess. 4:16 17, demonstrate they are not referring to the same coming.4. What is the sign of the Son of Man?5. Explain the two positions Christ is seen in Mark 16:42.



6. What is the trumpet of 24:31?7. Who are the elect in 24:31?8. Identify the four Bible trees associated with Israel and the significance of each.9. What is the basic mistake made by date setters when using 24:32 34 s parable?10. Explain the parable of 24:32 35.11. Why does Mark 13:32 say that even the Son doesn t know the time and His coming while Matt. omits this?12. Until Acts 7 the Second Coming is in view in all that is done and taught. T or F?13. The Flood is a type of what coming prophetic event?14. Matt. 24:40 41 is generally said to refer to the Rapture. Explain how this cannot be true and what it does in fact refer to.15. What is the basic fault of the servant of 24:45 51?16. The parable of the Ten Virgins is designed to teach what basic truth?17. Who are the virgins?18. The oil is usually understood to be a type of the Holy Spirit. Do you agree? Prove your answer.19. What is the point of the parable in 25:14 30?20. Demonstrate that the Matt. 2:31 46 judgment is not the same as the Rev.20:11 15 judgment.21. The Throne of Glory is Christ s millennial throne. T or F?22. What is the significance of the titles ye blessed in 25:34 and ye cursed in

25:41?23. Matt. 25:34 demonstrates that the Kingdom has been the issue with God from the time God placed man on the earth. T or F?24. How long is everlasting in 25:46? Prove this by Scripture.25. What is the basis upon which the nations will gain entrance into the Kingdom?




Matthew 26. This is a shift of gear chapter in the Book of Matthew. John Nelson Darby said about this chapter that from this point on in the Book of Matthew,you need very little explanation, not because the events that are going to transpire from here on are not important or interesting but because what is going tohappen needs to be felt rather than explained.

When you read these passages, the further you go, you get a sense that the moreyou say about it, the less you are getting across. You read them sometimes, especially as a teacher, and you think to yourself, Boy, you just don t need to say anything about that. Now, I am going to say things about it, you know that, but you get the impact of these verses because from here on out, we are going to shiftgears in what Christ is doing.

Matthew 26:1 And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples,2 Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man

is betrayed to be crucified.Now, right here, He has finished the sayings. In Chapter 21, He enters into Jerusalem and He goes in and cleanses the temple. He presents Himself as Messiah,as the King, as the Anointed One, as the One who has come to be Israel s Redeemerand her Saviour. He goes up on the Mount of Olives and preaches the great discourse that we ve been studying the last few lessons where we see Him talking aboutHis coming kingdom, the effect of His coming on the nation Israel, on His disciples, on the nations of the world and on the believing remnant: His coming and His glorious kingdom and all the ramifications.

Now He is through with that. Now He is going to turn from contemplating about His coming and the presentation of himself as the rightful King of Israel. Now H

e is going to turn to a more immediate issue ? and that s the cross.Now, two days later, He is going to die at Calvary. He has finished all thesesayings and now He is going to be submissive to the sufferings that were appointed to Him.

I told you when we started Matthew if you go back and look at the very first verse in the book that the Book of Matthew is dramatically outlined by that very first verse.

Matthew 1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

For the first twenty five chapters, He is eminently and preeminently the Son ofDavid, the King, the one to whom the throne and all the royal rights belong.

At the beginning of Chapter 26, He is no longer just the Son of David, He now is the Son of Abraham. Abraham s son was Isaac, the one Abraham takes up on the mountain in Moriah in Genesis 22. He takes him up yonder and says, The lad and I are going there, we ll worship and come back. He takes him up there in order to kill him, to offer him as a sacrifice to God according to the instructions that Godthe Father had given to him.



You know the story of how Abraham offers his son. The knife goes back and in Abraham s mind, the boy is dead. Abraham knew that though he killed his son, God would raise him up or else he would never had told his servants that they were going up to worship and return.

Hebrews 11 says, Abraham believed in the resurrection and received him as from the dead. That s the perfect type and most complete type in the scripture in the Old Testament of the son of Abraham going there and dying.

In fact, it is interesting that in Genesis 22, Isaac goes up on the mountain, dies and is resurrected (in Abraham s mind Hebrews 11). Abraham comes down but you don t see Isaac in Chapter 23 and not again until the end of Chapter 24 when Abraham has sent his servant out to the kinsmen and gotten a wife for Isaac. The servant brings Rebekah back to Abraham. She and Isaac meet one another in a field and are united out there. She is a type of that believing remnant meeting the Lord Jesus Christ when He comes.

In the next chapter in Genesis, Sarah dies. The old is out and the new is in.There is tremendous typology back there.

From here on, Christ is going to be the Son of Abraham with His sufferings in view.

Somebody has said, The closer Christ comes to the cross, the more kingly He appea

rs. It s that way, even though you are going to see Him in the rest of the book in the depths of His humiliation. I have said to you before that I don t think there is any part of the Word of God that you ought to be more intimately familiarwith than the chapters we are fixing to read and study together.

I think you should know more about the details of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ as they are recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John than you do about whoever that was that got kicked off the Bears team for the next game for hitting somebody in the nose last Sunday. You know all about that, don t you? You know all the details about what the commissioner said and what you think about it and about the guy, the week before, that sacked the Bears quarterback and threw him onhis head.

What you know about the crucifixion of Christ ought to make that other, just nothing. That isn t the way it is with most of us, is it? We are going to read passages here in Matthew 26 that many people don t even know are in the Bible, much less pay attention to them or spend any time trying to figure why they are in theBible. So, you need to be intimately familiar with these things. There is a feel for them that you get.

You need to know the Pauline epistles so you can interpret these events and understand the meanings behind these events. To get the feel for what is here is tremendous.

In the depths of His humiliation, notice how Christ still shines out as the Master and as the King.

Matthew 26:2 Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and theSon of man is betrayed to be crucified.

In other words, He is telling them ahead of time what He is fixing to go do.

3 Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas,4 And consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him.



In Verse 2, Christ tells His disciples that He is going to be betrayed and crucified. He just says it as a subtle fact of reality. He says, After two days evenbefore those guys get together and do it.

John 10:18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have powerto lay it down, and I have power to take it again.

What is going to happen is not just something somebody is to going perpetrate against Him. He is the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.

In Hebrews, He said, A body hast thou prepared me and Lo, I come to do thy will, OGod,

He knew what was going on. He is the King in the midst of and in spite of whatmen think they are going to do to Him.

2 Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of manis betrayed to be crucified.

5 But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people.

He says, That in two days is the Passover and I am going to be crucified. They say, Not on the Passover. Notice in Verse 2, He told them that He was going to die

and when He was going to die. That is His foreknowledge.They say, We re not going to kill him on that day. He says, You re wrong buddy, thathe day I choose to die. The day you don t want to kill me is the day I choose you to kill me. Which one came to pass? I don t have to ask that question. You already know the answer. He s still sovereign.

18 And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at thy house with my disciples.19 And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them;

He knows right where to send them. In one of the other accounts, He told them t

o find a guy with a pitcher of water, That s the guy to ask. Tell him that the Lord wants to use the upper chamber. They went and there he was and they found thechamber. He s the King. That s His foreknowledge. That s the demonstration of who He is.

In Verse 25, He identifies Judas ahead of time, the one who is going to betray Him.

In Verse 31, He says, All shall forsake me, and Peter says, Not me. I will not deny thee.

34 Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

He might be going to the cross but He is still the King. He is still the Master. He is still the one who knows and controls and He demonstrates it all through here as to who He is. That is all the more significant in that the closer He gets to the cross, the more He appears as a King and the more evident it is thatwho is dying at Calvary is not some helpless victim, but it is Messiah, the King.

3 Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas,



4 And consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him.

They just want to murder Him. They have murder in their eyes. Come to John 11for the reason. I say this as respectfully as I can. You will want to notice in the passages here that it is priests that play a major part in the betrayal, the arrest and the murder of the Lord Jesus Christ. Priests. Their motive is, We redoing it for the religious good of our constituency. But, it s still a bunch of priests who go around in long, black robes. Do you remember how we studied that back in Matthew 23? They call each other father. Have you ever seen any priests who go around in long, black robes and call each other father? You have the descendants of the guys who murdered the Lord Jesus Christ or at least, played a big part in His betrayal, His arrest and in a mock trial and then His murder. Ibear you record, that isn t just me talking.

Somebody is saying, You re just mean and nasty and vilifying. I m not doing that. That s what the Bible says about them. Now you can know why some of those people don t care so much about the Bible. They perceive and rightly so, that it is against them.

The Bible is always negative toward man and positive toward God. Have you evernoticed how we are always positive toward man and negative toward God? We always blame God for all the bad things that happen, but whose fault really is it? It s being a part of a sinful creation. Where did sin come from? Adam. Of whom are you a descendant? You see, you are in the family, the wrong family.

Mankind is always positive toward man, Up with man! Up with people! We are going to get bigger and better every day in every way. We are going to go out there to the sky as we achieve our full potentiality.

But, the Bible is always positive toward God and what God is doing and it is negative toward man who is a sinner and needs a Saviour. Christ died for your sins. He s the Saviour. He s the one you need. See? That s positive toward God and negative toward man. That s not being mentally deficient. That s just recognizing the truth and knowing what s going on and how it fits.

John 11:47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said,

You have to watch out for councils in the Bible. Religious councils in the Bible are bad business bad business. We had that ordination here the other day they usually call it an ordination council. I call it a committee. There is nothing wrong with the word, but boy, I tell you it is bad when it is connected to religion. It s the religious councils in the Bible that run round and cause all the devilment. They killed the Lord. They persecuted the apostles and chased Paul all over creation.

John 11:47 Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.48 If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shallcome and take away both our place and nation.

What are they worried about? They are worried about their position. They are worried about their political and economic status in the community. They are worried about money and pomp and clout.

49 And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, saidunto them, Ye know nothing at all,50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.



In other words, Let s go bump this guy off and save the nation because if we don t get rid of him, the Romans are going to come in here and the whole nation is going to be destroyed. So, let s go get rid of him.

The reason for their desire to murder the Lord Jesus Christ and that s exactly what they want to do murder Him, is that they have some pomp and position and status in the world and they want to protect it.

Old man Bob Jones used to say that when the money runs out, people get real basic. When the money runs out, they get right down to brass tacks. If you can t buy gas for the car, you don t care what kind of car you have. You get down to whatis really important. That s true in what we are reading about the Lord and the crucifixion. When you get in here, all the veneer gets to be pulled away and youget down to what is real basic.

You are going to see human nature and you are going to see the way the religionof the world and religious system operate, the way man operates and the way he thinks and the way he responds. You are going to begin to see yourself in here and what is going around you.

That s the reason I say that these passages are here. I hope in the next few weeks as we study that you will spend some time just reading them and just get the feel for them. It s almost as though you don t need to say anything about them. You go through here and, boy they just live life day by day.

Matthew 26:5 But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people.

Not because it is wrong to kill Him, We need to do that to save our position, but let s not do it on the feast day. It would be a politically inexpedient move because the people will get mad at us. Why are the people going to get mad at them? The religious ceremonies are going to get violated.

We ll study later in John 18 that they re up there lying about Christ and trying toget Him murdered by the Romans and they won t even go into a building lest they be ceremonially unclean. They are a bunch of moral pigmies and perverts and yet they won t go into a building lest they be ceremonially unclean. If they went int

o a gentile building they couldn t later keep the religious ceremonies of the Passover.

That s what religion does. It focuses on that outward ceremonial exterior. Jesus said, You re like whited sepulchers all fixed up on the outside and inside you are dead with the stench of dead, rotted, corrupted flesh, morally and spiritually.

That s the reason I keep saying to you people that what God is doing today is inside first. You see, it isn t religious externalism. Anybody can do that kind of stuff, with a little discipline. It s the life that God puts inside that is the first issue. It doesn t mean that life won t express itself outwardly. It doesn t mean that the outward doesn t count but the life is produced from within. The classic

example of religious externalism is these characters right here.

Matthew 26:6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,7 There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

The stage has been set. Christ says, In two days, I am going to die. They are going to kill me. Then the plot to get Him is laid out. Then you have a little flashback to Bethany.



Notice what you are going to read in Matthew doesn t chronologically take place at this time. It is sort of a parenthetical flashback. It is a literary technique where you are talking about something now and you reach back in the past and bring it forward so you can see significance of the event in the context of whatis happening in what you are discussing.

Compare Matthew 26:6 with John 12.

Matthew 26:6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,

John 12:1 Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.2 There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of themthat sat at the table with him.3 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.4 Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him,5 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

It s identically the same passage that you are reading in Matthew 26:6 13. But in Matthew 26:2, He says it is two days until the Passover. In John 12, it s six da

ys before the Passover. So, the event took place six days before. Matthew flashes back and brings it up and inserts it as a parenthetical expression. In fact, in John 12, you don t find the entry of Christ into Jerusalem until Verse 12, after the event. The entry of Christ into Jerusalem in Matthew 26 is five chapters before in Matthew 21. He has already gone into Jerusalem. What you have in Matthew 26, about Mary putting the ointment on His head and feet, is a flashback.

Why would he do that? Why would it be parenthetically inserted here in Matthewwhen it is in other places in John and Mark? He recalls the Bethany incident here because of the significance that it holds in relation to His going to the cross.

Matthew begins to tell you and demonstrate to you, Here s the Son of Abraham and now He s going to the cross. Here s what is going to happen: He is going there and die. He sets the time and the plot. Then Matthew says, By the way, he points back, Do you remember what happened when Christ was in Bethany?

Matthew 26:6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,7 There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.8 But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purposeis this waste?9 For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.10 When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.

11 For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.

This incident is associated with what is fixing to happen and it is there as a great encouragement to the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ, sort of a balm for Him as He faces the cross.

Bethany was a very special place in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a place of retreat and refreshment. It was a place of loving, loyal friends. Ma



ry and Martha lived there. Many people believe that Simon the leper was Martha shusband. He is not identified beyond just Simon the leper, but just maybe, maybe, he might have been that one leper in John 17, whom Christ cleansed. Obviouslyhe was Simon the leper, past tense. In other words, he was a leper and Christ healed him and made him whole and he simply has the name because that is how they used to know him. Then there is Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. He s the one Christ raised from the dead. There is a tremendous loving relationship between these people and the Lord.

In Verse 10, Jesus talks about what Mary did. In John 12, it s Mary who comes inand breaks this bottle of ointment and pours it over His head and feet. Then she gets down and wipes his feet with her hair. The disciples are watching and they get all bent out of shape.

Matthew 26:10 When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.11 For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.

Christ says, She wrought a good work upon me. You always have the poor with youbut me, you don t have me here all the time.

Mary was occupied with one person. She was so occupied with Him, in thinking ab

out Him and sitting at His feet and learning His words that she could sense what was in His heart. She could sense what He was feeling at the time as He goes to condescend now, to go to Calvary and become the victim, the approach of that dark hour of His death as it approached. It was felt not just by the Saviour but it was felt and acknowledged by the heart of one whose total attention was fixed on Him.

In Chapter 10, Mary and Martha are in the house. Martha come and says, Lord, I m working and Mary won t come and help me. Jesus says, Martha, Martha, you are cumbered and careful about so many things but that one thing that you need and Mary chose it. What was she doing? She was sitting at His feet learning and listening to what He said. She is sitting at His feet, occupied just with Him.

Now, when He begins to tell them about going to that cross, she who is occupiedjust with Him, without Him saying a word, senses it. She feels it. She owns it. Her heart is in total tune with Him, so she does something marvelous. They all knew the enmity against Him. All the disciples were aware of what Mary was aware.

John 11:8 His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stonethee; and goest thou thither again?

16 Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellowdisciples, Let usalso go, that we may die with

You always remember Thomas bad day, don t you? He missed prayer meeting one Wednes

day night and the Lord was there. Thomas came in and said, If I can t see the nail prints in his hands, I m not going to believe. Now, he did believe that but he said that he didn t. Everybody remembers Thomas bad day. Did you ever have a bad day like that? Sure you did. I can confess it for you. We forget his good day in Verse 16. That s a pretty good day, isn t it?

Thomas said unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

That s a good testimony, a good day s work. Sometimes that is the way of the world. They remember your bad days and forget your good days.



They were aware of the enmity that the Jews had for Christ but it was Mary, that little woman who was used to sitting at His feet, who listened to His words and was occupied just with Him.

She did a good work on me. She wasn t looking around at everything else; she was looking at Him. She feels what affects Him and her love draws out of her the action that was fit for the occasion.

Matthew 26:12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did itfor my burial.

Luke 24:1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.2 And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.3 And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

On the resurrection morning, they went to anoint His body with the ointments that they had made and did they get to do it? They were too late, He was gone. The only person who ever anointed the body of the Lord Jesus Christ for the burial was this little lady about whom you are reading in Matthew 26. Her heart was in tune with His heart. She sensed what was on His mind and what He was feelingand she went ahead and did it ahead of time and she s the only one who got to do i

t. That s touching. Do you know that?Matthew 26:8 But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation,

Here s bunch of old stuffed shirts, all blown up like a toad frog:

saying, To what purpose is this waste?9 For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.

We could have sold that ointment for three hundred dollars (three hundred pence,whatever that would be). That s a great sum of money! We could have given it to the poor. Look what we could have done for the ministry with that money!

Did you let that word waste hit you in the face? Here s a little lady who comes in with that expensive ointment and she pours out every bit of it out on the Lord Jesus Christ, on His head and on His feet. She used it all on Him. The only person who was ever going to get any good out of that ointment was Christ. She gave it all to Him.

The disciples said, When you just take all that ointment and spend it on Him andHim alone, it s a waste and you are taking it away from the poor. That s awful, isn tit, when you focus just on Him and give it just to Him!

The problem that those guys had was that they were focusing on their ministry.They were focusing on getting results. Just give me something useful and practical. You always hear people say, Don t talk about doctrine and all those kinds of th

ings. Give us something useful and practical.

Don t you forget that is who is talking there when they say, What is all this waste to talk about all these things that God is doing and to spend all these riches? Give us something we can use and we ll go feed the poor.

Don t ever be that way.

Those disciples of our Lord were focused on the ministry and on getting resultsand on what they were doing and on themselves. That s just the selfish, cold hear



ted treachery that results from not being occupied with Christ. There isn t anywhere it shows up more obviously than in the ministry. There it was in the ministry of those who should have been the closest and known the best.

There is not one indication in the gospel accounts that they ever did anything comparable to what this woman did. They never understood what she understood. They never had their heart beat with His heart like she did. In just a few moreverses down here, you ll find them arguing among themselves about who is the greatest in the kingdom. Do you know who the greatest in the kingdom is? The Lord Jesus Christ. They don t even take that into account, focusing on themselves. The closer you get to the cross, the more it shows human nature and the more you begin to see human nature. It doesn t make any difference what dispensation it s in,it s human nature.

Mary s love and her service of love brought out the traitor s heart. Do you know who it was in Verse 8, who complained?

8 But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purposeis this waste?

John 12:4 Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him,5 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

It was Judas Iscariot who said that. He saw her and he first said, What is she doing? The disciples talk among themselves and then Judas stirs up the whole bunch of them to get all upset about this wasteful extravagance of just being occupied with Christ and entering in to the things that were on His heart and minding the thing He was mindful of and having their heart beat with His.

My friend, there is a lot of that going on today in God s work in our age as wellas it was back there.

Matthew 26:13 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preachedin the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

That is a touching verse. He never said that about any of His apostles but He said it about her. Why is it going to be mentioned? It s a rebuke to those who were not fully occupied with Him and it is a memorial to someone who was totally and completely occupied with Him.

Out in the world, they have a song, I Only Have Eyes For You. That s what she had yes for the Lord Jesus Christ. That s a memorial.

Now, that is inserted there to show two things. One, to show you how Mary doessomething that is an encouragement and a balm to the heart of the Saviour as Hefaces the cross. But, it also shows you the traitor s heart.

14 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests,15 And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you?

How much will you pay me to betray Him? You see, Judas got mad. John 12 says that Judas held the bag. He was the treasurer. He was used to counting the money.

And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.16 And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.



The name Judas Iscariot is important. The Greek word Judas is the Hebrew word Judah. Iscariot is derived from Ishi and karioth. Judah, Ishi (man) and karioth (from Karioth): Judah, a man from Karioth. That s how Judas Iscariot s name breaks down.

The name is important and prophetically significant because of two things. Come back to Jeremiah 48 and Zechariah 11. Karioth is east of the Jordan River over in Moab, in Syria. So, Judas was really a half breed Syrian Jew who would be indirectly kin to Nimrod. Nimrod is a classic type in the Word of God of the anti Christ. Judas is one of the twelve, a man from Kerioth.

Jeremiah 48:1 Against Moab thus saith the LORD of hosts,

24 And upon Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and upon all the cities of the land of Moab, far or near.25 The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken, saith the LORD.

Notice that there s a man whose judgment comes at the Second Coming of Christ.

15 the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts.

That s Christ. He is talking about the judgments that are going to take place asHe comes around there. In Moab, the judgment is going to be upon Kerioth and upon a man who has a broken arm. A broken armed man from Moab.

Watch all this begin to come together.

Zechariah 11:15 And the LORD said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd.16 For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, andtear their claws in pieces.17 Woe to the idol shepherd

Notice that word idol ? like an icon or statue. The idol shepherd. You know over there in Revelation where that fellow sets up an image and they fall down and w

orship it. That s this guy right here.17 Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

That s a reference to the deadly wound that the anti Christ suffers in the midst of the week. Did you ever see a picture of Napoleon with his arm tucked into his coat? Did you ever see a picture of Hitler strutting around with his arm at his side when he walked? At Christmas time, you see pictures of the Baby Jesus making a gesture. Children s Bible picture books show people with their hand extended. Have you seen the Pope bless somebody with the sign of the papal blessing with two fingers and thumb? The salute of the Swiss Guard is done with two finger

s and thumb. In pictures, the Baby Jesus has his hand extended out. Mary has her hand extended out.

In Revelation 6, the anti Christ is called an archer, a fellow who shoots with a bow. The sign of an archer is the two fingers and thumb. When I was in college I stood out on the archery range and the instructor told us that if we shot it right, we pull back and always see that little V between our thumb and first finger and to put that right up to our chin and let the arrow go. If you do it right, you come out with the two fingers and thumb the sign of an archer. I ll never forget seeing him out on that hill holding up those fingers and thumb and saying, T



hat s the sign of an archer. I thought, Uh huh, uh huh.

That Bible you have in your lap, people, is the greatest scientific textbook onthings you don t understand. You see them but don t understand them. It is amazing.

Do you remember the song, The One eyed, One armed, Flying, Purple, People eater. There he is right there. He is one eyed, one armed and he eats people. In Verse 16, it says that he eats the flesh of the fat. He flies (Genesis 6) and he is red and that isn t too far from being purple.

Zechariah 11:12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

Didn t you just read about thirty pieces of silver in Matthew 26?

13 And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

Matthew 27:7 is when it happened.

So, you have a prophecy in Verses 12 and 13, about the betrayal and the thirty pieces of silver. In the context it is the anti Christ.

2 Thessalonians 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed,the son of perdition;

That s a reference to the anti Christ. He is called the man of sin. He is called te son of perdition. Those are titles that refer to the anti Christ.

John 17:12 [This is Jesus praying to God the Father about the twelve apostles]While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

Who is it in that passage? That s Judas Iscariot. In this Bible, he is associated as a type of the anti Christ. Back in Matthew 26, when He talks about one ofthe twelve, Judas, who went into the chief priests, you are dealing with the satanic operation designed to bring about the destruction of the Lord Jesus Christand the purpose and program of God Almighty.

Matthew is putting all the elements on the table for you. There is the sovereignty and foreknowledge of God that I am going to go die. There is this plot of the religious hierarchy and there are the disciples sitting around, fat and happy,not knowing what s going. Then there s that little group of people who are gettingit. Then there is Judas and the adversary.

By the way, thirty pieces of silver in Verse 15, write down in your notes Exodus

21:32. You will see that thirty pieces of silver was the price that was paid for a slave when he was killed or rendered useless. If a slave was killed or hurt so he couldn t work any more, the guy that did it had to pay thirty pieces of silver to his master.

Judas sold Christ for the price of a useless slave.

Matthew 26:17 Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciplescame to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eatthe passover?



Judas Iscariot could never bring himself to call the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord.

John 13:13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.

There was only one of them who kept calling Him, Master. The others called Him, Lord. Judas could never bring himself to be submissive to Christ as Lord.

In this chapter and in John 13, there are seven different times where Christ tried to win Judas from doing his dastardly deed and Judas went on in spite of allthose attempts by the Saviour to stop him and Judas went on his way and had hisway. I suppose that you and I will never really understand what Christ meant in Verse 25 when He said to Judas, Thou hast said.

To live a godly, faithful life as the Saviour did, and then at the very end to be betrayed by a trusted confidant, one you thought enough of to let him keep the funds for the group. He was someone He had confidence in and then to be betrayed by. That s a heartache that we will probably never fully understand. And yet, it s there.

We ll go on from there next time with the issue of the upper room and then institution of the supper.


Matthew 26:26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink yeall of it;28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

Now, this is the passage where the Lord institutes what we call and what the apostle Paul later calls The Lord s Supper. It s a passage that is somewhat debated by some people. It s a passage that is greatly misunderstood among most people. It is used in Christendom in a variety of ways. I want to spend just enough time on this to get through the information that is here.

Verse 26 says, As they were eating, Jesus took bread. The time element involved in the passage here is debated by people who believe that the Lord s Supper is really the Passover. Their attempt is to say that they are eating the Passover together.

17 Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover?

He sends them and they prepare the place and they have the meal.

20 Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.

Nobody ever points out to you the fact that when they say the Lord s Supper is the



Passover, if you go back to Exodus 12, what posture were they supposed to be in when they ate the Passover? Were they supposed to be sitting at a table? They were supposed to be standing up with their traveling clothes and shoes on and with their staff ready to go. That was the way they were supposed to eat the Passover. It s a little bit different and people will say that s one way. I point out to youthe other so you get all kinds of different ideas.

21 And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.

26 And as they were eating

As they were eating. That is, the meal is involved. There are two things I wantyou to notice about the timing.

21 And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.

In other words, Judas Iscariot is present at the meal. Come over to John and Luke and you will find that Judas does not leave the company of the apostles and Christ until after that communion service, after the supper, is instituted.

John 13:30 He [Judas] then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.

Compare that with Luke 22

Luke 22:14 And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him.15 And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover withyou before I suffer:16 For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.17 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves:

That s why some people, instead of passing out the tray with the bread already broken up, give you a loaf and you tear off a piece. They take that verse there.

Luke 22:18 For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.19 And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.20 Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.21 But, behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table.

See, Judas was there for the supper. That means that Judas Iscariot took the so

called sacrament of the Lord s Supper. He went out and betrayed Christ, got paid off, felt badly about it, went back and confessed his sins to the priest, gaveback the money to get his sins taken care of and he still died and went to hell. Do you understand all that religious activity?

When you are dealing with people and have witnessing opportunities, that s handy to know sometime. Somebody says, You ve got to take the sacrament. Which one? The Eucharist, the mass. Well, Judas took it and he still died and went to hell.

Notice that the supper took place before Judas left. That is important and it w



ill be handy for you to recognize that.

20 Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

If they are taking the bread and the cup after supper, then the indication is that they have the Passover supper and then after supper He takes the bread and the cup. When you read the verse, the indication is that the two things are separate.

But, as I said, some people like to argue and you can be confused real easy. The chronologies in here are not easy to figure out. Part of the reason for thatis that God didn t design for you to figure it out. He didn t write it so there would be a chronology involved. He wrote it for you to get the truth of the thingas it is being presented by each one of the writers as they focus on a different aspect of the cross work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as each one of them focuses on a different view of His presentation to Israel, so it is that each oneof them focuses on a different aspect of His cross work.

15 And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover withyou before I suffer:

John 19:14 And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!

30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: andhe bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.31 The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation [for the Passover]that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) [first day of the seven day feast of unleavened bread].

The Passover was on the fourteenth. The fifteenth day and twenty second day were Sabbath days, holy days. Notice when Christ dies according to John 19: He dies on the day of the preparation which would be the fourteenth day of the month.

That s the day when they go out and kill the lamb. Then the evening begins between the fourteenth and fifteenth day at sundown, 6:00 P.M. The Jews count days b

eginning with the evening and then the morning. (We begin our day at midnight.) Today, Jewish people go on Friday night to Sabbath services. That s because their Saturday begins on Friday night at 6:00.

So, the fourteenth day would have been over at 6:00 in the evening. The evening would begin the fifteenth day, the Sabbath day, at 6:00 P.M. They would eat the Passover meal during the evening between the fourteenth and fifteenth day.

So, they kill the Passover lamb on the fourteenth.

(Chart) You have the fourteenth day and the fifteenth with the night between. The fourteenth day starts at 6:00 P.M. According to John 19, Christ dies on thefourteenth during the day. They want him off the cross and in the ground before

evening (6:00). The fifteenth is the Sabbath day. They are to eat the Passover meal in the evening (after 6:00) of the fifteenth (Exodus 12 and Leviticus 23).

Luke 22:15 And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:

If he eats with them before He suffers, can He eat with them in the evening of the fifteenth? He has to eat with them on the night of the fourteenth but He calls it the Passover.



l the same Passover and everything in between is just a flashback. That s a way of doing it, I guess. I just never heard of that before.

The parable in Luke 13 is about the husbandman who goes out and seeks fruit from his vineyard for three years. The fig tree doesn t bring forth fruit so he is going to cut it down but then gives it one more year to bear fruit and then if itstill doesn t bring forth fruit, then cut it down. That s how you know that Christ sministry is three years long.

I have a book in my office that says, according to the Passover in John, that Christ s ministry was four years long. Well, if you had a choice to pay off your car in three years or four years, and one guy told you it was three years and then another guy came along and said, No, it s four years, Do you reckon that you d havea problem? I figure you would. A year is a year if it is important to you. If one guy tells you it is three years and another guy says it is four years and they are all looking at the same evidence, you will say, Lord, I need some help.

So, I appreciate Luke 13 when he says Three years and then one more year.

When you want to study the chronology through this part of the life of Christ, generally speaking, the Book of Mark is the easiest and most chronological placeto use. Mark writes about Christ as a servant and he just gives detail, detail, detail, action, action, action, fact, fact, fact. Generally, Mark forms the best basis of the chronology of the life of Christ.

Mark 13:35 Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:

Now, the night is divided into even (6:00 to 9:00), midnight (9:00 to 12:00), cock crowing (12:00 to 3:00) and morning (3:00 to 6:00). If you start in Chapter14, he divides it up about that way.

Mark 14:1 After two days was the feast of the passover

It is two days before the Passover.

12 And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover,

That s going to be the fourteenth day of the month. That s where you are in Matthew 26:17 when He sends the men. The day has started at 6:00 P.M.

17 And in the evening he cometh with the twelve.

He comes into that room for the meal between 6:00 and 9:00 in the evening. They are there having the meal during the first watch of the night.

26 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.27 And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night:

They are going to move over into the section of night (9:00 to 12:00).

30 And Jesus saith unto him [Peter], Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.

Now, you move over into the cock crow section.

68 But he denied, saying, I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest. And he went out into the porch; and the cock crew.



72 And the second time the cock crew.

So, time wise you know you are in the cock crowing time (12:00 to 3:00) of the evening.

15:1 And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation withthe elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate.

That is in the morning (3:00 to 6:00). So, if you come back to Matthew, you can sort of divide up what s going along in here as per that time schedule. You will recognize where you are. It is important for you to understand what you are talking about is an all night event. That s what I am trying to get you to see.

The events that take place here transpire all night long: Christ, the day before He was crucified, the night before He was crucified and all day that He hung on that cross. He had been up all night. He hadn t had a time to go to sleep, and you wonder why those guys went to sleep at 11:00 at night? Did you ever go out in the garden or in a field at night after a nice, warm meal and good fellowship and you lay down on the ground? You begin to get the idea. This wasn t a bright afternoon. This was Wednesday at nighttime.

That s the chronology and I am not going to spend a lot of time about this from now on but it is good for you to understand it. The immediate chronology at the s

upper is a little harder to figure. From Luke 22, it looks like the actual meal itself, which as far as I am concerned, was not the actual Passover anyway. It was a special Passover celebration that Christ had with His disciples.

Matthew 26:26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink yeall of it;28 For this is my blood

When He holds up the bread and says, This is my body, He is not saying, This breadis literally my flesh. He is saying, This represents my body and it is going to be broken for you. When He breaks the bread, that isn t Calvary; it represents Calv

ary. It s just like I drew those things on the board for you. When I point to 6:00 P.M and I say This is 6:00 P.M., it is not. It is the little diagram on the overhead projector. What I write represents 6:00 P.M.

Now, the doctrine of transubstantiation is the Roman Catholic heresy that when He says, This is my body, and the priest rings the little bell and consecrates thehost, that piece of bread and the hooch that is in the cup literally become theliteral flesh and the literal blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you think about it, it is about as close to blasphemy as you can get. If, when He said, This is my body, if it were literally His body, His body would have been holding his body in His hand. I don t know how you work that.

27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink yeall of it;28 For this is my blood

Drink all of what? Did you ever try to drink a cup? He doesn t say to drink what is in the cup. He says, This cup is my blood. If you take the verse literally,that s what it says. If you take it on the natural sense of the words, you know it means that it represents what s in the cup.

You ought to write down some verses: Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 3:17; Leviticus 17:



10 and Acts 15:20 and 29. Those passages along with a number of other ones demonstrate that before the law (Genesis 9:4); under the law (Leviticus 3:17 and 17:10); and after the law under grace (Acts 15:20 and 29), they are forbidden to drink blood. The drinking of blood is forbidden before the law, under the law and after the law under grace.

Any religion that would have you drink literal blood is a religion that violates the Word of God. So, you know that isn t what it is.

Luke 22:19 And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.

When you do something in remembrance of somebody, it s a memorial. You have Memorial Day when you remember the American service personnel fallen in battle.

1 Corinthians 11:23 For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.26 For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's

death till he come.You are not repeating it. He isn t dying again. You re just demonstrating it. You have a little home video. You are memorializing and commemorating it but you are not repeating it. It s a memorial.

There are about five different views that you should understand about the communion.

The first is transubstantiation. The Roman Catholic view is that when they have the mass, they believe that they are literally re sacrificing the Lord Jesus Christ. A couple years ago when the Pope stood up down there in Grant Park and held up that host, he said, This is your Saviour, he was telling those people and he

believes that that piece of bread that he held up was literally the flesh of Jesus Christ because it was a consecrated host.

When they ring the bell, the wine in the goblet, they believe, turns into the literal blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It s just the old basic cannibalism. It is literal flesh and literal blood. Transubstantiation is Rome s view.

When the Protestant Reformation came along, Luther rejected the literal presence of Christ. He would look at the bread and say, It s just bread. He would look atthe wine and say it was still wine.

Years ago when I worked at the Rescue Mission in Mobile, I walked down in frontof the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception where the bishop holds forth. The

re was a priest I knew from being around down there. He came staggering out ofthe Cathedral and fell down. I went over and helped him up and the guy was drunk as a coot. I helped him over to the Catholic Maritime Club and got him a bedand let him sleep. He told me that what happened was that he was supposed to run three masses that evening from six to nine. It was a holiday and the relief priest who was supposed to come on didn t show up so he ran masses all around the clock until six in the morning. When I saw him it was about six thirty. What he had done was to drink all that wine and the poor guy got drunk.

I asked him, Did you ever drink that much blood? Do you know what happens if you



drink a quart of blood? You d be sick for six weeks. You see, it wasn t blood, it was wine. It hadn t changed its chemical makeup although that s what the doctrineteaches.

The next doctrine is consubstantiation. Trans means over and con means with. That is the doctrine that Luther taught, and what the Lutheran Church teaches today.Consubstantiation means with and under and present around the elements (emblems).

By the way, the word element is a bad term to use because that is the word for what the thing turns into: a sacramental term for the host. The proper term touse is emblem, a representative.

They say that when those elements, that host, is consecrated, it still is breadbut there is a spiritual presence of Christ with the bread. Luther said that in the sacrament forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are given. He didn t believe that they were in the bread but were in the words that Christ spoke over it so that when the priest consecrates it, it s the words of Christ that come in withthe bread. How do you explain that? I don t know. I never have understood that. They say it is a real, spiritual presence, not a physical eating but when youare eating the communion, you are getting something spiritually from God.

By the way, the memorial aspect of it was taught by Zwingli. When you hear of Luther and Calvin, always think of Zwingli, too. Luther and Calvin, as great men

as they were, didn t remove themselves nearly as far from Rome as Zwingli did. Interestingly enough, Zwingli, doctrinally, is much more like we are today. His view of the communion is exactly the view that we have today: that it s a memorial.

John Calvin didn t buy Luther s view but he didn t completely buy Zwingli s view so he sort of stood in the middle between the two.

In the more recent days, you have the Plymouth Brethren view. They believe it is a memorial, a commemoration. They call it the breaking of bread. You ll run through passages in the Book of Acts where they break bread. They say that every time you see that, it is the communion. The trouble with that is that every time you see it, it is not the communion but breaking bread is just having a meal togethe

r. The Brethren call it the breaking of the communion bread. They believe they should keep the communion on a weekly basis and they believe in what is called closed communion. That means that only people whom they authorize can come and take part in the communion table. The invitation is not open to everybody.

Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 11:28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.

The communion table is not a judgment table and unfortunately the Plymouth Brethren make it that. It is not a table of judgment where I judge you and you judge me and we judge each other. It is a table of fellowship. It s the Lord s Table wh

ere all of His children come as unworthy as we all are. We come and partake ofa memorial that demonstrates our oneness. Rather than being a judgment table, it is a fellowship, a communion table. So, the open invitation to all the savedis a far better way of doing it.

Then there are the Quakers and Salvation Army. Did you know that the Quakers and the Salvation Army do not practice water baptism or the Lord s Supper? You thought you were the only people in the world that didn t practice water baptism, didn t you?



William Booth was greatly influenced by E. W. Bullinger in England and he came to see some dispensational issues, evidently, about some of these things but theSalvation Army doesn t believe in keeping the Lord s Supper either. They teach thatit is not a physical observance but a spiritual observance, as in John 6.

John 6:51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat ofthis bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh,which I will give for the life of the world.

In that passage, He is talking about believing on Him. It s a spiritual consumption.

Then there is the Pauline method. That s in 1 Corinthians where it is a memorial. I realize that there are some people who chafe at the idea that the Body of Christ and the nation Israel share in this memorial. They go back into the gospels and try to say that it is the Passover.

May I say to you that there is no way that the apostle Paul would have ever told the Corinthians to keep the Passover at Corinth.

Deuteronomy 16:16 Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty:

There is one place to keep the Passover and that is in Jerusalem. The Book of Deuteronomy is clear that the Passover is to be observed in Jerusalem. Paul would never have told the Corinthians, I am delivering the Passover for you to keep at Corinth. He wouldn t have said that. He knew better than that. He was going to Jerusalem at the time to observe the Passover. He communicated to the Corinthians the Lord s Supper, this new memorial that Christ gave of His cross work.

As members of the Body of Christ, you and I share a memorial to the cross with the nation Israel because the destinies of both the Body of Christ and Israel are inseparably linked to that one event, the cross. We share the cross in common. Everything God has ever purposed to do finds its basis in the blood that Jesus Christ shed at Calvary, the blood that Christ calls the blood of the New Testame

nt. So, we are inseparably linked with that cross and the work of the cross.That sign we have overhead at the back of the church says, Unto him who loved usand washed us from our sins in his own blood. That is in Revelation 1:5. Paul didn t write that.

In Revelation 5:9 and 10, it talks about those kingdom saints who are made kings and priests and who are going to reign on the earth forever. They are singinga song about His blood.

Revelation 5:9 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us toGod by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;

10 And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

Christ s blood is the basis of the kingdom program. It is progressively revealedand during this time in history where you are in the earthly ministry of Christ. He hasn t yet revealed the fact that His blood at Calvary is going to be shed and be the basis for the kingdom program. That s revealed later.

Listen. No sinner ever got any right standing before God except through the blood of Jesus Christ whether they had it revealed to them or not. In the Old Test



ament, there were shadows of things to come: the blood sacrifices and those things that taught them doctrine appropriate for them.

Matthew 26:28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

He begins to unfold the issue of the blood.

Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,

After the resurrection, He opens their eyes so they can understand how He had to suffer and be raised again. He begins to unfold to them the purpose of His cross in the prophetic program. In Acts 2 and 3, you see Peter talk about those things.

When you get over there to Paul, he says, Now we ve got the full revelation. I m the due time testifier.

Matthew 26:28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

Who is the many ? It s Israel. The focus is on Israel. He is Israel s Saviour. He came, For he shall save his people from their sins. Israel was His people. That s the only way to read that. Paul says, We now know it was for all men.

1 Timothy 2:6 [Jesus Christ] Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.7 Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles

Paul was the due time testifier of the fullness of what was accomplished. WithPaul you have the fullness of the revelation given. Paul is given the capstoneof progressive revelation.

What you have here is that progressive revealing of the first stages of it in the shadow of the cross. And again, He is talking to Israel and He is telling them how the cross is going to fit in Israel s program. When we study through the early Acts, you will see that it did fit in the prophetic program and when you get to Paul, you get the explanation of what it means to them. So, when you get over to the Hebrew epistles, written in light of Paul s revelation, Israel can clearly understand the application of the cross work.

So, it is very appropriate that we share together with Israel a memorial, whichpoints to the cross.

I don t know if you have ever wondered why there is so much controversy about the

Lord s Supper. There is as much controversy about the Lord s Supper as there is about water baptism. We don t see it as much because we keep the Lord s Supper.

Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation, closed communion and spiritual presence,and so forth ? there are all kinds of confusion about it.

1 Corinthians 10:20 But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.21 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be par



takers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.

Satan has a counterfeit of this and that is the reason for all the commotion out there about it. That is why there is so much confusion about it and that s why you and I have to be sure to go to the Word of God and stick closely by it in order to avoid that confusion and in order to have clear light to give others as to how they can be brought out of the confusion.

Matthew 26:28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many [Israel] for the remission of sins.

You need to write down by that verse 1 Timothy 2:5 7 where Paul says that we now know that Christ gave Himself a ransom for all men. In Matthew 26:28 it says that the Son of man shed His blood for many for the remission of sins. A limited Redeemer with a limited redemption, but now with the capstone of progressive revelation given through Paul, the fullness of the revelation of the mystery having been unfolded, we now know that the blood of Christ is the foundation for both programs and is progressively revealed. Paul gets the capstone of that progressive revelation and we know how it fits and that it touches everybody. We ve been over that time and again so you should have no problem with that.

Notice the issue of the New Covenant.

Matthew 26:28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many

for the remission of sins.He is saying that the blood that He is going to shed at Calvary is the blood that is going to ratify the New Covenant.

Come back to Exodus 24 and notice that it is almost identically the terminologythat Moses used when he instituted and ratified the Old Covenant (the Mosaic Covenant). God gave Israel the law and the commandments, etc. In Exodus 24, theyhave a ceremony where they enter into the covenant (agreement).

Exodus 24:4 And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according tothe twelve tribes of Israel.

5 And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD.6 And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.7 And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.8 And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people [Hebrews says, alsoon the book], and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.

He ratifies the covenant with the shedding of the blood. Christ says, The bloodthat I am going to shed is the blood of the New Covenant. He s doing there the same thing as Moses did here.

By the way, did the Mosaic Covenant take effect in Exodus 24? No, they didn t start operating under it until Exodus 29.

Exodus 29:1 And this is the thing that thou shalt do unto them to hallow them,to minister unto me in the priest's office:

He tells them to take the priests out to wash and anoint them. In Acts 2, Peter says, Repent and be baptized. Get washed and you will be anointed with the Holy Ghost. The ministry in the Pentecostal era is saying, We ve got the blood that rat



ifies the New Covenant. Let s put it into effect. Let s get the show on the road.

Hebrews 9:16 For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.17 For a testament is of force after men are dead

Could the New Testament be enforced before Christ died? No. Well then, what we are reading over there in the Book of Matthew is really in the Old Testament.The New Testament could not be ratified until the blood was shed and it isn t putinto effect until the people are washed and anointed. That will take place at the Second Coming of Christ.

Hebrews 8:8 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:

10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

That has to take place in the Millennium when the knowledge of the Lord will cover the face of the earth like the waters cover the seas. That is when the New C

ovenant goes in effect and begins to operate. Just like Moses ratified it in Exodus 24 and began to put it in effect in Chapter 29 and then the nation functioned under it after that. So it is, Christ s blood ratifies it. In Acts 2, in thePentecostal era, they began to put it in effect but that stopped with the change of programs. When Christ comes back again, they ll pick up there and put it in effect.

Matthew 26:29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit ofthe vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.30 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.

The hymn they sang was called a Hallel. Psalms 115 118 are called the Hallelujah Psalms. They sang one of those songs at the closing of the meal. The last th

ing Psalm 118 talks about is: bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the hornsof the altar. That s what He is going out to do offer the sacrifice on Calvary.

29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

What was in the cup? One guy says, grape juice. Another says, wine. Better than that, how can you demonstrate it from the scripture?

Lord willing, we ll talk about that next time.


Matthew 26:26 28. Last week we talked at length about those verses on the institution of the memorial service, what the apostle Paul later calls The Lord s Supper



.

Matthew 26:26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink yeall of it;28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.30 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.

The last time, we ran out of time before we had the opportunity to discuss one issue about this passage which is of some debate and interest beyond what we have already discussed. That is the issue of the cup.

27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink yeall of it;28 For this is my blood [that is, the cup]

You understand that when He says, the cup, He is not talking about them drinking the literal cup but rather drinking what is in the cup. It is a memorial service; it s a representative. When He says, This is my body and He is holding a piece of bread, He is not saying, That bread is being miraculously transformed into my li

teral flesh as the transubstantiation doctrine is. He is not saying, This bread is bread but it really contains my spiritual presence (consubstantiation). He is saying, This bread represents my body and what I do when I break it that s what is going to happen to me. I am going to be broken in death. It s going to be a very difficult death, one in which He is broken.

When you take the blood out of a person s body, you have killed him. That s the reason why the two emblems are separated. The two emblems: the life of the fleshis in the blood when you separate them. It s a memorial death. It s a broken bodyand a shed blood. Through the body of flesh, Paul says, He has reconciled us untoGod. So both the emblems are there demonstrating the death, the broken, the torture, the death, the suffering, the agony of it, the realness of it and yet the nature of the death is the nature of a sacrifice, the nature of the blood being s

hed. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. (Hebrews 9:22)

We talked about this last time. The bread represents His broken body and the cup and the juice in the cup more particularly, represents His shed blood. Notice that it doesn t tell you what is in the cup. People have argued about that. They say, There is wine in the cup. Somebody else will say, No, it ought to be grapejuice.

We have the communion service here every month and we use grape juice. In fact, it is Welch s grape juice. The Welch family was a Christian family and that grape juice empire had its beginning and development around the idea of providing grape juice for communion services in Christian communities.

(Did you know that the Hershey Chocolate Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania was founded by a Christian man, too? The town of Hershey was named after him.)

There s the contention: was it grape juice or was it wine. Let me say this to you. It is very clear that the Lord drank wine. If that bothers you, I am sorry. I don t drink wine and I don t recommend that you drink it. There might be a lotof things that it is your right to do but it is also your privilege to abstain from. If the Book of Proverbs can tell you that wine and strong drink are not for princes and you are an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ, how much more sho



If you had an ordinance that said to stop at stop signs, that would be quite specific, wouldn t it? An ordinance in the city of Chicago not only says to stop ata stop sign but to stop before you get to the white line in the road that is that side of the stop sign. You re not supposed to drive up where your front door is beside the stop sign with the front end of your car sticking out in the intersection and then stop. The ordinance is very specific as to where you stop the car.

The point is that an ordinance states specific instructions but that is not theway it is with the Lord s Supper.

Well, what is supposed to be in the cup? How do you know? There isn t any way to know positively without any question to be asked or raised but there are some indications. I will share some of those things that may help you understand what is going on and why it is that we use grape juice as opposed to using wine.

Matthew 26:29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit ofthe vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom

Isaiah 65:8 Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all.

The new wine is found in the cluster of the grapes. It is not found in the bott

le. Grape juice is in the cluster when you squeeze it. It is grape juice and yet it is called new wine.

Proverbs 3:10 So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

In other words, when you take a cluster of grapes and you hold it up, that s where the new wine is. If you take grapes and put them in a press, new wine is squeezed out.

Genesis 40:9 And the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, In my dream, behold, a vine was before me;10 And in the vine were three branches: and it was as though it budded, and her

blossoms shot forth; and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes:11 And Pharaoh's cup was in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand.

He is making grape juice. The guy takes Pharaoh s cup and presses the grapes from the cluster into the cup and gives the juice to Pharaoh.

Moses is talking here about Israel coming out of Egypt and the time they spend in the wilderness.

Deuteronomy 29:5 And I have led you forty years in the wilderness:6 Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink: that yemight know that I am the LORD your God.

Did they drink wine in the wilderness? No.

Deuteronomy 32:13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;14 Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breedof Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.



They drank the pure blood of the grape. They did not drink wine. They drank grape juice. The indication is that they didn t drink wine but they did drink the blood of the grape. The issue there is grape juice. In the Bible, grape juice is a type of blood. The pure blood of the grape. (Did you ever get red grape juice on a white shirt? It makes a good dye.) It is defined there in the verse as the pure blood of the grape. So, when you have a cup and the contents of the cupis going to represent blood, it is logical that it would be grape juice.

The cluster is on the table. Christ takes the grapes and presses them into thecup, as the custom was (Genesis 40), and they literally see Him press the grapes out into the blood of the grape as in a winepress. He is going to Calvary andHe is going to suffer under the winepress of the fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God.

We are going to read down in Matthew 26 where He asks to let this cup pass fromHim. He gets up out of the garden and says, I am going to drink my cup that theFather has given me and that s Calvary. That cup represents the fierceness and the anger and the fury of the wrath of God poured out without mixture against sin.

Blood. In the Bible wine is not, but grape juice is, a picture of blood. That s the idea.

So, the reason that we use grape juice is the typology involved. The assumption

is and it is an assumption because I can t prove it beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt. I am not going to argue with someone who wants to believe otherwise,but there is a reason to see the activity that would have been going on and thesymbolism involved just as He breaks the bread to represent His broken body. No doubt He crushed the grapes in order to produce the pure blood of the grape tofill the cup. This is a very dramatic moment or they would say in literary circles: pregnant with meaning.

The fruit of the vine in Verse 29 is the Deuteronomy 32:14 type of the fruit ofthe vine. It s the pure blood of the grape.

Matthew 26:29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit ofthe vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

Now, the drinking of the fruit of the vine is new with them He s not talking about drinking new wine with them. He is talking about the drinking being new. He is talking about a new type of a relationship they are going to have. It is newin its manner, in its quality. When the New Covenant is in effect, it is a newway of drinking, a new fellowship, that they are going to have.

That New Covenant (the blood of the New Testament Verse 28) promises that personal, individual regeneration and forgiveness and personal relationship to God through the nation for each individual in the nation, each believing Israelite and when that takes place they will have His Spirit in their hearts and there will be a new fellowship that they will share together.

This memorial is a representative and a typical display of the new fellowship they were going to have under the New Covenant in the Millennial Kingdom when themerits of the blood of Christ were applied to the nation. Those merits would identify Israel with her Messiah in resurrection. Israel being identified with her Messiah in a resurrection would produce regeneration, the resurrection life.

Matthew 19:28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throneof his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.



When do they do it? In the regeneration, Israel expects a national regeneration, a giving of spiritual, eternal life and they expect to get it out there in that kingdom. Because God s Spirit is placed in them, they have the new birth, being born of the Spirit. Then they have eternal life and His Spirit being in them gives them a new type relationship.

We have talked about this repeatedly as we have studied Matthew, it is criticalthat you remember, as you study these passages, that in the prophetic system and in the New Covenant as it is made with Israel, regeneration was a basic promise but it was associated with that future kingdom that Christ would establish when He came back. So, He says, Here s a memorial and I won t be here to eat it with you but it s a memorial that you are going to keep and I won t do this with you anymore until the day out there in the future when I drink it new. He says, When I comeback out there, the whole fellowship that we have is going to be brand new in away that you don t understand now. (They weren t regenerated now and didn t yet have the New Covenant.)

Mark 10:28 Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.29 And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,30 But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren,

and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

You see, they are going to have eternal life in the future Millennial Kingdom when the New Covenant is inaugurated and placed into effect.

In Matthew 26, Christ is saying, This is the blood of the New Testament which isshed for many. The cross ratifies and establishes the New Testament but it doesnot inaugurate it. What activates it is His coming in the kingdom and putting the elements into effect just like the Old Covenant (Exodus 24 we read the passages last week). Moses stands and says, This is the blood of the covenant, echoed in Christ s words, This is the blood of the New Testament.

It is only in Exodus 29, five chapters later, though ratified by Moses with theshedding of blood in Exodus 24 and with the affirmation of the people, it is put into effect; it is inaugurated. So it is with the New Covenant.

We elect the president the first Tuesday in November but he isn t inaugurated into office until January 20. It is always that way. He is elected and ratified; he is established, but he doesn t take up the function of his office until later.

That s the same way with this. It is ratified at Calvary, then there s a transition team in effect and it is implemented and inaugurated when that kingdom begins over there. That s going to be part of the wonderful events that take place over there when Christ comes back and establishes His kingdom and all that time element back in Daniel begins to be literally fulfilled.

Hebrews 10:9 Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first [Old Covenant}, that he may establish the second [New Covenant].10 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

16 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith theLord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;17 And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more [the New Covenant Jere



miah 31].18 Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

There is a once for all sacrifice for sin. That s what Calvary does. This is the blood of the New Testament shed for the remission of sins.

19 Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the bloodof Jesus,20 By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;

The new and living way, if you will, is where the merits of the blood of Christare applied to the nation. They are identified with their Messiah, not just inHis rejection, but in His resurrection. Identification with His life results in that regeneration.

What He is talking about back in Matthew 26:29 is that great day. Now, you understand that they don t grasp all of this at this moment when He says it to them, this and so many other things that He taught them. He is teaching them in view of more information that He is going to reveal to them after His resurrection. Then they are going to be able to look back and say, Hey. That s what he was talking about. Oh, now we see that! That s what it was!

At this point they still don t believe He is going to go die. Here He is, the nig

ht before He dies and they still don t understand that. You ll see that in the verses that immediately follow. They still don t understand His resurrection and youwill see that in the next few verses that follow. It is only later that they get that information and it all falls into place, but He is telling them about it.

What were only shadows back in the Old Testament and in time past, now He begins to unfold for them. In the early Acts period they begin to see how it comes together and then the fullness of the revelation that Christ gives Paul over there and the fullness of the cross work are made known. And the capstone of progressive revelation about the way His cross and the way the blood of Christ fits inthere is revealed.

You see, Paul s revelation doesn t affect just us in the Body of Christ; it also affects these kingdom saints and the kingdom program. The books of Matthew, Mark,Luke and John have to be understood in that light. In fact, the Book of John itself is written here and it looks back. Of the four gospels, the three synoptics: Matthew, Mark and Luke, sort of go together, and then John stands aside. People read the three and say they are alike and John is different.

The reason is that Matthew, Mark and Luke look just at the earthly ministry of Christ as it was happening at the time and they don t try to interpret anything. They just try to explain what is happening during the events. John looks back to an event and says, We now know that signified , and he begins to explain what washappening in light of advanced revelation. John looks back and sort of interprets the events in light of the advanced revelation that they didn t have when the e

vents were taking place. That is why John is very compatible, in many regards,with the Pauline revelation. We understand the entire Bible in the light of Paul s revelation because that is the frame of reference we work from today.

The Book of John is written largely from that perspective, looking at the events in the life of Christ from that advanced revelation. That is what sets it apart from the other three accounts (viewpoints) as different in its perspective.

There are four gospel accounts and they all stand equal in their different presentations of Christ, His ministry and His person, but the reason that the first t



hree, the synoptics, look more alike is the approach they take to His ministry.It is more current, this is what He said. John will come along and say, This is w

hat He said and now we know its meaning. John is over here looking back and says, Oh, remember He said that and this is what He was getting at.

Matthew 26:30 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.

They sang a Hallelujah hymn (Psalms 113 118) and then they went out into the night.

31 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.32 But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.33 Peter answered and said unto him,

Praise God! You are going to die and rise again! No, that isn t what he said. Look what he did say.

33 Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.34Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cockcrow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

35 Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples.

Christ is beginning to warn them again of what is ahead for Him and what s ahead for them. When He does, human nature sticks its little face right out there andpops its puny little chest out and tries to bust its buttons off right here in the middle of everything. If you want to see human nature for what it is, you watch the cross of Christ and the events that take place around it.

31 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night:

He says, All of you are going to be scandalized tonight because of me for it is wr

itten. He says, Do you know why I know that? For it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.

Zechariah 13:7 smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.

Do you see the place of the Word of God held in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ? He says, I know what is going to happen. The old book says this so I know it is going to happen.

If you want to see the heart, the core, of the problem that Peter had, here it is.

33 Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.

Christ said, All ye shall be offended. For it is written. In verse 33, Peter was directly denying the statement based on the Word of God in Verse 31. Christ said, All of you will deny me. Peter said, Though everybody does, not me. You don t know me, Lord. I don t care what the Bible says, I m not going to do it.

(You never said anything like that, did you? You don t know anybody who would saythat. That was poor, old, dumb Peter, two thousand years ago, right? Just keep



believing that. You know better than that.)

Peter s problem was self, self will. I don t care what the Bible says, I know what I believe.


Christ s confidence obviously wasn t in Peter. It was in the scripture. That s humbling, isn t it? It ought to be. I ve said to you before, The Bible is negative toward man and positive toward the Lord. That was the attitude that Christ had.

Christ said, Pete, if it is up to me to depend on you not to do it, forget it. I m going to trust the book.

Can I say to you that if you ever get to the place where you say, I am going to depend on myself, I am going to do it. I am determined . Don t you think that Peter meant what he said? Peter was a commercial fisherman. Do you know any commercial fishermen? I wouldn t say they are mean because they are not ? but they are tough. You don t go out and battle the elements and make your living by pulling fish out of the sea and outsmarting the creatures of the sea and not be determined. Folks, some of the toughest, roughest, most independent individualists you will ever meet in your life are commercial fishermen.

I was born and raised on the gulf coast of the United States. I have been around commercial fishermen all my life. I have relatives who fish for a living. They get in a little old boat no bigger than a few feet and go out in waves that are taller than you are. I mean you have to be crazy on one side of your head and dull on the other to go out and do something like that. They do it for a living. How would you like to do that all day long and come back in and you ve made twenty seven dollars? It costs you eight dollars for gas to get out there. That s tough.

You see what Peter is saying. Lord, I don t care what they do but I am going to stick with you. If they try to kill me, I am going down fighting. The Bible says you are going to deny me, Pete. Peter says, Don t worry about me, Lord, I am going to hang tough.

Peter ignores the Word of God. He denies the Word of God. He says, My determination is what God s word says will not come true. Do you know which one came true?

That old book is something, people. You can say what you want to about it but people ignore it and they deny it, yet it just comes on through like nobody eversaid a word against it. That s because that book is God s book. It s a different kind of book.

The Word of God is sharper than any two edged sword, quick and powerful. It is life giving and energetic and it s God s word. It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of your heart. That s why Christ could tell Peter, You bow your back up like

that and spout off against the Word of God and remember, pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. You re fixing to take a tumble, buddy.

The only real safe place for you and me to be is with our hearts bowed in subjection and submission before the Word of God.

You go on from this event into the garden of Gethsemane.

36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.



18 And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother,19 And he saith unto them, Follow me,

21 And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, and he called them.

23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

He s up there in Galilee when they first meet Him and they first follow Him.

He says, You guys are going to bitterly forsake me and there is going to be a terrible time of rejection. You are going to be scattered and not know what to dobut after I rise again, I ll meet you right back where I started with you. We ll go right back to where it all began for us and for the preaching of the Gospel ofthe Kingdom. We ll go right back and begin again the relationship that we had and the kingdom that began with that proclaiming.

What He is doing in meeting them again in Galilee after His resurrection (We ll see more in Chapter 28.), is that He is promising them a renewed opportunity. Hesays, You re going to be offended and deny me, and you are going to be scattered, but it isn t the end, guys. It isn t over. All these things I have been training yo

u for I am going to rise again and I am going to meet you and we are going to start all over.

Rather than the cross being the fall of Israel, it actually resulted, by the grace of God, in a renewed opportunity being given to the disciples. To me, that is touching. Right in the midst of it, He says, I know what is going on. You are going to forsake me but I am going to rise again. And when I do, don t worry. I have it all taken care of and we will just meet over there and start all over only this time it will be a new beginning in a new way. It won t be like that OldCovenant. It will be a new one and I will put my Spirit in you and I ll accomplish it for you,

He didn t tell them all that but now we all know that that was what it was all goi

ng to be about. We know the basis of it so we can look at this and appreciate the significance of all of it.

They didn t even respond to it. He had to remind them of it after His resurrection. Don t forget, meet me in Galilee. They forgot about it. They were like us, just paying attention to themselves and what they were doing. I won t be offended. Who, me? You don t understand. I ll fight for you. I ll deny the Word of God, but I l do it.

Then He takes them into Gethsemane. Come on, guys. Let s go over here. The hourhas come. You fellows, pray for me. Pete, you and James and John, come on over here. I want to talk to you a little bit.

He takes them a little further.

Matthew 26:38 Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.

You were up on the Mount of Transfiguration with me. You saw the glory. You saw all the splendor. I want you to know the suffering that is coming. I want you to see that too. You were a part of the other, I want you to be a part of this.



38 tarry ye here, and watch with me.

40 And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?

The hour of darkness had come. Couldn t you just focus on me for one hour? They were asleep.

43 And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.

Poor little babies. They are asleep again. Do you know what they did on the Mount of Transfiguration? (Matthew 17) There was Moses and Elijah and they fell on their faces because they couldn t behold the glory. He told them to get up. They got up and couldn t see anybody but Jesus.

Here it is again. They were there with the glory and now they were here with the sufferings. Now, typical to their spiritual situation, they are asleep. They never enter in to what is really happening. They were dull of hearing and blind to what was going on.

It is instructive that in the Book of Matthew, the Lord Jesus Christ is the kingin rejection. He is the victim, the rightful King who has been cast out. At every aggravation and without absolutely any alleviating circumstances at all, this is what meets Him. One frustrating circumstance after another faces Him. You

constantly see it over and over.39 And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

I love the first part of that verse: And he went a little further.

Get the picture. There are eight apostles back there. (Judas has already gone.) Then you get three more. He puts them in that privileged position again. Then He goes just a little bit beyond them. He is the perfect dependant man. That s all physical but, you know, spiritually it is true, isn t it? He is always beyond us. We sin and come short of the glory of God.

39 And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

We ll have to talk about the prayer next time. But notice that He is praying. There is something very important about Him praying here.

Mark 14:34 And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.35 And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.36 And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this

cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.

He prays and says, Abba, Father. Do you know the only time in all the Word of God that anybody ever addresses God the Father as Abba, Father is right there? That is the privilege of the imminent, immediate Son. It is the privilege of JesusChrist, God the Son, addressing His Father.

Galatians 4:6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.



If you, as a member of the Body of Christ, as a son, an heir of God and a jointheir with Christ, if you pray in the spirit, what are you going to say? Abba, Father.

6 God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

He sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts to pray, to claim the position wehave in Christ and pray Abba, Father. Pray like who you are in Christ. Isn t thatwonderful? Now, do you want to see the practical demonstration of it? Look atMatthew 26.

This is our kind of praying. Now, I know the dispensational setting. I am nottalking about the Jewish program that He lived under because that isn t what He deals with here. This is God the Son praying to God the Father. He does it three times: in Verses 39, 42 and 44. This prayer about the cup, about the Father s will: nevertheless not as I will, but thy will be done.

Did you ever sing the song, Neath the Old Olive Tree?

Neath the stars of the nightWalked the Saviour of light,In the garden of dew ladened breeze,Where no light could be found,

Jesus knelt on the ground,There He prayed neath the old olive tree.

That s what He is doing here. He prays and He does it three times. You see the deepness of the conflict that He was in. It didn t drive Him away from God. It drove Him to the Father.

This is our kind of praying, people. The conflict, the difficulty didn t raise agreat barrier between Him and God. It caused Him to cast Himself all the more on His Father. His distress deepens His intercession. It deepens His submission to the Father s will. We ll see that next time as we go through. Each time He becomes more committed to be submitted to the Father s will. It deepens His reliance

upon the Father to the place where He begins by saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

So, when He meets the band that comes to take Him captive (John 18) after He leaves the garden, He says, The cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it? You will see this distress, the trauma and conflict and the agony which Hewas in. I want you to see next time what was really in that cup and what He really faced and how that, rather than swelling up rebellion in His heart as it did in Peter s, it caused Him to be more dependant upon the Father. It caused Him to be the more submissive to that which the Word of God said. It caused Him to rely all the more on what God was doing and His part in it.

That s our kind of praying, people, knowing and insisting upon only one thing. Do you know what Christ insisted upon there?

39 O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless notas I will, but as thou wilt.

If there is any other way to do it: I don t care if I drink it; I don t care if I don t drink it. There is only one absolute thing: not as I will, but as thou wilt. Thy will be done.



That s the absolute with Christ. As they say out in the world: Come hell or highwater. Well, they both came for the Saviour because it was hell. It was the eternal wrath of God against sin and it was high water, a figure of speech used overand over in the Psalms for the judgment and the billows of the wrath of God as in the days of Noah. It was both. He said, Come what may, whatever the circumstances are, what I want is to do your will in them. That s our kind of praying.

That s how we pray today. We cry, Abba, Father. That s what crying Abba, Father re means.


Matthew 26. Now the Book of Matthew, of course, is a book that describes the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. We ve been studying it now for some time and we are now in the last hours of the life of Christ. He is on His way to the cross. He s in the Garden of Gethsemane now and has already had supper with His apostles. He has told them about His betrayal and upcoming death. They ve had t

he passover supper together and He has instituted the new memorial with regard to the New Covenant.

It is interesting to me that in Verse 30, before they leave the meal they sing a song and then they go out to the Mount of Olives. In essence, Christ is singing as He goes out to die. That reminds me of that verse in Hebrews 12:2 where it says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame.

He goes out and we find Him praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Matthew 26:39 And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless n

ot as I will, but as thou wilt.40 And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

In our last study we talked about the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ there in the garden. I told you that three times, in Verses 39, 42 and 44, He prays. Inthe midst of His distress and difficulty, they only cause Him to cast Himself all the more upon His Father. What you want to notice, as you go through this scene in Gethsemane, is how submissive He is to the Father s will. The Lord Jesus Christ had implicit faith and confidence in God the Father.

It is important for you to realize that as Christ lived His life, He lived it in the context of His implicit faith in God His Father and in God the Holy Spirit. He lived it in submission.

The Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Godhead, was God and is God, but He laid aside the free and the independent exercise of His deity. He placed Himself in a position of a servant not using His attributes Himself, but rather depending upon God the Father and God the Holy Spirit who fill Him, to provide those things for Him. You see Him here as a representation of the perfect man, the last Adam.



The first Adam in the garden was rebellious against what God gave him to do wanting his own will done. Here, you see Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, the olive press. Again, olive oil is a type of the Holy Spirit. You see Him as the classic example of what it is to be praying in the Spirit. There are tremendouslessons in this passage for you and me today, as members of the Body of Christ,who have His life in us.

I am not talking about the Jewish program that He was under because that is noteven what you are looking at here. You re talking about the character and essence of Him, His attitude, His actions, His character. The Holy Spirit is placed in us (Galatians 4). We studied the passage last time as we studied Matthew thatGod put the Spirit in our hearts crying Abba, Father. It s right here in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14) where Jesus Christ bows before the Father and says, Abba, Father, if is possible, let the cup pass from me.

This is the prayer not of just the intimacy; it is that, but also the privileged prayer of an adult son, if you will, one who can come as an adult in the family and address his father and say, Not my will, but thine be done.

That is the privileged position of the adoptive sonship status of the Lord Jesus Christ that we have because the Spirit has been placed in us. So, as we pray in the spirit today, that s what Christ is doing here. The Spirit of Christ whichis in us is going to pray as He prayed even here.

You ll notice as we have pointed out to you, the things that Christ prays here, the one thing that is absolute is, not Him determining that this circumstance must happen or that circumstance must happen, but the will of the Father be done.

In His distress, the depth of the conflict that He has here only deepens His intercession; it only deepens His submission; it only deepens His reliance on the Father. It doesn t make Him bitter or rebellious. It doesn t turn Him away from God. It drives Him to the Father as the weight and burden grow heavier on Him. His trust, His resting and leaning on the Father, is made all the heavier. And so instead of Him bearing the weight, it s on the Father.

So, if you want to see real prayer, our kind of praying, here is the classic exa

mple of it, done to sinless perfection in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.There is something that you want to notice in the prayer.

Matthew 26:39 [He] prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cuppass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

42 He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.

44 And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

Luke 22:42 records the same words in the prayer. The issue in each of the prayers is that cup.

The first time He says, If it is possible, let it pass. Then He says, If it is not possible for it to pass away, okay. If it is possible not to do it, thy will be done. If it is not possible, if it has to be done, okay. Thy will be done.

The big issue with Christ was not whether He took the cup or whether He didn t take the cup, it was whether the will of God the Father was done. He comes and Heprays that way. He prays for the will of God, Nevertheless not my will, but thin



e be done. That s the total, complete submissiveness to the will of the Father.

Why would He even have a question about the cup? It is important that you understand what the cup is so you can understand why He prays what He does. There are some people who say that the cup was death, that what He is doing is praying that He wouldn t die before He got to the cross. They use Hebrews 5:7 for that. That s about as an oddball idea as I have ever heard. The idea is that He is in the garden praying that Satan wouldn t kill Him until He got to the cross which is less than twelve hours away. But you know, He says in John 10:18, No man takes my life from me. I lay it down and I take it up again.

Nobody killed the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you understand that? And, the Lord Jesus Christ wasn t afraid to die. Death wasn t the issue. He wasn t afraid of dying because He wasn t afraid of him who had the power of death (Satan) because Christ is life. Listen. All the blood could have drained out of His body; they could have cut off His head and whatever else. He wasn t going to die until He decided He was going to die.

So, I don t get the idea in the passage that He is praying that God wouldn t let Him die before He got to the cross. There is something else. The cup. That s the key to it.

In Jeremiah 25, he is talking about the captivity in Babylon which is a pictureof the tribulation period. Nebuchadnezzar is a picture of the anti Christ. Pro

phetically, you have a picture of the time of great trouble, the time of wrath to come in the Tribulation.

I just point out to you, especially you men, that three times in human history the wrath of God was poured out without any mixture. One is in the Tribulation.

One is in the lake of fire and the third time is the cross. When you read about the wrath of God being poured out in the Tribulation you are reading about the same kind of wrath and fury and indignation against sin that God is going to pour out in the lake of fire. They are the same. It s His wrath poured out without any mixture.

That is the same wrath and indignation and fury and anger that were poured out against the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary s cross. There He suffered the eternal wr

ath of God against men s sins, against our sins.So, what you have, in Jeremiah 25, is a description of the tribulation wrath but it will correspond with the other things and especially for our thinking, to Calvary.

Jeremiah 25:15 For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.

Notice: the wine cup of this fury.

17 Then took I the cup at the LORD'S hand, and made all the nations to drink, u

nto whom the LORD had sent me:

Now, the cup that they are to drink that comes from the Lord s hand is the wine cup of His fury.

Isaiah 51:17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the handof the LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.

That cup of His fury is a cup of His wrath, a cup of indignation, a cup of judgm



ent against sin.

Here is a verse that describes the fulfillment during the Tribulation, of thosepassages in the Old Testament.

Revelation 14:10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

When you begin to compare the passages like that, you begin to find the cup that passed out from the Lord s hands is the cup of God s fury and wrath against sin. It s not just death and it s not the idea of going to the cross. The Lord Jesus Christ didn t fear dying. In fact, He told His disciples all along in here that He is going to the cross. He just told them, in Verse 32, that He is going to die and be raised again. He understands that death is in the cards. But the thing He is trying to get around when He looks into that cup is the fury, the wrath, the anger and the vengeance of Almighty God s justice against all of the sins of allof mankind for all the ages. He sees the unmeasured, unmixed wrath and vengeance and indignation of Almighty God, His fury and His anger at sin.

When the Lord Jesus Christ looks in that cup and sees that sin and the fury andwrath of God against it, His holiness shrinks back from that experience.

You understand that the integrity and holiness of God is made up of two attributes. One is His righteousness.

Habakkuk 1:13 Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.

God s righteousness refuses to recognize and look at and tolerate sin. His justice is the other attribute that makes up His integrity. One is the righteous standard and the other is His justice. Righteousness is the standard of His integrity and justice is the enforcer of the standard.

It s okay to have a high standard but if you don t have a quality control to keep up with the standard, what happens to your product? It gets to be a little inferior.

So, the quality control aspect of God s character, His justice, is what requires everything and everyone to meet God s righteous standard. His standard of rightness is to be as perfect and as right as He is. Anything less, the justice of Godcomes in and takes out of the picture and destroys the wrath, the anger, the vengeance. That s where justice comes in.

When the Lord Jesus Christ saw that cup and saw in it the sins of mankind and the fury, anger and wrath of God against your sin, His soul shrank back. That hol

iness, that righteousness, shrank back from it, as we understand that it well might. Notice what He says when He looks at it: Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

Matthew 26:42 O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.

You see the will of God the Father in the matter was the absolute thing. Thereis a progression in His thinking through the issue.



39 O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me:

Then He says, If it can t pass, Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. Okay, let it pass if it can, let your will be done. But if it can t, let your will bedone. Which ever of the outcomes it is, your will is what I want to do.

Don t you know that God the Father didn t leave any stone unturned in heaven to find another acceptable sacrifice for your sins before He offered His own Son?

There is something important here for you to realize. When the Lord Jesus Christ came out of that garden, there was no question in His mind that the will of God and that cup were one. He is going to the cross and will take it.

John 18:10 is after they have come out of the garden. Judas has already soughtto betray Him in the verses before this.

John 18:10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.11 Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup whichmy Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?

The Lord Jesus Christ now knew the issue was resolved and the cup was what the Father gave Him. He is going to the cross and He is going to drink it.

You know that an adequate appreciation of what goes on at the cross of Calvary is almost blasphemy. I say that because of 1 Corinthians 12:3 says that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed, and yet that is exactly whatGod says happened to Him on the cross.

Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made acurse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

When they put that crown of thorns on His head and said, Hail, King, they didn t know what they were doing but we look at it and we know because in Genesis 3, God cursed the ground and the sign of the curse of sin on creation was that the ground brought forth thorns and thistles.

There comes the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect man, the last Adam. Mankind takes the symbol of the curse on creation and places it on His brow and presses it down so it is anchored firmly upon Him.

Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made acurse for us:

He didn t just wear the crown of thorns which is a symbol of the curse, He was made a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

A proper description and a proper appreciation of what happened to Christ at Calvary is as close to blasphemy as you could ever come without doing it. The only reason it isn t blasphemy is because it is what God said. God took His Son, Hims

elf, the second person of the Godhead and hung Him on that tree and God made Him to be a curse, made Him the personification of sin. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered in His soul the transformation that is described in the Book of the Revelation as the second death. Now, that is deep water.

Let me encourage you once again to get the tapes on Eternal Judgment. Go throughthose tapes where He talks about the second death and listen carefully to what the scriptures say about it. Get an appreciation for the depth of what your Saviour did for you when He went to Calvary.



He took the cup and He drank it. By the way, He was innocent.

Tonight coming in, we had a little altercation in the automobile betwixt the children. (Preachers kids, you know, are terrible. They get that way from playingwith the deacons kids.) We had a little problem develop. You know, Daddy has to intervene and settle things down and when we get here I ll meet with you on the front seat of the car before we go into the building. My number three son and I were sitting on the front seat and we were discussing it. After I pronounce the sentence, he swells all up in tears, and I ask, Why are you crying? Are you crying from a heart of remorse for what you did or are you crying because you are not going to get to do what you want to do? I knew which one it was, and he did too, but he knew which one he was supposed to tell me. So, he told me that and I said, Now, let s not compound this thing by not telling the truth. Well, okay, all right. And, that thing all comes out.

But you know how it is when you have to bear the fruit of your bad behavior when you are guilty. I had him dead to rights. There was no question about his guilt. It was just a matter of bringing him to the point of confessing it and then making the thing right and bearing the result of that.

You know how it is when you make a mistake and have to face it and get it rightand bear the reproach and penalty for it. That s bad, isn t it? How much more difficult it is when you know you are innocent and yet you are bearing the reproachof others, spitefully, hatefully, wrathfully, maliciously given and yet you are

innocent and you know it.That is what your Saviour did. He was not a transgressor, but He was numbered with the transgressors. He went there to Calvary and He was innocent. He had no death to die and yet He tasted death for every man by the grace of God. That s fantastic, people. That s wonderful.

2 Corinthians 5:18 And all things are of God,

Well, they would be, considering all He has done.

who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;

19 To wit, that God was in Christ,God was personally present in His Son.

reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

21 For he [God the Father] hath made him [the Lord Jesus Christ] to be sinfor us, who knew no sin;

God Almighty made the Lord Jesus Christ who knew no sin to be our sin, personified. God Almighty laid the blame for all those sins on the soul of His Son and Hegave His soul as an offering for our sin. That is what that cup was all about.

When the Lord Jesus Christ saw it and looked at it and He prayed to the Fatherand He said, Father, whether I take it or I don t take it, that isn t the question.The question is What is your word on it? You give me your will; you give me your word. Tell me what you want and that s where we will go.

I am come to do thy will. That is His submissiveness. That was His faith as He committed himself into the hands of the Father.

When He came out of that garden having prayed that way, He had no question in His mind: the cup and the Father s will were one. He came out of that garden with t



he determination to go there and He does go and drink it down to the very dregsand He wrings out the dregs, as Isaiah said. Please appreciate what the Lord Jesus Christ is doing. You don t get all the doctrine of it in Matthew. You have to get it revealed later.

But please, appreciate what He is doing as He gives His soul an offering for sin, not just to die as a sinner but to die as an innocent one. He is being pronounced as being innocent, innocent, innocent, and yet they kill Him. He dies forus and He has our sin placed on Him. He hangs there with His hands outstretched and says, Blame me. And, God does.

It is the only time in all of His existence in all eternity that God the Fatherand God the Holy Spirit ever turned their back on God the Son. And the only broken communion ever between them was in those hours of darkness at Calvary when He died and suffered the separation. The eternal Son of God died for your eternal debts, suffering the eternal wrath of God against your sin, suffering your eternal hell and the separation from God that you and I should have for all eternity. As He prays in that garden, that s what on His mind, that s what He sees, that s what is in that cup, that s what He faces and that is what He surrenders to without any question.

Matthew 26:43 And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.44 And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the

same words.Again, He just insists on obeying. He doesn t insist on dying. He doesn t insist on escaping. The will of God was the absolute thing in His life. The cup was not absolute. You might not understand that but He looked at it: I can do it or not do it.

Do you remember the type in Genesis 22? Abraham took Isaac up on the mountain and he is going to offer him and kill him because God told him to kill him. Didhe actually kill him? No, God intervened and Abraham didn t actually kill him intype he did ? and he received him back.

So, whether Christ actually drank the cup or whether he didn t, the issue was doin

g the Father s will. When He comes out of that garden, the issue is settled. You are going to see from here on, the total submissive spirit with which He goes to Calvary. That submission is going to cause the disciples some real problems.

41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

They didn t watch and pray and because of that, they are going to have some real problems in the next few verses because they are not submissive to the Father s will. They weren t up watching and praying and entering into His heart and mind andfocusing on Him. They were satisfying their own needs. They were all so tired. Poor little guys. They were satisfying the lust of their flesh and the result

is that you are going to see them have some problems.

45 Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

That is the hour of His crisis and the crisis is past. It is all resolved in His mind now and He is ready to go.

By the way, it is at this time that that the angel comes and comforts Him.



Luke 22:42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.45 And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow,

That is, it made Him sorry to find them sleeping. They weren t in sorrow for Him. They slept, to His sorrow.

The angel comes and strengthens Him. Now, I don t know if you ever thought aboutwhat the angel did to strengthen Him, but personally I don t think it was a physical strengthening where he came along and touched Him and gave Him physical strength alone. Perhaps that was involved but certainly not all.

Psalm 102 is called the Gethsemane Psalm. From time to time, I have said to you that, over and over when you read the Psalms, you read passages of scripture that take a glimpse into the mental attitude, into the mind, and into what is going on inside His head, inside His thinking during these hours. You should spendsome time this week reading Psalm 102 in the context of Gethsemane. Think of Christ in Gethsemane. I personally would venture that what the angel did was to minister that Psalm to him and remind Him of the words and things that were proph

esied there.Psalm 102 and Hebrews 1 are quoted as being a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. It s the agony and the suffering and then the glory beautifully portrayed thatHe sees out there that sustained Him through it. That s the Gethsemane Psalm, a Psalm that no doubt depicts the mental attitude of the Lord Jesus Christ during this time period.

By the way, in the sufferings of Christ He is being identified again, as He goes to the cross, with the sufferings of His people when the wrath of God is poured out in the Tribulation. So, Psalm 102 is also a Gethsemane Psalm for the nation, Israel itself.

46 Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.Luke gives you more of the fullness of His personal sufferings, the angel s ministering and the drops of blood, and that sort of thing, than Matthew does. He istelling you that He is the Messiah, the Redeemer. He is here. He is being treated as the victim and that every problem that can possibly comes up does, and that there just isn t any relief. He is just a rejected victim over and over.

But, when you see Him walk out of that garden, you see the work of redemption is in the hands of one who cannot fail. Just think about what is going on there.

When He leaves that garden He leaves as one who has overcome self will. He has conquered the temptation to quit. He has resisted the devil to the very limits and He emerges bloody, submissive, victorious and most of all, sinless.

Proverbs 16:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he thatruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

That s what you see in Christ at Gethsemane. You see the victory of the inner man. That is why it bears such an echo in our hearts today where the work of God is focused on the inner man in us: Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Matthew 26:46 Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.



47 And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came

As He comes out of the garden, now things are going to begin to pick up. Again, you want to understand that what He has just gone through is a time of total, sublime submissiveness and it is on display here.

Philppians 2:8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

All of that is here. So, Judas comes.

Matthew 26:47 And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.48 Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss,that same is he: hold him fast.49 And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him.50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.

I have told you that this passage of scripture demonstrates human nature over and over again. That passage demonstrates that a man can know what he is doing, know the results of what he is doing and go ahead and do it, knowing that what he

is doing is a willful sin and that it merits only death. These people who aredoing what they are doing here are not just walking in and seeing Judas plant akiss on the side of His cheek and they grab Him. There is a whole lot of dramagoing on here. Talk about high drama.

I love to read the passage. I would have loved to have been there to watch this take place. It had to have been wild. You have a big band of guys. There are professional soldiers in the group, men who are hardened in combat. There arecommon people, priests and religious leaders, Judas and others.

John 18:1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the which he entered, and his disciples.

2 And Judas also, which betrayed him,John doesn t describe the praying in the garden.

2 And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples.

Judas knew where He would be. He goes over there all the time and prays. That s where He will be.

Do you remember when they got Daniel in Daniel 6? They got him when he was praying. That s the way it works.

3 Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.

It is dark so they ve got their flashlights and their lanterns. The dirty work is always done in the dark, people. It s always done in the dark. If what you do can t be done openly in the day in front of everybody and just lay it out on the table where everybody can see it, then you d best not do it. The dirty work is always done in the dark behind closed doors.

4 Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, an



d said unto them, Whom seek ye?5 They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them.6 As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fellto the ground.

Notice that the word he is in italics. When He said that in the Greek language, He just said, I am. The he in the verse is understood and rightly translated.

Exodus 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

What s your name? Tell them, I AM sent you.

John 8:58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abrahamwas, I am.

He says, I am Jehovah. We have studied that Jesus in the New Testament is Jehovah in the Old Testament.

Whom seek ye? Jesus of Nazareth. He says, I AM and down they go. If you are in that crowd and trying to pick yourself off the ground and get your lantern and yourstick and then go back after this guy and he just knocked you over with a word,do you reckon that you d be too interested in getting him again? I don t think I wo

uld have wanted to put my hands on him. The next time when he asked whom are you looking for, I would have said, Is there a Joe or a Jim around here somewhere?But those guys didn t do that.

John 18:7 Then asked he them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth.8 Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way:

Let the disciples go and just take me. You see folks, there is a whole lot goingon here. Peter never misses an opportunity to go into action.

10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant

, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.Luke 22:50 And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.

By the way, have you ever tried to cut anybody s ear off? No? Well, I am glad that we don t have any street fighters here.

Peter didn t have a six foot sword but it was a sword with a good blade. To cut somebody s ear off, you have to whack it vertically. If you drew out your sword, you d go horizontally, wouldn t you? If you slash like that, what are you aiming for? My neck. How are you going get my ear? Only if I duck. That s the only way I can figure he got the guy s ear. Peter is going for broke, man. Peter sees an o

pportunity to break out of this thing.

As I said, these are professional soldiers that are in the group there. Peter is no pushover. He s a commercial fisherman. He is accustomed to settling a fight in the alley. He s been in a fight with Roman soldiers before. He s not scared.He s been around these religious guards of the Sanhedrin. He knows what s going onand the best defense is a good offense. My feeling about that always has been that if they are going to give me the opportunity to give the first blow, hit himwith a good one, man. That s Peter s philosophy.



Old Malchus ducks and did you notice that he was the high priest s servant? Peter was going for the top brass, you know. Isn t that what Christ said? Smite the shepherd and the sheep scatter. Old Malchus ducks and off comes his ear. Look what Christ does. Luke 22:51 And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched hisear, and healed him.

Imagine that. Think about what is going on. They come out after Christ in thepitch dark night and find Him in the garden. Judas goes over and kisses Him. He looks at the mob and asks, Whom are you looking for? They say, Jesus of Nazareth, and He says, That s me. And they all fall over backwards from the force of His words. He slays them with the breath of His mouth. They scramble back up again and regroup and He says, Whom did you say you were looking for? They say, Jesus. Ifthey had good sense then they would have said George or Harry. He says, I ll go withou. I don t have to, you understand, but I ll go, but let these guys go, would you?

Pete, in a minute of diversion, takes out his sword and whacks off the guy s ear and while that ear is up in the air, Christ reaches up and grabs it and puts it back on the side of the guy s head and instantly the ear is replaced.

Don t you think, if you had been in that crowd, that you could have recognized that this fellow here was a little different? There was something different about

him He was God Almighty.That centurion stood at the foot of that cross and watched Him die. He, as a hardened soldier in battle, had seen men die before. You became a centurion by being a soldier and as he watched Him die he said, Man, I ve never seen anybody die like that. That had to have been the Son of God.

And yet, they go right on. People, a man can know what he is doing, see what he is doing, know the results of what he is doing, know what he is doing is willful rebellion and sin and doesn t merit anything but death and destruction, yet go right on and do it anyway. If you want to see human nature, you re looking at it.

The closer you get to the cross, the better you get to see it. The closer youget to the cross, the better you see yourself in a lot of this.

Matthew 26:48 Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.

I wonder why he kissed Him. That is a religious sign and he was bringing the religious leaders to get Him. It wasn t a habit and a customary thing for those disciples to kiss each other. You don t read that anywhere else in the Bible. But you go back to 1 Kings 19:18 and Hosea 13:2 and you ll find the Baal worshippers kissing each other.

When you find some religious leader that puts his hand out and lets people kisshis finger or his ring, you re not dealing with the worship that God set up, you redealing with Baal worship. Psalms calls them the bulls of Bashan a bunch of Baal

worshipping priests and religious leaders, and Judas gives them their sign and he says, Hail, master. (I ve told you before that Judas never called Him Lord but always called Him master.

Matthew 26:49 And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him.

I know that there are people who get bent out of shape when I say this but sometime you ought to count the words in Verse 49 and see how many there are. It isjust one of those phenomena in English.



50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come?

It is interesting to me that He calls him friend.

John 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; [I have chosen you friends.]

Judas wasn t there in John 15 when Christ said that to them. Judas had already gone out in Chapter 13 to cut the deal that was going to betray Him. The next time Christ sees Judas come to Him, He says, Judas, you re one of my boys, you re one of my men, you re one of us, Judas. You re my friend. You have the opportunity to have the same relationship with me that Peter, James and John and James and Bartholomew and Thomas and all the rest of the disciples have. I haven t thrown you out. Now what did you come for? Are you here to take your stand with me ? or forsomething else?

The point is that Judas was responsible for his own fate. Judas was responsible for the betrayal. That s what is going on there. Christ isn t responsible for making him do it. Judas did it because he chose to do it. Christ made him the offer, even at the moment, when mine own familiar friend hath lifted up his heel aga

inst me. Psalm 41:9 prophesies it that way. Even then, Judas, you re one of my men. You re one of my group. I accept you. I give you the status. Now, what do you want? Have you come to take it?

No, he came to betray Him. Do you know who was responsible for that? Judas was. Don t you ever let anybody tell you that Christ was responsible for the betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ. Judas was!

You say, What would have happened if he hadn t betrayed Him? Don t you worry about that. Okay? The fact is, he did.

Those verses over there in Exodus where it says that God hardened pharaoh s heart don t you forget the verses that say first pharaoh hardened his own heart.

Proverbs 29:1 He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.

Hardening comes to that person who is not responsive to it. Judas was responsible for his own action.

Proverbs 27:6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Judas took the accolade but he turned out to be a deceiver.

Matthew 26:50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.51 And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. 52 Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?



54 But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?55 In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me.56 But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.

We don t have time to go into that part of the passage now but we ll take it up next time. I did read it because we talked about the incident with Peter cutting off the servant s ear.

The Lord Jesus Christ comes out of that garden totally submissive to the Father swill, totally submissive, not just to die. You see, Peter was willing to die.Look back to Verse 35.

35 Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples.

Peter is willing to go down in a fight and he says, If they whack me under, I ll go down fighting with you. Christ didn t come out of that garden to go down fighting. He came out of that garden just to surrender, to willfully surrender Himselfup as a lamb before her shearers is dumb. Just to die as though He were guilty of all the claims against Him, he was numbered with the transgressors to die. Hecame out of that garden totally and completely submissive to the Father s will.

The disciples missed that because they were asleep at the time when they shouldhave been praying with Him and should have learned with Him. Because of that, they don t understand His total surrender in the face of the opposition here. Because of that, they all forsake Him. When the Lord Jesus Christ surrenders on purpose, they miss it because they haven t entered in to that total submissiveness that He had in His heart to the Father s will. We ll talk more about that next time as we go down through the passage.

Don t miss that issue of total surrender to the will of God the Father.

Today, you and I live in the Dispensation of Grace. You and I live in an age when we are in Christ and Christ is in us. What God has done for us in Christ is

our position and what God does for us by Christ being in us is our daily portion.

You see, when God places us in Christ, that s the position of blessing. But whenHe placed Christ in us, that put us in the possession of real power. That s why grace works because it isn t me that is having to do it (like Peter) in my own wisdom, in my own will, cutting off this and stopping that, but it is Christ in me as it is done by His energy, strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man that victory is achieved.

You are seeing it placed in bold relief before you as the Saviour, in total submission to the Father, walks in the Father s will and accomplishes His purpose, and as men in the flesh, blind to it all, rebel against it.

May we walk not as the apostles did but walk as the Saviour with our hearts just submissive to the will of God, in tune with it, knowing what it is from His word, and then be submissive to it.

Our Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus and this time that we can study about His perfect life. As Paul exhorts us, Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. As we see His character, His mindset in these wonderful passages, we look far beyond the program of prophecy that He preached and we look into the wonders of His character and His person. May that blessed life that is His a



nd that resides in us be the thing that gives power and motivation and energy to us so we can say with Paul, For me to live is Christ and I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me. We thank you for it in His blessed name. Amen.


TEST #4


1. The closer we draw to the cross the more vividly we see human nature. T or F?2. How does the deity of Christ shine through even in the hour of His humiliation? Give at least three examples.3. Who is it that took the major part in the murder of Christ?4. Why was a special memorial established for Mary?5. What is the significance of the apostles question, Is it I? (26:22)

6. Christ made five attempts to win Judas from his betrayal demonstrating that the responsibility lay with Judas alone. T or F?7. Was the Lord s Supper introduced as part of the Passover meal or after it? Prove your answer.8. Explain the meaning of this is in this is my body (26:26) and this is my blood (26:28).9. Define the following positions on the Lord s Supper:a. Transubstantiation b. Consubstantiation c. Plymouth Brethren d. Quaker/Salvation Army e. Pauline 10. Who are the many for who Christ s blood is to be shed in 26:28? How does th

is fit today?11. The blood of Christ is the foundation for both the prophecy and the mystery programs.

T or F?12. The blood of the New Covenant is the blood that ratifies the New Covenant. T or F?13. By Scripture demonstrate what was in the cup.14. Why does Christ promise to meet them in Galilee after the resurrection (26:32)?15. What does the cup of 26:39,42 represent?16. Explain the progression in thinking through Christ s three prayers in 26:39,42,44 and identify the one basic unchanging issue.17. What caused Peter to forsake Christ?

18. Why were they unable to get witnesses to convict Christ?19. What is the significance of the High Priest s rending his clothes?20. What caused Peter s repentance?




MATTHEW (Part 2 302)






Matthew 26. We want to continue our study in the Book of Matthew. In Chapter 26, you are approaching the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has had His Passover meal, as it were, with His disciples. There are really two Passovers. I pointed that out to you: one that Christ celebrates with His apostles whichis not the actual Passover on the night of the fourteenth and fifteenth but it is a pre Passover that He has with them before He dies. He says to them, I desire to eat this Passover with you. I am going to be dead tomorrow night when the nation is eating it, so I am going to eat it with you now. They eat it in the evening.

It is nighttime and He leaves the upper room with His disciples and goes out tothe Garden of Gethsemane, the oil press. You can literally see the life being squ

eezed out of the Lord as He prays in the garden. He takes Peter, James and John a little farther than the others.

One time, I heard J. Vernon McGee say that the reason that Christ focused on Peter, James and John so much was not because they were so wonderful, spiritual and smart but because it was that those guys needed special attention because theyhad so many problems. That sure sounds right, doesn t it? Peter was pretty impetuous and had problems all the time.

If you know the record of James and John, they had the same kinds of problems.They were the sons of thunder. People get the idea that John was a meek, mild, milksop kind of guy. I don t know where they get that idea. People looked at Johnand his brother James, and said, They are the sons of thunder. Do you reckon you

get that kind of nickname because you are sweet and never raise your voice? The answer is no. They were robust men who were used to speaking their mind.

I don t know why Christ focuses on those three men. There is probably a better reason than they were His pets. Perhaps it was because He recognized their potential and need of the special attention. But anyway, He takes them away and He prays three times in the garden. Then He comes out to go to the cross.

So, you re in the nighttime, sometime after midnight at this point, where Judas betrays Him. Judas had left the upper room to go make the deal to betray Him. He cuts the deal and comes with a mob of soldiers and thugs and chief priests andreligious leaders. He comes to take Christ. You remember that we saw last time that they come into the garden and Jesus asks, Who are you looking for? They tel

l Him and He says, I am he. When He says that, they all just fall back onto the ground with their sticks and lanterns and swords. They stand back up and grab their things and put their hats back on and He says, Who is it that you said you wanted? They say, Jesus. This is an irrational kind of crowd. They are still coming with blood in their eyes.

Judas goes over to Him and throws his arms around His neck and kisses Him. When it says kisses, it isn t just a little peck on the cheek. Have you seen in the news how these guys in the Middle East grab each other to greet each other? Judasis making a big show out of it. .



Matthew 26:50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come?

That is the last appeal that Christ makes to Judas conscience. It still is not too late for Judas but he chooses to betray Him. Christ calls him a friend.

After Judas had left the upper room, in John 15, Christ says to the eleven who were still there, You are my friends. You are not servants, you are my friends and I am going to lay down my life for my friends.

Here, because Judas was formerly excluded, He takes that same word and affixes it to Judas. He is still including him. He is saying, Judas, you can still be part of us and what we are doing. And, Judas, even in that last moment of solicitation by the Saviour, of course, betrays Him and goes on with the dastardly deed.

Judas was responsible for what he did, not Christ, not God, not somebody else, Judas. He was the betrayer.

50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.

They aren t just coming up and saying, Will you please come and go with us this way? I mean, if a fellow just spoke to you and knocked you down, when you get your

hands on him, you want to get a good grip. They re coming up and getting Him by the scruff of the neck and they are going to take Him.

51 And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear.

The fellow who had the sword was Peter. He s ready for action. There s nothing slow about Peter. He s got the sword.

John 18:10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.

They even give you the name of the guy who got his ear cut off. Do you reckon i

f you lived in that time period and you had the name of the fellow who had his ear cut off when they went to betray Christ and take Him, do you reckon that if you wanted to check the authenticity of the record, you could find that fellow?If an investigative reporter can find Oliver North in the basement of the WhiteHouse and stick a microphone at his mouth every morning when he tries to go to work, don t you reckon they could find Malchus?

Little things like that are stuck in there just to prove beyond any shadow of adoubt that was true. You can go into any court room in any state of the union and prove by the laws of authenticity and historicity that establish the legal processes of our country, the accuracy of an event. You can prove the Bible is true in every case.

The Lord even puts in the name of the name of the man who got his ear cut off, demonstrating the validity and accuracy of the scripture. Peter cuts off Malchus right ear. Now, think about that for a minute. The sword isn t a long dueling sword that you see on TV when they are fencing. It s about eighteen inches long like a Bowie knife and it would be something you would keep in a scabbard in your belt. Peter pulls that thing out and he goes for the servant s head but if he swings the sword vertically, he would hit the shoulder. You don t fight a guy like that. You pull out the sword and slash horizontally in an attempt to decapitate the guy or at least to make him bounce backwards. When Peter comes swinging that sword, old Malchus ducks and that little nub of an ear goes up in the air. My



point to you is that Peter is ready for action. He is serious about what is going on here.

Peter told Christ back in Matthew 16, I won t let you be killed.

Matthew 26:33 Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.

35 Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee.

He is ready to go and shed his blood. If this is where the end comes, let s get on with it. Peter believed the old adage that the best defense is a good offense.

He figured that the first person who drew blood was the one who was going to win. Out it comes and there he goes. You have to get that in your mind about Peter in this event or you will never understand the psychology about what is going on in Peter s mind.

Don t you believe for one minute the bad mouth that is given to Peter that says he is a coward. Peter didn t tuck his tail and run from anybody. He is standing right there in the front of the line and when they put their hands on Christ, outcomes the sword and he begins to swing and off goes the man s ear. Now the bloodis flowing.

The question is, Why did they have a sword to start with? Luke 22:35 And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing.36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, andlikewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

This takes place just before they go to the garden in the same context as we are reading in Matthew 26. Fellows, if you don t have a sword, you d better go get one.

37 For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me

, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.

In other words, The time for me to die is here. They are going to consider me athief and a robber and a crook and they are going to come after me.

38 And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, Itis enough.

They miss the point. He is telling them, Things are now changing from when I sent you out. (In Matthew 10) I m fixing to die and I ll be gone and, until the Holy Spirit comes back, you re going to be on your own. I won t be here to protect you.

When you get to rightly dividing the Word of God and talking about dispensational things, you can go through the earthly ministry of Christ and find little changes. There is a change here. He is saying that between now and Pentecost there is going to be some differences.

It isn t a new dispensation, you understand. He says, It s been that way, but now it going to be this way until the Holy Spirit comes over there. He says, You re going to need a sword and some scrip, some money.

The situation is changing now and when we get over in Acts we will see that thin



gs have changed. There is a progression in the activity that s going on here.

Luke 22:49 When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword?

That s when Peter whacked the guy in the ear. The point is, Christ told them to get the sword for their own protection, not for Christ s protection, not that theyshould step in and keep Him from going to the cross but because they were goingto need it for their own protection.

John 18:8 Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way:

In other words, You want me, leave my fellows alone. The idea is that the crowd that came to get Christ evidently was going to get them too and round up the whole bunch of them. The idea is that when the shepherd is gone, what happens to the sheep? They smite the shepherd and the sheep scatter. He says, Look guys, you re going to be on your own out there. You need the sword for your own protection.

So, they got the sword and they think they have to protect Christ ? and there goes Peter. He is ready for action and off goes Malchus ear.

Matthew 26:52 Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place:

for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.That verse has been maligned and misused by the liberals, modernists and humanists down through the centuries. It isn t hard to understand what He is saying. He is not saying that you shouldn t have a gun. They passed that ban on handguns in Oak Park and I saw literature that had that verse quoted in it. Isn t that wild? That is as wild a misinterpretation and misapplication in the Word of God that you ever find. He s not saying that you shouldn t have a handgun to protect yourself. He just told them to get a sword to protect themselves.

What He is saying, put the sword into his place, is that the rightful place for the sword is in the hands of the government. (Romans 13) Okay? For all they thattake the sword shall perish with the sword. The emphasis is on the word take. T

hat is, people who arbitrarily, illegally, presumptuously resort to violence are going to wind up dying a violent death.

That s exactly what Genesis 9:5 and 6 and many other passages in the Word of God,say. The issue there is that the sword belongs in the hands of the government.

It doesn t mean that you can t go to war and you can t declare war on somebody or ifyou serve in the military that you are violating the commandments of Christ. People get all kinds of warped ideas about those things. Military service is scriptural and right and is ordained by God and it is not in vain and is not a violation of the passage.

What He is telling Peter is, Hey guy, you re out of line. You re over here jumping in here and doing something you ought not to be doing. He rebukes Peter.

53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?

Peter, if I need some force and some soldiers, I can get a lot better ones than you are. I don t need you. If I need to be delivered I can just say, Father, and Hel send a legion of six thousand men (in a Roman Army). He ll send me twelve times six (seventy two thousand). How many did one angel kill over there in 2 Kings19? One hundred eighty five thousand in one night. Samson killed one thousandwith the jawbone of an ass.



Do you reckon that seventy two thousand angels would have any trouble taking care of the Lord? What He is saying to Peter is, If brute force action is what we needed here tonight I could get help instantly, promptly, help that would be happy to do the job and they wouldn t whack somebody s ear off, they would take care ofthe situation. That isn t the issue here.

54 But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

You see, Pete, if all I needed to do was to be delivered, I could speak the wordand I d be delivered and there wouldn t be any problem at all, but if I did that how would the scriptures be fulfilled?

The scriptures said He was going to go die. The scriptures said they all wouldforsake Him. The scriptures said he needed to be numbered with the transgressors as we just read over there in Luke.

He said, Listen, Pete, the issue is not me being delivered from this tough circumstance, the issue is the Word of God and God s word and God s will being accomplished. That s the issue, Pete. Haven t you got that straight yet?

And do you know what? Peter didn t have it straight, did he?

Matthew 26:31 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of m

e this night: for it is written,Why were they all going to be offended? Christ says, Because the scripture saysyou are going to be offended.

Peter responds, I don t care what the Bible says, I don t care what the verse says, I will never be offended.

33 Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.

You see, Peter forgot the word and Christ is telling him:


The issue is God s will and God s word and that s the thing that counts.

55 In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me.56 But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.

You see, the issue is the word and having the word fulfilled. This was the hour of His submission and this was the hour that the power of darkness had come and

He was going to be submitted and submissive to the hands of sinful men,

56 Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.

I am sure they would have called it a tactical retreat. But brother, they were getting out of there. Let me show you how fast they were getting out of there.

Have you ever heard of a guy losing his shirt getting away so fast? Do you know where that expression comes from?



To be free from the law, you have to die. You are never free from the control and dominion of the law until you die. The key is that we keep sticking ourselves into it. I want to do this and I want to do that. I m going to do, I m going todo, instead of it being Christ in me. The life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. It s His life accomplishing.

The point there: it is important to notice that the final blow for Peter, you might say, is when Christ says that He is going to surrender on purpose. That s what gets Pete. Peter wasn t a coward. He went out of that garden in a frustrated rage.

I ll tell you something, people. The most bedeviling thing in God s work is frustrated ambition. Frustrated ambition is something that destroys, checks and stopsmore Christians than you could ever write on a page. People have ambition to do this for God and do that for God. They have this idea and that idea. And it s them, it isn t the Lord.

A man is subject to the law as long as the man lives. It s just performance, performance, performance to get to God, and God says, No, no, no. You ve got that wrong. I have put you in Christ and it s got to be Him. It s got to be grace, not law. It s His grace, not your performance system. It s got to be the Holy Spirit taking the Word of God and motivating.

That s what Pete has done. He has completely forgotten about the Word of God anddisregarded that and has gone off on human viewpoint and his own will. And buddy, when he goes out of that garden, the smoke is blowing out of his ears. He is mad and offended and he is frustrated. He is not a coward. He didn t run out of there with his tail tucked between his legs and his knees shivering and a pulse rapid and his face a pasty white because he got scared. A scared fellow doesn tpull his sword and walk right into a battle with the high priest s servant. Do you reckon maybe he was going after the high priest? I don t know. Peter wasn t a coward. He just wasn t ready for the will of God. He wasn t ready for the surrender.

57 And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled.58 But Peter followed him afar off

We re not going to compare all the passages as we go through all the latter part of Matthew. It would take a lot longer than the time we have to spend. But, I want you to kind of understand what is going on. I am not going to try to give you a chronology of events. If you have a Scofield Reference Bible, he has a good chronology in there and you can spend some very interesting time trying to work out a chronology of events.

I ll tell you again that one of the most pitiful, frustrating things you will ever see in your life is Christian scholars, good men, trying to produce a harmony of the gospels. If God Almighty had wanted one gospel account written, how manywould He have written? One. He wrote four, so how many do you reckon that He wanted written? Four.

You don t need a harmony of the gospels. Every harmony you will ever see has gaps here and gaps there. Maybe it s here, maybe it s there. The purpose was not to present one chronological, homogeneous account. Each of the writers had a perspective about Christ: His life: His birth, His ministry, His death, that they wanted to present. You miss that when you don t focus on the book and you try to stick them all together.

So, I am not interested in producing a harmony for you. It s a frustrating kind of thing to do and it captures a lot of time that would better spent studying the



things the way God wrote them.

John 18:15 And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest,

Now, that other disciple was John. When they come and get Christ, everybody flees and runs from the garden, but Peter and John stop outside the gate. When the mob drags Him by, Peter just follows along as they go. They first go to Annas.

13 And led him away to Annas first; for he was father in law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year.

First, they take Him from the garden to Annas. Now, you don t know what happenedthere. Why would you not know? There weren t any disciples there. There weren t any believers there to have an understanding, only His enemies and the Lord so you don t get any record of it in the scriptures.

From there, they go to to Caiaphas and it is different.

15 And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest.16 But Peter stood at the door without.

John actually goes in with Him. They forsake Him in the garden, Peter and Johncatch up with Him as they go and John actually goes right into the judgment hall with Him. Peter hangs loose and stays outside.

Matthew 26:58 But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest's palace, and went in, and sat with the servants, to see the end.

Peter just loved the Lord. He wasn t the kind of guy who could just quit Him. He is frustrated and confused. He s offended and mad. He s all tore up and he s just going to follow the mob and see what happens, just follow Him to the end. He just couldn t leave Him. You sense that in Peter s heart.

59 Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death;

They get an ad hoc committee together. All the Sanhedrin didn t go along with killing the Lord. Joseph of Arimathæa, a member of the Sanhedrin, gave his tomb to bury Him in. Nicodemus was also a member of the Sanhedrin. They come forward so all of them, necessarily, are not going along but they are in such a small minority that John 12 says, that for fear of everybody else, they just kept their mouth shut and didn t say anything.

At Caiaphas house, the ad hoc committee of the Sanhedrin is assembled together.

57 where the scribes and the elders were assembled.

3 Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas,4 And consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him.5 But they said, Not on the feast day,

They are going to kill Him but not on the feast day. That s what they were theretalking about. That s when Judas made the deal to betray Him and they send the mob out to get Him. They come back to Annas, We got Him! We got Him! They want tokill Him for political reasons.



Remember in John 11:50, when Caiaphas said, It is expedient for us, that one manshould die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. (That we lose our place.)

That s why they want to kill Him, you see. They want to get rid of Him because they see Him as a threat to their political, religious, economic establishment. Let s get rid of Him. Let s bump Him off. Let s rub Him out.

Religious devilment is always done in the dark. It is always done under cover.Get Him before the council where the people can t hear His answers.

Do you remember watching that movie the other night about John Wycliffe? They got him in front of the council so only his enemies could hear what he said. Ifyou are standing outside, do you reckon that the council is going to give you an accurate representation? Not his enemies. No way.

So, they are going to box Christ into a little room and get false witnesses. They are going to try to trick Him all these many years and they are going to getHim. So, they gather their false witnesses together for the purpose of killingHim. They have already decided on His death. They just need some witnesses.

They have two problems. First, they have to get two witnesses. They don t care if they are true or not, they just have to get two witnesses. Why did they have

to have two? That s what the law said: By two or three witnesses every matter is to be established.

Matthew 26:60 But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet foundthey none. At the last came two false witnesses,

Why couldn t they find any witnesses? Do you want to see human nature again?

Mark 14:56 For many bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together.

They got one witness to lie that Christ did this or did that but they couldn t get two guys that told the same lie. They had a bunch of guys coming and accusing

Him of different things but they never agreed with each other.59 But neither so did their witness agree together.

They have a bunch of people coming in, trying to do their bidding to tell aboutHim and lie about Him, but they couldn t get two of them that agreed.

Matthew 26:60 At the last came two false witnesses,61 And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days

John 2:19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in threedays I will raise it up.

20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?21 But he spake of the temple of his body.

You see, they didn t understand what He meant. In Verse 19, He said. In Verse 20,hey said. In Verse 21, there is one of those little editorial comments that John writes. When John writes his book, every now and then he ll give an interpretive comment. It is real obvious that Verse 21 is what John is saying. Most of the time when John inserts a comment, it is obvious that he writes, This is what they said, but he adds, They missed it. This is what He was talking about.



At the time they didn t understand what He was talking about so these two guys come in and misquote what He said: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

Did He say He was going to destroy the temple of God in John 2:19? No. He said, [If you] destroy the temple. They took His doctrine and perverted, twisted anddistorted it. So, they took Him and are going to attack His doctrine and don t tell what He really said but twist and distort it and try to get Him on the basisof that.

Matthew 26:62 And the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee?

What did they witness against Him? Lies.

63 But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest answered and said unto him, Iadjure thee by the living God

That is, I put you under an oath before God that you tell me the truth.

63 I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.

Is that a good question?64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said:

You said it. (Did you figure that all out by yourself? Caiaphas, is that a doctrinal statement that you are saying or are you just curious?)

Come over to John 18 where you will see the whole gist of the conversation. This is the Lord. He is bound and tied up. A bunch of thugs had Him in the houseof His enemies who were plotting to kill Him and He says, You said it.

John 18:19 The high priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine.

Notice that please. You re going to be there one day. They wanted to know aboutHis disciples and His doctrine. When people want to get you, they want to knowabout your doctrine and your disciples, your friends, people you stand with, the hypocrites down at the church. They re going to take the doctrine and twist it. By that verse you ought to write down 2 Timothy 1:8.

2 Timothy 1:8 Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord [the doctrine of the risen Lord], nor of me his prisoner:

You ought not to be ashamed of the doctrine that God has given us to preach andyou ought not to be ashamed of the people who stand and preach it. You ought to be proud and happy and glad to stand with people who stand true to the doctrine

s that God has given to us to preach. You ought to be glad to do that.

There s a saying in the world: If you don t hang together, you will hang separately.

They are trying to embarrass Him. (He had some disciples He could be embarrassed about, didn t He?)

John 18:20 Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing.



21 Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said.

Man, that s tough talk from a man who is tied up by his enemies in their house atnight. He s just telling them the truth.

22 And when he had thus spoken, one of the officers which stood by struck Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, Answerest thou the high priest so?23 Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but ifwell, why smitest thou me?

How would you like to have a conversation with Him? Which one of you convinces me of sin? It s different when you deal with the Lord. The hatred of sinful men to be able to look Him in the eye, You are disrespectful to the high priest. Whack! Christ is the High Priest! Christ is the great High Priest! He s the one the high priest over there ought to bow down to in obeisance and worship. If you want to see a picture of religion, you re looking at it. If you want to see a picture of men trying to justify themselves before God, you re looking at it.

Matthew 26:64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, andcoming in the clouds of heaven.65 Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy.

66 What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.When He said, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand ofpower, and coming in the clouds of heaven. He was saying , I m Messiah. He is claiming and asserting His deity. You re going to see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power. (Psalm 110:1). Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

David said unto his Lord Lord, sit thou. (Matthew 22) He s Jehovah God. That s who He says He is. He is going to be coming in the clouds in great glory. (Daniel 7:13 and 14) He s the one who goes to the Ancient of days, God the Father, and receives the Kingdom. He comes in clouds and in great glory.

Do you see the two positions there? He is sitting and He is coming. We studied that back in Matthew 24 about Him in Revelation 6 (mid Tribulation), sitting on the throne and in Revelation 19, Him coming. He said, You re going to see me sitting in Revelation 6 and coming back to the earth in Revelation 19.

He just gives these guys a shot, just like that and they know what He is saying. That old high priest tears his robe. When he did that, he did something he never dreamed about doing. When he screamed out in horror at the assertion that Christ made about His deity and being the Messiah and he rent his clothes, that high priest did something that was demonstrative of what was happening to the nation at that time.

Leviticus 10:6 And Moses said unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and unto Ithamar, hi

s sons:

Aaron, the high priest, and his sons were the priesthood. Here, these are instructions on how the priesthood was to operate. Two of Aaron s boys, Nadab and Abihu, just got killed for failing to obey the instructions. Here are more instructions.

Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the people



What s going to happen if they rend their clothes? They are going to die and wrath is going to come upon the people.

When that high priest of that favored nation stood there before the Lord Jesus Christ, he may have had Him hogtied, trussed and bound up but He was the Messiah. He was Jehovah God in human flesh. When the Lord Jesus Christ asserts His deity and that guy screams out and rends his clothes, that pictures the fact that the priesthood was dying and that the wrath of God was going to fall on those people.

That s why, in Acts 2, Peter says, Save yourselves from this untoward, crooked, perverted generation. That s why, in Luke 11, Christ calls them a generation of my wrath. That s the reason it is in Matthew. There stands the King! There stands thenation rejecting Him! The result, symbolized by the rending of the clothes, isthat jeopardy: the priesthood dies. Isn t that what the Book of Hebrews says? Hetook away the first that He might establish the second. It s not the priesthood down here. It s that priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. It s that new priesthood over there in Revelation 7 that the favored nation, the Little Flock, is going to have. Wrath is going to come upon the people.

Matthew 26:66 What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death.67 Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him withthe palms of their hands,68 Saying, Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote thee?

Now begins the mockery and the abuse. They ve already tied and bound Him and dragged him around. They ve already slapped Him for speaking disrespectfully of the high priest. Now, they really go after Him. From here on out, begins a constant badgering that finally ends up at Calvary.

1 Peter 2:21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

Now, it is important for you to see that because when Christ goes through these

things, He is as a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. As He goes through all these torturous events, He takes them.

Most of the details of the actual physical agony that He suffered are not in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They are in the Old Testament. It is fascinating that by far and away, most of the details about the actual physical agony that Hegoes through are in the Old Testament. There are tremendous details back therein Psalm 22, Psalm 38, Psalm 69. Psalms like those just have tremendous insights into the physical agony He goes through.

Isaiah 50:5 The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.6 I gave my back to the smiters,

That s what you read in Matthew 26:67:

and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair:

Have you ever heard preachers talk about them blindfolding Him and turning Him around and telling Him to prophesy and pulling out a piece of His beard? There isn t a word in the New Testament that says they ever pulled out His beard.

Have you ever heard a preacher say how they took nails and nailed His feet? Did



you know if it weren t for Psalm 22, you wouldn t know that they punctured His feet?

Listen. Don t tell me that grace people don t ever study the Old Testament. That is just boring stuff when they tell you that. You do remember, when you studiedin Matthew 26, you were in the Old Testament, don t you? So, we are not out of whack. We re not out of context.

Isaiah 50:6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.7 For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.

You see, His death didn t just happen. He accomplished it.

8 He is near that justifieth me;

Every time I read Verse 8, it sends a shiver up my back.

who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let himcome near to me.

The adversary was the devil. He begins in Gethsemane and goes all the way to the cross. He says, Come on, man. There s my chin. Take your best shot.

People, there is a spiritual transaction going on in the events that we are reading in Matthew that far succumbs anything you could ever imagine except with the eye and the ear and the heart of faith in what you read in that book.

And to you and I who are told:

Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

For us whose ministry is in that realm, we should not study Matthew, Mark, Lukeand John when it talks about His agony and just see the physical gory goo. You d

better look beyond that and see the spiritual battle He was undergoing.In Verses 7 and 8, you are entering into the mental attitude with which Christ approached Calvary. He is saying, I am more than a conqueror through Him that loved me.

Does that minister to your heart? In Christ, in Him, there is absolute, total victory. Go back and read Psalm 22, and Psalm 38, and Psalm 69. Go back and read those passages, those great Messianic Psalms, where you get His mental attitude and you see the spiritual agony and conflict and faith that He had in God theFather. He is near that justifieth me.

Then when you read those verses over in Paul s epistles about the faith of Christ,

you remember that faith that He had in God the Father s faithfulness to Him. His faithfulness to us is just the same.

I ll tell you folks, these passages that we are studying in Matthew ought to be as familiar to you as anything in the Word of God.




Matthew 26. Tonight we ll look at some information about Peter. We are in the last few hours of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the night before His death. The next morning He is in the hands of His enemies. The chief priestshave come and captured Him. The Sanhedrin has sent out their ad hoc committee.

They ve taken Him first to Annas and then over to Caiaphas place and there they are grilling Him and giving Him the third degree. When they left the Garden of Gethsemane with Him, you will remember that all of the apostles fled.

Matthew 26:56 But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.57 And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled.58 But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest's palace, and went in,and sat with the servants, to see the end.

Peter loved Him and when he left the garden, as I tried to tell you last time, he was in a frustrated rage. He left in a rage of anger. People give the idea that Peter was a coward. He wasn t a coward at all when it came to fighting. He s

tood right up in the front row and got out his sword and started doing businesswith it and Christ stopped him. Christ tells the disciples and then turns to the multitude and tells them, I surrender. I am giving up on purpose. They are not capturing me. I am giving myself over into their hands.

That sort of nailed the nail on the coffin lid for Peter. He would have understood if they were going to fight. He told Christ, on at least two occasions, that he would fight to the death with Him. But, he didn t tell Him that he would give up with Him. You have to understand human nature. Peter was a commercial fisherman. He was a man s man, so to speak. He wasn t a lace pants kind of fellow sitting in an ivory tower.

You get the idea, when you read commentaries, that these people were a bunch of

pansies or sissies or wimps or whatever the common word is to describe a personlike that. This fellow was someone who was used to be out battling the elements, a man of the world. You re going to see here, in a few minutes, he s a fellow who could cuss a blue streak at the drop of a hat. He knew what it was to live inthe world and get around in it. Fighting was second nature to him. He was a rough and crude kind of guy.

Acts 4 says these men were unlearned and ignorant. That didn t mean that they were stupid. It just meant that as far as the culture of the world was concerned,they weren t plugged into that. They weren t raised in an ivory palace and didn t get their education by polishing their heels on the top of a desk, drinking a Dr. Pepper and eating a moon pie, talking about some theoretical theophany that tookplace in bygone ages.

These guys were out fishing, making a living, supporting their families, livinglife. They heard John the Baptist. Christ came along and called them. So, that s who they are. Peter sort of reverts back to some of that in here.

What happens in Verses 59 to 68 is that you see the scene in Caiaphas palace as they grill and prosecute and condemn Christ. Now, you are going to get a flashback.

69 Now Peter sat without in the palace:



While this is going on inside, here is what Peter is doing outside.

69 Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee.

To get the psychology of what is going on there, come over to John 15. This girl didn t just walk up to him.

John 18:15 And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple:

There are really two of them waiting outside the gate as they take Jesus by. This other disciple is John, the writer of the Book of John.

15 that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest.

So, John actually goes with the crowd into Caiaphas palace.

16 But Peter stood at the door without. Then went out that other disciple, which was known unto the high priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter.17 Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not.

That s the first denial. What happens is that Peter is standing out there and John is inside. John sics the girl on him, so to speak. I am sure that Peter knew that John went in. They probably had a discussion on their way. John may have said, I can get us in. I know this place. Peter may have said, I don t want to beseen with the guy. I ll stay out here. So, Peter stands in the hallway between the main building and the road. John knows he is out there: I know his heart. He sjust mad and offended. John speaks to the girl, Do you see that guy out there. Tell him to come on in. She goes out to get him.

Matthew 26:70 But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest.

Peter says, Who, me? You don t know what you are talking about. Denial number one.71 And when he was gone out into the porch

He s out walking around. The guy can t stay still. Does that tell you anything about what is going on in his mind? It s a cold night. (John 18 says they had a fire because it was cold.) He can t sit still. He is nervous and upset and frustrated.

71 And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth.72 And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man.

John 18:25 And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself.

Have you heard of warming yourself by the devil s fire? This is where it comes from.

They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He deniedit, and said, I am not.26 One of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him?



He just tried to cut the head of this guy s relative and he pins the finger on Peter. What I am trying to get you to see is that the things that were happening to Peter somebody doesn t just walk up to Peter and say, Hey Pete, do you know the guy? Peter says, I don t know him. And, Peter didn t just run over to the doorkeeper and say, I don t know that guy in there.

There are a lot of things happening in Peter s life right now, a lot of confusion. He doesn t understand. He has been tremendously disappointed: Christ is goingto go die. Peter wasn t a coward. Peter was a coward only when it came to sitting still and taking a beating when he was able to retaliate and fight back.That s the only time Peter was a coward. Peter wasn t a coward if it came to fighting. Peter was a coward when it came to sitting still and taking the licking when he had the ability to fight back.

Do you recognize any of that in you? That s human nature, isn t it? Peter s fix is about all of us. He gets frustrated and angry and his heart won t let him leave so he follows along. Isn t that the way it is when you get in the flesh, your heart just won t let you leave the Lord alone completely. Your heart is there but youjust don t want to be associated with it for awhile. Do you? Well, you do, whether you are going to admit it or not. That s us, see?

Somebody else comes along and says, You were with Him. Peter said, I don t know theman. Think about that. He doesn t even give His name. He just says, The man.

John 13:13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.Now he doesn t even mention His name. He has gone so far that he can t even get His name out.

Matthew 26:61 [The false witness] said, This fellow said,

Peter is beginning to talk like the unbeliever did. Have you ever noticed thatwhen people get mad at you, if they know your name and maybe you were their friend, they don t use your first name any more? They call you by your last name. Old Jordan said this. Old Jordan said that. When you are friends, you don t usuallydo that. Have you ever noticed how your friends talk to you and about you? Where I come from down south, it is real common to call people by their last name b

ut if you get in an argument, it gets to be common everywhere. That s what Peteris doing.

It has always impressed me that when Peter blew up there and denies Him, it s just the man. He even begins to leave out His name.

The second denial is in Verse 72. Now a little time goes by.

Matthew 26:73 And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee.

If his speech betrayed him, what does that mean? He s been talking. It s been a little while so he s gotten to talking with these people. He is standing in the way

of sinners, sitting in the seat of the scornful and walking in the way of the ungodly. He s right there with them. His speech betrayed him because he was fromGalilee, up north.

Luke 22:59 And about the space of one hour after another confidently affirmed,saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is a Galilaean.

Mark 14:70 And he denied it again. And a little after, they that stood by saidagain to Peter, Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a Galilaean, and thy speech agreeth thereto.



Do you see that? Peter remembered the word. Christ said, All of you are going to be offended for it is written. Peter said, I don t care what everybody else does, but I won t be. I don t care what the Bible says, I am not going to be offended. Christ said, Pete, before the cock crows, you re going to deny me three times. And he did.

Peter heard that cock crow ? and there was something else:

Luke 22:60 And Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew.61 And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.62 And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.

Can you see the scene? Can you see it in your own life? Here you are out there in the flesh, just doing it your own self, forgetting about the Word, forgetting what God says, forgetting about the doctrine that ought to be in you and thatyou ought to be operating under.

All of a sudden the cock crows and as quick as it does, Peter looked to the Lord to see if the Lord was looking at him. Their eyes met and brother, you talk about some glance. There s the Lord walking across the way, tied up, trussed up, bl

ood on His face, garment torn and the cock crows. Pete looks up.It is interesting because Peter knew where He was. Peter was ranting and raving but he knew right where to see Him. He knew what was going on. He looks and that is the look that made him go out and weep bitterly.

That is real repentance. That is a godly sorrow that works repentance. Repentance is not sorrow for sin. Penitence and penance are sorrow for sin and tryingto make up, restitution, for your sins. Repentance, in the Bible, means a change of mind. Paul says, Godly sorrow works repentance.

What happened to Peter was that he remembered the Word. That s something you don twant to forget about.

One time, somebody said, If you have a hard time remembering the Word, get a better look at Christ. That s what Peter did. When he saw the Lord, he remembered. The Word convicted him and he went out and got right. He changed his mind and it tore him up. What tore him up was not so much what he did because that wasn t the issue. What tore him up was who he was. Godly sorrow worked repentance, a change of mind and attitude, in him.

Matthew27:1 When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of thepeople took counsel against Jesus to put him to death:2 And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to PontiusPilate the governor.

Now, those two verses are very important because what you ve had at Caiaphas houseso far has been an unofficial, ad hoc committee. Come back to Deuteronomy 19, and you will see the problem they faced. I said last time that they faced two basic problems in their trial of Christ that night. First, they had the problem of getting the witnesses to agree together. They kept calling witnesses in and they were false witnesses willing to lie for them but they wouldn t tell the same lie.

Finally, Caiaphas just asked Him, Are you the Son of God? And Christ said, You said it. Caiaphas goes berserk and says He has blasphemed because He said that He i



s God. That s what they are going to try Him for. You are worthy of death. Leviticus says that you are to be stoned to death.

So now, they have the accusation but they have another problem. An ad hoc committee can t execute somebody or pass a formal sentence.

Deuteronomy 19:16 If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong;17 Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days;18 And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witnessbe a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother;19 Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother:so shalt thou put the evil away from among you.

That would stop false witnessing, wouldn t it? If you are going to perjure yourself against a guy to try to get him convicted and they catch you, you are going to get the sentence that you tried the other guy to get. If you are risking that kind of thing, you d think twice. That is good social judgment.

In the laws back there in Deuteronomy and Exodus, he talks about a guy who steals something. You don t put him in jail; you make him pay back four times what hestole. If you steal one hundred dollars, you have to pay back four hundred dollars. That gives four fold restitution to the victim and it gives a real interes

ting type of incentive to the criminal not to steal any more.Ephesians 4:28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good,

That s the way to put down those kinds of things. It is interesting to me that the thing that Ephesians 4 says that grace will produce in a person s life is righteousness. That s why Paul says in Romans 8:

Romans 8:4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

When you walk under grace led by the Spirit and live under the principle of grac

e, motivated by grace today, you re going to accomplish the good works that the law demanded but never enabled you to do. You re going to accomplish the standardsbut just for different reasons.

It is obvious that the judges had to be there. They had to have a formal hearing so in Matthew 27, 1 and 2, in the morning they gathered together and the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel. This is the formal meetingof the Sanhedrin to officially, formally condemn Christ (which you notice that they do in a snap of the finger). The ad hoc committee met, tried Him, condemned Him and beat Him up.

Matthew 27:1 When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death:

2 And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to PontiusPilate the governor.

Just like you had a flashback about Peter denying and repenting, now you are going to have a flashback to Judas. There are two flashbacks right here, back to back, by Matthew and they are given to illustrate two different types of repentance.

2 Corinthians 7:9 Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance:



Please remember, will you, repentance does not mean to be sorry for your sins.I don t care how many times Billy Graham says that is what it means. That is notwhat it means. I don t care how many times you read it in tracts and in literature and books; that is not what it means in the Bible.

Penance and penitence are religious terms and that is what they mean. That is not what repentance means and it is clear in the verse. Sorrow leads you to something else. They are not the same. Repentance (metanoia) means a change of mind, to turn around the way you think.

9 for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage byus in nothing.10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation

In the passage, he is talking to believers. He is not talking about salvation from hell. He is talking about salvation from defeat and destruction in the Christian life. He is talking about overcoming sin and that kind of thing.

10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: butthe sorrow of the world worketh death.

You can have the sorrow of the world which will ruin you and kill your Christian experience. It will just wither up and fall apart. Or, you can have the godly

sorrow that works repentance that brings you to the place of objectively evaluating what you are doing, doing the right thing in response and properly going on. That is real guilt, real repentance under grace.

Those are the two kinds of repentance. In Peter, you see godly sorrow working real repentance. He was changed by it. In Judas, you are going to see the sorrow of the world, a false kind of repentance. In Judas, you are going to see a different repentance, the sorrow of the world. I m sorry I got caught. I made a mistake. It s not the godly sorrow, not an objective recognition of what the real issue is, which is, I m the one that is wrong. I am responsible.

Matthew 27:3 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chie

f priests and elders,4 Saying, I have sinned

That is a pretty good confession, isn t it?

4 I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.

Is that a true statement? Sure is. Does Judas want to do right? Well, he brings the money back.

5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

Wasn t he pretty sorry for what he did? He has the remorse of conscience. He goes out and kills himself. That s being pretty depressed and sorrowful and remorseful for what he did. That s the sorrow of the world.

When guilt comes to the place where, instead of being real guilt, it is the world s sorrow, the psychological feelings of shame and rejection, fear and lack of any self worth, all these psychological guilt feelings ? that is what he has here. He is crying out and it is the repentance of despair. It s not true, real repentance. This is just the guilt syndrome. He is just sorry for the problems andthe mistake that he made for what he has done. He is not really experiencing tr



ue guilt which is an objective looking and saying, I am wrong and not just that the thing I did was wrong, but I am the one who did it. I am accountable.

Rather, Judas is saying, I have sinned and all the folks know what I did.

Judas and Peter both were sorry; both wanted to do the right thing; both wantedto make restitution. The difference between the two guys was they went to different places. Peter went out and wept bitterly. I ll bet he went back to the Garden of Gethsemane from where he had just come, and went right back to that spot where his Lord had been praying and had asked him to pray. I ll bet he got right down on his face on that spot and got the thing right between him and the Lord.

Judas went to the priests. Did you ever hear of anybody going to confession? That s what Judas did. He went up to a bunch of priests that were called fathers and wore long, black robes, and did all kinds of little hooledy doos and they took his confession.

What would make one guy do one and another guy do the other? Their heart. Faith. That s what happens to Peter here.

Judas said, I have sinned, and he surely had, but it wasn t the godly sorrow that works real repentance unto salvation. It was the sorrow that works death so Judas went out and hanged himself.

By the way, there are seven people in the Bible who said, I have sinned. You talk about a good sermon. It would make a good series of sermons. If you want to study repentance in the Bible, get your concordance and start over there in Exodus 9 with Pharaoh. I have sinned. It s just a hypocritical confession. He was a hardened sinner. In Numbers 22, it s Balaam.

Then there s Saul in 1 Samuel 15, and Achen in Joshua 7; David in 2 Samuel 12, the repentance of a saint. Then there s the prodigal son. He comes to the father and says, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight. And here, it is Judas.

You can see those different kinds of repentance in those men and what they did.

Judas had the sorrow of the world that works death. So he died. I have betrayed innocent blood. You ought to write in the margin of your Bible by that verse, Acts 20:28. Innocent blood. I am sure he didn t fathom what he was saying.

Acts 20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over thewhich the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he [God] hath purchased with his [God s] own blood.

It was God s blood that was poured out at Calvary. There is not much doubt in mymind about why the new versions change that verse more often than not.

When Judas said, I have betrayed innocent blood, he didn t know the half of it. Tha

t was not only innocent blood but it was God s blood. We sing a song:

There is a fountain filled with bloodDrawn from Immanuel s veins;And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,Lose all their guilty stains.

The blood that flowed through Immanuel s veins is a hymn writer s way of saying that the blood which is the basis of our salvation was God s blood. Immanuel, God with us.



Matthew 27:4 Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.

You have a problem? What s that to us? Take care of it yourself. Beat it.

That shows you the situation that Israel was in. Their leaders are ignoring the fact that Christ was innocent and that Judas was guilty. We know what we want to do and we are going to go do it. They are out to get it done and they are going to accomplish it.

Matthew 27:5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful forto put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.7 And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.8 Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.

Come over to Acts 1 because this is one of the classic contradictions in your Bible. This is a place where people will often look. For years I used to do a lotof work on the street corners, that kind of ministry preaching and passing out tracts. I have dealt literally with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. Every now and then you ll meet somebody who says the Bible is full of junk and

full of fables and contradictions. I used to hand them a Bible and say, Oh, is that right? I ve been reading it for a long time. How about helping me out. Show me one, will you? You don t get very many takers when it comes to that. They just heard somebody say that and they thought it sounded smart so they repeat it.When it comes to showing you one, that s different.

Once I was in a bus station putting out some tracts. You know, there are a lotof interesting places to put tracts. You can stick them in the places in Coke machines where the bottles come out and fold them up and put them in the return slots in a telephone.

I got a letter the other day from a fellow in Detroit who said he had found this gospel tract in a telephone booth and he read it. If what it says is true, I m go

ing to get saved. If you will write me back and say it is true, I ll get saved. And, the guy got saved. I ll bet I know who left that tract, too.

I saw this rack in that bus station and there was a tract in it that said, Fifteen Hundred Contradictions in the Bible. I said, Boy, I want one of those. There were fifteen or twenty of them in the rack and I said, No, I want fifteen or twenty of them. I stuck them in my pocket and went home and I was fascinated. This is one of the contradictions.

Acts 1:18 Now this man [Judas] purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.19 And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field

is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.

This is obviously a reference to Judas and obviously a reference to the potter s field that he bought. Verse 18 says, Judas purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst himself open and killed himself.

Matthew 27:5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.Matthew 27:7 And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.



Matthew says the chief priests bought the field and Judas hanged himself.

Now, did Judas hang himself or did he fall over headlong and burst open? Did he buy the field and then go do it or did he kill himself and they buy the field?

That s not a real problem. Can you figure it out? Do you want to work on it andI ll tell you next time? Good idea. I ll do that. It would be good for you. You don t want to wait?

In Matthew 27, where it says he hanged himself and they took counsel and went out and bought the field, whose money did they use? It was Judas money. The dirty rascals got the thirty pieces of silver and said, We could put it back in the temple treasury because that is where it came from to start with. Can you imaginethat? We can t put it in the treasury because it is blood money so let s go out andbuy this field with it. Everybody knew the money they bought the field with came from Judas. So when they say that the man purchased the field with the rewardof iniquity, they are talking about buying the field by proxy. Judas didn t walkout and make the deal but it was his money and his activity that generated the money that bought the potter s field. It was a proxy sale.

Acts 1 is giving you some additional information about the transaction and it is telling you some things that take place after some other things happen.

In Matthew 27, it says that Judas died by hanging. Judas left the temple and found a tree and climbed up and went out on a limb, pulled the sash out of his robe and put that around his neck and tied a slipknot on it and tied a knot aroundthe limb. He loosened his grip and off he went. The knot tightened, his neck snapped, he twitched a little bit and he was dead. He hanged himself. A few hours later,

Matthew 27: 50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

Let me ask you something. If Judas is out yonder hanging by his neck from a limb and the earth begins to quake and the rocks open up, is it beyond your imagination to think that the rope or limb would have snapped and he fell headlong andburst himself open? That isn t too hard to figure out, is it?

I know a fellow who says the way he thinks it happened is that Judas tied a rope to a limb that was over a ravine and took a leap over the ravine with the ropearound his neck. When the weight of his body came down on the rope, it snappedthe rope and down he went over the cliff and his body burst open. That s a pretty logical explanation, too. They are two plausible explanations for what it says so then there is no contradiction. It isn t something that is wrong; it just takes a little mental energy to figure out the answer.

Matthew 27:6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is notlawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.

Here is ceremonial correctness and ritual exactness all the while they are killing God the Son. That is religion. That s why God hates religion.

8 Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value;



10 And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.

People say, There s a mistake! Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet. If you have a cross reference Bible, there is a little note that says that quote comes from Zechariah 11:13. Now, wait a minute. If it were spokenby Jeremy (Jeremiah), how come it is really in Zechariah? Shouldn t it be in Jeremiah? So, there is a contradiction in your Bible. Right? It says it is in Jeremiah and it really in Zechariah. So, you ve got another problem.

When you get to messing around with Judas, you ve got all kinds of problems.That s a mistake. Right? Come back to Zechariah.

Zechariah 11:13 And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

Matthew 27:9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet,

When you see something that doesn t make sense to you, keep thinking, keep reading. Don t just raise your hands in holy horror and run off into the dark. Think!God never gave His word to lazy people who don t think. All that stuff you hear out in the world: Oh you Bible believers, you re just a bunch of thumpheads and funny mentalists. That s all right. Let them believe that. You have better sense than that, so you think! The Bible makes sense.

Look at that verse: Then was fulfilled that which was spoken That verse didn t sayit was found in Jeremiah. If it were in Jeremiah, it would say it was written.

Mark 1:2 As it is written in the prophets,

Then he quotes Malachi 3:1 and in Verse 3, he quotes Isaiah 40. Every new Bible on the market today reads Mark 1:2 as it is written in Isaiah, the prophet, and then quotes Malachi. Now, that s a mistake. If it is written in Isaiah, do you know where it better be written? In Isaiah. It doesn t say it is spoken in Isaiah, they say it is written in Isaiah. Every Greek text that they are translating from, says, It is written in Isaiah. That s a mistake. If you use one of those Bibles, you are going to have to adjust your convictions about the doctrine of infal

libility of the Word of God.That isn t what that verse in Matthew 27 says. It doesn t say it is written in Jeremiah it says it is spoken by Jeremiah. It is written in Zechariah 11. If you just keep reading your Bible, put it in the back of your mind, and keep giving God the benefit of the doubt, give God a break and you ll find some answers.

Zechariah 7:7 Should ye not hear the words which the LORD hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain?

Can you name me one of the prophets that prophesied while Jerusalem was still inhabited? Who was one of the pre exilic prophets? Wasn t Jeremiah one of them? Y

es, he was. Jeremiah kept saying, Nebuchadnezzar is going to come down here andclean your plow. Jeremiah was in the land in prosperity and he warned them and prophesied about the judgment that was going to come ? and then it came. Zechariah was telling them, You ought to listen to what those men preached to you.

God was telling them, in Zechariah, that they ought to pay attention to what Jeremiah and other prophets wrote and said. Then Zechariah, a post exile prophet,wrote down some of what Jeremiah was saying in Chapter 11. Verse 13, by the way, is a great statement on the deity of Christ.



Zechariah 11:13 And the LORD [Jehovah] said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.

15 And the LORD said unto me, Take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd.16 For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, andtear their claws in pieces.17 Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

Verses 15 17 refer to the anti Christ, in a context associated with Judas that focuses on the deity of Christ that the Jews used to try to deny the infallibility of the Word of God. You talk about getting beans all in one bag; you ve got them right there.

Matthew 27:7 And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.8 Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom the

y of the children of Israel did value;10 And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.

When Judas died, the judgment of God was falling on Israel and yet God s grace was providing through that judgment and through their unbelief, through their rebellion and rejection, a field to provide grace for strangers. We ll see that as wego on through.

We ll pick it up in Verse 11, next time.


Matthew 27. In Verses 3 10, there was the issue with Judas. Verse 11 goes back to Verse 2 where you have a flashback just like it had to Judas in the preceding chapter.

Matthew 27:1 When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death:

That was the formal hearing in the morning after they had the mock trial at Caiaphas palace in the night. They couldn t pass a formal sentence at the ad hoc committee meeting, so the Sanhedrin met in the morning for the official condemnation.

2 And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to PontiusPilate the governor.

They take Him to the civil authorities at this point.

11 And Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, Art



ready given Him. Then they bring Him in to Pilate. They could tell Pilate, Well, he resisted citizens arrest. They get away with it.

Pilate looks at Him and they ve already beaten Him. They accuse Him and accuse Him and He just sits there. What s the matter with you? Don t you hear what they aresaying?

Isaiah 53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.8 He was taken from prison and from judgment:

While He is being tried, He just remains silent. Just like at Caiaphas , they accuse Him and He didn t say a word until they asked Him about His doctrine. Here it is the same way: He doesn t defend Himself. He is quiet because, you see, He is being numbered with the transgressors. Anything He had said, No to, some of us are guilty of and He was being numbered with us, with sinners.

There is an incident that transpires just before Barabbas. I want you to notice these guys when they lead Him to Pilate s hall.

John 18:28 Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and itwas early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover.

See, those religious leaders were maintaining their ceremonial correctness, their cleanliness, their sanctified state. If they touched the unclean they would have to go through the purification rites and ceremonies and that would disqualify them from eating the Passover that evening. So, in order to maintain their status where they could eat the Passover that evening, they won t go into the judgment hall where they would touch the unclean thing. Yet, at the same time, they are murdering God Almighty. They are taking God manifest in the flesh, lying about Him, making false accusations about Him, and sending Him out with lies on their lips and hatred in their hearts. Envy is their motive and they are getting ready to kill God s Son. That fascinates me: avoiding going in a building while you are going about killing God s Son. That is religious devilment. That is whatreligion does to you.

I have said to you before, when you study these passages, you just see human nature and all the systems of the world crystallize down in a saline solution thatjust burns when you touch it. It has so much of you in it. It s got your numberthat way.

29 Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man?

They are outside and Pilate goes out to them. Christ is inside. So, Pilate goes out to them, then will come back to Jesus, then go back out to them and then back inside to Jesus.

29 Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man?30 They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee.

What s the matter, guy? We wouldn t have sent Him to you if He weren t a criminal. e getting a little indignant. It s indignant righteousness of self.

31 Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law.



If He did something to you, why don t you take care of Him? That s the first way Pilate tried to deal with Christ. There are four ways he tries to deal with the Lord. The first one is carelessness. Like any old sinner, he just doesn t give a hoot. He is indifferent. If you have a problem, you tend to it.

31 Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death:

We can t do it. No, you do it. Pilate tries to put it back on them. (They didn t hate to kill Stephen in Acts 7.) Pilate puts it back to them and they say, We don t want it, back to you.

You watch the cleverness of religious leaders enforcing the government to do their dirty work. When you see religion bind itself to the government to accomplish its purposes, that s what you have right here. That s the reason that the founding fathers of this country I m sorry what the brethren say, that they didn t do it, but they wanted the church and state to be separate entities. They came from England and Europe where they were the same and they knew the religious tyranny ofallowing the government to fall into the hands of religious leaders. That s whathappens here.

That kind of thing where both church and state are one as the pope is in Rome.

The thing about that is, he has these two keys on his sash: the key to the Kingdom of Heaven and the key to the Kingdom of God: the key to the political authority on earth and key to heaven. You ve got to give allegiance to both. That s bad.

They got Daniel in Daniel 6 on a government warrant made out against his religion. They got him on charges of religion.

John 18:32 That the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die.

The Jews are trying to get Rome to kill Him so they won t be responsible to get somebody else to kill Him to do their dirty work. Pilate says, I m not interested in

it. You do it. They say, No.God uses the wrath of men to praise Him. How is Christ supposed to die? In prophecy He is supposed to be crucified. Psalm 22 says He is going to die by having His hands and feet pierced through. If the Jews killed Him, they would have to stone Him but if the Romans killed Him, they would have to crucify Him.

God overrules even in circumstances of their argument that what Jesus said about the manner in which He should die is going to be fulfilled. He s going to hang on a tree and be crucified and not be stoned.

33 Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus,

Pilate goes back inside and he has the accusation.

33 [Pilate] called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?34 Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?

Jesus says, Are you smart enough to figure this all out by yourself, or did somebody else tell you?

Have you ever heard of a smart aleck? Don t misunderstand because I am not accusi



ng the Lord of being a smart aleck but can you get the idea of what Pilate would have thought about Him?

35 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew?

Who do you think I am, a sorry good for nothing Jew like you?

35 Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?

Pilate is aggravated. They have gotten him up early in the morning. He probably wanted to sleep until nine thirty or ten o clock and here are a bunch of crazy nuts out here at sunrise running around, stirring up the country with this guy they want him to kill. Pilate goes in here and he can t get a straight answer and he just blows a gasket, man. Am I a Jew? He wasn t complimenting Him.

Do you remember Ephesians 2:11: those who are called the Uncircumcision and the Circumcision ? The emphasis is on the word called. That s an illustration. That Gentile didn t care about a Jew. He hated Him. They despised the Jews about like people do today.

35 Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?

Now, if you want to see some dueling.36 Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of thisworld, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

People have misunderstood that statement and have taken it to mean that since His kingdom is not of this world, therefore, His kingdom will not be physical, literal, visible, earthly kingdom. But, that is not what He is saying.

Christ said, My kingdom is not of (does not originate from) this world. It s the Kingdom of Heaven, not the kingdom of the earth. It is the kingdom from heaven set up on the earth but now it is not from hence. In other words, the issue is Wher

e does this kingdom come from? His kingdom doesn t come from the power of Rome or the power of the gentiles around Him, His kingdom comes from God.

37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

Pilate, you said that I am a king, and what I am saying is bearing witness to the truth. Even now, it is their responsibility to identify who He was. He made it abundantly clear to His people. They were to bear testimony to Israel and even in His condemnation, here Israel is, condemning themselves out of their own mouth. The irony is staggering. They say, He says He s the King! They should have bow

ed down before Him and trusted Him as their Messiah and gone out and gladly proclaimed to the Gentiles that He s the King! Kiss the King and worship Him! That s what they should have cried to the kings of the earth (Psalm 2), but they didn t. They go up in mocking accusation to have Him killed and say that He is the King.

Pilate comes in and says, They say you are the king. Are you? If you say I am the king I ll say, Yes. Do you get the irony of it, the backwardness of it? It s a realay of what is going.

37 . Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.



38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

When Pilate said to Him, What is truth, He wasn t asking a question. That is not aproof text for the Greek philosophers and for the constant search for the truth. Pilate was saying, I don t have any use for truth. What s truth? What good is truth? Pilate said it to Him. He wasn t asking.

38 And when [Pilate] had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

Every time that Pilate pronounces the judgment, he says Christ is innocent. Every time he pronounces Him innocent, innocent, innocent, innocent. He s innocent.

Right at this point, Pilate hears something that he likes, so he tries a new approach. First, he tried to be careless; he tried not to care about it. He tried to slough it off. Who cares about this? You do it. You do it. I ve got no part in all this stuff. It s not for me. I m not interested.

Luke 23:4 Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man.5 And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.6 When Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilaean.

7 And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time.

That s what you call, passing the buck. Hey, this guy is from Galilee! That isn t en my jurisdiction. I ll take care of this. He sends Him off to Herod.

8 And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.9 Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing.

Christ was going to bear witness to the truth but nobody said or asked Him anything He could respond to.

10 And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.

See the heat and anger and the force.

11 And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate.

Now Pilate has Him back on his hands again. Back He came like a yo yo.

They mock Him and Herod says, You say you are a king. Let s put a robe on you. They mock Him and punch Him around. Notice it says, Herod s men of war. The Lord Jesus Christ is in the hands of professional soldiers, some of the most rugged, hand

to hand combat troops ever assembled on the face of the earth. These men weren t used to handling their prisoners with kid gloves so Christ s physical condition is steadily deteriorating.

Now Pilate is going to be clever and he comes upon a real clever scheme.

Matthew 27:15 Now at that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom they would.16 And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas.17 Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will



ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?18 For he knew that for envy they had delivered him.

Pilate read those guys like a book. He knew exactly what they were up to. That s why he said, What is truth? Truth hasn t anything at all to do with what is going on here, Jesus. It s political power and clout. That s why he says in John 19, Donyou know that I have power to crucify you and release you? The only issue hereis power or clout, who can get things done and what you are willing to do to get them done. Truth hasn t anything to do with any of this. He knew these guys delivered Him for envy. Envy. Frustrated ambition is what that is.

Ecclesiastes 4:4 Again, I considered all travail, and every right work, that for this a man is envied of his neighbour. This is also vanity and vexation of spirit.

Every time a man does the right thing and that is all that Christ ever did it says that he is envied of his neighbor and that is vanity and vexation of spirit. So, they envied Him. They envied what He could do and who He is.

Barabbas is an interesting character. The word Barabbas: Bar is the son. Abbas (abba) is the word we cry, says Paul. That s the word for father. The son of thefather. What a cruel mockery of the name. He was a notorious prisoner.

John 18:40 Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now B

arabbas was a robber.Barabbas is first, a thief, a robber.

Luke 23:18 And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas:19 (Who for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast intoprison.)25 And he released unto them him that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will.

Here s a real lovely guy. He s in Jerusalem, robbing and killing and promoting rebellion. He probably could be Enemy number one. Pilate says, This man is the scourg

e of the earth. There isn t anything wrong with Jesus. They re not going to want to get Barabbas back on them. They ll take Jesus. I ve got it figured out. I knowhow to get Him off my hands. I ll offer them Barabbas and they ll take Jesus instead because He goes around doing nothing but good things.

Barabbas is an expression of the spirit of this world, the spirit that works inthe children of disobedience: murder. Satan was a murderer from the beginning and a robber. He robs men of their souls and their life. Sin is a murderer; sin is a killer; sin is a robber; and it makes rebels. The children of wrath even as others.

Barabbas is an expression of the spirit of Satan, the one who was loved and accepted by Israel. Barabbas represents that satanic spirit that Israel loved and a

ccepted and chose as opposed to their Messiah. You can t just blame it on Israel, can you? You can t deal with unsaved people. You can t even deal with Christian people. They get in the flesh and act like unsaved people without seeing that.

In fact, if you know anything about you, you try to serve the Lord and you walkin the spirit and not in the flesh. Paul says, If we walk in the Spirit, we won tfulfill the lust of the flesh. If you walk in the Spirit and walk in line with what God is doing today and you re trying to do what the Spirit of God is doing inthe Church the Body of Christ and get an understanding of the doctrine in your soul and you execute it and you walk on the basis of that, you know something abo



ut struggling and warring against the flesh, don t you? You know about old Barabbas down inside of you, don t you? You say, Who, me? Yes, you.

The only difference between these people here and us well, there isn t any really, because the same thing that was in them that made them do what they did is thesame thing that is in us and makes us capable of doing what we have ever seen them doing. If you have been checked and you have the Spirit of God in you that checks you and keeps you back, and some doctrine that gives you a renewed mind and a different viewpoint, all you can do is to praise God for it. You can t take any credit for it.

There he is, old Barabbas. What a mess.

Matthew 27:20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus.

Wouldn t you know it? Wouldn t you know it? That bunch of rascals are in there again. When they put up Jesus and Barabbas before the people, the chief priests and elders people, don t you go away from here and say, Oh, Brother Rick just has it in for religious leaders. Look at the verse! It tells you who did it. It s a bunch of guys going around in long, black robes with the collar turned around backwards and everybody calling them father. They are priests called fathers and have long titles and salutations in the marketplace so everybody bows and curtsies we ve already studied about them. We have already identified who they are.

Down south, we say, We tied the rag on the bush. People up here don t know what that means. That means that we clearly identified the trail. A guy is going out hunting and he goes down the trail. Somebody is going to follow him. Where he enters the woods he ties a rag on the bush so when his buddy comes and follows him, he can find the way. It is clearly marked.

That s who these people are. The chief priests and elders persuaded the people thepriests did it. The leaders of the nation lead the people into it.

Matthew 27:19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man [underline it]: for I havesuffered many things this day in a dream because of him.

About the time Pilate has it figured out, his wife comes in and says, Don t get hooked up with a deal about this guy because He is a just man. Every testimony that Pilate had about Christ; every testimony that you find given by any judicial bodies in this text is that He is innocent.

Judas said, I betrayed innocent blood. Pilate said, I find no fault in Him, Pilatewife said, He is a just man. Herod said, He is not worthy of death (Luke 23:15). Pilate sent Him to Herod and Herod sent Him back and he said that there is nothing worthy of death in the man. One of the malefactors on the cross said, You (the other thief) and I have done wickedly but this man never did anything wrong. There is a seven fold testimony in the scripture: innocent, just, righteous. What do men do with Him?

As we read on down here in the chapter, the only good thing about this account is that it is brief. The horrors that are described under the cover of one or two little words in the passage are enough to turn your stomach so you couldn t read it.

Cecil deMille and all these guys who put all this stuff in the movies and TV you couldn t stand to watch it. People talk about being tough and able to take it.I have seen people sit there and just suck all that stuff up and if you gave them a catfish and a knife and told them to go out in the back yard and gut that ca



tfish, they d pass out cold before they got through. It s one thing to see it but it s another thing to be right in the blood and guts. This stuff gets gruesome down through here.

21 The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye thatI release unto you? They said, Barabbas.22 Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified.

Can you imagine the irony of the judge and the governor standing in front of a howling mob and saying, Well, what am I supposed to do with this prisoner? That is cowardice, that s what it is. That s being a blank, open faced coward. What am I supposed to do with Him? Imagine Pilate asking the crowd what to do with a prisoner. He is the governor. He s the one to make the decision. He doesn t make it. He says, You make it. What am I supposed to do?

That question: What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ has been called life s greatest question. What are you going to do with Jesus? We have a songin our hymn book:

Jesus is standing in Pilate's hall,Friendless, forsaken, betrayed by all;Hearken! what meaneth the sudden call?What will you do with Jesus?

Will you evade him as Pilate tried?Or will you choose him, whate'er betide?Vainly you struggle from him to hide:What will you do with Jesus?

What will you do with Jesus?Neutral you cannot be;Someday your heart will be asking,"What will he do with me?"

I guess that every preacher who ever lived has preached a message sometime along the way in a rescue mission, on a street corner or in a church somewhere, on Wha

t will you do with Jesus which is called the Christ? Brother, that is the question of the ages. When the question was spit out of Pilate s mouth, Pilate was fumbling the ball and so was Israel.

The Jews and the Gentiles joined hands and gave the wrong answer and all the world became condemned.

23 And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified.

There was no answer. What evil did He do? No answer. No answer. Just hatred.

24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult wasmade, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.

Pilate tries to wash his hands. He takes a basin of water and stands out on the porch and he is doing something real significant. He is going through a ceremony that Israel was familiar with. It came right out of their law (Deuteronomy 21). He washes his hands and says, I am innocent of the blood of this just person



3 And it shall be, that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer,

He goes on down and gives the regulations and the ceremony involved in the slaying of a person.

7 And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.8 Be merciful, O LORD, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel's charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.

The blood, the blood of this innocent man, innocent blood. Verses 7 and 8 is the confession that the nation Israel will have to make in the latter days, in the Tribulation, when, in the light of Calvary, they will clear themselves from the murder of the Messiah. The unbelieving members of the nation will suffer the doom.

18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father,

There s the Old Testament prodigal, the stubborn and rebellious son. The unbelievers in the nation will suffer the doom of that stubborn and rebellious son and will be cut off, put away, destroyed. But, before the Second Coming of Christ, t

he believing remnant will go to Jerusalem.The subject in the passage is innocent blood. The context, in Verses 21 23, isabout the guy hanging on a tree.

22 And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree:23 (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;)

This is the passage that tells you that if a man hangs on a tree, he is accursed.

Paul takes that passage in Galatians 3:13 and says that Christ has been made a c

urse for us.Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made acurse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.

The context is the guy hanging on a tree needs to be taken down as they did Christ. The city nearest to where Christ dies is Jerusalem. (He dies right outside of Jerusalem.) The leaders and elders are to go outside the city of Jerusaleminto the valley of Gehenna, the rough valley.

Deuteronomy 21:4 And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley,

6 And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley:7 And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.8 Be merciful, O LORD, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people of Israel's charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them.

The blood that s exactly what Matthew 27:4 calls it, the blood of this innocent man. Judas says, The blood of this innocent man.



That s the ceremony right there that Israel is going to have to perform. Until the nation Israel performs that ceremony outside of Jerusalem down in the valley of Gehenna, prior to the second advent of Christ, the nation won t be officially forgiven the shedding of the innocent blood.

I doubt seriously that Pilate had that in mind when he stood there washing his hands. Maybe he did, but I doubt it. The reference is there, nonetheless.

When you see Pilate there washing his hands, you see a reluctant Gentile doing what Israel should have done and one day, will do, when she recognizes her Messiah. Behold Him whom they have pierced, when He comes back.

Matthew 27:24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather atumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude [trying to get rid of the guilt].

By the way, Pilate uses water to wash away his sin. What should he have used? What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Water will not washaway your sins. You can get baptized until you look like a dried up prune, shriveled up like a raisin and you won t wash away any sins. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. Pilate knew all about that temple and how to get them remitted. By the way, he was a Roman.

Did you ever wonder where trying to wash away your sins came from? Well, thereis a Roman doing it. Maybe that would tell you.

25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.26 Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.

We ll get the rest of the passage next time.


Matthew 27. The last time we met together we got down to Verse 25 so we will pick up at Verse 26.

Of course, you know the context is the hours just prior to the actual crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has been delivered into the hands of Pilate andis being tried. Pilate tries to let Him go and it doesn t work and the nation won t have Him.

Matthew 27:26 Then released he Barabbas unto them:

You will recall how Pilate had offered them a deal as a way to get out of it, trying to be smart. He said, I ll give you an opportunity to choose between Barabbas



, a notorious thug in the community, a man guilty of murder and sedition and robbery. I ll give you this bad man or I ll give you Jesus. He thought they would choose Jesus. Well, they didn t. They took Barabbas so he had to release Barabbas to them.

and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

That scourging is a very tremendously terrible thing.

27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, anda reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!30 And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head.31 And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.

The passage describes the contradiction of sinners against the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, all the way down through Verse 44, you are going to see the contradiction of sinners, Hebrews 12 calls it, that He endured against Himself. Men, in their hostility here s a bunch of soldiers who knew what it was to be under the authority of Caesar, the Roman Emperor and now they have a king in their hands.

And, what do they do with Him? They do what any son of Adam would do at that time, they do what all of our sins do: they torture and punish Him. They strike out at Him. The context here is one of rejection. Literally, the Lord here becomes a play thing for a brutal, cruel crowd of people and soldiers.

Notice that it says, Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus. Now, that is not a bunch of parade ground soldiers. Those were professional soldiers, some of the most rugged, battle hardened soldiers the world has ever known. The Romansoldier was a tremendous fighting machine. They take the Lord Jesus and He is delivered, Verse 26 says, into their hands to be scourged.

Notice what the Psalmist says, prophetically. I have mentioned repeatedly thatyou get some of the most striking details about the events and the things that h

appened to the Lord out of the Old Testament and especially out of the Psalms.You read these books where Christ on the cross and the remnant under the tribulation wrath to come often just blend together. Sometimes you say it is Christ and then you say, No. That is somebody else, that s a man under tribulation punishment and wrath. The reason that it seems to go back and forth is not because the author is confused but because you are getting a picture of Christ being numbered with the transgressors. He is being identified with His people in their suffering. Basically, what you are seeing is the cross when it moves back and forth between those two is because it s both of those things together.

Psalm 129:3 is describing something that took place when Christ was being scourged.

Psalm 129:3 The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.

He is talking about a plowman who sets the plow into the ground. The Psalmist is saying that is like taking the plow and digging it down into my flesh and making long furrows and flaying open wide the skin in my back.

Every now and then you ll see pictures of some of the Muslims in Iran, especiallywhen they had our hostages, and they d be flogging themselves with what looked like a broom handle with a bunch of little leather thongs coming off the end. They



called it a cat o nine tails. They d tie knots in the thongs and tie little rocksand pieces of broken metal in the knots so they d cut when they hit. That s what they scourged with. When they d beat a person, the cat o nine tails would hit and then rake across the flesh. It would just make mincemeat of the person. When you get to thinking about it, your flesh gets to crawling.

These guys weren t amateurs but professional. They knew how to hit, where to hitand the way to hit to get the most effect out of it. That s what they were doingwith the Lord. They scourge Him. They are subjecting Him to total, physical debilitation by men who knew what they were doing. The Psalmist says it is like taking a breaking plow down the back and skinning you alive. That s basically whatit is like.

You know Isaiah 53, the chapter that describes the crucifixion of Christ. It really begins back in Chapter 52.

Isaiah 52:13 Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.14 As many were astonied at thee; his visage [appearance] was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:15 So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.

The idea there is that just as He was humiliated, He is going to be exalted as King.

What happened to Him so mutilated Him that He wasn t recognizable to the people who knew Him the best. You see pictures of this blond, blue eyed Jew hanging on the cross. When is the last time you saw a blond, blue eyed Jew? You know the guy got it wrong when he painted it like that. The only physical description ofthe Lord Jesus Christ in the Bible is in Song of Solomon 5 that says His hair was bushy and black like a raven. His eyes were brown. That would fit what you know about a Jew s physical characteristics.

When you see all those pictures of Christ hanging there on the cross, if they painted what He really looked like you would see His broken nose, blood all over H

is face, black eyes, abrasions and bruises, mouth and face swollen and lips protruding, teeth cracked and gums bleeding, His back a bloody mass, His body wracked, just one big oozing flesh pile of blood. That s not a wonderful description to give you, but that s what happened to Him.

That s what sin costs. When it says, By his stripes we are healed, stripes were stripes. He took a tremendous pulverizing. If you saw a real picture of what He really looked like, you wouldn t be able to keep your dinner down. You see, they would never be able to paint a picture like that, but that was what it really was like.

Isaiah 50:6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

That s Matthew 27 where we are reading.

They d reach up and poke Him and spit upon Him. One would reach up and grab a piece of His beard and yank it out. Did you ever have somebody yank out a piece of your hair? It didn t feel too good, did it? No. That s what He is going through: shame, humiliation, suffering, tremendous agony and brutality.

That s what you are reading there in Matthew 27.



26 Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

You go down to Verse 32 and you see that He is in such a weakened condition that He can t even carry His own cross. They have to get somebody else standing by to carry it. He can barely carry Himself out to Golgotha to be crucified. That s the amount of physical torment that He has been through.

Now, when you think about what has happened. He was up all the day before. He s been up all through the night. In other words, He s gone without sleep for more than twenty four hours. It s daylight, early morning, here along 6:00 to 9:00. They have brought Him to Pilate to get him to kill Him as soon as he can. After all those hours of sleeplessness and brutality, the mocking and humiliation and poking physically aimed at Him, I say to you again, after all that, He didn t have to take any of it.

Here is the Son of God, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, who didn t deserve a bit of going through all of that. Don t read over those verses real quickly.

27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.

When you read about Him being led away to be scourged there was a whole mob of t

hem, just a plaything for a cruel, brutal, bloodthirsty crowd of people. Professional killers is what they were.

Don t blame it all on them. They were just representing us while they were there, just one of us, one of the sons of Adam. He didn t have to be there. He was there for you, so when you read these passages, don t read through them real quick and just say, Ho hum, what s next? When you go through here, you go with a real reverent heart.

28 And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.

They re going to mock Him.

29 And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, anda reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!

By that verse about the crown of thorns, write down Genesis 3:17 and 18 where thorns first came into creation. The mob didn t know the significance of what theywere doing but we do.

Genesis 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voiceof thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat th

e herb of the field;

Thorns weren t there before the fall. A thorn is a sign, a symbol, a result of God s curse on creation because of man s sin. And when those rascals take that crown of thorns made out of long thorns from a tree, they plait those little limber limbs with big spikes on them and put that crown on His brow and push it down onHis head with rods on each side to drive it into the flesh so it will stay there. The blood trickles down into his eyes and mouth and down the back of His head.



We sing the song: Five bleeding wounds he bears, Received on Calvary and those are some of them.

They crown Him with the symbol of the curse. That ought to be precious to yourheart because Paul said that Christ was made a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13)

When the eye of spiritual understanding looks back at the cross and even in theevil deeds of the diabolical madness of men, it sees the hand of God working and it sees the hand of God providing grace and redemption for sinners. That s whatis going on there.

They bow the knee at Him and make fun of Him and mock Him and ridicule Him. They are just trying to get His goat in abject humiliation and untold suffering, strip Him naked and put Him through all that torment.

Matthew 27:32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name:him they compelled to bear his cross.

He is just too weak even to carry His own cross, the tree to hang Him on, so they have to get somebody else to do it.

31 And after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.

You need to get the scene about what is happening. Matthew goes immediately from the mocking and scourging to and led him away to crucify him. The nation just wants to get rid of Him so Away with him! We have no king but Caesar! Crucify him!

We have said it from the very beginning, the Book of Matthew is written to demonstrate the nation s culpability in rejecting their King. In Matthew, it is Get away! Go! Go! Reject, reject.

In Verse 31, between the time they put His raiment on Him and led Him away to be crucified, John 19:1 16 fits in right there. You will see John s view of presenting Christ as the Son of God, as Messiah who is Jehovah. In that context, Johnputs the interview He had with the soldiers. You find that they bring Him back

to Pilate and Pilate, one last time, goes out to the people to try to get them to stop. He stands before them this bleeding, bloody victim who has been thoroughly brutalized. In his mind, Surely that will be enough. But they still won t letChrist be released.

John 19:1 Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him.2 And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and theyput on him a purple robe,3 And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands.4 Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him.

Over and over and over again, the record says that He is a just man. I don t find

any fault with Him. There s nothing wrong with Him. And yet, they want to kill Him anyway.

5 Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. AndPilate saith unto them, Behold the man!

You talk about a statement. That s a statement. If you want to behold the man, you don t look at somebody like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Charles Atlas or some puny little punk like that, going around exercising his body and think he s something. You look at that guy fifty years from now and see what he looks like. He ll be



a dried up little shrimp sitting around with somebody pushing him around in a wheelchair. You know that.

If you want to see the man, you look at Christ. If you want to see the man in arts, in science and anything else, you look at Him. If you want to see man at his greatest, you look at the Lord Jesus Christ.

I don t know that Pilate knew what he was saying, but boy, that s a tremendous topic right there. Look at this guy. There isn t anybody like Him. Pilate is emotionally shaken by what s going on here.

Notice in Verse 5, He has the crown of thorns and wearing the purple robe and they re still mocking Him. You see, they hadn t cleaned Him up. You notice when they got that guy in Nicaragua, when they were going to show him to the cameras, they give him a bath, put on clothes and give him a good meal. We re taking good care of him. They re putting on a good front. We ll whoop up on him in private but whenthey re going to show him off, they make him look good.

That isn t what Pilate is doing. He s trying to show them that they have their pound of flesh, Now won t you let him go?

6 When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him.

Pilate says, He s not guilty.

6 When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him.7 The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.8 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid;9 And went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer

Notice that question. Pilate knew He was from Galilee because in Luke 23, when

he heard He was from Galilee, he sent him to Herod to get Him off his hands. Pilate knew where He was from ? or did he? You see, it s getting through to old Pilate.

They got Pilate up out of bed early in the morning and they begin to wail on him about killing this guy. Pilate talks with Him and finds Him to be an innocentman. Then Pilate gets a message from his wife who is still back in the bedroomand she tells him not to mess with this guy because I have been much disturbed in a dream tonight about Him.

Something supernatural about him starts working on Pilate. He looks at Christ and asks, Where did you come from? It s almost like Pilate almost suspects that He is a little more than human. In the few dealings Pilate has had with Him, he sus

pects it, but the nation doesn t get it.

10 Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?

That s quite a statement, isn t it? You talk about guilty. If Pilate had power torelease Him, he should have released Him. He washes his hands. Tonight he is in hell washing his hands. It doesn t do any good. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Hehad the power to do right and he refused to do it for personal considerations.



11 Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.12 And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him: but the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.13 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha.14 And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!15 But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saithunto them, Shall I crucify your King?

Pilate is convinced now that He is their King.

The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.16 Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away.

First I want you to notice something in Verse 11. Look at the last word in Verse 11. That s the last word that Pilate ever heard from the lips of the Son of God. How would you like to have the last word God ever say to you to be that one?

That wouldn t be a lot of comfort, would it? Don t you think that word just rang t

hrough his memory and conscience and his mind and his heart right on down through the ages? He had the power to release Him but he didn t.

Now we are back in Matthew 27. We read the passage in John to see that there are a lot of events and emotional, philosophical and spiritual trauma taking place. In the midst of it all, Christ is perceptive, conscious and alert and knows exactly what is happening.

Matthw 27:32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name:

They re going down the Via Dolorosa outside the city. He is too weak to carry His own cross. Mark says that he falls underneath it. They find a man named Simon.

Christ walks in front and Simon carries the cross. He is a Gentile from Cyrene

. He is a strong man and carries the cross for the Lord behind Him. him they compelled to bear his cross.

That is the greatest illustration of substitution in the Bible. To whom did that cross belong? For whom was it made? Whom did Pilate try to release? Barabbas. Who wound up on it? Christ did.

The son of the father, Barabbbas, was his name but he was a wicked failure. Can you imagine that morning when they came down into the cell in the dungeon to gethim out and he could hear the guards coming. He could hear the steps coming and the keys rattling. They stop and do the about and the keys come off the sash and he hears the jingle. They open the door and say, Come on out, Barabbas. He walk

s out and they shut the door behind him and grab him with a rough hand and haulhim up before Pilate. Barabbas is thinking he is on his way to death. Pilate says, Unshackle him. Barabbas stands there, not knowing what is going on and Pilate points, Yonder goes your cross and look who has it.

You see, when Christ hung on that cross, it wasn t His; it was Barabbas cross. It sa great illustration of substitution, of Him dying in the stead of another. It sHis cross now though, and He is ready to go with it.

Simon, a man, of Cyrene, bears His cross. It is interesting. Do you remember t



he other man by the name of Simon? Simon Peter? How appropriate it is that itwas a Simon who bore the cross for the Saviour. Peter had said, I ll not forsake you. I ll never let anything happen to you. Peter is in the wings now. Peter is off now. Peter is gone. He is out weeping bitterly over his failure. Another Simon has the cross just to remind you, I guess, of the failure and yet, the faithful. Some of the Bible dictionaries say the name Simon means obedient and to hearken, to listen, to hear, and hence, to be obedient.

I want you to see one other thing about him. This experience in Simon s life apparently had a great impact.

Mark 15:21 And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.

Notice that Simon s two boys names are listed there: Alexander and Rufus. Why inthe world would he put the boys names there? What would that detail have to do with anything? You wouldn t know too much about that unless you read Romans 16.

Romans 16:13 Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine.

If this Rufus is the same one, and the probability is real strong that it is, his mother is Simon s wife. They were very dear to the apostle Paul because he calls her his mother and mine, someone who was like a mother to Paul.

The indication is that this Simon in Matthew came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, not just as one for whom he bore His cross, but one who became his Saviour as well as His family and even became faithful followers and ministers together with the apostle Paul at a later date.

That is just a little sidelight but it has always been a touching thing to me to see the fallout there of these events.

Matthew 27:33 And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is tosay, a place of a skull,34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.

Luke 23:33 And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.

Do you see where it says, They were come to the place which is called Calvary? We sing the song:Years I spent in vanity and pride,Caring not my Lord was crucified,Knowing not it was for me He died on Calvary.

We talk and sing about Calvary. The only time that word occurs in your EnglishBible is right there. Do you know what most of the new Bibles do with that verse? They take the word Calvary out of that. The word Calvary means the skull.

The Greek text says they come to the place of the skull.

If you use one of the modern versions of the Bible, most of them don t have the word Calvary in them. That is interesting to me. That makes a mess out of your hymn book, doesn t it?

Do you see how deeply embedded in the warp, woof and fiber of our faith is our King James Bible? I know what people say. No, that is a link with the Protestant heritage that we have as twentieth century believers. We ought not be unmindful of that and not be so ready to throw it out to the wolves in the street and m



s among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.

That s important for you to notice. Do you know what happened to His clothes? They stole them. I told you that you never saw a picture of the cross like it really was. He is hanging there stark naked, bruised, beaten to a bloody pulp, exposed to the world, hanging there.

Back over there when Adam and Eve sinned, it says that they were ashamed because they knew they were naked. Christ is bearing your shame on that cross and He bore it in full for every sin you ever committed, for every mean, nasty thing you ever did, every rotten, every self righteous thing you ever did, all our sins.

That s what they look like.

Don t tell me preaching about the cross and preaching grace through what God did for sin there is going to promote sin. What your sin does results in the greatest protest demonstration the world could ever conceive. If you get a grip on what happened there, you aren t going to think much of yourself or your sin. You re going to think pretty low of it. There it was: they crucified Him.

They parted His garments

Isaiah 61:10 ; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness,

They took away His garments while He was providing the garments of salvation for us and a robe of righteousness that we can swaddle ourselves in and stand before a holy, righteous God in their perfection. What a wonderful thing.

Matthew 27:36 And sitting down they watched him there;

They don t just do the deed but they are fiendish. They are not going to leave Him to die; they are going to stay right there to torment Him and see the thing done all the way to the end. Imagine the stomachs they had to have.

37 And set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

I am not going to go through this accusation with you but the indication is that there were three different things written at three different times because they were a little different in each of the gospels.

Notice that Verse 37 says the accusation was set up over His head. As far as Iam concerned, that settles the question and debate of whether the cross was in the shape of an upright with a cross beam one third of the way down as you usually see it or whether it was like a T with the cross beam at the top. If it is with the crossbar one third of the way down, they could write above His head. As far as I am concerned, that is it the way it is. You can t tell very well from theGreek words that are used. But in order to put the accusation over His head, they d have to have something up there above His head.

Evidently they did it three times. The first one is in John. The second writing is in Matthew and the third one is in Luke. In Mark, it only says what the accusation was about.

If you compare them, you will see that the first one was in John. They took itdown and put up the one in Matthew. There was an argument and they didn t like that so they put up a third one and then that was it.

John 19:19 And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.



20 This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.

That title is written in three languages. Those three languages represent the three men in the earth. You re not just the son of Adam. You are also the son ofNoah. Noah had three boys: Shem, Ham and Japheth and there they are: the Hebrew, the Greek and the Latin. The Jew, the Roman and the Greek. Jerusalem, Rome and Athens: the great centers of the world. Man s religion: Jews (Shem), man s power: Rome; man s philosophy: his wisdom, Athens. (Languages: Hebrew, Greek, Latin.)

What you are seeing in that inscription over that cross is what God says to man sreligion, to his power, to his philosophy, to the greatness of all men. He says (pointing to the cross), That s what your work does. Behold your work! Behold your part. Behold your handiwork in what you are doing.

Do you want to see your work? Look at the Christ of God hanging on a tree. That s what your wisdom gets. That s what your power gets. That s what your religion gets.

They didn t like that inscription up there and they said, Take it down. Pilate said, What I have written, I have written.

By that time, Pilate was disgusted with them and he is through with them and hefinally puts his foot down. It wasn t much but it was something. He finally put

his foot down and said, It s going to stay up there. That wasn t much because he shouldn t have put Christ up there but at least he put the testimony over him.

38 Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.

If you follow E. W. Bullinger, he said that there were five in all, two were thieves and two in Luke were called malefactors which could be thieves. He said there were two thieves and two malefactors which would make it four of them and Christ. The way he gets that is by going over in John where they break the legs oftwo of them and then they come to Christ and they don t break His legs because Heis already dead but they thrust the spear in His side. Bullinger says that it isn t very likely that they would go by one over there and then go by one over ther

e and then finally get to Jesus.I don t know about all that but if that kind of thing impresses you, Bullinger has six denials of Peter regarding the cross. Every time there is a little bit ofdifference between two things, his answer is to make them all different.

I don t personally go for it and I don t think there is any problem with the three but you need to be aware that if you are Bullinger, you ve got five of them. Whether you have three or five of them, either one or the other, a malefactor could be a thief. I figure there are probably two criminals; one repents and the other doesn t. Both of them revile Him at first and one changes his mind after awhile.

Matthew 27:38 Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right

hand, and another on the left

He is numbered with the transgressors. He hangs up there and dies just like a common thief. He is dying like a criminal with the criminals.

39 And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,

I love that. Just Tut, tut, tut, just wagging their heads. Too bad, too bad. I knew it.



40 And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days,save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.

Do you remember somebody else saying, If thou be the Son of God? Do you rememberin Matthew 4, reading about the temptation of Christ what the devil said?

Matthew 4:3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

I suppose here they are just quoting their daddy.

Matthew 27:40 If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.41 Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said,42 He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.44 The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.

That is a great company. You ve got the mob, you ve got the chief priests, the scribes and religious leaders of the nation and a bunch of thieves mocking Him. They are confused about His word (Verse 40). He never said, I ll destroy the temple and I ll rebuild it in three days. He never said that. That s just their twisting of

His doctrine.42 He saved others; himself he cannot save.

They are confused about His work. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. They are confused about what He is doing.

42 If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now

They are confused about what God is doing. It was the hour of darkness. It wasn t God s will for Him to come down at the time.

43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him:

Verse 43 has a sting in it: If he will have him. We have Him up there. See if God will have Him. He said that God was His Father.

There He hangs. The mockery. He told Pete, If I needed help, I could just whisper a word. Do you know the song, Ten Thousand Angels?

He could have called ten thousand angels to destroy the world and set him freeHe could have called ten thousand angels but he died alone for you and me.

You ve got to get the idea of what was going on there, though. Do you know what i

t is like to be near deliverance and to have it right within your grasp, to be able to get it and then have a hostile mob deny your Saviour, deny your faith, because your Saviour and faith didn t deliver you? Maybe you don t know anything about that. That is where He was and he stayed and He stuck it out because He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninthhour.46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?



My friend, when that happened, a deeper chasm began to yawn beneath the Saviour. Now it isn t just the physical agony and suffering, now we move into three hours of darkness. God reaches out and pulls down a shade of sackcloth over the sun. We sing the song, At the Cross.

Well might the darkness hide,And shut his glories in,When Christ, the mighty Maker diedFor man, the creature s sin.

At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,And the burden of my heart rolled away,It was there by my faith I received my sight,And now I am happy all the day.

We ll save Verses 45 and 46 for next time. Now we get into divine judgment on man s sins. Now you get not just to the physical but the spiritual death. Now you hear Him cry, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

John 8:29 And he that sent me [Christ] is with me: the Father hath not left mealone; for I do always those things that please him.

The Lord Jesus Christ, from moment one up to that moment on Calvary, could say, M

y Father has never left me alone. Now he cries, My God (the Father), my God (theSpirit), why hast thou forsaken me? They forsook Him. They forsook Him. The answer to why they forsook Him is that God made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Every time I read that, I know I can t explain it to you. I have read theology books and commentaries and they have explanations about how the trinity could be divided and how God the Son could be separated from God the Father and God the Holy Spirit when they are a perfect eternal one. You get trying to describe all that and your mind just goes blank on you. You crack your skull trying to figure out all of that, and you never will. But, I ll tell you what, the eye of faith just backs off and looks at it and sees it and bows and says, My Lord and my God, Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.

Far more than the physical torment that that bleeding, bloody, dying, battered body had suffered more than any other man was the spiritual torment, more than the battle with the adversary in the spiritual realm ? now spiritual death, simply defined as God forsaking Him because of our sin.

We ll talk about that in detail next time. I ll try to show you what it is in the scripture but it is something that never before happened, something that never before was experienced by humanity to be cut off, symbolized by the darkness, thenatural sign of His predicament.

How grateful we can be tonight because of that which He did for us there. Paulcan say to us and about us that we have been delivered from the power of darknes

s and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son. It s good to be saved tonight. It s good to have a Saviour.

You know folks the religions of this world don t know anything about a Saviour and a God of love who would give Himself for His sinful creation. Religion knows about a God of justice who demands performance to gain His acceptance and demandour doing and performing and our giving in order to placate and please Him to make Him happy with us. But, the God of the Bible is entirely and exactly the opposite of everything man ever could think of. He did the one thing that man would never think of: He gave Himself for us.



Herein is love. If you want to see God s love, you look at that cross and you see God giving Himself as a sacrifice and payment for our sins. That s why Paul says, The love of Christ, not me loving Him, because I have failed. Don t you fail, too?

Yesterday I heard a guy on the Moody station on the radio. We were riding along listening to the music and they were singing a song, not Oh, How I Love Jesus, but it was something like Lord, I want to love you and I do love you. The announcer came on afterwards and said, I love the Lord too, but I fail so often. I thought, Boy, that s a real confession that we all can make. If it meant me loving Him, I dhave to quit, but it isn t that it s Him loving me so I never have to quit because He never quits.

Our Father, we thank you tonight for your goodness and your grace and your great love for us. I pray that the details of the things we have read about our Saviour, those moments that He hung there on Calvary, though they transpired in just a few hours in human time, we know that He was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. He is the eternal, spotless one, the eternal God who suffered for us. We thank you for your love and your plan and purpose and wisdomin executing such a marvelous plan of redemption. We thank you for our part init, that we are participants in it. We pray as we appreciate it, as we understand it, that it would bear fruit in our lives for your glory. We pray in Christ sprecious name. Amen.


We are about to read a couple passages of scripture that are probably the deepes

t chasm in the Word of God. The Lord had been subjected to tremendous dejection, desolation, despondency and rejection - the ridicule of men, the rejection of His people, the vicious hatred and so forth. He had been beaten and brutalized by professional Roman soldiers. Then He is hung out on a cross. There He hangs.

That wasn t the worst of it. All that physical agony and suffering, the rejection, mockery and suffering, all of that was leading up to what we are about to read now. That was making it very clear that He is all by Himself.

Matthew 27:45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land untothe ninth hour

From 12:00 noon until 3:00 in the afternoon, darkness comes out over the land.

God, as it were, just reaches up and pulls down a shade of sackcloth over the sun and the sun doesn t shine. I have quoted that verse to you that we sing.Alas! and did my Savior bleedAnd did my Sovereign die?Would He devote that sacred headFor such a worm as I?

Well might the sun in darkness hideAnd shut his glories in,When Christ, the mighty Maker died,



For man the creature s sin.That s what is happening here. The darkness there is symbolic. The physical darkness was just really representative, figuratively, of the spiritual darkness that was enveloping the earth and mankind at that time.

Luke 23:44 And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.45 And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.

Notice how Luke gets the order of events all out of whack.

46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy handsI commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost

Luke has the veil being rent in Verse 45, when the sun was darkened while in Matthew it isn t until after Christ s death. Luke doesn t pay any attention to the time. I ve shown you throughout Matthew that all these writers don t necessarily try toget things in chronological order because they are not trying to write a harmony of the life of Christ.

I am going to say that once last time. Okay? I have tried to emphasize that to you and I am not trying to be disparaging of the idea of studying the life of Christ and getting the chronology of it. In the last two months I have spent a great deal of time figuring time elements and that s okay. But, the point is, ther

e are four gospels because there are four pictures of the ministry and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. I ll show you in a minute how it works out in the OldTestament.

It s fascinating when you read this Bible that it s one author from one end to the other. It just fits together and yet there will be fifteen hundred years between the time that Moses wrote something and the time when Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote something. It s just as though there was one writer and an unseen hand behind it. Of course, there was an unseen hand. Who was it? God the Holy Spirit. So, there really is one author.

God the Holy Spirit reached down to the vocabulary of some forty odd men and pulled out of their experiences and the vocabulary in their mentality and frame of

reference, the words that He wanted written down, but it was the Holy Spirit writing that book. That s the reason that that book is different. That s the reason the longer you are saved and the more you study the Word of God, you become a person of the book and that book becomes important to you. That s where we are. Weare people of doctrine that resides in us and we get it out of the word.

Luke sort of takes it out of the chronological order because he is focusing on the spiritual significance of what is going on. In Verse 45, he says the sun isdarkened but he already said that darkness was over the face of the earth. That is just a type of the spiritual darkness that the world was in that came to a head like a festering boil when Christ hung there on Calvary.

The darkness over the face of the earth was a natural sign of the predicament of

mankind.

John 1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

The darkness was also a sign of the predicament that the Lord was in at that hour for He was being made sin for us. Any of the darkness that mankind had, Christ was taking on Himself.

Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, E



li, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

This is probably the most heart rending verse in the Bible. The Psalmist said that when He said that, He screeched a blood curdling death wail. My God! My God! That s the first time in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ that He ever looked at God the Father and God the Holy Spirit and said, My God! My God! Every other time, He had said, Father. Now, it s My God. He does that because the relationship isbroken. Why hast thou forsaken me? That is the first time that something that had never before been experienced by the Lord Jesus Christ in His humanity.

John 8:29 And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.

John 8:16 And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.

In Chapter 10, He said, The Father and I are one. Specifically, He could say, TheFather hath never left me alone. He hangs on the cross, My God! My God! Why hath thou forsaken me? We sing the song: Friend of the Friendless:

Friend of the friendlessBetrayed and denied,Help of the weak

In Gethsemane cried.Light of the world,In gross darkness He died.Jesus, wonderful Saviour.

God the Father, God the Holy Spirit. That s why He cried, My God! My God! referring to the other two persons in the trinity who forsook Him. He s cut off. I toldyou last time that I can t explain that to you.

I have read theology books where they try to explain how one person of the triune God: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, three persons, onein essence, all three being equal in the Godhead how it is that one of those persons could be separated from the others. I can t explain that and I don t have to e

xplain it and I am glad of that. I have never seen anybody who could explain it. I have seen people try and wind up in heresy. I have seen people try and wind up in confusion. What I decided is that I can t explain it. My mind can t take it in but I can read it and see it happen.

Now, when He was forsaken by God, the relationship is cut off; the reason for the forsaking come back to Psalm 22. Why did God the Father forsake Him? There wasn t a Jew standing at the foot of the cross who didn t know that He was quoting Psalm 22:1. (A lot of Gentiles don t know it because they don t study the Old Testament.) Every Jew knew it because they learned the Psalms when they were children.

Psalm 22:1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

That is the divine judgment of God on sin. If you want a definition of spiritual death; if you want an accurate description of the Second Death, that s it. Youjust remember Christ hanging on the cross crying, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? being punished from the presence of God, separated, cut off. That is the definition of spiritual death. It s not cessation of existence, not annihilation and snuffed out, and the darkness of soul and the damnation that goes withit, but separation from God Almighty. That s what the Saviour took on the cross.

We ve talked about it before but there was something that happened there and I wan



t to read the verses to you again. There was something there that happened that is so staggering, so earth shaking that when you read the passages you feel asthough you never can come up with enough words to fully describe it.

Psalm 22:1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far fromhelping me, and from the words of my roaring?

That s it. He is roaring. The word there means to screech out. Not just from pain but from the fact that God was making Him to be sin for us. Not just screeching out from the crucifixion and physical pain but from the spiritual death as He, for the first time in His life, came in contact with sin. The answer is in the first four words of Verse 3.

3 But thou art holy,

Habakkuk 1:13: Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity

And when the Lord Jesus Christ hung there on the cross, the book says that God made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin. You see, when you get over there toPaul s epistles, you begin to find out all that God was doing there at Calvary. When you look back and see these events and then when you read Matthew, you can t just run over that quite so quick. It opens up it for you.

Psalm 22:3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were notconfounded.6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

And on He goes about the mockery. Notice Verse 6, when He says, I am a worm andnot a man, there is a transformation taking place spiritually in the soul of theLord Jesus Christ as He hangs on that cross. God Almighty makes Him to be sin for us, and God Almighty pours out the fury of the wrath against sin in an unmixed portion on Christ as He hangs there and He suffers your second death.

He hangs there and says, I am a worm. The Hebrew word meaning a worm is a red magg

ot. Does that encourage you? It s a little worm that they used to squash his guts out and get the crimson for the scarlet color to stain robes and garments. AsHe hangs there, the very life of His soul Isaiah says He gave His soul an offering for sin.

There is a spiritual transaction taking place there that is staggering. I am a worm and not a man. What is He talking about? Think just a minute where you are in the passage. You re in the Millennium. They come up and worship at Jerusalem and they got out to Gehenna, the place out there south of the Dead Sea that we ve talked about time and again. It is set on fire and burns down to the pit of hell and there is an opening in the Millennial Kingdom that goes right down into hell itself where you can walk on the precipice and look down, as it were, rightinto hell and see the souls of the damned. That s what they are doing here.

Isaiah 66:24 And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.

I am a worm and not a man. They go out and look at those people in hell and theylook at their worm that dies not.

Mark 9:43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that n



ever shall be quenched:44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.45 And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that nevershall be quenched:46 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.48 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

It s little wonder to me that the new versions of the Bible leave out those verses. Those verses are talking about a spiritual transformation in the souls of lost men, the natural degenerative activities of sin that take upon the souls of men and degenerate their souls in hell.

Darwin had it backwards. He said we went from an amoeba to a worm up the line to a man. We didn t go from the puddle of paradise. Man goes from paradise to the puddle and the puddle winds up in the lake of fire.

Mark 8:36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

He wasn t just talking about not knowing where his soul was when he wanted to getup in the morning, like you lose your car keys. Your soul is a piece of personal identity within yourself that is you, the part of you that is always you thatcarries your identity. He says that sin is going to cause a man to lose that.

Whatever that is, it is described in the Bible as just a big mass of seething, burning red maggots, suffering under the eternal wrath and fury of God against sin.

Do you know that unsaved people in this Bible don t have names? Did you ever notice that guy over in Luke 16 with the rich man, Lazarus and Abraham? What is the rich man s name? In the text he doesn t have a name. Dives is Latin word for richman. The unsaved man loses his identity and has no name. Isn t that what sin does to you?

Let me show you something about these passages, as I said, is staggering. People debate whether we should use the passage. Let me show you something about it.

John 3:14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

Calvary is described in that verse as lifting up a serpent on a pole.

The sign of the medical profession is a serpent hanging on a pole. They have all kinds of reasons for doing that but it goes back to Moses. When the serpent (the little fiery worm) bit them, Moses made one of brass (type of judgment) andputs it on a pole and said, Look at it and you will live.

Christ says, Do you see that? I am going to be like a serpent hanging on a pole. Who is the serpent in the Bible? Satan. Do you know if you have a clear view

of what happened on Calvary when Jesus Christ cries, My God! My God! Why has th

ou forsaken me?, if you get a real view of that, you won t be able to run around like twentieth century America runs and never gets it.

Sit sometime and meditate on it and think about the verses for twelve, fifteen or eighteen hours and let them sink in. The Bible describes what Jesus Christ went through as a worm and not a man, for your redemption, a serpent hanging on atree. To accurately describe the spiritual transaction that took place at Calvary is about as close to blasphemy as you can get without blaspheming God.

Satan, the serpent, is sin personified and that is who the Lord Jesus Christ bec



ame at Calvary. He died for everything that is wrong with you. He died for every one of your sins. He didn t just have them placed on Him; He was identified with them in the flesh.

2 Corinthians 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

He made Him to be sin. He made Him sin itself. He didn t put it on Him just to carry it. When you say that, you have to be careful because then it says that He didn t know any sin. He didn t have any of His own; it was your sin.

Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made acurse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

When you look at Calvary and you see what really happens there, you say, Cursed!is everyone who hangs on a tree. That s the reason I say that you get in there soclose.

1 Corinthians 12:3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking bythe Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed:

That s blasphemy and yet when you see what happened at Calvary, you see somethingthere that is so deep and so wide and so dark.

Folks, never forget that it is your sin that put Him there. If it had been just one of your sins it would have taken that. For the righteousness of God Almighty to be satisfied, the justice of God would have demanded it and the love of God would have sent Him and the grace of God would have provided the plan for your redemption. But you yourself know that it is more than just one little sin, isn t it? It s a lot of old dirty, rotten things that make our lives what we don t want them to be.

Forsaken by God: the divine judgment of God against sin. Boy, when you see that!

There s a song that we sing that says,

In evil long I took delight,Unawed by shame or fear,Till a new object struck my sight,And stopped my wild career.

I saw One hanging on a tree,In agonies and blood;He fixed His languid eyes on me,As near His cross I stood.

Sure never till my latest breath,Shall I forget that look!It seemed to charge me with His death,

Though not a word He spoke.

My conscience felt and owned the guiltAnd plunged me in despairI saw my sins his blood had spiltAnd helped to nail him there.

A second look He gave, which said, "I freely all forgive; This blood is for thyransom paid; I die that thou mayest live."Thus while His death my sin displays In all its blackest hue, Such isthe mystery



of grace, It seals my pardon too!

That s it. That s the good news of the Gospel of the Grace of God that s ours to proclaim.

Folks, when you read that passage in Matthew, don t you ever forget that when He cries, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?, He is not just hanging there crying out underthe physical pain and agony, He is drinking that cup of the fury and wrath of Almighty God against your sin. Glory! Hallelujah!

Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?

Eli, Eli. It is a little different in Mark

Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

Eli, is the Hebrew. Eloi is the Aramaic word. It is fitting according to the gospel. In Matthew, Eli means my mighty God. Eloi means simply My God and refers to God, His nature. Mark s gospel, presenting Christ as the servant, it is fittingthat it would be just My God referring to His identity. He s the boss kind of thing. He s the one who has to be satisfied.

Matthew points to His power. He is the lion of the tribe of Judah in Matthew, so it s fitting that way. There is that difference.

Matthew 27:47 Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias [Elijah].48 And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.

Notice that one of the sayings on the cross takes place here.

John 19:28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.29 Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vi

negar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.That s where you are in Matthew 27. Notice that the first thing after He cries, My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me? is I thirst.

Do you remember Luke 16? The rich man in hell said, Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

Don t you ever get the idea that hell and the wrath of judgment of God against sin isn t literal.

Forsaken! I thirst. He is suffering your hell, people. The eternal Son of God,

God the Son, comes in contact with your sin and the wrath of God is poured out against Him and the eternal wrath of God is burned out on Him. It is real and it is literal. You ought to cry in hell for eternity, forsaken and tormented. He suffers that right there for you. Like I said, Hallelujah!

Matthew 27:49 The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.

Those people were taunting Him: If you are the Son of God, come down. Let God come and save you. They think He is crying out for Elijah in response to their moc



kery because Malachi 4 says that Elijah is going to come and prepare the way for the Messiah. They are continuing to mock Him and they think that He is tryingto call down Elijah. They are still confused and don t know what is going on.

50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.

When He yields up the ghost, it is as though he says, Dismissed! It s not as though He s saying, Well, I guess I think I ll just turn it over now. It s not that kind of thing. It s the king saying, Court dismissed! You can leave now! It s that kind of proclamation.

John 10:18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have powerto lay it down, and I have power to take it again.

When it comes to Him dying, Matthew says. He dismisses court! And, it s over with.

The Lord is actually going to quote scripture again from the cross.

Luke 23:46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.

Now, again, He is saying, Father so their relationship has been restored. The suffering is over. The payment is made. Everything is okay now. The spiritual ag

ony of separation and wrath is over. Now the expiation is made and He says, Father. Wonderful word.

46 Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave upthe ghost.

Notice. He gives up His Spirit; He gives up the ghost (that s His soul) and thenHis body, of course, they take down and put it in the grave. Spirit, soul and body; like you have.

Psalm 31 is the one Christ is citing. It s a fascinating Psalm to read in the context of the cross.

Psalm 31:1 In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.2 Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me.3 For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me,and guide me.4 Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my strength.5 Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.

When Christ says, Into thine hand I commit my spirit, thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth, He is enduring it on the basis of truth, on the basis of sound

doctrine of what He knows about what God is doing, He can endure all that.

Hebrews 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

You have to see what He is doing there for it is exactly what we do today in the Body of Christ as we express His life. As His life lives in us, we are doing only what He did. He has a realm of knowledge, of sound doctrine, in His heart and in His mentality, in His mind and in His consciousness that enables Him to en



dure the cross because He knows O LORD God of truth! He knows that God is a God of true doctrine. His faith in God the Father and God the Holy Spirit and in the Word of God is not going to fail. And so, He just goes on sound doctrine right down to the end.

That ought to be a lesson to us, shouldn t it? It ought be something to tell youthe value. People, Paul says, This is the way I look at it and think about it: this is the mental attitude that I have.

Romans 8:18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

That s Hebrews 2 in another way. Just as Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, He is not talking about following the Jewish program that He was under but He s talking about following the same mental attitude and dynamics that He practiced. It s the dynamics, the life, the activity of a mind that is fixed on the Lord God of truth, the reliability of sound doctrine and going on it. That is what enabled Christ to endure the cross.

Do you want to endure? Do you want to have victory? That tells you how, doesn tit?

After He says, Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit,

John 19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.And brother, those are the last words that came out of His mouth. Teletelestai! It s over! It is done! It is finished! That s it. It s done! That s it! ad and gave up the ghost. It s over.

There are four gospels: Matthew presents Christ as King; Mark presents Him as the servant; Luke presents Him as the man; and John presents Him as God. Just asthey present His life and ministry in those caricatures, so it is that each oneof the gospels takes one of the offerings out of Leviticus.

There are five offerings in the first seven chapters of the Book of Leviticus.Four of those offerings require the shedding of blood. One offering, the meal o

r meat offering, was just grain where there was no blood. However, in the other four offerings: the sin, the peace, the burnt and trespass offerings, there was the shedding of blood. Those four offerings find their counterpart in the four gospels.

Matthew presents the trespass offering. It s the view of the death of Christ that is of the governmental activities and the reparation that involved in the trespass offering. Trespass means you have overstepped the boundary. You ve stepped over the line. You ve broken the law. It is the governmental restoration in view in that offering. That fits Matthew as the gospel presenting Him as King. It looks at sins. Mark presents the sin offering. This one looks at the sin nature. It has to do

with expiation in view.

Luke presents the peace offering. The peace offering is just what the name indicates: the offering that brings communion between the sinner and God.

John presents the burnt offering which presents the total and complete consecration to God.

The peace and burnt offerings are called sweet savour offerings. They are special because when they go up to God they are a sweet savour unto Him.



We just don t have the time, but it is a fantastic study to take those offerings,understand them and see them fit into these gospels. It is something that is worth your time in studying. I ll tell you what it will do. It will take the Bookof Leviticus and it won t be such a hard time to get through it.

Each of the offerings has a Psalm that matches it. The trespass offering corresponds to Psalm 69. He is a reproach. The sin offering Psalm is Psalm 22. Thepeace offering Psalm is Psalm 18, and the burnt offering Psalm is Psalm 40. Psalm 16 is the meal offering Psalm.

Again, you can go into each of these Psalms and see a parallel because of the way the death of Christ is presented in each of the gospels that corresponds to it.

Your Bible is put together so perfectly that you can t beat it with a stick. When I talk to you about respect for the Bible and about the Bible being a wonderful book, I know that sometimes I might sound nuts because I go overboard about praising and glorying in the Word of God. I write all over the pages and you can tear pages out of my Bible but you can t write on God. I m not talking about the paper or ink on the pages and leather binding, I m talking about the perfections of the Word of God, the Written Word that puts you in contact with the Living Word.

I look at that and I say, Lord, you had to do that. Where are you going to get Matthew, Mark, Luke and John just think for a minute about the character of thoseguys. John is called the son of thunder. Mark is a quitter. Luke, a doctor, isout there with Paul. Matthew is a publican. They are not the most hoity toityguys in the world. They write four gospels.

There s a bunch of guys over there writing Psalms. There s Moses writing about theofferings.

How in the world could all these gospel writers get all the Branch titles and all these different prophecies and get all the offerings straight and then all the Psalms straight? You know, it took more than an IBM computer to get all that straight.

A guy wrote me the other day and said, I ve got a new IBM computer and now I can count the words. Listen, you d run yourself crazy in five generations trying to figure out this stuff ahead of time. For a dumb fellow like you or me just to discover what s there, that s hard enough, isn t it? How would you like to put it there first? That s God s book, people.

If you touch that Bible anywhere, you touch the Lord Jesus Christ. It will reward your study and your diligence in it so you take a lesson from that and you spend some time studying some of those things back there, will you?

Matthew 27:50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up theghost.

51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, 53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.



What you are getting into there is a list of results of the immediate accomplishments of Christ s death.

The first thing is that the veil of the temple is rent from top to bottom. Then there is a resurrection that takes place after His resurrection. Matthew putsit here due to the fact that it is a result of the cross. Then there is this Gentile centurion and they who are with him who express the faith that Israel hasfailed to express. Then in Verses 55 and 56, there is a group of women.

There are some immediate results of the crucifixion. First, the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. The veil was about a foot thick, made out of skins, a big, heavy kind of drape. It wasn t that somebody at the bottom ripped it up but it ripped from top to bottom as though God did it. God tore the veil open. The earth quaked and the rocks rent.

The veil signified that the way into the holiest is not yet open. (Hebrews 9)

Remember what happens. (Chart) The temple is a rectangle. Out front is the brazen altar. Inside at the farther end is the Holy of Holies where the ark and cherubim are. Just outside in the Holy Place, are the table of incense with thelamp stand on the left and the table of shewbread on the right.

The veil that we are talking about separates the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place. The idea is that the place where the priests worked was separated from the

Holy of Holies where the priest was allowed only one day a year, the Day of Atonement. That veil separated the people from going into the Holy of Holies where the mercy seat was. God had told Israel, On the mercy seat is where I am goingto meet with you. So, the presence of God, the Shekinah glory, is manifest on that mercy seat. The veil keeps the people from going in there.

When Jesus Christ dies, the veil is rent. Why? Here s the answer.

Hebrews 10:19 Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,20 By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;

The idea is that now we have access into the presence of God because the veil (the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ) has been rent and the way has been made through His blood to go into the presence of God. The teaching is that when Christ died, the veil was rent, demonstrating that now the way was open into the presence of God. The law was ended. When He said, It is finished, the idea is taught that that means that the law was finished and was no more.

The problem with that is what you are reading in Hebrews 10, is not something that the people knew at Calvary. That is part of a later revelation that is given as a result of the mystery given to Paul. You understand that.

In Acts 2 and 3 and as late as Acts 21, the believers at Jerusalem were still keeping the law. It is obvious that the law had not been set aside at this time,

at least in the conscience of the people. So then, what does the veil mean? Ithink it is anticipating revelation. For you to say that it means that the lawis done away with, that s something that you learn later. What does it mean in Matthew 27? It is very obvious if you just stick to Matthew.

We studied the passage before. Jesus Christ is standing in the temple and He is fixing to walk out.

Matthew 23:38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.



He is saying, I am Jehovah God and when I leave this place, God is leaving. Do you know what those priests saw in the Holy of Holies when that veil was rent in twain and it was opened up? They saw the ark, the mercy seat and the cherubim but the glory of God wasn t to be found.

What they found was that instead of the glory of God being behind the veil, it was desolate. It was Ichabod the glory is departed from Israel. The rending of that veil signified in the passage in Matthew and in the context of the crucifixion that the temple had been forsaken by God. It demonstrated the judgment of God on that nation, that Ichabod was written over them and they were just an emptyvessel in need of their God coming back to them.

Folks, when they go over there in early Acts, they are offering Christ to come back for the times of refreshing and restoration . . . to come back and the times of bringing the glory back to the house of Israel.

When we study Acts, we are going to see that Little Flock, that little group ofbelievers was a tent, a group of people of flesh and blood, a fleshly tabernacle with the glory of God in them just like that tabernacle in the wilderness was.

But here, they have rejected Him. They ve thrown Him out. He is Jesus of Nazareth. They crucified Him. They said, Away with Him! And, God demonstrates to them, I m gone!

The kids today say, I m gone. The Lord said it first, the rent veil. He s gone. Emp

ty. Forsaken The nation is left desolate as a result of having crucified andrejected their Saviour.

But, He doesn t leave them without witness.

Matthew 27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection,

That s three days later. He comes up. He is the first fruits. They can t come upbefore He does but He comes up and then they come up too.

and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

That was a foretaste and a testimony. They came up and went into the city of Jerusalem. There had to have been some who recently died. If Joe Schmoh from 600 B.C. had come up, they wouldn t have known who he was. These are believers, mothers, dads, children, whom they have taken out to the graveyard and were resurrected and have come back in to the city, after Christ is raised, as a testimony to the resurrection of Christ and the restoration potential that is available forthe nation Israel.

54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.

There s a Gentile centurion and a whole company of Gentiles with him and they take their place with Peter (Matthew 16) proclaiming what the nation denied: Truly this was the Son of God.

Luke 23:47 Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God,

That is something Luke always has the Gentile doing. Luke is giving you the view of how a Gentile would look at Israel s Messiah.

48 And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things wh



ich were done, smote their breasts, and returned.49 And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.

What a picture that was. There at the foot of that cross with the dead body ofthe Messiah still there, the blood not even dried on the ground, there s a company of Gentiles gathered together and they look to Him in hope. What He is sayingis that there is hope for the nations. There is hope for that heart smitten inIsrael, for those Israelites who beat their breasts in return, those Israeliteswho repent and are smitten in heart as Zechariah says they will be.

And that Little Flock; all His acquaintances. You see, the gospel writers overin Acts, will look back to His death and see the tragedy of it and yet there isall the promise of the prophets. There is Israel, heart smitten. Hope for them in the one whom they have pierced. There are the Gentiles who come and glorify God through Israel and say, Look, this is the Messiah. There is hope for them.

And then there is that Little Flock of believers, His testimony during His absence. They are there. They are all gathered there. You have a snapshot of theprophetic program. It s all there and the seed for accomplishing it all is rightthere at the foot of that cross.

We now know that Unto Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, that s the prophetic program. He has redeemed us by His blood and made us to be kings and priests of our God and we will reign in the earth. That s the prophet

ic program.You don t learn about the cross work and the fulfillment and fullness of it and how it fits and accomplishes the prophetic program until you come over to the apostle Paul. But we now know that it is the basis of everything.

You see, God places it in His word back here so that once we found out that thecross is everything, we can look back here and see, Yes, God had it in mind all along to be just that way. How wonderful.


Our heavenly Father, we thank you for the word. We thank you for the clarity with which it presents the details of the life of our Saviour, especially the last moments of His life, the results, the facts and truth of the resurrection. We know that we now understand not just the historical events but we understand thereal doctrinal and spiritual significance that was being accomplished in these events. We thank you for it. We pray that these things would be clear to us, an encouragement to us, and that our instruction in them might be profitable for t

hy glory, in Christ s name. Amen.

Matthew 27:50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up theghost.

When he had cried with a loud voice. He just says, It is finished! Those are the last words to come out of His mouth. It is finished. That s it. It s done. It s one word in the Greek language that He would have expressed: teletelestai. It s over with. That s it ? and He dies. He yielded up the ghost. He dismissed His spirit and died like nobody else ever did.



I have seen saints languish on beds of pain and agony and ask God, Why don t you let me die? They want to die and beg God to let them die. That s a natural thing for people to do when their ability comes to an end.

I was out yesterday at Hines, the VA hospital, there s a man, a quadriplegic, paralyzed from his neck down and he s blind. He can hear but he can t feel anything except from his neck up. He can t feed himself and can t see the people who come to feed him. He can talk and that s all he can do. They said that he bites people. A nurse showed me her thumb where he bit it. She said she was lucky because he won t let go when he bites. She was wiping his mouth and had a towel underneath her thumb so was able to pull it out but her thumb was pretty badly chewed.

I got to thinking about that guy just lying on that bed. That would be a horrible existence. Don t you know that man would just like to be able to dismiss his spirit and die? He can t do it. He has no control over that. Just to say, I m gone.

But Christ did. He died differently, you see. He died differently because Hisdeath was not just a human death; it was a sacrifice for a payment that God wasdoing so He just dismissed His spirit, yielded up the ghost. That is, His souljust departed out of His body.

Matthew begins to list some of the results, some of the consequences, some of the accomplishments of His death. He lists them in connection with his gospel as

it presents Christ to Israel as their rejected king and the consequence of their rejection and the consequence of His crucifixion. They are listed briefly butreally in quite a significant series of events as you study them. Often times we don t read into them the significance that is there.

I hope that by now, close to the end of the Book of Matthew, that you have seenenough to see that Matthew puts into his book things, events, conversations andhappenings that parallel the dispensational purpose for which he writes. Mark,Luke and John do the same with regard to the purpose for which they write.

I have said to you so many times that I probably shouldn t say it again but the reason that there are four gospels is because each presents a different perspective, a different viewpoint and facet of the ministry of Christ. Therefore, the th

ings that are added are there specifically there is nothing there by chance andeverything by design.

51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

Matthew says the first thing that happens when Christ yields up the ghost and He says, It is finished and He dies, is that the veil in the temple which separatedthe Holy of Holies from the Holy Place is rent from top to bottom as though Godjust tore it open from above.

The significance of the rending of the veil is very important.

Matthew 23:36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

He says, I would have gathered and protected you and mothered you and taken careof you and hovered over you but you wouldn t have me. You rejected me. We have seen that from the very beginning, from the first place you see Christ in the Book of Matthew at His birth and in the scene right after His birth in Nazareth, the



place of rejection. They call Him Jesus of Nazareth in the early Book of Acts. We saw then from the beginning that Nazareth was the place of rejection. He was the rejected one.

The wise men come to Jerusalem Where is he, born king of the Jews? ? and old Herod and the Gentiles are troubled at that saying. They don t want a king.

He wasn t in the favored city. In Matthew 2, He was two years old so they had plenty of time to have gotten Him and brought Him there. From there and all the way here in Matthew, He was rejected. He was the rightful king, rejected by the nation.

John 1:11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

Saying that, John is telling you in thumbnail fashion that, in essence, what Matthew presents in great detail. John is building on that truth.

That is what Christ is saying here, I would, but you wouldn t.

Matthew 23:38 Behold, your house [the temple] is left unto you desolate.39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.24:1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

It is as though Jesus Christ, standing in the temple, says to the leaders of Israel, the favored nation, Behold, your house (the temple) is left to you desolate.

He walks out of the temple and was saying to them, I am God Almighty and I am leaving this place and now it is not my Father s house, but your house ? and it s empty and it s desolate. The glory of God isn t going to be in this place again until you see me coming and shall say, Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord.

At His second advent, He comes back to that temple. He leaves the temple as anexile, the rejected one; He comes back in His glory.

Malachi 3:1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the m

essenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.

Elijah, the one that John the Baptist was a type of, will come and prepare the nation for the Second coming. His name is mentioned in Malachi 4:5

Malachi 4:5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple. In Acts 3, Peter talks about the times of refreshing and the restoration of all things. He is talking about the time when God will take Ichabod, the glorious departed, away from the title of His people and will plant His light and His glory in their midst once again.

In representative fashion, that s what is happening here. In Matthew 27, when that great, heavy, separating curtain is torn asunder, they see that the Holy of Holies is desolate and empty. Oh, they see the ark of the covenant and the mercyseat and cherubim but God had said He would dwell there between the cherubim. Psalm 80:1 Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.

The Shekinah glory is the presence of God. Shekinah is the Hebrew word for presenc



e. Let the glory of His presence shine forth. In Exodus, He said He would meetthem on the mercy seat when the high priest came in and brought that blood. I ll meet you on the cover of the ark, the mercy seat, where the blood is poured.

All of a sudden that veil is torn asunder and they see that God is gone. The rending of that veil demonstrates the judgment of God on the nation and it s an open testimony to the fact that they are a forsaken nation.

God has forsaken them for they would not have Him. They crucified Him. They would not have Him so He left. He withdrew from the nation and His presence was to be found only in that Little Flock of believers.

Watch the rest of what happens back in Matthew 27.

Matthew 27:54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.55 And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:56 Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, andthe mother of Zebedee's children.

They are the disciples relatives. Come over to Luke and see these women who followed Him from Galilee.

Luke 23:27 And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.28 But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.

Then He continues to give them a passage on the great tribulation that is goingto come. Jacob s trouble will come upon them because of their sin and rejection of Messiah.

He identifies those women who followed Him from Galilee as the daughters of Jerusalem. That is a tremendous term, used over and over in the prophets, about the virgin daughter of Israel. It is a title that describes that remnant in Israel d

uring the Tribulation. In Luke 12:32, He calls them the Little Flock. Luke 12:32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

They have a number of different titles. In Isaiah 26, they are called a righteous nation. Over and over, in Jeremiah, Isaiah, Lamentations, they are called the virgin daughter of Israel. This pure group of people, this believing remnant there they are.

It is interesting to me that in Matthew 27:54, there are the Gentiles. Matthewsets before you situations where Christ comes along and shows Israel s failure and He would point to the Gentiles and say, Look out there. They are ready to recei

ve it. Why don t you get right so we can take it out to them? The very first time you see them in Matthew 2: here come the kings from the east, the magi, the wise men, ready to worship Him and they seek Him and they findHim and do worship Him. What does Israel do? They don t want Him. They join hands with old wicked Herod and seek to destroy Him from the very beginning ratherthan rising up in faith claiming Him and being the light to the Gentiles that Isaiah 60 says they should be. Isaiah 60 even describes the gifts that the kingsof the earth are going to bring. They will sit at Messiah s feet. Here are thesekings ready to do it. The nation, in unbelief, won t have Him.



Matthew 27:54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him,

It s not just one Gentile but a Gentile and a whole bunch of other Gentiles, a company of Gentiles.

54 Truly this was the Son of God.

He watched the Lord die. He said, There is something different about that man who is dying. The centurion was a battle hardened soldier. Roman centurions weresome of the greatest soldiers that the world has ever seen. He watched the Lord dismiss His spirit and just command death. He knew there was something different about this man. He said, Truly this was the Son of God.

Matthew 16:15 whom say ye that I am?16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Here you have this Gentile proclaiming exactly what the nation Israel should have proclaimed. He is identifying himself with exactly the same thing that little remnant is saying. The effect of the death of Christ is judgment on the nation and yet there is hope for the Gentiles out there. There is hope for them as they recognize Him and join themselves together with that believing remnant. There is hope for them. In Verse 57, there is hope for Israel, too, because here co

mes one of Israel s rulers, a Pharisee.57 When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple:58 He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.

Joseph of Arimathæa, a rich man, a Pharisee, came and Nicodemus also, according to John s gospel. Two of the rulers of Israel come. They had been fearful before this but they are emboldened by His death and come and get His body, willing to go to Pilate and beg for it. Get it, take it and go bury it. Isaiah 53 is fulfilled.

Isaiah 53:9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death;

Matthew 27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

Notice! It had to be after His resurrection. It couldn t be before because Christ is the firstfruits, and after Him come the others. So these people are raised after His resurrection. The other things take place the afternoon He died. This resurrection doesn t take place until three days later on the day of the resurrection. Not only does Christ come up that first resurrection morning but the bo

dies of many, not all, of them that slept are raised.

Some of the commentaries put the Old Testament saints at this time as well and are then transported into the third heaven when Christ ascends. I don t know where they would have been for the forty days that He was walking around on earth. It would have been crowded because there were a lot of them.

When we studied Daniel 12, the indication was that the Old Testament saints areresurrected at the beginning of the Millennium, not at this point. Instead, this is just a foretaste. It is one of those many infallible proofs of the resurre



ction of Christ that Acts 1 speaks about. It s one of those demonstrations and testimonies that there was something going on in that nation at that time that was different. The only place you read about it is in Matthew, interesting as it is. It is the resurrection of Christ that assures the resurrection of the nation itself.

Ezekiel 37 talks about the valley of dry bones that he sees, where the flesh iscaused to come back on the bones and then they stand and they live. Ezekiel says that resurrection is a picture, a prophetic foreview of the restoration of the nation Israel to itself. Daniel 12:2 talks about many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall arise. No doubt that is a reference to the same thing.

So, here you have Matthew putting in a picture of God s restoration of the nation, a picture of the Gentiles joining hands with them, a picture of the Little Flock, the remnant of faithful believers who are following Him and now you have a picture of the nation in Verse 57.

Joseph, the rich man, of Arimathæa came and begged the body of Jesus.

Matthew 27:59 And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,60 And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.

There is a little more information on Joseph in Luke 23.Luke 23:50 And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he wasa good man, and a just:51 (The same had not consented to the counsel and deed of them;)

Back in Matthew 27, he had not agreed to the death sentence against Christ.

he was of Arimathæa, a city of the Jews: who also himself waited for the kingdom of God.

Just like Anna and Simeon in Luke 2, he was waiting for the Kingdom of God. Hewas a man of faith, of the believing remnant in the nation, even one the leaders

in the nation.John 19:38 And after this Joseph of Arimathæa, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews,

Secretly because of the Jews. You want to notice that. He was Christ s disciple but he was a fifth column disciple. He wasn t out following Him. He still had hisposition in the Sanhedrin and he just kept his mouth shut about it.

38 [Joseph] besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus.39 And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.

40 Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.42 There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand.

Notice that where Christ was crucified there was a garden. In Genesis 3, the entrance of sin takes place in a garden. When Christ died, the forgiveness, the putting away of sin, took place in a garden. There s a real touching thing there f



or you, too.

These men were secret disciples for fear of the Jews.

John 12:42 Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue:43 For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.

You might call them Fifth Amendment believers because they pled the Fifth J (I won answer lest it incriminate me and get me kicked out of the synagogue.) When Christ dies, His death makes them bold and they come take His body and bury it inJoseph s own tomb.

That is interesting because just like Christ took the cross that Barabbas deserved, just like He suffered for his sin and the punishment God gave him against the sin that Rome was going to give and all the rest, Christ took the penalty of his sin and He also took his place in death and in the grave.

Did you ever take a loved one out to the cemetery and put them to bed with a shovel? You put that coffin down in that hole and put the lid on and throw dirt on their face for the last time and you bury them. When you walk away, just remember Joseph of Arimathæa s tomb, because they wrapped up Christ s body and laid it in the tomb and death couldn t hold Him.

Folks, that s the way it is for everybody who is a believer. You are looking at an empty grave. You know, our faith and our salvation are not built on a coffinlid. The Lord Jesus Christ is not the pathetic echo of some bygone age. He isthe ever living Saviour and He s alive.

Joseph s tomb is a great demonstration of that because Joseph s tomb is empty.

Matthew 27:61 And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.

They see where it is and they set a watch.

62 Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,

By the way, The Good News For Modern Man, today s English version says, The next day, that is, the day following Friday. That is a blatant, private interpretation because there is nothing in any Greek text that gives you any reason or any rightto put Friday in there. As we have already studied in these classes, it wasn t theday after Friday, anyway. You have to be careful when you get going around in that kind of a circle. That s just a little change to follow tradition.

62 Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,63 Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, Af

ter three days I will rise again.64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.

It is interesting to me that these guys are hung up on three days I will rise again because it is mentioned here and again in Verse 40.

40 And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days,save thyself.



That s a reference to the same statement. Back at His trial, they misquoted Him.

Matthew 26:61 And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.

They distorted what He said at His trial. The have distorted His doctrine before the people but when they go to Pilate it is clear that they really did understand what He said. Now they are not saying, I will destroy the temple and I ll raise it again, they re saying You kill me and after three days, I ll rise again. They relly did get it, you see. What they were doing was using their religious connivances to twist the doctrine intentionally to deceive the people, keep them from hearing what He was saying, into rejecting Him.

You are going to see that in your ministry for the Lord. You are going to see that. People will take what you say and twist it rather than answer what you say when they disagree with you. Open it up, look at it and deal with it honestly. They are going to twist and distort it, not because they want to answer you but because they want to keep people in the dark, keep people away from you and keep people rejecting you and thinking you are nuts and away with you.

Our history in the grace movement has been strong if you look back fifty or sixty years. You just see one example after another, after another. I don t need toelaborate on that but when that happens and you see that, you should understand

that nothing is happening to you that is uncommon to man. It happened to your Lord; it happened to Paul; it happened to your predecessors and it is going to happen to you. When it does, don t worry about it. You know what it is, you know where it is coming from and you know that it is a result of unbelief and you just go on.

Notice that when these guys do this they want the tomb to be sealed. They windup producing a situation that actually gives testimony to His resurrection.

Matthew 27:65 Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.66 So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting awatch.

I love Verse 65. By this time, Pilate is so exasperated. He has had it up to here, with these Jews. I ve had it! He is also very confused and concerned about theLord, about the one he s just had crucified.

Do you remember in John 19, the last attempt that he made to keep them from crucifying Christ? When they still gnashed on Him, he went back inside and asked Christ, Where are you from? From whence are you? He knew He was from Galilee. Here guy that he can t find one thing wrong with in all his inquisition. He beats Him up physically to a pulp, the guy never strikes back, never curses, never reviles, just blesses.

They got Pilate up early in the morning, you remember, and his wife rolled over

and he was gone. She asked the servant where he was and the servant said that he was out there with some Jews who were trying to get her husband to crucify some Jesus. No, no, no. You take word to him that I have been much troubled in a dream about that man tonight and not to have anything to do with Him. Pilate gotthat word from his wife. He goes through all these politicians methods and theydon t work. He finally turns Christ over because of the political situation. They take Him away. He says, Before you go, I ll write an inscription, This is Jesus, King of the Jews to be nailed over His head. He writes it in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. The Jews come in and argue about that and he says, Look guys, what I have written, I have written. That s who He is. You have to get the psychology of tha



t.

Now, the Jews have got Him killed and He is buried. The next day they come running in to Pilate and said, There s one other thing, Pilate. He said He was going to rise from the dead in three days. We want you to go out there and seal the tomb and send some soldiers to guard it. Pilate says, Go and do the best you can.I don t think you have a prayer.

I am sort of reading between the lines in Verse 65 but it s pretty certain that s what he is saying.

65 Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.

That s sarcasm. Go do your best, guys. I don t think you have a chance. Pilate knows that something is going on. He knows there is something different about thisguy whom he has had killed. It s the Lord. Pilate is a damned lost sinner in hell tonight. He had power to release Him and had a moral obligation to do it buthe wouldn t. Coward! Compromiser! Conniver!

That doesn t mean that he didn t have a testimony down in his soul that brought conviction. You are going to witness to a lot of lost people who are going to try to snake around like Pilate did and yet down in their heart they re going to know you are right. They won t be like the Pharisees who have their own ends in view b

ut you are going to meet the other kind, too.Remember I told you when we started this section in Matthew about looking at the crucifixion that you begin to get a real picture of human nature. You see it.

You see men confronted with the Saviour and that haunting question that Pilateasked, What then shall I do with Jesus which is called the Christ? That s a haunting question that every soul is going to have to answer one day. You see it in here.

66 So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting awatch.

It is interesting that in Revelation 20, you will see another seal.

Revelation 20:1 And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,3 And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

When God took Satan and threw him into the bottomless pit and set the seal on that lid and on that entrance, nothing ever broke it. When God sets the seal, it sunbreakable. Man seals Christ in the cold, dark tomb. He walked right throughthe rock. He didn t push it out of the way. How do you think you can keep God in

side something that He made? The stone was rolled away the next day, not so Christ could get out but so the disciples and the women could get in and see that He s gone. So, their seal doesn t work but when the Lord seals something, it s secure.

Matthew 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week

There s one thing I d like you to notice in this passage which is sort of an aside.It is interesting and important because it has to do with the three days.



Now, Christ is crucified on the fourteenth day of the month as the Passover is being prepared. He s in the tomb three days and three nights.

Matthew 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

He dies at 3:00 P.M. on Thursday. His soul goes down into Paradise in the heart of the earth. He is down that night and the next day; the next night and nextday; and the next night and He comes up before dawn.

The fourteenth is Thursday and He is resurrected on Sunday

Luke 24:1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning

When they get there before sunup, He is already gone.

Luke 24:13 And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus,

That same day was the resurrection day. Christ appears to the two on their wayto Emmaus and He talks with them and walks along with them.

Luke 24:21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day [Sunday] is the third day since these things weredone.

If the resurrection day was on Sunday, counting back, the crucifixion occurred on Thursday, three days prior. Saturday was the first day, Friday was the second day and Thursday was the third day since it took place. We would say, three days ago.

The Bible sets up its own standards, its own terms and its own definition of the terms. The first place to look to try to define what three days means is to look in the Bible.

Some of the brethren take Matthew 12:40 for the crucifixion and say that He hadto be in the ground for seventy two hours, so therefore, He had to have been crucified on Wednesday. The problem with that is that if it had to be seventy twohours, and He went to Paradise at 3:00 P.M. on the fourteenth, He would have had to come up on the third day, at 3:00 P.M. so it isn t a necessity to have a seventy two hour period.

1 Corinthians 15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

He rose the third day, not the fourth day which was when He would have risen if

it had been seventy two hours. If it was after three days it would have had to have been on the fourth day, but He rose on the third day.

What I am saying to you is that a piece of a day can be counted as the whole. You don t have to have a whole twenty four hour period of it to be a day. It is clear that they understand it that way.

Matthew 67:63 Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day,



Until the third day, not until the fourth day. After three days, it is going to be the period of time up to the end of the third day.

In 2 Chronicles, you see the same thing. There are a number of illustrations of this in the Bible. I ll just give you one. You can search out some others. The reason is that this is important along with fixing out the dating system. In Chapter 28, you will see some things that make it important.

2 Chronicles 10:5 And he said unto them, Come again unto me after three days.And the people departed.

They are to come after three days.

12 So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day, as the king bade, saying, Come again to me on the third day.

Comparing verse with verse, coming after the third day and coming on the third day have the same meaning. When he says, Come after three days, he is not saying to come on the fourth day. He says, Three days from now, come see me.

The crucifixion of Christ I wouldn t argue with you about this for two minutes for love nor money but as far as I can tell in the scriptures when I ve studied the verses, Christ didn t die on Wednesday or on Friday. Neither one of those days fit

. If He died on Friday, there were not three nights. You can get three days: a piece of Friday, Saturday and a piece of Sunday but you can t get three nights.Matthew 12:40 requires three days and three nights.

It won t work that He died on Wednesday either, because you have too much time. You have Him go down on Thursday and He d have to come up at 3:00 on Saturday afternoon to make it seventy two hours and it just won t work.

Luke 24 is clear that Sunday is the third day from the day it happened. Saturday is the first, Friday is the second and Thursday is the third day since it happened.

The fundamentalist brethren say Wednesday. The religious world says Friday. So, if

we say, Thursday, you re not with either one of them. We are different from all of them and probably that is a good testimony that it s right.

I want you to see the day in there. Verse 63 and 64 is a proof passage of the definition of on the third day and after the third day.

Matthew 27:64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.

Matthew 28:11 Now when they were going, [after the resurrection.] behold, someof the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done.

They went to the chief priests and told them that the angel had rolled away thestone. He is gone. We don t know what happened to Him.

12 And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers,13 Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept.14 And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you.



We re willing to bribe Pilate as well as you.

15 So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.

Now, all the soldiers are supposed to go and say, We fell asleep on our watch. You are supposed to believe that all the Roman soldiers were sleeping at the sametime when they knew that would result in the penalty of death. That s the reasonthey were told, We ll secure you. We ll keep Pilate from having you killed.

Let me ask you this. If they all were asleep, how did they know that the disciples came? They couldn t. How in the world are you going to explain the disciples, off locked in a room, scared to death and petrified, with the doors and windows nailed down, a bunch of fellows who wouldn t stand up for Him when He was aliveand when He was being killed, coming and getting Him when He was dead. I mean,His disciples buried Him. How are you going to explain them, all of a sudden, being so bold, robbing the grave? It just doesn t make sense.

What you have here is the involuntary testimony of unbelief to the legitimacy, factuality and historicity of the resurrection. Even the guys who were making the watch couldn t get a story straight to explain His absence.

There is a book entitled, Evidence That Demands A Verdict. You ought to own it.

It is written by Josh McDowell, published by Intervarsity Press. You ought to have a copy of that book and read it every now and then. It is a thick book of historic evidence that uses the laws of evidence involved in the court systemsof our land: the laws and rules of jurisprudence. It proves conclusively where there can be no honest question or doubt about the historical, accuracy of thefact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It proves it more conclusively, as far as it being a historic event, than events like Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most conclusively documented events in all of human history.

You ought to have a copy of that book, every one of you, and be able to demonstrate to people when Easter time comes around don t get caught up in all the religious hullabaloo. Put your feet firmly on the facts of the resurrection. Don t let

somebody tell you that the resurrection just means that His teachings live on and the spiritual principles are passed on down to us like the neo modernists teach. You can go into any court in this country today and prove the authenticity of the historic event of the resurrection of Christ according to the law of admission of evidence. Don t let anyone laugh at you. You ought to have that book. It will add a backbone to your faith when you can see that. You believe it because the Bible says it. Don t believe it because the book says it, but just to seethe historic evidence of it is a real encouragement.

Matthew 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it

.

The angel comes and rolls away the stone. There is a real complicated series of events (if you want to think of it that way)that now takes place. If you are concerned about getting the order of events of the resurrection morning down in your mind I m not going to go through them but if you want to try to get them, usea Scofield Reference Bible because he has them laid out in a footnote. That isas good a presentation of the order of events as you ll ever get. He has laid out the order of events of the resurrection morning and the appearances of Christ.

I m not going to study that with you but I just tell you that if you are interest



ed you can follow what he says.

The angel rolled the stone away from the door and sat on it. As I said before,he did that not so Christ could get out, but in Luke 24 when the women come they are discussing who is going to roll away the stone. Now they can see that it has already been moved. The angel there tells them to come see the place where He lay. He is not here. He is risen.

When Peter and John go in they see the linen clothes. Imagine someone telling you that the disciples stole His body. Why in the world would they have unwrapped Him? They ve got these soldiers outside sound asleep, why would they take the time to unwind all those clothes and then wind back up the wrappings in all the convolutions, lay them there and then tote off His corpse? You need to be zonked out of your gourd to believe something like that. But, that s the idea that they put forth.

The angel rolls away the stone so the people can go in and see that He is not there. When Christ left that morning He just ascended right up through the stone. He didn t have any trouble. He walked through the door to the upper room and disappeared from their midst.

3 His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:4 And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.

That s what happened to the soldiers. They didn t go to sleep. They passed out when they saw the angel.

5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know thatye seek Jesus, which was crucified.6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said.

He told them that He would rise and He did. He kept His word.

6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told

you.8 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.9 And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.10 Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

Notice Verse 9. I want to compare something with you.

9 And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.

John 20 took place about two hours before the encounter with the group of women

in Matthew 28.

John 20:16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him,Rabboni; which is to say, Master.17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father:but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

Mary Magdalene is the first one to get to the tomb. She saw what had happened and ran to get Peter and John. They come and she follows them back to the tomb.



She stands out in the garden and they go in to the tomb and see the linen clothes and that He is gone. They hurry away and she stays there and He appears to her. But, He says to her, Don t touch me because I haven t ascended to my Father yet. Go tell the disciples that I ascend to my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God.

In Matthew 28:9, the women hold onto Him and He doesn t say anything to them. What does that tell you? If I say, Don t touch me because I have to go do somethingelse first, and then later, You can touch me, means that He did it in between. So, in between those two accounts, maybe, there is a two hour period in there (that s what most people estimate it to be) where Christ has ascended into the third heaven and appeared before God the Father and has come back to the earth. That is moving! That is very fast interplanetary, intergalactic travel. That s what a resurrected body can do.

That s the kind of body you folks will have. Space and distance won t have any meaning. You ll be out there in heavenly places ruling with Christ, you won t have anyproblem with time, distance and space. I mean, you can come and go in less than two hours and do the job you have to do. Travel isn t any problem.

Come back to Leviticus 23 and let me show you what He was doing. Why did He go? Leviticus 23 tells you that the fourteenth day of the month is the Passover.That Passover is offered in Verse 5. The night between the fourteenth and fifteenth they eat the Passover. The day after the Passover, the fifteenth, is a Hig

h Sabbath day in which no servile work can be done. Then Saturday is the regular weekly Sabbath.

Leviticus 23:10 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof,then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest:

Christ s resurrection is said to be the firstfruits. (1 Corinthians 15)

11 And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on themorrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.

On the day after that Sabbath, the priest goes in and presents that wave offerin

g. He is presenting the type of the resurrection of Christ before the Lord to be accepted for them.

15 And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the daythat ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete:16 Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days;

You count out fifty days from when you brought the wave offering and that is Pentecost. So, you have Passover and Pentecost but in between there are some things that they do. On the day after that Sabbath, they bring the wave offering before the Lord. They go into the presence of the Lord, into the Holy Place, and they take the firstfruits and present it before the Lord as a thanksgiving testim

ony to the coming harvest. That is the typology.

Christ dies as the Passover. He is resurrected as the firstfruits between the time of His resurrection on that morrow after the Sabbath and business begins tobe done in the temple at sunup there. At the very time of the morning oblation, those priests in the temple down there in Jerusalem were offering that wave offering before the Lord of the firstfruits, Jesus Christ was in the heavenly places before God the Father, My Father and your Father; and to my God and your God, Iam going there to be accepted for you, fulfilling the type.



That s what He was doing when He went up there. He went up there for a testimonyof the firstfruits of the accomplishment of what He was doing. He is fulfilling the type in absolute detail.

That is the reason He said, Don t touch me. You see, if that priest was touched, he couldn t go into the Holy Place until he had gone through the cleansing process and he d have to wait another day. He would be disqualified. That s the reason that these rascals back over here didn t want to go into Herod s hall because they would be defiled and couldn t eat the Passover. They would have to go through the cleansing period. Christ is fulfilling the real type; He s the anti type, going in and doing it.

Everything works right down to a fine point.

We ll stop now. Next time I want to spend some time on the commissions.

I want you to see that about the firstfruits and about how the Lord Jesus Christ is fulfilling every single detail as He goes through these events. There is areason for all that. He is the firstfruits of the harvest of the resurrection.

1 Corinthians 15:23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.

First there will be the rapture of the Church the Body of Christ and then Christ at His coming. The Old Testament saints will come up.


This is the last lesson in the Book of Matthew. As we conclude the book, you wi

ll see that it ends the way it began. The dispensational issues that we have been seeing all through the book remain true right down to the very last amen. It is a very consistent presentation of the Lord Jesus Christ as the King of Israel, presenting His kingdom in rejection by the favored nation and the legitimacyof the offer of it and the rightfulness of it. Yet, the opportunity will be available and the certainty of its coming in that faithful remnant. We ll see that as we go through here.

I have to say to you that I have enjoyed teaching the book. I have learned things about Matthew you always learn things when you teach that you didn t really see before. I can t tell you how many times, standing right here teaching through apassage that I have been studying for hours, I would see things I never saw sitting in the study. Things would come together what I call the gelling factor, that

living thing that happens by the Holy Spirit s teaching ministry as you are teaching. It has been a fascinating book for me and I hope it has been profitable for you.

I hope that you can see as we study a book like Matthew when you rightly dividethe Word, you don t have to force the Word of God into the dispensational settingin which we live. We study the Bible where it is, what it is, in its own dispensational setting and it is still a rich treasure. Practical instructions are there once you get the doctrinal issues in your mind. It s been a real joy for me and I hope it has been for you, too.



The last time, we studied down through Chapter 28, Verse 15, but there is one thing I didn t show you in the first part because we ran out of time.

Matthew 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.3 His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:4 And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know thatye seek Jesus, which was crucified.6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

We have just studied the crucifixion of Christ and let me say one thing to you.It s one of those spin offs that I wish I had time to really demonstrate to you.

Remember last time when we talked about the four views of the cross in each of the gospels. Just like each of the gospels looks at the Lord Jesus Christ with a different perspective, each of them looks at the cross work from a different perspective. I showed you how each of those four views match four offerings backin the first seven chapters of Leviticus. There are really five offerings, four

of which require the shedding of blood and one is a meat or meal offering where there is no shedding of blood. I pointed out to you that it is the offering that focuses on the resurrection. So, that is where you come in Matthew 28. Each one of those offerings has a Psalm that corresponds with it. Psalm 16 is the one that corresponds with the resurrection, the meal offering.

The Book of Psalms is a fantastic book and sometime I just sit and read it because of the way it meshes together with these things. In the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary all the way up to Verse 45 of Chapter 27, He is suffering the humiliation and shame, the persecution, the physical agony and spiritual combat of human suffering. Peter said, Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Christ died as a sacrifice for your sin. That suffering begins in Verse 45. It s that spiritual separation that we studied in Verse 46 and following,

that spiritual death. That s what paid for your sin. In the physical sufferingand agony that Christ suffered up until the time God s wrath was poured out upon Him, the issue in that was His total, complete identification with His sufferingcreation, with the sufferings of humanity because of sin, with the suffering remnant in the time of that great tribulation.

You remember that I said to you repeatedly that there are three times in the Bible when you see the wrath of God poured out without any mixture. One is in hell. One is in the great Tribulation, in the Day of the Lord, wrath without mixture and the cup of indignation. The third one is the cross.

As we have studied those things you look at the cross and see Christ suffering and being totally identified with the sufferings of His creation and His remnant.

The Book of Psalms is full of that. It is fascinating that when you read thePsalms, you say, This is the remnant. No, this is Christ. No, this is the remnant. No, this is Christ. They sort of intertwine. We have been seeing that in Matthew.

By the way, the sufferings into which you and I do not enter because we are believers are the sufferings in Verse 46 and following, the issue of the wrath of God falls on Him. That is when He dies as our sacrifice. That s when the divine suffering is payment for our sins. That is when He is identified with us and as us. He doesn t just die simply as a substitute and that is true but He died as you



. You died there, says Paul.

Just the other day on TV they told of two men who had been in the penitentiary here in Illinois for ten years for a crime they didn t commit. They were released, for they had been wrongfully incarcerated. If you stood before a judge and the death sentence was to be passed upon you, and someone came along and said, I ll die for you, and they went off and died in your place then the next week, you showed up before the judge, the judge would have you killed too. If that person died, they would say, We made a tragic mistake. We killed the wrong guy. See, it isnot enough for him to die in your place. A substitute can go in for you in football to play your position and that kind of thing. But in order to die for you, he has to be identified as you. It has to be you that died. It is in that sense, the substitute does far more than just substituting for you. It is literally that Jesus Christ was made you, sin for you. When God looked at Christ, He wasn t looking at His Son; He was looking at you. That s what we were talking about last time about Christ being made sin personified and the depths of that.

Now we are at the resurrection. We talked about the details of this passage last time. I just want to remind you about the Psalms. It is fascinating and I hope you will spend some real time in the next years of your life, studying the Book of Psalms, studying it from the point of view not just to get some little devotional ditties out of it. If you learn anything about the prophetic scriptures by studying Matthew, learn that there are more than devotional sermonettes for Christianettes. There is some real meat there for men and women that want to know

what God is doing. There are some thrilling things there that will fortify your soul with an understanding of what God is able to accomplish. I wish we had just weeks and weeks to go through them. We don t, so I am going to resist that temptation.

Christ identifies Himself with that suffering remnant in the Tribulation. Paulalso says:

Romans 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,

Just as Christ identified Himself with that suffering remnant in the Tribulation who suffers under that time of Jacob s trouble, so it is that He understands as it says in Hebrews: To make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. (Hebrews 2:10) He completely understands and identifies with our suffering,too, today. That s a wonderful thing to know.

The reason that the Psalms so often minister to people in those circumstances isn t because it is the prophetic program that they are under but we see Him identified with us in our suffering in the bondage of corruption that even we find ourselves under today.

In the passage I read to you in Matthew 28, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is in view. We discussed the issues last time but there is something here

that I want you to see about the resurrection.

The Lord Jesus Christ was raised in a literal body. He was literally, bodily raised from the dead. His resurrection is not simply the liberal and modernist idea that the spirit of Jesus and His teachings, His ideas and principles live onamong those who follow Him. That isn t the resurrection at all in the scripture.

That is the resurrection out there at the university with the liberals and modernists and the people who are philosophically committed to the principles of Christianity, not to the person of the Saviour.



Jesus Christ was stone cold dead in the tomb and then He was literally, bodily resurrected. His resurrection was different from any resurrection that had taken place prior to that time. Jesus Christ was the first person ever resurrected in an absolutely new and different way.

Colossians 1:18 And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead

Who is the beginning the beginning of what? The Jehovah s Witness says, the beginning of the creation of God. He s the first thing God ever made. That s not what Paulis talking about. He s the firstborn from the dead. He s the first one to come up from the dead in a new way. He s the first one to come up from the dead in a line of people who are going to be resurrected like Him. He s the beginning of a new type of creation, a new humanity. He s the very first one to ever be resurrected that way.

Well, some other people were resurrected. Yes, they were. Other people were raised from the dead but their being raised from the dead was entirely different than the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is critical for you to see that. He was raised in an entirely new kind of way, something brand new, in the way that we are going to be made like His resurrection.

I want you to compare the resurrection of Lazarus with the resurrection of Jesus and see the difference in how men previously had been raised and how our Lord w

as raised.Matthew 28:2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, andsat upon it.

It was the angel who rolled back the stone. Why did he do it? He did it so the women could get in and see that He wasn t there. Christ didn t roll away the stone so He could get out but the angel rolled it back so people could go in and seethat He was gone.

John 11:38 Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone.He wanted the stone rolled away from Lazarus grave so he could get out.

41 Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.42 And I knew that thou hearest me always:

In Matthew 27 where we studied last time, The Father is with me always and has not left me alone. Yet, My God. My God. Why has thou forsaken me?Do you see the contrast there?

42 And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stan

d by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.44 And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: andhis face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

Lazarus comes hobbling out all bound up. He says, Loose him and let him go.

Contrast this. Think about this.



John 20:6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,7 And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.

Peter goes in and sees the slab where Christ had lain, there lay the linen clothes still in the same convolutions as they had been wrapped around His body. Over aside lay the linen napkin that had been wrapped around his head. When JesusChrist came up from the dead, nobody had to unwind Him. He just came up out ofthe clothes.

Lazarus had to have somebody unwrap him and take away the stone so he could getout. When Christ was resurrected, His body just stepped right through the clothes and right through the tomb. On the day of resurrection, if you had been standing inside the crypt (He probably came out the top) you would have seen Him levitate and disappear right up into the rock and finally all you would have seenwas His feet and then you would have seen His feet disappearing.

If you had been outside, you would have seen His head begin to appear out of the rock and up He would come passing right through the solid rock. No problem atall. Lazarus couldn t do that.

Jesus Christ had a resurrection body, a body that was different from anybody els

e s who just had their physical body rejuvenated with life coming back into the same physical frame. But Christ was given a new, resurrected type body. He s the firstborn from the dead, the first in a line of people who will be born with a brand new kind of body.

That body was a real, literal, recognizable body. (Some people would say that He was resurrected a spirit.)

Luke 24:36 And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.37 But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in you

r hearts?39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for aspirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.40 And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.

That s literal. He materialized in front of them and they thought they were seeing a ghost. He said, I am not a phantom. I am not some something unreal that you reach out and it isn t there. I am not some superstitious relic. I am real. Touch me. Feel me. A spirit doesn t have flesh and bones.

Notice that He doesn t say, flesh and blood. He says, flesh and bones.

1 Corinthians 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inher

it the kingdom of God;

The blood has been shed. The blood is gone.

Did you ever wonder what Adam and Eve had running through their veins before the fall? They had a heart. They had a circulatory system. Whatever it was, it was contaminated by that forbidden fruit which is a type of blood. The old timers used to say what they got was blood poisoning. Often the old timers have been right, haven t they?



I don t know exactly what happened to them back there but I know the verses and Ican look at them. I know what people say about it and I have my own ideas but I know flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, so He says, flesh and bones, a literal body. He says a spirit doesn t have blood it s not a corruptible body like you and I have. It s a brand new kind of body.

It s recognizable. They knew Him. They could see Him and touch Him. It was a real, recognizable body ? a bodily resurrection.

Luke 24:41 And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said untothem, Have ye here any meat?42 And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.43 And he took it, and did eat before them.

He could eat. In the resurrection you are going to be able to eat. Aren t you glad of that? Aren t you looking forward to the day when you are going to eat anything and not worry about getting ten pounds overweight? Glory to God! Hallelujah!

It was a body that could pass through solid objects.

John 20:19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, whenthe doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

He has scared them out of their wits. They re sitting at that table there and one says, Hey guys. Weren t there eleven of us here just a minute ago? There are twelve now. Where did he come from? The doors are locked and the windows are nailed down. One, two, three, four ten eleven twelve. Christ stands up at the end of the table and says, Peace, fellows. Their hair just stands up on end. The palms of their hands go clammy and their mouth dries up and they say, It s Him!

That s where you get the scene. I m not a ghost. It s me. How did He get in? He just walked in but He walked in through the closed door. No problem. He was not limited by physical objects. That s how He got out of that tomb.

He had a body that could be visible and invisible at will. Do you reckon that a

ny of them saw Him walk through the door? You haven t seen Him come out of that tomb because He had the will to be visible and the will to be invisible.

He had a body with the ability to travel at the speed of light. Last time we studied where he tells the woman in the garden not to touch Him and less than twohours later He let the men hold Him. He said, Don t touch me. I haven t ascended to my God and your God, to my Father and your Father. I ve got something to go up there to fulfill the type in Leviticus 23, and I ll be back, and then they hold Him. He went from the earth to the Father in the third heaven and back in less than two hours. Now, that s moving. Do you know that? That s faster than anything Star Trek ever thought of: Beam me up, Scottie. That s moving. That s the kind of bodya resurrection body is.

Mark 16:19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

He had a body that could be on the earth and be received up into the third heaven where God is and sit down at His right hand.

He had a body fit for traveling in outer space before there ever was a Sputnik or a spacesuit. People may say, Well, that is not literal. No? That is just as literal as you are, buddy. That happened just like you happened to come here tonight. It happened just that way.



If your faith isn t willing to take God at His word and believe what God said andthe way God said it, then God help your faith. You don t have too much. You ve got some superstitions and some human viewpoint but you are going to have to take it the way God said, that He had a body that could do that. Do you know what happens to your body when you get about thirty miles above the earth? It passes out. You get about three hundred miles up where there isn t any atmosphere and it explodes. His body, fitted for outer space, just went right on up there.

1 Corinthians 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

You have a natural body that is designed to work down here in this sphere on the earth. One day when you are resurrected you are going to get a spiritual bodythat is designed to operate in the heavenly places. You are going to have a body just like the Lord Jesus . Now, isn t that interesting?

One more thing about that body there are a lot of things about that body but I am just trying to make you understand that it is a literal, real body that is different from anything anybody ever thought of before.

Luke 20:35 But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:36 Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are t

he children of God, being the children of the resurrection.The resurrection body never dies. Another of the characteristics of that resurrection body is that it never dies any more. This mortal must put on immortality, and this corruptible must put on incorruption. You re going to die in this life,go into the next and be resurrected one day like Christ was resurrected and given a glorified body fashioned like unto His glorious body.

What science and religion and education have been trying to do for you for six thousand years is a body that isn t ugly or have any wrinkles and all that, (that s why you paint it up and comb it up, etc.). You want a body that never wears out. You want a body that can eat and not get fat, not get sick. Haven t you ever thought about just being able to walk through a wall? You want a body that can do

supernatural feats. You want to be at peace with the animal creation. You don t want to have to worry about famines and wars. Everything that men want and that religion, science, education are designed to try to get for people for six thousand years ? the believer has it all in an instant in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Can t you be patient for a sure thing? Sure you can. So, in the resurrection ofthe Lord Jesus Christ, there is a whole lot of stuff there. I want you to be conscious of the fact that the historic record demonstrates that it is a real thing. He really was resurrected.

It wasn t that His teachings live on in the hearts of those who follow His wonderful example. It s a literal, bodily resurrection that has a literal body that cando all these characteristics and one day, you are going to be fashioned like unto

His glorious body. He is the firstborn of a new species of humanity of which you and I are participants because we are believers. That ought to encourage you.

Matthew 28:16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.

It is important to notice that they go to Galilee. Before He is crucified, Jesus is telling His disciples that they are going to forsake Him.



Matthew 26:32 But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.

Matthew 28:7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo,I have told you.

10 Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

Christ is going to meet His disciples in Galilee. When they get there, they goup on a mountain. A mountain in prophetic scripture is a type and figure of a kingdom. He goes up into that mountain in Galilee. It s as though He is pointingto the kingdom. Galilee is extremely important in the Book of Matthew.

In essence, He is saying, Fellows, I have been with you and trained you. I diedand am resurrected and now, we are going to start all over. He began His ministry with them in Galilee in Matthew 4:12.

Matthew 4:12 Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee;13 And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the seacoast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim:14 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyo

nd Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles;16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

He begins His preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven in Galilee. He begins with the rejection of John the Baptist. He moves up into Galilee and He stays there for the rest of His ministry. In Matthew 19, you see Him come back down. He justmakes little excursions down to Jerusalem for the feast days but the center of His activity is in Galilee.

By the way, the first five chapters of the Book of John fit into Matthew 4, betw

een Verses 11 and 12, the early Judean ministry. But, with the rejection of John and John s message of preparing the way for the king, the king goes away as an exile up into Galilee and there He calls His disciples. There He trains His disciples and ordains His disciples. There He commissions them and sends them out.

It is from there that He is rejected by the nation and that rejection is demonstrated we have studied all of this how He goes away from the nation and gets that little remnant of people, those people who were not a people and they see the great light. It s out of Galilee that He brings that Little Flock, He calls them. He goes back to Jerusalem and He dies. He says, Hey guys, I am resurrected. I ll meet you up there where we began and we are going back and start all over.

He connects His resurrection ministry with the remnant of Israel, with the Little Flock. In His post resurrection ministry, it s as though He is saying, We ve come

this far and these things have happened and now we are going back and start allover and we are going to preach to the nation to repent, once again. We are going out and give them a new opportunity. Only this time it is not going to be me in incarnation but me in resurrection. My resurrection ministry is going to go right back over there with that little remnant, with that Little Flock and I am going to give the nation a renewed opportunity of repentance. That s what He does.

He s on a mountain, the type of a kingdom That s the subject, the topic, the issue.



Matthew 28:17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted

Some doubted like Thomas, and Christ says, Blessed are they that believe even thought they haven t seen. They are more blessed than those who have seen. There isstill that mixed multitude in their midst.

18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

That post resurrection commission concludes the Book of Matthew. In each of the gospels and in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, there is a record of thecommission that Christ gives to His apostles and His followers between His resurrection and His ascension. We call it the Post resurrection Commission. He had already given them one in His earthly ministry and now He re commissions them. Notice in Verse 18:

18 And Jesus came [type of the Second Coming] and spake unto them, saying, Allpower is given unto me in heaven and in earth.19 Go ye therefore,

Therefore, why are they to go? All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Therefore, go and do these things. This commission is associated with His kingdom and with His right to reign in the earth. All power is given unto me in heavenand in earth. The commission in the Gospel of Mathew is a commission that fits the Millennial Kingdom. It s a commission that looks to the kingdom. It is a commission that is given and to be carried out in light of the fact that all powerin heaven and in earth is in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, is a prophetic statement. Notat the time of the Lord Jesus nor today is He exercising all power in heaven and

in earth. The power in heaven and in earth is His by right but not His by theassumption of the authority yet.

Hebrews 2:8 Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in thathe put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels

Notice carefully. All things are under Him, nothing is excluded but it just isn t true yet. Now we see, not yet. Everything is going to be put under Him but it isn t going to be under subjection to Him, yet. There is a delay. There are things to be accomplished before it is put under subjection to Him.

Revelation 5:12 Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain toreceive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, andblessing.

He is worthy. He has the right. He is the only one who can go up to the throne of the Father and take the sealed book. He is the only one who has the power and the right and the privilege of taking the title deed to the universe and exercising its authority. That s what you are seeing in Revelation 5:4 and 5. They are looking for someone to take the title deed to the universe and only the Lambis worthy. But, you see, He hasn t taken it up yet. That is a future scene where



He comes and formally takes it, receives Himself the kingdom and comes back topossess it. That is what Matthew 28 is looking forward to.

Revelation 11:15 tells you when it happens.

Revelation 11:15 And the seventh angel sounded [in the middle of the 70th Week]; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world arebecome the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for everand ever.

That s when He takes it up. A day is going to come when Jesus Christ comes back into this universe and the kingdoms of this world become His and He will be Kingof kings and all the kings of the earth will bow down and worship Him but that hasn t happened yet. He has the right and He is the only one worthy of it but He hasn t taken up that authority as yet. That s His kingdom and that s what He is goingto do in the kingdom.

Come to Mark 3 and notice what He has to do first.

Mark 3:27 No man [Jesus Christ] can enter into a strong man's [Satan s] house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.

In Luke 4, Satan talks to Christ and he offers Him the kingdoms of this world.

Luke 4:6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and theglory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.

He says, I ll give you the kingdoms of this world and the power thereof because they are mine. I have won them in contest with the vice regent (man) that God placed on the earth. I overcame him and they were given to me. They are mine to give them to anybody I want to give them to.

In order for Christ to take back that authority over the earth He has to bind the strong man. That s why in Revelation 20, before He sets up His kingdom, He binds Satan and casts him into the bottomless pit and sets the seal over that bottom

less pit. But, before He can come and spoil his house, before He can come and take what belongs to Him by his usurpation, usurping it, Christ binds and defeats him.

So, when you go back to Matthew 28 when Christ says, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, He is talking about that prophetically. He says, It is mine by right. I am the one who is worthy by virtue of what I have done at Calvary, by virtue of my resurrection. When I take it up, Go ye therefore, because of mycoming kingdom. In view of the kingdom reign, Go ye therefore. Everything hangs on Verse 18.

It is clear that He doesn t exercise the power in heaven and earth today. In Ephesians 2 and 6, it says that the principalities and powers in the heavenly places

are in the power of the adversary. On the earth Satan is the god of this world and the prince of this world (2 Corinthians 4 and Luke 4).

But, Christ is the rightful king of this universe. One day He is going to takeup that authority and in view of Him being the rightful king of the universe, Goye therefore, and teach all nations.

The commission fits the kingdom. It s the Kingdom Commission. I want you to seethe details of it. Most people never study the details of these commissions. They talk about them and call this the Great Commission. Go ye therefore, so let s al



l go. The first two letters in the gospel are GO, so we need to go out missionary stuff, you know. Go out and teach all nations. Go out and preach the gospel to every man. But if you will put those things out of your mind for a minute andstudy the passage, it is fascinating to see how this passage fits exactly what is going to take place in the Millenium,

Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,

You need to write this passage indelibly in your mind. This is Balaam prophesying against Israel.

Numbers 23:9 For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people [Israel] shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.

You look at that. God Almighty says that Israel is separated from the nations and is not to be reckoned to be one of the nations of the earth. There is absolutely no way in the prophetic program that the nation Israel is ever considered in the same breath as all the nations of the earth.

When Christ says, Go ye therefore, Ye is Israel. Go ye, the people of God, and teach the nations. He is absolutely not including Israel with the nations. This is a commission to Israel, to the redeemed nation, to go out and reach the Gentile nations. Do you see that?

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations. What about Israel? Why don t you teach Israel?

Hebrews 8:8 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

In the kingdom, the nation Israel is going to be converted and they won t go about and teach every man his neighbor because every man s neighbor is going to know the Lord. Israel will be the missionary enterprise that goes out and teaches thenations when Christ reigns. The reason that they are going to know the Lord from the least to the greatest is because He is going to put His Spirit in them and write His law in their hearts. Part of the New Covenant blessing is that the nation in its entirety is converted at that time. The Little Flock is not goingto have to teach themselves, so converted, redeemed Israel is going to Go ye therefore, and teach the nations.

You need to write down Zechariah 8, Micah 4, and a dozen other passages but we lljust read one.

Isaiah 2:2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain [typeof a kingdom], of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways,and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

The Millennium will be a time of Gentile conversion. Isaiah 11 says that the knowledge of God is going to cover the face of the earth like the water covers the



sea. That will be the result of the missionary ministry of that nation, that Little Flock of believers.

Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations

That is a commission for Israel to go out and teach the Gentiles. It s a kingdomcommission. It s what they are going to do in the kingdom.

baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Notice that the baptism is for the nations in this passage. It is wrong for you to ever say that baptism is strictly and totally Jewish. It is not. Baptism is not Jewish but has to do with the kingdom. It has to do with the kingdom program. This is a Gentile baptism for the Gentile nations that come and subject themselves to Messiah s Kingdom.

In Leviticus 14:1 9, you will find that for the unclean thing to be cleansed, he had to be washed every whit with water. That is what is going on here. It has to do with the Gentile baptism for acceptance into God s favor for the unclean thing as in Leviticus 14.

So Israel goes out to teach the nations, baptizing them, bringing them into subjection to the nation Israel.

19 in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:There is tremendous confusion about that passage. People say, That s the formula. You have people over here in Indiana who baptize people three times by immersion: one time in the name of the Father, one time in the name of the Son and one time in the name of the Holy Ghost.

Somebody else says, No. You did it wrong. You did it backwards. You are supposed to do it face down three times. Then you have somebody else says, No. You doit one time backwards. Somebody says, No. You do it frontward one time. .Others say, No. You pour water on their head. Another guy says, No. You sprinkle water on their face. You have all different kinds of ideas and concepts. Most people reading Verse 19 misunderstand the words.

19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: That s a great Trinitarian statement, a proof text of the trinity: one name for all three. He is not saying that that is a formula as a word that you are to pronounce over them when you baptize them. It is not a formula to be recited in the baptismal ceremony.

When the Bible says to do something in the name of, it s like we say, Stop, in the name of the law. You mean by the authority of the law. In the name of the law, I say, Stop! There is a song out in the world that says, Stop, In The Name Of Love Before You Break A Heart.

What is Christ talking about? Authority. That s the idea. He is talking about baptizing in the authority of the triune God: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. He is not saying to baptize in the person of the Father, theSon and the Holy Spirit. The way you know that come to Acts 2. Notice that there is a little difference in Acts.

Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ [in the authority of Jesus Christ] for the remissionof sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.



Peter is talking to Israel. Jesus Christ is the rejected one and He is the embodiment of the trinity, is he not? For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. (Colossians 2:9)

The issue with Israel is Jesus Christ. They have rejected Him so they are to be baptized to submit to the authority of the rejected king.

Acts 10:48 And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord.

When Peter baptizes Gentiles at Cornelius house as per Acts 2:38, he does it according to Matthew 28. He commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord,in the authority of the triune God. There is one name that fits God the Father,God the Son and God the Holy Spirit: Lord. When he says to be baptized in thename of the Lord, he is talking about all three of them. The idea is to be baptized in the authority and power (not in the person) of the triune God.

1 Corinthians 1:14 I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius;15 Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name.16 And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whetherI baptized any other.17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel:

Did Jesus Christ send the twelve apostles to baptize in Matthew 28? Yes. Go yetherefore, baptizing. Did He send Paul to baptize? No. Therefore, I know thatthe apostle Paul was not working under the Acts 2:38 commission or the Mark 16 commission. The apostle Paul did not work under the so called Great Commission. He specifically says, My authority, my commission, my being sent is not accordingto those instructions. If you follow Paul today, that is why you will not follow the so called Great Commission.

Matthew 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:

You can do a lot of things with that verse. You can go back to Matthew 5:19 and show that Christ taught them to keep the law. If you keep the commandments, you

will be great in the kingdom. Romans 6 and 7 make it obvious that isn t what we do today. We are not under the law but under grace.

20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Notice that there is no ascension in Matthew 28. I am with you always and they never see Him leave. Matthew leaves Christ the King on the earth because that iswhere the king is supposed to be ? reigning on the earth.

(Chart) There are five different commissions given by Christ after His resurrection and before His ascension. The commissions are in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Johnand Acts. They pertain to the Acts period until the fall of Israel. Then you h

ave the Body of Christ which will go out one day. Then there is the tribulation period. Christ will return and set up His kingdom.

The commissions in Luke 24 and in Acts 1 fit the Book of Acts. Those commissions are what they are doing in the Book of Acts. Luke writes Luke (Volume 1) andActs (Volume 2): both volumes of Christ s life. You find the Acts commission in those two books.

The commission in the Book of Mark fits the Tribulation. In Mark, Christ commissions them and gives them power, is carried up and leaves them. You see Him at



the right hand of the Father, working with them on the earth with signs following. All the signs and wonders in Mark fit the tribulation period.

The commission in Matthew 28 fits right over there in the Kingdom.

The one in John 20 is a general commission that describes the authority and theadministrative wherewithal of the apostles, no matter if in Acts, in the Tribulation or in the Kingdom. Those men have divine given authority to act, both in the absence of Messiah and in His presence. John describes that authority. This is the commission that the Roman church uses to demonstrate why a priest can forgive sins.

The commissions are often usurped by the Protestant church to demonstrate that this is what we are supposed to be doing in His absence. What they have failed to recognize is that Christ has spoken again through the apostle Paul and has given us a new commission, a further revelation with a commission involved in it (2 Corinthians 5), one that fits appropriately what we are doing today, one that fits appropriately into the silent heavens when God is not judging and holding men s sin against them, not imputing it against them but is forming a spiritual body of believers reconciling them unto God in one body by the cross. So, we have the commission of reconciliation today.

The commission in Matthew 28 fits the Kingdom where Christ is with them on the earth.

The commission in Mark fits the Tribulation where Christ is ascended into the third heaven and is working with them on earth..In the commissions stated in Luke and Acts, they go out beginning at Jerusalem in that order.

Those five commissions fit like that and it is important for you see that they are given after the resurrection and before the ascension and are given to instruct these believers in the program during this period of time and then during the seventieth week and then during the Millennium.

At each point in time, they knew what was required of them and what they were to do. They were thoroughly equipped to do the job that God had called them to do.

Rather than taking these commissions and trying to place them on us today, if you will recognize where they fit, instead of doing something that God isn t doing today and trying to obey passages that God has rendered inoperable today, you can realize what they are and rejoice in them. Then go get the passages that describe what He is doing today.

Okay. You didn t think we d get through, did you?

MATTHEW 302 8

(Part 2, Lesson 37)

TEST #5

On a separate sheet of properly headed paper answer the following questions using complete sentences where appropriate. You may use and unmarked Bible to look up references.

Matthew Part 2(Richard Jordan)

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