1. "These teachers were literally dumber than rocks. The creation knew its Creator. They would cry out if no one else did. The crowds massing and cheering Jesus were closer to understanding the truth than the teachers were."

2. "Those who are confident of their own goodness don't understand their own needs so they're not looking for a God who comes as a Savior of sinners. That's why they don't see Him. They don't think they need that. They're not looking for that."

3. "Friend, if you've ever thought that ignorance is bliss, you should reexamine that assumption. Your ignoring Jesus will not be ignored by God. To mistake Jesus is to ignore the exit when the fire has begun."

4. "Jerusalem had been entrusted with God's truth, God's prophets, and they have worse than squandered them. They've acted like the king would never come back. They've acted like there would never be an accounting they would need to give."

5. "Fear and rejoicing, tears and shouts of joy could be in such close proximity to each other, but that's the way it is in this spiritual battle of this life. Good comes crashing in on bad, and bad shows itself even in the midst of good."

6. "Outward majesty can awe and it can mislead. Capital cities may look grand and be filled with spiritual deception and death. Awe of this world can steal from your awe of God. Beware of what awes your soul."

7. "Doom on that day will be avoided not on that day, but by your repentance and faith in Christ today. You must find God's grace today."

8. "For centuries they've been worshiping the Lord, but look what happens when the image of the invisible God actually turns up. A lot of them realize that this is what's being talked about. And they go like, oh, that's not the Lord I'm talking about. That's not who I want to worship."

9. "Our problem today can be that we sometimes like our religion or some of its benefits more than we do God or the opposite, that we can't stand the church but think somehow there is some fictional Jesus that we like. That's just a sort of mixture of some of our own preferences."

10. "The temple unclean will never cleanse you. The temple and its religion will never save you, apart from your trust in Jesus Christ."

Observation Questions

1. According to Luke 19:28-31, what specific instructions did Jesus give to the two disciples He sent ahead, and what were they to say if anyone asked why they were untying the colt?

2. In Luke 19:37-38, what did the whole multitude of disciples do as Jesus drew near on the way down the Mount of Olives, and what specific words did they cry out?

3. What was the Pharisees' response to the crowd's praise in Luke 19:39, and how did Jesus answer them in verse 40?

4. According to Luke 19:41-42, what was Jesus' emotional response when He saw the city of Jerusalem, and what did He say was now "hidden from your eyes"?

5. In Luke 19:43-44, what specific events did Jesus prophesy would happen to Jerusalem, and what reason did He give for this coming destruction?

6. When Jesus entered the temple in Luke 19:45-46, what action did He take, and what two Old Testament quotations did He use to explain His actions?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Jesus chose to enter Jerusalem on a colt that no one had ever ridden, and how does this connect to the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 about the coming king being "humble"?

2. What does Jesus mean when He says "the very stones would cry out" if the disciples were silent (v. 40), and what does this reveal about the nature of His identity and the appropriateness of the crowd's worship?

3. How do we reconcile Jesus weeping over Jerusalem (showing compassion for the lost) with His prophesying their destruction (announcing judgment)? What does this teach us about God's character?

4. What is the "time of your visitation" that Jesus says Jerusalem did not recognize (v. 44), and why was their failure to recognize it so spiritually catastrophic?

5. How does Jesus' cleansing of the temple connect to His identity as the coming King, and what does His quotation of Isaiah ("house of prayer") and Jeremiah ("den of robbers") reveal about what had gone wrong with Israel's worship?

Application Questions

1. The religious teachers were so confident in their own understanding that they missed the Messiah standing before them. In what areas of your spiritual life might you be relying on religious knowledge or tradition rather than genuinely seeking Jesus Himself?

2. Jesus wept over those who rejected Him even as He pronounced judgment. How does this challenge the way you think about and pray for people in your life who are spiritually blind or resistant to the gospel?

3. The sermon emphasized that finding God's grace must happen "today" rather than being delayed. Is there a specific area of repentance, obedience, or trust that you have been postponing? What would it look like to respond to Jesus as King this week?

4. Jesus drove out those who had turned the temple into a place of exploitation rather than prayer. How might you examine whether your own participation in church life has become more about personal benefit or religious routine than genuine worship and prayer?

5. The disciples trusted Jesus enough to follow His unusual instructions about retrieving the colt. What is one area where you sense God calling you to step out in obedience even though the assignment feels strange or uncomfortable?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Zechariah 9:9-12 — This prophecy explicitly foretells the King coming to Jerusalem humble and riding on a colt, which Jesus fulfilled in His triumphal entry.

2. Psalm 118:19-29 — This psalm contains the words the crowd cried out ("Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord") and provides the liturgical background for Jesus' entry as the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone.

3. Isaiah 56:1-8 — This passage contains the prophecy that God's house shall be "a house of prayer for all peoples," which Jesus quoted when cleansing the temple.

4. Jeremiah 7:1-15 — This temple sermon by Jeremiah warns against trusting in religious rituals while practicing injustice, and contains the phrase "den of robbers" that Jesus applied to the corrupt temple practices.

5. Romans 11:1-10, 25-32 — Paul explains Israel's hardening and blindness to the Messiah, connecting to Jesus' words about Jerusalem not knowing the things that make for peace, while also revealing God's ultimate redemptive purposes.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Excitement of a Coming King and the Setting of Jesus' Triumphal Entry

II. When the King Came, He Found the Teachers Ignorant (Luke 19:28-40)

III. When the King Came, He Found the City Doomed (Luke 19:41-44)

IV. When the King Came, He Found the Temple Unclean (Luke 19:45-46)

V. The King's Sovereign Reign Continues Despite Opposition

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Detailed Sermon Outline

There is an excitement in the air when a new king is coming. The new king comes with powers that dwarf those entrusted to temporary elected officials because the king will reign for life. He has many titles and jobs and responsibilities and privileges in his mere gift. We've recently seen the coronation of a new king of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And some of the celebrations surrounding that.

But even they pale in comparison to what would have been experienced, say, 400 years ago when King James of Scotland was coming down to London to take the throne of his recently deceased cousin, Queen Elizabeth. In those days, the king's power was immense and that meant that the hopes were as well. What might the new king do?

What ills would He redress? What people would He honor?

That kind of excitement was going on in the last few weeks and months of Jesus' earthly ministry. We know that on the road to Jerusalem, Jesus had told His great parables of salvation. We read back in Luke chapter 15, and Luke tells us that great crowds accompanied Him.

The crowds were loud in Luke 18. So loud, blind Bartimaeus heard them and went in search of Jesus. Zacchaeus too heard Jesus was coming, but he had a hard time getting a sight. Why? Because of all the crowds of people.

By the time we get to our passage today in Luke chapter 19, Luke could refer in verse 37 to the whole multitude of disciples. It's a lot more than 12. We know from John chapters 11 and 12 that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the chief priests and the Pharisees were concerned that, quote, if we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. And the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. In chapter 12, John refers to the large crowd that had come to see Lazarus.

And it was that large crowd we read in John 12:12 that were the ones who took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him. That's the core of the great crowd with the palm branches at the triumphal entry. It's the people who came out to see the raised Lazarus.

Imagine the scene. A crowd bursting with a wider and deeper public admiration than had ever been seen in Judea. Throngs swelled, accompanying the entering rabbi who many thought would be the deliverer of Judea from Rome. Many in the crowd were reciting Psalm 118:25, Hosanna, which means save us now. A cry longing and hopeful.

Not to be found in the throngs would be the king in the line of Herod, though he is no doubt come into the city for the Passover and is almost certainly aware of the threatening nationalist unrest.

You can be sure that the power elite of the city wanted to eliminate the approaching rabbi.

Crowds that stirred up threatened to make their own positions unstable. Who had come out to see the approach to the city of the one whom many thought was the Messiah. Was Joseph of Arimathea there somewhere in the back of the crowds not drawing attention to himself as a member of the Sanhedrin, but intrigued and searching. Were Roman soldiers there in attendance stationed at crucial points along the pilgrim way assuring Crowd control and order. You can be sure that the high priest of the temple Caiaphas was not there.

No, Caiaphas would have been well aware of Jesus and he would be concerned about the unrest of those who thought that this miracle worker was the Messiah. Among the characters walking the 15 miles or so up over 3,000 feet of elevation from Jericho to Jerusalem would have been the disciples. There was Thomas, immortalized mainly for a question he would ask in about a week. Imprisoned people like Barabbas were not there, but this rabbi's approach was about to affect his life more than he could ever have imagined. Most remarkably among the throngs would be the rabbi's friend Lazarus who had recently died and been brought back to life and everyone was talking about it.

Lives of his sister Martha would almost certainly have been there walking with her brother and their friend. The disciple Andrew was walking along who had been following his master for three years or more. And Mary Magdalene, whom the Lord had forgiven so much. Looking younger than most of the other disciples, would have been John, the son of Zebedee. And too, the master's mother, Mary, would be there walking along, still following her son.

Still tending his needs. Philip, who would share the good news with so many. And Judas, who would betray the rabbi. James, John's brother too, who had been walking along that palm strewn way. So many faces we can recognize in this crowd.

And his palace in the city would be the one most in charge of keeping order, the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate.

He probably dreaded this time of year, Passover, all the pilgrims assembling from all around Judea and beyond. But on the other hand, this was why he was there. It was his job and doing it well could propel his career.

In one way or another, Satan himself would have been there that day, inspiring murderous thoughts of Pharisees like Paul.

Perhaps most prominent among the disciples walking along would have been Peter, the fisherman, the first to have confessed Jesus in public as the Messiah, the impetuous, heroic, loving, impulsive, instinctual leader of the group. He must have been beside himself in excitement thinking what was about to happen when the King finally comes into His kingdom. And then there is the central figure of the crowd who had spent the last three years ministering in gardens and on the road, in the countryside and on mountainsides, at the beach or on the lake, in the cities, towns, and villages of Judea and Galilee, in synagogues, and perhaps most of all in people's homes. He had healed the dying official's son, people with swollen arms and legs. He had given sight to the blind, adhering to the deaf, and on and on it goes.

And most recently, as I just mentioned, He had raised from the dead His friend Lazarus who had been dead four days. These crowds from Jerusalem that had come out to see Lazarus were worrying the leaders in Jerusalem. And they formed the core of that crowd that day surrounding the rabbi as he slowly approached the city. Here he is now seated on a colt at the center of all the loud praising and rejoicing, the one who had been performing such mighty works around the country that his name had become familiar to all the leaders, Jewish and Roman in Jerusalem, Jesus. Luke 19 gives us the account of the king coming into his kingdom.

The culmination of years of public teaching and doing good, and entry covered in all four of the Gospels.

And yet everything that seemed so near to this jubilant crowd was about to quickly unravel. How could this anticipated coronation turn, in fact, into the horrible public spectacle of the execution of Jesus in just a matter of days. What happened? That's what our chapter is about. Luke chapter 19.

We come here today at the entrance of the main character, Jesus, onto the main stage, Jerusalem. We're starting in Luke 1928. If you look at the Bibles provided, that's on page 878.

Please turn there now. What was the Jerusalem like that Jesus was coming to? What were the religious teachers teaching? What was the city like? How was the temple, the graphic portrayal of the mercy of a holy God that had for a thousand years been at the center of their national life?

These are the questions that we'll follow as we look at Luke, chapter 19.

What were the expectations for the coming King among the teachers in the city and the temple? And I pray that as we go through this, we will each one see how we are welcoming Jesus and His rule and reign in our lives.

First, when the King came, He found the teachers ignorant. Look at Luke chapter 19, beginning at verse 28.

And when He had said these things, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When He drew near to Bethany and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, He sent two of the disciples, saying, 'Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' you shall say this, 'The Lord has need of it.' so those who were sent, went away and found it, just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owner said to them, 'Why are you untying the colt?' and they said, 'The Lord has need of it.' and they brought it to Jesus.

And throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. And as he was drawing near, already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples.

He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

Ironically, the people whose job it was to know God's Word and teach it themselves missed the coming of the King.

These teachers were literally dumber than rocks. The creation knew its Creator. They would cry out if no one else did. The crowds massing and cheering Jesus were closer to understanding the truth than the teachers were. They were obeying Psalm 150.

Praise Him for His mighty deeds. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. While these so-called teachers of God's Word were themselves not obeying, and in fact they were calling others to join in their disobedience at this point. But Jesus said that if they would fail, then the stones would cry out.

The Creator would have the praise of the creation. This passage has prophecies fulfilled left and right.

I point out just a few of them. You can find more at home this afternoon. Jesus foretells the cult and the disciples find it exactly as He foretold it. As we heard in Zechariah 9 just a few moments ago, He came humble and mounted on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The song of the angels from Luke 2:14 at His birth was echoed on the lips of the crowd surging into the city surrounding Jesus, Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Psalm 118:26 was what the crowds were crying out. Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.

Even Jesus' own repeated prophecies of being rejected by the teachers and the leaders of the people were being fulfilled as the Pharisees criticized those who were praising Him.

This passage is full of prophecies fulfilled. Some people have been surprised by who ends up praising Jesus in this passage and who doesn't. But those whom God elects to make His very own have always included and excluded surprising people. His choice has never been based on our inherent comparative worthiness. As Jesus had taught back in chapter 15, lost coins are found, wandering sheep are recovered, prodigal sons return and are embraced.

The God of the Bible is a God of outgoing, surprising love, a love which blesses those who are its objects and redounds to the praise of the one who is Himself love. Those who are confident of their own goodness hear that the teachers or those who lead the temple are those who don't understand their own needs so they're not looking for a God who comes as a Savior of sinners. That's why they don't see Him. They don't think they need that. They're not looking for that.

Friend, if you've ever thought that ignorance is bliss, You should reexamine that assumption. Your ignoring Jesus will not be ignored by God.

To mistake Jesus is to ignore the exit when the fire has begun. Your ignorance will not lead to any bliss. Friend, do not delay thinking carefully and seriously about Jesus Christ, about who He is and why He's come.

I wonder if you've noticed the theme of reversal as we've been studying through Luke's gospel. So just before this, the notorious tax trader Zacchaeus is saved, while just before him, the very moral, rich ruler is not saved. Or here at the end in chapter 19, it's the common people who get it right. As they listen to Jesus' teaching while the religious teachers get it wrong as they literally plot to kill the Messiah.

God seems to like to do surprising things that call attention not to our strengths and merits but to His. That's why Jesus regularly sought out the disreputable. I wonder if we're like that. When we're thinking about evangelism, Do we tend to only think of the reputable people, the people that we know our neighbors would respect? Are they the only ones we really think about trying to take the time and the effort to share about Jesus with?

I pray that God help all of us to be better evangelists.

If you're here for the first time today, know that we're always glad to have new people visiting. You're welcome to come back anytime. You'll find it sometimes easier to get here than you would have found it this morning. You should be paying special attention to Jesus and how His ancient mission includes even you today. And if that's not clear from this sermon, maybe ask a friend that you came with about what it could mean for the mission of Jesus to include you.

Maybe you're someone who's just been coming along for a few weeks or months now. You wouldn't call yourself religious, at least you wouldn't have last year. You're still getting used to the way there's so many people here and they stay for so long on a Sunday morning. It doesn't seem a particularly convenient church. The pews are old.

The parking spaces are few. People keep coming even through snowstorms or Capitol Hill classics. You're still a little surprised by people taking these 20-page programs as they come in, opening them and then standing and singing loudly, even the men.

It's just not normal. But you've begun to be convinced about Jesus. And you're still trying to understand what this means for your life. My Christian brothers and sisters, we want to rejoice like these crowds here. We want to recount Jesus' mighty deeds and our words and our songs and our prayers and our testimonies.

We want to grow in our trust of him, like the disciples who grew in their claims to recognize Jesus as the King. They trusted him even as the two went to go get that colt. What a strange little assignment. How much trust they had to have in Jesus even to go do that. But they did.

I wonder how you're doing at obeying the Lord today. What kind of things you know he's called you to do. Maybe you've paused at something. Let me just encourage you gently but clearly, why don't you go ahead with that obedience? The Lord is worth trusting.

If you're about to have lunch with a Christian today, maybe you could give part of your time listening to them answer a question about what good things they've seen the Lord do in their lives. So you can kind of continue this chorus of praiseful testimony to the Lord in his good works. I wonder what unexpected ways God has used in your own life. It threw the teachers here. The teachers here are ignorant, but God will have his own.

When this king came, he found not only the teachers ignorant, but number two, he found the city doomed. Now, you expect the capital city to be prepared, festooned with banners and likenesses and ceremonies to recognize and solemnize the new king's rule. Days of prosperity should follow his coming and enthronement. But instead, look at what Jesus does.

And says and predicts. Luke 19:41, and when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it, and saying, 'Would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation. Remember the parable last week of the minas, the servants entrusted with different minas? Remember we had the enemies who didn't want the guy to be king?

And then we had the two servants who were faithful and one returned 10 for one and the other five for one. And then most of the time in the parable Jesus spent on that third servant who was given the one mina like the others, but he didn't engage in business, as Jesus had instructed, or as the master instructed in the story. He just put it in a handkerchief and put it away. He showed he didn't really believe that master was coming back as the king. He didn't really believe the king would ever make any accounting necessary.

That servant is a personification of Israel, of Jerusalem. Jerusalem had been entrusted with God's truth, God's prophets, and they have worse than squandered them. They've acted like the king would never come back.

They've acted like there would never be an accounting they would need to give. But in Jesus' coming, on this day of the triumphal entry, the day of their visitation, as Luke puts it there in verse 44, had come. That word for visitation is a strange one for us today. In the Greek, it's just episkepesis. Scope, scope, look, epi, upon, or over.

So look over, look around. That's what it means. Episcopal. So if you're coming from an Episcopal church, you're coming from an inspectionist church. That is the bishop, the episcopos, is the one who's there to inspect.

So three ways Christians have organized churches: bishops, presbyteries, congregational. Congregational, like us, we think there are camp commands in the Gospels and the Epistles, which are commanded to every Christian as a member of a local church, and we as a whole have to deal with them. We'll be doing that tonight in our meeting. Presbyterian, you think that there is a body of elders who has that special responsibility and that the congregation should obey what the elders do. They will have this role of visitor or inspector, Episcopalian.

Ah, same role, only just one person. A bishop, episcopos, that's the word. It's the visitor. It's this idea of inspecting. And that's what will keep all the churches orthodox.

Except it doesn't always work that way, as we've seen in Greece and Rome and other churches down through history. That's the idea here, that an inspector is coming. A visitation will happen. That's the visitation, in fact, that was happening when Jesus is coming. That very day, that was the day of their accounting.

Jesus and His ministry were also, that phrase we read in verse 42, the things that made for peace. And we find that the leaders of Jerusalem have become the actual opponents of God. And so Jesus tells them in verses 43 and 44, They will be condemned to destruction. Friends, imagine the scene. Jesus is coming.

He crests the hill. He saw the full city laid out before him, and he was struck, and he wept. Jesus wept because of Jerusalem's poor, stewardship of the truth entrusted to her prophets. The poor stewardship amounted to a rejection of him, of God, and Jesus wept because of the consequences which were coming, the judgment that would come upon them. Jesus was not carried away by the praises of the crowd around him.

He saw through them. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is marked both by tenderness and by strength. We never read in the Gospels of Jesus laughing. But at Lazarus' tomb and here we read of Jesus weeping. He's undone at the blindness of Jerusalem to the spiritual truth that would give them peace if they just understood it.

He sounds like the Lord in Psalm 81, oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways.

Or in Isaiah 48, oh, that you had paid attention to my commandments. But the very thing they needed for their peace they would reject. And so the Holy Spirit explains through Paul in Romans chapter 11, what then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.

As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear down to this very day. The judgments for Israel's sin had come upon them even in their own hardening, and their eyes being hidden to the truth. It would take a miracle to bring them out of it. And God was about to perform that miracle for many of them. You look at the miracle God used in the hiddenness of Christ to the Pharisee Paul.

That's one example. Here though we see Jesus looking over His capital city, the new king come for the coronation, and He wept.

Just as He had when He saw His friend Lazarus dead. You know, part of the incarnation of the Son of God as one truly human meant His experience of our emotions of sadness and sympathy. And Jesus' truly divine nature showed itself in His knowledge of the spiritual reality today. The things that make for peace, He calls them. That is His own coming.

And the coming reality, in this case, is a description of the destruction that did in fact come 40 years later when the Roman General Titus would do exactly what Jesus predicted here in 70 AD, right at the same time of year around Passover. Passover had just finished and the Roman General with his forces surrounded the city, besieged it and trapped them. You can read the harrowing accounts from Josephus in his book on the Wars. In our passage we see great theological concepts joining together. In order to understand these simple sentences here, we need to understand some of the deepest points of Christian theology.

We need to understand the idea of the two wills of God and the idea of the two natures of Christ. The two wills of God are the will that He has revealed or declared and the will that He has concealed or decreed. The first is what we should do, the second is what He will do. We know from Ezekiel 18 and Ezekiel 33 that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that He wants all to turn and live. This is His declared will that He has revealed to us.

Then there is also what happens. Not everyone is saved. Not all the Pharisees have an example like Paul on the road to Damascus.

An appearance of the risen Christ. Not everyone finds him. And so we look in Revelation chapter 19 and we see the praise that is given God for his exaction of justice on the final day.

The other deep point of Christian theology exposed in our passage is the two natures of Christ. Here we see him weeping. Jesus was truly human in his feeling, in his sympathies. And we see him warning of the coming future. Jesus was truly God in his knowledge and in his certainty.

Friend, you won't understand Jesus if you leave out either of these Bible truths so well summarized about 1700 years ago this very weekend in Nicaea in the words that we read earlier in our service. True God from true God, who for us and for our salvation came down.

And was incarnate, being made a man. Are we supposed to weep like Jesus did here as we look at Washington, D.C. or the city you come from? I wonder if you've thought that growing spiritual maturity showed itself in a kind of undisturbed complacency or Jordan Peterson-like stoicism. Do you think that's the height of maturity according to Jesus? It doesn't seem to be.

No, I look at Jesus here surveying Jerusalem. I wonder when the last time was you felt such sympathy stirring for someone in danger because of their spiritual rebellion. What if the next time you see your mom or dad or your son or daughter Is that the seat of judgment? How will you feel then? Friends, to ask these questions is not to question God's sovereignty or His goodness.

It strikes me here that fear and rejoicing, tears and shouts of joy could be in such close proximity to each other, but that's the way it is in this spiritual battle of this life.

Good comes crashing in on bad, and bad shows itself even in the midst of good. They're taking place at the same time. Heroic resistances and craven concessions. Costly love and cheap sin. Outward majesty can awe and it can mislead.

Capital cities may look grand and be filled with spiritual deception and death. Awe of this world can steal from your awe of God. Beware of what awes your soul. Jerusalem was a great city, but ultimately it depended on God and it forgot that. Did you notice that in verse 43 Jesus spoke of the days to come?

But in verse 42 he spoke of this day. Friend, it's vital you appreciate the difference there. Try to find God's grace on this day, and the days to come will take care of themselves.

You must find God's grace today. Doom on that day will be avoided not on that day, but by your repentance and faith in Christ today. You've been made in the image of God. You've been made a morally responsible creature, a spiritually responsible being. And the Bible tells us that every single one of us has sinned against God.

We've done what we've wanted rather than what He's wanted. And because of that, we've put ourselves in guilt before a good God. We're all the same in that. As different as our sins may be, we all have that same state. And our only hope is not to try to clean things up right at the end.

It is to today trust in the perfectly good Jesus Christ and what God has done in giving Him in His death on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice bearing God's good and right wrath for all of those who would ever turn and trust in Him. You must see what it means for you to trust in Christ. That's your hope that today you can be forgiven so that on that day you will not face doom, the doom you've deserved because Jesus has been doomed for all of us who trust in Him. Friends, we know God accepted that. Jesus was raised from the dead.

He ascended, and His heavenly Father accepted that, and then He said that He was coming back in the same way that He left. So when Jesus crucified and resurrected would ascend from this same Mount of Olives, a few weeks later He would leave one city doomed, as He here predicted, but he would go to the city described in the book of Hebrews that has foundations whose designer and builder is God. Jesus has gone to prepare a heavenly city that we sing of so often here, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. This is the city we seek that is to come. So in Christ we seek the Jerusalem that is not the city of destruction, but the city of salvation.

Not the city that is doomed, but the city of the saved. One more surprise for you in our account. When this king came, he found not only the teachers ignorant and the city doomed, but he found the temple unclean. He found the temple unclean. Look at the last two verses in our passage, verses 45 and 46.

Luke 19, verses 45 and 46.

And He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, 'It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer,' but you have made it a den of robbers.' Jesus was acting out a kind of preview of the cleansing destruction As here in verse 45, he drove out corrupt merchants in the temple. We don't know much more about this from the other Gospels. We know that they were exchanging money, assuming that's trading in money that had pictures of gods or humans on it as idols, changing it to coins that didn't that therefore could be used to purchase sacrifices in the temple. But they were doing so in exorbitant ways that took advantage of those who were to come to worship. This temple that was to be the very heart of holiness, the picture of faithful religion living among the people of God, it was the structure which gave a visible account of how a holy God could show mercy.

It involved blood and death and sacrificed life for sin. It involved substitution. It involved that which was provided by one for another. It involved obeying God's own Word. It reflected a revealed code of what was right and wrong.

All of this was going on at the temple. The temple. The account of verses 45 and 46 is part of the cleansing that Jesus performed not this first day, but we know from Mark's gospel this actually happened the next morning. It happened on the Monday morning.

But we know also from Mark's gospel that when Jesus did enter the city triumphantly and weep over Jerusalem, that He did in fact go straight to the temple. Though it being late, Mark 11:11 says, when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the 12. I've included these two verses in our account this morning though because it makes sense to me. Because the King's triumphal entry didn't fall short of him going to the temple. He came through the gate into the city and it would seem strange to end there.

So he must make it to the temple, which we know from Mark's gospel he does. Verse 47 turns to the teaching that would take up Jesus' ministry the next day, and it is a part of the next couple of days in the temple teaching that we'll see going on there in sermons to come. But the temple is the symbol of the Lord's presence with His people. It is in that sense like the court of the king with the holy of holies as his throne room. So what we know is that on this Sunday Jesus entered the city, he surveyed the whole, and his coming to the temple brings his entry to its symbolic completion by the king not only coming into his capital, but into his very own court, the temple.

And there he finds not what Isaiah said the temple should be a house of prayer for all peoples, but it had become, as the Lord predicted it would in Jeremiah 7, a den of robbers. People were being robbed, even in the very act of trying to comply with regulations for worshiping the Lord.

Friends, there's something about human nature that respects religious buildings. We're awed by them. We like to look into them. We want to see what goes on in there. What is that space like?

Whether that's the temple in Jerusalem or the century-old building that Caleb was telling us about in the class earlier this morning that we're meeting in here. But friends, buildings are simply tools to be used by the faithful in their worship of God and obedience to Him. So we meet here in order to regularly obey God's commands, to praise Him, and to read and to sing and to welcome each other. To pray and strategize for love and good deeds in each other's lives. And you're always welcome to join us for that.

We do that every Sunday morning here at this time. We meet again Sunday evening at 5:00, come back, pray with us. This house, too, is meant to be a house of prayer. You can come to join us for that.

But the great sin of the temple leaders and so many people from 2,000 years ago is that they seemed to like God's building more than God. They seemed more concerned about the accoutrements of worship than about the One they worshiped. They thought that they were loving God, but really they were loving certain parts of His public worship: the choir, the priests, the sacrifices, the symbolism, the history. They liked that even more than they liked Him. God Himself.

I wonder if you're somebody who's grown up in a religious home, in a Christian home, kids, young people. I wonder when you look around and think about your own life, do you find you're like Jesus more or church?

Do you like your friends here or teachers you've had or God? It's good to like both, but you might find it's fruitful to ask yourself that question, which do I like more? And why? And explore that. Explore that with some godly teachers you have, or perhaps your parents, maybe a friend.

Ask why I like what I like at church. Pray for God to use the teachers we have here to help us all know Him better. For us grown-ups trying to figure out what we really like is usually a matter of seeing what we easily agree to do even with excitement and what we're really reluctant to commit to do. We can usually follow that and tell where our hearts are.

Sometimes I think we think we mean the same thing But then we find out we really don't. It's like when you're talking to a friend you went to school with, and so you meet this friend and you start talking about Bob, you know, oh, Bob, oh, Bob was hilarious. Remember this time, Bob, oh, yeah, it was great. I was there. You know, you're both having this great time talking about Bob, and then one of you says, oh, you know what?

I just remember, I got a picture of Bob, and you pull it up on your phone. Oh, yeah, there's Bob. The other guy goes, no, that's not who I'm talking about. That's exactly what happened when Jesus turns up at the temple. For centuries they've been worshiping the Lord, but look what happens when the image of the invisible God actually turns up.

And a lot of them realize that this is what's being talked about. And they go like, oh, that's not the Lord I'm talking about. That's not who I want to worship. That's not who I want to give my life for.

Friends, the local church is to be the embodiment of that character of our Creator and Redeemer. We're supposed to be the ones that people can look at to see what God is like.

Our problem today can be that we sometimes like our religion or some of its benefits more than we do God or the opposite, that we can't stand the church but think somehow there is some fictional Jesus that we like. That's just a sort of mixture of some of our own preferences. I notice here in this verse 45 some people are confused that Jesus would ever drive anyone out. It just sounds very much not like Jesus, though this account is recorded in several of the Gospels. But friends, you realize that someone are sometimes driving someone out is how we can help to show what it really means savingly to be in, to be one of God's people.

So when Jesus was driving out the money changers, he's God. He could be doing that knowing their final judgment. Or he could have been doing that as a way to help them understand what it would mean for them to lose that and turn to real devotion to him. As a congregation, I hope we understand that our act to put someone out of membership, to excommunicate a member, is never meant to consign them to eternal condemnation. No, it's really meant to lead to the opposite.

It's meant to lead to their salvation as we try to wake them up from their sleepwalking in sin service. We will, as we have covenanted, entreat and admonish one another as occasion may require. We are here together to encourage one another in following Christ, not to condemn. So pray that God grow you in building others up. The way to seek responsibility in this congregation is to be an edifying factor in other people's lives.

Try to help other people. Try to love them. Encourage them in their growth in Christ. We're to be people marked by our prayerfulness to God and our concern to edify each other.

The temple unclean will never cleanse you. The temple and its religion will never save you, apart from your trust in Jesus Christ. In so many ways, the king's coming to the city was not a typical royal entry. It was not what so many had expected. So we've seen that the King Jesus came to the capital city, but the teachers were ignorant.

The city was blind. The temple had become an idol.

But His sovereign reign is never stopped by opposition.

This weekend is the 162nd anniversary of the deaths of a dear couple of Canadian Christians you may never have heard of or don't recall. On May 20th, 1861, Mr. and Mrs. George Gordon, after living as missionaries on the South Pacific island of Eromango for four years, were killed by those they were trying to reach with the gospel. When the news of the martyrdom reached the aged and sightless mother of George, She cried out, My son, my son. And she wept. George's brother, James, was also a student for the ministry, and he was plowing when he was given the news.

And he immediately sent an application to the mission board. He asked that he might be sent to take his brother's place in Eremango. That he might go and be able to take the message of forgiveness in Christ to his brother's killers.

His brother James did follow him there and did see fruit.

But James, too, was martyred there. He, too, was killed by the very ones he was trying to reach.

When news of his martyrdom reached his mother, she quietly exclaimed, I wish I had another boy to send that the heathen may receive salvation.

Friends, that sounds like the response of someone who knew Jesus. That sounds like the response of someone who knew that they themselves needed a Savior and having found one who wanted to share that good news with others.

The Gordons knew that they bore the guilt of their sins and that their only hope was in transitioning that guilt to another. That's the kind of king Jesus had come to Jerusalem to be. You remember what Isaiah prophesied, that He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. Friends, this King brought with Him a kingdom, a rule, and a reign so new, so radically unexpected by some, that when it happened and when people began to understand, the news of it echoed around the world and down the ages, and is still reverberating today in this very room.

News of this King and His coming. What is Jesus' kingship looking like in your own life this morning?

Let's pray.

Lord, we each one carry burdens that are too heavy for us to bear. And so we need youd help. Most fundamentally, we need youd salvation. We need the bearing of our sins by the Lord Jesus. Give us trusting, real faith, we pray.

And then through that, empower us by youy Holy Spirit to look on every occasion in our lives with faith and trust in youn, that yout will get us through it, that yout will help us to trust yout in youn sovereignty, that yout will show us how with each day youy give us, with its circumstances, yous can teach us how to live that day with Jesus as King. Teach us to trust your goodness through it all. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.